I've been toiling for months on this shit. Years, actually. I'm still knee deep in the whole damn thing, but now I have something to show for it. After more than 100 interviews (and still counting!), I finally turned my attention to transcribing some of them and generating some written words you nice folks could feast your eyes upon. This is nowhere near complete, but Tony, Steve, and Wedge were such fantastic interviews, I felt compelled to share some excerpts. And goddamn was Nine Shocks Terror a powerhouse with a hell of a story! Eventually, eventually, eventually this will all be available in the form of a book that you can read while trying to fall asleep, kill time, or poop...or maybe you'll just want to look at the pictures.
PS: This content is all part of a much larger project that will ultimately see the light of day. I'm being cool enough to share some of it with you now here on this blog. I'm working my ass off for no money, so please don't use this content for any other purposes. Just read and enjoy. Appreciated! -Ken
Thanks to Tony, Steve, Wedge, Mike, DJ, and Felix for sharing their time and stories.
Not a Fucking Anthem
Nine Shocks Terror
Michael Thorn (Maximum Rock 'N' Roll) There’s something about Cleveland, in general. I actually feel
like the best punk bands come out of Cleveland. Going back to Rocket from the
Tombs, Dead Boys, Pere Ubu, Devo. There’s something so fucked up about a city
that was able to light its river on fire. It’s a total fucking shit town, it’s
been shit on by everything, it’s a Rust Belt city, but it creates this need to
have this amazing creative outlet.
Wedge (Nine Shocks Terror, Gordon Solie Motherfuckers) Pretty much everybody who's been involved with the scene here at
some point time in the last 30 years has been some sort of degenerative, pill-popping
skater that knew how to party and by the way, they had impeccable taste in
music.
Steve Peffer (Nine Shocks Terror) One big thing about this town, even still now, there is this
sense of humor that just runs through everything.
Michael Thorn (Maximum Rock 'N' Roll) I don't think I'll ever be able to fully explain how much I love
Tony Erba as a human being, as a person in a band, just as this total fucking
psychotic weirdo.
Steve Peffer (Nine Shocks Terror) Tony is trouble in good ways and bad ways but he’s just an
absolute sweetheart, a very kind person. Tony Erba is one of the three most
instrumental people in shaping my life.
Tony Erba (Nine Shocks Terror, Gordon Solie Motherfuckers) I was always motivated with the bands, I wanted to do something.
First, it was like “you'll never put out a record.” Fuck you, I just did,
the label’s from California, what do you got, asshole? “Well yeah, but you're
never going to go on tour.” Fuck you, we’re going out for three months.
…
Wedge (Nine Shocks Terror, Gordon Solie Motherfuckers) Steve showed up one day blew our fuckin’ faces off.
Steve Peffer (Nine Shocks Terror) I'm in Wedge’s Basement with Wedge and Chard and Tony and they're
about to start playing these songs and I’m just gonna’ scream shit that I have
written down in this notebook.
Tony Erba (Nine Shocks Terror, Gordon Solie Motherfuckers) I go to Wedge, “this guys a real prick, he's perfect.” We got him
in the band and there he stayed for like 10 years. I say that facetiously, the
guy’s a really good friend of mine and we never, ever had a cross word.
Steve Peffer (Nine Shocks Terror) These Japanese thrash bands had more of a rock influence. There
was more to the song. It wasn’t just like, okay, let's rip through this fucker,
lets blast through it and it's over. There were solos, the songs were not
necessarily a million miles an hour, there was a groove to these songs. I think
that Nine Shocks also had that spirit, that rock influence.
Tony Erba (Nine Shocks Terror, Gordon Solie Motherfuckers) We rolled with a lot of amperage. We always were a very loud band.
…
Wedge (Nine Shocks Terror, Gordon Solie Motherfuckers) The first two or three years that we were playing in that band,
basically nobody gave a fuckin’ shit about us.
Steve Peffer (Nine Shocks Terror) It was hyper-political and hyper-lifestyle conscious, not even
lifestyle conscious, but lifestyle fashion. It was very serious, very
judgmental, very weak, very weak…When we first started, for the first couple
years, we were around, that's how people were at the shows we played. We’ll go
play a show with Charles Bronson and it was a humorless scene. It was a
humorless scene and weak. It was so fucking weak.
Michael Thorn (Maximum Rock 'N' Roll) When Nine Shocks Terror would roll up to your house, they look
like the guys are coming to do drywall. A bunch of chubby dudes in their 30s,
they weren’t cool, quote-unquote.
Steve Peffer (Nine Shocks Terror) We had a presence that did not jive with what else was happening
and we didn't take ourselves seriously at all. I mean, we knew that what the
band was doing was righteous and bad-ass and it was like, let’s take the
fucking show on the road and just like slay every town just by being ourselves.
Tony Erba (Nine Shocks Terror, Gordon Solie Motherfuckers) If we’re gonna’ get scolded because someone started jumping up
and down at a show, then we’ll just do our own thing, then. It might be real
hard to find a place to play or an audience to play to, but we’re just gonna’
do it. That's what the H100s did and that kind of morphed into Nine Shocks and
you probably had a bunch bands by osmosis doing the exact same thing their
towns.
Wedge (Nine Shocks Terror, Gordon Solie Motherfuckers) Every time we were hitting the road once that split with Devoid of
Faith was out it was like, wow we were here eight months ago and played to
eight people and the bartender, and now there's 40 people here swinging from
the rafters and they want to buy two of each of our T-shirts.
…
Tony Erba (Nine Shocks Terror, Gordon Solie Motherfuckers) Wedge had that book lying around, Zen and the Art of
Motorcycle Maintenance. “We should call the record Zen and the Art of
Fucking Kicking Your Ass.” We laughed and then we just shortened it to “Beating
Your Ass.”
Wedge (Nine Shocks Terror, Gordon Solie Motherfuckers) We’d been touring a lot and Chard cleaned up his act with the
heavy drinking and with bad drugs. He was sober for a little bit under a year,
and in that time, we actually finished writing like the most of the songs and
gotten really tight and had rehearsed a lot.
Steve Peffer (Nine Shocks Terror) I think the songwriting on that album was beautiful. The guitar
playing is absolutely beautiful. Wedge to this day is my favorite punk drummer
of all time. I can recognize his drumming from down the fucking street. It's
just total battery, just thundering bombardment, galloping thundering bombardment
and he is always fucking on.
Tony Erba (Nine Shocks Terror, Gordon Solie Motherfuckers) We went to Mars. That was a professional studio run by this guy
Bill Korecky, who was a cool dude. He was a guy coming out of the 70s that was
into hard rock and early British heavy metal.
Steve Peffer (Nine Shocks Terror) They did all the music in one day, which is the way you should be
able to fucking do it and then I came in the next day and did vocals…At that
point I still hadn't learned how to scream without giving myself the most
piercing, painful, head-in-a-vise-grip headache.
…
Steve Peffer (Nine Shocks Terror) People here back then at least were just shit-heads. Throw a
firework at a show. It's like where do you not light off a firework? Okay,
let’s light off firework there…It wasn’t just for our band. It was definitely a
Cleveland thing for other bands. But it wasn’t this huge thing. It was a thing
that happened occasionally.
Wedge (Nine Shocks Terror, Gordon Solie Motherfuckers) The first time I remember anyone throwing fireworks at a show was
a really early H100s show.
Steve Peffer (Nine Shocks Terror) All the shows that we played back then were at these
nontraditional places for bands to play, because no regular club would let us
play, and there was like an attitude of “well, fuck this place too.”
Tony Erba (Nine Shocks Terror, Gordon Solie Motherfuckers) That fireworks thing started at Speak in Tongues. I think that
whole thing all across America started right at Speak in Tongues. People always
talk about this Easter Sunday show with No Justice and Gordon Solie. People
throwing paint around, it was totally out of control, but I guess people took
word of that back to their towns.
Steve Peffer (Nine Shocks Terror) All this whacked out behavior got noticed by all these people
from out of town and they just fuckin’ ran with it.
Wedge (Nine Shocks Terror, Gordon Solie Motherfuckers) The first couple of times it was pretty cool, everyone is going
this crazy over what we’re doing. It was always in the back my mind, I can’t
fucking breathe with all this smoke and someone’s really gonna’ get their neck
broken at some point in time, and we’re the ones who are gonna’ get blamed for
it.
Steve Peffer (Nine Shocks Terror) When people were doing it organically originally, it was what
you're not supposed to do and you're doing it and then it became what you're
supposed to do.
Tony Erba (Nine Shocks Terror, Gordon Solie Motherfuckers) I can tell you right now, we never showed up with firecrackers.
Felix Havoc (Havoc Records, Damage Deposit) Well, there were a lot of pretty wild shows, as I drove them on
two tours, only once did I think things had gotten “too out of hand” and that
was a show in North Carolina with tons of fireworks. In retrospect, I was
probably overreacting. But really, the mayhem was very good natured, kind of
like the pro wrestling schtick that Erba was often promoting, just going wild
and blowing off steam.
DJ Podolski (Last In Line) That Hampshire
College show in 2001 was legendary. That was a legit legendary, awesome show.
Nine Shocks killed it at that show.
Steve Peffer (Nine Shocks Terror) I remember that being a colorful performance.
Tony Erba (Nine Shocks Terror, Gordon Solie Motherfuckers) Al quint jumped out the window. Love it. One of my favorite
memories. He bailed out because of the smoke.
Wedge (Nine Shocks Terror, Gordon Solie Motherfuckers) I still have 10 stitches in one of the knuckles of my left hand
from that show.
Steve Peffer (Nine Shocks Terror) At that point, and for like a year afterwards, we were like hands
down the best live hardcore band in the fucking world. We were so just dead on.
We were so locked into our own thing. It was like the crowd is like this
fucking mist. When you get to that point in the band, the crowd is like a
vapor, like this mist floating around out there. You're just locked into this
groove with these three other guys and you're just trudging across the tundra
together in this gigantic fucking machine and you're all propelling it forward.
…
Tony Erba (Nine Shocks Terror, Gordon Solie Motherfuckers) I thought Paying Ohmage sounded kick ass. My bass sounded really
good on it. Slabs of guitar sounded good. I was really kind of an amp guy by
that time. We had like three stacks in there, three guitar stacks, two bass
stacks. I wanted it to sound like a Mountain record, but with a hardcore band
playing.
Steve Peffer (Nine Shocks Terror) Lotta’ good riffs on that record.
Wedge (Nine Shocks Terror, Gordon Solie Motherfuckers) We ended up writing four or five more songs that weren't bad,
never got played live. They got recorded and then they were completely
forgotten. But at the same time, there's three or four songs on that album that
I think are some of the best shit we ever did.
Steve Peffer (Nine Shocks Terror) After the second album, our hearts just weren’t in it anymore.
Wedge (Nine Shocks Terror, Gordon Solie Motherfuckers) It was not long after that record came out where I was out of the
band for the first time and that’s when the first big West Coast tour happened
and they eventually ended up going to Europe after that. I was not a part of it
unfortunately. It's my own fault.
Steve Peffer (Nine Shocks Terror) How many times can you jump up and down on stage and scream in
the microphone? How many times can you do that? I think it got to a point where
I wasn't enjoying it. But this is something I'm convinced I want to do, but I'm
not enjoying this, so take it out on the crowd.
…
Tony Erba (Nine Shocks Terror, Gordon Solie Motherfuckers) Japan is its own little world, everything is completely
different, different from Europe, different from the USA.
We played about 20 shows or so and the only
place we didn’t go was Hokkaido, Sapporo, which are far northern islands and we
didn’t go to Okinowa.
Sometimes I’d spy a ladder backstage and I’d
go, “I could use this.” So I played the last song, I put the bass against the
stack and there's the feedback and we’re obviously gonna’ come out and do a
couple more songs…I Come out from the back with the ladder, I set it up and I
motion to the crowd to start stage-diving off and they went berserk. That was
the show with Nightmare and it was in this big club in Osaka that was upstairs.
It was in this mall, but had this atrium. So this thing is on the second floor,
but you can look out the windows and see down into the atrium of this mall. PS:
there is also a giant sandbox in there the size of a living room. Everybody was
tripping on acid and playing in the sandbox. Oh yeah, there’s also a roller
coaster that just happens to go by right outside the window of this place.
There’s a roller coaster there for some reason, it was so fucking freaky.
…
Steve Peffer (Nine Shocks Terror) So what ended up being our last show was at the Cathedral in
Toronto playing with Drop Dead and Fucked Up.
By that point, I had totally disconnected
myself from any sort of pleasure from playing these shows. My contempt for the
crowd had gotten ridiculous and I was dealing with that by just getting totally
fucked up at shows.
Tony Erba (Nine Shocks Terror, Gordon Solie Motherfuckers) Steve was really hammered at the show. Hammered! He knocked
Kevin’s stack over and then I threw a brick through the monitor.
Steve Peffer (Nine Shocks Terror) At that show in Toronto, I just got so fucked up during the bands
leading up to us and then, by the time we go on to play, I am just blacked out,
fucked up. Kevin had a full Marshall stack that he was playing on, I knocked it
over, all of it, like three times. Not even singing the songs. In a way it's
almost performance art, in a sincere sense. I woke up the next day and I just
thought, I’m never doing that again.
Tony Erba (Nine Shocks Terror, Gordon Solie Motherfuckers) I went to band practice one day and no one showed up.
Steve Peffer (Nine Shocks Terror) We had a practice scheduled and I think Tony was the only one who
showed up and he left a note on the door. I still have the note on the door. It
said “nobody showed up for practice” and then he signed it “zodiac killer.”
Steve Peffer (Nine Shocks Terror) Those guys are such fucking characters. Now they’re older and
more mellowed out, one of them’s dead, but fuckin’ a man, I was so fucking
lucky to hang out with those guys.
Tony Erba (Nine Shocks Terror, Gordon Solie Motherfuckers) When we were on, we could kick your ass. When we were off, we
were pretty bad, but mostly we were pretty good.
Steve Peffer (Nine Shocks Terror) The best bands are different types of people. Different
personality types, people with different ideas, people that get inspiration
from different things, people that are influenced by different shit, people who
have different ways of approaching things, different attitudes, different
behavior, different sensibilities. The best bands are the bands made up of
people of all different types. If you can get those people together to work
towards a common goal, you become like a gang and that's how we felt. We were
the fucking Mobile Terror Unit.
