Feeling sad but I can't fight it- Home (Naked Raygun)

EDIT: boy do I have egg on my face. I sent this entry to the best friend mentioned in the story and he let me know I had confused two Thanksgiving movie treks into one. The discovery of Naked Raygun, for me, actually took place on November 26th, 1988 when he and I went to see They Live, a movie we both LOVED, I got the NR record and he got Death's Leprosy on cassette. We all went and saw Predator 2 as as a big group, with more friends (as we had actually made some by that point in High School) he also says he doesn't look at P2 is as harsh of a light as the rest of us... ANYWAY, enjoy this MOSTLY true story:

On November 23^rd, 1990 my best friend and I ventured to the Boulevard Mall in Amherst NY to see the sequel to one of our most revered films, Predator. Ultimately, it was the hard sell to our 16 year old  brains, old man Danny Glover (though, at the time, he was 2 years younger than I am currently) goes toe- to- toe with the predator and wins. We HATED it. It was akin to the transition from …And Justice for All to The Black album or Technocracy to Blind, total disappointment.

While we were walking through the mail picking apart what we had just seen, we went over to regional record store chain Cavages to see what gems we could find. When I looked in my pocket to see what degree of funds I was working with, I had around $8, and lamented the fact that I had way overspent on theater snacks and food court delicacies. Thankfully, in the import section I saw an LP marked “Import- $6.99” on Homestead Records.  The layout looked strange, and I mistook Homestead for New Renaissance Records (of which, I had the Speed Metal Hell compilations) and plunked down $7 and some change for the kind of punk looking record Throb Throb by Naked Raygun.

When I put the record on, I was blown away. The power and speed of hardcore were there, but with huge melodic hooks- I was instantly a fan. Shortly thereafter, I got a copy of their second full-length All Rise on cassette from my cousin, who had it stowed in a box of stuff he didn’t like. Again, All Rise was yet another tasty bite for my ever increasing teenage musical appetite.

I already loved Raygun when I got a copy of Understand In early 1990, but that record, and more specifically the song Treason, galvanized that loved to near obsession.  I picked up their current record Raygun… Naked Raygun and aside from the opening track, which thankfully I also got as a standalone 7” single, I don’t think I ever listened to again for a decade, choosing to stick the parts I loved and leaving out the ugly bits of a band on its way out.

In the fall of 1991, I was hanging out with my friend Scott and he asked me if I had heard “the guys from Naked Raygun’s new band” he handed me an LP which I assumed was to borrow, but he told me I could keep it. That record was Strong Reaction by Pegboy and every song was somehow BETTER than Naked Raygun. I wanted to go see Pegboy with Social Distortion during the spring on 1992, but tickets were $20 and that seemed like A LOT of money for a show,  and seeing as I had seen the Bad Brains and other huge shows for $10 and under, I passed, which I regret; I have not come across the opportunity to see Pegboy since.

On Thanksgiving Day 1997, I found out in an AOL chatroom that Raygun was doing two reunion shows that coming weekend. It seemed impossible to make it happen and although I started sorting out the logistics, I decided not to take the risk of driving 550 miles with the hopes of getting into one of two sold out gigs with little money and a more unreliable vehicle. I decided that I would never see them and would have to just dig in to the recordings. My band at the time, No Reason, was asked by  Dyslexic Records (who had just released The Last of the Demohicans by Naked Raygun) and although we started working on the song Rat Patrol, and although we did play it live for fun ones, we never recorded it and the band, and Dyslexic Records both folded.

In the fall of 2006, my ex-wife and I learned that Raygun was playing a reunion gig at the Metro in Chicago that coming November.  We both decided we had to go, as one of our first conversations ever revolved around a Throb Throb shirt I was wearing.  On a hunch I Myspace messaged drummer Eric Spicer if they were doing any smaller warm up gigs and he pointed me in the direction of a Holyy Lazarski Nahane gig with The Bomb (Singer Jeff Pizzatti’s newer band) at Subterranean, a MUCH smaller club, the night before the Metro show.  This was the better of the two nights and the night where I enjoyed myself a lot more, the set list and show was more my style than the vastness of the Metro.  The Strip/ Vanilla Blue/ Dog at Large/ Entrapment/ Roller Queen/ Surf Combat/ Knock Me Down/ Rat Patrol/ Walk in Cold/ I Don't Know/ I Lie/ New Dreams.

The Metro show was one of the first iterations of “Riot Fest,” which has grown to a US Festival of massive proportions, but this was a relatively small at around 1,500 people.  I remember being mostly bored during the opening bands (even the Effigies were less than exciting), with 7 Seconds, who can get along at any show on their back catalogue of songs alone being an exception, and actually leaving the show at some point to have dinner at a sit down Mexican restaurant. Raygun were better the night before and the start stop of their first song really kind of detracted from the set’s take off.  Home Of The Brave/ Metastasis/ Hips Swingin'/ Coldbringer/ Dog At Large/ Surf Combat/ Treason/ Gear/ Suspect Device/ The Strip/ Managua/ I Don't Know/ Rat Patrol. After the set, I won an autographed Naked Raygun skateboard, which was awesome, HOWEVER, they had sold so many decks, they had none with and album art left, so they had to sign one of the company’s standard board. Jeff wrote “The Lame Eagle Board” on it and it still hangs on my wall to this day.

I was extremely saddened this morning when I awoke to a message from my friend Bill informing me that Pierre Kezdy, the bassist for Naked Raygun and later Pegboy had lost his long battle with cancer. I felt the need to write something, but couldn’t really put it into words the way I wanted to.  Raygun was the first band I 100% discovered myself, with no outside influence whatsoever, so it hits hard- they were mine and even though I didn’t know Pierre, it still hits like I’ve lost a friend of the past three decades.

“We can look back and say, ‘We were the guys out there with machetes, blazing a path through the jungle, while other people were able to follow and bring their weapons through easily. And what did we get out of it? Sore arms.”- Pierre Kezdy 2015