The first EP

Welcome to the rest of your life, Chris T.

My years in Hoboken (1994 to 2007) included regular visits to Sixth Street Vintage around the corner from my sad Adams Street railroad apartment. Items I still treasure–a 1930’s rolling medical lamp, a chrome-plated Art Deco cocktail shaker, etc. –emerged from that little antiques shop, as did a long friendship with its proprietor, Sharon. When my fiancée and I moved from Hoboken to Weehawken we soon crossed paths with Sharon, who was living across the street. After my Catskills antiques store That Cave was forcibly shuttered (my cousin threw me out of the location we shared) I bartered with Sharon for space in Sixth Street Vintage to winnow down my remaining stock. She’d get a knowledgeable person manning the place in her absence and I’d empty out my garage. It went well and as Sharon wound down Sixth Street Vintage–renting the place to a succession of tenants–to concentrate on her thriving estate sales business, she’d enlist my help there, too. I’d research values, arrange displays, keep an eye on the randos who troll estate sales (yes, people shoplift from the dead) and work alone when she couldn’t be there. Appreciative for the work, I soon noticed how drained and loaded down I’d feel when back home. Nothing reminds you of time’s winged chariot drawing ever nearer–and just how much shit you own–than experiencing an estate sale from the inside. The things we treasure and how little they ultimately mean to those who outlast us is fucking sobering. Your shit will be sold for pennies on the dollar, friend. That’s why I’m more determined than ever to do large-scale Swedish Death Cleaning. I even tried to persuade Sharon to spin-off such a business, based on the concept of unloading your shit BEFORE you croak, not leaving a goddamn mess for your survivors. Thinking I might need proof of concept, I’m starting with myself.

This week I decided to concentrate on a room in our house where it feels the walls are closing in: our tiny upstairs office. Long shelves groan under the weight of multiple foot-square black cardboard containers holding all manner of outmoded media. Let’s begin here. Climbing a step-stool, I retrieve the box labeled “45s” and set it down on our tanker desk. Pulling off the dusty lid of the box sends me hurtling back to the late 1970s and those last two years of high school when a burgeoning interest in English punk rock began to supplant the heavy metal I’d been into. Mike Nicolosi (RIP)–Nihilistics songwriter and bass player–and I made regular weekend runs in either his yellow Ford Capri or whatever hunk-of-shit Mopar I owned at the moment to Long Island’s north shore (was it Great Neck?) and our favorite Import record store (our local–Looney Tunes–didn’t carry imports). Making a beeline for the bin labeled “NEW SINGLES” we’d peruse picture sleeves for clues, eventually asking the store owner “What does this sound like?” rather than “Can you play this for me?” After the obligatory spin we’d gladly plunk down cash, leaving with bagfuls of fresh releases. Now the 45s molder in this black box containing most of the 7-inches acquired back then. I say “most” because I sold my Heart Attack God Is Dead EP years ago (it went for over $1,000 and is worth more now) and “acquired” because Nihilistics often exchanged records with other bands. They’d give us their latest and we’d fork over one of the 200 copies (a minimum order at PRI Record Pressing in Wyandach) of the first Nihilistics EP. Let me find it… ah, they’re all still in alphabetical order.

And here it is…

Recorded at 7A, the “studio” (little more than a pot smoke-clouded near-squat with a rudimentary PA and a few microphones running into an ancient mixer and on to a creaky reel-to-reel) run by the Bad Brains on Avenue A near 7th Street (not to be confused with A7, the bar/venue at the OPPOSITE side of the same intersection), in 1982, the session took less than two hours. As one of the Dead Boys–Jeff Magnum (likely in attendance to score weed and/or get high) looked on and offered encouragement, we banged out five songs live (I punched in frantic lead guitar overdubs on a few) in rapid succession. Releasing the results on our own Visionary label in a black & white sleeve featuring the stark NIHILISTICS graphic (designed either by Mike or his then-girlfriend Sandy) on the front, the one that’d become our logo, and a band photo on the reverse (credited to the aforementioned Sandy), we felt inordinately proud of our thin-sounding (there is NO bottom end on those recordings) achievement. Having an actual record separated Nihilistics from all those NYHC bands still playing out with nothing tangible to show for their efforts and no “product” to hand to local DJs. Two of the 7A-recorded tracks also landed on the seminal ROIR New York Thrash cassette (I have mine here somewhere) but it was the EP that became our calling card.

Flipping it over, I stare hard at the picture of the four of us–Troy, me, Mike and Ron–posing in front of a house ten yards north of where I grew up. We’d been trudging up and down South 5th Street, looking for a suitable backdrop, posing first in front of a DEAD END sign, then trespassing on the site of a recent house-fire. Sandy hastily clicked off a bunch of shots with her SLR and we got out of there before any nosy neighbors intervened. How we settled on the picture with Mike seated, head in hand, is lost to memory. But here I am immortalized in my weird Travis Bickle phase, replete with asinine almost-Mohawk and camouflage Eisenhower jacket, squinting into the camera. No last names are used–punk rock de riguer–but I’d soon christen myself “Chris T.” because “Chris” was too meager and no one could pronounce or–God forbid–spell my last name. Inside the record jacket we stuffed a folded photocopied lyric sheet, with credits and a long list of thank-yous, beginning with “Tim” (Tim Sommer) and “Jack” (Jack Rabid).

I fish the lyric sheet out and again am gobsmacked by all the Death. On side 1 there’s After Death (“After death you rot in the mud, rot in the mud, rot in the mud”), followed by You’re To Blame (“…that my mommy’s dead”) and No Friends (“There’s a funeral dirge playing in my head/thoughts of my future, I wish I was dead”). Side 2 features Love & Kisses (“A-B-C-D, D is for Dead/H-I-J-K (don’t ask me why it’s not E-F-G-H”) bullet in the head”) and Kill Yourself (fill in the blanks). Talk about a bleak fucking future. I can’t speak for Ron or Troy but Mike and I were on a definite Death Trip. When Mike’s beloved father dies unexpectedly (car accident, then lingering in a hospital while undiagnosed internal bleeding finishes him off), his generally cheery former-fat-kid demeanor is thoroughly jettisoned following weeks sequestered in his bedroom cranking out lyrics for the first real Nihilistics songs. Me, I’m still a fat kid, full of self-loathing, subject to endless ridicule, at constant war with my family, thoroughly lost and with fuck-all to look forward to after graduation but (a slow march to) Death or (Nihilistics) Glory. The only thing I’m good at is playing my guitar and all I want is to be in a band. Everything else–work, love, home–is a bottomless well of bitter disappointment, so I stake my future on the Nihilistics. The EP is the demarcation point and I’ve argued previously that absent Mike and the band we started, my trajectory might look very different. But here’s the partial through-line, for clarification:

1974: Mike and I meet in Lindenhurst Junior High

1979: We begin playing music together: Nihilistics soon coalesce

1981: Emergence of the fully-formed band on the NYHC scene

1982: The first Nihilistics EP and the ROIR cassette is released

1984: Band relationships sour; I play my last shows with Nihilistics

1986: I move off Long Island, landing in Tenafly, New Jersey with Jeff Nagle (RIP), who I befriend when our bands (Nihilistics/Drunk Driving) play the same bill. My first night as a Jersey resident, Jeff drags me to a Hoboken house-party where I meet Kaz, who’s recording station IDs for his show on WFMU. In July I’ll make my first appearance on air there.

1987: New best friend Kaz and I begin co-hosting our own WFMU show, The Nightmare Lounge.

1988: I get my first job in radio, working in the WFMU offices.

1989: After Kaz ends his involvement, I remain at WFMU, launching the talk show Aerial View. I also attempt (a failed) reconciliation with Nihilistics, recording a batch of new songs, some of which (unbeknownst to me) are eventually released.

1995 (or thereabouts): I’m hired by a WFMU fan to work at NPR’s New York Bureau as a freelancer.

1999: After years of imploring me to visit him, I relent and stop by Mike’s house while on Long Island for Thanksgiving. He thanks me by trying to choke me to death.

2002: A WFMU DJ now programming the Blues Channel at a new service–Sirius Satellite Radio–hires me to be on air. I also play the CBGB New York Thrash reunion with a Mike-less Nihilistics.

2005: I meet my future wife at an Asbury Park Weird NJ party hosted by a WFMU DJ.

2006: The husband of a WFMU DJ hires me full-time to co-host a daily trucking radio channel talk-show.

2007: My fiancée and I buy a house: later in the year we get married down the shore where we met. In attendance are a half-dozen members of the WFMU staff.

2012: Mike Nicolosi dies of cancer.

This EP represents so much more than a moment in time: it was the beginning of the rest of my life. I might sell off other contents of this box but how could I part with this?