.....The Rebel Star is Shining............ James "Rebel" O'Leary Videos & Interview ............(York, PA)

Bask in the glory of the late James "Rebel" O'Leary & his Texas Rebelettes.

Rebel Star

Highway 81

All The Way From Texas

...and an interview with the Rebel and Jammie Ann at the 1987 Fan Fair in Nashville.

A thousand thanks to Rustle Noonetwisting for rescuing the definitive Rebel video collection and to the O'Leary family for creating the music and footage!

If you're hankerin' for more of the Reb, head on over to these earlier Tapewrecks salvage sites:

• James "Rebel" O'Leary.... ......The Man... The Legend (c1930-1994) 
• Leave My Grandpa Alone!... .....James "Rebel" O'Leary & Family... York, PA's Finest Country Band and my Vinyl Salvage Operation......

Hotlegs.... .....Neanderthal Man...

This is a funny scratchy single I picked up at a thrift store last year just for the title. Turns out the song was an accidental hit record in 1970 when I was just learning to walk upright and use tools.

Neanderthal Man

 
Story goes, they were just messing around with layering drums on a new 4-track machine and started on this ditty. They intended for the vocals to be super low, to accentuate the drums. And at the end of the recorder solo, they hit a piece of sheet metal with a hammer, which blew the cutter head while the record was being mastered.

Apparently, when you add Italians, you get this:

Reesa & the Rooters .............. .......................Suburban Wives Club (Philly & South Jersey 1979-83)

[pronounced: rootahs] When the 70s and the 80s collided in mid-air.  Reesa and the Rooters came walking out of the wreckage in primary colors.

In 1978, my younger brother, Larry Laskey, and I would often jam on acoustic guitars to create moody songs with lyrics inspired by the news. When friends Bob Jay and Donny Buckley joined on electric guitar and bass, I booked us in a South Jersey tavern as Reesa and the Rooters, a blues-pop, semi-acoustic group.

We added a drummer and continued to gig around Philadelphia and Jersey. I hand-lettered and cut and pasted graphics on all our literature, as well as putting up hundreds of posters and sending out mailing list postcards.

After Larry switched to electric guitar and I started playing a Farfisa organ, the local media dubbed me “the queen of the new wave scene.” Cherie Rumbol, a cohort who played in South Jersey club bands, came in to replace the original bass player and to add another voice to the mix.

The band and its music fit perfectly into the blossoming new wave scene in 1979. Except for some suburban clubs where people just didn’t get it, our audiences dressed up with skinny ties or spiked hair and came ready to pogo or slam dance.

In October 1980, a new version of the mythological jerk appeared on the Rooters’ first and only record release, Ultraman in Surf Villa,

backed by the punk-rock anthem TMI. I was always a natural on stage, but it was my natural knack for promoting that helped push the single into a college radio hit.... You make me cold like TMI... Melt my heart like TMI....

[I was 10-years old when TMI had its little accident and our moms packed my cousins and us in the car and headed for the hills. We stayed in a cabin in the Poconos and picked blueberries that week. 30 years later it's great to find a love song based on a TMI simile!]

My performances were a reflection of my hippie past that included running offstage into the crowd, as well as tumbling around while singing and playing organ or guitar, or checking my makeup in a compact mirror.

Cherie exuded a quieter, more demure sexiness as she sang lead on such songs as “Ultraman in Surf Villa” and “Pierre.” The latter was Larry's vision of Marie Curie, whose husband discovered radium.

After nearly three years with the Rooters, and frequent artistic differences between me and my brother, I started writing songs on my own. “Guru Eye,” based on an article about Mao Tse-tung’s wife, was the first original tune we performed that had been written sans Larry.

That summer, Cherie and I jammed in Philly with drummer Ann Frances at an outdoor concert. We clicked immediately, and decided to put together Suburban Wives Club as a Rooter side project. But almost as quickly, the Rooters broke up.

SWC performed some of the Rooters songs, although in a more minimalist fashion. I set aside the Farfisa and concentrated on guitar to record Guru Eye as our quick-and-dirty single, b/w Casual Cat at a Laundromat.  Since we were a trio, I couldn't go out into the crowd much but I still did crazy stage routines, even getting Cherie involved in musical calisthenics during "Fat Thighs."  -from Reesa Marchetti's website.

Reesa and the Rooters put out a brand new 4-song CD in 2008 and is recording a new release.  Look for live performances and more info at the Reesa and the Rooters website and Reesa's Relive the 80s Philly band website.

Thanks to Billy Synth for telling me about The Rooters!  

L.Sid.......... from Mercury to Jupitah

Dedicated to Markus's family and friends.

From the first time I met Markus, I was affected. "Wuuauoah," I wish there were a way to put that voice onto paper. -Therese Joy Madden

When Markus moved into our flat on Valencia Street he livened it up with his kaleidoscopic spirit.  He wore a furry vest and knickers and whatever pattern or color happened out of the laundry.  He said he didn't believe in colors not matching, and he mixed three or four different types of cereal in his bowl every morning. We had fun times that year. We didn't know he was coming apart at the seams, except that he occasionally woke up in the middle of the night screaming bloody murder because one of his arms had come out of its socket, or he'd be vomiting so loudly that he rivaled the Fog Horns in San Francisco Bay.

Markus Cook was more than a fixture on the San Francisco bike messenger and music scene.  He was an organizer and a mobilizer with resounding vocal chords that needed no help from a bullhorn.  He had an infectious personality and an irrepressible drive to build community among the people he touched, from shared meals at our little Mission flat, to mass bike rides in SF, to global messenger solidarity.  He published a zine of bike messenger writing called Mercury Rising and was a major force in the creation of the SF Bicycle Messenger Association, which, short of a union, was able to create some unity and advocate for the thousand or so couriers pedaling the streets for a living.

How about hosting the next Bike Messenger World Championships here in SF in the summer of '95? Wouldn't it be cool to get to know messengers from everywhere?  It's going to take a couple of dozen people who are ready to take on a major project for the next year-and-a-half, and a lot more people to help out later.  Though I'm still reeling from CMC '93 and L.Sid's Berlin to Berlin Tour, I'll gladly join the effort if it comes together.  I think this town needs to be overrun by a thousand bike-freaks as much as our world-wide tribe needs to be solidified by another gathering. -Spokes, by Fur (Markus), Mercury Rising, December 1993

As I lay drugged and listless in my bed at General the day after my shoulder surgery, my roommate came in and told me he had just seen a group of Western Messengers on their way to visit a fallen sister who had her pelvis broken by a car.  Damn, we keep those hospitals busy.  This got me thinking about what the SFBMA is and what it could be.  We spend thousands every week at the same few bars. If a couple hundred people siphoned off a mere 5 bucks a month and dumped it into some kind of emergency fund thing, that would be $12,000 a year, to help people and invest to keep our fund going.... Might work, I dunno... could strengthen the messenger community in a variety of ways.  - Spokes, by Fur, Mercury Rising August 1994

San Francisco Bike Messenger Association: Broken Bones Fund

L.Sid was another outlet for Markus's philosophy and unstoppable energy, with its mashed up confusion of musical styles, instruments, and pseudo-political, absurdist, sci-fi subject matter.  Just like all of his activism, Markus was a key organizer, but never dominated the action.  He pulled everyone together and created a vehicle for each person to shine at what they did best, to the benefit of everyone involved.  He'd go boinging around the stage while the band diverged into stratospheric jazzy solos, occasionally barking lyrics and props to his bandmates.  He surely vied with James Brown for "hardest working." At one show he was flailing around the stage and suddenly fell screaming after dislocating his arm (again).  After a rush to the emergency room to get it popped back into place, he was back on stage to finish the set within the hour.

L.Sid released Alive 1995 on cassette, complete with intergalactic radio interference; from a show at the Covered Wagon Saloon. Sunflowerz is from a studio session at Mindfield, included on Pothole, an SF bike messenger band compilation.

Photo by Bluoz

Public Service Announcement
Sunflowerz
Jupitah
Dallas, Texas
Medium Rare Frankenstein
Vigilante 4:35

Sadly, Markus died of a heroin overdose on January 3, 1996 after struggling for several months to to get clean.

Markus Cook was a politician, a poet, a great orator, and a loyal friend. As far as 'front men' go, I would put him right up there in the same category as David Byrne, Iggy Pop, and Joe Strummer. I recall one day, we climbed up on a giant billboard near Bernal Heights, and shared some 'medicine' and philosophical talk. At one point, he looked down on the panorama and said, "Someday...I'm gonna miss all this."
Moral: Live every day as if it were your last. 
Rest in Peace, brother.  -Jack Chandler

With The Germ at KUSF

L.Sid 1994-96
Markus Cook - Vocals and Guitar
Jack Chandler - Sax
Chad - Sax
Timmy Hesla - Baritone Sax

Carl Prescott - Guitar and Trumpet
Lou "Luigi" Decolator - Drums
Billy Wig - Bass

Earlier members:
Adam Kahan - Bass
Matt Broiler - Guitar

Jack played in The Wellsprings of Hope and Tim Hesla's Big Band and currently plays in Ice Age Jazztet. Tim played in Necropolis of Love and The Wellsprings of Hope, and his Big Band of course. Chad was a founding member of Polkacide and currently plays in The Gallimaufry Orchestra. Billy was previously in Boston's Hell Toupée. Carl is playing with Smokestaxx and Montalban Quintet. Adam later formed Orson County Line.  Luigi played in Derailleur and The Converse All Stars. I just learned that he died in a house fire in 2009.

More info from Sector L:
Here's the full Alive 1995 cassette posted on It Crawled From the Vault (Thanks Bluoz!)
An extended article about Markus in SF Weekly: Mercury Falling
Moving Target Magazine: Messenger Hero #4
Moving Target Magazine: The Markus Cook Memorial Award
Video interviews with Markus
Messenger Memorial: Markus "Fur" Cook
Messenger Memorial" Lou Decolator "Luigi"

To My Little Brother,
This wasn't supposed to happen. Your life was not meant to end this way, this soon. This was not your destiny. There are too many things you still have to do.... And I'll never understand why....        - Kim Camille Cook

Vem quente que eu estou fervendo

"It's So Hot I'm Boiling"

Nalva Aguiar can shimmy.



Here's the original by Erasmo Carlos e seus Tremandões

Vem quente que eu estou fervendo (from Garage Hangover)