By Troy Brownfield

And Now, An Epic!!

A few people have asked me about the shows that we've been plugging lately on the front page. In the last few months, I've gotten a bit more active in Indianapolis's music scene. Now, this may seem strange to people who know me only from the site. I mean, to the casual observer, it probably looks funny, what with the comic book/opinion column guy booking shows. Ah, how little they know.

A Brief History of Troy and live music, with a little bit of romance thrown in

As readers who perused my column on Graduation from last May know, my pal and site webmaster Shawn Delaney had a band in high school called the Ravenous Doorknobs. The mainstays were Shawn, Mike Acton and Jason Renn. When we graduated in 1991, we went in different directions; I went to Indiana State, Jason and Shawn went to Purdue, and Mike went to Vincennes University.

Oddly, through one circumstance, transfer, or another, Shawn, Jason and Mike all ended up back in Terre Haute by 1992. The whole alternative explosion was on, and the kind of music Shawn had been into for years (and had gotten me into) was now The Big Thing. Shawn, Jason and Mike reformed their band with another guy from our high school, Dave Eastman, and dubbed themselves The Icicle Thieves. As for me, having lived my freshman year at home, I decided that I wanted to live on-campus and get the "full college experience" my sophomore year. It would turn out to be the biggest turning point of my life because had I not lived in the dorm, I might not have met my wife.

Immediately in the dorm, I made friends with some kindred spirits. They were Nick Jankowski and Craig Jones. They were roommates down the hall from me. Nick was a gigantic X-Men fan, so that was a familiar topic. They introduced me to their good buddy, the thin genius/madman Bill Dando. One night while Nick and Craig were elsewhere, Bill and I cemented our friendship by playing Wing Commander on Nick and Craig's PCs and killing off assorted bottles that the roommates had stored. When Nick discovered the pile of empty vessels, our only defense was, "You said drink whatever we wanted!" (Nick would go on to found ComicKingdom.com, where I first wrote the original online version of the Shotgun Reviews column).

Right about the first week of school, Shawn and I went to a house party at the 700 Club. Located at 700 South Seventh, "The Club" was the home of Scott Hamilton. Scott would have bands play in his basement while charging for a keg. Local sounds like the bagpipe-driven hardcore of Fanje and the hard-rockin' Groove-Billed Ani (fronted by Cheryl, a woman with a voice eerily like Janis Joplin's) could be found there.

I was in the kitchen filling up my plastic cup when a hand appeared in front of my face. I looked up, and a guy with long black hair and a Euro-trash beret was standing unsteadily and trying to shake my hand. He yelled, "My name's Todd! I'm in a band!"

I shook his hand and said, "Uh . . . my name's Troy. My best friend's in a band!"

Excited, Todd said, "Where's he at?"

I pulled Shawn over, and Todd grabbed his friend and bandmate, Mark Dillon. Turns out that the duo were in a band called Mona Lisa Overdrive. Frankly, everyone was destroyed, so a lot of the conversation didn't make a lot of sense.

Later that week, Shawn and I were walking across campus at night, and out by the fountain, we saw Todd. He was sitting and strumming his acoustic guitar, hoping to advance his skills as a mad bitch magnet. We had a more coherent conversation, and the guys agreed to get together and jam.

It was about this time that a couple of guys in the circle of bands that played the 700 Club started talking about doing a big show at someone's house. Shawn's house had always been cool; he'd had several parties out of his garage with a huge field nearby. He didn't think his parents would go for multiple bands.

All of this started my mental wheels turning. I was attending I.S.U. on a full Alumni Scholarship, and as such, I'd joined the Student Alumni Association. At one S.A.A. get together, we'd learned all about how to program an event on campus, including proper channels, AV procurement, clearances, publicity, and more. I had loved that little lesson, and I really wanted to put on a show. Our group didn't have the money for anything big, but I found out that any event space around the I.S.U. Student Union could be reserved for free if a registered student organization requests it. Also, I had chance to redress the fact that Terre Haute offered nothing to its younger citizens. I think you know where this is going.

I told Todd and Shawn that I could put on a show. I told them how it could be done, and if we talked to Fanje and Groove-Billed Ani, then we could have four bands. Todd and Shawn decided to open the show with a one-off techno set. We were then set with FIVE bands that we could do a show on campus with. We just needed a name.

As the three of us sat there in a moment's silence, Kurt Loder appeared on Todd's TV with an MTV News Break, detailing the success of the original Lollapalooza.

I said, "What about Smallapalooza?"

It stuck.

For the next two weeks, I was a man possessed. We threw the show together, reserved the space by the fountain, found a sound guy, and put the word out to the high schools. A few days ahead of the show, Shawn, Todd, two female friends (the Companik sisters, Kim and Adrienne) and I drew fliers with crayons, colored pencils and Magic Markers, then walked the campus to put them up. They told everybody else what we already knew: Smallapalooza would be held at the I.S.U. Fountain on October 2nd, 1992.

Sometime around that mad publicity blitz, I went to the TV room at the Student Union. The TV Room had been the place where Terry, our friends and I had hung out during our freshman year. Terry was working on a zine, "Above the Ozone", and he said he'd have a booth out at the show.

The week before the show, our four main bands played at a Battle of the Bands at Wolf Field on campus. All the bands dutifully plugged the next week's show. A great videotape exists of this show; I think Shawn has it. In it, you can see the hilarious site of me with hair that goes past my collar richoeting off people in the pit.

The night before the show, I accompanied Shawn to the barber shop. Okay, it was a Fantastic Sam's, but I'd rather say barber shop than hair stylist. Besides, my dad's named Floyd. Anyway, I did something a little wacky for me. I got my hair not just cut, but shaved half-way up the back of my head. It looked a bit like Bernard Sumner's hair in New Order's True Faith video, but I wasn't as cool. It felt right though.

On the morning of the 2nd, I woke up terrified that a million things would go wrong. I was mentally predicting rain, snow, hail, sleet, pestilence, famine, nuclear disaster and one thousand years of darkness. Dogs and cats, living together, mass hysteria! Hell, it had been gray and cold all week. I closed my eyes and pulled open the curtain. 70°, clear and sunny. I'll be damned (probably for certain now).

All day, I helped set up the outdoor stage and the tables that would house booths for various student groups that we'd invited. Lots of people looked at me and the other guys oddly, but a couple of people actually stopped and asked things like, "Is this where Fanje's playing?" That was seriously cool.

By our designated start time, I was amazed. The sound guy was set up, Shawn and Todd were set up, and people were sitting down to watch. Shawn and Todd had dubbed themselves Necrophiliacs Anonymous for the occasion, and were set to deliver Nitzer Ebb covers and mid-tempo techno-pop covers of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" as a keyboard playing duo. The real show-stopper was when they ended their set by playing Depeche Mode's "Just Can't Get Enough", then veering widly into Metallica's "One". Todd smashed a keyboard on the edge of the stage, sending Casio keys flying. People alternately either laughed their asses off, opened their mouths in shock, or dove to grab souvenir keys. All in all, a Grade-A start.

We rolled through the whole show without incident. Every band took a moment to thank me, and that was awesome. Every band kicked ass, and I was completely exhausted. And like most productions, it wasn't long before we started talking sequel.

Interlude: How I Met My Wife

I realize now that by tossing off that line about not meeting my wife if I hadn't lived in the dorm was a bit of a cliffhanger. Anyway . . .

Not too long after the first Smallapalooza, I was walking back into the dorm from work. At the time, I was a disgruntled employee of a large dyslexic toy chain. I had just left the home of the giraffe, and I was on my way back upstairs. I noted that my new pal, Bill Dando, was kissing a brunette on the landing.

I ducked by and went on to Nick and Craig's room. The door was open. "Hey," I said, "who's kissing Bill?"

The pair shared an odd look, then laughed.

Craig said, "That's my sister."

"Aw, bullshit," I said. "She's too cute to be your sister."

Nick totally lost it, and Craig produced a photo from his wallet.

"I'll be damned," I said. I'd swear upon a stack of Raymond Chandler novels that's how it happened.

It might have been the next evening that Becky Jones and her roommate Jana came down to Nick and Craig's room. I believe Becky was bringing donuts or something to her brother. They officially introduced me to Becky while she stood in the doorway. I was immediately struck that she had a warm and beautiful smile (remember, I'd previously only gotten a look at her while she was attached to Bill).

Contrary to what a couple of people with severe issues might say, I don't steal girls from other guys. Sure, I thought that Becky was cute, but I'd been scorched more than once on the whole "she-used-to-date-a-friend-of-mine" road. As far as I was concerned, she was Bill's girl.

I should probably point out what my dating life was like at that precise moment. In high school, I'd dated a girl for two years. That ended, as we say in the business, badly. My first major relationship in college also ended fairly badly in August of '92. I dated casually for a while, but nothing was really going on.

Anyway, I was hanging around that group more and more. As I got to know Becky, I liked her more and more. Here was a really warm and caring person that would fight for her friends and really looked after her brother's best interests. She was selfless in a way that women I'd dated before weren't. I wanted to find a girl like her.

Late one night, I was hungry. I could always count on Bill to still be up. He, Nick and I were like the insomniac trio of Burford Hall. Bill and I walked across the street to Hardee's and had what one might say was one of the most pivotal conversations of my entire life.

Bill said, "I think that you should go out with Becky."

I said, "I think that you should break up with her first."

This is one of those things that you'd really have to ask Bill about. Maybe he felt odd dating his good buddy's sister. Maybe he felt odd that Becky's first major boyfriend, a guy named Rob Wilson, was also his friend. Maybe he read tea leaves and saw that he would marry a wonderful woman named Cheryl in 1997. At any rate, Bill was going to break up with her, and he clearly indicated to me, in no uncertain terms, that he thought that Becky and I would be good for each other.

If I haven't bought him a beer over this before, looking back, I think that I owe him a case.

Bill broke up with her soon after. I know that Becky didn't expect it. I felt kind of like a prick for knowing it was going to happen, but just between you and me, I got over it pretty quickly. Before too long, Becky and I officially got together on January 22, 1993. And with a couple of minor exceptions, we've been together ever since. And on a few levels, you can thank her for the website.

Why? Because for every enterprise that I've been involved with from that point on, I've had a willing supporter, assistant, helper and partner. She has a lot of interests of her own and she's a very capable woman who has an excellent reputation in her own chosen field, but she's always been willing to help me. This woman has helped me stuff resume envelopes, track down elusive back issues, proofread thesis drafts, set up booths at concerts, pick up trash after concerts, tote boxes around at comic conventions, complete action figure collections, recover from illnesses and surgery, send out writing samples, and any one of a thousand other items. She lets me do a remarkable amount of things that I'm interested in with barely ever any word of complaint. This site wouldn't exist without her, because I wouldn't be the same man without her. Becky believes in me, and that gives me the power to believe in myself. There is no higher compliment: that's why I love her, and that's why she's important here.

The first Smallapalooza had given me an amazing amount of confidence. It had been a learning experience and a big success with its intended audience. I had an event of my own, a decent reputation, and a brand new girlfriend that actually thought I was pretty cool. Do you think that I would stop with just one?

Back to the Music: Sequelpalooza

I'll mention now an incident that happened during the preparation for the first Smallapalooza. To secure the space for free, I had to sign up through a registered student organization. Since I belonged to the Student Alumni Association, I asked for and was granted permission to register the needed items for the show through SAA. However, a certain person who no longer works at I.S.U. took me aside and told me that if the event went over well, SAA would get the credit. If it went down badly, I'd take the fall for it. Needless to say, when the event was over, I walked away from SAA.

That kind of set a tone for my subsequent Smallapalooza shows. At some point in the commission of EVERY SINGLE ONE, I'd have some ridiculous problem that would come to define the event in my mind. The most talked-about was probably at the second one (cleverly titled Smallapalooza II), when a campus religious leader took umbrage to the alternative rock. She wrote the V.P. of Student Affairs, hoping to shut me down.

Frankly, when I got my copy of the letter, I freaked. I made an appointment with the V.P., Paul Edgerton. I got all dressed up and went in. I pleaded my case while he nodded sagely, then . . . he laughed. Apparently, this woman had a history of causing problems, and he seemed to be amused at my approach. I guess you could say that V.P. Edgerton sort of became a fan after that. He presented me with an award during my senior year by proclaiming me "Mr. Smallapalooza", and he even took part in a "Dunk the Administator" tank that my future wife ran for S5.

Smallapalooza II featured six bands and took place in The Commons, which was the main seating area of our Student Union. It wasn't perfect. In my opinion, the space was all wrong. Still, a lot of people really liked it. We got on the TV news with that one.

After number two, Bill got me into the Union Board. UB planned the student events on campus. Bill was set to be president for the 93/94 school year, and he got lots of his friends to join. I became the Entertainment Chair and started a concert series featuring local bands, with the intention that a "Smalla" in each semester would bracket the series. Becky became the Special Events chair, and brought in cool stuff like comedians, jugglers, and Laser Storm.

My first official BIG UB event, Smallapalooza III, took place in a large activity space in the Student Union. That show might have been one of my favorites. We had 8 bands, one of which was Todd's Contrapunctus IX. In a moment of pure rock and roll that still cracks us up, C9 set off the fire alarms with their fog machine. Amazingly, we got them shut off in time.

The following spring, I was burned out. I was kind of sick of pulling together lots of local bands. It was hard on me, and it was hard on Becky because it took so much of my time to do it all right. I really meant to make S4 the last one, and end it in grand style.

Smallapalooza IV at I.S.U. had TWELVE bands in one day. It was a logistical pain in the ass, but it went over very well. To complete the never-ending circle of problems, I had a huge asthma attack and passed out while we were cleaning up. Hooray for me. In retrospect, I find it kind of funny. I don't think Becky ever will.

Over the summer, I started to feel a little more recharged about the whole thing. However, the dangling problem presented by my shows was that someone would always bitch that there was too much emphasis on alternative rock. Some people in the Union Board and other places kept pushing things like cover bands and even (shudder) country.

Let me get a couple of things straight: if someone else had decided to do a show to make up for a perceived lack of diversity, then that's great. That's what I'd been doing for years, because Terre Haute was death on cool, original bands. But sadly, certain parties were bitching in an official capacity about my (and I do mean my) show. I'd also like to point out that I started including hip-hop acts in the show as early as S3 without any official urging, just because I thought it would be cool.

Somewhere in there, I helped put together a show with Scott Hamilton (he of the 700 Club) for the Vigo County Parks Department. It was a benefit for a great organization called Chances For Youth. Chances bankrolled the thing, and Scott and I set it up. The show featured three bands at Deming Park in Terre Haute in the summer of '94. Chances actually paid Scott and I $100 each for putting it together. All told, I would do 5 Smallapaloozas, consult on an Amnesty benefit, organize a battle of the bands, put on a project called The Sideshow (more later), and put together roughly 20+ other shows on campus at Indiana State, and that's the only time I ever got money. It's almost exactly like writing professionally.

So anyway, I finally came up with a crazy idea that all of Union Board could support. I called it the Smallapalooza Spring Music Marathon. My pitch was that in the last week prior to finals of Spring Semester, we have one night for each different kind of music. We'd do a Country Night on Monday, an open-mike acoustic jam on Tuesday, Jazz on Wednesday, Blues on Thursday, and we'd close out the whole deal with an epic, senses-shattering Smallapalooza 5 on Saturday AND Sunday. I figured out how to bring in bigger bands from Indy, Bloomington (home of I.U.) and Champaign-Urbana (University of Illinois) by getting local sponsors to offset costs. I worked in local media coverage and pre-show promotion into the proposal. I even made up flip-style poster boards and meticulously calculated exactly how many bands I could squeeze in on Friday and Saturday.

When I did the pitch in the Fall of '94, Bill had already graduated. The aforementioned John Warren was now UB president. I was now the programming V.P. It made sense to me to go out on MY senior year with something big. I did the presentation, and looked around the table. Some of the other Board members just looked shocked; it honestly was a crazy amount of work to create for one's self. Some looked impressed. I figured it had gone over.

Then Linda Eldred, our advisor, said, "I don't like the title." Linda and I had had our little run-ins over the past couple of years. She was generally supportive, but she had her agendas and I had mine. In terms of music, she may have been great on speakers or diversity luncheons, but she wasn't Bill Graham. Sometimes, I kind of got the perception that when it came to my events, regardless of whether or not they were successful, she was very take it or leave it.

I said, "Okay. Why?"

Linda replied, "If Smallapalooza is only two days, why should the whole thing be the Smallapalooza Spring Music Marathon?"

In retrospect, it's somewhat of a good point. I decided to just call it the Spring Music Marathon, and promoted the components as Country Night, AmJam Night (AmJam was a name that Doug Champion came up with), Jazz Night, Blues Night and Smallapalooza V. However, in retrospect again, I can also see that Linda wanted the title to be more generic in order to make the event more identified with Union Board and less with me as a person. I didn't really care; I intended the Marathon to be my gift to Union Board. I was keeping solid records, and at the end, they could do it every year (this would later bite me in the ass).

So, before the meeting was over, one of the members asked, "How many bands are you going to have on Friday and Saturday?"

Without thinking, I blurted out what my estimate had been. "I could do 25."

They all just looked at me like I was nuts. That millisecond of doubt suddenly made it in my head go from "I could" to "I SHALL!!!" Whee.

All told, the whole ordeal ended up being pretty cool. I did indeed book 25 bands for S5, and more or less, 25 played; there was the requisite line-up shuffling and all that, but it was cool. Three of those 25 acts were hip-hop, by the way.

Perhaps the fondest memory I have of the whole thing happened on the Friday night. Todd, who had long since moved to Georgia, drove back to perform with Contrapunctus IX. It was to be the second surprise of Friday night in order to close the show. The first surprise was that Shawn, Jason and Mike reformed to play as the original garage band trio that started this whole thing when we were in high school.

Shawn's then-current band, Mesh, ended their set. I went up and introduced Mike and Jason. Adam Phelps, who had played in Mona Lisa Overdrive with Todd, Shawn and Mark Dillon, screamed like Led Zeppelin had just gotten back together. Lots of old friends hopped up. We had kept it somewhat of a decent secret, and the locals who knew really dug it.

The once-again reunited Ravenous Doorknobs ripped into a cover of Social Distortion's "So Far Away". Adam wailed for "Portrait of a Picture", one of their originals. I patted him on the shoulder and said, "Hang on." The boys played "Portrait", then "Something More", which was an original that I'd written lyrics for in high school.

Then came the really fun part. Shawn called me up onstage to sing, and we did a huge, punked-out, 7 Seconds-style rendition of "99 Red Balloons". I thought Adam would collapse, he was laughing so hard. I then picked up my guitar and we blasted out the cacophony that was Sonic Youth's "Mildred Pierce". As I was using a drumstick as a slide, I busted a string. Right when we got to where the whole song breaks down into dissonant noise, I stuck my fingers under and ripped the other five strings out while shaking the whole guitar. It sounded like an air raid siren. Shawn was turned around into his amp, pulling amazing screams out of his Gibson. Jason was pounding on his bass like he was channeling Flea circa-1986. Shrapnel flew from Mike's drum set. The sound trailed off, and I said, "Contrapunctus IX is next; stay tuned."

We walked off, and people were cheering. Todd was waiting with a big grin. "Thanks a lot, you fuckers," he said. "Now I have to follow that."

That, my friends, is one of the single finest compliments I've ever received.

So ultimately, the whole Smalla Experience turned out to be very rewarding to me as an individual. It really made me feel like someone who could accomplish things. I'd taken a vaguely discussed idea and turned it into roughly 30 shows over the course of three years. I decided to quit right there. I officially packed it in as a college promoter on Walpurgis Night, April 30, 1995.

There are a couple of sidenotes here: A guy named Paul Allen from Union Board tried to do a "Smallapalooza" in 1996. The less said about that abomination, the better. Instead of taking the Spring Music Marathon format that I'd meticulously set up, he decided that they'd take the popular part and cram everything together, something that I was always bitterly against. As a result, of course, it bombed. People LOATHED it. For a couple of years after that, I would still have people saying, "Man, I KNEW that wasn't your show." It made me feel good to know that the audience could tell an obvious difference, but the guy had ruined it. Yeah. Great.

On the positive side, some people at the I.S.U. student newspaper, The Statesman, had gotten to know me, and were interested in having me write for them. Since I was staying at I.S.U. for Grad School, I said that I would. I'd written for the Statesman as a freshman, but I hadn't really been impressed by the student editor at the time. However, I knew all the editors going in, and there was actually a vacancy for Entertainment Editor. Given the fact that I a) had lots of local entertainment experience, b) had a well-documented love of movies and comics, and c) was going to Grad School for English, I more or less was given the post.

Very few people get the chance to reinvent themselves. It usually happens when you go from junior high to high school, then again when you go to college. I had gone from put-upon, bespectacled, braces-wearing geek in junior high to a somewhat less reviled form in high school to being The Smallapalooza Guy in college. Going into Grad School, I was going to be a T.A. and an editor. It was going to be a big shift. I didn't quite realize how big.

HA!!! Now there's a REAL cliffhanger.

Troy Brownfield is the Editor-in-Chief of Shotgun Reviews. His wife went to high school with a genuine rock star: Kyle Cook, now of Matchbox 20. Email Troy at psikotyk@aol.com

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