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The TV Mini-Series

Lance Gargoyle
The Handsomest Monster in the World

Lance Gargoyle loved music. Even before he learned to play an instrument, he would make tape recordings of other people's music to the taste of the person he was giving it to.

His mother's side of the family were musical, and played a variety of instruments. His mother was the most natural of them in her generation - she played by ear.

Lance's first beginnings began when he was out of work in 1975.

He walked around town and wrote lyrics in his song book. It started out as "Dead Egg Productions," with songs with titles as obscure as "Dust Diet" (a song about angel dust and loneliness), "Chesty Morgan: Deadly Weapons" (a parody on the fascination of large breasts), "Nymphomania" (something no man could ever get enough of), with lyrics like: "She's waiting / She's moaning / She can't find no more / So it's back to her drawer / To her vibrator for more / NYMPHO-MANIA!!!!!!!"

Or "Dust Diet": "I ain't gonna get high no more / My mind's stopped buzzing and I'm dying on the floor / But before I go / I want some more'.ANGEL DUST!!! / Yes, I got dusted as you can plainly see / I'd rather have some THC / Controlling me, than angel dust."

Or, from those times, "Tricky Dicky was a fly / He buzzed around and bugged people / Yes I said bugged people! / Flies hang around GARBAGE / And they will infect you and your loved ones / Flies are bad / Flies are bad / We need some fly paper."

Speaking of angel dust, first you roll it in pin joints, then you roll it in fat joints and only smoke part of it.

Then you're rolling big ones and forgetting to only smoke part of it,

A couple more titles from those days: "Accent: the Stuff You Put on Your Meat," "I'm Speeding on Spaghetti, 'Cause I've Got Noodles Up My Nose."

Lance Gargoyle started experimenting with the bass guitar, some regular guitar, a little organ - some of it was simple stuff that he would play, but a lot of it was improvisational and very creative.

He would record himself ad libbing words to a song or reading his lyrics from one of his song books, and play something creative on whichever instrument he was playing.

He even got a couple of his friends one evening to record the lyrics to his songs while he played.

He always recorded himself and had a ton of recordings - eight tracks, the people started to use cassettes, and he started recording on cassette.

He would bring these tapes with him when he hung around with his friends in their cars, and ask them to play the them. It was his method of quality control.

Some things they would like, some things were hard to take.

Some things were just too far out there for anybody - even you picked up on a little bit of it, you were freaked.

Three or four months had gone by since he had originally started playing and recording, when a friend asked him to play at his party.

He brought his two bass guitars, his guitar, and two drumsticks which he would use on the strings.

It was a Saturday night he would never forget.

He felt awkward but dynamic.

Unsure of himself at times, but invincible at other times.

He sang his vocal tunes. He became another person. People reacted differently to his lyrical compositions. "Dust Diet,´ "Chesty Morgan: Deadly Weapons," "Nymphomania," "Tricky Dicky was a Fly."

It had not gone over like he planned. When he left, he felt he had let his friends down, and hadn't played well enough.

He hadn't played any of the songs they knew - old or popular songs of the time.

He hardly had any polish or real skill at this point, but his heart was in it.

The next day, he was almost ashamed to show his face around town - feeling the failure that he was, and the humiliation that he would soon encounter. He didn't have a car, and he was hanging around the Gulf station.

Eventually some friends stopped down in their cars, and he got in. Some of them were raving about how unique and original he performance had been.

At that moment he realized two things: that there was hope for his music, and that he would always improve his music for the people who would enjoy it.

Lance would write many more lyrics, and make many more tapes. He hoped to meet Frank Zappa, and had called his record company frequently.

He called so much, the receptionists knew him by name.

He finally got a hold of Frank Zappa's manager, Worm Incoherent.

Being nervous, and stuttering badly, he asked if he could send some of his material - lyrics or tapes - to him for inspection.

Lance had sent things like this in the past, but supposedly they had never gotten there.

Worm said to send it registered mail, which Lance did.

This was his big chance to prove that he was a creative individual. A wacky creative individual with potential. He felt that this was his big big BIG chance,

He sent almost all of his existing material: eight tracks, cassettes, four or five song books of lyrics, almost everything that he had created and recorded up to that time.

Lance waited for the reply. It never came.

He called Zappa's office and was told that they couldn't find it, but it must be there somewhere, and they would send it back when it was found.

That never happened.

Lance would find out years later that it was customary for musicians to send short recordings and limited lyrical sheets, if any.

He had lost everything that he had accumulated in his life in music. But he started over.

Then Lance moved to Lowell, and started playing and recording again.

Eventually he learned guitar and some keyboards.

It took him years to recover and start to create lyrics again.

He had become friends with a person called Mike (of "Mike and the Spikes," the band that broke up because of drug problems).

Another guy he recorded with was Dan Santana - they both would play distortion guitar - Lance called these recordings "The Distortion Brothers."

Another person who comes to mind is Riff Graft - he played guitar and his hands were like two claws - fat hands with short stubby fingers.

He loved wailing lead, and he loved heavy metal, and people like Johnny Winters, and he enjoyed the blues.

He still plays to this day, and his hands are still two claws, two fat claws.

And he's manipulating that whammy bar, stretching that note, bending that note UP, or way down, and scraping those strings, baby.

He knew every fucking chord in the world.

He would sell all his equipment and stop playing (and he always had quality equipment).

Months later, he would buy something else and be playing again.

When Lance first met Quiggly Atoms, it was a musical match made in heaven.

Quiggly, with his polished chords and lead from years of playing and performing with bands. They hit if off right from the first moment they played together.

They became lifelong friends. There's so much to say about him, we're going to have to save most of it for another time.

Lance and Quiggly became big fans of each other's music.

Besides being musically courageous, competent, and masterful, Quiggly was also an exceptional artist and creator of painted plexiglass squeeze-together art work.

And he had great hand writing, and he's not balding in the least.

Quiggly never lost his sense of humor, or his genuine interest in life.

Another person who would become a good friend of Lance's was Dave Id. He was into hard-core industrial music, the Rolling Stones, and very avant garde music.

He would become a lifelong member of Lance's quality control team.

Some of Dave's music was a little too much for Lance, but he loved some of it.

Dave Id had a brother named Edward Id. Actually Lance had met Ed Id first, where he worked at the hospital.

Ed Id was even wackier and wilder than Lance. They became fast friends.

Years later, Dave Id, Ed Id, Lance, and a friend of his nicknamed "the Panty Man" John Dressell, would record the Panty Man doing his rantings while on alcohol.

John, or the Panty Man as he was called among Lance's friends, was from Baltimore, and used to sleep in the graveyard when he got drunk.

In Baltimore, if you crashed in a good part of town when you were drunk, they'd put you in jail for a couple of weeks.

If you crashed in a bad part of town, you might get your throat sliced.

He learned to sleep in the graveyard - it was always quiet and safe for him.

The Panty Man was a valued friend of Lance's when he first moved to Lowell. Lance was working but was always broke.

John would go on the street and in the bars, for Lance, selling anything Lance had, to get a couple of bucks - a hot plate, a toaster oven, even an old guitar.

Sometimes Lance would have pot, and roll some joints up for John to sell. A buck apiece, or six for five.

He would usually give John ten joints, and tell him that he only wanted five or six dollars. John could sell the other joints or smoke them.

Some days John was unsuccessful, but would stop back every hour to give Lance a progress report.

The Panty Man had no shame about approaching people to sell his wares. He'd go into the bars -- Blackie's, McCullough's, the Copper Kettle.

He'd approach people on the street, anybody who he thought would be interested in buying what he had.

The Panty Man had a fantasy and an obsession of meeting and marrying Marie Osmond.

She was a Mormon, and he was willing to become a Mormon.

Somebody tried to get him into the Jehovah's Witnesses, and as normal as he could appear at times, his inner self and abnormalities would come to the surface, and even the Jehovah's Witnesses would be taken aback.

As wacky as he was, they let him in the Army Reserves, until he got even too wacky for them.

When he got drunk, it was almost like he was possessed by demons, talking in different voices.

But most of the time, he was okay and perfectly sociable.

He was a veteran and was on social security, but after he paid his rent, if he paid his rent, he would be penniless two weeks after getting his check. He'd be extravagant at the first of the month when his check came in, buying a new TV for seventy dollars, selling it in a couple of weeks for fifteen, maybe twenty.

He scared the fuck out of you if you looked at him, and you didn't know him, because you didn't know what the fuck he was thinking. But he had a good heart, and was never purposely evil.

The year was 1981. Lance had an Arp Axxe, an amp, had had a couple of guitars, and was feeling confident.

Riff Graft told him about a talent show at a club called The Front Page that happened every Tuesday night - he should check it out and maybe play. Was the world ready for Lance Gargoyle yet'

He had played for friends, he had had sung to a record at the famous Commodore Club on the disco open mike night. But not in front of strangers in a real club atmosphere.

The owner's name was Walter, and he was a kind of fat guy. He liked having blues bands play there, and loved to come on stage with the bands. He used to make cracks like, "I haven't seen my belly button in over fourteen years" or "When I take a shower, my feet don't get wet." Anyways, he was the owner, and he had a talent show every Tuesday night.

It was his way to get people into his club, and free entertainment on a Tuesday night.

Lance went there, and performed the first night he went. Walter had a cheap PA with a microphone that always shocked you. Lance played his distortion guitar, and his on the spot ad lib improvisational lyrics. Lance never thought his music was weird or strange before. People at the club found it unusual, but saw that Lance was into it. He never recorded that first night, which would be one of his best performances.

He would go there almost every week. The emcee would not always give Lance a lot of time. Lance was out there. Eventually he bought a drum machine, played his songs with his Arp Axxe, and the lyrics would be set. This new era would create the songs that would make Lance Gargoyle the monster he is today - songs like "Monster Rock," "S.P." (short for "Stale Pussy," a crowd favorite), "Them," and "Mole People."

Lance would sometimes jam with his friends, but basically became primarily a one-man band.

He had a practice room at the Rialto for a while, where he would jam with a drummer he met named Dave Duck. He was the best drummer, the most natural drummer, that Lance would ever jam with.

For years, Lance had been recording abstract experimental music, multilayered or multitracked compositions using various percussion sounds including octave oatmeal boxes, glass and wood. He was as much an experimenter in sound as he was a musician.

Eventually he got a small Casio keyboard and would play along with it on guitar, lead of course, and because the melody and bass line and drums were built in, Lance could sing his lyrical compositions and create new ones more easily.

Years later he got a gig at The Downtown on Halloween. His Halloween show at the old Front Page was the best he ever had, and it would always be his favorite night of performing.

At the Downtown they only had blues, and it took Lance a year of going there before he could get the gig on Halloween. The owner, Speakeasy Pete, didn't think that Lance could draw much of a crowd. Lance got his best buddy, Quiggly Atoms, to play guitar, and got a friend of theirs, Juan Wishwell, to play bass and program the drum machine and synthesizers to Lance's monster songs.

They rehearsed a number of times.

100

The night arrived. It was Halloween. Dave and Ed Id opened the evening with Lance doing an industrial piece.

101

Then Lance did a couple of songs with his Casio.

102

Then the band came on: Quiggly, Juan, and Lance. Quiggly and Juan knew a shit load of musicians and friends, and Lance knew a couple too. The place was fucking crowded by the time they went on. It was a roaring success.

103

At the end of the night, the tables were filled with empty beer bottles. Lance had had his night, and had finally made his mark in Lowell. But this was only the beginning.