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One quality that people would never say that Mike of "Mike and the Spikes" would ever exhibit, was what Lance Gargoyle would term, "vanity overload."

Mike was Lance Gargoyle's first and only guitar guru. They met at Solomon Mental Health on Varnum Ave in Lowell. Although Sidney Hipple is the primary candidate for past mental health issues, Lance had a short stint at Solomon himself. Lance met Mike one day in the piano room. Mike was playing a little piano, and Lance started to talk to Mike about music. Lance had brought in his hollow body bass guitar. At that time Lance wasn't really a competent or polished musician. Oh yeah, he could sing pretty good, and he could always create some musical expressions on the bass -- but he didn't have any training.

Later on that day, after Mike and Lance met, Lance let Mike play his bass guitar. Mike could play it as a bass, or as a guitar, much better than Lance. But Mike being the humble guy that he was, didn't act all uppity. He was just playin', man. He was groovin' that groove. Lance thought to himself, "This guy is pretty talented, and it appears that he has at least a half a brain in his head." But overall he was a good person. They talked about jazz. Mike showed Lance the major chords on the piano. They became fast friends.

Mike was a little out there at times. But not so far that Lance didn't know where he was heading. Eventually Lance and Mike got out (of Solomon Mental Health). Not at the same time. But they got out. Lance would never go back, but Mike would make many more appearances over the years.

When Lance got out, he got on welfare, and lived in a one-room on Summer Street, the white building. If you ever go to Lowell, and go on Summer Street, you'll know what building it was. It's abandoned now. Years after Lance moved out, they put chicken wire on the downstairs window so people wouldn't break in.

Lance never lived on his own before, and he had never been good with money. Someone stole his food stamps, and he had no money. Sometimes Mike and Lance would sneak in the lunch line at Solomon. The cafeteria people would assume that they were day patients. Sometimes a friend of theirs, a drummer named Roger Mono -- he had been in Solomon in the past too -- would go in the line with them.

None of them ever had money. They used to go into an outreach program of Solomon called the Renaissance Club. Patients and ex-patients used to hang around there when it was open. They had free donuts, and coffee was only a dime. Roger, Lance, and Mike were always bumming cigarettes. Roger always acted like the slickster -- he'd see a young woman walking down the street, need a cigarette, and say, "Hey babe, got a butt?" Although he rarely got any women, he had that self-confidence that Mike and Lance lacked, bumming from strangers.

After Lance smashed his hollow body bass against his radiator, Mike sold Lance a hollow bodied guitar that only had the four bass strings on it. That was all Lance played for a long time. If you're a real musician and you want to really play, you'll play anything that you got.

Mike showed Lance the simple blues, bar chords, and a couple other tricks that they could jam together. Eventually they recorded some songs together: "Vibrator Blues" with lines that said, "She's a girl who loves a vibrator / Even in the refrigerator / Every time I call or date her / She says I'll see you later."

Lance and Mike had a number of adventures. There weren't too many genuine people that Lance found to hang around with in Lowell. But Mike was a guy that Lance could trust.

One of their adventures involved hitch-hiking from Lowell to Salem, New Hampshire to donate blood for money. They walked a good portion of the way. Early on, when they first started out walking along the road, Mike would pick up cigarette butts off the ground to smoke. Lance only smoked Marlboros. Sometimes Mike would find a Marlboro that wasn't smoked too much, and Lance, dying for a cigarette, would accept.

So they're walking along. Mike is always looking on the ground.. Sees something wrapped in tinfoil. He picks it up and opens it. It was pot. Lance enjoyed smoking pot. Mike was primarily a wine drinker, so he rarely smoked much pot. Walking along, Lance got a little bit of a buzz.

After three or four hours they finally got to Salem, New Hampshire, to the blood donor place. For some reason, they denied Mike -- maybe it was his extra, extra Bohemian appearance and attitude. Maybe his blood was fucked up. But they took Lance. Now the two of them had fifteen bucks and some pot. The first thing Lance did, was buy a couple packs of cigarettes.

They started walking and hitchhiking home to Lowell. They walked a long ways. Finally, walking on 495, the traffic had slowed down so much that they were walking faster than the cars were moving, and somebody let them in and gave them a lift.

You know that four string hollow body guitar that Lance bought from Mike for fifteen dollars? It took Lance four months to pay him off. Sometimes Lance would duck Mike because he would feel guilty about not having any money. Mike was the type of guy that wouldn't have cared anyways.

Eventually Mike got a one room apartment at 73 Fletcher Street. He had all types of stuff in there that he found on the street. Big stereo consoles that parts of it worked. Eventually Lance got a job as a pot washer at St. Joseph's Hospital, but they paid him every two weeks. In between pay periods, Lance would bum food stamps from Mike. Sometimes Lance would try to pay Mike back, but Mike didn't care anyways.

After a couple of years of working at the hospital, and becoming the stock clerk for the kitchen, Lance drifted away from his old friends. He had developed friendships with people who worked at the hospital, and as time went on, he hooked up with other musicians from Lowell. Dan Santana -- Lance and him formed a group called "The Distortion Brothers." Lance played chords with a lot of distortion. Danny played lead with a lot of distortion. Another musician who came into Lance's scene when he lived at 231 Appleton Street was The Claw, Riff Graft. He always had a great guitar and great equipment, and loved playing lead and using the whammy bar. The friggin guy knew every conceivable scale there ever was to play on guitar.

Danny lived in the projects on Salem Street near the hospital. Danny's father was an older man. Danny would be wailing loudly on his Gibson, playing lead along with an album. His father would sit in the kitchen like it didn't even affect him.

Sometimes Mike would stop by and visit Lance, but he'd always want something, and look decrepit. Lance still had an ugly side back then, a selfish side. One day Mike stopped over to visit -- he'd gotten hit by a car, and his arm was in a sling, and he was bruised pretty badly. Mike just wanted someone to talk to. Lance knew Riff Graft was on his way over to play guitar. Lance had Mike sit in the closet the size of a phone booth, hidden away when Riff came over. Mike never thought it was any big deal, but later on, Lance would feel like "Maybe I shouldn't have fuckin' done that to Mike."

Lance felt he was entering into a new productive phase in his life. Mike's lifestyle seemed almost primitive to Lance. And remember, Mike was the type of guy who would have given Lance the shirt off his own back. Maybe Mike reminded Lance of his desperate days in Lowell, that he wanted to forget. Because Mike had continued to go in and out of the hospital, Solomon, Lance felt that Mike would never leave that ugly cycle of institutions and nut juice.

After a couple of years, Mike stopped by and saw Lance. He had a job, a car, and a girl friend. He was washing and delivering automobiles at a dealership with his brother worked. He had been regularly taking medication, and his erratic moods had stabilized.

Couple years later, Mike was off the medication and back to his old self. Like Lance, Mike felt that the medication, or as they called it, the nut juice, severely altered a person's creativity, and the side effects always made you look like a goon. Your tongue would twist, your thoughts would still be racing a mile a minute, but your body didn't go no place, you felt lazy. That's why Mike never liked taking medication.

Eventually Lance surrendered his self-importance towards himself, and was more open to Mike's presence and situation. He even lived in Lance's building on Appleton Street for a while -- three different times, three different landlords. But Lance learned to live with the quirks of his good friend Mike, cause deep down inside, Mike was a humble, genuine guy who never ever had a bad word to say about anybody, even if they ripped him off. Okay, he might bitch a little bit, but he'd soon forget about it.

Mike always liked wine. He had got accepted for social security benefits, and would spend most of the money after he got it on the first of the month. Mike would always be working on something. He'd have a couple of TVs in his room, with the chassis removed. The TVs would be somewhat working. Mike hung around with some real characters. Ditch Dooby for one.

Lance could usually put up with Mike for about six or seven months, before Lance would start to lose it. Mike would have no sense of time. Banging and building on the floor at three o'clock in the morning was not unusual for him. But they always remained friends. Mike would get on anybody's nerves, and he knew he got on Lance's nerves after a while.

Years later Mike would even live in the big building, the undisclosed building that Lance lives in now, that people can't know about because they'd bother him. Mike was regularly doing crack when he got his check, for a couple of days anyways. Lance would have Mike help out around the building that they lived in, and that Lance managed. Mike could make a couple extra bucks vacuuming the hallway, cleaning a refrigerator or a stove. Mike was meticulous and impeccable in his cleaning, for many years anyways.

Lance had adjusted to Mike and his ways. One month while he was waiting for his check to come in, he built a friggin acoustic guitar from scrap wood. He made a guitar neck, and went to Russo's Music and got some frets to put on it. It played and looked good, and Mike never had any fancy tools to work with either. But the first of the month came around, Mike got his money, got some crack, and smashed the guitar. Oh shit, I forgot -- Mike was always getting good guitars, or at last decent-playing guitars, and smashing them, or throwing them into the canal. The friggin guy had talent. His fingers were luck Gumbie when he played the guitar neck, the way they'd twist around to make a chord. He was a character, I'll tell you that.

Eventually the building got sold and Mike, who as usual was behind on his rent, had to move. Lance wouldn't see him too often. Mike got arrested for urinating on the side of a building, and although it was a criminal matter, they put him in Tewksbury Hospital, where he remained for over a year. Lance went to visit Mike a couple of times, and it was a trip. This wasn't like the old carefree days a Solomon Mental Health. Most of the people in Tewksbury weren't going to ever come back. But Lance knew that Mike would. And eventually he did get released, under the condition that he go to a half way house and take medication, or nut juice.

Lance always stops whenever he sees Mike riding his bike around town, or walking around town. They always have a good chat, and Lance always makes Mike feel like he's the most important person in the world, and certainly a member of the human race. Lance remembers when Mike lives in the building and would sometimes be talking to himself in his room. Lance would knock on his door and give him something to eat. Most of the time that's all he needed. Or someone to talk to. Lance found out for Mike, as for most people, the three basic requirements are -- to feel a part of society, if you want to call it that, or humanity, what it really is -- the three requirement are: something to eat, something to do, and someone to listen to you once in a while.

Lance learned a lot from Mike, not just a couple of guitar chords. He learned about genuineness and humbleness and understanding. You know when Mike was living in 73 Fletcher Street on welfare and food stamps, what he said to Lance one time? "The same people you see going up the ladder, is the same people you see going down." Mike will always be rememberd by Lance as Mike of "Mike and the Spikes." Although nowadays Mike is on the nut joice and unable to be as creative as he once was, but I'm sure in that halfway house, if they let him, he still working on something in his room. He talks about being trapped in that zombie environment with the other residents, but he's gonna make it. He got hit by a car and got a lawsuit, and got hit by a car other times and didn't get a lawsuit. But he always came back with that zest and gusto, and that enduring conviction that even if life sucks right now, chances are it's gonna get better when the check comes in at the first of the month.