There was no way that I could do that. I just want to imagine me being a helicopter pilot. I couldn't imagine doing that. But the drums I could, I could be like, drummers are a special breed. It wasn't pome, it wasn't new wave, it wasn't metal, it wasn't southern fried rock, it wasn't anything, it was too weird really. You guys kind of created this foundation for other lovers of rockability to kind of find a welcome within the alternative space. There was wacky, I would bring my friends home. I had a pool table and a pool and a sauna the next day for hangover, you know? And I was just my, like, house was a nice, you know, kind of a respectable party house. Slim Jim Phantom, thank you for being on my show. Thanks for the meal, honor. Let's start with Mousy Alexander. I found this an intriguing way to jump into your music journey. Mousy Alexander was a jazz drummer. His fame came, he had played with Benny Goodman Orchestra. He'd also played with Dina Washington. Where we grew grew up, Masspec along Island, he was a drum teacher. And he lived like four or five train stops away. Masspec with Masspec with Park Seaford, Belmore, Walter, everybody knows that he was in, I think, Valley stream. So just like a few blocks away, and I heard he was a drum teacher from the back of a newspaper drum lessons and he sounded cool. So I used to take the train and to his, over to his place. And he was, this, you have to remember this is Long Island, 1976, 1977. And he was this big, hence his nickname, Mousy, and he had a goatee,

and a jazz patch, and he wore a beret, and a scarf, and he said, hep cat, and he said, daddy-o, and he really spoke that way. And he was a drum teacher. And I had taken lessons and learned a little bit before that, but when I met him, he was like, get straight into rudiments. Yeah, but I can play this, and then Dr. Dr. Dr. Yeah. He started from square one, had a sit, had a whole to sticks.

Yeah. Did you learn to play traditional? Yeah, he didn't really care about that. Oh. But like, I can. I like to go back and forth. Yeah. If it's one spin move, I know how to get from here to there. So it's the one move I know.

So, unlike slow slow, I think.

But he was very proper guy and then he would tell stories

about the T- to, to the Far East with Dino Washington and like me it was like a, it was almost like it was proof there was a guy that I know that's cool. Yeah. That got out of here. I had the same thing with my I knew I knew somebody who had been successful in the booking hams. Okay, yeah. They were from Chicago where you're from Chicago. Yeah, it's my dad's friend. So it was like I knew somebody who'd been there. Yeah. And I understand what you're talking about. It's like that feeling like, well, if I know this guy, like it's not as far away as it seems through television or whatever. so that was one of my And then I I just love the guy Yeah, you know, I studied with them a couple of three years and that was when we were You know like it could have gone either way if you found some future who was uninterested or yeah But where I live my my father's a farm and my mother was a Homemaker, a hundred percent Irish for, if you were gonna do something like play the drums and by the time I had mousey, I had proven that I wasn't just in this for two seconds and I had taken lessons, I had a really cheap drum kit and I paid half my father chipped in to get a nice sling rely on drum kit like year before taking less of that. I like proved that I was serious about it. Yeah, so because taking less of from him back then the thing was always like this isn't a there's no future in this that was that was yeah. Nowadays kids started 12 and they're going to school Iraq but back then it was like get a real job and exactly. Well, what was it about because I think you jabbled another music listener, but what was about the drums that was initially a trot to you? Because you know, drummers are a special breed. Yes, positively. I think that for me, I can't say it was Ringo, although I'd like to say that, but I'm a little bit too young for that. But for me, when I would see Midnight Special or Don Kirschner's Rock concert or American bandstand or Soul Town or whatever it was that had music in it, I saw the guitar player, I saw the keyboard player, so the singer, I thought, I can't do that. It's sort that. So the drummer, and I thought, I think I can probably do that. And the new experiment sticks in the pots and pans, and you got a practice pad for five bucks from the local music store, and I could kind of do it. I could go, follow along to it a little bit. So when I saw people shred on the guitar, then I got into Jack's saxophone like there was no way that I could do that. Might as well imagine me being a helicopter pilot. I couldn't imagine doing that, but the drums I could relate. I've seen where you talked about Elvis at Sun, that was kind of the record that sort of turned you on, but it's just a slightly different tangent part of it. What was about rockability or the raw power of rockability that was attractive to you? Because it's, you know, I want to say it's an acquired taste, but it's not for everybody. Sure. The thing about rockability that got me was that it seemed to be a built-in life. When you you got turned on to this, and we were unaware of it, it wasn't like we had a new about it younger, maybe they did in England or something, but like for us in 1978 on the island, it just wasn't on your transom, you know, there was an oldie station, 101.1 CBS FM, like that were to played Blueberry Hill or Johnny Be Good or maybe Blue Suede shoes. It was good, you liked it, but it wasn't. I didn't know what it was, particularly. And that's why Elvis came in, I discovered that. And then you find Gene Vincent in the blue caps and it's a whole gang of these guys who were pink pants with diamonds down the side, but would also like kick your ass. You could just tell. And to me it seemed like a whole cool thing to belong to and the more I found out about it, the more I just fell in love with it. Like there's a Lippertskin couch involved in the kitchen box in there's a, you know, a 50s car. And to me, it just was like a snowball for the whole lifestyle of it. So, and I met two other guys from school who were, I don't know if, you know, things are already written in the stars, you know, these two are supposed to be your neighbors. Are they supposed to be John and Paul supposed to be on the same bus, you know, like that type of thing. When I got a friend George, he could, I got a friend Lee, he could all neighbor her guys who did this and fell in love with it and then we became our own gang. We were three guys in 1978 in a sea of, you know, did you go into the style part of it immediately? Or just about. There was a brief couple of months before I, and I liked the music, and I was starting to wear the clothes a little bit, but then when I got turned on to Elvis Presley in the sun years, and I saw the, you know, the hillbilly cat photograph and I just said, I just have to look like this.

Even if I continue like I was, I worked in a liquor store and I was going to be going to college because I graduated from high school year early as, so I was working taking lessons. But regardless of what I ever did in life, I was going to look like this. I was going to wear a pink paint pants with diamonds down the side, have my hair up, black can white shoes and that's what I was going to require this of anything else.

I just loved this whole mythical thing. Wearing a long island, and we're imagining what life was like in Memphis for Elvis Presley. So we tried to almost live that way. Can you elaborate? I know that a little bit, because that intrigues me about, I love subculture, and I don't sub does not below.

It just means where people go off on a tangent.

I just love it. I think it's happily, the ultimate. Happily. So at that point, we were musician guys. Brian Setscher was always like legendary in the New York area. He was like the greatest guitar player since we were seven years old. is a subon i will say just as a guitar player since we were seven years old the jazz teacher

the local music store where all started he was like

you know you know great play since we were seven years ago. He really is a sub-bond. I will say just as a guitar player since we were seven years old

The jazz teacher the local music store where we all started he was like you know, you know great He's just make it look really easy. Yeah, he makes it look really easy So but he's found out about rockabilly and he started doing this By himself. Yeah with the rhythm box just by himself because he had a band that was okay probably gonna get a record deal they did at maxes and CBGB's and all that and Lee rocker who's again

It's very important he's two years older than us which now doesn't matter but at the time that seems like they seem like there are another generation. I'm 17 I'm 17 he's 19 kind of so and Lee Rocker and I had a band that was kind of new New Wavy 1978 again. We had a girl singer.

What kind of music?

Like that.

We... had a band that was kind of new wavy, 1978 again. We had a girl singer. What kind of music? We loved Steely Dan, but we loved Fleetwood Mac. What could have been? Mr. was the lead singer. Pat Benetal was from Mattel and our neighborhood, right? So it was like we would do in that and Brian's thing was almost like the Smiths early to be gone like ahead of the curve. So, but we all found this rockabilly music in this style and we just liked it. He was the guy in his new wave band that looked rockabilly Lee and I were the guys in our band that was playing like new wave rocks that looked rockabilly, had bowling shirt, baggy pants kind of thing.

So we figured, well, we loved this music and it could really look like CBG, because Maxis K. City won some month kind of thing. They were afraid that he could do the draw. And so we didn't really play that much and when we found the three of us into the same music. Yeah. And a big one is the buddy Holly Story come out, that movie with Gary Moosey, which is beautiful around that time.

So it's a little bit on the radar. American graffiti got reissued or something, so it was a little bit on the red. Yeah, and after that, it was the Jerry Lewis movie. It was not that long after that. So the three of us started, why don't we just go down to the bar on the corner, that bar over there? Or I think they have bands in that place over a Belmore train.

So we just found not established rock clubs because we were a little too weird for that. It wasn't poems. It wasn't new wave. It wasn't metal. It wasn't Southern Fried Rock. It wasn't anything. It was too weird, really. So we had to find our own bars to play in. And we just liked doing it because we would come home and Eddie Cocker made two albums.

So we would learn all the songs on that. So we started to make money at it. We were getting 18 years old making five, six, seven hundred bucks a week because every gig would pay two, three hundred bucks. We split the money and we had five gigs a week, four sets a night and we we were just making money from playing this. So, we imagined how Elvis Presley lived in Memphis. We drive to the gigs of my old Pontiac with the bass, like sticking out the back, couldn't roll the window all the way up. We had the drum with the tie down, we had a grouchy guitar and an amp and like we used to and a little PA, we used to bring it to all these games. So eventually I was getting home so late four or five in the morning every night because we would play until two and then hang out with to get paid. But at the time he get home was very late. My parents asked me at dogs with this day we get woke up my brother. So I, Brian and I got a little flat in Massapiqua. That's the size of this, you and I were sitting right now. And we slept late. We woke up, we went to thrift stores, tried to find cool threads. We went to a diner and had breakfast at three o'clock in the afternoon. We went to a few record stores that we knew that would have been old. Yeah. And a lot of the records were not import because they had gone away. Gene Vincent, Johnny Burnett, Eddie, a lot of the music stayed alive in Europe where it kind of died in America. Yeah. So we're buying in on an import. I'm paying 20 bucks for a Gene Vincent record where it's right. So as we very little to start with as far as that, we had five records all straight, we had maybe five albums, you know, Buddy Holly, Ricky Nelson, Eugene Vincent, Johnny Bernat, was it Scotty Mourad played with? Yes, Ricky Nelson at this. Yes, yes. James Burton played with Ricky Nelson. Oh, that's might be a might add. Scotty with Elvis. So we were just trying to live how we thought Elvis personally live with Scottie and Bill like waking up late, you know, like avoiding a real life. Yeah. In like anyway, and like we were managing for about a year or so. And we did very well at it. Yeah. We would like local accent tricks and it was hard to go out, go out into the real without getting a hassle. You had to get a little bit tough for a calm musician.

I am not too fast.

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