The Crawling Walls
In the summer of 1979 I moved to Albuquerque to start a Ph.D. program in
statistics. I had been
living in Austin for the previous six years, at a time when punk rock
was changing the music scene in the southwest. I remember going to see
local Austin bands at clubs like Raul’s on Guadalupe, right by the U.T.
campus. I arrived in Albuquerque knowing absolutely no one, and being
completely unfamiliar with the music scene. One night I went to see a
showing of "Rock ‘n’ Roll High School," featuring the Ramones (although
it was originally written with Cheap Trick in mind, which would have
totally changed this story), at a movie theater on Central Avenue (the
old route 66) when I met a girl who was dressed exactly like Riff
Randell from the movie. She invited me to a house party a few days
later, where I danced my ass off to the latest punk, ska, and new wave
records with people who later became bandmates and friends; from that
point on I became immersed in the Albuquerque underground music scene.
A rather unique characteristic of Albuquerque is
its isolation. The next big city, in any direction one might choose to
travel, is about 400 miles away. This had two consequences which
directly affected me: first, touring bands that might otherwise not have
considered playing Albuquerque stopped there anyway because their crappy
vans couldn’t make it all the way from Phoenix to Denver in one stretch;
and second, musicians and artists, feeling the isolation, developed an
amazing camaraderie uniting the various components of the underground
culture. There would often be punk, garage, electronic, psychedelic,
art-rock, noise, and rockabilly bands sharing the bill at house parties,
warehouse shows, and back-alley clubs, and the people attending would
span the full spectrum of musical, artistic, and sexual preferences.
Sexual preferences? Yes, punk bands would play at gay bars, something
that would have been unheard of in most other parts of the planet.
In 1982, my girlfriend (Elaine) and I were living
in a tiny house in the 200 block of Princeton Dr. SE. A few hundred
yards away, in the 100 block of Stanford, there was a house occupied by
members of several bands. One of the people living there was Hans Kohls,
who was a computer operator at Kirtland AFB. He was just then learning
to play guitar, but the most incredible thing about Hans was that he
knew absolutely everyone in the scene. He and I started a guitar/synth
band called Conflicting Theories. We performed some originals, some
covers of Depeche Mode and Orchestral Manoeuvers in the Dark, and an
occasional surf instrumental, playing live tracks over a Dr. Rhythm drum
machine and a couple of Sequential Circuits Pro-One monophonic
synthesizers. At one show, we had a friend of ours, Bruce Hill, the
drummer from The Generics, sit in with us. Having played with a real
drummer, we found it hard to go back to the cheesy Dr. Rhythm. Sorry,
Doctor.
In May of 1983 I went back to Austin for a few days to visit some old
friends, including Mark Leon, who had been my housemate for several
years during graduate school. By chance, I heard part of a radio show
where the DJ was alternating ‘70s and ‘80s punk rock tracks with late
‘60s garage and psychedelic tracks, many from Texas bands like the 13th
Floor Elevators, Moving Sidewalks, The Golden Dawn, Mouse and the Traps,
Shiva’s Headband, the Sir Douglas Quintet, and Bubble Puppy.
When I returned to Albuquerque, I bought a copy of
Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from
the First Psychedelic Era, and proceeded to learn every song on the
compilation. I suggested to Hans that we find ourselves a permanent
drummer and morph into a garage-psych band, and the transformation only
took about a month. There was a punk band we knew, called Straight
Razor, and we convinced their drummer, Richard Perez, to join us. At
first, we played a bunch of songs from the Nuggets compilation,
including “I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night,” “Dirty Water,” “Night
Time,” “Pushin’ Too Hard,” “Liar, Liar,” “You’re Gonna Miss Me,”
“Psychotic Reaction,” “Hey Joe,” “Talk Talk,” “Incense and Peppermints,”
“Nobody But Me,” “7 And 7 Is,” “Time Won’t Let Me,” “A Question of
Temperature,” and “Wooly Bully.” We quickly started writing songs in the
same vein.
There’s a parallel story that goes along with
this one, but I won’t go into a lot of detail here. As the Crawling
Walls were getting off the ground, I was also playing in a band called
the
Jet Girls. Because of its proximity to West Texas, Albuquerque had
always had its share of rockabilly bands. But this band was a tad
different (to put it mildly), inventing the entirely new genre of "glitterbilly" and creating some now-legendary performances, including the
infamous party where the police helicopters showed up. Find Keith
Drummond and Simon Whiteley on Facebook and they can fill you in.
The confluence of art and music that I mentioned
a few paragraphs back becomes important at this point. A few local
artists who liked the band would regularly make posters for our shows.
In return, we would play house parties and gallery openings. It worked
out well. And I kept copies of the posters, which is the only way I was
able to construct the rest of this history.
The First Incarnation
Bob Fountain: Vocals, Vox Continental organ, MiniKorg synth for keyboard
bass
Hans Kohls: Guitar
Richard Perez:
Drums and vocals
The show on October 20 with Plan 9 was one of the most memorable. They had left their home base in Rhode Island and were touring the country in a school bus that broke down in Kansas. They got it fixed and drove 12 hours straight, arriving after the Albuquerque show had already begun. No matter. They got there, and they were great! Afterward, they parked the bus in my driveway, and the 8 of them (they were touring with 4 guitars, bass, drums, keyboards, and vocals!) camped out at my house for a couple of days, long enough to stay for Hans' going-away party. They were amazed at the poster art that R.K. Sloane had done, and invited him to do the cover for "Dealing with the Dead," the album that they were working on, which pretty much launched Sloane's new career doing album art. He created cover art for 2 other Plan 9 albums, as well as several of the "Battle of the Garages" compilations, Roky Erickson's 1986 "Evil Hook Wildlife" single, and many others, including the skull and guns logo for the Guns N' Roses "Use Your Illusion I" album.
The Second Incarnation
Bob Fountain: Vocals, Vox Continental organ, Yamaha DX7
Larry Otis: Guitar
and vocals
Nancy Martinez:
Bass guitar
Richard Perez:
Drums and vocals
The Third Incarnation
Bob Fountain: Vocals, Vox Continental organ, Yamaha DX7
Larry Otis: Guitar
and vocals
Carl Petersen: Bass
guitar
Bill Mudd: Drums
Postscript
Our last show in Albuquerque was on July 30, 1985, at the Northwestern Corral. One of the bands we played with was Michael Glover & Shout. Mike had been the drummer in the Philisteens, Larry's former band. A few years later, Mike played drums in the Strawberry Zots, another Albuquerque psychedelic band.
Our actual last show was 4 days later in Hollywood, at Bomp Record's Cavern Club. The last song of our set was "Falling Away," whose final lines are "Look at the walls, how they crawl and they sway. I can't see them now, 'cause they're falling away."
Now it was my turn to break up the band. It was unavoidable, since I was
graduating from UNM and had accepted a position at the University of
Texas at San Antonio. In Texas, I tried to restart the band, but it
never took. There's a time and a place for everything, I guess, and I
had slipped out of place. Still, there were some interesting moments.
Jim Beal, the music writer for the San Antonio Express-News, reviewed
the "Inner Limits" album and later contacted me when his band,
Anarchists' Convention, needed a keyboard player for a couple of months.
I played a few club gigs with them. At one of the shows, Augie Meyers,
the organist from the Sir Douglas Quintet (and many later bands,
including the Texas Tornados) was in the audience. We invited him up on
stage, and he burned up the keys on my Vox Continental for a couple of
songs. That was cool.
In 1992, I moved to Portland, Oregon, where I still live. I'm a
professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Portland
State University.
In 2006, my friend R.K. Sloane passed away.
Every once in a while an event occurs which shifts the universe in a
peculiar way, and this was one of them. Upon learning of Rick's death, I
found myself vividly reliving those wild times in New Mexico. It
inspired me to start writing songs again, stirring a creative impulse
that had lain dormant for far too long.
Hans Kohls eventually moved to San Diego, where he played in several
bands. He never lost his love for instrumental surf music, and he
recorded an album with the
Sand Devils,
also featuring Ran Mosessco from the Israeli surf band the Astroglides.
Hans and his wife Lisa tour the country in their RV (check out their
blog,
Metamorphosis Road),
and the Sand Devils still play gigs when Hans is in town.
Richard Perez and Nancy Martinez live in Southern California, and I
understand that Richard still plays in bands, mainly doing covers of
'60s material.
Larry Otis, Mark Shipman
, Carl Petersen and Bill Mudd are still in the 'Burque. After the Crawling Walls, Carl and Bill had a band called the Ant Farmers and recorded an album in 1990. Also, Bill played drums in the Strawberry Zots at some point after Mike Glover had left the band. Carl is currently the editor of the Weekly Alibi, Albuquerque's alternative newsweekly.I'm still writing songs and playing music. Along with Adam Bayer (former drummer of The Mooney Suzuki) and guitarist extraordinaire Will Ivy, we are The Low Twelve. Give it a listen—you'll hear echoes of the Crawling Walls.