Today is Friday July 03 2009

The Sillies began Easter Sunday, April 10, 1977 at a basement jam session in Detroit where Ben Waugh met Sheila Edwards. After discussing art and music, they agreed the next day to form a “Progressive Punk” band. Waugh called his friend Perry Noyd (Steve Sortor, ex-Mutants) who had been asking Waugh to form a band. Sortor later earned the stage name Perry Noyd because of his repeated statement that the Sillies song lyrics would cause them to be “the first band to be assassinated on stage”. Auditions brought in ex-Flirt guitarist Tommy Kilowatt and keyboard player Ed Mich. Sheila invited her friend Tamara to fly in from Las Vegas and join the Sillies as a “visual performer”, appearing onstage in costume. Vince Volatile joined later as second guitarist/bassist.

The Sillies made their debut on August 10, 1977 at the Kramer Theater before a crowd of more than 1,000 people. They were second billed to the (new) MC5 and supported by Destroy All Monsters, featuring ex-Stooges guitarist Ron Asheton and original MC5 bassist Michael Davis. Rather than being reviewed in the “Entertainment” section, the Detroit News ran an editorial calling the Sillies “an X-rated gong show for the young and desperate” but also called them “appalling yet spellbinding, revolting yet stimulating. And food for thought”. Concerts in Trenton and Ann Arbor followed that same year. Stooges guitarist Ron Asheton recalled that Ben Waugh was the first performer ever to wear a headset microphone onstage, years before Madonna, Garth Brooks, or anyone else.

Noyd, Mich, Tamara, and Sheila left late 1977. Guitarist Michael Profane, who was at the original jam session, switched to bass in order to join the band. Katy Hait joined to share vocals with Waugh. She was joined in early 1978 by her friend Gloria Love, another “visual performer” in the tradition of Tamara. Drummer Bob “Bootsey X” Mulrooney (ex-Ramrods) eventually quit Nikki Corvette after subbing at a few Sillies shows and became a full time member.

In spite of a strong start, there was virtually nowhere in Detroit for an original band to play. The Sillies played only their own music while most bands played the hits of well-known bands with one or two originals at most. Another new band at the time, The Romantics, played 50’s and 60’s classics in local bars and eventually landed a record contract. The Sillies headlined the first “Hookers’ Ball” April 1st, 1978, a benefit for prostitutes that garnered heavy media coverage, but paying shows were hard to find. In time, the only way for The Sillies to have somewhere to play in Detroit was to start their own club. They booked St. Patrick’s Day weekend 1978 at Bookie’s Club 870, an old supper club that didn’t usually have live bands. After the weekend, the owner offered the room to Waugh to book as he saw fit. The Sillies turned Bookie’s into Detroit’s first rock & roll nightclub while using the basement as their rehearsal hall and demo studio. They also allowed competing local bands to headline at Bookie’s and brought in out-of-towners such as The Police, The Damned, The Dead Boys, Ultravox, John Cale of the Velvet Underground, The Cramps, Johnny Thunders’ Heartbreakers, Peter Hammill, and others who had nowhere else to play in Detroit while touring the U.S.

The Sillies also started playing out of town, headlining colleges and concert clubs in Ann Arbor, Chicago, Toronto, and Cleveland while playing Bookie’s and other clubs in Detroit. A few bars started having “concert nights’ with two or three original acts instead of one band playing five sets of cover tunes. This started after the press and word of mouth was generated by the apparent success of Bookie’s, especially at the business meetings held regularly for local bar owners. Local communities, however, overreacted to the perceived threat of punk rock in ways that the anti-rock & roll paranoia of the mid-1950’s. A small altercation at the Sillies show in Cleveland resulted in the bar being barricaded against hostile locals until the police finally arrived. Once they did, they told the band point-blank to leave Cleveland and never return under threat of immediate arrest. A relatively innocent appearance at the University Of Detroit hosted by TV personality “The Ghoul” concluded with the band being escorted from the premises by campus security and being banned from university property- for life. A show in Lansing, Michigan’s capital, was stopped by local police well before it was even held. It was moved beyond city limits to open farmland, but the electrical generator went up in 20 feet of flames just prior to the Sillies’ set and a fleet of huge fire engines came streaking across the field while Sillies members fled to get out of their way. Even the first Chicago show resulted in a bottle-throwing fest in the audience, the Sillies equipment van being towed away with one band member inside just prior to performance, and the Chicago police interrogating the band members while they were simply waiting to go on stage to play their set. None of it stopped the club from booking the band again while Chicago’s “Gabba Gabba Gazette” gushed about their new favorite band, The Sillies.

Tensions within the band escalated after the Sillies 4th Of July show with the Damned in 1979. While the band was about to release its only 7” single, Katy, Bob, Vince, and Gloria left the band, partly due to an unwillingness to tour. “No Big Deal” was one of very few independent releases to get played on commercial radio and an early supporter was deejay Mark McEwen, now a well-known personality on CBS TV. Kirsten Rogoff joined on organ and piano and Chip Sercombe on drums. Ben Waugh took over all vocal duties plus guitar, sax, and keyboards, leaving drums to Chip. This was the lineup most people came to know in Toronto and Chicago plus larger Detroit venues. It was a bit less anarchic, but a lot tighter musically. At the same time, The Knack had a huge hit with “My Sharona” and The Romantics were getting support from Detroit radio. The days of punk rock in Detroit were numbered.

This was the period that the Sillies did most of their recording, including “Sex For The Handicapped” with Nashville session pianist Throbbin’ Bob Wilson. Wilson played all keyboards on Bob Dylan’s “Nashville Skyline” and “Self-Portrait” albums and was depicted as the “yankee hippie boy” in the motion picture “Nashville”. He guested on “Sex...” as a favor to Waugh. Other tracks recorded at that time were “Break Loose”, “Heavy Breathing”, and the definitive version of “Love You To Death” with Waugh’s harpsichord solo and Kirsten’s piano track. A Canadian affiliate of CBS was interested, but punk was being overshadowed by “Power Pop” and the Sillies were on the wrong bandwagon at the wrong time. Kilowatt quit in mid-1980 to return to Flirt and Profane switched back to guitar. Kirsten took over the bass lines at live shows with her deft lefthand work, drawing comparisons to The Doors by people with no other point of reference.

The December 1980 tour with Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers took a heavy toll on the band emotionally. The winter was bitterly cold, holding down attendance. Even John Lennon’s recent death was blamed by local promoters for mediocre crowds. The highlight of the tour came when Thunders stole Ben Waugh’s gloves in Hamilton, Ontario. After convincing Thunders to return them, Waugh inadvertently lifted the ground on the amplifier he and Thunders were sharing for the tour. This resulted in severe electrical shock for anyone who was plugged into that amp and touching a mic stand, especially with their lips, which Thunders was prone to do. The Sillies had been cheated out of their first night’s pay by the club owner, the reputed head of the Hamilton mafia. Thunders convinced the owner that he, too, was Italian and made sure he was getting paid while leaving the Sillies penniless and friendless in a foreign country. After a particularly wild and energetic set by the Sillies, Waugh settled back into the audience to enjoy what he knew would be Thunders’ most entertaining performance. One song and five severe shocks later, Thunders left the stage screaming.

Despite surviving the tour, Profane was too unstable to continue and Kirsten was burned out on band life. Mike was released at the tour’s end to form his own band in Toronto. Kirsten and Chip quit in May of 1981, forcing the third cancellation of the Sillies East Coast tour. Creem editor Lester Bangs showed up for the Max’s Kansas City date, only to die never seeing what Stiv Bators of the Dead Boys described as “Detroit’s best live band”.

Waugh went on to record “Real Live Love” for the 1981 anthology “Detroit On A Platter” album. The song was a radical departure from all previous Sillies songs and was compared to Joy Division and The Cure in the nationally distributed magazine N.Y.Rocker. Trouser Press also praised the song as the highlight of the album, but the punk rock era seemed over and Waugh retired the band name later that year.

A fan and concert promoter convinced Waugh to reunite the Sillies for a show in December of 1989. Flirt bassist and founder Skid Marx joined on bass with Tommy Kilowatt and Kirsten returning on guitar and keyboards respectively. The show sold out and was followed by two more. The last was on April Fool’s Day, 1990 at a striptease club in Detroit. Nude dancers appeared onstage with the band and the entire performance was videotaped.

The members went their separate ways until Kirsten introduced Waugh to her college dormitory mate Jackie Jung in October 1992. The result was a series of shows from January ‘93 through December ‘94 and the live album “Public Enema Number One”. Jackie took over female vocals, with Waugh, Marx, Kilowatt, Kirsten, and drummers Dan Bloxsom and Keith Brown rounding out the lineup. Warner Brothers was interested at the time, but Jackie left for New York in August 1994, and the band split again after headlining Grand Rapids’ top concert club on New Year’s Eve. A fan’s phone call seeking a copy of “Enema...” brought news that Michael Profane had died in San Francisco in December 1992 from internal bleeding.

A Bookie’s 20th Anniversary show in 1998 brought the addition of bassist Dean Denizen of The Denizens and Nikki Corvette. Dean also played the Detroit Punkfest in September 2001 with The Sillies as headliners.Original member Ed Mich died unexpectedly June 26, 2001 from complications after a high voltage electrical accident. Kirsten returned from Los Angeles on Easter Weekend 2002 to play the 25th anniversary of the formation of The Sillies. A summer tour was discussed, but no one knows what the future holds for the band Detroit music insiders said “wouldn’t last six months”.

Recordings
		P066 - The Sillies - "America's Most Wanton" CD/LP Straight outta '77 baby. The long lost SILLIES unreleased unearthed gems.