Crib Notes

Mac McNeilly (right)

Chad Radford:  You’re a local guy, or you used to be.

Mac McNeilly:  Yeah, I grew up in Atlanta and have a lot of really fond memories of hanging out there, but ever since ’89 I’ve been making Chicago and the Chicago area my home.

How did you make the jump from playing in Atlanta bands like 86 and Phantom 309 to the Jesus Lizard?

Well, 86 played a show in Austin, Texas, and I met David Yow. He and David Sims were at the club where we played. We introduced ourselves to each other and I said ‘I like the way you sing and I like Scratch Acid,’ and he said ‘I like the way you play drums.’ So we both said something like maybe some day we can do something together musically. It was one of those things where you say something that would really be a great thing to do, but don’t think anything will come of it. We traded numbers anyway and I got a call from David Yow a couple of years later. He said ‘we’re putting this thing together in Chicago and we have an EP that we’ve done with a drum machine. I can send you a tape because we want to put a live drummer in there and actually be a band.’ When they did the EP it was just a recording project. I don’t think they had any plans to make a rock band out of it, but they changed their mind and I went up in the summer of ’89 to try out. I was playing bass in Phantom 309, but I’m not a bass player and it was a way for me to get back to playing drums. David sent me a tape of the EP and I really liked what I heard. It was the kind of music that I could really adapt drumming to so I went up and it clicked right away.
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AN ODOR OF SANCTITY: David Yow (second from left) and the Jesus Lizard, reunited

The first time I saw the Jesus Lizard play was Oct. 22, 1989. I was going to see the Rollins Band play at a scary little dive called the Lifticket in Omaha, Neb., in what was then a scary little neighborhood called Benson. These days, the Lifticket is a cleaner, bigger venue called the Waiting Room, and the neighborhood is a trendy bar district with a farmer’s market open on Sundays. But it was a rough part of town in those days, hardly a place for a 14-year-old kid on a school night.

Tim Moss was the record store guy at a local punk rock record shop called Drastic Plastic. He sold me my first cassettes by Dinosaur Jr., Bauhaus, the Pixies, Big Black, Minor Threat, the Minutemen, etc. — all gateway drugs. These days, Tim plays in the band Porn, and is the road manager for bands such as the Melvins and Faith No More. Back then, he sang for Ritual Device, the scheduled show openers. He was cool and said he could get me in despite me being a solid seven years underage.

Continue Reading “20 years after getting a face full of the Jesus Lizard, the sweat of Yow returns”

(Photo Courtesy Joshua Black Wilkins)

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