By Thomas L. Vaultonburg
The strange names, forgotten stages, and glorious musical misfits of Rockford's rock-and-roll past
Being spooky season, I recently found myself remembering a Rockford band that used to arrive at its performances in a hearse. As I recall it, the lead singer would emerge from a casket, presumably to begin entertaining the audience, although I suppose he might also have been there to collect somebody. It was such a peculiar memory that I began wondering whether I'd invented the whole thing. Then the name came back to me: Cealed Kasket. With a C and a K, naturally. Because if you're going to haul a coffin around in a hearse to announce your arrival at a bar, there's no point being conventional about the spelling.
I went looking for evidence of Cealed Kasket and discovered something almost as entertaining as the original memory: how easily a local band can disappear from history. There's evidence of a later Chicago-area theatrical metal band using that name, complete with a singer called Mortal Death, but I haven't established whether these were the same coffin-hauling entertainers I remember. Maybe someone reading this can settle the matter. In the meantime, the search sent me down another rabbit hole: the gloriously peculiar names of bands that played Rockford during the decades after Cheap Trick made the city famous.
Everybody knows Cheap Trick. They've become such a permanent part of Rockford's identity that it's sometimes difficult to remember there were other musicians in town. Hundreds of them. Some were exceptionally talented. Some were exceptionally loud. Some were probably exceptionally drunk. A few came tantalizingly close to making it, and others seemed perfectly content to play for whoever showed up on Friday night. But they had names, and those names deserve to be remembered.
Consider Pee Wee and the Wristers. Even before hearing a note, you have to admire the possibilities. Is Pee Wee a person? Are the Wristers athletes, musicians, or gentlemen who have been asked to leave a bowling alley? Whatever the explanation, they were a real part of Rockford's entertainment landscape. Their name appears repeatedly in the history of On the Waterfront, including performances in 1985, 1988, 1989, 1991, and 2003. They also appear in historical calendars associated with Charlotte's Web. That is a substantial stretch of local musical life for a band whose name sounds like something a nervous high school principal might refuse to announce over the public address system.
Then there's Big Twist and the Mellow Fellows, a name so magnificent it sounds as though somebody invented it while trying to describe a bowling team from another dimension.
Big Twist and the Mellow Fellows, featuring Lawrence "Big Twist" Nolan. Archival promotional photograph.
Big Twist was Lawrence Nolan, a formidable blues and rhythm-and-blues singer whose band traveled far beyond northern Illinois. They weren't strictly a Rockford group, but they were part of the musical world Rockford audiences knew. They played Charlotte's Web in 1980 and shared a bill with the Beach Boys at the MetroCentre in March 1983. They brought something different to the proceedings: horns, soul, showmanship, and the kind of rhythm and blues that made sitting still seem like a personal failing.
Charlotte's Web deserves a story of its own. Located at 728 First Avenue, it was one of those places where the distinction between a local music scene and the larger musical world became wonderfully porous. The venue hosted artists as varied as Robert Fripp, the Runaways, Bill Bruford, and Big Twist and the Mellow Fellows. Imagine wandering into a Rockford club and finding somebody whose records you might otherwise have expected to discover in an imported-music bin. For a while, that kind of thing happened here.
By the late 1980s, the names were getting considerably more threatening. Ript was a Rockford hard-rock band that developed a substantial following during the period when hair metal, thrash, punk, and alternative rock were all competing for the attention of young people who wanted their music loud enough to cause structural damage.
Rockford hard-rock band Ript, pictured on its self-titled album cover. Image: Dark Star Records.
Ript featured vocalist Ian Serrano, guitarists Gregg DeCarlo and Mike Nelson, bassist Greg Utley, and drummer Wally Houck. They shared an On the Waterfront bill with Cheap Trick in 1987 and released a self-titled album in 1992. The group would eventually reunite for performances years later. Ript is a particularly interesting example of a band that could become a major attraction in its own community without becoming a household name everywhere else.
But if we're judging by names alone, Ript has serious competition from Bludgeoned Nun. There is absolutely no ambiguity about the musical territory being advertised there. Nobody bought a ticket to Bludgeoned Nun expecting an evening of delicate acoustic interpretations of James Taylor. The band belonged to Rockford's late-eighties punk, hardcore, and metal underground, a scene that developed around clubs, rented halls, and unlikely venues such as Rotation Station, the roller rink that became a gathering place for skateboarders and young music fans. Former participants remember Bludgeoned Nun as one of the scene's most ferocious acts. The name might have been calculated to offend, but the music and the musicians left an impression that survived long after the performances ended.
PineWood Box is another name that seems appropriate for a story beginning with a coffin. Active from 1985 to 1996, the band mixed punk, industrial sounds, keyboards, and theatrical stage presentations into something that resisted easy classification. Their own surviving account describes years of performances around Rockford and the surrounding area, unusual stage shows, and a loyal audience. Their recordings survive under the wonderfully appropriate title Embalmed. It's difficult not to admire a group that managed to spend eleven years making original music in Rockford while maintaining a name that sounds like a product description from a funeral supply catalog.
And then there was Sarkoma, another prominent name in Rockford's heavy-music underground. The group appears repeatedly in interviews with musicians who came through the local scene in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Alongside them were bands called Mirrored Image, Diamond Force, Pure Aggression, Necrosis, Blind Witness, and Devoid. These were not names designed to reassure parents. They were names designed to announce that the children had discovered amplifiers and were no longer interested in parental reassurance.
Mirrored Image eventually became ForChristSake, and the manner of the transformation was almost as entertaining as the name itself. Guitarist Jerry Sofran recalled that the band changed its name during a performance in 1991. They stopped playing, had Sarkoma singer Brian Carter announce the new identity, dropped a new banner, and continued the show. It was a remarkably efficient piece of musical reincarnation. Most bands would have needed a press release, new publicity photographs, and three months of arguments. These fellows simply changed names in front of the audience and got back to work.
Rockford's punk scene had its own memorable contributions to the naming business. We Hate Cake is a personal favorite, partly because it seems like such an unnecessarily aggressive position to take. What did cake ever do to these people? The band eventually evolved into War on the Saints, a considerably more serious name, although perhaps less likely to start an argument at a birthday party. Other names included Davey and the Daggerz, Rocky and the Squirrels, The Icks, The Flex, and Mulligan Stu. Rocky and the Squirrels sounds like a children's television program that went terribly wrong. Mulligan Stu sounds like something you might order at an Irish restaurant after the kitchen has closed.
What's striking about the history of these bands is that Rockford's musical culture was much broader than the familiar story of Cheap Trick. There were garage bands, punk bands, heavy-metal bands, rockabilly acts, power-pop groups, blues musicians, and people who apparently believed a roller rink was the ideal location for a hardcore concert. Musicians formed bands, broke up, joined other bands, changed their names, recorded songs, and occasionally managed to get their records distributed beyond the city limits. Some pursued national recognition. Others were building something just as meaningful on a smaller scale: a community of people who knew the songs, recognized the musicians, and turned up when the band was playing.
The Internet has preserved fragments of this history, but fragments are what they remain. Old concert listings, interviews, recordings, flyers, and personal recollections provide tantalizing glimpses of a musical world that was once very much alive. For every group whose recordings have survived, there are probably several others whose existence is documented only by a faded poster in somebody's basement or a story told by someone who was there.
Which brings me back to Cealed Kasket. I can still picture that hearse and the singer climbing out of his coffin, although I can't yet prove the details. Perhaps someone remembers the band, knows the musicians, or has a photograph. Perhaps there's an old advertisement buried in a newspaper archive, waiting to confirm that I haven't completely lost my mind. And perhaps there are dozens of other Rockford bands with equally wonderful names that deserve to be resurrected.
Because the history of a city's music isn't only the story of the people who became famous. It's also the story of the people who loaded their equipment into vans, played to their friends, annoyed the neighbors, and went to work the next morning. It's the story of a town entertaining itself, sometimes brilliantly and sometimes badly, but almost always with more imagination than anybody was giving it credit for.
Cheap Trick got the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Somewhere out there, I'd like to think Cealed Kasket still has the hearse.
And if anybody remembers where they parked it, I'd love to hear about it.
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