kit, temporary drumming supplied by high school bud and longtime colleague/supporter Mike and even more determined Alan in 2007
Between the preceding informational tidbits, this interview , and the bios below, you have the complete story of our band thus far. Alan
My name is Alan McCabe. I formed the band Bernie Bernie Headflap at Ursinus College with three friends in 1992. We wanted to make intelligent, energetic, melodic music like the classic rock and alternative we enjoyed listening to. Over the years the line up of BBH changed until it ended up a one man band – me – for a few years there, but now here it is 2007, BBH’s Crystal Anniversary, back to being an actual multi-member ensemble again, and the creative goal remains the same.
I was born with a rare disease called cystinosis. The disease has caused me to have kidney failure all my life. From 2002 to early 2006, I underwent renal dialysis treatment three days a week until I received a kidney transplant that February. Everybody reacts to hemo-dialysis differently. I seemed to handle the first two years okay, but after that the constant onslaught of chemicals turned into a complete mindscrew requiring heavy supervised use of psychiatric medicines which themselves yielded varied results. After the transplant my mental-emotional state improved considerably, but my physical condition encountered one final hurdle in 2006 before on New Year’s Eve into 2007 when I realized I was totally ready to relaunch the band in a very big way. Another complication caused by cystinosis is severe visual impairment. For these reasons BBH has not toured or even gigged locally for nearly a decade. BUT PART OF THIS YEAR’S BIG PLANS ARE TO TRY TO PLAY OUT IN THE Delaware Valley about once a month starting in Septemberish. To facilitate this plan, I figure I will have to hire a personal assistant. Any sexy young ladies in the SE Pennsy region with experience in the nursing and music industries looking for a low paying position with no benefis please get in touch. .
I have always used music as the main source of brightening my spirits when in the medical issues get hairy. I have always considered my go at a music career to be an attempt to give back some of what music gave me all those times in the hospital. Specfically, I remember that repeated listenings of XTC’s Skylarking made a particular challenging hospital stay almost bearable.
In the early days, screaming about medical issues was cathartic. Witness the song Blind at Night on our debut CD Cheese on Wheat. The soon to be released second CD Less Like Penguins, sort of a concept album, has a whole subplot about The Patient trying to adjust to life away from the Research Ward, and a warped doctor who attempts to administer a “final shot.” How intriguing!
As I’ve grown, I try not to dwell on the medical theme, but you'll hear it, on the more recent CD "Stone Cold Blue," such as on the song "Got to be Joking." No need to continually dredge up personal nightmares as if blaming the world; rather. I can use the experiences as inner material when creating characters who speak of their own miseries and fears.
I started listening to my dad's record collection at a very early age. The Beatles, of course, made a huge impression on me as did Wings and Billy Joel. In 1976 my late older brother Matthew heard "Telephone Line" by ELO on the radio, and he brought home a copy of "A New World Record." We begged our father to get tickets to the "Out of the Blue" concert the next year and so at the age of six I went to my first rock concert. I was physically overwhelmed by the smell of marijuana and my dad had to take me outside for a breather where he was questioned by suspicious police officers. A few years later my dad took Matt and me to see the Who documentary "The Kids Are Alright" where a lifelong fandom of that band was born.
Current musicians that I feel a kinship to include Beck, Cake and They Might be Giants. I admire each of these artists for their explorations of catchy melodies, tight songwriting and experimental home recording enthusiasm. More recently, I’ve gotten very heavily into the legendary prog-jazz rock scene of late 60s early 70s Canterbury – Soft Machine, Gong. This has awakened a better awareness of current prog artists. Porcupine Tree seems to especially have they shiznit together.
Will these new investigations trickle into my writing? I don’t see how they can’t… or far better, I see an increased willingness to loosen the tight grasp of control and allow old and new members who have a better familiarity of these genres to have their say in the music BBH makes.
In other words, the seconds 15 years of this delightful project is shaping up to be even more interesting than its first,
CHRIS
Bernie Bernie Headflap saved my life. No, seriously. I was really bored early in my sophomore year at Ursinus College and thinking about transferring to Eastern Connecticut State University, which is best described as "prison-like" and "oh my god". But then Messrs. McCabe, Hicks, and Crowder entered the picture, I stayed on at Ursinus, and all was good. We had this funky little abrasive sound, sort of like Joey Santiago filling in for Jerry Harrison when he was sick. One of my best BBH memories was our first practice in Sprankle Hall – not far from the college boundaries and local residences. The police received a noise complaint and came out to tell us to move our practice elsewhere. The officer was very cool about it and apologized, saying that he had no problem with it personally but had to respect the complaint nonetheless. For formality's sake, he was required to take down our names – which he did in a similar manner as album credits (Alan: guitar, vocals; Moses: bass guitar, tuba; etc.). That made me laugh. Bernie Bernie Headflap was the first thing that ever made me feel like I might be kinda cool. I've since proven otherwise, but it was certainly nice to feel that way for a while. Recently, Matt came to one of my current band's shows and he made me laugh as always. Alan and Moses are back recording together. Jerry Harrison appears to be healthy. All is good.
MATT
--- The somewhat short history of Matt as it relates to BBH ---
Al wanted to give me the nickname "Hoss." That ended shortly after I started calling him "Lil' Buddy."
I was lucky enough to start my college career on the 3rd floor of Curtis Hall. There I met "child progeny" Al McCabe (I inherited a penchant for malapropisms and mixed metaphors from my grandfather). After a rocky start we got along happily: throwing each other's pillows from windows, smashing candles, and burning posters. Eventually, we got around to inventing stories, writing poetry, lyrics, and songs together, more or less. My grandfather might say, "a horse a piece," which is a saying most folks have never heard and causes about as much confusion as having attended North East High School (http://www.nesd1.org/), home of the Grapepickers, causes in Philly.
Moses and Chive joined the merry band and so BBH was born.
The more I think about my own work in BBH, as much as I want to say I strove to make sounds "we'd thought we'd never heard before," my contributions were lifted from Devo, Talking Heads, The Pixies, and Barkmarket. Along with TMBG, The Minutemen, and Poster Children, those were the bands I listened to in college and with which I tried to purge my inner folksy singer-songwriter. But, I'm proud that BBH created music 10-15 years ago that still sounds original and can't be lumped into the sound of it's time.
The rest is a giant blur for the man who would have been Hoss.
MOSES
The man known in Headflap circles as Moses was originally thought, due to his enormous size and reclusive, quiet nature, to be a distant relative of creatures like Bigfoot (Homo hirsutis) or Sasquatch (Homo horribilis). It was assumed that he had little human intelligence or capacity for using tools until, one day, he was spotted playing a guitar. Fed a healthy diet of hard liquor, progressive rock, and British comedy, Moses was gradually able to enter human society, and even managed to earn a scholarship to Ursinus College in Collegeville, PA. (Editor's note: More than likely, the admissions personnel were won over by the heart-warming story of Moses' rise from his feral upbringing. Perhaps they simply wanted some publicity - headlines like "Missing Link to Attend College" were not uncommon at the time of Moses' admission to Ursinus. ) At Ursinus, Moses met Alan McCabe and Matt Hicks, two thoughtful young men sympathetic to Moses' lack of facility with the college social scene. (Moses was more spoken about than spoken to at Ursinus.) As a way of trying to communicate with each other, the three men would often spend time playing guitar together. One day, Alan and Matt decided, along with a classmate, one Chris "School Chive" Wirtalla (no, seriously, that was his nickname), to start a band. The new band, called Bernie Bernie Headflap, had Hicks on guitar, McCabe on bass, and Wirtalla on drums. Soon after forming, the trio decided they needed another guitarist, so they crossed their fingers and brought Moses aboard. The quartet recorded roughly half a dozen songs with this lineup when it was decided unanimously that Alan McCabe should switch to guitar and Moses should play bass. Given that the bass guitar has two fewer strings, and since its low roar approximated the vocal frequencies of Moses and his forebears, Moses took to the new instrument, quickly showing greater facilty with the bass than he had the guitar. Moses went on to record a number of 7" records and several CDs with Bernie Bernie Headflap, among them the Who Gits Da Deer compliation CD, and Bernie Bernie Headflap's debut album/CD, Cheese on Wheat. (On the latter, a rare recording of Moses's voice can be heard on the song "Jackrabbit".) It was at about this time than Moses' feral nature began to return; he
became less and less a member of human society. He has come back to the world of men roughly every five years or so in order to do work with Bernie Bernie Headflap - the rare photograph above (with Moses on the far left) was taken during some gigging Moses performed with BBH in Austin, Texas during one of his forays back into human society. Apparently Moses is back. He is to do some recording with Bernie Bernie Headflap on the upcoming CD to be entitled "Fear of People", perhaps a topic about which the enigmatic Moses has some knowledge.
From BBH's second line-up, only one member other than Alan has provided commentary so far, and that is
JOE
Joe DeRosa played drums for Headflap between 1996 and 2000 on the albums "Less Like Penguins," "5 Weezy Pieces," and some other random songs. He considers that period to be a high point in his musical
experience. BBH also spawned the two-man-band side project "Salsa Windfall," in which DeRosa and former Bernie guitarist Paul Chell perform. Salsa is still at it, recording tracks and playing shows from time to time, and so is Joe, now a successful stand-up comedian and composer/performer in his new rap group "DEEP."
classic rock and alternative we enjoyed listening to. Over the years the line up of BBH changed until it ended up a one man band – me – for a few years there, but now here it is 2007, BBH’s Crystal Anniversary, back to being an actual multi-member ensemble again, and the creative goal remains the same.
constant onslaught of chemicals turned into a complete mindscrew requiring heavy supervised use of psychiatric medicines which themselves yielded varied results. After the transplant my mental-emotional state improved considerably, but my physical condition encountered one final hurdle in 2006 before on New Year’s Eve into 2007 when I realized I was totally ready to relaunch the band in a very big way. Another complication caused by cystinosis is severe visual impairment. For these reasons BBH has not toured or even gigged locally for nearly a decade. BUT PART OF THIS YEAR’S BIG PLANS ARE TO TRY TO PLAY OUT IN THE Delaware Valley about once a month starting in Septemberish. To facilitate this plan, I figure I will have to hire a personal assistant. Any sexy young ladies in the SE Pennsy region with experience in the nursing and music industries looking for a low paying position with no benefis please get in touch. .
Crowder entered the picture, I stayed on at Ursinus, and all was good. We had this funky little abrasive sound, sort of like Joey Santiago filling in for Jerry Harrison when he was sick. One of my best BBH memories was our first practice in Sprankle Hall – not far from the college boundaries and local residences. The police received a noise complaint and came out to tell us to move our practice elsewhere. The officer was very cool about it and apologized, saying that he had no problem with it personally but had to respect the complaint nonetheless. For formality's sake, he was required to take down our names – which he did in a similar manner as album credits (Alan: guitar, vocals; Moses: bass guitar, tuba; etc.). That made me laugh. Bernie Bernie Headflap was the first thing that ever made me feel like I might be kinda cool. I've since proven otherwise, but it was certainly nice to feel that way for a while. Recently, Matt came to one of my current band's shows and he made me laugh as always. Alan and Moses are back recording together. Jerry Harrison appears to be healthy. All is good.
It was assumed that he had little human intelligence or capacity for using tools until, one day, he was spotted playing a guitar. Fed a healthy diet of hard liquor, progressive rock, and British comedy, Moses was gradually able to enter human society, and even managed to earn a scholarship to Ursinus College in Collegeville, PA. (Editor's note: More than likely, the admissions personnel were won over by the heart-warming story of Moses' rise from his feral upbringing. Perhaps they simply wanted some publicity - headlines like "Missing Link to Attend College" were not uncommon at the time of Moses' admission to Ursinus. ) At Ursinus, Moses met Alan McCabe and Matt Hicks, two thoughtful young men sympathetic to Moses' lack of facility with the college social scene. (Moses was more spoken about than spoken to at Ursinus.) As a way of trying to communicate with each other, the three men would often spend time playing guitar together. One day, Alan and Matt decided, along with a classmate, one Chris "School Chive" Wirtalla (no, seriously, that was his nickname), to start a band. The new band, called Bernie Bernie Headflap, had Hicks on guitar, McCabe on bass, and Wirtalla on drums. Soon after forming, the trio decided they needed another guitarist, so they crossed their fingers and brought Moses aboard. The quartet recorded roughly half a dozen songs with this lineup when it was decided unanimously that Alan McCabe should switch to guitar and Moses should play bass. Given that the bass guitar has two fewer strings, and since its low roar approximated the vocal frequencies of Moses and his forebears, Moses took to the new instrument,
quickly showing greater facilty with the bass than he had the guitar. Moses went on to record a number of 7" records and several CDs with Bernie Bernie Headflap, among them the Who Gits Da Deer compliation CD, and Bernie Bernie Headflap's debut album/CD, Cheese on Wheat. (On the latter, a rare recording of Moses's voice can be heard on the song "Jackrabbit".) It was at about this time than Moses' feral nature began to return; he
experience. BBH also spawned the two-man-band side project "Salsa Windfall," in which DeRosa and former Bernie guitarist Paul Chell perform. Salsa is still at it, recording tracks and playing shows from time to time, and so is Joe, now a successful stand-up comedian and composer/performer in his new rap group "DEEP."