1991, or 1992. I can’t remember. Much like many of the daze in the 80’s when I played in my first band No Reazen. This picture was taken at the Hollywood Sportatorium in South Florida which held all the major concerts. At the time of this photo shoot the famous venue was closed and about to be demolished.
No Reazen was about to come to an end too. When I joined the band I was 14 years old and 1984 was coming to a close. I had been playing guitar for about 2 years. As a matter of fact, I really had no idea what I was doing on the thing. I knew a few songs and my fingers seemed to work but that’s about it.
A friend of mine said to me that there was a guitar player who lived down the street that’s was pretty good. Do you want to go meet him. I said sure, and we walked down to his house. He was living with his girlfriend Sandie at the time. She let us into the apt. As we walked toward the bedroom where he was we didn’t see him until he popped up from behind the bed where he must’ve been looking for something. This shirtless sun tanned dude with the curliest hair said hello, my name is Carl.
Carl Bailey pulls out his guitar and starts playing. I was just blown away. He was great. He was playing all the stuff that I loved. Ratt, Dokken, Judas Priest. Carl was about 17 or 18 at the time and was way ahead of his time. We later realized the Carl had perfect pitch and that he can figure out anything quickly without even hearing it. One of his nick names that we gave him was “Ear.”
Carl really helped me because like I said I didn’t know much of anything. I could barely even tune the guitar. Carl would tune it for me. Once we were in tune, we would play together and it sounded pretty good. We started writing riffs, and songs together.
It turns out that Carl knew a drummer who was a high school friend of his that he was about to start a band with. His name was Ronnie Oakes. Carl told Ronnie that he had another guitarist that he had been writing with, and that they should swing by my apt to meet me.
I’ll never forget the day Carl, and Ronnie showed up at my place. Ronnie was about Carls age maybe even a year older, not sure. Ronnie had already been playing for years in some great local band’s that had seriously great guitar players. Dave Scott, and Pete Demdrowski were two of them. These were guys that I would soon meet and become friends with, and remain seriously inspired by even till this day.
The three of us headed to Ronnies house in Miramar where we had a jam session in his garage. Ronnies garage was legendary. He had his waterbed set up in there about 5 feet in the air with the PA system set up underneath. I remember the jam session being magical. It didn’t matter how good or what the level of our musicianship was. For that period of time that we played we were on the same page and we just made music, and had a great time. We just knew we had something and wanted to move forward with it.
At that point we were in search of a bass player. We had a few players that were good but didn’t work out. The three of us had a great chemistry, and we really wanted to have that with the other members that we brought in.
One afternoon we heard about this bass player Mike Verrico. He was playing some classic rock covers at a party in the park. We went to check him out. The band was really good. We got to know Mike and invited him to one of our rehearsals.
Mikey hit it off with us very well. We shared just enough of the same influences with each other. Mikey had a really good backbone on the bass being more of a Zeppelin fan. Carl and I were total metal heads. Ronnie liked metal too but he was also into fusion.
The combination was perfect. All we needed now was a singer. Just like the bass players, we went through a few singers but none of them really had the magic we were looking for. One day we were at our friend Freddy Sparxx’s recording studio hanging out. In walks this guy with awesome long blonde wavy hair named John Pierre Rammond. He said he was a singer. That made us very curious. We wanted to hear. I think we got him to sing some Judas Priest. He had the high note screams down perfect. That along with his kick ass Rock N’ Roll attitude, we were blown away and said you’re in.
The band was set. We just needed a name. I actually suggested the name while we were all watching the classic movie “The Warriors.” There’s a famous line that says “Why’d you do it? Why’d you waste Cyrus?” “No reason. I just… like doing things like that!”
It was 1987. We would go on and play all over South Florida for the next 5 years. We made some great music. Even till this day I have at least one demo, or live recording of everything that we did. I recently recorded the No Reazen song “Down To The Wire” and released it on my latest record “Married To Myself.” It’s now being played as the opener to a very prominent football podcast from BTSC.
I cut my teeth in music with these guys and owe everything to them for turning me into who I am today. I truly don’t know where I’d be today if I didn’t meet Carl the way I did on that very important day in my life.
I’m so grateful. Thank you to my brothers from No Reazen.