FUCKED UP

The song and the story behind the song

Last night my band The Judys played the International Pop Overthrow festival in Vancouver. We were given 30 minutes to get our message across. We used most of our allotted time, but our set was truncated with the demise of the bass amp. The last song we played was called THE WHOLE WORLD’S ON DRUGS. Our bass player, Pete Feend, is a local legend and a monster on the bass. As big as his sound is, Pete himself is not a big guy. But when the amp died, the set ended, simple as that. We could not go on without him.

One of the songs from our MORE album, is Fucked Up, the story of the many friends I used to hang out with growing up in a suburb of Portland called Rock Creek. I don’t remember there being any specific creek, but there was a pond that we would frequent, with my friend Doug and his dog Harry. We were the typical 70’s North American teenagers up to no good. Doug brought his BB gun, and we would go down to the pond and Doug would shoot bullfrogs. You would see the bubbles on the water where they were just below the surface, and fire. The bullfrogs would leap up bleeding from the shot, then fall back into the murky water.

I know it sounds real fucked up, but there were worse things that we did.

We were just bored teenagers. Goods kids in a suburban wasteland development, surrounding a golf course, with farm land a few blocks away. That combination of wilderness and wild boredom. We were doing our best, trying to grow up.

We had a very close little group. There was Doug and I, then tall skinny Steve. One day when were were goofing around, Steve’s little brother fell from the hay loft of an abandoned barn to the concrete floor below. His brother was in a body cast for months.

I remember the time I came back to visit after we moved away. I took the Greyhound down from Vancouver BC, and went to a party with Steve and the others. Steve brought this wet blonde Lebanese hashish, which we hot knifed.

I got so ripped, I went downtown the next day on the bus to explore the city. I was still so high that I actually believed I was another person. In my drug addled brain, I had assumed this new identity. I would live a completely different life than the one I was living. Perhaps it even happened. Living the alternative life, that is. But that was later.

Mark was the most promiscuous guy in our little gang. He would walk around the neighborhood, catcalling every girl. Strangely, the catcalling seemed to work. Mark had a magic power. His mother, who was Italian, was always warning him to be careful with that “thing”, that “thing” being his monster sized manhood. “You could hurt somebody with that thing”, his mother warned.

Pat was a very funny Irish/ Italian kid, who we called Pasquale. Why? Because he wanted to be called Pasquale. Pat’s Dad had married another woman, and they had a new young child. Pat was from the former marriage, and was not wanted at home. His stepmother was always blaming him for being such a bad influence on his younger step-brother.

One day they just kicked him out, which shocked us, the unshockables. Pasquale was living in a motel for awhile. That was fun for a week, then not so funny. Later he joined the military to get straightened out. Not sure sure what happened to him, or many if the others.

Greg, aka Burger, was nicknamed after running through a sliding glass door in a house being built. Was he exploring or vandalizing? It was pretty much the same.

An adult caught him in there, and he fled, not seeing the sliding glass door was shut, cutting up his face, hence the name Burger. It wasn’t so bad, mainly a scar across his nose. One hit summer day, we were hanging out, and heard some guy had died at Burger’s house, suddenly having a heart attack. His body lay covered on the hot pavement for hours, waiting for the coroner to pronounce him dead. We took matters into our hands, pronouncing him dead with our blasting Black Sabbath’s Electric Funeral from Greg’s bedroom upstairs. Fucked up.

Another buddy was Rennie. Rennie was the only one who had a car, a shiny black ‘64 Impala with red interior. We would cram into it and go driving the backroads at night, at great speeds. There were many hills and winding roads. We would turn off the lights and speed. Another hot summer day, we were bored, so we had a “sweat out”, where we rolled up all the windows, and cranked up the heat, trying to see how long we could actually survive in the closed car furnace we had just created.

Fucked up. We were bored, and we wanted more. MORE MORE MORE.

But the most fucked up thing was when our friend Pete was murdered.

Pete was a year older, he was tall, skinny, with greasy long hair. He smoked. He was also a bit of a practical joker. When we heard about his murder, it was said that he had teased the killer at school the day before. We heard that this kid went home, found the keys to his Dad’s gun cabinet, and got a gun. He surprised Pete and his friend in a park late at night, gunning them down.

Pete’s murder was never solved. You can read about it on the news report below from 2017 from KOIN TV, but I warn you the video is quite grisly.

Pete is the guy with the shadow of a moustache on the right. RIP PETE ZITO.

FUCKED UP

Steve brought the knives and the Lebanese blonde

We used to shoot bullfrogs down by the pond

Rennie's 64 Impala with the red insides

We'd roll the windows up and crank the heat up high

In the summer we would cruise down by the pool

where those girls in their bikinis man they were so cruel

We had Aerosmith on 8-track

Dream On in the front and girls in the back.

And we were fucked up then

and life was just a bore

We were doing what we want

and we just want more...More MORE MORE!

Big Pete got smoked one night in the park

Crazy Joe got a gun and shot him in the dark

Big Pete was just trying to get his life back on track

And Steve's Mom always wondered how her knives got black.

And we were fucked up then

and life was just a bore

We were doing what we want

and we just want more...More MORE MORE!

Fucked up

Fucked up

Well we were fucked up then

and life was just a bore

We were doing what we want

and we just want more...More MORE More MORE!

Lyrics: Dennis Mills © 2017.

My friend Doug and I hanging out downtown Portland in the seventies.