Talk:Surf Trio/Archive 1

Reviewing the edit and history sections on The Surf Trio, it appears that a very selective overview of this group is being presented.

The user "Ronkleim", who may be this band's guitarist, seems to want to gloss over the crossed paths and turbulent actions that connect these momentarily notorious groups with each other and the cross-pollenations of influences that are reflected in the music.

The Miracle Workers and The Surf Trio often gigged together in Portland, OR at Club Satyricon. In early 1986, when The Miracle Workers moved to L.A., Joel Barnett, the Miracle Workers' bassist, stayed in town and formed The Bo Diddley Headhunters. The Bo Diddley Headhunters gigged often with Surf Trio in the two years that the Bo Diddley Headhunters was in existence.

In the summer of 1988, Aaron Temple, the Surf Trio drummer, quit the group suddenly. Terrence Kerrigan, the drummer/co-founder of the Bo Diddley Headhunters (and notorious fellow Hell-raiser with Aaron Temple) was brought in as a replacement. Kerrigan's drumming can be heard on the "Here Aint The Sonics" tribute release, playing on "Strychnine"; he can also be heard on several of the cuts on the Moxie Records Surf Trio box set, which were recorded with the Surf Trio side project, The Hugs, which was basically The Surf Trio without Jeff Martin.

In June of 1989, before a gig at Club Satyricon, Jeff Martin and Peter Weinberger, unceremoniously, voted Ron Kleim out of The Surf Trio. Terrence Kerrigan voted for Ron, and threatened to quit and pull his kit off the stage if they voted Ron out of the group.

In July of 1989, with a release pending on Get Hip Records, Jeff Martin and Peter Weinberger pulled Kerrigan back in, Kerrigan called in Joel Barnett, and former Drivetrain guitarist Richard Spaugh to form The Wicked Ones. The Wicked Ones released a three song EP on Get Hip records featuring songs written by Martin, Kerrigan, and Barnett. 63.24.76.66 16:08, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Terrence Kerrigan

Just leave it alone PLEASE! THIS IS 20+ Years OLD NEWS! Don't tell ME what I think or don't think about ANYTHING! If you want to write separate articles about the other bands you were in, go ahead, but stop messing with the Surf Trio one. I put your name in there.......OK? Joel is upset enough about your constant "creative history" additions to the Miracle Workers to ask Wikipedia to remove it. Leave it alone.

Ron Kleim Founder of the Surf Trio

Ron Kleim

"Creative history"?? You write that as if it didn't happen. It is the furthest thing from being woven from whole cloth. Hell, it was Joel who buttonholed ME in January of '86 in the back of the old Rodeo Club after a Workers gig to discuss putting together a project, (which became the BDHH), after the rest of the group headed to LA. Yes, it is ancient history, but I was there in the midst, sweating and bashing, laughing and stumbling with the best of them...which is why, I believe, after many a rowdy gig with The Headhunters, after many a roady to Seattle and Bellingham in Aaron Temple's pickup, after many a beer-fueled jam in Aaron's basement, that you fellas picked up my option and, after a sweaty week of daily double jams in MY house, had me aboard from August '88 to June of '89.

As for "telling you what you think or do not think"...I wouldn't deign to presume. But like it or no, YOU guys brought me into the franchise, and, for the time I was involved, the only thing I may have assumed, was a friendship based on a common enjoyment of loud, unrestrained, 60s style rock-n-roll. This assumption proves the aphorism of what happens when such things take place in the "making of an ass out of you to me". Guilty as charged.

As concerns YOUR untimely, and decidedly unwarranted, departure FROM the Surf Trio, I merely recall it as it went down. Jeff and Pete WERE absolutely chomping at the bit for your departure...(a puzzling thing, given that YOU were the most professional of us musicians, bringing along mixed demos of songs when you and Pete would bop up from Eugene for rehearsals)...then again, Jeff's ego was always like his reaches, well beyond his musical grasp...and Pete, while an impressively talented player, was a reed ready to bend to the strongest of breezes. So I can ONLY presume that it was that self-same combination of ego and blowing breezes which led to ME getting the SAME treatment from those guys as you did, not a full year later.

Whatever perianal osculations took place after my departure from the group resulting in your reunion and this subsequent jabberwockian ontology, I can't, and won't, hazard a roofie-fueled, blackout-resultant guess. That's past my history and beyond my pay-grade, Ronzo, my quondam buddy and erstwhile bandmate.

I just have the posters, the tapes, the copies of Willamette Week featuring MY battered, Black-Irish mug right in the middle with you guys. So don't come the "creative history" tone to me. My heartfelt, and most sincere, condolences if the ensuing years have made your memory faulty and your choices for targets of resentment the wrong ones, but, since this appears to be a come-as-you-are, blow your own horn scenario, I just figured to drop my two pennies having earned them after all those many nights playing my knuckles raw behind the drumkit. Not to mention the many after-party escapades.(Which will NOT be mentioned for anything LESS than a bottle of 45 year-old Macallan! Such is my price, mercenary that I am.)

Warm are most of the memories I have of being in the band, and never once having quit a gig or been so out of it that, come the count-off, I wasn't there lighting an absolute conflagration under your backsides, looking to drive you three to pull out louder, faster, more inspired performances onstage and in studio. (Then still being vertical enough to marshall up and lead a crew for a mind-thobbing after-blast from the seat of my full-dress Vespa!)

Pity it couldn't've gone on longer, but hey, egos and breezes, right, Ronzo?

Love me or hate me, or "pog mo thoin", I was THERE!

Terrence "Animal Boy" Kerrigan Drummist-With-Portfolio, 1976-1994

I don't want to fight.

I guess in retrospect, you did stick up for me, although I don't ever remember being FIRED........ We decided as a group to disolve the band at a meeting at your house, outside on the driveway as I remember. When I finally DID quit the band, it was for good reason as Surf Trio was going nowhere fast with no record contract and only the prospect of a few gigs a month for 20 dollars apiece; what was the point? After my departure, Surf Trio played few gigs and recorded very little before calling it quits anyway. When I first wrote the small article on Surf Trio , it was in response to all the rubbish about Eugene "bands" who had little reason to be mentioned. I felt a good rock band was being ignored that had actually written good songs, made records, toured in Europe,etc. unlike most mentioned. That's the fatal flaw with the whole concept of Wikipedia (created in Eugene, I might add), it's presents a very biased view of reality; the people that bother to find and care about Wickipedia can bend the truth in any direction they want. I'm sorry it had to come to this; too many cooks spoil the soup. All the dirty details of our personal involvement in the Surf Trio are not for public comsumption in my opinion. Yeah you WERE there, but just say goodnight Terrence  : )

When The Music's Over...

Yep, I did indeed back you up, in many a rehearsal when Jeff would condescend, and snipe, and try to blow off a song you wanted to bring into the rotation...sparing you, and the six wiki-readers who might stumble across this, the boring, gory details, but hearken back to "Something Happens" vs. "Li'l Darlin' One". (Man, I STILL have holes in my back teeth from the saccharine nature of that tune.) From my vantage, it was a pure Lennon vs McCartney paradigm. (But I shouldn't insult Sir Macca like that.)

Yes, The Surf Trio was "a good rock band" that never quite got its due...the whys of that venture into the "dirty details" aspect of the story, and all I'll add to that, is that the little gathering of the three of us, at the end of the bar at Satyricon, while you were onstage tuning up the guitars and bass, before we were going to open for Los Jackals, was one of the most nauseating moments I was put through because one egomaniac thought it easier to tear down another than build up their own diminutive talents. Respect is lost after a thing like that, and if it wasn't for Kostellic yelling at us about the Get Hip release, I would have thoroughly bailed. Pontius Pilate had nothing on Jeff, and as an independent frontman, he was a hell of a bassist. So much so that, on most of the recordings, YOU handled the four-string duties.

That aside, I thought it relevant to the larger picture of "Oregon Bands" and the thread of "Garage Rock Bands" to weave in the connections to other groups of lesser, equal or greater momentary notoriety. The Bo Diddley Headhunters being in the lesser to equal rank, The Wicked Ones ranking lesser, The Miracle Workers ranking, arguably, in the equal to greater side.

For good, bad, laughers or weepers, that thread ran through your not-too-humble, constantly flattered to be asked aboard to put his back into the stroking, correspondent. My whole trip when folks like Joel B., or you three guys, called me to sit in was always "keep-up-or-get-left-behind"...trying to show respect NOT by kissing ass but by kicking it by contributing as much as I could as a fully-fledged partner in the endeavor. Whether in rehearsals, live, or recording.

I can understand Joel's passionate reluctance to cop to being involved with The Wicked Ones...THAT was a brutally mercenary, Peter-principle project...but the Bo Diddley Headhunters...(talk about underheralded)...then again, he did bail from that one just as things were about to break. Ah well, the bodies are many which are left in the wake of the rock-n-roll juggernaut.

(Turns out the lights)

(Turns the lights back on)

A Stub?!?

It looks like the masses of Wikians crave further expansion of this torrid tale...hmmmm...I seem to recall mentioning my price running along the lines of vintage Macallan. If the Wikians want the warty tales, I'll open the bidding at two cases of "Cask Strength" and six boxes of maduro Macanudo toros.

What say you, Ronzo?