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| The cover to their 1989 cassette. |
1.Paramoure
2.Food of the Gods
3.Birthright (Destiny)
4.The Last Danse
5.Hospital (of the Unholy Cross)
6.Tales From The Dark Side
It was a time of thrash and speed metal . . . a time when we made cassette copies of our albums and tapes and traded them with complete strangers discovered in the back of underground metal magazines . . . a time when Tampa was the death metal capitol of the world . . . a time when there were still mall-based record stores that carried vinyl records and cassettes (sometimes two stores in one mall) . . . and The Record Bar in the Coral Square Mall—next to the pizza and burrito-stocked food court, complete with a video arcade next door (Taito’s Jungle King with the swinging n’ swimming, crocodile-stabbing Tarzan was my jam)—operated as the hub for the “Coral Springs Metal” brigade: I was a proud member.
Memory serves that one of the guys from Panic worked at The Record Bar . . . was it drummer Jon Somerlade,
who spun records at Club Soda, or the band’s guitarist, Hank Edney? Regardless,
the store employed a “metal head” because The Record Bar—for a brief period of
time (because a moralistic, corporate chain dickhead removed it)—had a lone, four-by-four wooden record rack backed by a corkboard for
posting band flyers: a section replete with the latest releases from Combat, Metal
Blade Records, and Shrapnel Records, as well as the obscure bands we read about
in our copies of Metal Forces and Metal Hammer. The rack stood proudly: all alone against the left wall as you walked in, butressed by vertical-flipping poster racks (I bought a Krokus and Motorhead poster).
There, stapled to the cork: a flyer for a Friday night show in the warehouse storage room in an abandoned Winn Dixie in the Holiday Springs Shopping Center, aka our home away from metal haven home: Club Soda. Sadly, my Paramoure flyer from that show is long lost, along with their Summers on the Beach “Innards Strewn Across the Strip” flyer . . . as my pack rat abilities have failed me, once again.
John Cain Riley (vocals)
Jonathan Linder (12-string guitars)
Caryn "One Evil Bitch" (bass)
Marcel do Santos (drums)
Don Carr (guitars)
Oh, the memories of Paramoure’s husband and wife rhythm section of bassist Caryn “One Evil Bitch” and drummer Marcel dos Santos taking the stage with lead singer John Cain Riley. On the first pluck of Caryn’s E-string (female bassists make me weak in the knees) and Riley’s scream: I was a fan. So much so that when a copy of their first (and only) demo (I didn’t know what a demo was or that the tape was a demo; all I know is that Paramoure had an actual tape to buy) sat proudly amid the licorice pizzas and analog-Mylar goodies, I plucked down my five bucks.
Cranial Storage Failure #1: Since it has been 40-plus years: Did I buy the cassette at Uncle Sam’s Records and Tapes in the Shoppes of Inverrary—which also sold local band tapes and D.I.Y 7-inch singles, as well as holding local concerts in their parking lot? A Joe’s Diner “Let’s Eat” gig is the one I remember.
Cranial Storage Failure #2: Since it has been 40-plus years: Paramoure had ten members, and three were vocalists, through the metallic turnstiles—but I’m positive the roster above is the one that rocked the Soda that Friday night because four of the odd members out formed the like-minded Elysium, which featured vocalist Terry Allen—and David London was his short-time replacement in Paramoure.
As with Panic and Amboog-a-lard, which Paramoure doubled-billed for some shows (at The Tree House): that demo tape, For the Love of Death . . . (1989), garnered no interest from any of the metal labels of the day. And one day: Paramoure was no more. Then, the City of Coral Springs wised up and shut down the Mullins Park concert series while the city’s code enforcers shut down Club Soda: it was a dark day, indeed, as us wee-metal lads and lassies showed up on a Friday night, only to see a big red sticker plastered across the doors and the cops turning us away. But at least we got to see Saigon Kick and Tuff Luck (in separate shows) burst the seams of the Soda’s supposed “500 seat” capacity before the city went all puritanical and gestapo on us.
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| The "Coral Springs Metal" brigade represented! |
Previous Paramoure members: Terry Allen, Brett Hart, Jon Rubin, and Tim Jorgensen regrouped as the Margate, Florida-based Elysium, which released the seven-song demo, Inspired Hatred (1989), and lasted until 1993. Rubin’s extensive career in the metal community took him through Fort Lauderdale’s HatePlow (a band still active since 1993), then with the city’s internationally-infamous Malevolent Creation (on-and-off from 1987 to 2008) and Monstrosity (from 1990 to 1994).
Sadly, Terry Allen, and another early vocalist, David London, are no longer with us.
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| Just an '80s wee metal lad at the Soda. |
Flash Foward #2: My hair, while still long, was not as long and not permed. The “Year that Punk Broke” passed a year earlier, and a bastardization of metal and punk known as “grunge” roared out of Seattle to rule the world . . . that lasted until about 1996 before burning out because the figurehead of the era burned out in 1994.
So, there I was, 1992-ish, standing inside a dark, windowless converted gas station/garage tucked under and just off the Andrews Avenue bridge along The New River, aka Fort Lauderdale’s newest music club: Squeeze. The black-clad and clove cigarette-scented miscreants referred to the black-painted garage as a “danceteria” since everyone danced (not slammed, as we did in Club Soda) to the alternative-based “industrial” music released by the likes of the British labels 4 AD and Beggars Banquet, with the names of Front 242, Nitzer Ebb, and Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, and songs titled “Steers, Beers and Queers” that filled the dance floor. However, on this particular Friday night, a new “alternative” band on the scene took to the stage: Basketcase. Their singer belts a scream: “It’s a fucking basket case . . .” and holy crap: it’s John Cain Riley, aka now J.C Riley, from my Club Soda Paramoure days.
Needless to say: I was an instant fan of Basketcase.
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| Blake was the bassist, don't cha know. |
Needless to say, Part Deux: Basketcase, as with Panic, Amboog-a-lard, and Paramoure before them: a well-deserved record deal—in a then hot scene where Tamarac’s Collapsing Lungs, Miami’s Nuclear Valdez, Fort Lauderdale’s Cryer, Marilyn Manson, Saigon Kick, and Tuff Luck (well, all of those 16 Florida bands in that nifty drop-down list blog archive to your right)—wasn’t forthcoming. Basketcase was no more.
Now, around the time Basketcase came into being: Some
transplanted kid from Los Angeles, Scott Putesky, met another kid transplanted
from Canton, Ohio, named Brian Warner for the first time at, yet another, newly
opened “alternative” music joint, The Reunion Room (see Love Canal), in December 1989. The duo came to form the
world-infamous Marilyn Manson & the Spooky Kids . . . that would later
count Jeordie White from the Club Soda Amboog-a-lard days as a member.
Then, by 1996, creative differences between the band’s founders came to a head and Scott Putesky left the band, then simply known as Marilyn Manson, quickly returning to the local scene with a solo project known as Three Ton Gate (named for the coral-constructed revolving door within the Coral Castle of Homestead, Florida). During the band’s 1996 to 2000 tenure, a three-song demo debut, 3x3 (1996), and the full-length Vanishing Century (1997) were released. Prior to developing the Three Ton Gate project, Putesky developed the dual side projects The Linda Blairs and Rednecks on Drugs with ex-Marilyn Manson roadie Rich Penny, who played bass alongside growler Don McDonald in Killing Silence (another lost tape with a great song, “Put the Money in the Basket”).
Killing Silence, as with Panic and Amboog-a-lard, is a band familiar to the most discriminating Marilyn Manson fans. It was after hearing the hardcore sounds of the band with “God Hates Me” on the South Florida Slammie Awards: Vol 1 locals compilation that Manson requested Killing Silence open several shows between 1993 and 1994 at the long-gone venues The Button South, The Edge, Squeeze, and The Plus Five (where the Slammie Awards were held and tracks recorded).
Then, Rednecks on Drugs, with a newly-developed hard rock-gothic rock hybrid, became known as Stuck on Evil. Rich Penny was soon replaced by ex-Plastic Nude Martini and Mindflower (see Talk of War) bassist Martin Davis and . . . oh, no, not him again . . . I can’t rid myself of this guy: it’s J.C Riley from the Paramoure Club Soda days on lead vocals (leave me the fuck alone with my “vivid” memories) following up his work in Basketcase.
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| Basketcase at The Button South, February 1993, with another great, "lost tape" band, Schizo Saviour. |
Stuck on Evil completed recording on a promising, 10-song debut album, Suntanic (2001), which led to their booking a national tour set to begin that August; sadly, it was cancelled due to J.C Riley suffering a career-debilitating injury. Then, in the wake of the 9-11 attacks—and the world obsessed by the “evil” perpetually touted by President George Bush—the name Three Ton Gate was reactivated for the effort’s official release.
Three Ton Gate released its third full-length album, Lose Your Mind, in 2003. By 2008 Scott Putesky and bassist Martin Davis joined the husband and wife team of guitarist and vocalist Russ Rogers and Alicia Olink as Kill Miss Pretty, until 2010. Prior to his October 2017 death, Putesky released the fourth and final TTG effort, Rumsprina (2012). The 49-year old Putesky succumbed to a four-year colon cancer battle that began with chemo treatments in September 2013. Among his many musical accomplishments: he was the co-founder and original guitarist in the Marilyn Manson satellite group, Jack Off Jill.
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| Tampa's Thrust Magazine, September 1991. |
Elysium (not in order)
Terry Allen (vocals/guitars)
Brett Hart (guitars)
Jim O’Sullivan (bass)
Tim Jorgensen (drums)
. . . And our parents thought we were wasting our brains and very
lives listening to metal music and hanging out at Club Soda in Coral Springs—with those totally respectable lads from Elysium that a girl can take home to dinner to meet the parents—where “metal thrashing mad” good times were had by all . . . and what in tarnation was the name of that hole-in-the-wall bar in the shopping center on the corner of 441 and Margate Blvd. that booked Elysium?
And, yes: Club Soda served actual sodas, aka Coke, Spite, and, thank god, my cherished Dr. Pepper. They also served pre-fab wrapped hamburgers, but fresh fries, at the snack bar, stage right—but it sucked: we went to the Qwik Mart in the Holiday Springs Plaza for our eats, then hung out in the video room banging our heads to a tape of the 1985 Ultimate Revenge Tour with Venom, Slayer, and Exodus hosted by Combat Records.
When I cross over to the other side: Heaven will regrow my mane and I’ll be in life-long attendance at Club Soda with the “Coral Springs Metal” brigade thrashing heaven just a litte bit harder: I was a proud member.
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You can listen to For the Love of Death . . . by Paramoure (broken down as individual tracks), Kill Miss Pretty’s Permission Is Strange, as well as Lose Your Mind and Rumspringa by Three Ton Gate on Over the Edge Radio You Tube. Suntanic, the debut by Stuck on Evil/Three Ton Gate featuring J.C Riley on lead vocals, is not available on the platform, but we have Inspired Hatred by Elysium.
You can visit with Paramoure’s Don Carr and his band, Noisecult, at their official website.
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