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Wednesday, May 16. 2012
Are You Rockin’?
Sometimes rose-colored glasses can’t change the sad news. Last June my lovely sister Lainey succumbed to cancer. As much as we expected it, the loss was great and still, 11 months later, my heart is heavy with the weight of her absence. Lainey and I would, randomly, text one another lyrics from the Grateful Dead songs in our ears and brains. It was often a great boost in what is often the dreary dullness of our day-to-day lives.This morning (Tuesday) my brother Rick reminded me we are at that age when this starts happening to our friends and family. Rick and I were in the Milwaukee Music Scene at the same time for a while, from about 1984 -1992. We saw a few concerts together, and I saw a few of his shows. He was often in one of the greatest hits bands that play weddings and bar mitzvahs so the opportunities to listen were rare.
In those years though we met a lot of people, world famous and otherwise, some of whom he still sees to this day. I’ve since moved away, but Rick still rocks the keyboards in Milwaukee, now with a country band. To this day the people who made an impression on us were the local Milwaukee people we came to know in that music scene.
One of the people Rick and I would often talk about in the 20 years I’ve been away from Milwaukee was a guy by the name of Mark Shurilla. The first words out of his mouth when we first met in 1986 were, “Are you rockin’?”
That was pretty fuckin’ weird I thought. He didn’t even know me. Up to that moment, my impression of Shurilla (totally unfounded I soon learned) was that he was a bit of a crackpot and shameless self-promoter. The latter are actually okay in my book. Most times an entertainer can’t get anywhere without promotion and self-promotion is often times the only promo you get.
As it turns out Shurilla was a great motivator. Why he never took up motivational speaking is a mystery. He would have been quite unconventional, but the theme of his life was to enjoy it and have fun! And always be doing something.Shurilla always had something going on, be it his band the Blackholes, or his Buddy Holly tribute band, The Greatest Hits or his crusade to bring back polka, which he did. Oh, and his Irish band, McTavish.That’s when I learned Shurilla wasn’t so much about self-promotion as promoting the scene, the music and the people around him.
He had been a contributor and leader of The Express music paper in Milwaukee, a small publication that had a small circulation, but a devoted following. Sometime in 1986-87 Shurilla and one of the founders of The Crazy Shepherd, Jim McCarter, got it in their heads to merge the two papers and become a weekly publication. Up until then both had been monthly. The Shepherd was making plans to go weekly anyway and adding the music scene to our regular news coverage looked like a good idea.
On the flipside, it might have looked like a good idea for The Express to add some news coverage as well. It was at the time when I first really met Mark Shurilla. “Are you rockin!”
“No! I’m a serious journalist!”
Shurilla and I helped kick off the merger with a two part story covering the simultaneous releases of Roger Water’s first solo LP after leaving Pink Floyd, Radio KAOS and Floyd’s first studio album without Roger Waters. Here’s the thing: because Shurilla was one of the big dogs in the new Shepherd Express offices, which were located on East Wright Street in the Riverwest section of Milwaukee, Shurilla pulled rank and said he was doing the piece promoting Roger Waters, clearly the better story to cover. Man!
Well, Floyd wasn’t so bad. David Gilmore and company did a nice album, but it was the first Floyd album that wasn’t conceptual, not in the connected way Waters made the earlier Floyd works. The concert was typical Pink Floyd. If you were a Floyd fan you hardly noticed Roger Waters was not in attendance.
But the better show was, without question, the Roger Waters concert, held in the Milwaukee Arena. The Floyd show had been at County Stadium of course. Waters engaged with the audience and looked to genuinely enjoy performing for his audience. To this day I know Shurilla covered the better act. But, it was collaboration and we had fun with it.
After that Shurilla would stop in the offices on occasion, but most of the time we would see each other at shows, most notably at Shank Hall, although one time we both attended the G.G., Allin show at the Odd Rock Café. Once Allin started throwing his shit at people (literally), I left, but Shurilla stayed. He loved telling people, for years afterward I’m told, the story of G.G. Allin at the Odd Rock. The horror on the faces of the assembled audience, people running out the door, then running back in, then back out. I just never came back in.
After G.G. Allin died, the only place you could have feces thrown at you was in prison or at the zoo in front of the monkey cage. Yeah 20 years later we can say that was pretty fuckin’ funny! My G.G. Allin story; the promoter, Jack Koshick, called me up and asked if I’d go down to Chicago and pick up Allin and bring him to the show. “The whole band?”
Koshick, “No, just G.G. Allin. The band is coming up in their van.”
Me, “Why doesn’t he ride up with his band?”
Koshick, “They won’t let him ride in his van with them.”
Me, “You want me to pick him up in my car and drive two hours with him when his band doesn’t even want to ride with him? No fuckin’ way!”
Yeah Shurilla, that was funny!
Here’s a little fun fact about Shurilla, few (if any other) people know: when I moved to California in June 1992 Shurilla told me about a friend of his who worked at one of the two San Diego newspapers before they merged. Shurilla said his friend told him there would be some work available at the San Diego bureau of the Los Angeles Times and I should check it out. As it turns out, the morning I was driving to meet the bureau chief I heard on the radio the L.A. Times was closing its San Diego bureau.
The point is: I was leaving Milwaukee and Shurilla was helping me find a job here. That’s the kind of guy Shurilla was. Shameless self-promoter? Maybe, but he had a genuine interest in everyone else’s success as well.
Another little fun fact: in 1991 Ray Manzarek, once the keyboardist for The Doors, was on tour with poet Michael McClure. They did a show at Shank Hall. Manzarek needed some keyboards so Shurilla called my brother Rick and voila! Ray Manzarek had two keyboards with amps and outboard gear.
Rick and Ray met at Shank and played with the keyboards, setting them up for the show. In the meantime Shurilla calls me and says they need a music-poetry act to open for McClure and Manzarek, so he asks if I know anyone. It just so happens Rick and I had done a poetry-music thing under the name of The Forkestra. So, I told Shurilla we had a band. We actually didn’t, at the moment, but what the hell.
Shurilla was enthusiastic about us doing it and got pumped up like he did when he got excited about something. So, I called Rick, he was good to go, and then called Jim Eannelli and Bill Stace to see if they were willing. Both were and voila! The Forkestra was actually a band and opening for Michael McClure and Ray Manzarek! Thanks to Mark Shurilla.
He was never at a loss to say good things about the local music scene, but he had a cutting wit as well. Mark Shurilla was very smart and knew how to promote not only his bands, but also a lot of shows around Milwaukee. There are a lot of bands that benefited from Shurilla’s help and promotional talents, not to mention his uplifting, positive spirit. The guy was truly a gem.
Sadly, we now speak of him in the past tense because Monday, May 14, 2012, Mark Shurilla passed away from complications related to his triple bypass surgery about 10 days earlier. This crazy diamond shined every day of his life. On his Facebook page there are pictures of him smiling, wearing his signature shades, as he lay in his hospital bed, before and after the surgery. His spirit was indomitable.
We will forever remember Mark Shurilla. In 2011 he sent a Phi Zappa Krappa poster my way. Ever since I would think of him (every day) when looking at Frank Zappa sitting on the crapper. Now I will look at it with sadness, but also genuine affection and gratitude. Mark Shurilla’s message, if you followed his actions, was “keep moving forward, don’t stop!”
What I’ll never forget is: “Hey Forkes! Are you rockin’!?”
Now I am.
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