mosriteforum.com

Hiya folks!
This is the code I got from tinypic when I uploaded the first one of the images taken by my late wife Denise Donahue Rowe as we sat on the dance floor at the Rat in 1976. I'm no expert, but it seems to me that Johnny's Mark II still has at least one stock pickup. Unfortunately (from the historical sense,) Johnny has his palm firmly planted on the bridge in all of the pictures in this group, so I can't say if the bridge pickup is still stock, but you can see that his guitar still sports stock metal Mosrite knobs. Another detail I recall is that his guitar emitted earsplitting feedback when he wasn't actually playing through his Marshalls, which looked like the old Super Plexis to me. To combat the feedback problem, he had an on-off footswitch on the floor, and his guitar was silent in the frantic seconds between songs. That night the power went off three times and Johnny yelled, "What the heck is going on!? What kind of place is this?"
As Johnny was still honing his image in 1976, he was wearing flare jeans (straight legs weren't quite available yet) and a rather cheap, new bike coat. If this link goes out okay, I'll start sending out more.

http://i45.tinypic.com/vree00.jpg

Here goes nuthin"
Frank

Well done, nice pic. Great story. Thanks a lot for sharing. That pic is going to be a big hit with the Ramones fans on the forum!

Maybe there are more to come?

+ 1 what handbrake said

I love that, "as we sat on the dance floor at the Rat..." Being 38 and having moved to Boston in '90 I unfortunately missed The Rat's heyday, but for those of you that don't know, that wasn't exactly a floor you would want to sit on. It's funny though, seems a lot of the old Rat stories involve people actually being able to sit on the floor and watch these bands that became legendary. Frank, I'm sure you've seen some of Richie Parsons photos from that time right? So when do I drag you over so I can give you the guitar tour in exchange for some education?
-Tommy

Great photo!

Thanks for the photo, Frank. I think the only modification Johnny made to his blue Mark II was the tailpiece, Which he changed to a Gibson tailpiece. He never used the stock vibrato and since the Mark II vibrato relied on tension to stay in place it would come off when restringing unless you replaced one at a time, Leaving the others at tension. I can imagine anyone getting annoyed by this.

Austin

eltuce wrote:I love that, "as we sat on the dance floor at the Rat..." Being 38 and having moved to Boston in '90 I unfortunately missed The Rat's heyday, but for those of you that don't know, that wasn't exactly a floor you would want to sit on. It's funny though, seems a lot of the old Rat stories involve people actually being able to sit on the floor and watch these bands that became legendary. Frank, I'm sure you've seen some of Richie Parsons photos from that time right? So when do I drag you over so I can give you the guitar tour in exchange for some education?
-Tommy

Well, at the beginning you could sit there. We would have our pitchers of beer in our laps, because you couldn't go back to the bar without losing your place. After they laid carpet a few years later, which began to absorb spillage and stink, nobody sat. Your feet would stick to the floor and the smell would smack you in the face...and we liked it that way!
As for Richie Parsons, he was Denise's best friend. They worked in adjacent booths in Filene's Basement, which is just a big open pit now, and told each other everything. Denise and I attended what I believe was Unnatural Axe's first gig, at a place called Rick's in Worcester. We were the only ones there. Most of the pictures or Richie from that time will have been taken by Denise, who was the fotog for Boston Groupie News, and the short-lived Frenzy.
The world will remember that it was I, playing onstage with Unnatural Axe doing my cover of The Man I Don't Wanna Be who distinguished myself by completely forgetting the lyrics and tripping over a pipe, and fell flat on my face onstage in front of five hundred people at The Middle East. Ah...memories.

twango the clown wrote:

eltuce wrote:I love that, "as we sat on the dance floor at the Rat..." Being 38 and having moved to Boston in '90 I unfortunately missed The Rat's heyday, but for those of you that don't know, that wasn't exactly a floor you would want to sit on. It's funny though, seems a lot of the old Rat stories involve people actually being able to sit on the floor and watch these bands that became legendary. Frank, I'm sure you've seen some of Richie Parsons photos from that time right? So when do I drag you over so I can give you the guitar tour in exchange for some education?
-Tommy

Well, at the beginning you could sit there. We would have our pitchers of beer in our laps, because you couldn't go back to the bar without losing your place. After they laid carpet a few years later, which began to absorb spillage and stink, nobody sat. Your feet would stick to the floor and the smell would smack you in the face...and we liked it that way!
As for Richie Parsons, he was Denise's best friend. They worked in adjacent booths in Filene's Basement, which is just a big open pit now, and told each other everything. Denise and I attended what I believe was Unnatural Axe's first gig, at a place called Rick's in Worcester. We were the only ones there. Most of the pictures or Richie from that time will have been taken by Denise, who was the fotog for Boston Groupie News, and the short-lived Frenzy.
The world will remember that it was I, playing onstage with Unnatural Axe doing my cover of The Man I Don't Wanna Be who distinguished myself by completely forgetting the lyrics and tripping over a pipe, and fell flat on my face onstage in front of five hundred people at The Middle East. Ah...memories.

Richie has some great ones of the Dead Boys which he took with a camera that he borrowed from his science teacher, but you probably already knew that, as well as the ones he took of The Runaways. He's been putting up a lot of fun old stuff on facebook lately. How have I not heard of this stage dive that you took?

his guitar emitted earsplitting feedback when he wasn't actually playing through his Marshalls

No place, person, or thing would change his control settings!

10 10 10 10 10 10

More photos please Frank. That guitar has the stock pickups in the neck and bridge, always did, never changed. They are VERY noisy in a high gain amp. Sometimes he just turned the volume down on the guitar, like on California Sun between the main riffs. I did read that he used an on/off pedal between songs, but every time I saw them it was more like 5-7 songs, then a very quick break into 1-2-3-4 and 5-7 more songs. That pedal probably lasted a long time. Great photo, post more.

Rocco