Carl Tickle spent several months in late '82 and early '83 playing bass in Blemish on Society, which was - if not the first Roanoke punk band - at least one of the first to play out on a somewhat regular basis. Back then, bands played wherever they could, often ending up in local dives that would ban them after one performance.
These days, Carl's not a punk rocker; instead, he owns Cyberbang, a Salem business which allows video game players access to multi-computer LAN systems and other gaming consoles on large-screen TVs.
He's still got a pretty good memory though, and his frankness in addressing past events made him a fun interview.
So this is the chillout room.
Yeah, I made it so it comes in really good with video games so you can see them better. And the thing is, you can sit here and play, and you won't be interrupted.
Well maybe we'll have to get a game after the interview. So, you were born in the Roanoke area, right?
No. I was actually born in Bluefield in '64. We lived on the Virginia side, but the hospital where I was born was on the West Virginia side.
So it was you, and Alan was your younger brother.
Alan was born in Radford in '69. Then we ended up moving. Dad was working at the Radford arsenal, and then he got a job at the railroad, so we went to Williamson, West Va. It's not bumfuck, but you can see it from there. Then we ended up moving to Virginia Beach. Anyway, we came to Roanoke in 1980. I was a junior in high school, and I played guitar for the choir at Patrick Henry my senior year. I ended up meeting Doug Caldwell and Tommy Hausman and a bunch of them. Actually, my brother was the one who met them. He was 13 years old and he played drums. He'd been playing since he was 8. That was his first real band, where he actually played out in public.
How old were those other guys?
Alan was 13, I was 18, and Doug and Tommy were in their early 20s, at the oldest. Back then we practiced in my basement. We'd have parties. My folks were real supportive of the whole thing.
Where did that style of music come from?
Records. One of the big ones that we listened to a lot was "Let Them Eat Jellybeans." Most of the records you got were compilations that had a bunch of bands. That one had the Feeders, a lot of different bands like that. We'd get a lot of that.
So Alan met these guys, not you so much.
I'd met them before, but when I came home one day, they were in the basement playing. Doug was playing guitar, Tommy was singing, Alan was playing drums, and they didn't have a bass player. I picked up the bass and learned every song they had. When I was younger, I used to seek the rock star thing. Looking back, I'm glad I didn't achieve it, because I'd probably be dead now. I could see myself, you know, getting involved really bad in drugs and just going right down the toilet.
You guys played at your house? What did you parents think of all this?
We were living in the southwest, over by the car wash on Main Street. We had a big basement, and we'd play gigs there. We played the first little show in the basement before we started playing out. We practiced, and my parents were supportive at first. My dad was an old-school guy. He was kind of country music, but he was a DJ in the '60s. He used to DJ the Beatles and stuff like that. When punk came along, at first he didn't like it, but then he started realizing … basically the motto back then for punk rock was "Think for yourself." Don't listen to what everyone else is telling you to do. Take some initiative. I used to always get hell from the other guys because none of them liked Ronald Reagan, and I was a big Reagan fan. I thought he was great. I really did like him. I liked a lot of the things he did. In my belief, he came along at the right time. This country was in a depression, mentally. There wasn't a lot of hope, we'd been through so much with Iran and inflation. And when he came along, things got better. I used to catch a lot of flak from him about that.
When did y'all form?
'82. End of 1982.
So this was in the middle of Reagan's first term.
Yeah. We formed up toward the end of '82, and we broke up in the spring of '83.
The lineup with you in it, anyway.
Yeah. What happened is we played our last show at Dots, and there was a big brawl. That was where my dad and punk rock split. We were over there at Dots, playing this gig, and there was a bunch of big rednecks in there. This friend of mine, Andy, they grabbed his wife and one of the guys pushed her into the bathroom and was trying to take her shirt off. Andy and his brother went over there, and one of the other guys grabbed his brother Ronnie Pittman [who just passed away in Florida on 1/1/2005] and hit him. So this fight ended up on the dance floor, where there were people slamming. I'll never forget, my dad was like, "Oh, well, this oughta be good." He was waiting for these big bad punk rockers to go out there and just kick some ass. Everybody just sat there and watched these three guys pile up on Andy. He was wondering, "What are they doing?" He thought these guys were going to get in there and do something. Me and my brother were up on stage. My dad ended up picking up this beer pitcher and hitting this guy over the head with it. He hit the guy so hard that the girl behind the bar got glass stuck in her. The guy he hit was probably about 6-foot, 300 lbs, a real big giant redneck. Dad whacked him and the guy turned around and looked at him. It was funny, here's this older guy in there, but he jumped in because no one else was doing anything. The guy turned around and looked at him, and my mom kinda jumped in the way. They ended up going outside, and I know dad had had a few beers. I remember walking outside and it was snowing, and the ice was real slippery. I went outside and he's sitting there with a bandanna wrapped around his hand, and there was a puddle of blood under it because he cut his hand when he hit the guy with this beer pitcher. He was out there drunk, shaking because it was so cold. I walked out and said, "Dad, are you alright?" And he said, "I ain't had this much fun in years!"
Did y'all just keep playing through all that, the fight?
No, that ended the show. They had to kick everybody out. But the end of it, I'll never forget. We were getting ready to drive away in the truck, and me and my brother were sitting in the back. The big ole fat redneck come walking out, and we were hollering at him and flipped him off. He come running toward the back of the truck and slipped and busted his ass on the ice. It was actually pretty funny. But Dad, what got him about it was here all this time you hear these punk rockers talking bad, and all these chains and everything, but when it came time to do something, everyone just kind of wussed out. Ever since then, he just doesn't look at punk rock the same way.
That was your last show, too?
Yeah. Me and Alan quit the band. We got tired of playing in redneck dives. There was kind of a following, but it wasn't enough people to really … you just get tired of it.
Was it the brawl that just pushed you over the point?
Yeah, the brawl, and the fact that after that I came to realize that … it seemed like it was a lot of talk and no action. It was unorganized. Nobody was really trying to do anything except get drunk and make loud noise. I wanted to do something a little more creative.
Did you ever see those younger guys?
I went in the Navy right there about that time, spring of '83. I didn't see any of them. I went and saw BoS one time before I left. It was the same old thing. They sounded the same. They'd gotten a new drummer and bass player. It was out at Big Daddy's on Williamson Road. I rode out there a month or two after we played our last gig, and that was the last time I saw Doug, Tommy or any of those guys.
Do you think doing that, playing in BoS, has changed your life in any way these days?
Oh yeah. In a way it kind of changed me. It came out with anything else. If you go back and look through history … the flower children of the '60s, Greenpeace of the '70s, whatever it is. You have people that build up this big movement: "We're going to change the world and make it better!" And they never really do. I think punk rock to me, when that happened, it was kind of a letdown. "Alright, I had fun. I went out, I drank a bunch of beer, I played a bunch of gigs. I got laid a few times." [laughs] But it did give me some experience as far as playing in front of that kind of crowd. I'd never done that. I'd played guitar with a choir.
Have you played music in front of people since then?
Oh yeah. A little bit of everything. I've played rock, mostly. I sat in on a country band or two, just playing acoustic. I'm more of a composer. I've got well over 100 songs, I'd say, that nobody's ever heard. That I've written in the last 25 years. Some of it goes from country to rock to metal to jazz, just a little bit of everything.
What do you do these days?
I run this place here, Cyberbang [on College St. in Salem]. I hang out with my son Brandon. He's my number one buddy, my best friend in the world. I've been divorced since he was 3. He's 15.
Any other thoughts about what you did or your experience with punk rock in Roanoke?
I think that punk rock in Roanoke in the early days was kind of a fad. It was like a new thing and people were into it. You didn't see people walk down the street with big green mohawks. That was something that turned people's heads. Today it's not that big of a deal anymore. But I'm not the one to say. I'm displaced from the music scene. I don't drink any more, I don't go out to bars. I basically play video games and jam with my son. That's the extent of what I do.