A Music, Entertainment, Art & Life Journey... Part 1

by: Luie 'Primal' Brangers

SplatterTribe Entertainment Founder/CEO   POSTED June 6, 2011

Years ago, I wanted to be a Rock N' Roller. Sorry if that sounds corny, or cliché, but it is fact. I wrote lyrics pretty much on a daily basis and have always tried my best to master the art of guitar, to no avail. Unfortunately though, I think I always saw Rock N’ Roll as more of an attitude, than...well, pretty much ANYTHING else.

I mean, I enjoyed and respected Rock History and I respected the musicians like none other, just when it came to me and my circle of friends, it always seemed that the party and the partying would never allow us the time to actually get our shit together at some point.

Then, when the party did not stop us, a whole FTW mentality stepped in and did its part to derail our Rock N' Roll dominance. Once again, it may sound corny or cliché, but it is fact. I may get more into all of this in the near future, but for right now I want to talk about something else.

I want to talk about how this SplatterTribe mess was actually formed.

OK, my memory is probably going to be a little sketchy at times here, so some details and timeframes may be a little off, but I'll try my best to remain as factual as possible.

This story goes back to my late high school years.

There were 2 situations that occurred that would introduce me to the idea of covering music and art.

One situation was when my buddy Dillard Logsdon showed me a Death Metal fanzine that was done by another buddy of ours by the name of Mike May. The fanzine was called Infected Voice (or IV for short) and it wound up becoming a blueprint, for a more diverse idea, that would actually be the first steps in the SplatterTribe journey.

Also, somewhere along this timeframe, I was introduced to a guy named Shawn Wilkerson. Shawn was a music enthusiast but was about as musically talented as a goldfish. I really don't remember who brought it up to whom, it seems like he may have brought up the idea, but it could have been me; not for sure. I just know that we had deep discussions about doing a magazine to cover music. Nothing ever came out of that at the time though, because I was way more interested in playing music than I was covering music.

As I said, details may be sketchy, but those 2 situations are my first memories of 'the idea' of doing something like this.

Now let's fast forward to a few months later; or maybe a year later...Damned if I remember...

Anyway, there was one infamous night that a couple of buddies and I, were driving around our hometown; probably bored to death or something. It was me, Dillard and another buddy named Chris Riggs. I remember I was in the backseat, Riggs was driving and Dillard was riding shotgun and for some reason, they started talking about doing a magazine. I joined in on the conversation, and then the next thing you know, we wound up going to Riggs' mom's place and for the rest of the night, we sat on their living room floor coming up with our first flyer.

I remember we came up with the title 'Down To Earth Magazine' and Riggs scribbled it onto the paper. We added the bi-line 'We're cracking through the first layer to get down to the Underground'...or something like that... Once again, memory is sketchy.

None of us could really draw, so we wound up cutting some skulls and a tribal design out of a tattoo magazine and gluing it to the flyer for decor. The plan was an All-Range, All Styles, Unbiased, Unprejudiced, Music, Art, Writing and Poetry magazine. The flyer looked so sloppy, that it was cool as Hell. At the bottom of the flyer, we put all three of our home addresses for the contact info, basically because we all three wanted free stuff.

We had also come up with THF Productions as our company name. How did we come up with THF Productions? I believe, when originally trying to draw the logo (we were going with 'THE DOWN TO EARTH MAGAZINE' at first) Riggs stopped after he drew 'THE' on one page and scrapped it, except the ‘E’ looked like an ‘F’. We looked at the THF on the scrap piece of paper and for some reason thought it was brilliant.

After trying to decide something for the THF to stand for, we decided it would stand for Tom, Harry and Frank. Whose Tom, Harry and Frank? Well, that would be us.

 That would be our new monikers. I believe Riggs was Tom. I was Harry (Hey…wait a minute here…) and Dillard was Frank.

So we wound up making a bunch of copies of that original flyer, when days later, another buddy of ours named Chris Adams informed us that he thought Down To Earth was already the title of a mens magazine, or something. This was probably a week or so later actually. Anyway, this led to a search for a new name.

We also had our first interview looming soon, so we had to think quickly.

That's when Randomosity came into the picture… Riggs brought up the name.

Another person in our immediate circle, by the name of A.J. Palumbo (can’t remember her maiden name) had come up with the word and for some reason, without even asking her permission, I guess, we decided to use it. Well, in all actuality I was under the assumption it was cool.

Nonetheless, we had a new name, even cooler than the first. We were still Tom, Harry and Frank, but we were now responsible for the ALL NEW Randomosity Magazine!

We started gathering our friends to try and get them involved. I know our buddy Ray Turpin, who was a certifiable lunatic, was going to be doing an advice column and several other friends were coming up with their own ideas. It was seeming like this might turn into a group effort.  It never really did though, but that’s beside the point.

Actually, Ray wound up running away from all civilization before we could really discuss doing the column. He finally snapped, I guess… It seems he spent the next few years living with a family rabid beavers on a creek bank in the back woods of Kentucky. No one could really get close enough to him to help either, because, well, he lived with a family of rabid beavers. There were a few pictures circling around our group at the time though, which were supposed to be of Ray. I don’t want to get into details, but the pictures featured him apparently trying to build a dam while using his bare ass as a beaver tail. He had some sort of string hanging out of his mouth as well. It was all very weird. I guess he really did believe himself to be a beaver. Hated to see that happen to such a cool guy…

 Anyway, back to the story…

As I previously stated, we also had our first ‘real’ interview on the way. See, an advantage we had back in the day, was that Dillard worked at a local music store called Disc Jockey. Disc Jockey had this big yellow book that contained the phone numbers for every known record label, at the time and Dillard scored us copies of these pages. That meant we could call any record company we wanted, at anytime…

It just so happened that there was an upcoming show at the infamous Toy Tiger in Louisville, Kentucky.  Keep in mind; we were very Metal oriented people at the time. That show was going to be by Atlantic Records recording artists Overkill and I had the phone number to Atlantic Records. So, with one nervous first call, trying to be as professional sounding as I could, I requested four tickets and an interview with Overkill at this event… and well…I got it.

That’s it! We had our first real interview!

Somewhere in this timeframe, another buddy of ours named Cliff Wheeler got involved as well, and the four of us, Dillard, Riggs, Cliff and myself finally made our way to do Randomosity’s  first interview.  It worked out really well for us that day, actually.

Cliff and I ended up the designated interviewers… Well, I was the designated interviewer, Cliff was, uhm…there.

 I remember during the interview I asked Cliff a couple of times, if he had any questions, hoping he would bail me out when I was stuck and each time he simply said, “No, I don’t have any.” That left me to do the interview by myself, as I nervously laughed like Beavis and Butthead every time I asked a question or replied to one of Overkill vocalist Bobby "Blitz" Ellsworth answers.

 I was nervous people and was winging  the whole thing!

We had just decided to do a magazine maybe 2 weeks earlier and now I was setting on an actual tour bus with a national recording and touring artist for Atlantic Records. We did about a 30+ minute interview though and Blitz, was about as cool as a person could be to a very, very green interviewer.

After the interview was over, the four of us Randomosity guys met and hung out with the opening act for the rest of the night. That band was called Stick. They had just released an album on Arista Records and were traveling with Overkill for their first actual tour, I believe. Those guys were awesome and made fans out of all of us that day. I sometimes wonder what happened to those cats. I really dug’m. I saw them play a show a few months later with a band called I Mother Earth and then both bands just disappeared into to void of lost bands.

Anyway, after that night at the Overkill/Stick show, Randomosity was in full ‘shine and ready to take over the media world…

This was, unfortunately, around the time Dillard decided to run off and join the circus as a rodeo clown/trapeze artist, believe it or not. I remember him setting us all down one emotionally charged evening and saying it was what he was born to do, blah, blah, blah and he had to try it, blah, blah, blah. The next thing you know, he was gone. Last I heard, he ended up getting gored pretty bad by the bearded lady and had to retire though.  Hated to hear about that…

Dillard’s exit left the Randomosity thing to Riggs, now Cliff and myself…

The upcoming weeks would see the Randomosity dynamic change once again. I believe the old creative differences might have come into play. I was pretty headstrong into getting this thing done by now, and Chris and Cliff, to me, wasn’t doing much of anything to help.

I’m sure their side would be different than mine, but…

We were basically looking into different ideas of how to get it done and just couldn’t agree on how to do things. I don’t remember all the specifics, I just remember arguing one day at my place and the next thing I know, I was running the show myself.

I always regretted not trying to do more to keep things together though, because, as with Dillard, everything seemed to go downhill for both Riggs and Cliff following their Randomosity exits. As with Dillard, both of them gave up on the idea of doing a magazine and went onto other ventures…

Cliff went on to sell AVON products in nursing homes all over the county, all the while developing an addiction to sniffing wrinkle cream and eating mascara. He hit rock bottom many years later though, when he was found, unconscious, in a dumpster, where he had been trying to smoke cigarettes laced with facial foundation powder and feminine hygiene products…Rock bottom indeed. He and his twitch has never quite been the same.

A few weeks after the Randomosity split, Riggs went on to make a bet with a 17 year old girl, that he was trying to hook up with, that could jump off a 25 foot cliff and survive, only to find out a second or two from the bottom that he might be wrong. It was a truly sad situation. That’s actually were the legend of Flat-Faced-Riggs originated. I’m not sure if you have ever heard of that one or not. I actually think the TV show Destination Truth did and investigation of Flat-Faced-Riggs a season or two ago. I didn’t see the episode though, so not sure what they found…

Anyway, back to the story…I now found myself going the magazine route on my own, which is when I realized I had to start recruiting others for help. I mean, I didn’t even own a computer and I was planning on doing a magazine.  How would that be possible?

Somewhere in this timeframe, Shawn Wilkerson and I became in contact again and we decided to start working together to make the Randomosity Magazine a reality. I had been doing several telephone interviews (known as phoners) and had started working with Shawn to get more live interviews scheduled and done, which we were getting. He also hooked us up with the Toy Tiger’s all girl dance review known as The Tiger Tails, and they had agreed to have one girl featured in each issue.

Things had changed a bit, but things were still a rolling for Randomosity, indeed. A name change was looming though.

I remember setting at the local mall one night talking to yet another buddy named Adam Paris and he informed me that A.J. (who had originally came up with the Randomosity word) may not have been thrilled with the idea of us using the Randomosity name. In no uncertain terms, I took it as she was never really asked or informed that we were going to use it and with the fact that Riggs (the original person to bring the name up as a possibility) was no longer involved with the Magazine, I started thinking I may need to use a new, unaffiliated name.

I also came to the realization that the whole THF Productions idea was a little outdated as well, being that Tom (Riggs ) and Frank (Dillard) were no longer involved. So that left me with two new names to come up with; a company name and a Magazine name.

The thing is, I really had liked the THF Productions name for some reason. I’m not sure why. I just liked it. I liked the three letter thing, I guess, who knows?

So, as I was trying to think of a new company name that was similar to THF, I came up with FTF Productions. I had felt like Riggs and Dillard, kind of abandoned the project that we had started, so in good-natured fun and humor, I came up with F Tom & Frank.

Now, I don’t have to explain the ‘F’, do I?

So that was it, I had FTF (F Tom & Frank) Productions, now I just needed a new name for the magazine. By this time, I had decided that there was a slim chance of getting the funds I would need to do an actual magazine, but on the same note, I didn’t want this to be considered a Fan-Zine.

This pushed me back to the original IV Fanzine that Mike May had previously published. I actually borrowed heavily from how that ‘Zine was put together. Really, it was just a bunch of photocopied pages stapled together; no color, all black and white and front and back.

This seemed like something I could pull off. The dilemma was what to call it. I did not want to use the term Magazine or the term FanZine. In all actuality, what I wanted to do would be part Magazine, part Newsletter. I couldn’t use the Randomosity name, as I had no rights to it, but I liked the random term. So that’s when it hit me…

I would call it The Random Mag-Letter; part Randomosity, part Magazine and part Newsletter.

The Random Mag-Letter…

Now it was time to get something done…

Oh yeah, getting back to Mike May. The damndest thing happened and I guess I should probably bring it up before I continue…

Actually, you know what?  I’ll get to that in Part 2 of the story, which will be coming very soon. So stay tuned to find out how my Music, Entertainment, Art & Life Journey went from The Random Mag-Letter to The S.C.C.A.M...

Stay Tuned for Part 2! --Primal