Those XCleavers Band Member Bios

All musicians think they're revolutionaries, and those that succeed in their quest, or at least notoriety, realize there is more to the task than forcing us to listen to their "new." Musical revolutionaries also make us gaze backwards, as they blend influences, and cultures, producing what they hope someone else "out there" will also find interesting. Musicians always hope there is someone out there listening, while they become what Woody Guthrie once called ‘hoping machines.' The young mid-west musicians of those XCleavers found plenty of people listening. The "Cleavers" were fortunate in finding a fan base of ‘others' looking for new rhythms & sounds. And when you throw in "original" music, you increase the difficulty. Because you want to tell the world something that happened to you, doesn't necessarily make it interesting. Just because you "can" perform doesn't mean you "should." Terry Tanger, John Gaskell, Tom Lesions and Ernie Alvarez found their audience by understanding people don't buy plastic or material. They buy emotions. Popular Music triggers events we remember with a wave of emotion, and feeling that resonates through our bodies forever. These artists constantly bring us back when we get lost. When I first heard those XCleavers in a Milwaukee club, the beating melodies of Save It and White Reggae set me back in search of a cheap, white plastic, Japanese hand-held radio I could plug into my ear, while listening to "The Village Idiot" on Chicago's WLS late at night. The Cleavers kept their ears open, took in everything, and spit it out right back at us in a dare, using the essence of rock and roll rebellion, and punk attitude.     

In the late 70's and early 80's the club scene in the Milwaukee area included the Stone Toad, Craig's, Zak's, Starship, Century Hall, Teddy's, UWM's Kenwood Inn, Palms, Sunset Bowl, Casablanca, Hooligans, Rock City, Fantasy's, Pinocchio's, Marquette Union, Odd Rock Café, and Avalon Theatre. Your choices in musical entertainment could have been ‘cover' bands at small clubs, or possibly a soul band at one of the larger clubs. If you were looking for a more intriguing musical experience, you were probably at Zak's on the corner of North and Humboldt, or the Starship on Wisconsin Avenue. Punk had arrived in Milwaukee, along with New Wave (the names became interchangeable quickly as professional mentors on radio, and amateurs in the audience, used both terms with excitement, if not sometimes confusion.

If you ventured out to those venues, you'd find yourself listening to some of Milwaukee's earliest alternative acts: Buck Byron & the Little Seizures, Yipes, Johnny Rubbish, the Strangs, Girl Scouts, Oil Tasters, Haskels, Shivvers, Hometown Rejects, Peter Lorre, Paul Cebar, Blackholes, Plasticland, Red Ball Jets, Einstein's Riceboys, and those XCleavers. They would all release their material on vinyl or tape, using their own money. They reflected ‘your' interests, looking for changes in direction, revolting against a plastic society, using nonconformity, and an antiauthoritarian approach, with a strong 4/4 beat. They were bohemian, artsy, and dancing the Pogo. There are two good compilation albums of punk / new wave groups from the Milwaukee of that era. They are difficult, but not impossible to find: The Great Lost Brew Wave Album (CD 1997) and History in 3 Chords (2CDs 2001). With little historical research of the genres, and era, music fanzines and Milwaukee's alternative newspaper, The Shepherd Express, offer at least a visual glimpse of the scene. Later, Milwaukee's most famous popular band, the Violent Femmes, would meet in an area punk club. They would first experiment in Brian Ritchie's bands (Ruthless Acoustics, Rhomboids, eventually, the Femmes – actually opening for the Cleavers).

The Cleavers did not shy away from any opportunity. Early in their career they agreed to be the stage band for local multi-media artist Uncle Vinty (Vincent Waterman Medbury III), once described as stranger than Alice Cooper. As a visual artist, it also allowed the Cleavers to appear on numerous local television programs, and gave them the opportunity to tour the mid-west, broadening their base, and experimenting with early videos. Uncle Vinty would die from Aids complications in Mill Valley, California in 1994. 

Some musicians and groups with more traditional concepts, and their own perceived musical virtuosity, looked upon the new waves of music with suspicion. They weren't used to the simplicity or harshness of the 4/4 time, or a traditional verse-chorus form where solos were considered self-indulgent. They found the production techniques too minimalistic, and the new punks & wavers too confrontational, reminding us lyrically, and aurally, of a darker side of life, history, and culture. Area punks and new wavers got their guts (in every sense) from 1960's garage bands like the Kingsmen (1963 Louie, Louie), the Kinks (1964 You Really Got Me), the Who (1965 My Generation), the Standells (Dirty Water), the Seeds, the Sonics, and ? and the Mysterians. Their lyrics grew from traditional themes of girls, friends, and relationships, but blended with a frustration, and rebelliousness of another generation.

Terry Tanger and John Gaskell, who lived across the alley, in the Milwaukee suburb of Shorewood, got together in their early teens to play and listen to music in Tanger's basement. Both sets of parents were encouraging, and offered many different styles of music in their households. They met in high school after Gaskell's family moved from Florida, and when Tanger heard him play the drums, it was exactly what Tanger had been hearing in his own head. They both knew they would play together for a long time, and quickly became best friends. Their age limited them to playing occasional middle and high-school gigs, but they still learned. When not playing their own school gigs, John and Terry were sneaking into clubs to listen to area bands, to learn what they would need, from set up to tear down. Like most of their generation, Tanger and Gaskell loved Pop radio, but were intrigued by FM stations and college radio, which offered more extended, expressive, musical selections. "When you're a teenager, all music sounds good, and most of it appealed to me," remembers Tanger. Whatever he heard, he tried to play. Whether he got the chords right was questionable, but he and John got the spirit right. Being "in the band" was important, abilities could be worked on later.  

When they first heard the Velvet Underground, they thought it was a little rough, but also thought that ‘they' could do that. "The first time I put on the Velvet's ‘Banana' album, I was playing with those songs because of the very simple chord patterns. It made sense to me, it was easier," says Tanger. With college looming, John and Terry found themselves alone. Their bass player, Dave Willis, went off to college, as did other members. Ads in the paper kept them in musicians. They found Tom Lesions close by, and invited him over one night while jamming. Lesions was in a very early punk band, Buck Byron & the Little Seizures, and wanted nothing to do with the California country rock & pop sounds on the radio. He wanted to rock, and as he introduced new songs to the other two, they all found it sounded pretty good, very quickly. Tom was very strong about his likes and dislikes, and Tanger had become more intrigued with the punk & new wave artists he was hearing, with the echoes of his love for the pop sounds of the sixties. Somewhere between Tom's punk musings and Terry's love of melody, they noticed it could work. Now as those XCleavers (it was Tom who added the ‘X'), Terry and Tom started to encourage each other, emphasizing their own writing skills. For their first year together, Tanger admits "we were trying to catch up to Tom. He was always a little edgier then."

One of them would bring a song down to the basement, 90% done, and the other would help finish it. Most fans can tell who wrote which song other than by who is singing (Tom's songs are shorter in time and style, a little edgier, while Terry's are hook driven with a little more production. Gaskell's drumming was creative, and more complex than the typical 4/4 beat, allowing the band to strike off into different material, influences, and greatly aided in their bastardization of other people's songs. When they became old enough to play in the clubs, they also realized that the purpose of a club band in a town like Milwaukee was to sell beer. They had to get people dancing, and when they danced, they became thirsty. Selling liquor is one secret to longevity for bands. Early gigs at the Metropole, with other bands, would lead to club dates at Zak's and the Starship. It was the Starship, a former downtown strip club on Wisconsin Avenue, where they cemented their base, and a relationship with their fans.
"It was amazing, because there were so many different styles of music being performed there," says Lesions. No one passed judgment on what type of material was being performed, especially after the Starship became popular with nearby Marquette University students. Every night was scheduled with three different bands, usually with three different styles. And according to Tanger, that was the best part of playing there. "I was hearing all this stuff I had never heard before and it was eye opening. The fans loved it." Marquette and University of Wisconsin (Milwaukee) students found the club slightly dangerous with ‘real punks' in the crowd, yet could always ‘escape' back to campus.  

We forget it can be difficult in the music "business" to find someone who cares about the music. It's difficult to start a band no one has ever heard of, and no one has actually called for. It requires discipline, focus, and courage. Soon record companies like Slash and Arista were nosing around. The Cleavers were very fortunate early in their career to receive good reviews from local critics such as Dave Luhrssen, Paul Host and Divina Infusino. They also received air time and good reviews from the leading alternative station, WMSE, of the Milwaukee School of Engineering (between 1980 and 1982 they charted singles in the Top Five). They would take their influences from national punk / new wave acts like the B52's, Blondie, Elvis Costello, The Jam, The Pretenders, and the Talking Heads. The Cleavers took every opportunity to learn from these and other artists, opening for national acts like Comateens, Nona Hendryx, the Brains, Waitresses, Joan Jett, Fleshtones, Berlin, Busboys, Romantics, Devo, Peter Case, the Tailgators, and Charlie Sexton, among others. In 1981 they opened for U2, on St. Patrick's Day, in Madison, Wisconsin, while in 1984 they would open for the Police at the Milwaukee Auditorium.

~Dan Sokolovic