Preview: Blotto The Movie – Interview: Rob Lichter (Bert Blotto)

Interview: Rob Lichter (Bert Blotto)

By: Rob Smittix

RRX: We’ve got you coming to the Cohoes Music Hall with the movie edition of Blotto and this is really big for this area. Maybe just a little deep dive into your history with the band. 

RL: Oh, depends how deep you want to go, I guess. So the way this started was… I was vaguely familiar with Blotto and I was working for a local TV station on Long Island and I found a Blotto tape in their tape library. I haven’t heard of Blotto in such a long time. I was asking people, why do we have this? Someone just casually mentioned that the host of our variety show on Fridays was the guitarist from Blotto. It blew my mind because I’d known Bill for quite a few months at that point and he’s a great guy, I love him. I had no idea that there was any sort of connection. So I struck up a conversation with him about that and it led to an ongoing relationship. He would bring in some photos, posters and other paraphernalia every week and just show off all this to me, that was very cool. 

I’m not in show business at all and this guy… he was just a regular guy, he was fun and nice and all that but he had this history of “oh yeah, back, you know, when I was playing at Jones Beach, back when I was playing with Blue Oyster Cult, that time we were on MTV,” and I’m going… what is happening? I’m on Long Island and Bill “Broadway Blotto” was also living on Long Island. I guess it was 1998 when I first saw the actual band play. I think it was at the Tulip Festival in Albany. It’s the first time I met them all as well. I started going up there relatively regularly every time they had a show. If I could, I would drive up there. I teach video production, I run a TV studio in a high school on Long Island, that’s kind of my love, it’s just what I do. I was able to bring up video cameras and other cameras and record it because I just wanted to, really. 

After doing that for a little while, they were getting ready to put out their second CD, which was some older stuff that never got released. Since they were all getting together for this casual weekend, I thought this would be perfect to let me get some interviews with them. So the idea was a documentary, I guess but there was no real endgame. I just wanted to get all these stories on tape. So I got them individually, I would record Bowtie for an hour and then Sarge for an hour etc. This was right after Cheese died, so I wasn’t able to get him. I never met him in person unfortunately, I talked to him a couple of times on the phone but that was it. 

So I recorded them, mixing this thing in these little interviews. I tried to put it together but it wasn’t interesting, it wasn’t fun. I just held on so and we didn’t do anything. Again, every time they would play, I would record them and things like that. And then it was 2019 when Sarge died and it had been in the back of my mind that I should do that documentary. Like I said, then Sarge died. I was like, damn it, I missed my shot. This is what happens when you don’t do the thing you want to do and you put it off. So I said, screw this, I’m doing it! I told the guys that before I lose any more of you, we need to do this. So, the real secret sauce with these guys is to get them all together and that was the major difference. 

When I had the individual interviews, it was fine but it wasn’t fun. As soon as you get the three of them, I wish it was 4 of them together… they really played off each other, reminded each other and made each other laugh. That’s the energy I wanted, and they brought information out from each other. It wasn’t just that it needed to be fun but it helped remembering all this stuff from 40 years ago. So again, I really didn’t have an endgame. I kind of figured I would just throw it up on YouTube or something. These are my friends that have this interesting history that I wanted to put together and as it was getting together, the guys were like, this is real. They said, you should talk to Buck Dharma from Blue Oyster Cult. He’ll talk to you about this. So I got in touch with him and he said, yeah, absolutely and I had an interview. Then Jackie the Jokeman Martling… I reached out to him and he said, yeah, come on over to the house, no problem; I’ll talk about Blotto. After we did that, it soon became clear that this might have legs as they say. Between those two and Martha Quinn and then some other insiders that are less famous but still had a lot of stuff to say. I ended up getting a lot of voices on here and it turned into something a little more substantial than I had originally imagined. 

I think my original hope was maybe to rent out the basement of a library and show it to people who cared about it, you know? Family, friends or if any fans were in the area and happened to see it. And the thing is, I don’t live in Albany or that area. I wasn’t really cognizant of them being a force in 1981, 1982 or whatever. I really did not anticipate the demand for this. Once I started posting things on Facebook just saying that we’re working on a thing, I got this huge response. I went, oh jeez, really? They were telling me that we could sell out a movie theater and we’ll pack it. I said that’s never gonna happen and boom, it seems to be happening. Now I’m talking with other theaters as well, trying to get this played in other places because people are asking for it. I said it’s going to be playing in Cohoes on April 12th but some people are saying I can’t make it that day. When and where else are you playing it? Or when are you coming down to this town? So it seems to be a lot more of an audience for it than I had originally anticipated, which is terrifying but also really gratifying. It’s my first full length film. I’ve done little stuff but nothing really professionally, nothing with any real sense of having an audience. It was all just something to do, so this is a new world for me, but it’s kind of fun. 

RRX: Well, you hit the nail on the head saying that Blotto is a force around here. They really have been, Albany gets on all of these lists and usually they’re really bad, so it’s nice when we have a success story once in a while, and they’re clearly one of them. 

RL: Yeah, that was something that I had gotten a sense of after knowing them, but… over time, like oh, they’re really the ancient saints of Albany in a way and I’m sure there are a lot of local bands who might take offense to that but I think it’s undeniable.

RRX: In this area as you’ve seen, people will come out of the woodwork for them. I don’t know if we have a key to the city to give, but Blotto should probably get it. 

RL: They actually got the key to the city, I can’t remember what year it was. Mayor Jennings gave them the key to the city except it was more like a gas station washroom key, like a big piece of plastic with a key attached to it, so you can’t steal it. It was one of those. He had written something on it like… in honor of Blotto day!

RRX: Well, awesome. We’re very much looking forward to the world premiere on Saturday, April 12th, at the Cohoes Music Hall. 

RL: Just to mention after the movie, we’re also gonna do a little bit of a Q&A or a curated conversation. It’ll be me and the band on the stage doing a little after movie chat.

RRX: Sounds amazing. Well, thank you for your time. 

RL: Thank you very much, appreciate it.