Tim Livingston – An Xperience Interview

Tim Livingston – An Xperience Interview – by Liam Sweeny.

RRX: Let’s talk about the Morons if we could. 1979, 1980 – I was tripping over my blankie, 3 to 4-years-old, you know, so not too much before my time, but a little bit before my time. What was it like when you guys started out? What was the scene like? How did you guys end up getting together?

TL: I’ve been a rock fan my whole life, and I was coming from the school of, like, Bowie, Alice Cooper, glam, and things like that; into the Stones and just everything. It’s the ‘70s, and we’re in school, and it’s pretty mainstream. We were in East Greenbush, Columbia High School, the four original members of the band. We went to a party one night, and all the usual stuff was being played: Boston, Styx, Kansas. I was after the glam stuff I got into. Our bass player, JB Homicide, was into similar music, like Elvis Costello and all the new wave stuff. But punk came kind of late to Albany. It wasn’t ‘77, ‘76.

I had an older brother in New York, and he was turning me on to, like, Patti Smith albums and stuff. So jump ahead to some time in the fall of ’79, we go to a party, and there’s a band playing there. They’re in the basement, the instruments set up, and they’re playing Rush and all kinds of stuff like that, which is all good. I’m not knocking it. But it wasn’t what I was into at the time. During their break, Jeff and I, JB Homicide, jumped up, grabbed their instruments, and started improvising some punk rock stuff. The first thing I did was grab a roll of tin foil off of a banquet table and started ripping it up … Jeff was just like, “da da da da,” and I was like, “I chew on tin foil all the time,” and I wrote the song “Chewing on Tin Foil” on the spot. We made a mess of a couple other things and then quit after that. People started asking, “Hey, when you guys playing again?” And we just came up with the Morons.

We ended up getting another guy on guitar, a friend of ours in school, our buddy; we were all buddies, we all hung out together. We got offered a New Year’s Eve gig at a party with two other bands, just local Rensselaer County bands playing cover stuff. We got together with a drummer, and we did like five songs. I think I fell over and knocked the drum set over at the end. And all crazy, but it just sort of added to the hype.

So when I say ’79 to 1982, we played New Year’s Eve of ’79, so we were basically in a 1980s band. Then … Jim Furlong (who you may know, owns Last Vestige), he was in a band – the ADs – at the time. We were going around town because I always like to hype stuff, and I’m saying, “Yeah, we’re the Morons. We’re a punk band,” and, you know, all this stuff. And he calls me up like a few weeks later and says he’s putting together a showcase of original music bands at JB Scott’s on a Tuesday night or something, and it was his band, Real Danger out of Albany, another band out of Delmar, and us. I said, “OK, absolutely, yeah.” We wanted to play JB Scott’s because at the time, it was the happening national tour act place. But we weren’t really ready for it, so we basically wrote songs and started practicing, and it was really my first gig outside of some basements in Schodack … and we went from there. We did that show, and we ended up opening up for the Stranglers, the Cramps, the Motels, and playing every oddball place you could imagine in Albany. There was a lot of these downtown bars, like the Town Tavern, Chateau Lounge, 288 Lark. They were like basically old men day drinking bars, and guys like Furlong went in and us and Real Danger. “Hey, can we play here? We’ll play for the door. You have nobody here.” And that’s kind of how that whole scene started, and we played everywhere and anywhere we could.

RRX: 288 Lark, JB Scott’s, like all these places that were around back then, these iconic places, that aren’t around anymore – what do you think as far as the difference between those days and now? Are you keeping your eyes on the music scene in this area now?

TL: I watch it. I dabble. I live in Florida now. I’ve been down here for 10 years. I still have obviously all kinds of friends up there, and I keep an eye on it … with Facebook and stuff. I think maybe the foremost thing is that the drinking age was 18. And there was a lot more live music in the area, both cover bands and the original stuff. It just wasn’t techno and DJ style culture, which is more prominent today, I believe, with the young kids. It sort of just exploded, and it’s just a time and a place. 1980 – all these bands are popping up from every suburb and also the city of Albany, and we just started playing, doing original music, and having a real fun time at it.

I think it was more of a live music culture back then to begin with, a lot of opportunities to play places, and nobody made any money other than the cover bands. I think a case of Miller was our rider. That’s what we played for a lot of times.

RRX: The Last Conspirators. I’m trying to figure out how that connects to the Morons.

TL: The Last Conspirators was my band for a 10-year run. I was in the Morons, like I said, ’82. The Morons never really broke up. Guys went to college. I stopped booking gigs, and we remained friends all these years and never played again. Our last couple shows – one at 288 Lark, and one at Chateau in 1982, March of ’82 – would have been the end of that anyway. I did an album 11 years later; I kept writing songs, and I did an album under the name of Ghost Runner.

“Beneath the Apocalyptic Rain,” which was me taking myself as far away from the Morons as I could. It wasn’t tongue-in-cheek, bratty, fun punk. It was dark rock, and I think it was kind of intentional. I did four or maybe five gigs at Bogart’s, which was Bogie’s later on and might even have been Bogie’s then. This is ’93 … I did one at QE2, and then I left. I just didn’t do that anymore.

Kept writing songs. 13 years later, I put together (in my mind) this band, The Last Conspirators. I have a whole batch of songs, I have an album. …Talked to my longtime friend Al Kash, drummer. He climbed on board and wanted to play drums on it. I got a couple other guys involved and recorded the first album. It was gonna be one album, I thought, one album and a show, and that was at Savannah’s, the album release show. And this would have taken us up to 2016. So we did the show, and it went really well, and the guys were into it, were into playing. I kept writing. We just started doing shows, and I kept that together for 10 years.

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