Rudy Cheeks is a life long Rhode Island resident. He is well know in many artistic arenas and also recognized today as Jorge in Jorge and Phillipe and as Dr. Love Monkey in the Providence Phoenix. Attending the University of Rhode Island in the late sixties and early seventies, Rudy was interested in music, theater, and film among many other things. Rudy was a unique teenager, listening to artists such as John Coltrane, Thelonius Monk, Miles Davis, and Bob Dylan. He became very involved with friends of his at RISD and joined them in many endeavors. He and his friends started the band the "Fabulous Motels" and in 1975 started the "Young Adults." Throughout his career he has been involved at many levels in different and crazy types of live performance, in making films, television shows, documentaries, radio shows and countless other ventures.

Rudy's stories are entertaining, inspiring and will give you a glance at the full and exciting life that he has led. Please take a look at the interview and listen a bit to the recording to get a better feel of his voice and character. Enjoy!

Julia Wolfson: I guess the first question I have for you since we talked a little bit about what your childhood was like… I guess what I was wondering, if you could describe what your family was like. Maybe just tell me a story which encompasses your younger childhood.

Rudy Cheeks: Well, I don't know if there are any stories that would encompass my childhood. I think my childhood was pretty typical. I think that uh, you know I have an older sister and two younger brothers. We're all like two years apart and uh, I don't know. Everybody is kind of individual in a lot of respects. That's something that I just don't think there are any anecdotes that I can think of that would…I mean no one else in the family went into performing or anything like that or like extreme creative stuff. I don't know. My mother was a very interesting character. She was very funny, very personable and I think that there may be a lot of elements of her in my… the fact that I chose to do things where I work with other people.

JW: I know that when you were in high school you said that there was no one else that was really interested in the things that you were interested in like performance and music. Do you remember anything in particular that just got you into it? Was there someone…

RC: Well it wasn't that they weren't interested in performance and music.

JW: But the kind of music that you were interested in?

RC: Well, I remember very distinctly that when I was in the tenth grade my friend Charlie Sawicki was writing his term paper on humorists and he called me up and said, "I got to write this term paper on American humorists." He wanted to know… well he knew Mark Twain and stuff like that. I was basically giving names, because not that I had read widely in any of this stuff, but I knew these names and I knew Dorothy Parker and I knew Robert Benchley. I was a little bit familiar with Robert Benchley, who I had seen on film and I also read a little bit of national stuff. I also mentioned James Thurber, who I had also read some stuff, but I really didn't like that much, and S.J. Perelman. So, he went out and went to the library and spent a lot of time and a month or so later he calls me up and says, "Have you read this guy Perelman?" and I said, "No not really" and he said, "Go to the library immediately and get his books out." Immediately we became completely, myself and Charlie and actually a couple other people too, that were turned on to him, but it was mostly me and Charlie who were completely enamored by S.J. Perelman, who as it turned out was from Providence. Something we didn't know until a couple years later, because we weren't looking at the biographical stuff, we were just looking at the stuff he had written and he basically just wrote short fiction pieces, short humorous pieces for magazines like the New Yorker and there were a number of others…Holiday and stuff like that…at the time. Now they no longer exist. He was just amazing. The word play and the mastery of language were just incredible. It was like James Joyce meets Groucho Marx. So, we just became veracious readers of S.J. Perelman throughout high school.

JW: Ok.

RC: That was a huge thing and I remember also writing and we were also, myself and Charlie, we were both big Bob Dylan fans and we had this folk stuff, we were familiar with the folk stuff and one day we were, I remember exactly where we were, we were riding in the car, we were on Newport Avenue in Pawtucket, right near Newport Avenue approaching Armistice Boulevard from the north and we're in the car and all of a sudden "Subterranean Home Sick Blues" comes on the radio, this is the first time Bob Dylan had been on the AM radio.

JW: What year is this?

RC: This is about 1965 I think.

JW: Ok.

RC: And it was like '65-66 and we just broke out into a roar. It was like the greatest thing. We couldn't believe that the radio was playing his music.

JW: Little did you know.

RC: Well, the thing that was interesting was that the years that he was doing the most powerful stuff to me is that about that era, which is "Bringing It All Back Home," "Highway 61," "Blonde on Blonde," which is about '65 through about '67, and uh, there was some radio play with a few numbers, but really he didn't sell records like the Beatles or the Rolling Stones or anything like that. He was a name, but the thing is that we just thought that his stuff was just so many steps beyond everyone else.

JW: Yeah, and then so, what was that, 1965?

RC: Yeah, around then.

JW: Was that like your senior year in high school.

RC: Oh no. I didn't graduate until '68.

JW: Oh, ok. It's more the beginning of high school.

RC: And you know at the same time also we had been reading stuff like Playboy magazine, the New Yorker, things like that too. So, you know, budding pseudo-intellectuals and we were starting to find out about these people on our own. There also used to be a radio station…uh, in Pawtucket WPAW, later it was WXTR, I can't remember what the heck they call it, anyway it was way down on the low end of the AM dial and this is before FM had really had caught on in the late 1960's and we were uh… and there used to be a late night show called uh…hosted by a guy named Fred Grady, a jazz show and I used to listen to it on a transistor radio under my pillow every night, late at night when I was going to bed and I became very into that stuff.

JW: Well, what did your parents think of all these things that you were into? Like you said you hid it under your pillow.

RC: They didn't know about it.

JW: Did you think that they wouldn't support you?

RC: No, it wasn't even that. The relationship was more, there was…I think parents today or people who became parents who grew up in my generation have made more of an effort to try to understand their kids or something like that. I mean always there's going to be this generation gap and I think there was a very big one at the time during the '60s.

JW: Yeah, so you were just doing your own thing.

RC: Yeah, they weren't even... My grandmother had a bedroom upstairs, which was kind of adjacent to my bedroom in our house and she could hear me playing these jazz records at night on the little stereo….and uh playing these jazz records and playing Bob Dylan and she actually sometimes would laugh at the Bob Dylan stuff. "I Ain't Gonna Work on Maggie's Farm" and she would hear that and she would laugh. There was stuff from the song that she thought was funny. But it wasn't like that, you know. But as far as I was concerned they only touched on what I was interested in. But you know they were working a lot. My mother was working at the same time. My mother had a job and my father worked. It was like, there was not much of a shared culture. I mean there was shared stuff like TV, stuff like that. Maybe we all watched Ed Sullivan or we all, I remember the Beatles on Ed Sullivan when I was a kid.

JW: It was a big thing to watch.

RC: Oh it was huge! It was huge!

JW: I remember my mom's told me about that too. Watching it with her family.

RC: I was in the 8th grade when the Beatles came on Ed Sullivan and it was for the first time. I can even tell you the first song, um, they played "All My Loving" and that was the first song and it was just like dynamite. I also, by the way, I also remember seeing Elvis on Ed Sullivan, but I was a little kid then. I was like 6-7 years old, but I was 14 when the Beatles came on Ed Sullivan. I was the perfect age you know. And it was the talk of the junior high school the next day.

JW: And so then, after high school when you went to URI, what were you getting into at URI that led you to…

RC: Well, I had already, from high school, had these tastes that were…I didn't know if I was going to find like-minded people at college and as it turned out there were a couple people here and there who shared my interest in jazz, you know getting more into the stuff like the John Coltrane, Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman type stuff. You know the kind of out there stuff…the Sun Ra Solar Arkestra. I had a number of Sun Ra records you know and I had records by Harry Partch, is like this eccentric who wrote songs with like 32 tones or 36 tones or something like that so, he had to build all his own instruments, because you know it wasn't like 8 tone… do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do. It wasn't that it was like three more notes in between everyone of those. And I had a couple of records. Where I came across…I can't even remember where I…you know, I'd see a name, you'd read the back of record labels, I'd get a Miles Davis album and I'd read the back and I'd see the names of these other musicians and then you go to a record store. Or I'd hear it on Fred Grady's show and I go and get it. So, I became very big, you know John Coltrane, Thelonius Monk, Myles Davis, uh, there were a few people who were really huge I thought. They were really… you know I loved their stuff. So….uh, I remember when I went to college at first, my first year in college, my freshman dorm room I had a record player and I'll tell you what was popular then. The big hit songs of my freshman year in college, one of the biggest hits was "Sympathy for the Devil"

JW: Who's that by?

RC: Rolling Stones

JW: Oh, ok.

RC: That was big and this is like 1968 and you know I liked a lot of this rock and roll stuff. I liked that. That was from an album called "Beggar's Banquet." It was swell, you know, it was a great record. And the Beatle's had records out…"Revolver" I think and uh, the "White Album" came out that year or something. And I listened to all that stuff and I liked that too, uh, and Bob Dylan had a big motorcycle accident and had all of a sudden switched to this weird country music thing. "Nashville Skyline" came out that year and it kind of bothered me because he was using this (Rudy imitates Bob's voice) crooning voice which was very weird. So, I was not a huge fan of that record, although there are a couple of songs on it that I have deemed very powerful. "I Threw It All Away," that's a great, great song. It's very simple. He had had all this ornate stuff and all of a sudden he'd gone down to real basics. Actually, he did that in the album before that called, "John Wesley Harding," but what I do remember from my freshman year in college was that I had my record player in my room and I had my records with me and uh, and I remember one of the guys living down the hall coming in and he saw this record, which was Joe Williams singing with the Count Basie Band and he was like, I don't know maybe he thought it was like his parents music or something. He didn't understand at all. He tossed it out the window, you know the forth floor. He thought it was like a joke, a joke record. I was like "No, I love that record." I was just starting to get into big band stuff…and Nat King Cole, as I got older I started to appreciate that more, which was more of the music of my parent's generation, but I was more attuned to Bob, and then post Bob stuff, like I said, Coltrane, and Miles and stuff like that. But, I did realize at that point…there's no sense in… and what happened, and this is something that through high school I understood, there's no sense in even trying to introduce this to kids…my peers. If one of them comes on and expresses an interest in that, then I'll start talking to him about it, but there were very few of those people around.

JW: So, were your friends at school…where they the few people that showed interest…was music a big part of who you became friends with or the people you hung out with?

RC: No, I hung around with a lot of jocks and stuff like that. I was kind of, I didn't really know what I was doing at that point. It was my sophomore year that finally I found some people who were on a similar wavelength and they were not from the University of Rhode Island. What happened this guy from my neighborhood transferred to URI. His name was Steve Strezpek, aka Stevie Thunder, and Stevie was doing stuff with his cousin who was at RISD and his cousin had a band and was writing music and the music was kind of like this jazz tinged rock and roll. It was really uh… and with real satirical lyrics and stuff…and it was very original and the only thing that you can compare with stuff like that, I mean there was obviously some Frank Zappa influence there, somebody else I admired a great deal at that point and had some early records of. You know I'm also one of those guys who had the first "Velvet Underground" album. And it was said that it sold about 6,000 copies, but everybody bought one and started looking at it, you know. So, um, Stevie kind of got me bloomed in with these guys. His cousin Timmy Duffy was also somebody I grew up with too, so I also knew his cousin who was at RISD and a couple years older and we…what happened was Timmy at one time just kind of disappeared. He graduated from RISD and was having this band and just one day he just disappeared and nobody knew where he was for a couple of months. He materializes in like Colorado or somewhere…Texas or something, but all of a sudden all these guys that were in his band are left without the guy who was writing the songs and primarily the leader of the band and I had met all these people and become friendly with them and one of the other things we had in common was we were all interested in film and a couple of them were majoring in film over at RISD. One of them was a guy named Charlie Claverie or Charles Rocket and Charlie had some pretty interesting films that he was doing…which was all about 1969-70. He had a film called "Tits and Trucks" for instance. What it was was this woman had just taken her shirt off and her naked breasts were showing. It was a shot like this just of her breasts and it was interspersed with shots of trucks driving down the street and it would go back to her breasts jiggling and trucks driving down the street.

JW: Was there music or anything?

RC: Oh no, the soundtrack was having a candid conversation with a guy named Dan Gosch, who was a painter at RISD and basically the conversation was Dan saying, "Charlie, is that someone I know? Who is that, who is that woman?" And Charlie would go, "I can't tell you, I'm sworn to secrecy Dan, I'm sorry." And then Dan would go, "Um, well, just give me her initials. You know is it someone in our class or something like that?" "No Dan, I can't tell you." I mean and that's the whole thing. It's about a 7 or 8 minute film, but that was the whole thing and it was ridiculous you know. To us, nobody was doing anything like that. So, we thought it was really cool.

JW: Crazy, yeah.

RC: Yeah, this is really silly stuff.

JW: And at this point, when did you start playing instruments?

RC: No, what happened was this, Stevie was at URI with me. He transferred from Northeastern up in Boston and he is in sophomore year and so we were hanging around together all the time now and cause we had these interests in this like Avant-Garde art stuff and a lot of that influence was from his cousin Tim. And now so I was finding people and I was learning stuff from them and they were learning stuff from me I guess, because I was…I had this book that had a lot of small reproductions of paintings by Spanish artists and I used to cut the book up. I would cut the pictures of the paintings out and tape them to my shoes and I would change them every week. That was you know, just stupid stuff that we were doing. You know, just show off that we were doing, and of course people weren't even picking up on it, but for the most part we didn't even care. We thought we were the weird artists or something and we were just doing some sort of expression. We didn't understand why we were doing it, but we just felt…we had this compulsion…we're going to go with it. So, Stevie was riding home…and Stevie had gotten this Bolex 16mm camera and he was starting to do films. He did a film on the band that preceded the first band I was in. "Pig Town," was the name of the band, but I wasn't in it... that Timmy Duffy ran. His cousin Tim. He had done a film of their last performance, homecoming at the University of Buffalo. How they got that gig was another…Well, we knew people that would sign contracts with us for the most specious of reasons, you know they were our palls… and he had made a film of that and he had that film and we were working on another film called "Ecology" that we were writing you know. At one point we had a telephone shaped out of licorice and I ate the telephone…I can't remember.

JW: Just crazy stuff…

RC: I was pretty out there. And the thing was to process 16mm...buy and process 16mm film was kind of expensive for us.

JW: I mean buying a video camera, I'm sure before people were really having them…I'm sure it wasn't a common thing.

RC: Yeah, there was no sound. Syncing sound was financially out of our reach. So we were constantly looking for like opportunities to get people to, you know, invest in these films, cause there's no way that these films are going to make money, but we were trying to tap into the student government, which had all these funds and see if they would open us as a student art project or something and see if they would pay for it. So, what happened was, Stevie ran into a woman who was on the URI Cultural Committee or something like that and he was on a bus ride from Providence down to Kingston with this person and he was a very persuasive guy and he basically fast talked this woman into sponsoring a night of films, of his films, of Charlie's films…oh God, and it just grew and grew and grew. We called it "Polaroid Sausage" and what happened was it was a Tuesday or Wednesday night ballroom event at URI. Now usually these kinds of things draw like a dozen people, twenty people or something like, you know something the cultural committee is sponsoring. A night of films by somebody that we know. Now Stevie and I went out and did all this ridiculous advertising stuff for it and just plastered the campus with this advertising, which was all like cut out art and very humorous and very silly.

JW: Was "Polaroid Sausage" just some random name?

RC: Oh, yeah. Well, I think what happened was Stevie was talking to his cousin Tim, because Tim had finally resurfaced in Colorado or wherever it was and he said, "Yeah, we want to do a night of film stuff." And he said, "Do you have any idea of what we should call it?" "Yeah, Polaroid Sausage."

JW: Ok.

RC: So, what happens is the place becomes packed and they actually had to turn people away. There were actually like 600 people there to see "Polaroid Sausage."

JW: Were people paying to get in?

RC: I don't even know…it might have been like a dollar or something.

JW: So, were you making…

RC: We weren't really making money, although we started thinking we could.

JW: Yeah, with this crazy stuff that drew people because it was bizarre.

RC: Yeah, we had the room for free, because of the Cultural Committee…that was the whole idea…we had the ballroom. It was this huge room and we packed it.

JW: Well, you knew how to attract people too.

RC: Well, because "Tits and Trucks" was being advertised, the women's liberation movement, which they called it at the time kind of picketed too. So, we had counter pickets, which we had women, that we…friends of ours that we hired…you know, crazy artists…with bathrobes and pillows underneath so they looked like they were pregnant women marching counter protest to them. I mean you know, it was ridiculous.

JW: Yeah.

RC: I mean we didn't have any animosity towards this group…we were like pro-feminist anyway, but it was just like stupid stuff.

JW: It was like a joke.

RC: It was a joke, but some people took things very seriously in those days. And there was a reason to take things seriously, because women were, as they still are, discriminated against, but far more then than now. So, then after the success of "Polaroid Sausage," we were also doing a campus radio show at the same time.

JW: At URI?

RC: Yes. Steve had gone and gotten…in those days you had to have a radio license to have a campus radio show and Stevie had a radio show called " The Stevie Thunder Bad Taste Immaturity Hour," which was us basically coming in there and playing really bad records and frequently opening up the mikes and singing along. You know, Wayne Newton stuff, things like that. (lights his cigar) And… we would uh, open up the mikes, open up the phones and we would take calls from the listeners. And they would either be laughing or angry you know, and we'd put them on the air too. The show didn't last too long, because Charlie Rocket came up from RISD one night and he threw the regular news guy out of the booth and just made up the news, which was an FCC violation apparently.

JW: Oh, ok.

RC: And, so that was the end of the show. The student radio station fearing that they would be fined or scolded or something, told us we couldn't have the show anymore. And so, as I said, Stevie had gotten the show, because he had the license. So, anyway what happened was, Timmy Duffy's sister Patrice, who was also Stevie's cousin, was going to Connecticut College for women, which had just changed its name to Connecticut College was set up at like a 9:1 female to male ratio over there.

JW: Oh…ok

RC: So, that's always good for us too.

JW: All the girls.

RC: YEAH… So, she called us up and said "Hey, I think I can book you guys. I'm on the entertainment committee for the school." So we said "Great." So, we all got in the car. Charlie and Dan Gosh, Stevie, and a guy named Ron Lavey, who also like you know, he had singing dogs. Not really, it was just that Charlie plays the accordion real high and the dogs would wail. But we would integrate anything like that. Anything was integrated. And it wasn't just films. It was just stupid stuff. Like "Polaroid Sausage" started out with this woman, Simone Kuck aka Barbara Conway, her real name. She came out wearing like this huge headdress and she was like a six foot tall platinum blond with very long legs and she was wearing this like Tina Turner outfit with Christmas tree tinsel for a skirt. She had this extra long cigarette holder. I mean she was a complete parody of a vamp, you know. She came out and would say, (in woman's voice) "Hi boys… oh, you too girls. Now, we would like to start "Polaroid Sausage" by introducing Professor Charles Rocket." And of course he's no professor. He's like a junior in college.

JW: Yeah, he's like a kid.

RC: And as soon as he's introduced all of a sudden the stage lights go on, a group of women who were a little bit overweight, picked in particular because I don't know why and they just like the "Go-Go" dancers… they looked like real women. And the go-go dancers would go sliding off stage, "Brown Sugar" comes blasting over the soundtrack and then Charlie in a tuxedo and sunglasses comes dancing out on stage, sliding out like James Brown. He had the microphone stand between his legs, humping it, you know and just ridiculous stuff like that and you know this is supposed to be a film lecture and this is how it starts. Then all of a sudden the music dies down and Charlie gets up there and starts lecturing.

JW: On…?

RC: On film and he shows a couple of his films and then we show other films. I did a slide presentation in a rooster suit and the slides were all like me shooting my feet, you know bad photography and with this whole type of Dada-esque, uh, commentary with it. And you know, that was what the show was. It was like a vaudeville dada show. We basically did what amused us and we didn't even know if the audience would like it. So, anyway, because all these people were showing up we figured it must be great.

JW: Yeah. No one knew what it was anyway.

RC: Yeah, no one knew. There was a lot of head scratching, but there was laughing. So, we went to Connecticut College and they had a contract for us and we were going to sign it, but the only thing that Patrice Duffy could present to them to explain what we were doing or what we were like was she had tapes of her brother's band. So, I guess they had heard all these tapes…the kids on the entertainment committee, so while we're trying to sell "Polaroid Sausage," which is a film lecture, they keep saying to us, "Well, when does the band play? Well, when does the band play?" And so we said, after a while we just gave up and said, "Well, band plays at 9 o'clock, ok." So, after we signed the contract we realized we had to start a band. And so, there were these remnants of this band, and although Charlie and Steve asked me to join I wasn't in it.

JW: How long did you have between the contract and figuring out…

RC: Oh, I think it was a couple months. So, we could do rehearsals and stuff. We could figure out what we were doing. We only wrote a few songs at that time, but we did a lot of weird covers. Weird for that time. That was like 1970 and we're doing like the Shangri La's "Out in the Streets." You probably don't know that.

JW: Yeah.

RC: "Rhythm of the Falling Rain" by the Cascades. I mean songs that were considered real cheesy back then and in the late 60's early 70's we were playing like the really cheesy songs from the early 60's. Uh, "Last Kiss" by J. Frank Wilson and uh, what was another one? "Double Shot of My Baby's Love." We were just coming up with the most ridiculous songs.

JW: Cheesy.

RC: Yeah. The cheesiest songs we knew when we were growing up and those were the songs we were going to do. Bands weren't really doing that at that time. Plus, we had a couple of accordion players. Stevie Thunder and Charles Rocket both played accordion. That was their instrument. So, we had a band with two accordion players.

JW: Which, is not a common thing that you would see on the stage.

RC: Yeah, and that was the primary instrument of the band. The band was centered around the accordion. So, we weren't doing Cajun stuff. (Like Clinton Chenier)

JW: And what was your role?

RC: I was singing, playing the harmonica, and also I had gotten myself a clarinet about a year, a year and a half before that and started playing that, so there were a couple of times where I played clarinet. And, later I got saxophones. Some friends of mine chipped in and got me an alto sax and then I bought a tenor and a C-Melody and stuff. A C-Melody, by the way, is an ancient saxophone. They stopped making it in the 1950's, but that was my preferred saxophone. It was between an alto and a tenor, but its tone, its range was very similar to my vocal range, so I really liked it a lot.

JW: Yeah. And you just taught yourself how to play?

RC: Yeah.

JW: And then what was the name of the band again?

RC: Well, what happened is, here's the problem. When we first started working with "Polaroid Sausage" we just changed the name of the band every time we played.

JW: Ok.

RC: Well, the first night when we played that gig at Connecticut College…and we also started signing contracts with other people soon after that. We still didn't have a name. When we played that night we were the "Swinging Potatoes" the first set and then we were "Electric Driveway" and then we were "Iron Grandmother" and we played another gig as "Electric Driveway" and we were just making up the names as we went along. But that was too confusing you know.

JW: Then people didn't know who you were.

RC: Right. You're certainly not going to gain a fan base by changing the name of your band every time that you play. So, we had to find a permanent name and that took a while. But we came up with the "Fabulous Motels," which was kind of a compromise; because that was the one everybody could live with. It didn't mean anything and we uh, Dan Gosh had a suggestion: the Windbreakers. He played toy drums in the band by the way.

JW: Toy drums? Like little kid's ones?

RC: Yeah, a little toy drum set. He was more like…he was a visual thing.

JW: He was like the amusement on the stage.

RC: Well yeah. Basically, we're talking about a band which was primarily made up of visual arts painters and film makers and stuff like that.

JW: So, it wasn't just the music. It was the whole image.

RC: Yeah. It was a whole surface culture. So…we…finally latched onto that and that's what happened and we started playing gigs as the "Fabulous Motels," but like I said the first three or four gigs that we played were under all sorts of different names. We never really became like an established popular band in Rhode Island. We were very underground. Where we were established, we were like the house band at RISD.

JW: Ok, so wait, now you…how many people were at RISD? There were how many of you at that point?

RC: Well, the band…let's see now, in the band was Stevie and I were at URI, Barbara had gone to Vernon Court. We used to have female dance troop, The Tantalizing Tampoons.

JW: And they were just like friends of yours?

RC: Oh, yeah. We were just like this artist collective type thing. Yeah, there was this gang. There were ten of us. There was Barbara, Bonita and Mary, and Mary and Bonita were at RISD, Barbara had gone to Vernon Court, uh, Stevie and I were at URI, Charlie was at RISD, Dan Gosch was from RISD, John Scherff who was the guitar player was also at RISD, Sport Fisher (Dave Hanson), who was a key member of this whole thing, was from RISD and played drums and sang and Domino Floater, our bass player, Billie Bradshaw, he was just like a legendary local beatnik guy who was a very good bass player and he used to play in a band with Martin Mull the comedian. They had a band called "Soop." You don't know who Martin Mull is. He was a movie actor and comedian. Used to have a TV show called "Fernwood Tonight".

JW: No, I don't know.

RC: Which grew out of "Mary Hartman," another TV show. These are like 70's TV shows. Well, Marty was also a regular on Roseanne. Anyway, he's a RISD guy and we used to play with him and there was a whole group of us. We were all pals. So, it was mostly RISD, most of the people were from around RISD and also the rest of us all hung out around there. Well we became like the favorite band there.

JW: Yeah. So everyone at RISD knew who you were.

RC: Oh yeah. Exactly, exactly. The first night David Byrne, who started the "Talking Heads," came to Providence from Baltimore he was doing our intermission act, because his best friend, his roommate from Baltimore, Mark Kehoe, had already enrolled at RISD and they had done an act back in Baltimore called "Bizadi," which was David on violin and Mark on accordion. They did our intermission act, so I met David like the first night he was in Providence. He was lured there by Mark, who had told him about there was a cool scene going on and the cool scene was The Motels' scene that Mark was part of with us, Mark hung around with us. So, he immediately fell in with us and eventually tried out for a version of the "Motels"/"Young Adults," which was the later band, and didn't make the band as the guitar player…so. But I mean virtually, every major event that they had at RISD, where they had a band, we were it, we were like the house band at RISD. And we played numerous times at Brown, URI, and Rhode Island College we used to do, and basically we did… Yale and we played at colleges…

JW: So, people knew who you were at that time?

RC: Sort of. Well, if you were playing close attention.

JW: I mean if you were into that stuff it seems that people knew.

RC: If you were into the arts. Yeah, we were much more…we were straddling the art and rock and roll scene. But a lot of the rock and roll people didn't know us that well, because we only played these big outdoor concerts, but we were always like the…you know if anybody saw us we were like the oddest thing there, so they remembered. But we didn't really penetrate the mainstream rock and roll world in Rhode Island.

JW: Well, yeah, because you were different.

RC: But we did penetrate the arts scene in New York, New Haven, Providence, and to a certain extent some places in Massachusetts. The other thing too, you got to remember, the bands who played in night clubs on a regular basis. Basically, did cover tunes. Very few of them were able to uh, continue to work all the time and be playing original work. So, what you did was cover tunes. But we didn't do that, except for these weird cover tunes.

JW: With accordions and all your…

RC: We were doing weird things and also cover songs that nobody else covered, because they were considered cheesy and embarrassing.

JW: They were the weird songs that people didn't listen to.

RC: Yeah, I mean people were covering songs that were like the cool songs that everybody liked and we were covering the cheesy songs that people were trying to forget, like "Palisade's Park," stuff like that. We used to do a version of Bert Kaempfert's… the "Motels"… did Bert Kaempfert's "Wonderland By Night." We used to introduce it by talking about Bert Kaempfert being a German…uh… big band artist, who uh, made a big comeback after the Nazis blew over. It was just like, and yeah he was a German band leader who had this hit song "Wonderland By Night," which was a big hit in the early 60's and was an instrumental, and it went (Rudy makes the sound of the instruments.) It was like this ballad with a lead trumpet. What we did, was we played the song…the lead trumpet was played by Charlie with his mouth. (Rudy makes the same noise)

JW: Yeah, into the mike.

RC: Oh yeah, he did a beautiful like mouth trumpet, which goes back to the Mills Brothers, who used to do mouth trumpet stuff. They used to do instrumental solos just vocally. So, although that wasn't what we were thinking of at the time, we were just thinking "This is really stupid." And we played "Blue Moon." I played drums on "Blue Moon" and uh, we would switch off instruments and stuff like that. The musicianship got better as time went on. We lasted for 3 years.

JW: And when did it, what year was it when it ended?

RC: '70-73. When we started out the musicianship was very loose.

JW: Yeah, you were just like oh, we'll be a band now.

RC: Yeah, and I was the loosest of the loose…believe me. And what we went on to do after that I was still the worst musician. But…um…, I'm trying to think, but the… that's what we did. We played these college concerts. But then we got hooked up with this place called the Mercer Arts Center in New York City, back in about '72. We started playing there and this was like the kind of bridge club between "Max's Kansas City", which was the hip place in the 60's up until the early 70's in New York and when that whole Bob Dylan/ Andy Warhol scene…cause that's who hung around there…those guys, then all of a sudden this new scene was cropping up at the uh, Mercer and that only lasted for about a year and a half. That's because the Mercer…the building the Mercer was in collapsed.

JW: That's awful.

RC: Yeah, it was on the back of a welfare hotel called "Broadway Central." You had to use elevators of the "Broadway Central" to get to the Mercer. So it only lasted a while. And then within about six months of when that happened, Hilly Chrystal started CBGB's, which then became the club. For a while it had been the Mercer scene. So, we did really well there. And by that time, when we played there, we had been doing it for a couple of years and we had actually gelled into a great new band. But it still had all these eccentricities and all these quirks which were just completely off the wall. But, like I said, we got to New York and by then we had played for a couple of years.

JW: Yeah you were a developed band.

RC: Yeah, we were pretty smooth. We had developed this act that was completely eccentric, but is obviously developed and worked out, so the first night we performed at the Mercer Arts Center it absolutely blew their minds. We were playing at the big hipster bar and they couldn't believe what they were seeing.

JW: Yeah, you were completely new and different.

RC: New and different and also knew what they were doing.

JW: Right it wasn't just like getting up on stage and like at Connecticut College when you first started off.

RC: Exactly, but the thing that's interesting, is that was the kind of…that was the style. You could tell that that was a great part of the appeal. That was the primary thing about it, yet it was also professional. So, it was very strange.

(JW and RC take a break)

JW: Ok, so from where we left off…after the club fell.

RC: Well, before the club fell, we had played a number of things at the Mercer Arts Center and that was very helpful. Obviously, at that point we were trying to pursue perhaps a record contract or something like that. A couple of things cropped up while we were playing at the Mercer and one was Columbia/Epic Records took an interest and we did a showcase there and they had us come in and do some sessions in their studio in New York…you know, supposedly if they like it we would get a record deal. That didn't happen.

JW: Did you have, had you made up an album?

RC: Oh no, no. Because the thing was in those days you didn't have the small…

JW: You couldn't do it yourself.

RC: Yeah, right. Do it yourself stuff didn't really start happening until like at least the late 60's. And also it was an awful lot of work and our primary work was just trying to write songs and perform and stuff like that. And that's why a lot of rock and roll bands fall apart, because the business end of it is really…very critical and that's not why we got into it at the first point. Unless someone else found them and took care of them, then chances are it's not going to work out. So, we uh…we did…The Mercer Arts Center was helpful in the fact that our first gig there we got a really nice write up in "Variety," actually it was a very strong write up in "Variety."

JW: Is that…?

RC: That's like the show biz bible. Yeah, you know.

JW: That's a big thing.

RC: Yeah. It was good. It was helpful. And then there was also a write up, a nice blurb in "Esquire" magazine, which was probably a more prominent magazine back in 1972 then it is now, but anyway a couple of good things like that came about and we also uh…There was a movie that was being considered out on the west coast by a guy named Ross Hunter and he wanted to make a movie about a really weird rock and roll band, was the theme. And we were being considered and there was some band on the west coast. I don't know who that was that was being considered as the band to be in this movie. Unfortunately, just prior to this, he had put out a musical version of "Lost Horizon," which tanked so badly that all of a sudden he was no longer a producer of movies. So that was it for him. So, the vagaries in show business that you learn about. So anyway, all these interesting things were happening at that time. But then also, we started…then the band broke up. Why, I can't remember.

JW: so, this was like 1973?

RC: Yeah, it was like late 1973.

JW: Were things just slowing down?

RC: Well, it's just that we didn't see any progress coming and different people wanted to go in different directions. I mean Charlie had certain ideas and Dave, who was the other primary guy in the band, Dave and Charlie and I were kind of like the guys in the band…uh, who were, more Dave and Charlie than me, we were writing the songs and stuff like that. I wrote a few songs, but not a whole lot. Those guys were writing a lot of the songs. And so we…And I didn't really, I was starting to think I got to get serious, I'd better become a social worker or a teacher or something like that.

JW: Were you all based in Providence still?

RC: Um, by this point I was living in Providence. Yeah, it was always based in Providence, but I left URI while the band was still going on and I moved to Providence in '72. I was living here in '72-73 and then the band broke up and after that happened, soon after that I moved to Newport for a while and started to do like a regular job. I was working with folks at the Rhode Island Association of Retarded Citizens. I was working for a sheltered workshop at Newport which was for folks who were mentally retarded, who I might add…What happened was, while I was doing that for a couple off years, initially my thought was like this is probably the work I should be doing. Also, I'll leave this rock and roll artsy stuff. But, the thing was that that was still deeply in me number 1 and number 2, the people I was working with, the clients, were incredibly inspirational. They would do amazingly creative things and frequently they were told that it was inappropriate behavior and I wasn't finding it inappropriate behavior. I was finding the responses by the allegedly "normal" people to be inappropriate. Actually what happened was, I did that for a while, maybe a year and a half and then I came back to Providence and I called up all the people that used to be in the "Motels" and a couple of people and we had brunch at Leo's, which was a new place at the time. This is about early '75. They used to have brunch there at the time.

JW: Where was it located?

RC: Leo's was near a place called "Improv" there… "The Atomic Grill." It's 99 Chestnut Street, just past the overpass, the 195 overpass was just next to it, the beginning of Chestnut Street there. That was the time, early 1975, I had just moved back to Providence and I called most of those people up and I said "I want to start a band. Who wants to do it? Who doesn't?"

JW: Yeah, you were like I'm not going into this work.

RC: Yeah. Well, I just came to the conclusion that this is what I do and this is not what I do. I didn't fit in with the social worker and teacher folks. I mean I like them and I had a certain interest in it, but it didn't get me excited like other stuff did. Like writing songs and creating other things, theatrical events or whatever. Involving in film making and all stuff like that. So, I moved back to Providence and we started rehearsing and I was on unemployment and that was good, because I could live on it basically.

JW: And start doing the music.

RC: Yeah, collecting unemployment, and uh, cadging down another little job on the side or something like that and we started rehearsing and that band was called "The Young Adults" that we started, eventually became the name we took. We rehearsed for over a year before we played.

JW: And who was in the band?

RC: Well Sportfisher, Dave Hanson, who was in the original "Motels," one of the creators of that was in it with me.

JW: What was his nick name?

RC: Sportfisher. His uh, his real name is Dave Hanson. He's a great musician. Very, very funny guy too. And Dave and the other guy who started it was a guy named Jeff Shore, who in the latter days of the "Motels," Stevie Thunder had left the band and so we needed another accordion player, which we were really looking for. We were trying to be more of a regular professional band. In the last year of the "Motels" we had a guy named Jeff Shore play the piano. And he also helped start this. So Jeff and me and Dave, who were doing the "Young Adults" and got other people.

JW: You needed a guitarist right? That was when…

RC: Well, actually the David Byrne chapter was about a year before that.

JW: Oh, ok.

RC: But yeah, those guys at that point they had moved to New York and were starting the "Talking Heads" band. You know they were just starting to play gigs. They probably started to play gigs about six month before we did. But they were fortunately at the right place at the right time, because a scene never coalesced around the Mercer Arts Center, but it did around CBGB's, which was the neighborhood club around that time and what happened there was all the Providence, RISD expatriates would show up to see them play and so they could fill the room, because it was a small room and there was a lot of those folks around. So, that helped make an impression there and what happened was that all these rock critics happened to be living in New York at the time and they started writing about them and by their third gig they had a big story In the village voice you know. So, it was good timing and they were a great band, but there are a lot of great bands that that never happens for, but it did happen for them at that time and that was terrific.

JW: So, the "Young Adults" are together now. Where do you start playing?

RC: The first thing that we did was we played at…see, also all this other stuff was happening at Providence at that time. Providence was still a dead city… That was the name of a film that Mark Kehoe, David Byrne's roommate gave it, back in '73. But it was still pretty much a dead city. In a sense that this renaissance thing was like 20 years off. What was going on the downtown retail had not rebounded and was still pretty dead downtown. What happened was Lupo got his place around this time. Josh Miller got the Met around the time, Jon Rector started Leo's around this time, all these little places started growing up in all these areas where there was no real clientele. They were able to get these places for a song, because it was dead. So, we uh, the first place we played was 4th of July, 1976, the bicentennial. It wasn't a bicentennial event. Leo's had been around for a year and a half by that point and they had a parking lot in the back and we set up and played in the parking lot in the back.

JW: On the 4th of July?

RC: Yeah, and a lot of people showed up and it was a crazy scene and then we started playing at Lupo's and a few other things here and there. I'm trying to think of where else. Harpo's down in Newport and slowly we were starting to build somewhat of a following, but what really made a huge difference was in early 1977, a guy named John Meyers, who was doing some free lance writing and photography for the Journal, came to us and said that he wanted to do a story about the band. He had seen the band and was really impressed and stuff like that. And he could sense that there was this bourgeoning rock and roll club scene that was starting to happen in Providence and we said, "Yeah." The Providence Journal used to have a magazine that they published themselves. Instead of running the "National Parade" magazine they had the Rhode Islander, which was their own insert magazine on Sundays.

JW: Oh, ok.

RC: And we were on the, I can show it to you.

JW: Oh, yeah that would be great.

RC: We were on the cover. There was a cover story about a rock and roll band. This had never happened. You see rock and roll…

JW: Was this right after you had played on the 4th of July?

RC: No, this was probably, more than six months later. You know we're building a small following, but this really makes it, really pushes things. This was the kind of publicity that nobody around here had ever gotten before. Yeah, because they had never written a serious story about rock and roll. (Lighting his cigar) So, you've got to understand that prior to the early 70's, almost the mid 70's, rock and roll was looked at upon by the mainstream media as pretty much kids acting wacky and they'll all get over it soon and the big bands will be back in a couple months. And that was the attitude. It was looked upon more as a cultural phenomenon, rather than an artistic thing.

JW: Yeah, something that wasn't going to last.

RC: Now obviously…Rolling Stone started probably around '68 or something like that, there were a number of rock and roll publications that did take it seriously, but for the most part the mainstream media did not. But the mainstream media is being influenced by the alternative press and the other media and the rock and roll media and also younger people are getting into journalism and all of a sudden they're seeing rock and roll as an art form in and of itself.

JW: Yeah, it's not going to go away.

RC: Yeah, and it takes time. I mean I think if you were in New York or San Francisco or Chicago or something like that there's more of that going on. But when you get into the hinter lands like Providence…

JW: People hadn't come to that point yet.

RC: Right, the mainstream hasn't. They're a little more resistant to change. So in 1977, I think it was March 1977…lets see how good my memory is…we get this cover story in the "Rhode Islander" and that is like all of sudden thousands… tens of thousands of people all of a sudden know our name, know who we are. People who aren't regular club goers. Some of the regular club goers picked up on this, but that kind of multiplies things. So, within short order, within a few months we were like the virtually most popular band in Rhode Island. And I would give a lot of that, I mean some of that was that, it slowly built, it built. Because our original…I'm sorry I have a cold. That's why my voice is so deep.

JW: That's ok.

RC: You know, and other things are going on at the same time too. By 197..2 I think it is the drinking age is down to 18 for people.

JW: So, younger kids are going to the clubs.

RC: Exactly, well also…That's why I say that Lupo's… and you know that it has to do with timing too. Lupo's and these other clubs, the "Living Room," everything like that. All of a sudden there's a market for them. When that happens…also, I'm getting ahead of myself…there's a market there, because now all of a sudden people who are 18 are legally able to drink alcoholic beverages.

JW: But they want to go out.

RC: They want to go out. And another reason why they want to go out is this too, you have to remember back in that time there was no cable TV. VCRs hadn't…I don't think they had even come out.

JW: No, they came out in like the 80's.

RC: Well, I think it was like the late 70's, but it was still a couple years off from the mid 70's. So, there's not that, there's no internet, there's no…I mean all these things that are entertainment type things that keep people in the home, they're not there.

JW: People want to get out.

RC: Yeah, people who want to be entertained have got to get out if they want to hear music. So, all of a sudden if you're 16, 17, 18, like I said it's supposed to be 18.

JW: Yeah, you know how things work.

RC: Yeah, I'm sure it's still pretty loose today, but they all of a sudden are able to go out and they want to see bands and we were there at that time. So, like I said, it's all about timing. It's a lot of everything. And so, to go on with what was going on with us, was the fact that when we were doing the circus, when we were doing the show, it was unlike anything else. It was like total roots were in the "Motels." What we had done before, which was much more of a theatrical thing. So, we were like heavily theatrical and continued to be, but now we were a much more streamline and professional band. And also having been doing it for 6-7 years at this point we were much better at writing songs, we learned much more about song craft and things like that. And so we were there at the right place and the right time and we got to be very popular. I mean really, we were extremely popular in Rhode Island. Very popular in the Boston area. Got lots of write up in the Boston magazines and started to draw big crowds there.

JW: And you were playing in Boston as well?

RC: Oh yeah, oh yeah. You see the "Motels" didn't play too much in Boston, but the "Young Adults" played a lot up there. Of course the New York scene that we were involved in back with the Mercer Arts Center was all gone at that point. So, breaking New York became another challenge. We actually turned down CBGB's in '78 I think it was, because our thought was they wanted us to play, they asked us to play. Our thought was, "Well, that place has already signed all the bands that are going to be signed. Plus it's a small club." We ended up playing at a couple different places there. There was actually a place called Hurrahs where we actually made money, which is very unusual in New York. I mean I remember making over a thousand dollars for a night at Hurrahs.

JW: Wow.

RC: Yeah. Well they shut that place down pretty quickly, cause the other club owners were pissed that they were paying real money. You know.

JW: Yeah, they couldn't get the bands.

RC: But we used to play at another place, in Columbus Circle. We played there a lot. It was down in a basement and I can't remember the name of it. But, when we played down there, there were always interesting people hanging around there. I remember one night playing at Trax, that was the name of it, T-R-A-X and we used to be regulars there. We played every few months, and that place, it was not big, but we kept an enthusiastic response there and I remember we knew people in the business so they would come down. Joel Dorn, who was a jazz producer for Atlantic for many, many years and uh, Bob Thiele Jr. was there once. John Thiele Sr. was John Coltrane's producer at Impulse.

JW: Oh, ok.

RC: So, he was like a kind of an idol. Leon Redbone…people like that. Members of The Band. Stuff like that. There was a guy, uh…well one night we were down there and we knew about this guy because we did follow the "National Lampoon" magazine and radio hour at that time and they had, a lot of those people had been involved with the early "Saturday Night Live" and all this and we were down there and this guy shows up and he's wearing an "Animal House" jacket. Now "Animal House" the movie hadn't come out yet, and it's this guy Doug Kenny, who co-wrote "Animal House" and also co-wrote "Caddyshack." He was very involved he was one of the editors of the "National Lampoon" and I remember him being out there one night. He ended up tagging along with us all night. So, that was just fun and interesting and different and you know there are all sorts of interesting people we would meet there. As far as that was concerned, it was very gratifying to be successful on that level, but it didn't translate into getting a record contract or anything. And then we made a documentary film with Jimmy Wolpaw over at Lupo's called "Cobra Snake for a Necktie" with Bo Diddley, who was one of the first kind of national fame people that Lupo hired for the club. That was interesting and fun and later on we did this film "Complex World," a feature film. There's the poster for it right there.

JW: When did you do that?

RC: Yeah, oh yeah we were involved in that.

JW: When was it though?

RC: "Complex World" is actually a name of a "Young Adults" song. "Complex World" (the film) didn't come out until 1991. Actually, what happened was the band has ceased…we broke up…and uh.

JW: Oh, and there's a "Motels" poster.

RC: That's a "Motels" poster. That's from about 1971- 72.

JW: So were those the types of things you were posting up to get people to come?

RC: Oh yeah. You can take a look at that. That's the kind of art we were involved in there. The lyrics are on there, "In your Easter bonnet baby, I am numb baby, go, go, go," which was what I wanted to call the "Young Adults" album, but everybody, the producer, who was Lupo, rejected it. He refused to have something as weird as that be the name of the album, but that's what I wanted to call the album. "In your Easter bonnet baby, I am numb baby, go, go, go."

JW: So, you had a "Young Adults" album come out?

RC: Yeah, but there was... it was that we didn't have the money to record and Lupo was doing this movie, so he needed a soundtrack for the movie, so we had a mobile recording unit show up at Lupo's and recorded live.

JW: But this was much later?

RC: Oh yeah, this was like '87.

JW: So, the "Young Adults" broke up in?

RC: Yeah, but in the mean time, while the "Young Adults" is still going on I personally am doing stuff like working with Jeff Carpenter and Mary Lambert doing uh, who were at RISD at the time, doing a movie called "Rapid Eye Movements," which is Jeff and Mary got an American Film Institute grant to make this film and it was really interesting animation at the time. Karen Aqua, who's a well know animation artist based in Boston was also involved in this. And it won some awards, it got some play on early cable TV and it helped Mary Lambert anyway launch her career and she later became the producer of all the early Madonna videos. Everything from "Borderline" to "Like A Prayer."

JW: Yeah, the crazy ones.

RC: Yeah the first five years or so of Madonna all the videos were done by Mary Lambert.

JW: So, were you acting in…like "Rapid Eye Movement" what were you doing.

RC: Well, it was an animation thing, so I did voices and I also co-wrote the script and I also co-wrote the music. Because the music was supposed to be…they had a recording session for the voices, but it was done at the studio and I happened to had done some work at the studio before and they had some instruments at the studio and what happened was I sat down at the piano and what I did was, when we did the soundtrack one of the things I did to inspire, there were like four of us I think that were doing all the voices for the characters.

JW: Like what kinds of voices were you doing?

RC: Well, my normal voice was the voice of Polipholo, who was the main character, comes from some Greek myth or something. Believe me I tried to make the script a little more understandable, but I don't know how well I was able to achieve that, but anyway what happened was when we were doing the recording of the voices for the thing, you know we had this all day session and about a few hours into it I decided that we should call out for liquor, so they brought alcoholic beverages into the studio and we started drinking and after a while during certain breaks they kept the tape running and we started like playing the piano and…

JW: Fooling around.

RC: Doing songs and some of that remained on the soundtrack, so I get music credit on the thing too. It was one of those things where it was just like said, lets leave some of that stuff.

JW: Yeah, spontaneous.

RC: Yeah, because from my perspective the whole in and of itself was beyond understanding and it's great animation, but the whole film…I don't know what the hell it was. It was like a dream sequence stuff. But like I said, Mary has done real well. She has done about four or five Hollywood films.

JW: So, that was the time toward the end of the "Young Adults?"

RC: Yeah, the end of the "Young Adults." At the time the "Young Adults" and another club opened called The West End and Jimmy Wolpaw is running that and is Lupo's best friend and a film maker. He had done this Bo Diddley film. So, Jimmy is all of a sudden the manager of The West End and what he wants to do there is show films.

JW: And that was in Providence?

RC: That was in Providence. That was actually kind of across the street from Lupo's. And so what happened was it only lasted a couple of years, because the building was slated to be torn for this parking lot and a new federal building, which is what's there now. So, what happened was, there was this strip of buildings, it was The West End. There was a fortune teller, a dirty book store, there was a uh, The West End was originally an Italian Restaurant and there was the original Living Room and there was like a couple, a strip of buildings and they were all joined together and "The West End" became this screening place, this place where they showed films all the time and Jimmy was concerned, because this was his idea, but he wanted to show these like Japanese and European art films.

JW: Japanese films?

RC: Well, in the sense of "Women in the Dunes" and "Truffnut" and uh…

JW: Just different stuff that wasn't seen…

RC: Yeah, art films. But the thing was he wasn't drawing big. So after a few months of this Jimmy was like how can we draw people here? And I said, "Well Jimmy, here's the problem. The people that want to see art films are… the distractions in the bar were kind of a problem for them and the people that want to go to a bar to see a movie don't want to see art films. I said, "So, there's a disconnect here. I want to encourage you to keep showing these really cool films, because I like them too, but it's not going to draw big. I said, "If you want to draw big," and this is myself and Jimmy and a guy named Les Daniels, who had written lots of books, he was a novelist and had written horror genre novels for Scribner's years ago and he's now like the official historian for Marvel Comics. He's a Providence guy and a good friend. Also a musician and so I told… so Les and I were saying, "Ok, Jimmy here's what you do. Show the worst movies ever made." And so I throw into the plan, because I was looking for a job, because I stopped doing the "Young Adults" I didn't have anything to do. I mean I didn't know what I was doing. I was this 'out there' art guy, who is very well known. I was writing newspaper columns.

JW: For?

RC: Well, originally for the New Paper and then for the Providence Eagle and then the New Paper was later bought by the Phoenix and I've been doing that for like twenty five years or so. So, that was one of the things I was doing. I mean in those days you could get by without as much money and that was ok with me and so Les and I were saying, "Show like really bad movies. I will be the MC and I'll talk back to the screen like I do when I'm watching bad TV, I'm watching bad TV and talking back to the screen, making wise cracks.

JW: Like what types of movies were you suggesting?

RC: Well, we didn't suggest any more after that, but he sounded like "Oh, that sounds pretty interesting." And I said "We'll have a whole show around it. I'll be the Comediac, like a maniac comedian. And I'll be Comediac." And I ended up doing this for six years, two nights a week.

JW: So, what types of movies were you showing?

RC: Well, the first movie we ever showed, which was in 1979 was, "Planet Nine from Outer Space." At that point it was not even known, it wasn't even on the cult meter. Now here's the thing, I knew a bit about this stuff, Les Daniels knows virtually everything.

JW: Ok.

RC: Les Daniels and John Peck, the Mad Peck.

JW: Oh yeah, we were looking at some of his stuff.

RC: Mad Peck and Daniels used to, back in the 60's, used to manage the Shipyard Drive In, which was a drive in theater that showed horror movies. And they knew all the horror movies and they knew all the bad ones and they were connoisseurs of the real bad ones like me. So, we got these film catalogs, because in those days there used to be these 16mm rental outfits, there was one in New York, one in LA. Budget Films in LA was great. They had all the cool stuff. I mean you can't even do that anymore. There's no 16mm rental business. It's all schools or libraries or TV stations, they don't do it for outsiders, but those days you could. They used to do that, because there was no video. And it took a number of years before video took over. So, we played "The Creeping Terror," Hershel Gordon Lewis films, Ted Mikels films, "The Corpse Grinders," "The Undertaker and his Pals."

JW: So, did people come?'

RC: Oh, people came.

JW: People loved it. It was just crazy.

RC: I made a living off of this. We would get over fifty people a night on a regular basis and then we came up with…this was not my idea, this was Billy Flanagan's idea. Billy Flanagan is now the vice president of the MTV music groups or something like that.

JW: Yeah, it's huge.

RC: Yeah, he's also a novelist. He's also a published novelist. Now I've got one of his novels up there it's called "A & R."

JW: Oh, ok. Yeah I see it.

RC: And Billy at the time, he was a Rhode Island guy and he was still around at that time and he was writing music stuff for the New Paper and uh, Billy says to me…he was a big "Three Stooges" guy, and he says, "Lets do "Stooge" stuff." I say ok. So we come up with this idea and this is like Les and Billy's idea- The Stooge Symposiums." So, we had this conceit that was based upon the whole thing what it was was the "Three Stooges" will show three "Three Stooge" shorts, which are like twenty minutes, eighteen minutes, something like that. Because this film rental outfit from California had pretty much all of them. So we were like we'll show three "Three Stooge" shorts and we'll have a panel. This was not the same as a regular panel, in other words we won't talk back to the screen, while it's going.

JW: Right, you would have a group of people that would talk.

RC: Right, right. And then I'm sure of course that you recognize the fact that that "Mystery Science Theater" thing was just basically the same idea as my Comediac thing, it's just that it started five years after and there were definitely some similarities and there were definitely some dissimilarities, but that's not the point. I'm sure they were out in Minnesota, so it wasn't like an idea that they got from me at all, because I'm sure they had no idea what was going on in Providence. And they did like deep scripting and we didn't do any of that kind of stuff. And we showed very different films. We showed the like really coolest of the bad films. I mean the really bad, bad stuff. Hershel Gordon Lewis, I mean "Two Thousand Maniacs," "Blood Feast" "Color Me Blood Red." That's a great one. And I mean these films...a lot of the same people came back every week. Because they were just like, couldn't believe the films. They just wanted to know about every bad film that had been made. And we even got into theme nights, like you know racist cartoons, we showed racist cartoons one night and we talked about them.

RC: And you would have a panel right?

RC: Well, not a panel, but we would talk about the racism.

JW: While it was going on?

RC: No, after. We would show the films and then we would discuss them. The thing was that there was an educational component, because it was entertainment, but it was done in a context that kind of, uh, showed that we weren't endorsing the racism of what this was when it was 1946 and they made this stuff. What we're doing is showing that this happened, these people were actually making this and they thought this was ok and we can see what that is.

JW: Yeah, looking at the past.

RC: Well, we would do that. We showed like cartoons, Looney Tunes stuff, like tribute to Daffy Duck, cause he was one of my favorites and so, anyway the Stooges Symposiums, that was amazing. We had moved, when The West End got closed down, because they were knocking down the building, we moved into One Up, which was above Steeple Street and they had a club upstairs called One Up. And the first Stooge Symposium, no I think it was the second Stooge Symposium broke the all time house record. Two people actually, it was in the summer and two people actually had to be carried out, because they passed out. They were jammed in like sardines.

JW: It was so hot people were fainting.

RC: Well, it's just not like that. The whole room capacity thing. This is all being discussed now, because of the Station fire in West Warwick, nobody ever paid any attention to that kind of stuff.

JW: Packed in as many people who wanted to come.

RC: Right. And that is what happened. We had like a zillion people in there. And that was how it was. The Stooge Symposium would be, we would show a Stooge film and then we would, I would be the MC, Jeff Shore used to play piano in he "Young Adults," Billy Flanagan, who is like now vice president of MTV, and a guy named Jimmy Kelleher, who's now an attorney, but who was one of Billy's best friends. That was the standard panel. We sometimes had Louie Camp, this crazy saxophone player, who has now passed away, would come in and be part of the panel. But basically that was the panel. And the conceit was this: We would basically credit the Three Stooges with every cultural…cultural element of the 20th century. So in other words we would take the films and we would then explain what the films really meant and it was a complete exaggeration.

JW: Yeah, of course. I mean they're just bopping each other over the head.

RC: Oh yeah. Right. Like we talked about the idea like obviously the Beatles got their hair cut idea from Moe. And another extremely popular musician, Art Garfunkel, of Simon and Garfunkel, that's Larry.

JW: So, you just tied them into everything.

RC: Everything. Like the Catholic Church, World War II, the Depression, the Marshal Plan. We would just make these ridiculous leaps into that and we would also end the evening with what we called "the demonstration of the Stoogely arts," which was to show people how to throw pies, or seltzer bottles, or eye pokes and we would actually demonstrate how it was done.

JW: Would you have people come up on stage?

RC: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well the big thing was everybody would get to pie somebody. Everybody loved that, you know. And I can't remember how we carved the whole thing out or who came up with what idea, but I remember it was definitely Bill Flanagan who's initial idea was to do Three Stooge stuff and then from there on we all threw it around. Me, Billy and Jeff and Jim kind of thrust it around and like you know Jim had actually written like Three Stooges type songs. I mean he played the guitar and sang these songs and I'm trying to remember…and it was like "Abraham Martin and John and he was like (Rudy sings) Anybody here seen my old friend Moe Howard? Can you tell me where he's gone? Now I thought I saw him selling Brito down in the streets. You know and I just look around and he's gone. Anybody here seen my old friend Larry?" And you know it was just like that kind of thing. And we would do stuff like…uh it was just…

JW: I'm sure it was just hilarious.

RC: Uh…it was just the stupidest stuff. But at this point you started out just being amateur hour, just totally self indulgent, and just doing stuff that amuses yourself and if it doesn't amuse me, then it doesn't work as far as I'm concerned, you just don't even deal with it. So, what happens is that after a while you become proficient enough at it that you're now, by the time I'm doing Comediac I've been doing professional performance stuff for like ten, fifteen years, so we know how to put on a show.

JW: Yeah. People were enjoying it.

RC: And it was an interesting crowd that used to come. We used to have these professors used to come regularly and historians and a lot of government figures and stuff like that.

JW: It's such a mix. That's interesting.

RC: Mixed with club kids, rock and rollers and cocaine dealers and stuff like that.

JW: And that's great. To be able to do something where you are bringing in such a mixture that would never be in the same room.

RC: Yeah, that was what Comediac was like. I remember Nick Lowe showing up one night and Nicky was playing in town and I had met him through different things and I was like "What are you doing in Providence?" and he was like (in a raspy voice) "Oh, I got to see it." And the guys from the "Fabulous Thunderbirds" and like the "Talking Heads" and stuff. And that was another draw, because the fact is that I knew all the rock and roll guys.

JW: All these people were coming to see it.

RC: If they had the time before a gig they would come and check it out if they could. Usually that didn't work out, because the gigs were running counter to my…I mean I remember I couldn't see the "Talking Heads"…the tour that they did the "Stop Making Sense" film on. I got there early and David got me a whole ton of tickets.

JW: For friends.

RC: Yeah, and we were back stage for a long time and actually that was the first time I saw Chris and Tina's oldest kid Robbie, cause he was there on tour with them, you know a little tiny kid, who is now like in college and stuff and uh, we were all back stage and I couldn't see the show. I couldn't see the show. I had to split, because I had to do the show.

JW: The show. Right.

RC: Because they were at the Civic Center and I was at One Up.

(Switching Tapes)

JW: So, Comediac.

RC: Well, the other thing about Comediac was that after about a couple of years into it, you know it was basically going on at the night club level, but basically, I was looking for something more sustaining than working at night clubs. After doing it for a couple of years I got some interest from Channel 12 television, it was owned by a different outfit then, I can't remember who, but the guy who was the head guy there, the program director had gotten in touch with me and was interested in doing this like you know, a series of bad movies on TV. I'm trying to remember what that name of that guy was, lets see, what was the name? It was Low Budget Playhouse, but we actually shot a pilot over there and unfortunately in the middle of shooting the pilot, which was done in spare time because none of this was budgeted, the guy left and took a job with one of the newly emerging cable stations. This was the early 80's.

JW: Cable was just starting.

RC: Yeah, this guy was hip. This guy knew. He was an older guy. He was like in his forties or something, but he knew that cable was an ongoing, was going to be a big deal. So, he got out of network TV, he got out of working for a local affiliate and started working for a cable and nobody else had any interest, because basically local television didn't have a lot of vision from what I can tell. And what we were talking about was doing basically Comediac for television. And I gave them a list of about a hundred films, because they buy film packages at TV. I said see which of these films are available.

JW: Oh, as a package that you would buy from a company?

RC: Right. Whoever owns the rights at that particular time and so they… and in those days also, we're talking over twenty years ago, the local television stations buy packages and on weekends particularly they would run films.

JW: Like a series? Or they would mix it up?

RC: Well, not so much of the films. They would just have scheduled programming. I mean the whole structure of the business is very different nowadays and in those days it was very different and in those days it was different, so local television stations bought film packages, and so what I did was I gave them a list and I said, "Any of these films show up on a film package, buy it. These are ones that we can do that work with Comediac." And the idea was…Oh, I know what it was. It was called "Low Budget Playhouse," or something like that and it was virtually a spoof. I mean "Low Budget Playhouse" was written in like almost like crayons on a bed sheet. That was like the logo thing and I had other people, there were a couple other people who were involved with me like kind of like regulars and we would cut into the films when something ridiculous happened.

JW: So, it would cut in and show you instead?

RC: Yeah right, cut in when a particularly foolish moment happened. I would come in and say, "I hope you noticed the fact that the guy who is supposed to be playing the doctor here looks like he's a star of a porno film. And the hospital that they're in is obviously a very cheap motel room." And you know just things like that. That was the way that it was set up. We only got to shoot most of a pilot and then the guy left. I can't remember the guy's name I think it was Bob…

JW: Did it ever really…?

RC: No. Nothing ever…because no one else was interested. And also I think that the TV business was in a flux at the time and as it turned out what we were proposing to do, and I say this is also three or four years before "Mystery Science Theater."

JW: Ok, so it's like19...?

RC: Oh, we're talking about 198... 2…maybe something like that and uh, I think that…I can understand being very conservative about the whole thing. I mean it's not like somebody's stupid or something like that. It was just that the whole nature of the business was evolving very quickly and we uh… I can't keep up with the business ends of things. I just knew how to do an entertainment program and I thought that this would work out good with TV at the time, but TV was taken. So, that remained a night club thing from about 1979-80 to about 1985.

JW: And were you playing at different night clubs or were you just playing at…

RC: Well, we started out in The West End, The West End got knocked down, we went to One Up, we were at One Up for probably three or four years then we… moved to different places for different reasons. Then they closed One Up, so I went to the Brown, what do you call it? The Brown Alumni bar, or whatever it is. The Grad Center Bar? The Grad Center Bar.

JW: I don't know.

RC: Well, there you go.

JW: Probably doesn't exist anymore.

RC: Well, I don't know.

JW: The Underground.

RC: Yeah, it was an underground type thing. That's where it was.

JW: Oh, ok. That's what we call it, if it was the same place.

RC: Yeah. The Grad Center Bar and from the Grad Center Bar it moved to the Last Call. The Call. That night club. Yeah, it moved around. Basically, not based on the fact that anybody said, "All right we don't want to do this anymore." It was based on the fact that these places were closing down.

JW: Yeah, it was still the same show, just different locations. Or same stuff you were doing.

RC: Yeah. And it worked better in certain places, because of the layout of the room. Is it a good place to see a movie? Can you hear it clearly? Can you see it clearly? Is it that kind of thing. And then also the other thing that changed, once again, is the technology changes. All of a sudden you're not able to rent 16mm films anymore. Because you basically can't anymore. And as a matter of fact, the last probably year and a half of the whole thing I was probably the only person who was allowed to use because I had this long standing relationship with them.

JW: Where were you getting them?

RC: From Budget Films in LA.

JW: You were having them sent to you?

RC: Yes. Of course from Los Angeles. And you know what was funny, sometimes I would get…they had the mailing labels and sometimes plaster the mailing labels one on top of another and I get "Glen or Glenda" and I rip the thing off and I find out that the last person who rented the film was Steven Spielberg.

JW: So, you would see his address too.

RC: Yeah that kind of stuff. Well, one of the films we played regularly for many years, and we had this whole kind of group of films that we showed many times like "Planet Nine from Outer Space" or you know the Ed Wood films. We promoted Ed Wood for years before that film came out or before anybody, before there was any talk about him about being this cult…anti-genius. We were in fact so into Ed Wood back in the early 80's that we showed a failed pilot, a western pilot that he wrote for TV and Budget had all this stuff. Budget was fantastic. They had wonderful stuff.

JW: Was it just because people were using VCR's now there wasn't the interest? Is that why you couldn't get them?

RC: Well, no. A lot of things happened. The technology changed and with that change was people's behavior patterns too. People stopped going out as often as they did. I mean it was not unusual for people to go out three or four nights a week to hear music or some other type.

JW: Before.

RC: Yeah. Back in those days.

JW: Yeah, there was in-home entertainment was starting.

RC: In-home entertainment has a big way on the way people behave and the way people live and that was part of it and also part of it… Talk to anybody who does night clubs and they'll tell you about how things have changed from what it was twenty-twenty five years ago and what it is now. Even the ones who are successfully doing it. What they do is very different.

JW: Things cost more.

RC: IT is a different world. IT is a different world. So, there's that and there's…and you know, yeah I think they were there for a long time. And also the people who were there initially would come all the time and stuff like that. They're getting older too. You have to interest a new generation and their interested in other things perhaps. I mean I always picked up younger people. I think if some of the people who are in their late teens early twenties, up to thirty now, could witness some of the stuff we were doing back then, I think they would be thrilled. I think they would just say, "Holy Shit! This is great" I really think they would, but it's not possible to do it. The conditions are different, the world is different, the technology is different, people's patterns of living and cultural things are different.

JW: What's accepted isn't the same.

RC: Yeah, all the stuff that I thought was cool back then is still considered cool by a lot of the kids. You know kids who are with it still know that like, "Jeez, "Kind of Blue" is fucking great." Something like that you know. If they hear "Afro Blue" by John Coltrane "Live at Birdland" it will rip their fucking heads off. There is no doubt about it in my mind if they get to hear that. It's just that the opportunity to hear that isn't what it used to be. And even then it wasn't, because that was not a huge…Coltrane was just for certain people, but believe me you listen to "Afro Blue," just listen to that live in a night club, at Birdland, recorded in like 1963. I mean it's just so intense, it's so heavy. And the interplay with Elvin Jones on drums and Coltrane and McCoy Tyner and how they build the tension and what they do. It's just…it's so intense. It's so heavy. And anybody who understands music, whether rock and roll, hip hop, anything like that, they'll instantly be able to connect with that. It's that heavy. It's that good. It's that powerful. So, anyway, we did that stuff and also in the early 80's I was…cable TV started, so the first cable TV company that was to go online in Rhode Island was Cox Cable. Of course Cox owns everything now.

JW: Yeah, I was just thinking I saw that on a bus today.

RC: Yeah right, exactly. But in those days they only ran the Cranston and Johnston franchise. They were spread all over, because franchises were basically doled out to people you know and for seventy five dollars for life…the history of cable is a real disgrace. Seventy five dollars for life. You didn't have to pay a licensing fee after that.

JW: That didn't last long.

RC: Yeah. There was a guy named…there was a guy who ran the PUC, the Public Utilities Commission at the time set it up and it was set up in the mid 70's before anybody even knew what cable TV even was. So they didn't know it had potential. They didn't know anything. And this guy set it up and it was a political scam. It's a classic Rhode Island scam and I don't want to get into that, but the fact is…

JW: Cable was coming in and things were changing.

RC: Yeah, so cable came in and the first place to actually go online and have a studio that could produce, locally produce cable shows was Cox in Cranston/ Johnston. Before Providence, before Pawtucket, before anywhere in East Providence, anywhere. They had a studio up and running first. This was about 1981 I think and they hired, and this is also another classic thing that you do if you're a political insider. One of the guys who was like one of the people clamoring for something they didn't want was public access. They hired one of the public access rabble rousers, a guy named Minoog Kaprielian, Mike Minoog Kaprielian. Minoog is his name, but they call him Michael, but Minoog is his Armenian name. And Minoog, who is fabulous, who was an interesting character. In and of himself actually, film people should talk to Minoog. Anyway Minoog becomes the head of that stuff, of programming for Cox cable.

JW: Ok. To control access for people?

RC: Yeah, the programming they're going to do, they're going to shoot themselves. So, Minoog calls me up. And he says, "Do you want to do a cable TV show?" And I say, "Well, what's the deal? You don't have any money. I don't know if I want to work my ass off on something that doesn't pay me."

JW: Yeah, not get paid.

RC: Yeah, I say, "That's one of my principals you know." So Minoog says, he's trying to set up a situation where we can get paid. We're going to do what they call local origination. They have public access, they have um, something called, let me see…you know there's different ways to do local programming. And one is public access and public access is basically free. There's no way you can make money off of that. And that's people that have, they want to promote their religion, they want to promote their something or other…their non-profit, whatever they want to promote, or even if they just want to just have fun doing a TV show, but how long is that going to last when you're working as hard as you have to work to produce a decent TV show…

JW: And not get paid.

RC: Right so, that's public access and that's basically what you've got now a lot of. Then they had something called leased access, where you leased it. You pay the station so much money and you own the time and then basically you can sell advertising if you want to. So, that's of some interest, but I'm not wanting to get into the business of selling advertising. So, the other thing is called local origination, which means they are sponsoring it and then it becomes somewhat up in the air about the advertising thing. So, I'm on local origination at Cox. Thinking that we can sell advertising and we did sell advertising and take some money in. So that way we sell advertising, we keep the money, but we're out of Cox, because Cox wants us on there.

JW: Doing a show?

RC: Doing a show.

JW: Yeah. And you're pulling advertisers in, because they think, they know that people are going to watch you.

RC: Well, the thing is that no one's getting used to watching cable, because this is relatively new. People are just getting, I mean. At the time that I was doing cable TV, uh, none of the households in the entire city of Providence, which would be my base probably have cable TV.

JW: It's just Cranston and Johnston.

RC: Mmhuh.

JW: ok.

RC: But, it's an opportunity to do a show. And of course, we don't have time to do it professionally, because, uh, nobody's getting paid.

JW: Right

RC: Although we did get some advertising revenue our way. It would be (?) some money out some of the people we worked with. There's a whole bunch of people, someone, a guy who later ended up working as a professional for Channel 6, a guy who later ended up, uh, he and his wife, uh, running the whole video program at the university of Rhode Island for years and he started out doing this with me. And they wanted to do this. And he said, "Ok, lets do it," and so uh, and we basically made up the show…an hour show once a week, unrehearsed.

JW: Improv.

RC: Improv stuff, comedy, variety, interview type, you know, like uh, not unlike Letterman or something like that.

JW: Yeah, and you bring people in…yeah.

RC: I think this was even before Letterman was even doing the late night thing.

JW: Ok.

RC: So, we'd have, and of course the main thing that we're selling is attitude. So I did that for about, for a couple years. We won a, we won an award I think in the early 1980's, Rhode Island film, uh, awards or something like that. We won for you know, the most creative show or something like that. But, uh it was, that was, that was interesting, and the thing that we did was, that was like really, was uh, I had an opportunity. You never have enough time to do all this extraordinary work, I really should have only done three shows a year.

JW: And you were doing it every week?

RC: Right. Yeah. And you know I like had to rely on the idiocy of my friends to show up and be idiots on the air with me. And, uh, but we did draw a few, viewerships in, and I got feedback from people, it was strange. And it's still and I look at some of the stuff that's going on today and it's still, we were like still, uh, from my way of thinking, way cooler and more interesting and creative than a lot of other people. We had a lot of local, we had a lot of bands, not just local, but bands come on and play on their, um. Most people would do like lip syncing stuff. Mostly we had live stuff. I mean you know. Like, uh, and we uh, had uh. I wrote, I created the opening montage, which was like, you know, you know when you have the credits.

JW: Yeah, like at the beginning of the music or whatever else is going on.

RC: But it was all like my primitive drawings. And I also wrote the opening theme. It was called Club Genius. And it was just, What I was trying to do when I wrote, uh, was to write the most irritating television show theme ever written. And it was just like, (Rudy sings) "Club Genius", And I just kept going through, "It's the swingingest show in town. Club Genius. Your IQ will be coming around. From green to brown from up to down. From Stalingrad to Vegas. Hey. Open up them pearly grates to Club Genius. You know seven pillars, Club Genius, when I see the word culture, I, you know, I reach for my TV guide, I reach for my TV, I reach for Club Genius." You know.

(JW and RC laugh)

RC: You know, it would go, uh, "Mary had a little lamb, Louisiana had food stamp fraud, and you've got, you know, Club Genius." You know it's just like, "No cattle mutilations here, Club Genius. Advance to the rear at Club Genius." You know it was just this irritating theme. And we had all these stupid things, and we were drunk, and you know, and we recorded when we were drunk, yeah. And uh, what was interesting was that the guy who was pretty much the founder of the Rhode Island Commission on the Humanities, Tom Roberts, he's a fabulous person. Uh, you probably, I'm sure you don't know who he is.

JW: No

RC: He hasn't been the head of it for years. He writes and acts and does a lot of other things.

JW: Ok

RC: His wife Liz is a state senator, but anyway, she's my state senator. And Liz is fabulous. But, um, uh, Tom Roberts could sing the song by heart. He knew the theme song. So he was a regular viewer.

JW: Yeah, huh.

RC: You know we would do stuff like, you know, there was a phone thing, where we could do the live phone calls over the air.

JW: People would call you and..

RC: Yeah. People would call into the show sometimes, and we would take phone calls and we would say, " Uh yeah ok listen, you know what's going to happen here is we're going to have a quiz here, and we'd have a quiz, and we'd say well you know you're the winner", and like, you know so like someone ordered some pizza, like you know, we'd have like one slice left and I'm like, " I'll tell you what. You're the winner, here's what we're going to give you." I'd try to take out an envelope and try to put the slice of pizza in it.

JW: In the envelope and write their address.

RC: And write the persons name and be like "We're sending this out to you. You win this slice of pizza."

JW: Congratulations.

RC: From "Club Genius." So yeah that was a foolish thing that we did. But you know, we always, you know, anything that was available to exploit, we would exploit. That was why you started with Rock and Roll, because that was the most easily exploitable, because there's a marketplace for that. Trying to break into TV, I had already, by the time that the Club Genius thing was ending, I had been approached by radio to do radio talk shows, so I started doing radio talk shows.

JW: And that's like…1980…?

RC: 84, so yeah. PM magazine which was a TV show at the time.

JW: Uh huh.

RC: Uh, they had, well, sorry this is too boring to explain. Anyway, PM magazine Providence was based on Channel 10 WJAR and the host at the time were a woman, a woman named Sheila Martinez and Matt Lauer, now on the Today Show. Matt came and did a piece about me. So, I go back to 1985.

JW: So he interviewed you or he talked about you?

RC: No he did uh, a ten minute piece about me. He did a ten minute package as they say.

JW: Yeah

RC: You know it was just like, "Rudy Cheeks here on WHJJ," we had a different kind of talk show, and stuff like that, and that was called the Swinging Genius Party, was the name of that. And I uh, I used to have this song called the Swinging Genius Part that I wrote for the Young Adults and uh, actually now I have this thing written in the 25th anniversary issue of the Phoenix by Ted Widmer, who was a speechwriter for president Clinton. Who is now co-writing, uh is helping ghost, I don't know how much of a ghost will maybe get credit now, Clinton's memoirs.

JW: Oh wow.

RC: Uh, Teddy referred to it as the Swinging Genius Movement in Providence in this article. Like it was a movement. I don't know if it was a movement, but he knows it was one of my creations. Well, Teddy speaks, you know, very kindly of me and my alleged influence, you know, throughout the whole thing. But um, that was, yeah. So you, I mean, there was a million things that were going on. I can't even remember half of them really.

JW: That's ok. So you were doing radio.

RC: Yeah, I worked at the cable TV and I did the radio and the columns. But I didn't know anything about the columns because I never listened to radio after 1968 or so because it's sounded fairly tedious to me and there was this talk radio thing that was just started back then in the 70's and 80's and they said, "Hey, do you want to do a talk radio show? I said, "Well what's the deal?" And they said, "Well, we'll give you so much money and uh you just go in for like three hours a day and you talk on the radio and people call you up and you talk a little while.

JW: Sure, talking to people isn't bad.

RC: And I was like "Wow I get paid for that. That's cool." So I did that and I moved into doing morning radio and I did one of these rock and roll morning radio shows with a woman named Carol Fox for a number of years and we were like number one you know. So, that was good for the morning drive. That's the big time and that's where the money is, so I made a good deal of money doing that. And uh, also at the same time I started doing narrations for uh, you know uh, documentaries and stuff like that. Here and there. I did one with Liz Cheng, who is now uh, I don't know what her position is, but she's over at Channel 5 in Boston. And I've done a couple for uh, these guys in New York who uh, did one on national PBS, so those were nice and that's fun. They're really good guys. And great documentary film makers.

JW: Yeah, I've seen a lot of them.

RC: Probably, I did Vote for Me: Politics in America and uh, what was the other one. I forget what it was called. Uh, People Like Us: Social Class in America. Actually, I just saw that on a Boston station.

JW: Yeah, I feel like I've seen that one.

RC: Well I got to be the narrator of those so, they just bring you into New York and you go into the studio and you read the script and they give you a pile of money. So it's ok.

JW: Not bad.

RC: So you know, so you know, and than later on, kids like, when I was in the "Young Adults," apparently some of our bands were like the Farrelly Brothers who started making films and they, you know, well, before they started making films Peter had written a novel back in 1987 or so called "Outside Providence" and it got sent to me. I was writing for the New Paper Phoenix at the time.

JW: Yeah

RC: Well I got this in the mail and I don't know Peter Farrelly. As it turns out I had met him many years earlier. The publisher had apparently sent it. I thought he had sent it to me. Uh, later on, but it turns out it had nothing to do with Peter. Anyway what happens was, um, I don't where I get this book, and you know this happens now and then and so I see that it's about wise ass white guys growing up in Pawtucket and I immediately identify with that, because that's where I grew up. So, and I'm pretty much a wise guy, a white trash guy. You know. So I read the book and I really liked it and it was very funny and very heartfelt. It did however have a lot of you know, romantic elements that I probably wouldn't subscribe to, but on the whole it was very, very good. You know, I said, "Well this is terrific." You know and it's obviously a Rhode Island guy. So I wrote a review saying, highly recommending this book. Apparently, after I wrote this review, and I don't know, there may be or may not be a connection here. Charles Sullivan, who is a professor at CCRI, and a fabulous guy, fabulous guy, started assigning this book to his classes, and having his classes read it, which was good.

JW: Yeah

RC: And I'm sure that Charles read the review, but maybe he came up with it on his own, I don't know. I never talked to him about it. I see Charles now and then and uh, but the thing is that is that you know, the important thing is that Peter now gets in touch with me calls me up and he's in Los Angeles, that's where he's from now, with his roommate an unknown actor named Woody Harrelson. And he says, uh, "I really appreciated it Rudy, you know I used to be, I used to go see you guys all the time." I said, "Well next time you're around let's get together, you know." And so we did and we became friendly and he was just breaking into writing screenplays and actually writing television episodes. I think that Peter and another guy… this is before Bobby got involved in the whole thing, his brother, who is very funny too. Very good. Um, he and another guy Ben, who was his partner at the time, wrote the famous Seinfeld episode on, um, what's it called, "Master of the Domain" episode. It's about masturbation.

JW: Oh, I don't know. I'm not a big TV person.

RC: Anyway, it was an edgy, kind of a famous Seinfeld episode back years ago. In the early years of Seinfeld. So I think Peter and Ben Yellen wrote that. But anyway, (Rudy lights his cigar) so I established this relationship with Peter and Peter turns up you know and Peter turns up, and I see him time to time. So you know and he does this film "Dumb and Dumber."

JW: Oh, yeah.

RC: What happens is, yeah, he wrote the film. He and his brother Bobby and um, I think Ben, and all sorts of, yeah Ben Yellen. And, uh, they are pitching it at this studio and the studio guys are saying, "Hey this sounds pretty good. Well, who should direct? And Peter says, "Well I'll direct." And they say, "OK." The thing is they didn't bother to ask him if he had directed anything before. NO…So, Peter and Bobby just sort of talked their way into helming this whole project and the thing goes through the roof, and the thing goes through the roof.

JW: Yeah, Dumb and Dumber, everyone knows it.

RC: Oh they made hundreds of millions of dollars. It was just ridiculous. And it was so exciting. And you know what was nice is that and one of the other things that happened is while this was going on, one of the people who was hired to act in the film is my old uh, fabulous Motels cohort Charles Rocket. Because what happened in the meantime, see what happened with Charles, Charlie, is that, uh, after the Motels broke up, Charlie had joined, had done some news casting. Now he was not at all a journalist. He had no background in that, but he was a fantastic performer and had good presence.

JW: Good presence. Yeah. So people liked him.

RC: Oh, extraordinary presence. I mean the guy should have been, he should have had Johnny Carson's gig. I'm telling he's amazing, so much more amazing then people know. And what happened was, he gets his big break in 1980 when he gets hired to be on the cast of Saturday Night Live. Problem is that 1980 is the year for Saturday Night Live when Lorne Michaels leaves NBC. He, uh, wants to end Saturday Night Live, unfortunately he doesn't own the rights to it, NBC does. NBC tells Lorne, "No, no, no, this is too valuable a franchise, sorry, you're gone." Now Lorne, who is the creator of Saturday Night Live and is the guy who has like you know, has built the relationship with the press and things like that, had pretty much set up now that everyone's lying in wait to attack Saturday Night Live and of course they didn't have to wait long because the show did unfortunately suck. Jean Doumanian becomes the producer. Charlie's all of a sudden becomes, like a Chevy Chase guy, like the handsome guy, weekend update, um, guy, uh, one of the key guys and the new Saturday Night Live, which is just sitting there waiting to be attacked by everyone in the world, is ravished and a lot of it is deserved. The writing sucked. A lot of stuff sucked about it and here's Charlie, who has finally gets his big break, and what is it, it's something that everybody is already primed to hate. And what a frustration. So what it is is like the old guys who unlike, I'm only thirty years old, and some of my friends, Martin Mull, uh, the Talking Heads guy, David Byrne, Chris, Martina, um, now Charlie, look like they're making it. Making it in the business that we've all chosen to be involved in which is kind of, but we were always like the edgy guys, but like ooh, welcome to the mainstream. And uh, here's Charlie being like, and Charlie, who I was very close to you know, (Rudy lights his cigar), Here he is uh, being ravished uh, his big break turns into, uh, I don't know what it is. But you know it's better than doing uh, it's better than being the anchorman in Nashville, Tennessee, right?

JW: Yeah, But this is Saturday Night Live Now?

RC: Yeah, well Charlie says the F- word on Saturday Night Live.

JW: Oh, and this was like 19..?

RC: 80, 81. It runs throughout the whole East Coast, because unbeknownst to everyone at the time, there is no seven second delay on Saturday Night Live on the East Coast. But no one knew that until Charlie said, "Fuck."

JW: And was everyone up in arms about it?

RC: Well, no. But NBC did. Charlie lost his job. And it took him a while to, but Charlie is still, he has maintained a steady career, making good money and being in lots of, you know I don't know what would have been different if he hadn't, that hurt him for a number of years, I'm sure. But at least he got his face up there to a national public. And some of us, like myself, that never happened for. It's not like we're sitting around saying, "Uh, you know bla bla bla bla bla bla." I mean it's been hard. There have been things that almost happened. You know I mean I got dozens of stories like that. And I'll tell you what, you talk to anybody that's done the stuff I've done and they also have dozens of stories like that. My good friend Mike Tanaka was, among other things one of Oprah's producers. Now Mike…back in 19…85 I think it was, no hold on, let me think. I guess it was about '85, yeah. (lights his cigar) No, much later. The 90's. This is like '93 maybe. Mike is working at something owned by NBC called America's Talking. It's a national cable network. Working in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Sharing the same studios as CNBC. It's run by Roger Ailes who now runs Fox. And what they're going to do is like talk radio but on cable TV. So, Mike calls me up and says, "Rudy, I've got the perfect show for you." I say, "that sounds good Mike." And he says, " I'm working for these people here and it's owned by NBC and we're looking for a show." The show is called "Bugged." What happens is people call you on the phone, live, to you on the air for about an hour and they tell you what they're bugged about. They tell you what their problems are and you solve their problems. And your experience and bla, bla, and and your wit and stuff like that. You're quick witted enough to....

JW: To give them a slick answer.

RC: And to be entertaining. You know, whether or not you can help them is another story. That's what I do with the Dr. Love Monkey column over at the Phoenix. It's the same thing. Whether or not I can help somebody is dubious, but the fact that I can entertain people reading it.

JW: People want to be entertained.

RC: There are just some people way beyond help you know. So I said, "You know that sounds cool," and he says, "Well you got to send me some stuff. Basically, this is not an open thing. We're inviting 30 people to send in a tape of them in action, you know.

JW: Yeah

RC: And I'm sure most of these people have much bigger backgrounds in broadcasting then I do, because sporadically I've been here and there. This time it's about '93-'94. Because in '91-'92 I was doing, uh, a thing with Channel 10. Chip and I, Phillipe and Jorge, were doing a uh....a commentary every Friday night at the 11 o'clock Channel news.

JW: It was called Phillipe and Jorge?

RC: No it was called Look Who's Talking or something. I can't remember what the hell it was called. But it was like Chip and I would come on in the middle of the 11 o'clock news and we would do this like minute and a half minute and 45 seconds of commentary. And you know it was funny. The idea was that it would be funny and we would just be talking about whatever the issue of the day was and make silly statements about it. So, I had that footage from Channel 10 and I had footage from some of the movies I had done and I had uh, you know some radio stuff I had done. So, Mike called. I said, "I got to put together a tape, but it's not going to be nearly as slick as some of the packages you're going to be receiving from the other 30 people who are going to be trying out for this. But I did it. I called up some friends of mine to help me out and assemble this stuff. I also did some camcorder rap around stuff with my girl friend at the time, Holly. She would just hold the camera and I'm just talking and I would be like, "You know what, ever since Charles Kuralt retired," which had just been months earlier, "you know you really, the big problem with television is that there aren't enough overweight, balding guys on the air, white guys on the air. And I understand that and I'm trying to help you out here." You know I was just like completely like not trying to be unctuous at all, I'm just being an asshole…a wise guy. So I put together these tapes in like these, you know, different segments from the things I had done over the years and I sent them to Tanaka and I don't hear from him for a couple of months and I figure that was that. And so, one day Tanaka calls me on the phone and he says, "Oh no, you're still in it. It's carved down to fifteen now. You're locked at ten." He says, "It still could happen." And then it gets locked down to six. And it comes down to me and one other guy who's going to get this gig. Now here's the thing about the gig which is interesting. We did not, America's Talking didn't run in Rhode Island, so I never got to see this on cable. It was a cable station that was in LA, New York…many, many other places.

JW: Yeah, the big cities.

RC: Yeah, so that was good, because that gets you legitimized. I mean I don't want to explain the politics of show biz…

JW: Yeah, no, I understand it.

RC: So, I mean all of a sudden if I'm there I'm a legitimate guy. I'm here in Providence then I'm not a legitimate guy. It doesn't matter what I've done or what I can do. So, uh, Tanaka tells me, "So, It's you and the other guy." The other guy turns out to have like serious credentials. The other guy had been playing the role of Schemer on a show called Shining Time Station on PBS.

JW: Oh sure. I watched that show when I was little.

RC: Well, it was the Schemer guy who beat me out. It was between me and the Schemer.

JW: I can't remember who he was, but I used to watch that all the time.

RC: Yeah, George Carlin did it, Ringo did it. Well here was the part about it when all of a sudden, after a while, I got very interested, because I didn't know anything about this stuff. Well, I said, "national TV, I've got to move to New York, but I get to be on some national cable shit. But the thing was that this show ran 8-9pm, 5 nights a week. Prime time. I mean that was a break like Charlie's break. You know.

JW: Yeah

RC: You know, it's a smaller audience, it's a cable thing and stuff like that, but it gets you a kind of credibility and a legitimacy and an opportunity that trumps everything else. It doesn't matter what you've done.

JW: Yeah, well you would be constantly seen on that show.

RC: So, you know, what happens is the other guy gets the gig.

JW: Yeah.

RC: I mean I'm sure the other guy was incredibly talented. You know I am still flattered by the fact that I got that far in the whole thing. But there are a million stories like that. I've got four or five others that I'm not going to tell you about. Like when you're one step away from all of a sudden the big time. And the thing is, I look at it all very philosophically, in the sense of, I do what I do, and have done what I've done, because that's what I want to do. And it's always nice to be able to…uh, make a good living doing it. It's always nice to have a bigger audience. And I'm very happy for and they all really well deserve it… the people…the David Byrnes, and the Marty Mulls, Charlie, and all the other people that I've been, Mary Lambert. I mean there's tons of people… Billy Flanagan… who have worked in some of the same areas that I have worked in and who have succeeded, because they have succeeded against incredible odds and it's wonderful to see them succeed and I get very excited about that and very supportive and I just want to see them do better and better. I know the quality of what they do. I mean I've got a lot of other friends who have done very, very well and made it big time in lots of other, different areas. You know in writing and in show biz and music and films and stuff like that. You know, the Farrellys and Michael Corrente who I knew back when he was back in like high school. I used to work with his cousin…uh Bobby. We were Santa Clauses back in the old outlet company together. So, that's where I first met Michael when he was at Trinity Conservatory. But the thing is that, I've been basically able to keep my ass alive doing stuff I like to do, for the most part, and so that's pretty much… ok with me. And the fact that if perhaps I've inspired people who have gone on and done some good things… that's pretty cool too.

JW: Yeah, encouraging people's artwork.

RC: Yeah, I mean that wasn't the plan or anything like that, but I mean it's a tough, tough …uh, it's tough, tough stuff to be able to score in any of these worlds. It's tougher in stuff like painting and dance and stuff like that. I mean the popular arts at least there's some opportunities there, because I mean sometimes the public at large writes stuff and says, "You know this guy's swell." It's not like I'm a fan of Guns and Roses, but Guns and Roses did it the hard way. They went and toured and toured and toured, and all these people just dug them and so they got a record contract you know?

JW: Yeah

RC: But unfortunately, that wasn't going to happen for me, because I know a lot of people can identify with Guns and Roses songs, but I don't think too many people are going to identify with "At the Teamsters Picnic." I mean I did what I wanted to do. And if you do what you want to do then it's a crap shoot anyway. But unfortunately the things I wanted to do were also fairly obscurest.

JW: But at least you got to do it and enjoy it.

RC: That's right. I got to do it and I got enough of people that found it interesting enough that they wanted to go and pay money to go see it. That I was able to keep alive. So, that's good. So, you know, I don't have any regrets. I would have done everything the same way pretty much.

JW: I was wondering before we finish if you could tell me the story again about how you got your name?

RC: Well, when we started the Motels, which was back in 1970, we used to rehearse in a place in South Providence…409 Pine Street.

JW: Yeah, I know where Pine Street is actually.

RC: Well 409 Pine you might have actually been to, because people over the years have lived there. I mean it's been artists' lofts for years. Illegal artists lofts of course.

JW: I've never been there, but I know where it is. I drive by all the time.

RC: There's been tons of Denny Moers there's also some interesting Rhode Island artists that have lived there over the years. Well, what happened was, back in 1970, Jeff Thomas, who was playing guitar, with the Motels at the time, was living there and he was living up at the top floor, which is of no interest to anybody, except that we had to haul all the equipment back and forth up to the top floor.

JW: I know what that's like.

RC: Yeah it was a pain in the ass…But anyway, um, actually there's an interesting story that's attached to this, but what happened was that across the street at that time in 1970 there were these women who were basically street hookers and they were working there. We would see them now and then, because we were moving the equipment in and out of the van when we were rehearsing and stuff. So, on a Saturday afternoon we were rehearsing and I guess they were out there looking for business and because of the wiring in these old buildings at the time…we have our amplifiers wired, we were getting radio signals sometimes through the amplifiers and we hear our address… through the police wire and uh, we listen and we find out that the police are coming to pick up the hookers across the street. What they did was they would pick them up, they would take them down to headquarters, they would fine, they would take 50 buck offs of them or something like that and then they would go back and go right back to work. So…so, we stuck our heads out the windows, a Saturday afternoon in the summer, and we said, "Why don't you guys come over here. The cops are going to come over to pick you up." So, they came up the stairs and they just sat in on the rehearsal for about an hour. So, we're taking a break and after that and we're just kind of hanging out and talking to these guys and one of them says to me, "You've got ruddy cheeks." And I think Rudy Cheeks, that's a good name. So, the thing was, at the time, everyone had a fake name. Charles Rocket, Stevie Thunder, Sport Fisher.

JW: How were they getting them? Were they just making them up?

RC: Yeah, everybody was making them up. I don't know who was making what up. I made up a couple of nick names…Johnny Anglo Star. He was one of those guys…He played bass with us for a while, Johnny Holscher. He was Swedish, very handsome, blond, an Adonis type looking guy. So, I called him Johnny Anglo Star. You know Jeff Shore had long sideburns, I called him Van Sideburn. You know we would make up names. But anyway, Sport was Dave Hanson. Dave was really big on wanting to call me Al Fartino. I was going to sing in the band. I didn't want to be Al Fartino…I'm sorry. So, Rudy Cheeks sounded a lot better to me. So, that's where I got that name. That was like 1970 and I do not know what that woman's name is who told me that, but I'm forever in her debt…I think, I'm not sure, but as I said there was an auxiliary story involved with that. But we used to have this giant head…plastic head. It was one of those Chevron giants. You know they used to have them at these gas stations and lumber places. They would have these giant molded people that would be there advertising it. Like there would be this great big giant, like 20 feet tall. We had the head from one of them. I don't know where we got it.

JW: Yeah, picked it up in some random place.

RC: I don't know where the hell we picked it up, but we got one it was being disposed of or something, maybe it was something we stole. But anyway, we had the head. It was just the head. A big smiling face, like a bout five feet high…a big smiling white guy face. That we used to take to gigs with us and use it in different ways. Anytime we found anything really screwed up we would collect it and that was in the equipment truck. So, anyway, this Pine Street was kind of a high crime area at the time… and one night we had done a gig and we came back home and we were just too damn tired to move the equipment, so we left it all in the van, so the next day we come over to unload and we find the van has been broken into.

JW: Oh, no.

RC: Now inside the van were like Marshal amplifiers. Jeff Thomas had a National Steel guitar. These are like valuable stuff.

JW: Yeah really nice stuff.

RC: These are like valuable stuff. Some really good stuff. None of it was touched. The head had been stolen.

JW: (Laughing) They took the head.

RC: Yeah…stupidest thing in the world. Worth nothing, it's just a stupid, weird thing. And also one of the hardest things to move around. What are you going to do with it? So, naturally, and this is how ridiculous we were, naturally, everybody in the van suspected everybody else in the van. "Oh, you stole our head." So, for like a year and a half or something this went on. Nobody knew where the head was. I mean we forgot about it after a while.

JW: Yeah.

RC: It disappeared. So, one day, this guy Dewey, who is somebody you really should talk to for this. He's one of the true legends in Rhode Island. A hipster, world bohemian hipster. The guy who started Joe's sandwich shop, which later became Geoff's sandwich shop.

JW: Oh yeah.

RC: Joe's is the original owner.

JW: Wait, Dewey... is that his name?

RC: Dewey Dufresne, Dufresne. Ed Dufresne.

JW: He owns it though?

RC: He owned it.

JW: Oh, he owned it.

RC: He owned it until the 19…mid 1970's until he went totally bankrupt by trying to start Joe's downtown, which was a big really cool restaurant in presenting Jazz. He is such an important figure in the world of hip Rhode Island and he's so famous that his son Wylie is a very famous chef in New York, in Williamsburg. Clinton Fresh Food. I mean his son is like one of my favorite chefs in New York. That's his kid. Wylie I knew when he was a baby. And Dewey is like, was the king. He was the king. The hip restaurateur. He was the model for it and everybody emulated Dewey. Dewey was the king. When we played our first gig in the Mercer Art's Center in 1972, Dewey had rented a suite for the after party at the Chelsea Hotel. This is 1972, people didn't know how hip the Chelsea was. I mean it was just like, people like Patti Smith and Sam Shepard were there. I mean it was like unknown at the time. He was the guy. He was the king of the scene. I mean, he used to hang around with the Warhol crowd back in the 60's and uh, in the factory …when he was living basically in Philly. I mean Dewey is so cool it's ridiculous. The New York Times wrote a story. There was a whole article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine about two month ago about Dewey as the king of Williamsburg. As like the hip king of New York. He is. I mean was and always has been.

JW: He lives in New York?

RC: Yeah. He's been there for like 25 years. And Dewey was the king of Providence before that. Like, he's still so underground, but everybody who knows Dewey knows that he is like the ultimate hipster. The ultimate hipster. He is the guy. He is like the Rosetta Stone for a lot of us and we all know that. The fact that he's still alive is just incredible. I remember going to Connecticut drag… not Connecticut drag way… Seekonk Speedway to see a Demo Derby that Charlie was doing back in '70 or something like that and I never rode in a car with Dewey again after that. 80 miles an hour the whole way back to Providence. It was like, "What are you doing?" You know he's scaring the hell out of me. But uh, there's…uh

JW: So, wait did he take the head?

RC: What?

JW: The head?

RC: No, Dewey found the head.

JW: Oh ok.

RC: Dewey, well he might of taken the head and lied about it. Who knows? But the fact is that Dewey, the claim is, that years later, like a year and a half, two years later, Dewey is at a yard sale somewhere and he sees the head and he buys the head back and gives it back to us.

JW: At a yard sale…that's so funny.

RC: I mean that's right up there with uh, and I think Dan Gosch has the head now. He's a painter…Dan Gosch. And then there was the famous time when uh, David Byrne and Mark Kehoe moved above this abandoned pool hall downtown… downtown Providence next to the Paris Cinema. There was a pool hall down there on this third floor of the building. They had the place above that, which is about '73 or so. They found this big box of tutus. Apparently it was a dance place or something like that and they found this big, it was like one of those treasure chests, and you open it up…

JW: And pull out lots of different tutus.

RC: Yeah, so they tried to put the tutus on, they hung them on the wall, we would try to think of different things to do with the tutus. So, after like a few months they get bored with the tutus, so they gave the trunk to Dan Gosh. So, then Dan gave the trunk to the Young Adults and the Young Adults had the tutus and we put them on, we stapled them on the wall when we were playing gigs and stuff like that. And we got bored with the tutus after a while, but we still had the trunk of tutus, and we knew that somehow they were valuable. I don't know why, but we knew it. And then this is like 1976-77 and the Talking Heads and us start doing a bunch of gigs together. So, all of a sudden we find out the story of the tutus that they were originally from David and Mark's loft, we take the tutus after a gig that we were playing together and we put them in the Talking Heads trunk in their truck, so all of a sudden the tutus are in their truck. So, apparently they were off doing some other gigs and they find the tutus in the truck.

JW: They had been missing for years?

RC: Yeah, and the next time we do a gig together the tutus are in our truck. So, what happened was for about a year we were like taking the tutus and putting them in each other's trucks.

JW: Yeah, playing games.

RC: Very stupid stuff. I mean these are just stories. If you want to hear some like colorful and stupid stories of the people who were here and what we did and why we did them isn't even something we could get into because it doesn't make any sense. So there you go.

JW: Thank you. Thank you so much.