Holly Orr Melts Your Brain

Holly Orr melting minds with her Ibanez Roadstar. Sloppy Joe was lucky to have one of the all-time greatest axe slingers in North Carolina!

The Final Show!

Here is a flyer from the band's final show in 1990. Unlike most bands, we planned the breakup and made sure we gave our fans the best show of our career. We are all still friends today! That's how ya do it, kids. Thanks to Brooke O'Klatner for the flyer. This flyer is unusual because I didn't draw it!

More SJRRS flyer art!

Sloppy Joe 1.0

The original 1987 lineup of Sloppy Joe and the Random Rhythm Section was a trio consisting of Bert, Mark, and Sloppy Sarah. Mark played an acoustic 12 string guitar. I sang and played harmonica. Sarah played sticks. We practiced all the time, and became extremely tight. These performances were often captured on cassette and distributed to friends at school. As benign as that sounds, it led to the motivation to produce our first self release, the live recording from our first show at Milestone Records. That tape,  Live at Milestone Records was honestly one of the best selling releases I've ever made, selling out every day at school. I'd dub ten tapes on the double cassette deck and insert the Xeroxed covers and head to school.

We played a number of shows with this lineup before going electric and adding everyone else. Ground zero was the East Meck Talent Show which ran two consecutive nights. We debuted out version of Gloria and a song called Dreamworld that was about how everything in Charlotte looked pretty but at the expense of authenticity (cf. to 2015 when CLT is tearing down all history and building fancy apartments everywhere). The next show went down at the Church of Musical Awareness. Here we experienced our Blues Brother's movie moment as high school punks threw cans of soda at us, but minus the protective chain link cage. Milestone Records happened next, with an awesome turnout from our emerging fans. We laid down a smoking' "Oprah Winfrey," which of course celebrated old school 80s Oprah (a totally different game than the "O" of today). Our final acoustic show was at the infamous Lakeview Country Club--not an actual club--with the Couch Potatoes and a few other bands. At least 500 kids swarmed the place, and Sloppy Joe had them all shaking their car keys to they music. We actually played as the Polyester Briefs that night because we had a substitute stick player!

A week later we were jamming' with Holly Orr and Mike Calhoun and wondering where we would ever find a drummer. The real adventure was underway!

Live @ The Pterodactyl 1988

New release of Live @ the Pterodactyl 1988 is streaming free on SoundCloud. This set represents the pinnacle of our "opening" sets for other bands. An awesome supporting set is very different from a headliner! Highlights form these earlier electric sets include gems like "409-C" and "Detras de Mi."

Neotribal Stream Side 1 and 2

Here is side 1 and 2 of the Neotribal  LP by Sloppy Joe and the Random Rhythm Section.  Click to play! Released in 1989, this was the band's only official release. The recording session at Audio Incorporated was a classic analog capture of our staple tunes.

Loading Out in Greensboro 1989

Loading out after the Greensboro Cityfest show in October 1989. Mike and Kahlil appear to chat it up while the rest of us are slogging gear off camera! Look at that sweet bus! Pic by Caroline DeMerritt.

Live at Springfest 1989

Here is the live set from the 1989 Springfest in Charlotte, where SJRRS played for our biggest crowd ever. This concert propelled us into the public eye like no other event. It rained before our set and sprinkled on and off during the first songs. I remember the wet mics blitzing out and the sound man digging out more! We had a sweet trailer to use before the show which was cool rockstar action. We rocked the rain away with a neotribal party.

Click below to play! (Users of the free Soundcloud app can make this track a favorite and listen on your mobile device).

Concert Dancing with Sloppy Joe

Look what I found searching Google. I was suggested as a grotesque concert dancer! Classic!

Classic Flyer Art

Old school Sloppy Joe flyer art. We would get 1000 of these made at the copy store and hit the clubs, staple them to light posts on 7th street, give stacks to friends until they were all gone. I'm lucky to have held on to a few! This one is for a 1989 show at the World Famous Milestone Club.

Early Milestone show 1988

Sloppy Joe played the third electric show in early June 1988. After a year of college and graduating high school, the Joe's were ready to unleash their sonic meltdown on Charlotte full time. This day was in fact Mark Evangelist's graduation day from East Meck, as indicated by his rocking of the robe! Special notice should be payed to the vintage Ovation acoustic/electric, a guitar that helped define the early sound up to Neotribal. Tricia Tuttle on drums, giving the band the grooviest garage beats ever!

Tonight's light-show brought to you by Dr. Drew!

Whenever the venue afforded the scope, our light-show wizard Drew Detweiler delivered mind-blowing collages of film, light, smoke, and other visual trickery to push the show over the top. Imagine mixing the liquid light-show from the Fillmore West with the avant grade films from Andy Warhol's Velvet Underground happenings, and then compressing them through a rave disco explosion! The Pterodactyl provided the greatest canvas for this art. The picture is from our show opening for the Flaming Lips at the Pterodactyl Club in 1988.

Neotribal Back Cover Photo

Here is the back cover photo from Sloppy Joe's Neotribal. Caroline DeMerritt shot an amazing roll of film one cloudy afternoon in Charlotte. This shot captures our retro-leaning, bohemian vibe along with some classic REM-like reflective posing. The dog Lana brought it home!

Sloppy Joe in 1988. Photo by Caroline DeMerrit.

Sloppy Joe and the Random Rhythm Section LP "Neotribal"

In 1989 Sloppy Joe & RRS released Neotribal, the debut LP, on Third Lock Records. Featuring album art by Jennifer Fadel, the best of the early songs, and an excellent recording session at Audio Inc in Dilworth, Neotribal captured something more than the usual run-through of songs. This recording is the wild side of FM album-oriented rock, slicing through the sonic-sphere with far-out guitars, boundless percussion, and strange chants. More than anything we ever did, in my opinion, Neotribal represented Sloppy Joe. In it, one can hear the formative backyard practices, the grinding work ethic, the innocent pride of discovery, and even the tribulations of early gig experiences. It ends with an extend-length track "Ride," and I hope this album still has a few rides left!

Listen to it free in the SoundCloud links below. Side 1 and 2 are separate tracks. SoundCloud app users can choose it as a favorite to listen easily on your mobile device.