[Rock and Roll Through the Generations]

My Mountain Home

by Chase Lisbon

[From his blog at http://Nerve.com]

I don’t think that I’ve written very much about my upbringing and birthplace. I should also REALLY change my Nerve bio, as it isn’t very current now that I think about it. I mean, I haven’t lived in a Baltimore basement in a while, but now I’m looking further back than that.

I was born in Mountain Home, Arkansas. My dad was with the band “Black Oak Arkansas” at the time. He was later the tour manager for Foghat and Hall & Oates. If you pick up the Foghat “LIVE” album on vinyl, you can see pictures of my dad, mom, and me from ’77.

So basically all of Black Oak bought this land up in the mountains and built their own little cabin houses on it. They surrounded the area with a giant fence and put in an Olympic sized swimming pool. That’s where my parents were married and that’s where I spent the first year of my life.

Apnea and I went there this summer. It was the first time I had seen it in 32 years. It’s now rented out for vacations, and we stayed a night there on her birthday. We even did a shoot there, which was totally strange, but we can talk about that when I post some of those pictures some day.

Growing up I always heard my dad complaining about how Jim Dandy (Black Oak’s lead singer) was ripped off by David Lee Roth and Axl Rose. I used to watch all of the silent super 8 movies my dad had shot during that time, and I could see what he was talking about it. It’s always frustrating when someone is ripped off and the other person is super famous and receives credit for it… so now you can understand my excitement when I found this article today in “Arthur” magazine. It’s a discussion between an anonymous music reviewer that goes by “C” and Buzz Osborne of Melvins:

C: What about… Black Oak Arkansas? You guys ever listen to them?

BUZZ: I like some of their stuff, yeah. Simply for the weirdness factor alone. I always thought that Jim Dandy was getting ripped off endlessly by David Lee Roth, and moreso, Axl Rose. He sings EXACTLY like Jim Dandy. You know who else is really into Black Oak Arkansas is Jello Biafra. Heavily! That’s why Biafra has that star belt. He’s happy to admit it.

C: Didn’t Black Oak Arkansas buy land and live communally at one point?

BUZZ: I don’t know the history. Jello [Biafra of Dead Kennedys, Alternative Tentacles lable, and an occasional collaborator with Melvins] knows more about any band than I’ve ever known.

The answer is yes Arthur magazine. It was surprising to stumble across that today.

:::

Below: photo by Chase Lisbon, from the Nerve.com blog post. See more at http://www.SuperCult.com.

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