Bob Appel
The band re-created a vintage flier from O’Cayz to promote the upcoming reunion.
When 1980s performance art rockers Swamp Thing reunited in 2010, the group announced in a deadpan press release that it would be performing in three venues over two nights. One was a place that actually had a street address: Revolution Cycles. The other two were Club de Wash and O’Cayz Corral, both lost to fire years before.
“Friends of the band have warned the aging scenesters that the two seminal clubs from their heyday have changed substantially in the 25 years or so since Swamp Thing last performed there,” the release stated. “But the band remains undaunted.”
They played both spots, and, true to form, they took it all the way.
“We played as if they existed,” says Swamp Thing founder Jonathan Zarov, even though O’Cayz was a grassy lot on Wilson Street and the Club de Wash was a gas station on West Washington Avenue. At the “O’Cayz” show, the former sound guy took his position on the grass in the empty lot in the exact place where the board used to be. One fan, engrossed in the sur-reality of it all, wouldn’t come through the imaginary door because he wanted to watch it through the imaginary window.
The band was expelled from “Club de Wash” after just a few songs.
Fortunately, this year’s Swamp Thing reunion show is booked in a place that still exists: They’ll play the Harmony Bar on July 14.
Swamp Thing stormed the Madison club scene — and the country — between 1982 and 1987. Although they attracted the same folk-wave crowd as the Violent Femmes, who they often opened for and traveled with, that’s where the comparison ends. Swamp Thing was to Violent Femmes what The Replacements were to Foreigner. To say that a Swamp Thing concert was unpredictable is like saying that people in Ashwaubenon tolerate the Packers.
“We definitely considered ourselves more a performance art act, although we would never have referred to ourselves as performance artists,” says the band’s original guitarist Bob Appel, who works in broadcasting in the San Francisco Bay Area. “That would have pegged us as pretentious. But let’s face it. We were a little precious. Just ask Killdozer.”Appel is referring to a rollicking rivalry the serious punk band had with the Swamp Thing boys over in the artistic playpen.
There was the time a guy prepared a fish dinner onstage while the band played. One night at a Union Terrace show Zarov stripped down to his tighty-whities and dove off the pier into the lake. The band played on while instructing him to change strokes. “Now breaststroke! Now freestyle!” He returned to the stage and finished the set in his drenched underwear.
Many of the band’s stunts included, as Zarov puts it, “climbing and stripping.” He climbed the middle I-beam and touched the ceiling at the High Noon Saloon during another reunion show, causing concern to then-owner Cathy Dethmers, who made a rare appearance from out behind the bar.
As for stripping, well, it was almost a guarantee that Zarov would shed layers when the band struck the opening chords to “Naked Reasons,” with the refrain “I’ll do a naked hokie-pokie/ dancing in the streets of Skokie.” Zarov did most of the band’s stripping, although he recalls drummer Steve Bear once matching him article-for-article.
Swamp Thing’s crazy stage antics would have only gone so far if the music was drippy. But it wasn’t. Hits like “I Love Children” and “Rabbit Revolution” were tongue-in-cheek but still flaming rock songs. People magazine reviewed one of the band’s albums. They were managed by Michael Dorf, a former Madisonian who went on to found The Knitting Factory in New York City.
These days Zarov dresses (and stays dressed) for work as the Madison Children’s Museum director of marketing. He plays guitar with Loving Cup, a Rolling Stones tribute, and is carving out a niche as Madison’s go-to plastic bag percussionist. Swamp Thing — or pieces of it — actually plays reunion shows every couple of years. The July 14 lineup will include founding drummer Steve Bear, who teaches English at City University of New York. Appel will also be here. Appel’s son Eli will fill in for original bassist Mike Kashou.
As the reunion show approaches, we asked Zarov what Swamp Thing wanted audiences to experience during their heyday: “To laugh, blow off steam about the Reagan administration and crappy political stuff, be surrounded by people who felt like friends, jump up and down — maybe go home with someone. I guess I assumed they wanted the same things I did.”
