LEFT ON HIGH

ROB SOCIETY 

Old Times:

I started playing punk rock with some friends in the summer of 1988 here in Jacksonville, Florida. 

We had tried earlier that year to form a band featuring Phil Roberts, Tim Eiswirth, Jack Dunning, and Ty Anderson; but it was just a jam night. I was hanging around and couldn’t stop screaming out lyrics. By the time summer rolled around, the guys decided that I should sing with them as one of two lead singers and we started playing almost every day.  

The ‘88 summer lineup was: Tim Eiswirth on guitar; Ty Anderson vocals; Jerry Martini on bass; Jack Dunning on drums, and myself on vocals. Within about six months, Marcus Wood started playing lead guitar with us. When we first started we had no PA, so I would sit with a tape recorder in my lap: if I found the “sweet spot” while singing into the cheap mic on the recorder, the vocals would come through and we could play it back to hear what we might actually sound like through a PA.

We named the band Secret Society and Ty started calling me Rob Society. We played in a garage apartment and played our first show with the Creeps and some other bands at Phil’s warehouse downtown. Our band’s names and members changed often for the next 10 years or so.

During that time, we played at Spike’s Doghouse and were eventually allowed to play at the Milk Bar. It seems that I made a bad impression at a previous club that later became the Milk Bar, and was essentially banned from playing that downtown venue for roughly five years. We played a lot of halls before slamming punk bands had steady venues to play. Eventually, local clubs started catching up with the times and started letting hardcore punk bands play.

We stopped playing one by one, as we started having kids. Around 2000, I thought my punk-singing days were long behind me.

Tim Eiswirth 

Old Times: 

I 1st heard punk on a local college radio station in Minneapolis MN at the age of 12 in 1984. It was a song called “I Like Food” by the Descendents and then they played “Dolphin Field” by the Meat Puppets and i liked them. I remember seeing flyers for punk bands playing at the time like Husker Du and The Replacements and wondering what it was about. The next time I went to the local record store in St. Paul called The Northern Lights I had to make a choice between buying the usual breakdance rap music I was listening to at the time like Run D.M.C. or buying 7Seconds and D.R.I. records which I did buy and never turned back. Rap music changed around then anyway losing the intensity of the breakdance style and dropping most of the keyboards they used back then for bass and slower beats. I started going to the local punks show shortly after seeing some great bands like Toxic Reasons, Raw Power and Dayglo Abortions at 1st Avenue where they made part of Prince’s Purple Rain Movie. While at the record store it was hard to choose to go on the Metal Side of the Store or the Punk because around this same time Slayer, Metallica and Destruction were also putting out amazing early records.

My parents divorced and I moved with my mom down to Jacksonville, FL around 1987. This was just after they closed the 730 Club and stopped doing punk shows at Post + King so I was very depressed that there was no regular club to see punk shows at until Spike’s Dog House opened many years later. I was pretty miserable in JAX. until I met Rob Society and Jack Dunning at High School and got into a band with them called Secret Society whose name changed to Pit Stop. Rob could write and sing songs just as good if not better than other Great 80’s bands and Jack could do everything else besides sing. For many of our early songs, Jack D. wrote the guitar, bass, and drums. Then one day I brought him to my house to watch my mom play piano and he started playing that too! We were the 3 main dedicated members of Pitstop for at least 12 years up to the 2000s. We had enough songs to release 3 or 4 full-length albums but couldn’t find a dedicated bass player to keep up with us so broke up. We wrote some of our best songs in these years but have very little to show for it but memories and some good shows. 

uncle jessy

I got a bass for Christmas in 1992 and I didn’t take much interest in it. My dad was a bassist…ha ha!

I started playing drums at 15 and guitar shortly after. Started the band Apparition, in 1996—sharing guitar and vocal duties with our current Left On High drummer Matt Manucy, our boy Jimmy Fretwell (Poor Richards) on drums, and high school buddy Dell Hand on bass.

We played the Milk Bar a lot along with Spike’s Doghouse, 618, The Moto Lounge, Dante’s Purgatory, and more venues and house parties than I can remember. That went well until about 1999.

I tried to put a few projects together over the next few years with no real traction. Then everything changed when I knocked some chick up in 2002. Then I threw in the towel.