Max Schreck
in the 1922 German film Nosferatu

Sid Terror

It's a name I wished didn't stick, but it did. One can't always pick one's nickname. Problem is, then I needed a LAST name. Well, my great-great grandfather was a silent movie actor who played the vampire in the 1922 German film Nosferatu and his screen name was Max Schreck. "SCHRECK" roughly translates from German to English as "Terror". So what better name for a guy in "The Undead"? It was practically a vampire family name! haha Too bad they made a dumb animated movie with that name now. They also named Christopher Walkens character in the second Batman movie "Max Schreck" and made a movie called "VAMPIRE'S KISS" (I think it was called that) portraying my great-great grandfather as a REAL vampire that was cast in the part in Nosferatu. haha You just can't escape The Undead!

David Vacant was actually the third guitartist in the band. I first started The Undead in 1976 with some guys I was in high school with (Chris Loob on bass and Bob and Seth Kemp on drums and guitar in that order). NONE of those guys understood punk rock though, whereas I had seen The Ramones early on (when they were still pretty unknown and played a "Battle of the Bands" show in New Haven, Conn. against The Dictators! So I knew punk rock could work.) I couldn't ever talk any of them into seeing The Damned, The Sex Pistols, or anything. So, I took the name and my songs with me to Los Angeles after graduating high school, and in the summer of '77 started another version of The Undead there. That line-up was Saxon Violence (guitar), Jimmy Infidel on bass, and Juvey Delinquent on drums. We played a few shows at The Masque, Madam Wongs, Du Grand, Whisky, etc....the usual places. We recorded too but the songs were not released until the fall when I was back in the bay area and that band line-up was already ka-put. So, because there was no band line-up at the time to push it, the records didn't do as well as they should. Even though they looked great with 4-color covers (I got a great deal from my Uncle A, who was a printer). I mean, no punk bands had stuff that looked that good unless they were on a major label! It was "BREAKFAST CEREAL DEVIANT" b/w the Ramones inspired "SUPERMARKET MUSIC" on one record, and "FIDO IS A CROTCH SNIFFER" b/w "WE'RE ALL SCUM" on the other record.

With finishing film school and other distractions I didn't have a chance to begin getting the band together (with yet another line-up) until 78. Anyway, David was in that version. He was a good friend and a good guy, but frankly he did way too much speed and could never concentrate on learning the songs as I'd written them. In fact, I don't think he could play the same thing twice if he tried. So, I kind of dubbed David Vacant's time in the band as our "primitive period", cause it was a step back musically.

We'd done one rehearsal at our bass player Larry Conquest's house in Palo Alto... Where we halfway learned only three songs ("Cadillac", "Frisco", and "They Saved Hitler's Brain"...the last based on a bad b-movie I saw once) before someone called the police and had the racket in his parents garage silenced. Then David went and booked us a show like 2 days after our first rehearsal. GULP. The set list for that first show was the three songs we half learned, the names of the other songs I'd released already, and MOSTLY stuff that SOUNDED like song titles. During the show, I'd go to Dave between songs and whisper "play a fast one" or "play a slow one with a couple changes" and he'd start playing... Then our bass player Larry and drummer Bob Noxious ( Bob later sang for The Fuck-Up's) would jump in a couple bars in, playing slightly behind the beat so they could anticipate where it was going. I'd stand there and make up most of the lyrics off the top of my head on the spot, which almost made us the first rap band in a weird way. No one caught on, because there were a lot of crappy artsy experimental bands that we actually sounded better than. If you do something with enough conviction, a punk audience took you seriously as an artist, even if it was a bunch of made up bullshit. They just thought we were like the most hardcore over the top punk band they'd ever seen and at our second show some people (one of them was Tony Zero) had already stenciled our name on their jackets and shirts! If they ONLY knew!

Well, we did that same "make up the song on the spot" thing for about 5 shows, and within a couple weeks of the first non-rehearsal, suddenly Subterranean Records wanted to sign us to appear on a compilation. Hell, one of the only reasons I was in a band was because I was too young to be in clubs otherwise. If it was THAT easy to get a record deal, I'm surprised more people didn't get em'. But as soon as we finished that recording session I thought about it and realized, shit, after listening to the records a few times people will KNOW he can't play the same song twice. It was still a tough call to replace David Vacant because we were such close friends at that point, but I had to fire David and got Joe Dirt to play guitar. Now, Joe needed to learn to play the songs from the recordings David Vacant had played on, which you will recall David had never learned to play correctly to begin with. Why we didn't just scrap those tapes and re-record the songs (played the way I'd written them this time) with Joe I'll never know. Only thing I can think of is that money was tight and we had enough to press the tapes we had, but not for more studio time to re-record AND press them. I still wince every time I hear those recordings... Mostly the song "They Saved Hitler's Brain" from the SAN FRANCISCO UNDERGROUND #2 compilation, which David had cut short by two important verses. Without those verses, it's meaning came off completely different than it was written or intended, which is why the song pissed so many people off and it was banned on radio and in record stores everywhere. The other release we had around that time from David Vacant recordings was "CADILLAC" b/w "FRISCO" which was also banned because of the grisly picture sleeve and some of the language on Frisco. Anyway, that line about David's brain falling out the hole in his cheek came after a lot of frustration and toward the end of his tenure in The Undead. I think I may even have a live recording of that show on tape as a matter of fact.