The Mepham High School Buccaneer

Staying on the subject of Mepham High School...here's a puff piece on my band, Barking Spiders, from the November 1988 issue of The Buccaneer. It was written by our friend Elaine Gambale...and apparently Mike Maher was our "manager". (click on the image to view it larger.)


And I totally forgot to include this Intellectuals article when I was profiling the band a few posts back...


The Intellectuals article – probably from 1987 – was written by Deniese Kennedy...later to be known as Mrs. Joe Kollar. I'm not sure if they were dating at the time of the article but they've pretty much been together since. When Deniese turned in her piece it was titled "Intellectuals: Band From Hell", but it was deemed too risque and it was changed without her knowing. She was pissed.

Since we're talking about The Buccaneer...here's some non-music related stuff that was printed featuring the Bellmore Unscene cast. On the front page of the Mepham Homecoming issue from November 1988 (below), you'll see that Billy Kelly (The Intellectuals) was our Homecoming King. One thing can be said about our graduating class...we didn't do the cliched thing and crown the captain of the football team and the head cheerleader as our King and Queen. You'll also spot Jim Burns (Barking Spiders), in the bottom left hand photo – who judging by the article had "excessive school spirit". And Jim appears again in the bleacher photo along with John Hoffman (Barking Spiders), and me (Barking Spiders).


One more thing I'd like to talk about is the artwork of Billy Kelly. Billy was The Buccaneer staff artist and he was very talented...still is. I've always been a fan of Billy's illustrations. Billy, Kevin Purcell and I worked on the 1986 Jerusalem Ave. Junior High School yearbook together (see photo). I created the cover and graphic theme for the yearbook but my favorite part was Billy's cartoons. They were done in the style of MAD Magazine's "marginal" cartoons, made famous by Sergio Aragonés. Below is a couple of Billy's illustrations from The Buccaneer newspaper...


The Bellmore Unscene is more than just music, it's a network of creative people/friends who've always supported and nurtured each others talents.