Jim Skafish looks back at his (and Chicago's) punk legacy
It’s hard sometimes to be a punk.
Who can say whether Jim Skafish was born to be the protopunk of Chicago or whether his defiant, antisocial attitude was pounded into him through years of abuse by schoolyard bullies and Catholic school authority figures?
(Sun-Times file)
(Sun-Times file)
But the angry young man with the shaved head, little girl’s dresses and prodigious proboscis, who spewed venom from local rock stages in the formative years of punk rock, was the total package.
Skafish, whose self-named band debuted in 1976 and was the first U.S. act on the seminal I.R.S. label, is testing the musical waters again with “What’s This? 1976-79.” The 11-song compilation, which includes just two previously released cuts, “Work Song” and “Disgracing the Family Name,” draws on three sessions by the East Chicago-based group.
Many of the master tapes were thought lost but were recently recovered, and when the bandleader had some extra money to release them, the project came to fruition. The album also includes about 25 minutes of commentary by Skafish, covering everything from the Chicago scene in the band’s formative days to a violent encounter with Sid Vicious that led to multiple stitches for a friend, and the Sex Pistols bad boy’s seclusion until his fatal OD a couple of months later.
The frontman has never stopped making music, even releasing a jazzy Christmas album a couple of years ago. But he says he’s never made a living from his art and supports himself doing psychic readings in his home.
“I’m actually a clairvoyant psychic and spiritual medium,” he explains. “I talk to dead people six days a week. I’m able to hear them in a way that other people can’t. I take my work very seriously from a spiritual point of view.”
Skafish studied with the venerable Chicago jazz pianist Willie Pickens as a teenager and found an unlikely champion in jazz great Stan Kenton, who recommended him to Scott Cameron, superagent for Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon. The two blues greats were among his biggest supporters, says Skafish, and he played briefly in the blues band of fellow Hoosier Big Daddy Kinsey.
He had trepidations about meeting Waters and Dixon, Skafish says. “You’re this freaky little kid who dresses weird, but they were so welcoming to me and so inclusive. They got that I was like them, that we were on the outside. ”
He received a colder reception from rock audiences, he says, relating that violence was a fact of life during his performances, and he often felt like his life was in danger at gigs. “I didn’t realize how narrow-minded the rock and punk communities were. I was really quite naive.”
The band released two albums on I.R.S., but label chief Miles Copeland shelved the original second album, forcing the band to water down the product, Skafish says. Plus, the label soon would turn its promotional efforts toward million-sellers the Go-Go’s and R.E.M. Skafish lacked that potential because people won’t always embrace the weird or unknown.
“I used to strip down to an old lady’s one-piece bathing suit with a babushka and then do [the blasphemous] ‘Sign of the Cross,’ ” he says. “I would wear tube tops and diapers onstage, and one time in Europe I wore a baby’s bonnet with pee-stained underwear.”
So what if the world is finally ready for Skafish? He says he has no qualms about touring behind the album if there’s sufficient interest, and he has maintained his friendship with his former band members. He recognizes the material might be difficult for newcomers to pick up, but at the same time the musicians are living different lives and may not be able to hit the road again as Skafish.
