Where it all began

My first band was called ARBD, or Alcohol Related Birth Defects. The year was 1992. I played guitar, Joe Marino sang, Nick Giannone played guitar and Nick Camilleri played bass. There was no drummer for a couple of months. Dan Callahan from Hingham played guitar long enough to write us our first song called "Doesn't Fit". Opie from Weymouth was our first drummer, and by that time we had adopted the name Iron Lung. We recorded a demo on my boom box and passed that out amongst our friends, most of whom laughed at us. It was pretty bad sound wise, but we showed potential. I don't have a copy of that demo or much after that, I was really bad at labeling cassettes back then. We changed our name to THE NOTHINGS after we put out that demo.

After numerous drummers we recruited Mark Civitarese from Hingham. We played quite a few shows with Mark around Massachusetts; Edible Rex in Billerica, some place out in Worcester with Toxic Narcotic and our first real show at the Hingham Rec Center on January 2nd, 1993. Sometime in 1994 we kicked Mark out and Matt Coady played drums for us. He was more aggressive and also played guitar. Below is the only tape I have from those early days. It was recorded at MassComm on Berkely Street in Boston, MA. Doesn't Fit gets cut off at the beginning but Junk sounds real good. The Nothings with Joe and Coady

This line up of The Nothings didn't last much longer. Joe and Coady weren't really interested in doing much more than partying, which we all enjoyed but me and the two Nicks wanted the band to play more shows, especially in Boston. We got our first break opening for Blanks77 and Toxic Narcotic at The Causeway, a legendary dive above The Penalty Box across from the Boston Garden. We had 2 weeks until the show and Joe and Coady were putting little effort into practicing so we got my friend Eric, AKA Dinko North Shore to play drums and the one and ONLY Johnny Mango to sing. We made a lot of new fans that night in Boston. We played songs that were written with Joe but also had a new song that Mango had written in the week we had of practice. It was called "I Love the Bomb" and instantly became a fan favorite. This show ushered in the line up that would last the longest, more on that next posting.