Karate Church

We didn’t really give a fuck about shit in autumn of 1986. We were college students in the pre-internet age. Ronald Reagan was in the White House, but we felt like we were in charge in Bellingham, and in a lot of respects we were.

It was easy to find your way home drunk when you lived at 1111 High Street. Plus right next door was the sub-iconic Karate Church, home to the Bellingham Karate Academy. We named our band Karate Church and tapped the keg. Eight of us lived there (John slept in a walk-in closet) along with a drape-climbing tabby named Fuckstick. We took out what the University called ‘institutional loans’ and bought half-ounces, which we grammed out. It was a good system.

Karate Church had some original tunes but mostly we played junk rock covers and may have been the only band ever to cover Zeppelin and the Misfits equally straight of face. We played ‘Nice Boys’ by Rose Tattoo before Guns ‘n’ Roses, and could go Dead Boys to Beastie Boys in the matter of a half-set.

I invited my future wife to a party at 1111 the first time I ever talked to her. I’d been waiting to meet her for a year already and finally just approached her to tell her who the fuck I was. She knew who I was. She did not attend the party.

Anyway, most of the windows in the house were broken at that party and we were evicted the following week. Incredibly, I was able to find a room in a house up the street and moved my waterbed and all my records up there for the last quarter before I graduated. I was already in Panic and pretty anxious to get to Seattle and start doing some serious headbanging-- but Karate Church was a very pleasurable & socially profitable way to pass the spring of 1987.

Karate Church still stands. I get cottonmouth every time I drive by it, feeling a bit like someone in witness protection. You can’t go back…