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hoip chiggs
non-rock jobs after rock stardom
November 23, 2008 05:41PM
Lou Reed - typist for his old man (at least for a while.)

Richard Hell - certified public accountant. Just kiddin. Was in Desperately Seeking Susan, and is now directing his own films.

Anyone else you can think of?
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Aitch
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
November 23, 2008 06:17PM
[www.thenortonsrestaurant.com]

And while we are on culinary bassists, Peter Oxley from The Sunnyboys runs a gourmet pizza joint near me. He's got a bit of Gordon Ramsay about him in an unfortunately self conscious way. It's open-plan so you get a good view of him yelling at the staff.



Post Edited (11-23-08 20:23)
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John Brown
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
November 23, 2008 08:35PM
Pete Townshend was an editor at Faber & Faber, after The Who broke up for the first time, back in the eighties.
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erikalbany
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
November 24, 2008 06:45AM
Bill from Buffalo Tom has been big in real estate for years in Mass.
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erikalbany
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
November 24, 2008 08:23AM
Sterling Morrison was a prof. too, at UTexas. Being a professor is actually a good transition for rock stars. Being one myself (prof., NOT rock star, obviously), I can attest to the lack of daily structure--plus summers off (to do nostalgia tours).
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ira
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
November 24, 2008 08:29AM
David Grubbs of Squirrelbait is a Brooklyn College prof

Robert Pfeffer of Human Switchboard became president of Hollywood Records and then got into trouble with Anthony Pellicano

Gang of Four went into teaching and record businesses

Amelia Fletcher of Heavenly is an economics professor.

Handsome Dick Manitoba of the Dictators drove a taxi for a long time and is now a bar owner and radio personality (as well as a rock star)

Walter Lure of the Heartbreakers was or is a stockbroker

the late Jeff Salen of Tuff Darts owned clothing stores

the list goes on and on
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breno
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
November 24, 2008 09:19AM
Not rock stars, but related (to the Knack, anyway):

Sharona from "My Sharona" fame is a big time real estate agent to the stars. And Doug Fieger's brother was Jack Kevorkian's defense attorney.
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Delvin
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
November 24, 2008 08:10AM
David Aguilar, lead singer of '60s darage-psych group The Chocolate Watchband, eventually became a professor of astronomy at the University of Colorado.

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breno
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
November 24, 2008 09:12AM
Mo Tucker worked at WalMart.

Vanessa Briscoe of Pylon was working at a quick copy place when the Athens, Georgia documentary was made in the mid-80s.

Kurt Ralske of Ultra Vivid Scene is a fairly successful visual artist - just saw a lot of his stuff in a show at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago last fall.

On Sound Opinions a few weeks back they mentioned that Feargal Sharkey is the head of a UK musician's union or something like that.

I believe David Fenton of the Vapors became a computer programmer. EDIT: Wrong - I looked it up and see that he's a lawyer.

Thomas Dolby designed much of the technology in everyone's cell phones.

Chuck Berry owned a restaurant, much to the chagrin of female customers who used the restroom.

Gary Glitter became a sex offender.

Captain Beefheart is a painter.

Bill Berry is a farmer.

I believe Danielle Dax is an interior designer.



Post Edited (11-24-08 12:26)
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Michael Toland
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
November 24, 2008 09:47AM
Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson is a fish farmer who happens to make a record and tour every now and again.
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MrFab
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
November 24, 2008 10:37AM
Thought I'd dig up this thread from a coupla years ago:

[trouserpress.com]


Here's the original link to the massive "Rock Stars Who Went Back To Work" thread:

[www.ilxor.com]



Post Edited (11-24-08 12:45)
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hoip chiggs
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
November 24, 2008 02:25PM
"Thomas Dolby designed much of the technology in everyone's cell phones."

Wait till I get my hands on that pipsqueak. I HATE CELL PHONES!!
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rebelwithoutaclue
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
November 24, 2008 02:54PM
i think boz scaggs retired from the music business briefly and was a chef for a little while.
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mjm716
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
November 24, 2008 09:46PM
I'll rehash this one, just 'cause the pic is so great and they also happen to be playin' the recent months (btw, who saw that show?). Mr. Killdozer.

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Michael Toland
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
November 25, 2008 07:54AM
Oh yeah, I was supposed to give a report of their Fun Fun Fun Fest appearance, wasn't I?

I have to confess at the outset that I'm not really a fan. I tried one of their records in the late 80s, didn't dig it much and never went any further. I wanted to see them this time partly to see if I still felt the same way (my tastes have expanded considerably since then) and partly just because I felt they deserved the support. So I stayed for a couple of songs and then went elsewhere (my partner didn't like 'em at all, but she's not into noisy loud rock). I respect them for doing what they do very well - it's just not my cuppa.

That said, I have to give 'em their props: they were energized, on form and tight as hell. This wasn't some nostalgic get-together for old times' sake and a quick buck (like the Dead Milkmen, who were underrehearsed and sloppy, and not in a charming way) - they're most definitely a working band. If you're a fan and they hit your area, I recommend you go - you won't be disappointed.
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erikalbany
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
November 25, 2008 10:57AM
Not my cuppa either, but "Hamburger Martyr" is quite an inspired set of lyrics.
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satchmykels
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
November 25, 2008 01:14PM
"cyst" is my fave!!!

but gerald shouldn't have messed with the cadence. version i heard on wmfu was nearly unrecognizable...

[blogfiles.wfmu.org]
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dj45rpm
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
November 29, 2008 09:16PM
I think one of the Vandals was an entertainment lawyer.
Joe Queer had a restaurant, but I think he sold it some time back.
Marc Weinstein of MX-80 is one of the owners of Amoeba Records.
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blasmo
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
December 01, 2008 04:37AM
Met Alex Chilton when he was working at a Pizza Hut in Memphis.
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entropy
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
December 01, 2008 07:40AM
Peter Green was a gravedigger for a while after he left Fleetwood Mac. Jeremy Spencer was abducted by a religious cult and recorded a creepy pseudo-religious album in the early 70s. Danny Kirwan became homeless. No band has a more fascinating family tree than FM.
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HollowbodyKay
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
December 01, 2008 09:27AM
One needs look no further than your old, dog-eared copy of TTP to see the following lines about the late, great Thin White Rope:

"When Worlds Collide" and "Spoor" were both released after the band split up so Kyser could dedicate himself to a career in botany (no joke: the guy's got a graduate degree!).

I don't know if Thin White Rope ever achieved "rock stardom," but that’s my favorite "post-rock-day-job" example.

I imagine Guy Kyser humming "Ahr-Skidar" while gazing into a microscope.
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blasmo
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
December 01, 2008 10:23AM
I had a friend who took a job in Calif. at a computer video editing company, and half of his job was to sit with his manager in a car while they looked for (I believe it was) a member of Iron Butterfly, who had helped found the company, and who would disappear for days on end. He usually wound up at this park that they would sit and wait at. And one day, he never was seen again...

Again, I think it was Iron Butterfly.



Post Edited (12-01-08 12:24)
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breno
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
December 01, 2008 12:45PM
A friend of mine worked for a local Pella window supplier a few years back with one of the members of Snakefinger's band.
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jcakp
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
December 02, 2008 08:50AM
when i was in college i washed dishes at a local restaurant for a year. john harper of the micronotz was the sous chef there - he hired me, and, um, eventually fired me.
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Michael Toland
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
December 02, 2008 09:35AM
I remember visiting Austin in 1990, going into a Half-Price Books and being shocked to see John Croslin of the Reivers working the counter. I thought they were still signed to Capitol at the time (though it turns out they'd probably been dropped by that point). It sounds incredibly naive now, but it had never occurred to me that any of my favorite musicians would have day jobs.

The Reivers broke up about a year or so later and Croslin continued his bookstore job for quite a while before he finally started getting enough production work to do that full time.
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breno
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
December 02, 2008 09:43AM
I believe Jason Martin of Starflyer 59 and Ronnie Martin of Joy Electric have also been truck drivers for their late father's trucking company for most of their musical careers.
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Michael Toland
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
December 02, 2008 10:30AM
Pat Todd, leader of the late, great Lazy Cowgirls and current leader of the equally great Pat Todd & the Rankoutsiders, has been a truck driver for a Hollywood studio for many years.
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satchmykels
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
December 02, 2008 04:48PM

>It sounds incredibly naive now, but it
> had never occurred to me that any of my favorite musicians
> would have day jobs.
>


i'd always imagined curtis a living in a huge purple mansion, but there he was selling me peaches in a corner grocery store during the summer of 1990.
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erikalbany
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
December 02, 2008 11:42AM
Barry Marler, former frontman of Athens, GA, band Dreams So Real is now a bioinformatics analyst. It's true, but I don't know what that means. Wikipedia is the best I can do (Sorry):

"Bioinformatics is the application of information technology to the field of molecular biology. Bioinformatics entails the creation and advancement of databases, algorithms, computational and statistical techniques, and theory to solve formal and practical problems arising from the management and analysis of biological data. Over the past few decades rapid developments in genomic and other molecular research technologies combined developments in information technologies have combined to produce a tremendous amount of information related to molecular biology. It is the name given to these mathematical and computing approaches...[zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz......]"



Post Edited (12-02-08 14:11)
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Michael Toland
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
December 02, 2008 01:29PM
I often wonder from time to time what happened to the Dreams So Real guys. Now I know. I bet Marler's made far more money doing this than he did as part of a major label act.

CD reissues of their catalog would not go unappreciated in my corner of the world.
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erikalbany
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
December 02, 2008 03:03PM
I saw them at the Exit/In in Nashville in '89. A great, great show.

Drew, the drummer, had a terrible experience a few years back...an exboyfriend of his girlfriend shot him in the head and then killed the girlfriend and himself. Drew survived and is apparently doing well.



Post Edited (12-02-08 18:06)
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Michael Toland
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
December 02, 2008 04:05PM
Good lord. That's awful. Glad he survived it. Sorry to hear that his poor girlfriend didn't.
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Delvin
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
December 03, 2008 09:18AM
I always had sort of the converse idea in my head: I never imagined that rock musicians would end up leaving that life behind and getting ordinary jobs like the rest of us. I was astounded when I learned that my freshman-year science professor used to have a band, that actually recorded and released an album. (It wasn't Dave Aguilar.)

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Jermoe
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
December 03, 2008 12:51PM
Tommy Vinton somehow managed to drum for Too Much Joy while maintaining a career as an NYPD Officer. He retired from the PD last year. Too Much Joy's
frontman, Tim Quirk, went on to become the VP of programming for Rhapsody.com. I don't think Too Much Joy ever got around to breaking up.

A friend of mine has visited with Astrid Kirchner (girlfriend of Stu Sutcliffe, credited with the Beatles' haircuts and early look) at the bar she and her husband own in Hamburg on several occasions. She doesn't really care to talk about it much. She might not have been a rock star, but her influence on rock was pretty major.
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Heff
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
December 04, 2008 10:51AM
Michael Weldon, who, I believe, coined the term psychotronic to describe cult, midnight and just plain odd movies, then wrote two books about it (which are great), I think he was in Cleveland's Mirrors.

According to TP, Deniz Tek joined the US Navy as a flight surgeon. Ever since I read that back in Vol 3, I thought that was pretty cool. Talk about going from one extreme to another.

On TMJ's 'Cereal Killers' - 'Good Kill' is anti-death penalty and the liner notes specifically mention that Tommy Vinton did not play on that song because he disagreed with the sentiment.

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Michael Toland
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
December 04, 2008 02:10PM
According to his Wikipedia page, Tek has spent his time out of the Navy as an ER doctor (when he's not playing music, of course).
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Delvin
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
December 03, 2008 02:28PM
Wasn't it a big news (or gossip) item that David Lee Roth was training to be an EMT, after his solo career tanked? Or was that a publicity stunt or something? (I can't imagine he'd be hurting for money, unless he signed away his rights to the songs on those first six VH albums.)

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STEVE
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
December 03, 2008 03:09PM
jesus is today really the 3rd?
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STEVE
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
December 03, 2008 03:10PM
Wednesday...

the third.

fuckin nerds...
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mjm716
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
December 03, 2008 09:31PM
Good catch - Roth really was an EMT for a while around here. Much worse though was his follow up as a DJ in NYC - I woke-up with the Roth many times and even admired the train wreck at times when he was belittling station management by name on air. But his affinity for terrible gay euro-house was the biggest surprise, and I still shudder to think of it.

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satchmykels
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
December 04, 2008 02:08AM
so, is the jamie klimek i always see in the 'without a trace' credits the mirrors/styrene jamie klimek? the imdb has no opinion...
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satchmykels
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
December 04, 2008 02:16AM
apparently i keep misreading the first name...

johnny klimek

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Delvin
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
December 04, 2008 08:33AM
> I woke-up with the Roth many times ...

We're all going to do you a big favor, MJM, and ignore the boundless possibilities of ridicule that you've opened the door to. Aren't we, folks? Huh? Aren't we?

Heck, even thinking about Roth as an EMT, that sentence of yours offers plenty of opportunities.

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mjm716
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
December 04, 2008 10:16PM
but seriously, nothing would get me out of bed and AWAY from the radio faster than DLR in the morning... in fact he saved me a bunch of hangover call-in sick days.

now where your mind was ... I'm not that cheap! maybe Wolfgang Van Halen, but DLR - no way... =P



Post Edited (12-05-08 00:18)
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Aitch
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
December 08, 2008 03:59PM
Turning it the other way round, rugby league international Eric "Guru" Grothe played guitar for The Lime Spiders.
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ira
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
December 08, 2008 05:40PM
drummer Grant Young of Soul Asylum bought and operates a resort of some sort in northern MinnesoTa
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STEVE
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
December 11, 2008 08:58PM
thanks ira.

the mrs n me will be in minneapolis jul '09.

see you & the rest of THE midwesterners SOON!
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willie
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
December 12, 2008 09:25PM
Paul Gadd operates a spa for homeless teenage girls in Vietnam. I didn't know I loved him 'til I saw him rock 'n roll.
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rhettlawrence
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
December 09, 2008 05:47PM
Jon Fine of Bitch Magnet fame (well, fame might be a little too strong a word) turned up on the goddamn News Hour with Jim Lehrer last night, believe it or not: [www.pbs.org]

A co-worker of mine went to Oberlin with him (and a bunch of those other Bitch Magnet and Squirrel Bait dudes) and just happened to be watching last night. She had one of those "Holy shit - I know that guy" moments and quickly googled him to verify that it was in fact the same fella.
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mjm716
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
December 13, 2008 03:04PM
A new one (to me), that I thought you'd all appreciate:

Robert Pawlikowski, SST family member of Zoogz Rift, went on to be a major 'wrestler' and later manager in the short-lived WWF competitor UWF (Universal Wrestling Federation).

Last word has it, that he's now a HS science teacher.

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STEVE
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
December 14, 2008 03:58PM
Look out Michael Phelps.


[www.mtv.com]
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michael baker
Re: non-rock jobs after rock stardom
December 16, 2008 05:51PM
syd barrett became a housewife
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