Things happened quickly for Sluggo in1984. In January, we opened for Michigan’s Crucifucks at our home base, Newport’s legendary Jockey Club. In March we released our first recording, the Contradiction EP. School promptly took a backseat to the more important work of sending our 7-inch to college radio stations, independent record distributors, and fanzines in the effort to garner some attention for our music outside of our tiny Cincinnati-area footprint.

We wrote our songs at band practice which typically took place three days a week. By the time the record was out we had written a new batch of eight or so songs including First Step, Daktari, and Put It Off. At the end of March, we hosted an all-ages show at a neighborhood community center, sharing the bill with Human Sufferage and Musical Suicide. In April, my best friend, Andrew, our restless drummer, grew weary of playing hardcore and quit -- the band’s first member to depart.

No sweat. A few phone calls later and I had recruited our friend Eric Moreton to play drums. Eric had approached me at one of our gigs a few months earlier and had expressed his enthusiasm for the band, an enthusiasm which, it turned out, would never wane. By May, with a few rehearsals down, it was like Eric had been there since day one. We were damn lucky.

In the meantime, other changes were afoot. Sluggo’s fondness for Minor Threat was so huge that we decided to follow their lead and upgrade to a dual guitar sound by adding a fifth member. I contacted our friend Peter Aaron who was finishing up his Freshman year of college in Boston and asked him to join us on bass for the summer so I could switch to second guitar. Pete Wegele, as he was known then, was something of a hero to us -- he was the bassist for New Jersey’s Sand In The Face, a band which was featured on Volume 2 of The Master Tape compilation. That was solid cred.

In June we debuted the new lineup at the Jockey Club, opening for Negative Approach. They were one of our favorite bands and their sound was a huge influence on Sluggo. That summer we played two more shows at the Jockey Club -- one with JFA and Sun City Girls, and the other with the Necros. We also played a few local shows at our unkempt Second Street practice spot -- sharing the bill with BPA one time and on another occasion bidding farewell to The Edge, who were moving to Boston. Along the way we wrote more songs, including Demise -- a shredding contribution from our newest band member. We decided to record a 2nd EP of our new material with our new configuration before Pete headed back to college.

By then, the band’s coffers had run low -- I learned that distributors don’t rush to pay you for your records, if they ever pay you at all. I had enough cash for the studio time, but not enough for pressing. No problem, I thought -- now that we have our name out (fanzine reviews for Contradiction were quite positive), an established punk label will want to pick up our second offering and pay for the pressing.

In late August we assembled at Group Effort Studios and recorded six songs -- four shredding hardcore tunes, and two slower ones, both written by me. I’d always felt that it was good to have some variety of tempos from song to song. Plus, Pete (a living, bubblegum-chewing musical encyclopedia at eighteen) had turned me on to some of the ‘77 bands I had overlooked. I became enamored of Sham 69 in particular and penned Friends I’ve Made in an attempt to mimic both their sound and their direct, almost comically simplistic lyrics.

But tensions were high within Sluggo. I took our little band so very seriously that I became an annoying control freak with a short fuse. I simply couldn’t handle it when things didn’t go my way, and my buttons were easily pushed. By the end of the summer I had alienated my bandmates. I had no idea what to do with my frustration. Without thinking things through or discussing the situation with a soul, I made a dramatic spectacle of smashing my guitar and quitting the band on stage at the end of our set opening for the Necros. It was plain idiotic. My parents were there, even. Thank Zeus, there’s no footage. Did I mention I was sixteen?

When the dust settled, I found myself as an ex-member of Sluggo in possession of the six-song EP we had just recorded. I was still proud of what we had accomplished, although the hastily-executed sound mix could have been much better. I knew that people would like to hear this recording. So I sent cassette copies of the EP to several independent record labels, hoping one would pay the costs of pressing and distribution. Maybe a label would even pay for us to properly remix it. The only fruit from these efforts was that the final track, What Happens Next?, was picked up by Mystic Records for a phone-book style compilation called We Got Power Volume 2 -- featuring no fewer than 40 bands.

Sluggo played one more show with Peter before he returned to Boston. It was very weird for me to be in the audience that night. Soon afterwards, Tom Byrne from Human Sufferage took over the bass duties and the next chapter of Sluggo began. It took a few months, but by the end of the year I finally realized that I should never again attempt to be a band leader. Thus began my off-again-on-again career as a mercenary bass player, starting with my stint with local stalwarts SS-20. And seeing Sluggo from the audience, which I often did, became not weird at all, but just great fun.

In 1984 I certainly did some dumb things. But I did a few smart things too. Perhaps the smartest thing I did that year was pay the extra $36.92 to Group Effort for the half-inch master tape of the EP. (The receipt is still in the box.) That meant that one day, if I ever wanted to, I could remix Sluggo’s second EP from scratch and give it the attention it deserves.

The pandemic turned out to be the proverbial rainy day that I had never thought would arrive. In late 2020, I took the master tape to Steve Albini’s Electrical Audio for a professional bake and transfer. In February and March of 2021, I mixed the recording and shared rough mixes with my bandmates to gather feedback. The new final mixes were mastered by Michael Hagler.

Originally, the title for this EP was going to be What Happens Next?, the title of the final song. However, a well-known hardcore band named Ill Repute, coincidentally a Mystic Records artist, released an album by the same title that same year.

No matter. There are other good titles. We will figure one out.

And anyway, it’s not an open question anymore. We know what happened next. We grew up and we grew apart. Some of us left Cincy for good, some of us stayed. And in 2010 we reunited for a single gig in our hometown and it was a fantastic kick to be on stage with Sluggo again. And these days we are still in touch.

Welcome to ‘84.

-- Karl