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97 THE PAGANS 6 The new “sound of music” is defined simply—play it as loud, long, and hard as you can. The Pagans, to put it mildly, follow this recipe—as does any other teen band. None of them apologize for it—in fact there is sort of a contest to see which group can play the loudest. —“Pagans Teen-Band Named After Dog,” Rochester Post-Bulletin, October 17, 1964 The sexual and political repression of the 1950s created its own worst nightmare—longhairs playing rock and roll that made the girls shake their boobies. It made the men with short haircuts and white short-sleeved shirts put down their slide rules and try to stop all the tomfoolery. But by 1964 guitars and amplifiers were being dragged into basements all over America, including the Millstone’s. For a Sprinter, this was the coolest thing that could possibly happen. Real rock and roll right in your own house, with cigarettes and everything. The Pagans were just five high school boys, but to us Sprinters they were living gods—and two of them were my big brothers, Kip on lead guitar and Jeff on bass. Kip, like many firstborns, had an easy confidence that helped him succeed in most of the things he took on. Dark haired and Irish handsome like his father, Kip was an Eagle Scout, a state debate champion, a competitor for the state high school diving championship, leader of the Pagans, but more than anything he was the Big Brother. Sprinters who were seen using the Big Brother’s bathroom heard about it, and if Kip’s toothbrush was discovered wet to the touch, woe be unto any Sprinter with Crest on his breath. Kip should also have won the state championship for best girlfriend. Linda, his steady of several years, was a stunning ’60s beauty who had a devoted following of Sprinters trailing her like dwarves behind Snow White. The vice president of Cool, on the other hand, was brother Jeff. He was Bobby Kennedy to Kip’s Jack; The Man from U.N.C.L.E.’s Illya Kuryakin to Kip’s Napoleon Solo. Jeff dressed cool, walked cool, and slumped cool. THE PAGANS 98 He had a bonelessness to his gait and a way of draping himself over chairs that said, “I care less than anybody in this room.” Making Jeff laugh counted for something; Kip would laugh just to be nice. To add to his mystique, Jeff was an artist. He painted in oils and acrylics as well as pen and ink and had undeniable talent. Kip remembers learning boogie-woogie piano by ear around sixth grade, playing along to Elvis or Jerry Lee Lewis. The band got its start when Kip was on the diving team at John Marshall High School. There he recruited friends for a one-time performance at a high school talent show: Jay Gleason on drums and Collin Gentling on piano. They enjoyed it enough to keep playing, and though the band’s lineup changed a few times, they settled finally on a roster of Kip, Jeff, Jerry Huiting (sharing lead guitar with Kip), Jim Rushton (rhythm guitar), and Jay Gleason behind the drums. Jeff’s best friend, Chris Hallenbeck, was the Stu Sutcliffe of the Pagans. Chris was a decent keyboard player and could sing, but was with the band only briefly; he died in a car accident. In 1965, the Pagans’ first drummer, Jay Gleason, would also die in a car. In an article on the Pagans, the Rochester Post-Bulletin said the band’s name was “unusual” and “might bother some people.” Kip and Jeff liked its subversive, antireligious connotations but assured the reporters with short haircuts that Pagan was simply the name of Caesar’s replacement, one of our new Irish wolfhounds—“a constant presence at their practices.” (The fact that pagans were godless creatures, heathens without religion, also likely figured in the choice.) Dad was a drunk by the time the Pagans formed, but not the bourbonguzzling , elbow-bending, ethyl-to-urine system of his final days. Some part of him enjoyed the confidence it took his sons to get up there onstage and bang it out, and on one occasion he even paid them to play at a Mayo Clinic party hosted at the Millstone. He also put up with having band practices at the Millstone, this to the great delight of the sweaty group of Sprinters who attended every session...

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