In the early 80s when I was about 20 years old, I was in a rock band with older more experienced musicians in Santa Cruz California called Local 12 (short for Thieves, Villains, and Scoundrels Union – Local 12) – a Bullwinkle reference. Boris is on strike with a union sign that says “Unfair to Local Villains – Thieves, Villains, and Scoundrels Union – Local 12…”

I had joined this band after it had been around for several years and already gone through several guitar players – The original name of the band was The Fabulous Wieners. The band name change occurred before my arrival because the band members disagreed over its racy connotations…

This band had lots of interpersonal chaos and controversy but the music was amazing. I was really good pals with Jim Smith and Dave Murray who were really tight with each other. They tended to disagree with Bob and Steve about lots of different things and the band only lasted about a year and a half after I joined it.

Jim was the designated genius of the band – he wrote many of the songs, is an amazing vocalist and an excellent keyboardist. Dave is a great rock bassist. Bob (a surfer) was the drummer – he wrote some of the songs and did some of the singing and Steve, the first guitarist, was later replaced by George. After the breakup of Local 12, Jim and Dave continued playing together in different bands for years. Jim, Dave and Bob were founding members of the band.

Jim is legally blind – he had normal vision until his late teens in high school when he rapidly lost most of his sight. He was a gifted visual artist and was preparing to go to art school when this happened to him. When I met him, maybe 8 years later, he was still doing art – black and white line drawings with pen – he could see pretty good detail through a small window in one eye, and he would get about 8 inches away from the page and he could still execute some amazing drawings. He spent a lot of time during that period in the early 80s making those drawings and at some point he gave me good quality photocopies which I scanned some time years later,

In 2026, we decided to do an album at Evil Clown Headquarters in Boston with Dave travelling from California and Jim from Detroit. I went through my scans of Jim’s drawings and selected the one below of the Husband pondering WTF his Wife is doing Vacuuming the Lawn and I asked Raffi to color it for us to use as the album cover. Raffi has a BFA from Mass Art and is a real painter – he knows how to really use color to leverage dimension and shadow… The resulting image below – drawn with pen by Jim on paper in the early 80s and colored by Raffi with Photoshop in 2026 is the Album Cover for the Album: Fabulous Wieners – WTF!?…

Following the color image is the rest of the scans that I have of Jim’s drawings from the early 80s…

PEk – August 2026