Nitro

Nitro was really more of an idea than a band. Jerry Johnson was a guitarist for the local heavy metal band Sacred Sword who wanted to form a band of his own. He asked Joe Lamaina and me to join up with him to form Nitro. Jerry was probably best known for attaching a cheese grater to the back of his guitar and punching it during his guitar solo to make his knuckles bleed while he played. He reminded me very much of Blackie Lawless from W.A.S.P.

We played a few times together, writing songs and jamming, but didn't have a singer. Still, that didn't stop us from booking studio time in the same Northfield studio Rekkless recorded in earlier. For vocals, Jerry got Ted Ellis from another local band Altoona Works to sit in. He sat in the engineers booth while the three of us recorded the rhythm tracks, listening to the song and writing lyrics.

When it came time for the vocals, I got my first real lesson in the "magic" of the studio. While Ted had a good, powerful voice, he was unable to sing more than two lines of the song in a row. So the engineer had him record two lines, stop the tape, back-up a little and record the next two lines. This was done for the entire song. Still, Demons Cry is a pretty cool song and we had a lot of fun recording it.

Things fell apart pretty quickly after that though. Shortly after we finished the song, Jerry set up a radio interview for the band. Unfortunately, he failed to check with us first on the date. I had already scheduled a trip to visit family. So, while I was away, Jerry and Joe did the radio interview and played the song on the air. My apparent punishment for failure to appear on the radio show was to have Jerry forget to mention my name as a member of the band.

Needless to say, that was it for me.