Remembering Dieselmeat:
Reflections on Fate, Fame, and Unrequited Greatness

JR notes: Good news for Dieselmeat fans: as far as I can tell, this is the most in-depth tribute and history of the band available online. Bad news for Dieselmeat fans: this essay is not just about the band. It's told from the vantage point of my own evolution as a music journalist and entrepreneur who lost his way. Although the history mentioned here is as accurate as my notes will allow, I am not attempting to provide an exact chronology. I'm more interested in the legend than the precise timeline.

The year is 1994. The exact date doesn't matter; what matters is that Sean Keefe is about to go onstage and change my life. I had seen Sean around the valley as long as I could remember, but had never given him a thought. There are a lot of burnouts around here; I figured Sean was just another stoner who had turned the volume down. Of course, I was better than all that, given my desire to excel professionally.

I knew about Sean's band, Dieselmeat, but from the wrong messenger. The author of the Dieselmeat piece we ran in the Valley Optimist had a pre-disposition towards smart people's music (he later became a huge Radiohead fan). Our relationship was defined by mutual antagonism: mine towards his musical elitism, his for my unapologetic love of macho, take-no-shit American heavy metal. We were separated by a wall of early Smashing Pumpkins singles; it would be years before "Zero" broke that wall down. That we could have Dieselmeat in common was inconceivable; I kept the band at arm's length. But at the height of the Loud Music Festival, jammed into the basement of Pearl Street, the dots were about to connect.

***

Every music journalist dreams of being a part of something big before its time. For me, it all started in high school, a decade before I had ever heard of Dieselmeat and Sean Keefe. When I was sixteen, I started writing for a west coast metal 'zine called The Crucible. The editor, twice my age, was justly critical of my teenage tributes to the wonder of the Scorpions, but she warmed to my work after I had the good sense to skewer Quiet Riot in a concert review, giving the nod to (then) blue-collar openers Whitesnake instead.

To sharpen my critical chops, I started reading Kerrang!, a literate and trend-spotting import mag from the U.K. Kerrang! cut its teeth on spotting bands before their time - thus I discovered the two great musical loves of my life long before America knew much about them. While Hanoi Rocks never took the U.S. by storm, Metallica sure did. I was the first kid in my neighborhood with a copy of Kill 'Em All, and in 1984, I caught the Ride the Lightning tour in the tiny Cain's Ballroom "on the wrong side of the tracks" in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Metallica was on fire back then; the inevitability of their future fame just emanated from the stage.

But I had nothing to do with Metallica's success. I was not a high-profile music journalist; I was Jon Reed, middle-American high school student, mailing articles about hair bands to a magazine nobody cared about. Girls didn't know about my other life and doubtless would have been unaffected by the news. Still, I fashioned myself a high school talent scout, buying expensive imports with paper route money in search of the next big thing. I bought my share of lemons, but partner-in-crime Lee Nave was there to absorb the cost with his paper route bucks too. One of the standout reporters at Kerrang! was a scribe named Dave Dickson, a major voice in European music journalism. Seventeen years later, I would hunt Dave Dickson down for an interview on this web site, but that is a story already told.

Dave Dickson wrote with an artistry that rivaled the music he adored. With each installment in his "discovery" of Hanoi Rocks, I envied his knack for capturing a band on the brink. Dickson stoked the embers of my life as it fucking should be. Obviously, Hanoi never did make it in the states. As documented on this web site, their story took on a tragic dimension. The premature demise of Hanoi Rocks weighed heavily on my adolescent mind. It was a classic storyline, updated with modern characters I related to intensely.

So Hanoi went down, and off to Hampshire College I went. I spent the next four years in a strange quest to become the latest branch on the academic family tree while renouncing its roots at the same time. The life of Dave Dickson faded as I tried on the self-righteous hats of the activist, the pre-law student, the do-good teacher, and countless other worthy vocations that were never meant for me. Gone were the piles of Kerrang! s next to my bed. In 1988, you were a lot more likely to hear Cat Stevens than Megadeth in my dorm room.

Fast-forward to '94, back to the heady days of the Optimist, still early in my post-college life. I was beginning to shake the occupational pretensions of college and awaken those early, primal dreams - while realizing (with no small horror) that I lacked the means to pursue them. My desperate attempts to right the financial ship would eventually take me farther from those dreams than I had ever been, but in 1994, I was still straddling the fence between the life I wanted to lead and the life I ended up living. Through the Optimist, I had even met one of my teenage idols, writer Stephen King, whose total indifference to my existence was yet another wake-up call.

Jon Reed world headquarters was a tiny, dark office in downtown Northampton. You couldn't even open the fridge if the door was open, but there was enough room to sleep on the floor. That little space was all the audaciousness I could afford. I was living a cobbled-together existence of freelance writing gigs and half-assed bookkeeping services, and it was all gradually going under. The credit cards extending my demise promised a spectacular flameout when I finally went.

***

Into that life of entrepreneurial desperation walked Sean Keefe, and that night at the Loud Music Festival. Due to my aforementioned bias, I had already missed most of their set. Dieselmeat was about to play their encore; the crowd's silence caught my attention. As Sean grabbed the mike to introduce their last number and everyone packed in around him, I could immediately sense that I had misjudged him.

"Let's fuckin' rock this shit," Sean said, and he did. The song that followed, "Dreams," was delivered with life-is-hard intensity. "Dreams" was kind of a poor man's "Stairway to Heaven," but it was plenty rich for Pearl Street, and the song's naked ambition was bigger than anything I had ever seen around here. "Dreams" was one of those songs that establishes the scope of a band's songwriting talent, charting out a sky that will eventually be littered with stars. In that sense, "Dreams" was less of a "Stairway to Heaven" and more of a "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You," a bold declaration of future brilliance. As the song peaked, Sean laid into his guitar. I had never seen Sean without a guarded look on his face; now he looked freer than I had ever felt.

I managed to spot Sean and pull him aside after the show. I handed him my Senior Editor business card from the Optimist; the fact that I had left the publication six months previously was suddenly an afterthought. I was prepared to utilize all the media connections I had to be a part of the story.

But the story was to play out in reverse. As it turned out, the wildest part of the Dieselmeat ride was already over. Though the band was technically "undiscovered," I had arrived late on the scene, and I was to get more of a boost from Dieselmeat than Dieselmeat ever got from me.

***

Things moved quickly. My enthusiasm and press credentials were enough to get me into what appeared to be Sean's inner circle. It took me a while to realize that Sean had an "inner-inner" circle, and the very things that got me into that outer layer pretty much prevented me from ever getting closer. My motives would probably always be suspect to Sean, and rightly so. But he thought enough of my naïve enthusiasm to hook me up with Lou Davis, Dieselmeat's band manager, and someone who was to figure prominently in a shift my life would later take.

At the time I came on board, rumors about the band's brushes with fame were already becoming the stuff of legend. Dieselmeat had just released their second CD, Happily. They had already burned through their first record label and were now on their second. After Dieselmeat released their first record, the self-titled Dieselmeat, they evidently attracted the attention of some major labels, and did, to the best of my knowledge, execute some kind of contract with one of them, going on to blow a hefty signing bonus in short order. That relationship ended quickly and badly, leaving Sean jaded on the majors and determined to maintain creative control at all costs. The most credible explanation I ever heard for why things fell apart had to do with the label's insistence that Sean was Dieselmeat's Jimmy Page - he needed to go out and find himself a Robert Plant.

I never understood that particular criticism. To me, the most appropriate comparison with Dieselmeat was always Nirvana - two three piece bands that managed to generate huge intensity while fronted by a singer strong enough to hold down the stage and play lead at the same time. Maybe Sean wasn't as good a singer as Kurt Cobain, but he definitely didn't need a pretty boy wailing next to him to get a crowd's attention.

Like Nirvana, Dieselmeat paid tribute to the heavy metal era while undermining its blow-hard stupidity. It was not hard to understand why Sean would have told those suits to go fuck themselves. And he would have been right - not just creatively, but commercially. In the mid-90's, it wouldn't have made sense to re-launch Led Zeppelin. But picking up where Kurt Cobain left off, while simultaneously resurrecting the guitar hero - now that would have been a trick. To this day, I believe that Sean could have carried it off.

Fair warning: if you track down Dieselmeat's two official CDs on eBay, you won't hear much to support that kind of grandiosity. We all have a list of bands who never pulled off on record what they could pull off live - add Dieselmeat to that list, with an asterisk I'll get to down the line. The first CD was distinctive and diverse, but only hinted at Sean's songwriting capabilities. The second CD, Happily, had flashes of world-conquering potential and a tighter, harder sound, but was ultimately hampered by a thin-sounding mix and the absence of some of the band's best live material.

Indeed, Sean seemed to generate new music at a Prince-like rate, so song selection would have always posed problems for the Dieselmeat record producer - which direction do you choose, which songs do you leave out? Whatever the criteria, I didn't feel that Happily did Dieselmeat justice. Live staples like "Terrified" and "Spaceman" would have helped Happily's cause, but this wasn't one of those bands that blew out its best material on its first album or two anyway. You got the sense that Sean was just warming up on his first two CDs, sharing a few snippets from the cutting room floor as he moved on to new and improved experiments.

To be fair, I've encountered some fans who have a cult-like devotion to the first CD. They think I just don't get it. I can’t fault their passion, but I never felt that Dieselmeat was supposed to cater to a cult following. Sean wrote music that brought heat from the musical fringe while driving a four-by-four through the heart of American riff-rock. Like Kurt, he was meant to challenge and capture the mainstream at the same time; he was still evolving into that type of greatness after the first two CDs hit the shelves.

***

My mixed feelings about Dieselmeat's recorded output put me in a delicate position with the band. For the first time, I began to understand Dave Dickson's warning that for a journalist, befriending a band is fraught with peril. At this point, Dieselmeat was working with a major independent record label in New York City. The label's promotional connections were strong, so Lou proposed I write a review of Happily, which their publicist would place in SPIN Magazine. Simple as that. At the time, SPIN was not the gutless charade it later became. The sudden chance to place a review in the best American music magazine of my youth was a prospect that made me giddy. Not to mention the chance to pole-vault all those dues-paying steps between the Valley Optimistand SPIN in one quick phone call.

So I crafted a short review - more of a capsule than an in-depth assessment. Just as well, because every sentence was another chance to offend those I wanted to help. I thought I had written a balanced review, making clear that Dieselmeat was destined for greatness while holding their feet to the fire. But the word from Lou was that the review was too critical. When he told me that, my first response was something along the lines of "don't ever question my journalistic integrity." But the words felt hollow; I could tell he was disappointed in me. It's one thing to be told to tone down your work by someone whose priorities you question, but how could I question Lou? No one wanted the band to succeed more than he did. I had a dilemma: if I stood my ground, there was a good chance the publicist wouldn't push the review. Dieselmeat wouldn't get the exposure, and neither would I. For the first (and last) time in my life, I rewrote a review for suspect considerations.

The new review still had some sass to it, but it lacked the toughness of the original. I can't remember exactly what I took out, but it had something to do with criticizing Sean's lyrics. Rock lyrics have always been a sticking point for me - partly because I don't understand why musicians don't involve editors to bring out the best in their work, just as a poet does. Not that Sean didn't have a way with words, sometimes he really did; I just felt he could dig deeper. It was the best criticism I could think of that wouldn't turn off the reader the way a jab at the production quality would have. And it was a heck of a lot better than throwing in an obnoxious insider's line about how "Dieselmeat's records are good, but they're so much better live, man!"

I faxed the rewritten review to the publicist, and the page turned. I had bought into Dieselmeat. From here on, I would put on the best face possible and keep my criticisms in the family. When Lou called after he saw the new review, I could hear the excitement in his voice.

***

As it turned out, the review never got published in SPIN. I can't remember why; I do recall wondering if we would have been better off sending the original. The strange thing is that I can't even remember being disappointed. That I don't remember is a likely indicator of how hard a smack it must have been.

After the SPIN setback, it made sense to draw on the one thing I could be sure of: a Dieselmeat feature in the Valley Optimist. For a signed band in search of a national audience, local stories aren't exactly a huge thrill. Still, I hoped to atone for my lack of national pull by doing a quality local piece. I had a bit of a leg to stand on here, as my Optimist interview with another up-and-coming band, the Unband, had gone over well, so Lou sold Dieselmeat on doing a local interview with me.

I can't remember how the interview started, but it played out well. An hour in, I was asking the guys how they had been affected by Kurt Cobain's death. It was one of those questions you take an hour to build up to. Right after that, Sean pointed to the tape recorder on the table and said, "Isn't that supposed to be on?"

In all my interviews past and since, I have never had another equipment malfunction. But when you're caught in that dumbass moment, there is fuck-all you can do about it. I don't remember exactly what happened next, but I have this vague image of rushing back to my office, fighting tears of frustration, rewinding the tape, and learning the worst.

I tried so many times to recreate that conversation from memory. I tried to conjure up Sean's description of the Dieselmeat sound, but it just wouldn't come. That is, until I sat down years later and wrote this essay. I now recall that Sean described Dieselmeat as "Black Sabbath bent around Bowie and wrapped around Black Flag." It was one of the coolest descriptions of a band I had ever heard; not being able to get it exactly right nagged at me for a long time.

It was pretty hard to face the guys after that foul up. I wanted so badly to help them, and to date, had come up with nothing. Beyond that, I had over-promised and wasted everyone's time. You couldn't fault my effort - but big effort followed by no result is the mark of an amateur. Lou was really nice about agreeing to set up another interview, but it never got arranged. There was an upside to my journalistic frustrations, however: I vowed to help the band in any way possible, even if it meant leaving my comfort zone as a critic and taking up the promotional cause.

***

go to part two of "Remembering Dieselmeat"

Dieselmeat Promo Pic, Circa 1992. Clockwise From Right: Chris LaPlante,
Sean Keefe (seated), and Eric Davis.