Pucky Nye - Black Death/Badge

I was born and raised in Ashland, WI. I spent most of my time hunting, fishing, and swimming in Lake Superior. As most musicians growing up in the 60's, The Beatles influenced everyone to be in a band. I got interested in playing the guitar at age 12. I took two lessons and was told I'd never be able to play guitar because I was double jointed in both my thumbs. I decided to try saxophone. After a couple of months I still wanted to play guitar, even though I was becoming pretty good at sax. so I bought a cheap guitar and began teaching myself. I learned chords from a book and learned songs by listening to records. Ashland was small (10,000 population) so the only place to see live bands was high school dances or the Youth Center. The only Concerts were in Duluth MN which was 80 miles away. My dad was a sailor on the Great Lakes, so it was just my older brother and my mother at home. After a couple of months, I found some older guys that played, so we started a band. We became real good friends and practiced daily. we eventually started playing at the Youth Center, and High school dances. we became very good and as our popularity grew, so did the gigs.

We started playing at bars when I was 13 1/2, the other guys were 14, so our mothers had to be in the bars when we played because we were so young. we were drawing pretty good crowds because we were so young. The older bands would come to see us and were impressed with talent. When I was 14 we entered our first battle of the bands and won. In upcoming years we entered 3 more battle of the bands and won all 3. Our first band was called The Mistics, then The Living Dead (after the movie), then came Black Death(we were huge Black Sabbath fans). In Black Death, we noticed the Duluth radio stations were giving local bands air time with their 45's, so we decided to make a record. I was 16 then. We collaborated on a couple of our own songs, "Rock'n Roll With Ork", (Ork was the lead singer & front man) and "In need". We recorded them at Sound 80 Studios in Minneapolis. It cost us about $500.00 to record and press 500 records. the record got very little air play, but we now had a record out so that was a big deal.

The Mistics at Babes (Stagecoach) circa: 1969. Left to right: Gary King, Rick Marshall, Pucky Nye and Dave Blaszkowski. The members were 14 years old, so their mothers had to be there!

The Living Dead - Ashland Youth Center circa: 1970.

The Living Dead.

Black Death circa: 1973.

Black Death was together for about a year, and because of our popularity in Northern WI, we were approached by the Gary VanZeelan Talent agency out of Little chute, WI. This was one of Wisconsin's biggest booking agencies. They had over 150 bands working for them in the Midwest. We began playing all over Wisconsin and Mich. After some members leaving the band, we reformed and became Shotgun. Oh, the Cathedral label on "In Need" was something we came up with. I can't remember why. All the band members from all my bands were from Ashland, and we all attended high school together. Ashland was so small, that everybody knew everybody.

Shotgun hit the ground running. by this time we were 18-20 years old and could tour extensively. We averaged 20 nights a month playing in varies clubs, high schools and festivals in the Midwest. We also began opening concerts for big name bands. We toured extensively with The Grassroots, and soon became very good friends with them, Rob Grill (Grassroots lead singer and bass player) and I formed a pretty tight bond. At the end of our last tour with them, their guitar player was leaving and Rob asked me to join the Grassroots. At the time, our Record Glory Bound was doing pretty good and I also had just bought a bar, so I declined. Glory Bound/She put me down (Badge) had reached the top 10 in WI & MI and we were very much in demand. while playing in Bismarck ND, our agent called and said we had to change our name. This was before recording Glory Bound/She Put Me Down. There was a colored band out of Detroit Mi that was called Shotgun too and their album had just hit Billboards top 100. Infringement rights were about to take place so we had to come up with a new name like right now!

We (the Grassroots & us) were sitting in our hotel room on a night off, when our agent called. When we had a night off, we would get a tv guide and load up on alcohol and munchies and watch tv all night. We partied every night after the show so, on our nights off we chilled. Plus watching tv was a novelty because we were also playing and traveling so never got watch anything. I told the band about our predicament and the creative juices of picking a new name began. Names such as PINK STEEL, HOT FUCK were just few, lol. Finally after not getting any good useable names from my band, I asked the grassroots who were really enjoying the conversation up to this point. Rob said before being the Grassroots, they were called The 13th Floor, but he had always wanted to be called either Badge or Thumb. I immediately picked up the phone to call our agent and he said he would check those names out to see if anyone was using them. Our agent called back and said there was a band out of Chicago called Thumb, but no one called Badge that he could find. So we became Badge.

Nye with Rob Grill (Grassroots) after a show.

The original Badge: “I some what remember this picture, was the black pipe in the middle a band bong? That would explain us being lost in the woods. I remember our agent saying we all looked like we just killed 10 people. So we had to do a re-shoot for a poster. Oh those were the days!” - Nye

Now we had to paten the name Badge to prevent this from happening again. The best way to do this with out going through the legal process was to make a record. I had written a song when I was 16 called She Put Me Down and we did a cover of the Grassroots Glory Bound. the record immediately got airplay in the north, and we sold over 10,000 copies which was pretty good for no distribution, or label backing at that time. Our bookings greatly increased, by this I mean better venues, and more money. Now were trying to get a label to pick us up. back then that was not an easy task. too much competition and we were told we need a gimmick. so it didn't happen. now comes the funny part.

Original line-up of Badge.

After a year or so of heavy touring, the band wanted to take a break. Our agent kept hounding us to make another record. We were tired, so I had a genius idea. I told the guys, lets make a record that's so insane no radio station would ever play it. Hence, Boogie Till You Puke. We could get our agent off our backs, and maybe get some time off and kick it back in a couple off months. problem solved! Well, I was right, No radio station would play it. But it turned out to be one of the top bar juke box party songs in the state! recording that insane song made us more popular than ever. We were back on the road. eventually things slowed down, and some of the members began getting on with a more normal life style.

The Boys: They were only together for about 6 months. The band came about after Badge cooled down for a bit before starting up again.

Badge circa: 1980’s/1990’s.

We started to record an album but we wanted some one to back us money wise because with no record label, the cost to record, produce and distribute an album was more than we wanted to invest. All the investors we found knew nothing of the music business and expected a quick return on their money so we stayed away from them, fearing lawsuits. this was all of 40 years ago. I'm 67 now and continue to play today, but I don't travel more than 150 miles and only one to two nights a week. this is my 55 years in the music business,

This is Pucky today playing his 1968 Gibson Les paul custom. He bought it brand new in 1968 and used it on all his records. He still has it, but it only leaves the house on special occasions. Pucky also used it in Black Death.

Dakota Brown