Yep, it's The UNPLEASANTS. You can read everything you never wanted to know about these guys on their homepage. To spare you that experience, though, we'll give you an idea right here what you're in for should you happen to show up when these guys take the stage in September. (Keep in mind that this was written by Unpleasant Chuck, so you'll have to factor in his suspect credibility!)
The UNPLEASANTS are John Pendell, Chuck Brillowsky and Al Jurczyk. We first performed together at the April 1996 coffee house, and they've been trying to figure out a way to keep us from coming back since. We, however, persist like so many bionic cockroaches - there's just no getting rid of us!
John Pendell , a Trenton resident, plays rhythm guitar and sings most of the lead parts with the group. He is the most "traditional" of the three from a pure folk music standpoint, spending most of his pre-UNPLEASANTS years strumming softly and fingerpicking his way through a large collection of John Prine, Steve Goodman and John Hiatt offerings. John learned of the Folk Society in 1995, and attended a few of the coffee houses, thinking to himself, "Heck - I can do that." He never did crank up the courage to go it alone, however. He figured he needed a partner - someone to play and sing badly enough to deflect negative attention from himself.
So that's where I came in. I'm Chuck Brillowsky, and I also reside in Trenton. John and I met at the wedding of the son of a mutual friend. We hit it off well, and he told me of the Folk Society shows, suggesting that we might want to try to play there together sometime. I guess the wedding spirits were talking, because I said it sounded like fun. I play acoustic or electric guitar, whichever is least (or is it most?) obnoxious, depending on the song. I also bleat somewhat harmonically on many of our tunes.
John and I played together as the cleverly titled duo, John & Chuck (or was it Chuck & John?) at the March '96 coffee house. We were both as nervous as cats at the dog pound, and managed to croak out a couple of tunes, one of which was a political parody of an old Beatles song - "Two of Us". After the show, a white-haired gent approached me and said, "You guys have no shame --- I like that!" It was Al. We quickly found out that he played bass, and as a couple of the songs that we were cooking up for future Folk Society shows had cool bass parts, we asked Al to sit in with us in April, and we haven't been able to lose him since!
Al Jurcyk, from Wyandotte, plays bass and adds a third component of harmony to our mix. He is probably the most focused and disciplined of the three, having honed his craft in rocking teenage combos in the 60s. Although we all contribute to our "arrangements" (perhaps DE-rangement would be a more appropriate term...), Al is often the one who writes things down as we go, and makes us sweat the details on the sucky parts, which is generally the whole song. Al has recently perfected his unique brand of musical notation, which we fondly call Jurczyk Tab. It's filled with colored hilighter marks and arcane references to "do doos."
Being basically lame and lacking in creativity, we rely on mostly cover material, although Al has penned a few tunes and we have come up with a couple of parodies of popular songs. We all are fans of either humorous or cleverly written tunes amd are always on the lookout for interesting tunes to run through the UNPLEASANT meatgrinder.
We practice more than you would imagine to listen to us, each of us contributing a song each every month to add to our play list. This gives us a pretty eclectic mix of songs from which to choose. We like to present a variety of material to our audiences --- something to offend everyone. John plays primarily acoustic 6 and 12-string guitars, although he also messes around with a banjo (don't worry, we don't encourage it...) and have even forced him to play bass on one song. As mentioned, I play electric & acoustic 6 strings, and one of these days may surprise everyone by showing up with some type of keyboard. Or a trombone! Al usually play the bass, of course, but he has been know to pull out a banjo, electronic keyboard, or even a ukulele to assure maximum UNPLEASANT-ness!
Once again - the pertinent details:
East River Folk Society Coffee House
Saturday, September 9th, 2000 7:00 PM
Presbyterian Church of Wyandotte
2250 Oak St.
Wyandotte, MI 48192
Call (734)285-3999 for additional information