Without batting an eye, Jim Skafish will tell you that he’s “the sole originator and godfather of punk in Chicago.” And that’s not all–he takes credit for launching new wave and alternative rock as well. It all started in February 1976, when his band Skafish first walked onstage at B’ginnings, a club in a Schaumburg strip mall. That was the moment, he says, “when we created an art form.”
None of them had a rock background, but they were willing to follow the lead of their front man, who liked to be in control. “I remember practicing a lot,” says drummer Larry Mysliwiec, now a police officer in Schererville, Indiana. “I remember one or two years into it, Jim had gotten the measles, but he made sure we still practiced at his house. He directed the rehearsal from upstairs while we were downstairs. I think at least three or four of us got the measles. That’s how adamant he was.”
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Conversation tanked after its 1983 release and was savaged by critics who thought it was generic 80s dance music with lyrics that weren’t up to snuff. “What people don’t realize is that I.R.S. put out an abridged, watered-down version,” Skafish says. “Conversation was heavily weighted toward the pop side and people just assumed that was what I wanted to do. There’s a whole other second album no one’s ever heard that was certainly more groundbreaking than anything Skafish had ever done.” The band never recorded again, and after taking one last shot at touring, packed it in for good in 1985.
Music never generated enough money for Skafish to survive, but he didn’t quit. He says he’s written hundreds of tunes over the last ten years, and in May he released his first new recordings in almost 14 years: Tidings of Comfort and Joy: A Jazz Piano Trio Christmas. He’s been playing Christmas songs at corporate gigs for many years, but hadn’t ever considered recording them until Harrison “intuited” the project a few years ago. The idea was unusual, he says, but “energywise, it just felt right. And if you’re legitimately in that process, what comes to you is the antithesis of logic.”
