By Joel “Deadly Buda” Bevacqua
Pittsburgh, PA, 1993: “You know what my problem was?” His drunken ankle buckled, dropping his punk-rock body into the plastic rainbow-colored carpet of my little rave shop.
Two stoned teenagers in fat jeans and Fresh Jive T-shirts pried him off the ground. Rising undeterred, John’s beer belly plopped out of his faded Ramones t-shirt. He flicked off the long, black, fifty-something-year-old hair stuck to the saliva on his face.
”I never…” He made a basketball-sized globe with his hand gestures and stared into it—like it was fucking Rosebud or something and swayed back and forth as the two anemic rave kids braced to catch him. “I never…”
I couldn’t have cared less what John had to say. Smelling of booze and vomit, he had been frequenting Turbo-Zen Records—I assumed to get high with the college kids and high schoolers playing hooky at the store. I could never say no to him—he was a drinking buddy at Chief’s and did the sound at the Electric Banana, Pittsburgh’s finest punk rock club (R.I.P.) That conferred too much underground cred. But, he was creating a ruckus and I already was fielding calls from irate parents looking for their kids.
“Will you get him out of here?”
“No!” he croaked and stared into the imaginary globe. ‘I never took the time.” Then he got real ornery, waving his arms at me “to look at what I’d done, to look at it! To apprecccciiiaaaaaate it.” As he lunged at me for emphasis, the momentum of his arms threw him off balance to fast for anyone to catch. He smacked his forehead straight on the floor this time.
“He’s not moving.”
The paramedics came and took John to the emergency room. He was discharged and days later was back on the Electric Banana soundboard. But that was the last time I saw John Krom. A few weeks later, he was found dead in his apartment. He’d been dead a while when they found him.
Back in the 1970’s John was one of Pittsburgh’s biggest rock promoters, jet-setting with Led Zeppelin and all the other stars of the day. John was primarily responsible for orchestrating one of Pittsburgh’s most amazing concerts, but one practically forgotten. One summer day in July 1975, he ran a full page ad in the Pittsburgh Press, simply announcing something big was happening downtown. He then floated 3 barges down the Allegheny River to where Pittsburgh’s three rivers meet, Point State Park. In those barges were Suzi Quatro, Alice Cooper, and their bands. An estimated 80,000 people showed up that summer afternoon. The police were unable to control the masses of people doing whatever they wanted that day, such as: jumping off the Fort Duqesne Bridge, for fun. John Krom made that wondrous summer day happen.
Many great events can get lost in time, through error or intention. I had only heard of this amazing concert by word of mouth, by Pittsburghers I knew who were at the show. I have found virtually no written documentation of it other than this web post a guy did in 2001. http://www.drunkenbum.com/20010620.html
Someday I will search the Pittsburgh Press and Post Gazette microfilm for more details, as they surely must exist. But until then, the drunkenbum’s report stands as testament, and it corroborates all other stories I have heard verbally about the event. Amazing, wonderful things get lost in the shuffle of history. We read about wars, but never about wonder! Is it not as interesting I ask? Does it not fire the soul as much? Of course it does!
Anyway, something happened to John between floating Suzie Quatro down the river in a barge, to passing out in Turbo-Zen Records. I still haven’t the fine details, but John told me exactly what happened, and it’s my job to tell you. He never stopped to appreciate what he did. He just kept driving forward, oblivious to the joy he created, and never really took part in it himself.
John could have got wasted at a lot of places, but he chose my record store to get fucked up at towards the end. Now I know why. He could see us young raver kids loved the music too. The electric moments of music never left his soul, even as the booze grabbed control of his body and mind.
I didn’t respect John the way I should have the last time I saw him. I guess I can forgive myself considering the circumstances, but I can honor his memory and the man he truly was by relaying his accomplishments and one of his important messages. John’s legacy, and accomplishments will survive just a little longer, because they deserve to. So it is written, and I begin with John Krom’s story for my diary of the Trauma Harder Style Tour 2016.
The “Trauma Harder Styles Tour 2016” is America’s first hardcore techno music tour. It’s about forty-plus electronic music artists pushing the most extreme version of electronic dance music. This is EDM you might slam-dance to, pogo, mosh, or stage dive to. It is the type of electric hybrid John might have loved to hear, if he were only here.
Probably the most neglected segment of the EDM world in America, hardcore techno is actually one of its oldest—chock-full of rave pioneers and the perhaps overly-curious youngsters that found out about them. Like some others on the tour, I’m one of those rave pioneers with a nagging sense of unfinished business in the back of my mind. When I found out the tour would stop in my old hometown, Pittsburgh, PA, like a moth to flame I lobbied like hell to get on the tour, and vowed to document its entirety. This tour could be a boom, or bust, or just… whatever… but I want to remind myself, and whoever will listen to me, that what we’re doing is special, it’s important, and we’ll lose a part of ourselves if we take it for granted. So I dedicate my following journal entries to John Krom, who reminded me to take the time to look and appreciate what we all do.