Interview: Micke Mansfield (Big Gulp)

Micke Mansfield, bass player extraordinaire for two of Connecticut's most beloved HC/Punk bands Chronic Disorder and Big Gulp recently agreed to do my first ever interview for this blog. In this interview, I focused the interview on New Britain's Big Gulp, one of the funner bands on the scene, who had some serious but also fun takes on everything from eating disorders to titz. 

They were sort of like Connecticut's Gang Green, maybe? Their discog was short but memorable, including the hard to find first 7", a track on the Better Yet Connecticut Hardcore 7", a cassette only release (time to get this on Bandcamp or something, dudes) and a final 7" (Which I just ordered from the Netherlands(!) They love our hardcore over there).

Two of my favorite Big Gulp moments come from two of their many shows: the infamous New Britain VFW show that got shut down by the police, and the Bridges Café show with two soon-to-become-huge bands, Neurosis and Green Day! Micke touches upon them and many more topics in this interview, so let's get right to it!

Tell me a little bit about how you became involved with Big Gulp:

Big Gulp was my best friends Paul Zimmer and Mike Oswald and Chris Robson (UseLESS) and Chris Yustinitch (UseFUL, who sadly passed in Austin in 2021). Both Chrises sang and played bass on the Big Gulp shows before me - DRI, COC, they did some big ones before the record. They looked identical according to our high school teachers with their shaved heads and they developed those nicknames based on their willingness to play the game lol. We were 5 of the 8 high school punks. I was in Chronic Disorder at the time, but we all opened for Descendents at Trinity in our respective bands, which was cool. When Chris Useful went to college in Pittsburgh, I jumped in and brought my newfound love of funk with me.

What was Big Gulp’s first official show like, and who else was on the bill? 

I think it was a random high school type show in the South Windsor cafeteria of just whoever had a band.

There were a couple of shows you did which stick out in my mind. The first was the show that never was, I forget if it was a VFW hall or something, and the cops showed up and shut it down. Were you on that bill, I forget? (Editor - The fight started during Fallback's set)

Definitely, the New Britain VFW. We soundchecked, went to the apartment to drink beer and eat something, and about a half hour later couldn't get anywhere near the club. We got out and walked and saw the full parking lot and traffic and just hundreds of kids and realized it was for us. That's when I realized we had, indeed, created a New Britain scene. Crucial Youth was supposed to headline. SVOE played. I want to say Fallback before us. And then we went on, got a few songs in and the cops came and shut us down. Chris misunderstood and thought he could pull a Jimmy Gestapo-style vamp:  "The cops are here, welcome officers! Let's show them we're cool, because there's not gonna be any trouble, right?" And the crowd cheered but the cops picked him up like a backpack and that was that lol. Lots of kids who had never been to a show, but all in. It was never rescheduled. That girl who promoted it made a fortune.  

The second was the Bridge’s Café show with Neurosis, and did Green Day actually play that? I was wondering if you had any groovy stories about either show. Especially the Neurosis show before they became huge. And that other band, Green Day. I guess they had some success, apparently.

Great show, they both played. I know that Green Day asked to go on first because they had a show at a skatepark in Rhode Island the same day. We were the local name, so we were 3rd anyway. I wish I could say it was awesome, but like you, nobody has any significant memory of their performance. Neurosis was awesome and kept blowing out the circuit breakers. After a while, they just had fun with it. I remember them asking for just red lights because the changing colors were messing them up. The light guy tried every color before he found red and the band hilariously yelled "THAT's GREEN!"..... "THAT'S YELLOW!" every time he got it wrong. The power blew a 3rd time and they gave up rather than play longer. It was a Tuesday, it had been plenty of music for $5.

Do you have any recollections of the rehearsals or recording process for the Hard To Swallow 7”

We saw an ad for Sweet Sixteen - Carl Girodano's studio in his mom's basement. Two sessions, 10 hours maybe. No dubs. We knew our parts tight. I remember wishing Paul hadn't used the Rockman but Carl insisted that's what all the guitarists use in the studio (which was true).

A couple of tunes on Hard To Swallow would perhaps cause people to cancel you because of the lyrics, (Rock Hudson, Anorexia). Do you cringe at that stuff now, or do you shrug and say that was just the way things were back then? 

I don’t listen to much modern HC, but I’d hope there’d still be at least SOME offensive lyrics. - I didn't write those lyrics, Rock Hudson is beyond lol. The world was different, the ridiculousness and shock of saying things into a microphone and making people hear them was novel still. Anorexia is a social issue, I don't feel that bad, but not me lol. Didn't write Scauwuzyertitz or Jimmy Hat lyrics...bad lol. The worst I got was standing up for meat eaters with "Proud To Be a Carnivore." We were getting beat up by the proto vegans and straight edge side lol

You mentioned in the FB group that you wrote the music for the band. Is that the case? I ask coz you were the bassist, so did you get input from the rest of the band?

The first EP is all stuff they had been playing for years when I joined. When I came from Chronic Disorder, the main thing I brought with me was the belief that if you didn't have vinyl, you couldn't prove you were a band. So we knocked Hard to Swallow out and already had most of Anything for Jimmy in the can by then. We would each usually just show up with a fully formed song, ready to go and teach it to everyone. I was a word guy, and you can kinda tell which lyrics Chris wrote (like Jimmy Hat) vs. me - I was super topical and political (What About Us?) My songs all had lyrics and arrangements, so we did them that way without many tweaks. It was super democratic though. On the last cassette there's a suite where all 4 of us wrote a segment. 

So what led to the demise of the band? You had a bit of a gap between the first 7” and the tape, and then put out the final 7”. Did everyone go off to college or the job market, or how did that go down?

We all graduated college in 1990 or so and all had jobs in parallel this whole time. I did layout stuff at my job at Pratt & Whitney. We were going to just do a second 7", but the new songs we were writing - Piss Poor, and BTI and Pressures of Life were so far beyond the level of what we'd been planning to release we didn't want to have to keep playing catchup. We wanted people to know all our songs. So we did a full length. After that came We Came to Play 7" and a cassette swan song called Not For Sale. 4 songs. It was called that because every other band was getting signed but we all had real jobs by then so we refused to sign with anyone, and also because it was intended to be given to people and if I can find one, I will give one to you. By then, it was 1992 and in our minds, we had won. Our whole mission had been to reclaim rock and roll from the hair metal bands who kicked out the punks in LA. Nirvana dropped, Motley Crue had lost. We felt like the music had evolved to where it would now be grunge. Also by then, certain members who had been living together were at wits end. It was time.  

Any thoughts about releasing the stuff on Bandcamp as a sort of digital discog? 

That would be great, not that anybody has time for that stuff now that we’re old farts. - Spike curated a USB drive of everything  we ever recorded, live stuff, amazing, outtakes. Maybe someday, I'll take stock and make sense of it all. I'd love to remix some stuff and slow it down. We literally played stuff as fast as we could because that was the punk way. But some would have been better paced. Then again, we played them fast to fit more songs on the 7" lol. 

Finally, how’s post CTHC life going? Are you still playing at all, or involved in music somehow? 

I never stopped. This is my 42nd year playing clubs. I got into pop music to make a buck finally and have been all over. Today, I tour America in a casino band called Diva and the Playboys. 40 years on and I still get to say: "Gig in Boston next Saturday, you should come out! lol"

Micke, thanks for answering these questions for my little blog that nobody reads. Any parting words for the young punks of today?

Get a job!