NEWSLETTER

This next letter came from a postal worker and metal singer in eastern Pennsylvania named Freddie. If you’ve ever heard heard Jon Wurster call in as “Philly Boy Roy” on The Best Show on WFMU, that is exactly what he sounded like. It was uncanny.



Vice: Hi, is this Freddie?

Freddie: Yes.

This is Vice magazine. You sent us a note. Did you mail it from work?

Yeah, I work at the post office down in a small town. We always get your magazine and it’s a great read. When I seen the letters-to-the-editor thing, I go, “I’ll just write him a little note so he knows someone is paying attention here.”

When you say you always get the magazine, do you have a subscription or—

Not exactly, no. I have access to a lot of reading material, if you want to put it that way.

Do you work only in the office or are you a letter carrier?

No, I’m behind the counter at a one-man post office.

How long have you done that?

Thirty years now.

You signed your letter with the name of your band.

The reason I signed it Dog Bite Money is that’s my cover band, and it’s always nice to see your band’s name in print. We started about ten years ago. A bunch of mailmen got together to do 80s covers.

Oh, I get it now, like a dog biting a mailman.

Right. In the old days if a guy got bit by a dog, he’d just patch himself up and tell the owner to keep it away. But nowadays, he’ll sue for back pay, retraining at the academy—the whole nine yards. So we’re all sitting around trying to come up with a name for the band and our original drummer Tony’s check for his dog-bite money came in. His father said, “Here’s your dog-bite money, guys,” and that’s how we got the name.

You said in your letter that you’ve been in a bunch of bands.

Back in the 80s, I did hair-metal stuff in Philadelphia.

Were you always the singer?

That’s all I did was sing. Like the front-man kind of thing.

What are your favorite covers to do these days?

We’ve been doing “Let’s Go Crazy” from Prince and “I Wanna Be Sedated” from the Ramones. And right now we’re doing a really cool version of “Radar Love.”

I’ve heard there’s a big network of cover bands centered around Philly and northern Delaware.

Oh, gigantic. One of the band members from Dog Bite Money, a guy named Paul Hammond, he left us to start a Led Zeppelin tribute called Get the Led Out. And they play at the House of Blues now. I remember the day Paul had to leave us because of that, because they were booking some really heavy-duty money shows. They don’t look like Zeppelin, but they sound like Zeppelin—that’s the angle they shoot for.

So they’re the big guns on the tribute circuit. Who else have you got?

There’s a place up in Allentown called the Sterling Hotel that specializes in cover groups. They’ve got an all-girl band called Girls Girls Girls that does Mötley Crüe. And they look like Mötley Crüe. A band called Posin, that does Poison. The Ramoons. There’s even a band that for some reason does Social Distortion covers.

You signed the letter “Horns Up.”

Anthrax used to sign all their letters and autographs with that. When I sign the few autographs I get to sign, I always put “Horns Up” on it.


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Letters are edited for length.