August 8, 2024 • 44 mins
Out of the four young men in The Texas Zombies, only two became famous. This episode chronicles the stories of the other Fake Zombies. First, we uncover the teenage stardom of hot-shot lead guitarist, Seab Meador. Later, a look at the life of Mark Ramsey, the youngest member of The Fake Zombies and the one who started this search.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The True Story of the Fake Zombies is a production
of iHeart Podcasts, Talk House and never Mind Media. In
my search for the story of the zombies that toured
America back in nineteen sixty nine, I stumbled upon two
(00:21):
rock legends. In episode four, we explored the half of
the Fake Zombies you might already know Frank Beard and
Dusty Hill. Those two guys went on to fame and
fortune and zz top and they never looked back. It
wasn't until I discovered Frank and Dusty's involvement in the
(00:41):
Fake Zombies decades later that they even acknowledged it. I
got an email from Dusty Hill in twenty sixteen. He
confirmed that the Fake Zombies two are happened, but he
left out the details. It was the sixties man who
was Ali's saying forever a mystery that Dusty Hill. As
(01:02):
for Frank Beard, He's never commented on his time in
the original Zombies, and trust me.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
I've asked callous times.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
There are documentaries, concert films, fan made tributes, and about
a dozen biographies where you can learn endlessly about how
Billy Gibbons, along with Dusty Hill and Frank Beard, went
from Texas bar band to MTV darlings over the course
of their fifty plus years together, and were eventually inducted
into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Frank and
(01:35):
Dusty are part of the fabric of American music.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
And they always will be. Their sound heavy as hell,
but always locked into the groove.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Their partnership with Billy Gibbons is the sound of Texas.
Frank and Dusty went on to live the kind of
lives they could only have dreamed about back in nineteen
sixty nine. They put in the work, they paid their dues,
and they emerged from the shadows of the Fake Zombies
as music legends.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
But there were four guys on that tour in nineteen
sixty nine.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
And while that happy ending came for Frank and Dusty,
there were two guys on that trip who didn't reach
the same kind of rock and roll immortality. And it's
their story too. This episode is dedicated to Seed Meta
and Mark Ramsey, the other two. This is the true
story of the Fake Zombies. I'm Daniel Lolston. Looking at
(02:47):
the few photos of the fake Zombies that exist, it's
hard not to notice Seb Meta. He just stands out.
It's not just the male model cheekbones or his Rod
Stewart in a Texas Tornado haircut. Seb had an intense,
sicy stare, the kind that you can imagine would have
melted hearts, the kind of look you would need to
(03:09):
convince a room full of thousands of screaming music fans
that maybe you aren't just some kid from Fort Worth, Texas,
but a bona fide British rock star.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
What your.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
Sebizel has been? The fake zombie? I wanted to know
better for years. He was just the lead guitarist who
looked the part, and maybe the guy who put the
fake zombies together. But it turns out by the time
Seb formed the band with Frank Dusty and Mark Ramsey,
he wasn't just a pretty face. He was already famous,
at least in Texas.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
She when I met in junior high school a little
band together and started, you know, playing some gigs, and
then that kind of solidified and got better, and we
call ourselves a gentleman at that point.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
That's Tim Justice, the drummer and the gentleman.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
Seb metters high school band and that song you're hearing
was co written by Seb when he was just sixteen
years old, and that scorching guitar solo that sounds way
ahead of its time for nineteen sixty six, that's him.
(04:39):
It's a Crying Shame is one of those songs that
gets garage rock Officionado is all hot and bothered. It's
been featured on compilations and written about online by people
who obsess over finding hidden gems from the nineteen sixties.
Seebe had the looks and a distinctive guitar style, and
by the time he could drive, he had a hit
record time when most bands were trying to sound melodic
(05:02):
and broadly appealing, the gentlemen weren't. They followed Sebe's rebellious lead.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
We wanted to be brash and in your face.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
According to Tim, it was Sebe who really pushed the
gentleman's sound forward, even as a teenager. He was an innovator.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
You know, I remember when we recorded It's a Crime Shame.
Sebe had punched two holes through these twelve minute speakers
on his box super Beetle, and he was sticking in
the neck of his guitar, the head and the neck
into the holes to create the feedback. You know, a
lot of people talk about the feedback that song has
(05:43):
because he was he I think because it was what
they call it.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
There's no question that it's a crime Shamee rips and
the fact that Sebe was jamming his guitar into his amp,
a move that sounds more like Kurt Cobain and something
from nineteen sixty six proves he was thinking about music
a little differently than anyone else.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Seb let his guitar do the talking.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
He didn't really show off very much. He just liked
to play any Sea was reclusive for the most part.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
He may have been reclusive off stage, but he loved
playing live. His teenage years were spent playing for increasingly
large crowds. Tim and Seebe's band, The Gentleman, wore matching
suits and became the go to garage band for high
school dances and teen nightclub gigs in the Dallas area.
(06:38):
I'm talking to somebody who was there with Seb before
the fake Zombies, So I want to know about Seed
the guy, not just Seb.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
The would be rock star.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
Now, he has some family issues as folks broke up.
They split up, and that always bothered in my fag
and his father didn't like the whole rock and roll scene.
He he was a doctor. Matter of fact.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Like a lot of young rockers in the sixties, Seve's
rebellion came with a price. It can't be stressed enough.
This was the time when the generational divide between parents
and their kids was rapidly expanding.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
He actually sent Seeds off to military school or a
semester or two. We got another fellow to play at
his place, and then he came back and we picked
up again.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
When Seb returned from military school, it was on for
the gentleman. He didn't care what his family or anyone
else in Texas thought of his musical ambitions.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
We were on a mission and we really didn't care
what a bunch of dumb cowboys thought. She went on. No,
he didn't shop. I remember going to do his house
at one point. He had the black Jeff Beck here
and a lot of glam sequence and you know, things
(07:58):
going on. He definite when he stood out at that point.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Sebe's distinctive style continued into the fake Zombies and beyond.
There's not a single photo of him where he isn't
dressed in rock and roll regalia. Seb is what you
would call a lifer, a musical innovator who followed where
his guitar led him from the gentleman to the fake Zombies,
and right through the nineteen seventies he continued to play loud,
(08:26):
fast Texas blues with a British psych influence. Steve's guitar
got him out of Texas. His post Zombies band, The
were Wolves, got signed by Andrew Louke Oldham, the Rolling
Stones manager. They even cut a record in New York
City in nineteen seventy seven, and Sebe's guitar work remained
next level, but the were Wolves never hit. In photos
(08:50):
of seb from seventy seven, he still looked the part.
The hair is still wild and the outfits are still outrageous,
but his face is thin and his eyes are sunken
and hollowed. Seed broke free and lived hard.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
She'd always smoked. He always smoked camel regulars. And that's,
you know, next to pickyuns, picky ews you can get
in New Orleans. Then thereabout as possible.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
And then he got sick.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
His father, you know, being a doctor, but cooking tough.
Tyler for some reason, Tyler Texas, they did exploratory surgery
on him and and just closed it back up because
he was riddled with cancer. He just died pretty quickly,
which was a blessing.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
I guess.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Se passed away of complications from cancer on January twenty fourth,
nineteen eighty. He was just thirty years old.
Speaker 4 (09:55):
The Summus, Yeah, at last, this guy is own were casting.
Speaker 5 (10:01):
One brings a roscot and.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
She watches.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
One night, Tim was up late googling his old friend Steve,
and he came across my story on the fake zombies.
It reminded him that they'd actually talked about it a
long time ago.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Of course at the time, I was, you know, really
wasn't thinking that much about you know, what occurred. But
he just mentioned that he had a gig where they
essentially you know, out on the road, and I think
it in Canada. He said, you know that they met
with a mixed response that way. A lot of a
(10:45):
lot of people were kind of pissed about going to
going to see a band that was faking and being
another band. And that was That was actually the last
I saw Feet before he died.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
When Seed Meta passed away in nineteen eight I was
a year old by the time the words fake zombies
entered my world. In twenty fourteen. He'd been gone for
thirty four years. It wasn't until twenty twenty three that
I found Tim, Sebe's old friend and bandmate from The Gentleman.
Outside of what he recounted to Tim, I'll never know
(11:19):
how Sebe felt about being in the Fake Zombies, what
it was like watching two of your former bandmates go
on to a lifetime of fame and fortunes. But Seb
left behind some incredible music. It's just waiting to be rediscovered.
(11:41):
You can hear his innovation and rebellious spirit in those
early Gentleman records and in his post Zombies band, The Werewolves,
who were still making a name for themselves when Sebe
got sick. If Seb had lived past nineteen eighty, I
have no doubt he would have continued to make incredible
music and maybe even joined Dusty and Frank and the
pantheon of Texas blues legends. A guitar god gone too soon.
(12:06):
But all we have are those faded photographs and garage
rock records to remember him by, and a story from
the summer of nineteen sixty nine, when see Meta and
his friends from.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Texas hit the road.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
I actually talked to a Fake Zombie back in twenty sixteen,
Mark Ramsey. Mark was the youngest guy in the group,
the baby faced rhythm guitarist along for the ride of
his life. Mark lived a whole life. In between his
time in the Original Zombies with Frank, Dusty and Siebe
and our first phone call. He left the life of
(13:01):
a touring rock and roller behind and became a math
teacher back in Grand Prairie, Texas. Getting Mark to tell
me about his time in the Fake Zombies was always
a challenge. It had been almost fifty years, and Mark
had clearly spent those five decades looking back on the
Fake Zombies with a mix of wonder and regret. I
(13:24):
knew from the very beginning that this wasn't necessarily a
time in Mark's life that.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
He enjoyed revisiting.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
When I asked about the details the cities, sites and
sounds of the Fake Zombies, he wanted to talk about
the guitars he used on the tour, not the tour itself.
It went on like that for months, over the phone
and an emails, Mark picked and chose what he wanted
to share about the Fake Zombies. He sent me a
scan of a postcard he'd written to his then girlfriend Vicki.
(13:55):
It says he and his band had just played somewhere
in the Canadian Rockies. He enclosed Foes Roos too of
a beaded, fringed suede jacket he bought Vicki at a
roadside stand somewhere in the Great Plains. These were Marks
memories of the fake Zombies. But occasionally, late at night
he send me emails with hazy details and a little
(14:17):
attitude in response to my questions, like when I rather
callously asked him if he was at all embarrassed by
the fake zombies.
Speaker 6 (14:27):
It might have been embarrassing if we tried to fake
the zombies sound.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
We didn't.
Speaker 6 (14:31):
We had our own sound based on Dallas blues and rock.
I was proud of what we accomplished. The Delta people
told us they had to right to tours the Zombies,
so I really didn't worry about it.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Mark insisted that at no point were he and his
bandmates trying to pass themselves off as the zombies. Delta
promotions claimed to be legit. Mark always wanted to be
in a touring band and this was his big chance.
Speaker 6 (14:54):
I didn't look at it as anything more than a
chance to have some fun, hang out with some cool
guys some rock songs, go somewhere outside this Hillbillyville, and
earn a little money.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Naturally, Mark tended to focus on the high points, like
the fake Zombie show in Chicago, where he said they
blew the roof off the place.
Speaker 6 (15:13):
That not everything just went well. I remember a lot
of people wanting to come backstage, and I remember a
lot of people hadn't heard that kind of music. Texas blues,
that really hard blues.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Compared to the other guys, Mark was just a kid
in this rock and roll world, he said. The business
side of things was handled by the other guys. I'm
still not sure if he genuinely didn't know which of
his band mates was the point person, or if he
was just covering for them.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
You know.
Speaker 6 (15:39):
I wonder if it was Seed Mutter because all the
musical arrangements were his, but it might have been Dusty
Hill or Frank Beard. I don't know for sure, and
I'm sure no one ever told me.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
There were a few details Mark did remember, like the
press photo for the original Zombies, the one that both
Gary Johnson and I found and started this odyssey that.
Speaker 6 (16:00):
Photo is interesting. You'll notice both Dusty and Frank are
using stage names De Cruz and Chris Page, so it's
almost like they knew something was wrong here and didn't
use the real names. Seb signed his real name because,
like me, he probably didn't think we were doing anything wrong.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
That's how it was between Mark and I for months.
I'd ask questions and he'd filled me in on the
details he could remember, like the day he was asked
to join the band.
Speaker 6 (16:27):
Frank was the one who approached me. On the day
they asked me to join the band. All three came
over to my house in Grand Prairie. We walked down
the street and talked about it. I remember all three
being there.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Mark remembered the tour being less about trying to be
the Zombies and more about honing an original sound. In fact,
they didn't even learn a full set of zombie songs.
Speaker 6 (16:52):
Our live set was pretty good, but we only tried
to cover a few zombie songs. Now I understand why
Dusty and Seb wanted to play blues. They were just
practicing for the next level. They didn't care about the
zombie songs.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
I felt like Mark and I were getting along pretty well,
well enough that he agreed to let me come visit
him in Grand Prairie, Texas. Then, the night before I
was supposed to fly out to see him, I received
this email at one in.
Speaker 6 (17:17):
The morning, Daniel, I've changed my mind. A personal face
to face visit would require one thousand dollars paid in advance,
writing to each other and sharing digital photographs is free.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
From that point on, Mark's responses grew shorter and colder.
I asked if he kept in contact with his old bandmates.
After the Fake Zombies'.
Speaker 6 (17:41):
Tour, Frank and Dusty moved to Houston, Texas and met
up with Billy Gibbons. It wasn't long before Zez Todd
was formed Sebe started playing with the Werewolves. We went
our separate ways.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
It went on like that for a few months. My
story came out and Mark and I lost touch. After
a while, I heard from Mark one more time after that.
He reflected on his time in the Fake Zombies, now
that the world knew his story, at least the parts
he wanted to share.
Speaker 6 (18:10):
We had some good songs, I know. We blew some
folks away from time to time. Were we perfect? No,
and we weren't the Zombies. We were a blues rock
band from Texas, a band with plenty of good looks
better than the original Zombies. What we didn't leave behind
was a musical history.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Of our own.
Speaker 6 (18:32):
I think of that quite often, but that was long ago,
and I have my memories of the Texas Fake Zombies.
Most of the memories are dear to my heart. But
I went on and followed a different path. Sometimes I'm
confused about what happened. Perhaps they chose me just because
the way I looked.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
I don't know.
Speaker 6 (18:50):
I hope that I contributed musically. I know I tried to.
And those guitars, all those great vintage guitars and I've lost,
have all been replaced with better models. So when the
moon is full, don't think that I won't crank it
up and let it rip with high volume and effect.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Mark couldn't or wouldn't tell me everything, and when he
passed away in twenty seventeen, I assumed that door was
closed forever. I never know why Mark stopped performing despite
his lifelong obsession with playing guitar, or how he felt
about his former bandmates and the Fake Zombies going on
to become rock legends in Texas I wonder how he
(19:43):
felt seeing Frank and Dusty succeed at the thing he
loved a few times during our conversations, Mark mentioned his
(20:18):
kid brother, Brent Ramsey. He told me his brother Brent
worked in TV in film. He told me that during
some rough years after the Fake Zombies tour, his brother
Brent helped him get his life together. When I reached
out to Brent, seven years after I last spoke to Mark,
he was more than willing to give me some perspective
on his brother and his brother's time in the Fake Zombies.
Speaker 5 (20:40):
Yeah, Mark Ramsey was my brother. We were very close.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
Brent watched his big brother Mark grow up. They were
totally inseparable back in Grand Prairie, Texas.
Speaker 5 (20:50):
We were only two years apart in age, but we
were just one year apart in education going to schools.
And that had to do with my father, Carl Ramsey,
not wanting to drive us to two different schools, so
he made me start school when I was five so
I would be one year behind Mark.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
Brent left Texas eventually for his work in TV, but
he and Mark were side by side in Grand Prairie
through their teenage years. Ended the early twenties, so it
kept us.
Speaker 5 (21:19):
Very close, even though we should have been a couple
of years apart. So he graduated from high school in
sixty eight and I graduated in sixty nine, so roughly
fifty five years ago or so.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
According to Brent, Grand Prairie was the kind of town
where it paid to have an older brother in your corner.
Speaker 5 (21:36):
Grand Prairie was also known as Thug City, USA, is
a really rough town for guys. It was a lot
of fist fighting, and fist fighting was a ride of passage,
and there were places people would meet and fight, and
you were generally only as tough as your older brother
(21:57):
was tough. So I had to allow on Mark to
bail me out a lot.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
When they weren't fighting on the mean streets of Thug City,
Mark and Brent would hop in their dad's nineteen sixty
corvet and headed Dallas or Fort Worth, any place that
wasn't Grand Prairie in search of the music they loved
back then.
Speaker 5 (22:15):
We would go to Fort Worth, would go Dallas, and
we would club. They had team clubs, you know, they
had tremendous team clubs. And I mean that's really how
Mark and his music and everything got going.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
One of their favorite spots was a club in Fort
Worth called the Cellar. They weren't old enough to get in,
but they always found a way.
Speaker 5 (22:33):
So the Cellar, you'd be twenty one to give you
because it was a strip joint. It wasn't like they
had hired strippers. It was like chicks would just get
up hot as shit and start taking off their clothes
and we would sneak in with groups of taller and
bigger and stronger, older looking guys. We would sometimes just
going to see if we could sneak in, but our
success rate was high enough and we would continue to
(22:54):
go there.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
The Cellar was a real sixty.
Speaker 5 (22:57):
Scene, so it was just colos on the floor. It
was just one of these casual kind of hookah smoking
looking joints, you know, and you would sit on there
and then there was a band always play and then
the girls would get up and stripped.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
One night, while watching girls dance, the band on stage
caught their attention.
Speaker 5 (23:18):
The band that was playing that night was the American
Blues Band, and these were some rocking, blonde haired dudes
who had dyed their hair blue. And it was Rocky Hill,
Dusty Hill and Frank.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Beard, Dusty, Frank and Rocky made an impression on the
Ramsey Brothers. They'd seen a million bands play, but this
time Mark and Brent felt compelled to chat up American blues.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
After their show at the Cellar, we say.
Speaker 5 (23:44):
And close the bar down. That night, we were out
on the street and here comes the band and the
manager meets them out there on the sidewalk. If we're
standing just outside, we're like right there with them. I basically, hey, man,
you guys were awesome. Banks could show, you know, we'd
do a great time, you know. And so here comes
their manager and he kills off twenty five dollars each.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Man.
Speaker 5 (24:05):
I'll never forget it, right, I mean paid each one
of the band twenty five bucks.
Speaker 7 (24:09):
Right, I went, you know, you guys are awesome. They're
making some money here too, that's awesome. What are you
guys doing where you guys live? And they go, oh,
we live in Irving And I'm like, well, you know,
we live in Grand Prairie, said, what are you doing tomorrow?
Speaker 5 (24:20):
You guys will get together or something, you know.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
So what do a bunch of long haired rockers do
when they hang out for the first time? Well, it
was still Texas.
Speaker 5 (24:31):
He goes, you like playing football, So we went over
to I want to say's Frank's house. But anyway, they
had a giant front yard and we played touch football
out in their yard. And that's how this is how
we all got together. I brought my brother and introduced
him there, and they had the blue ass hair and
we're out there. You know, people drive by and hok
and shoot us the finger and you know it was
(24:52):
not safety and along haired kid in that part.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Of the country, with that game of touch football, the
seeds of the fake zombies were so. Mark Ramsey was
(25:24):
a pretty straight laced kid growing up straight a's student government.
Brent says their extremely strict father was responsible for that.
Speaker 5 (25:35):
You know, he grew up making us get crew cuts
and ship wear Madras shirts with that butch wax front
side and burr on the back. He was with these
guys like, this house is not a democracy, you know,
this house is whatever I say, it's my way or
the highway.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Like his future bandmates, seebe Mark's dad was less than
thrilled when he started sporting long hair in his teens.
Speaker 5 (25:56):
So he was pretty rough. Oh, my brother, because my
brother wanted that long hair. Early. We're all dead. I
mean the beach boy like was long hair in sixty
four and five, right, so we're already growing our hair
that moll. My dad wasn't exactly going off that program.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
This wasn't just a disappointed dad. It got physical. Brent
did his best to stay out of the way.
Speaker 5 (26:20):
He and my brother had some fucking knockout fights. My
dad was rough. Yeah, he'd take it to my brother
once in a while. My brother stood up for himself
against my dad, and I did not because I saw
him bad. It turned out for Mark. You know, my
dad was a big ass. He was a big, strong marine.
He could be in a marine and he had these
pop out of forearms.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
Brent's description of his dad might have you picturing some
Texas bruiser, an oil man or contractor. That's not exactly right.
He was a hairdresser.
Speaker 5 (26:51):
He wasn't just a fucking hairdresser. He was a lead
hairdresser in the United States. He was on the National
Hair Designing Committee. If you ever wonder our big hair
came from in Texas.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
That was their dad, Carl Ramsey. Mark was getting into
music and he and his old man didn't see eyed
eye on anything, but Brent says they did have one
thing in common.
Speaker 5 (27:13):
It was just a ladies man got of control. They
both were. My brother and my dad were. We called
it the curse, you know that the way the ladies
would come on. We said it was dad's fault. He
really had a lot of side hustle going. So it
was never really a beautiful, happy home environment when we
were kids, because my mom was always chasing him down,
you know, and it was uncomfortable.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
After years of infidelity, Mark and Brent's parents got divorced
in nineteen sixty six and the boys went to live
with their mother. Without their dad around, Mark and Brent
had the freedom they always wanted.
Speaker 5 (27:46):
When my mother and dad divorced, my brother and I
did whatever the fuck we wanted to, and my mom
was helpless, and it wasn't pretty in there. It wasn't
like a oh yes, mam. We weren't baver cleaver, you know.
And those days we'd be gone for three days at
a time. Sometimes, you know, mom is a streak out
where you've been. Well, one night we were just playing
space and we just all got up and drove to
(28:06):
Mexico to get a beer. I mean, that's kind of
shit we were doing back then, just and turned around
and some wherever the fuck we went, you know, when
those border towns told up, got some beers and drove back.
You know.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
Mark no longer had to worry about his dad's opinions
on his hair or who he hung out with, so
he started his own band at the age of sixteen.
Speaker 5 (28:29):
Of course, rock and roll picked on real quick around town.
It would be like Saturday nights at the YMCA, one
of those old school downtown movie theaters would have I'm
trying to help you picture it. It was go Go night,
you know. So they had go Go dancers on each
end of the stage, you know, and they had bands
they'd had. The Battle of the bands was kind of
(28:50):
like the genre that came on strong when we were
young high schools.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
Right.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
Mark put together a group with a very sixties name,
his Prism.
Speaker 5 (29:01):
So Mark hooked up with Brad Lloyd, tremendous, tremendous guitar player,
and Mark and I both had the same girlfriend for
a while. Her name was Tina. She was their lead singer,
and she said at Grace slig she was awesome. And
then they had a drummer who they made fun of
(29:23):
all the time. His name was Ricky and he was cold.
But the greatest night of Jakunda's Prism was in Fort Worth,
Texas at the National Guard Armor Mark Brad, Tina and
Ricky and the Chahunda's Prism. We're in this Battle of
the base and they won the Battle of the bands.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
That victory came with a seriously great prize. They got
to play the opening slot on a bill with two
other bands.
Speaker 5 (29:54):
The warm up band was the Box Tops. You know what,
maybe she wrote me a letter.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
The Box Tops were already in national wearing apps with
a bona fide hit song in the letter, and their
leader Alex Children we'll go on to form Big Stock,
arguably the most important influence on alternative and indie rock
music as we know it.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
But the Box Tops were just the opener.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
The real prize for Jacunda's Prism was opening for the headliner,
the band from California just starting to catch on nationally
and coming to Texas for the first time.
Speaker 5 (30:25):
The band band was The Doors, So you got to
play with the Box Tops and the Doors. You know, dude,
I was there and it was like a square stage
out in the middle of a former armory, you know,
big open space, and the stage was only a couple
of feet high, and the Doors started playing something like
(30:47):
Horse Latitudes and Good Done, and you know, it's just
going on for a while, and then I try to
remember wrap beside me man is the lead singers, Jim Morris,
and he's in those black leathers, and he's like, oh,
fucked up. You know, I'm fun fifteen and he's there's
Jim Morrison and he's not quite They're not a legendary yet,
they're just bands. There's maybe five hundred people there and
that was kind of the greatest knowedge to come to
(31:09):
his prison.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
That was the high point for Marx's high school band.
He opened for the Doors before they were big. That
would have been Mark's musical claim to fame. But not
long after the offer came to go on the road
as the Zombies.
Speaker 5 (31:25):
Frank and Dusty and Rocky Hill, Dusty's older brother came
back from a gig and we went to the airport
to meet him. Rocky had apparently had a problem with
them and was quitting the band, and I believe in
he might have called Mark.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
Mark and Frank Beard had become close in the years
between the Touch Football game and the start of that
Zombies tour, Frank.
Speaker 5 (31:50):
Would come to our house and Mark would go to theirs,
you know whatever. They had a better relationship going. You know,
I just put the damn thing together there.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Brent was always hyping up his big brother.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
He would continue to have a hand in getting Marked
together with other musicians. It says a lot about Brent
that he encouraged his brother to start a band with Frank,
who Brent, let's just say, wasn't a huge fan of.
Speaker 5 (32:15):
About that same time, I think was about when Frank
slept with my wife. He became less than a superstar
to meet around that time. You know, it's painful. I
was still a teenager. You know, my wife was effing
around with Frank Beard. But you know, it wasn't like
anybody had anything except as you know, time to Bob
and Hop. Anyway, that was just, oh, by the way,
(32:35):
that's kind of how I cut myself out of the scene.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
For a while.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
We reached out to Frank Beard through his longtime publicist,
Bob Merriless. Bob is a music industry legend. He's a
no bullshit kind of guy. Frank has never commented on
the Fake Zombies, and he told us, don't get your
hopes up. Bob Marless told us Frank Beard hasn't returned
an email in twelve years. Ramsey's claims remain unconfirmed. Despite
(33:04):
Brent's feelings towards the guy sleeping with his wife, he
still accompanied Mark when Frank and Dusty came calling.
Speaker 5 (33:10):
We went to the airport Mark and I to meet them,
and they came off the plane. My recollection is that
Rocky had a drug problem so bad that he couldn't
go on. If you had a drug problem so bad
that you couldn't go on in this time of everyone
having a drug problem, you really had a fucking drug
problem right, because everyone was doing drugs right and everyone
(33:34):
was finding them. So Rocky might have been the first
time I ever heard of someone burning out on you.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
With Rocky Hill out of commission, Frank and Dusty were
looking for a replacement guitarist, so they asked.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
Mark to join the bank.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
Frank is pretty sure Mark ended up in the Fake
Zombies because of hot shot guitarist Seed Metter, who recruited
the other three into the Delta promotions of it.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
I want to.
Speaker 5 (34:01):
Say Seb asked Mark to ask them because Sebe had
hooked up with these guys in Michigan.
Speaker 2 (34:09):
Brent knew Sebe too.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
He'd seen the gentleman play around Texas and high school,
and he wasn't surprised that his brother went along with
the scheme.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Seve was that good.
Speaker 5 (34:20):
Seve had been in so many bands at that time
because he was such a good guitar player and he
had he played that white, fine beat, and he had
that great goth look and he just had it all
going on. I think everyone wanted him in their fan
because it was just instant crap. I mean, I can
remember him coming to our high school and play and
was just like, you know, he was just out of
control good and he just had the look, you know.
(34:42):
So I believe he recruited all of them. Mark had
become Sebe's friend and had been playing with Seb as
a you know once come over was jammed, you know,
jam Sessions.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
Brant has always known that Mark's time on the road
back in sixty nine with the best guitarists in Dallas,
Seed Metter, the two guys who went on to form
ZZ Talk, Frank Beard and Dusty Hill, made his brother
a legend. Brent saw his friends go from touch football
games to playing the biggest stages in the world. But
(35:16):
before that, Frank and Dusty were in a band with
his cool older brother. I'm after some of the details
Mark didn't share, so I asked Brent if he knows
why Frank and Dusty used aliases while his brother and
Seb stuck to their real names and the promotional photos.
Speaker 5 (35:36):
You know, Frank was in trouble with the law and
he couldn't leave town because he had he was on probation.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
Well, it's nice to picture four guys in their teens
in early twenties setting out for adventure on the road.
The reality is drugs played a pretty big role in
all this.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
Nobody was hiding it.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
Even Gary, the rock and roll historian in his friends
were taking some heavy stuff.
Speaker 5 (36:02):
Most everyone in my group was high, either from smoking
marijuana or dropping acid or mescaline.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
Not to come off like a prude, but this story
is full of drugs. This really was the era of experimentation.
Even the most straight laced people I've come across in
search of the fake zombies, I've talked about taking psychedelics, uppers, downers,
and a lot of wheat. The Texas zombies were no exception.
Like Dusty Hill told me, it was the sixties, man, Danny,
(36:31):
I have.
Speaker 5 (36:31):
To remember, there were not a whole lot of long
haired people, so when you saw another long haired person,
you generally went, hey, what's up man? You won't go
smoke adobie or something? Right, It was always yeah, yeah, sure,
and you go smoke. And then that's how friendships developed,
was over pot and pot deals and could you score
me lit? Those were how the conversations developed a lot.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
The casual drug use and the fake zombies wasn't limited
to wheat. They weren't into the really hard stuff like heroin.
They did share needles.
Speaker 4 (37:01):
Well, it ended up killing him. Was that he you know,
he developed hepatitis. AD saved for that trip. It's why
he quit. It was why he had come home. It's
too sick to gone. I mean I know that the
managers I guest shut.
Speaker 5 (37:18):
It down at some point, but when he came home
he was pretty sick from hepatitis. They were sharing needles.
They would do B twelve. Sometimes they would shoot B
twelve just for the fun of it, but they you know,
that's how you get hepatitis.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Mark returned to Texas with three strains of hepatitis. But
it wasn't just a physical toll. The tour took on Mark.
Something changed in him. He wasn't the same playful, outgoing
kid when he returned to Grand Prairie. The old Mark
was fading away.
Speaker 5 (37:51):
Mark was two different people. There was the Mark during
those years of the high school rock and roll post years,
and then I drug Mark aroundtown, made him go to
college get a degrade because he just didn't have anything
going on. And then he became that school teacher Mark,
and he was an awesome school teacher, but he also
became super reclusive.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
You know.
Speaker 5 (38:14):
He was like Howard Hughes or something, and he just
had so few friends in such a small social life.
It was very rare to see him out with people.
Whereas he had been mostly extroverted.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
In high school, Mark became insular and guarded. That's the
Mark I got to know. Brent kept tabs on his
brother through those dark years and helped get him back
on his feet and into college. Music remained a big
part of Mark's life. He never stopped collecting guitars and
(38:45):
recording gear. Mark never reconnected with Frank or Dusty, but
he did remain friends with Seb. When Mark was back
on his feet, at Brent's suggestion, he asked to join
Sebe's post zombies band to Where Wolf, but they weren't hiring.
Speaker 5 (39:02):
And then Seed got sick, you know, with cancer. You know,
Seed died and Mark. That was Mark's last rock and
roll hang out buddy.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
When Seed passed away in nineteen eighty, Mark's connection to
the rock and roll world vanished. Brent kept trying to
get him out of the house.
Speaker 5 (39:20):
I said, Mark, why don't you ever like reach out
to some of these guys. And I've said, these guys
are still playing, you know, they need guys to fill in,
And I said, why don't you play with him? And
he had no interest whatsoever. So he just had no interest.
It wasn't his shyness. It may have been that he
had felt defeated by he had been defeated by that
tour in a way. You know, he got sick, man.
(39:47):
He just he just was not healthy mentally, physically. You know,
he just kind of gave up.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
Mark may have never played in a band again, but
he never stopped playing music. The guitars and the gear
continue to pile up. He loved to plays guitar late
at night. Before we say goodbye, Brent pulls out his phone.
He wants me to hear something. He holds the phone
up to the mic and plays me a song.
Speaker 5 (40:24):
He only recorded one song, ever, I mean where it
was like, from beginning to end, he just did one song.
I searched everything he had, all his hard drives, every
piece of recording equipment, he had, every SD card in
his house, played them all, searched him off. I said,
he couldn't have just done this one song. He had
this beautiful setup, recording set up. He was just such
(40:48):
a perfectionist that he I just believed for him to
have actually put that one down and said, I'm happy
with that and it's just our time listened to about
breaking me out.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
Brent was there for all of it.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
He watched his brother on stage as a teenager, playing
music with the coolest kids in town and then heading
out on the road. He saw Mark struggle after the
Zombies tour, when his brother got sick and didn't have
the strength to get out of bed, Brent dragged Mark
to college classes. Brent saw the best in his brother,
(41:41):
even when Mark didn't see it in himself. Brent Ramsey
and I have one thing in common. We both know
how fucking cool it is that his brother Mark is
a fake zombie. This is Mark's song. I think of
(42:03):
Mark on those nights alone where he turned his amp
all the way up and tried to make some perfect noise,
never sharing his music with the world like his old bandmates,
never getting back in the van and playing on stage again.
But on those nights, when his memories were alive and
he'd fired off a message to me, Mark left something behind,
(42:24):
a breadcrumb trail of names.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
And faces just waiting to be found.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
Fifty five years later, Mark Ramsey, Seve Metter, Dusty Hill.
Speaker 2 (42:35):
And Frank Beard, the original Zombies.
Speaker 1 (42:39):
Those four guys pulled it off for a little while.
They were the Zombies, and thousands of people paid to
see them play, and that's the end of their story.
But those Texas boys must have been really good, because
(43:00):
back in Michigan, Delta Promotions decided that the only thing
better than having one group of zombies out on tour
was having two.
Speaker 5 (43:09):
They learned some Zombies songs, the lead singer tried to
pull off an English accent, and they went on the road.
Speaker 3 (43:16):
List of Zombies.
Speaker 5 (43:18):
They sounded great and they could do all the zombies.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
Yes, you know, much better than the Texas Zombies. On
the next episode, we meet the second Fake Zombies.
Speaker 1 (43:31):
If you want to get in touch about the Fake Zombies,
we've set up an email address Fake zombiespod at gmail
dot com. This podcast was written by Daniel Ralston. Executive
produced by Ian Wheeler, Melissa Locker and Daniel Ralston. Produced
by Anna McClain and Nick Dawson. Score, original music and
additional audio engineering by Robin Hatch. The voice of Mark
(43:55):
Ramsey was provided by Jason Simms in Huntsville, Alabama. Additional
product support from Cooper Mall in Los Angeles and Matthew
Sneat in Huntsville. The True Story of the Fake Zombies
is a production of iHeart Podcasts, Talk House and never
Mind Media. For more podcasts from iHeart Podcasts, visit the
(44:17):
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
The True Story of the Fake Zombies is a production
of iHeart Podcasts, Talk House and never Mind Media. In
my search for the story of the zombies that toured
America back in nineteen sixty nine, I stumbled upon two
(00:21):
rock legends. In episode four, we explored the half of
the Fake Zombies you might already know Frank Beard and
Dusty Hill. Those two guys went on to fame and
fortune and zz top and they never looked back. It
wasn't until I discovered Frank and Dusty's involvement in the
(00:41):
Fake Zombies decades later that they even acknowledged it. I
got an email from Dusty Hill in twenty sixteen. He
confirmed that the Fake Zombies two are happened, but he
left out the details. It was the sixties man who
was Ali's saying forever a mystery that Dusty Hill. As
(01:02):
for Frank Beard, He's never commented on his time in
the original Zombies, and trust me.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
I've asked callous times.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
There are documentaries, concert films, fan made tributes, and about
a dozen biographies where you can learn endlessly about how
Billy Gibbons, along with Dusty Hill and Frank Beard, went
from Texas bar band to MTV darlings over the course
of their fifty plus years together, and were eventually inducted
into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Frank and
(01:35):
Dusty are part of the fabric of American music.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
And they always will be. Their sound heavy as hell,
but always locked into the groove.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Their partnership with Billy Gibbons is the sound of Texas.
Frank and Dusty went on to live the kind of
lives they could only have dreamed about back in nineteen
sixty nine. They put in the work, they paid their dues,
and they emerged from the shadows of the Fake Zombies
as music legends.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
But there were four guys on that tour in nineteen
sixty nine.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
And while that happy ending came for Frank and Dusty,
there were two guys on that trip who didn't reach
the same kind of rock and roll immortality. And it's
their story too. This episode is dedicated to Seed Meta
and Mark Ramsey, the other two. This is the true
story of the Fake Zombies. I'm Daniel Lolston. Looking at
(02:47):
the few photos of the fake Zombies that exist, it's
hard not to notice Seb Meta. He just stands out.
It's not just the male model cheekbones or his Rod
Stewart in a Texas Tornado haircut. Seb had an intense,
sicy stare, the kind that you can imagine would have
melted hearts, the kind of look you would need to
(03:09):
convince a room full of thousands of screaming music fans
that maybe you aren't just some kid from Fort Worth, Texas,
but a bona fide British rock star.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
What your.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
Sebizel has been? The fake zombie? I wanted to know
better for years. He was just the lead guitarist who
looked the part, and maybe the guy who put the
fake zombies together. But it turns out by the time
Seb formed the band with Frank Dusty and Mark Ramsey,
he wasn't just a pretty face. He was already famous,
at least in Texas.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
She when I met in junior high school a little
band together and started, you know, playing some gigs, and
then that kind of solidified and got better, and we
call ourselves a gentleman at that point.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
That's Tim Justice, the drummer and the gentleman.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
Seb metters high school band and that song you're hearing
was co written by Seb when he was just sixteen
years old, and that scorching guitar solo that sounds way
ahead of its time for nineteen sixty six, that's him.
(04:39):
It's a Crying Shame is one of those songs that
gets garage rock Officionado is all hot and bothered. It's
been featured on compilations and written about online by people
who obsess over finding hidden gems from the nineteen sixties.
Seebe had the looks and a distinctive guitar style, and
by the time he could drive, he had a hit
record time when most bands were trying to sound melodic
(05:02):
and broadly appealing, the gentlemen weren't. They followed Sebe's rebellious lead.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
We wanted to be brash and in your face.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
According to Tim, it was Sebe who really pushed the
gentleman's sound forward, even as a teenager. He was an innovator.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
You know, I remember when we recorded It's a Crime Shame.
Sebe had punched two holes through these twelve minute speakers
on his box super Beetle, and he was sticking in
the neck of his guitar, the head and the neck
into the holes to create the feedback. You know, a
lot of people talk about the feedback that song has
(05:43):
because he was he I think because it was what
they call it.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
There's no question that it's a crime Shamee rips and
the fact that Sebe was jamming his guitar into his amp,
a move that sounds more like Kurt Cobain and something
from nineteen sixty six proves he was thinking about music
a little differently than anyone else.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Seb let his guitar do the talking.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
He didn't really show off very much. He just liked
to play any Sea was reclusive for the most part.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
He may have been reclusive off stage, but he loved
playing live. His teenage years were spent playing for increasingly
large crowds. Tim and Seebe's band, The Gentleman, wore matching
suits and became the go to garage band for high
school dances and teen nightclub gigs in the Dallas area.
(06:38):
I'm talking to somebody who was there with Seb before
the fake Zombies, So I want to know about Seed
the guy, not just Seb.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
The would be rock star.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
Now, he has some family issues as folks broke up.
They split up, and that always bothered in my fag
and his father didn't like the whole rock and roll scene.
He he was a doctor. Matter of fact.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Like a lot of young rockers in the sixties, Seve's
rebellion came with a price. It can't be stressed enough.
This was the time when the generational divide between parents
and their kids was rapidly expanding.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
He actually sent Seeds off to military school or a
semester or two. We got another fellow to play at
his place, and then he came back and we picked
up again.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
When Seb returned from military school, it was on for
the gentleman. He didn't care what his family or anyone
else in Texas thought of his musical ambitions.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
We were on a mission and we really didn't care
what a bunch of dumb cowboys thought. She went on. No,
he didn't shop. I remember going to do his house
at one point. He had the black Jeff Beck here
and a lot of glam sequence and you know, things
(07:58):
going on. He definite when he stood out at that point.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Sebe's distinctive style continued into the fake Zombies and beyond.
There's not a single photo of him where he isn't
dressed in rock and roll regalia. Seb is what you
would call a lifer, a musical innovator who followed where
his guitar led him from the gentleman to the fake Zombies,
and right through the nineteen seventies he continued to play loud,
(08:26):
fast Texas blues with a British psych influence. Steve's guitar
got him out of Texas. His post Zombies band, The
were Wolves, got signed by Andrew Louke Oldham, the Rolling
Stones manager. They even cut a record in New York
City in nineteen seventy seven, and Sebe's guitar work remained
next level, but the were Wolves never hit. In photos
(08:50):
of seb from seventy seven, he still looked the part.
The hair is still wild and the outfits are still outrageous,
but his face is thin and his eyes are sunken
and hollowed. Seed broke free and lived hard.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
She'd always smoked. He always smoked camel regulars. And that's,
you know, next to pickyuns, picky ews you can get
in New Orleans. Then thereabout as possible.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
And then he got sick.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
His father, you know, being a doctor, but cooking tough.
Tyler for some reason, Tyler Texas, they did exploratory surgery
on him and and just closed it back up because
he was riddled with cancer. He just died pretty quickly,
which was a blessing.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
I guess.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Se passed away of complications from cancer on January twenty fourth,
nineteen eighty. He was just thirty years old.
Speaker 4 (09:55):
The Summus, Yeah, at last, this guy is own were casting.
Speaker 5 (10:01):
One brings a roscot and.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
She watches.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
One night, Tim was up late googling his old friend Steve,
and he came across my story on the fake zombies.
It reminded him that they'd actually talked about it a
long time ago.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Of course at the time, I was, you know, really
wasn't thinking that much about you know, what occurred. But
he just mentioned that he had a gig where they
essentially you know, out on the road, and I think
it in Canada. He said, you know that they met
with a mixed response that way. A lot of a
(10:45):
lot of people were kind of pissed about going to
going to see a band that was faking and being
another band. And that was That was actually the last
I saw Feet before he died.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
When Seed Meta passed away in nineteen eight I was
a year old by the time the words fake zombies
entered my world. In twenty fourteen. He'd been gone for
thirty four years. It wasn't until twenty twenty three that
I found Tim, Sebe's old friend and bandmate from The Gentleman.
Outside of what he recounted to Tim, I'll never know
(11:19):
how Sebe felt about being in the Fake Zombies, what
it was like watching two of your former bandmates go
on to a lifetime of fame and fortunes. But Seb
left behind some incredible music. It's just waiting to be rediscovered.
(11:41):
You can hear his innovation and rebellious spirit in those
early Gentleman records and in his post Zombies band, The Werewolves,
who were still making a name for themselves when Sebe
got sick. If Seb had lived past nineteen eighty, I
have no doubt he would have continued to make incredible
music and maybe even joined Dusty and Frank and the
pantheon of Texas blues legends. A guitar god gone too soon.
(12:06):
But all we have are those faded photographs and garage
rock records to remember him by, and a story from
the summer of nineteen sixty nine, when see Meta and
his friends from.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Texas hit the road.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
I actually talked to a Fake Zombie back in twenty sixteen,
Mark Ramsey. Mark was the youngest guy in the group,
the baby faced rhythm guitarist along for the ride of
his life. Mark lived a whole life. In between his
time in the Original Zombies with Frank, Dusty and Siebe
and our first phone call. He left the life of
(13:01):
a touring rock and roller behind and became a math
teacher back in Grand Prairie, Texas. Getting Mark to tell
me about his time in the Fake Zombies was always
a challenge. It had been almost fifty years, and Mark
had clearly spent those five decades looking back on the
Fake Zombies with a mix of wonder and regret. I
(13:24):
knew from the very beginning that this wasn't necessarily a
time in Mark's life that.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
He enjoyed revisiting.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
When I asked about the details the cities, sites and
sounds of the Fake Zombies, he wanted to talk about
the guitars he used on the tour, not the tour itself.
It went on like that for months, over the phone
and an emails, Mark picked and chose what he wanted
to share about the Fake Zombies. He sent me a
scan of a postcard he'd written to his then girlfriend Vicki.
(13:55):
It says he and his band had just played somewhere
in the Canadian Rockies. He enclosed Foes Roos too of
a beaded, fringed suede jacket he bought Vicki at a
roadside stand somewhere in the Great Plains. These were Marks
memories of the fake Zombies. But occasionally, late at night
he send me emails with hazy details and a little
(14:17):
attitude in response to my questions, like when I rather
callously asked him if he was at all embarrassed by
the fake zombies.
Speaker 6 (14:27):
It might have been embarrassing if we tried to fake
the zombies sound.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
We didn't.
Speaker 6 (14:31):
We had our own sound based on Dallas blues and rock.
I was proud of what we accomplished. The Delta people
told us they had to right to tours the Zombies,
so I really didn't worry about it.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Mark insisted that at no point were he and his
bandmates trying to pass themselves off as the zombies. Delta
promotions claimed to be legit. Mark always wanted to be
in a touring band and this was his big chance.
Speaker 6 (14:54):
I didn't look at it as anything more than a
chance to have some fun, hang out with some cool
guys some rock songs, go somewhere outside this Hillbillyville, and
earn a little money.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Naturally, Mark tended to focus on the high points, like
the fake Zombie show in Chicago, where he said they
blew the roof off the place.
Speaker 6 (15:13):
That not everything just went well. I remember a lot
of people wanting to come backstage, and I remember a
lot of people hadn't heard that kind of music. Texas blues,
that really hard blues.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Compared to the other guys, Mark was just a kid
in this rock and roll world, he said. The business
side of things was handled by the other guys. I'm
still not sure if he genuinely didn't know which of
his band mates was the point person, or if he
was just covering for them.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
You know.
Speaker 6 (15:39):
I wonder if it was Seed Mutter because all the
musical arrangements were his, but it might have been Dusty
Hill or Frank Beard. I don't know for sure, and
I'm sure no one ever told me.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
There were a few details Mark did remember, like the
press photo for the original Zombies, the one that both
Gary Johnson and I found and started this odyssey that.
Speaker 6 (16:00):
Photo is interesting. You'll notice both Dusty and Frank are
using stage names De Cruz and Chris Page, so it's
almost like they knew something was wrong here and didn't
use the real names. Seb signed his real name because,
like me, he probably didn't think we were doing anything wrong.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
That's how it was between Mark and I for months.
I'd ask questions and he'd filled me in on the
details he could remember, like the day he was asked
to join the band.
Speaker 6 (16:27):
Frank was the one who approached me. On the day
they asked me to join the band. All three came
over to my house in Grand Prairie. We walked down
the street and talked about it. I remember all three
being there.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Mark remembered the tour being less about trying to be
the Zombies and more about honing an original sound. In fact,
they didn't even learn a full set of zombie songs.
Speaker 6 (16:52):
Our live set was pretty good, but we only tried
to cover a few zombie songs. Now I understand why
Dusty and Seb wanted to play blues. They were just
practicing for the next level. They didn't care about the
zombie songs.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
I felt like Mark and I were getting along pretty well,
well enough that he agreed to let me come visit
him in Grand Prairie, Texas. Then, the night before I
was supposed to fly out to see him, I received
this email at one in.
Speaker 6 (17:17):
The morning, Daniel, I've changed my mind. A personal face
to face visit would require one thousand dollars paid in advance,
writing to each other and sharing digital photographs is free.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
From that point on, Mark's responses grew shorter and colder.
I asked if he kept in contact with his old bandmates.
After the Fake Zombies'.
Speaker 6 (17:41):
Tour, Frank and Dusty moved to Houston, Texas and met
up with Billy Gibbons. It wasn't long before Zez Todd
was formed Sebe started playing with the Werewolves. We went
our separate ways.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
It went on like that for a few months. My
story came out and Mark and I lost touch. After
a while, I heard from Mark one more time after that.
He reflected on his time in the Fake Zombies, now
that the world knew his story, at least the parts
he wanted to share.
Speaker 6 (18:10):
We had some good songs, I know. We blew some
folks away from time to time. Were we perfect? No,
and we weren't the Zombies. We were a blues rock
band from Texas, a band with plenty of good looks
better than the original Zombies. What we didn't leave behind
was a musical history.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Of our own.
Speaker 6 (18:32):
I think of that quite often, but that was long ago,
and I have my memories of the Texas Fake Zombies.
Most of the memories are dear to my heart. But
I went on and followed a different path. Sometimes I'm
confused about what happened. Perhaps they chose me just because
the way I looked.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
I don't know.
Speaker 6 (18:50):
I hope that I contributed musically. I know I tried to.
And those guitars, all those great vintage guitars and I've lost,
have all been replaced with better models. So when the
moon is full, don't think that I won't crank it
up and let it rip with high volume and effect.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Mark couldn't or wouldn't tell me everything, and when he
passed away in twenty seventeen, I assumed that door was
closed forever. I never know why Mark stopped performing despite
his lifelong obsession with playing guitar, or how he felt
about his former bandmates and the Fake Zombies going on
to become rock legends in Texas I wonder how he
(19:43):
felt seeing Frank and Dusty succeed at the thing he
loved a few times during our conversations, Mark mentioned his
(20:18):
kid brother, Brent Ramsey. He told me his brother Brent
worked in TV in film. He told me that during
some rough years after the Fake Zombies tour, his brother
Brent helped him get his life together. When I reached
out to Brent, seven years after I last spoke to Mark,
he was more than willing to give me some perspective
on his brother and his brother's time in the Fake Zombies.
Speaker 5 (20:40):
Yeah, Mark Ramsey was my brother. We were very close.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
Brent watched his big brother Mark grow up. They were
totally inseparable back in Grand Prairie, Texas.
Speaker 5 (20:50):
We were only two years apart in age, but we
were just one year apart in education going to schools.
And that had to do with my father, Carl Ramsey,
not wanting to drive us to two different schools, so
he made me start school when I was five so
I would be one year behind Mark.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
Brent left Texas eventually for his work in TV, but
he and Mark were side by side in Grand Prairie
through their teenage years. Ended the early twenties, so it
kept us.
Speaker 5 (21:19):
Very close, even though we should have been a couple
of years apart. So he graduated from high school in
sixty eight and I graduated in sixty nine, so roughly
fifty five years ago or so.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
According to Brent, Grand Prairie was the kind of town
where it paid to have an older brother in your corner.
Speaker 5 (21:36):
Grand Prairie was also known as Thug City, USA, is
a really rough town for guys. It was a lot
of fist fighting, and fist fighting was a ride of passage,
and there were places people would meet and fight, and
you were generally only as tough as your older brother
(21:57):
was tough. So I had to allow on Mark to
bail me out a lot.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
When they weren't fighting on the mean streets of Thug City,
Mark and Brent would hop in their dad's nineteen sixty
corvet and headed Dallas or Fort Worth, any place that
wasn't Grand Prairie in search of the music they loved
back then.
Speaker 5 (22:15):
We would go to Fort Worth, would go Dallas, and
we would club. They had team clubs, you know, they
had tremendous team clubs. And I mean that's really how
Mark and his music and everything got going.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
One of their favorite spots was a club in Fort
Worth called the Cellar. They weren't old enough to get in,
but they always found a way.
Speaker 5 (22:33):
So the Cellar, you'd be twenty one to give you
because it was a strip joint. It wasn't like they
had hired strippers. It was like chicks would just get
up hot as shit and start taking off their clothes
and we would sneak in with groups of taller and
bigger and stronger, older looking guys. We would sometimes just
going to see if we could sneak in, but our
success rate was high enough and we would continue to
(22:54):
go there.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
The Cellar was a real sixty.
Speaker 5 (22:57):
Scene, so it was just colos on the floor. It
was just one of these casual kind of hookah smoking
looking joints, you know, and you would sit on there
and then there was a band always play and then
the girls would get up and stripped.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
One night, while watching girls dance, the band on stage
caught their attention.
Speaker 5 (23:18):
The band that was playing that night was the American
Blues Band, and these were some rocking, blonde haired dudes
who had dyed their hair blue. And it was Rocky Hill,
Dusty Hill and Frank.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Beard, Dusty, Frank and Rocky made an impression on the
Ramsey Brothers. They'd seen a million bands play, but this
time Mark and Brent felt compelled to chat up American blues.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
After their show at the Cellar, we say.
Speaker 5 (23:44):
And close the bar down. That night, we were out
on the street and here comes the band and the
manager meets them out there on the sidewalk. If we're
standing just outside, we're like right there with them. I basically, hey, man,
you guys were awesome. Banks could show, you know, we'd
do a great time, you know. And so here comes
their manager and he kills off twenty five dollars each.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Man.
Speaker 5 (24:05):
I'll never forget it, right, I mean paid each one
of the band twenty five bucks.
Speaker 7 (24:09):
Right, I went, you know, you guys are awesome. They're
making some money here too, that's awesome. What are you
guys doing where you guys live? And they go, oh,
we live in Irving And I'm like, well, you know,
we live in Grand Prairie, said, what are you doing tomorrow?
Speaker 5 (24:20):
You guys will get together or something, you know.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
So what do a bunch of long haired rockers do
when they hang out for the first time? Well, it
was still Texas.
Speaker 5 (24:31):
He goes, you like playing football, So we went over
to I want to say's Frank's house. But anyway, they
had a giant front yard and we played touch football
out in their yard. And that's how this is how
we all got together. I brought my brother and introduced
him there, and they had the blue ass hair and
we're out there. You know, people drive by and hok
and shoot us the finger and you know it was
(24:52):
not safety and along haired kid in that part.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Of the country, with that game of touch football, the
seeds of the fake zombies were so. Mark Ramsey was
(25:24):
a pretty straight laced kid growing up straight a's student government.
Brent says their extremely strict father was responsible for that.
Speaker 5 (25:35):
You know, he grew up making us get crew cuts
and ship wear Madras shirts with that butch wax front
side and burr on the back. He was with these
guys like, this house is not a democracy, you know,
this house is whatever I say, it's my way or
the highway.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Like his future bandmates, seebe Mark's dad was less than
thrilled when he started sporting long hair in his teens.
Speaker 5 (25:56):
So he was pretty rough. Oh, my brother, because my
brother wanted that long hair. Early. We're all dead. I
mean the beach boy like was long hair in sixty
four and five, right, so we're already growing our hair
that moll. My dad wasn't exactly going off that program.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
This wasn't just a disappointed dad. It got physical. Brent
did his best to stay out of the way.
Speaker 5 (26:20):
He and my brother had some fucking knockout fights. My
dad was rough. Yeah, he'd take it to my brother
once in a while. My brother stood up for himself
against my dad, and I did not because I saw
him bad. It turned out for Mark. You know, my
dad was a big ass. He was a big, strong marine.
He could be in a marine and he had these
pop out of forearms.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
Brent's description of his dad might have you picturing some
Texas bruiser, an oil man or contractor. That's not exactly right.
He was a hairdresser.
Speaker 5 (26:51):
He wasn't just a fucking hairdresser. He was a lead
hairdresser in the United States. He was on the National
Hair Designing Committee. If you ever wonder our big hair
came from in Texas.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
That was their dad, Carl Ramsey. Mark was getting into
music and he and his old man didn't see eyed
eye on anything, but Brent says they did have one
thing in common.
Speaker 5 (27:13):
It was just a ladies man got of control. They
both were. My brother and my dad were. We called
it the curse, you know that the way the ladies
would come on. We said it was dad's fault. He
really had a lot of side hustle going. So it
was never really a beautiful, happy home environment when we
were kids, because my mom was always chasing him down,
you know, and it was uncomfortable.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
After years of infidelity, Mark and Brent's parents got divorced
in nineteen sixty six and the boys went to live
with their mother. Without their dad around, Mark and Brent
had the freedom they always wanted.
Speaker 5 (27:46):
When my mother and dad divorced, my brother and I
did whatever the fuck we wanted to, and my mom
was helpless, and it wasn't pretty in there. It wasn't
like a oh yes, mam. We weren't baver cleaver, you know.
And those days we'd be gone for three days at
a time. Sometimes, you know, mom is a streak out
where you've been. Well, one night we were just playing
space and we just all got up and drove to
(28:06):
Mexico to get a beer. I mean, that's kind of
shit we were doing back then, just and turned around
and some wherever the fuck we went, you know, when
those border towns told up, got some beers and drove back.
You know.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
Mark no longer had to worry about his dad's opinions
on his hair or who he hung out with, so
he started his own band at the age of sixteen.
Speaker 5 (28:29):
Of course, rock and roll picked on real quick around town.
It would be like Saturday nights at the YMCA, one
of those old school downtown movie theaters would have I'm
trying to help you picture it. It was go Go night,
you know. So they had go Go dancers on each
end of the stage, you know, and they had bands
they'd had. The Battle of the bands was kind of
(28:50):
like the genre that came on strong when we were
young high schools.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
Right.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
Mark put together a group with a very sixties name,
his Prism.
Speaker 5 (29:01):
So Mark hooked up with Brad Lloyd, tremendous, tremendous guitar player,
and Mark and I both had the same girlfriend for
a while. Her name was Tina. She was their lead singer,
and she said at Grace slig she was awesome. And
then they had a drummer who they made fun of
(29:23):
all the time. His name was Ricky and he was cold.
But the greatest night of Jakunda's Prism was in Fort Worth,
Texas at the National Guard Armor Mark Brad, Tina and
Ricky and the Chahunda's Prism. We're in this Battle of
the base and they won the Battle of the bands.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
That victory came with a seriously great prize. They got
to play the opening slot on a bill with two
other bands.
Speaker 5 (29:54):
The warm up band was the Box Tops. You know what,
maybe she wrote me a letter.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
The Box Tops were already in national wearing apps with
a bona fide hit song in the letter, and their
leader Alex Children we'll go on to form Big Stock,
arguably the most important influence on alternative and indie rock
music as we know it.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
But the Box Tops were just the opener.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
The real prize for Jacunda's Prism was opening for the headliner,
the band from California just starting to catch on nationally
and coming to Texas for the first time.
Speaker 5 (30:25):
The band band was The Doors, So you got to
play with the Box Tops and the Doors. You know, dude,
I was there and it was like a square stage
out in the middle of a former armory, you know,
big open space, and the stage was only a couple
of feet high, and the Doors started playing something like
(30:47):
Horse Latitudes and Good Done, and you know, it's just
going on for a while, and then I try to
remember wrap beside me man is the lead singers, Jim Morris,
and he's in those black leathers, and he's like, oh,
fucked up. You know, I'm fun fifteen and he's there's
Jim Morrison and he's not quite They're not a legendary yet,
they're just bands. There's maybe five hundred people there and
that was kind of the greatest knowedge to come to
(31:09):
his prison.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
That was the high point for Marx's high school band.
He opened for the Doors before they were big. That
would have been Mark's musical claim to fame. But not
long after the offer came to go on the road
as the Zombies.
Speaker 5 (31:25):
Frank and Dusty and Rocky Hill, Dusty's older brother came
back from a gig and we went to the airport
to meet him. Rocky had apparently had a problem with
them and was quitting the band, and I believe in
he might have called Mark.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
Mark and Frank Beard had become close in the years
between the Touch Football game and the start of that
Zombies tour, Frank.
Speaker 5 (31:50):
Would come to our house and Mark would go to theirs,
you know whatever. They had a better relationship going. You know,
I just put the damn thing together there.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Brent was always hyping up his big brother.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
He would continue to have a hand in getting Marked
together with other musicians. It says a lot about Brent
that he encouraged his brother to start a band with Frank,
who Brent, let's just say, wasn't a huge fan of.
Speaker 5 (32:15):
About that same time, I think was about when Frank
slept with my wife. He became less than a superstar
to meet around that time. You know, it's painful. I
was still a teenager. You know, my wife was effing
around with Frank Beard. But you know, it wasn't like
anybody had anything except as you know, time to Bob
and Hop. Anyway, that was just, oh, by the way,
(32:35):
that's kind of how I cut myself out of the scene.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
For a while.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
We reached out to Frank Beard through his longtime publicist,
Bob Merriless. Bob is a music industry legend. He's a
no bullshit kind of guy. Frank has never commented on
the Fake Zombies, and he told us, don't get your
hopes up. Bob Marless told us Frank Beard hasn't returned
an email in twelve years. Ramsey's claims remain unconfirmed. Despite
(33:04):
Brent's feelings towards the guy sleeping with his wife, he
still accompanied Mark when Frank and Dusty came calling.
Speaker 5 (33:10):
We went to the airport Mark and I to meet them,
and they came off the plane. My recollection is that
Rocky had a drug problem so bad that he couldn't
go on. If you had a drug problem so bad
that you couldn't go on in this time of everyone
having a drug problem, you really had a fucking drug
problem right, because everyone was doing drugs right and everyone
(33:34):
was finding them. So Rocky might have been the first
time I ever heard of someone burning out on you.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
With Rocky Hill out of commission, Frank and Dusty were
looking for a replacement guitarist, so they asked.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
Mark to join the bank.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
Frank is pretty sure Mark ended up in the Fake
Zombies because of hot shot guitarist Seed Metter, who recruited
the other three into the Delta promotions of it.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
I want to.
Speaker 5 (34:01):
Say Seb asked Mark to ask them because Sebe had
hooked up with these guys in Michigan.
Speaker 2 (34:09):
Brent knew Sebe too.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
He'd seen the gentleman play around Texas and high school,
and he wasn't surprised that his brother went along with
the scheme.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Seve was that good.
Speaker 5 (34:20):
Seve had been in so many bands at that time
because he was such a good guitar player and he
had he played that white, fine beat, and he had
that great goth look and he just had it all
going on. I think everyone wanted him in their fan
because it was just instant crap. I mean, I can
remember him coming to our high school and play and
was just like, you know, he was just out of
control good and he just had the look, you know.
(34:42):
So I believe he recruited all of them. Mark had
become Sebe's friend and had been playing with Seb as
a you know once come over was jammed, you know,
jam Sessions.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
Brant has always known that Mark's time on the road
back in sixty nine with the best guitarists in Dallas,
Seed Metter, the two guys who went on to form
ZZ Talk, Frank Beard and Dusty Hill, made his brother
a legend. Brent saw his friends go from touch football
games to playing the biggest stages in the world. But
(35:16):
before that, Frank and Dusty were in a band with
his cool older brother. I'm after some of the details
Mark didn't share, so I asked Brent if he knows
why Frank and Dusty used aliases while his brother and
Seb stuck to their real names and the promotional photos.
Speaker 5 (35:36):
You know, Frank was in trouble with the law and
he couldn't leave town because he had he was on probation.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
Well, it's nice to picture four guys in their teens
in early twenties setting out for adventure on the road.
The reality is drugs played a pretty big role in
all this.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
Nobody was hiding it.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
Even Gary, the rock and roll historian in his friends
were taking some heavy stuff.
Speaker 5 (36:02):
Most everyone in my group was high, either from smoking
marijuana or dropping acid or mescaline.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
Not to come off like a prude, but this story
is full of drugs. This really was the era of experimentation.
Even the most straight laced people I've come across in
search of the fake zombies, I've talked about taking psychedelics, uppers, downers,
and a lot of wheat. The Texas zombies were no exception.
Like Dusty Hill told me, it was the sixties, man, Danny,
(36:31):
I have.
Speaker 5 (36:31):
To remember, there were not a whole lot of long
haired people, so when you saw another long haired person,
you generally went, hey, what's up man? You won't go
smoke adobie or something? Right, It was always yeah, yeah, sure,
and you go smoke. And then that's how friendships developed,
was over pot and pot deals and could you score
me lit? Those were how the conversations developed a lot.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
The casual drug use and the fake zombies wasn't limited
to wheat. They weren't into the really hard stuff like heroin.
They did share needles.
Speaker 4 (37:01):
Well, it ended up killing him. Was that he you know,
he developed hepatitis. AD saved for that trip. It's why
he quit. It was why he had come home. It's
too sick to gone. I mean I know that the
managers I guest shut.
Speaker 5 (37:18):
It down at some point, but when he came home
he was pretty sick from hepatitis. They were sharing needles.
They would do B twelve. Sometimes they would shoot B
twelve just for the fun of it, but they you know,
that's how you get hepatitis.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Mark returned to Texas with three strains of hepatitis. But
it wasn't just a physical toll. The tour took on Mark.
Something changed in him. He wasn't the same playful, outgoing
kid when he returned to Grand Prairie. The old Mark
was fading away.
Speaker 5 (37:51):
Mark was two different people. There was the Mark during
those years of the high school rock and roll post years,
and then I drug Mark aroundtown, made him go to
college get a degrade because he just didn't have anything
going on. And then he became that school teacher Mark,
and he was an awesome school teacher, but he also
became super reclusive.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
You know.
Speaker 5 (38:14):
He was like Howard Hughes or something, and he just
had so few friends in such a small social life.
It was very rare to see him out with people.
Whereas he had been mostly extroverted.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
In high school, Mark became insular and guarded. That's the
Mark I got to know. Brent kept tabs on his
brother through those dark years and helped get him back
on his feet and into college. Music remained a big
part of Mark's life. He never stopped collecting guitars and
(38:45):
recording gear. Mark never reconnected with Frank or Dusty, but
he did remain friends with Seb. When Mark was back
on his feet, at Brent's suggestion, he asked to join
Sebe's post zombies band to Where Wolf, but they weren't hiring.
Speaker 5 (39:02):
And then Seed got sick, you know, with cancer. You know,
Seed died and Mark. That was Mark's last rock and
roll hang out buddy.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
When Seed passed away in nineteen eighty, Mark's connection to
the rock and roll world vanished. Brent kept trying to
get him out of the house.
Speaker 5 (39:20):
I said, Mark, why don't you ever like reach out
to some of these guys. And I've said, these guys
are still playing, you know, they need guys to fill in,
And I said, why don't you play with him? And
he had no interest whatsoever. So he just had no interest.
It wasn't his shyness. It may have been that he
had felt defeated by he had been defeated by that
tour in a way. You know, he got sick, man.
(39:47):
He just he just was not healthy mentally, physically. You know,
he just kind of gave up.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
Mark may have never played in a band again, but
he never stopped playing music. The guitars and the gear
continue to pile up. He loved to plays guitar late
at night. Before we say goodbye, Brent pulls out his phone.
He wants me to hear something. He holds the phone
up to the mic and plays me a song.
Speaker 5 (40:24):
He only recorded one song, ever, I mean where it
was like, from beginning to end, he just did one song.
I searched everything he had, all his hard drives, every
piece of recording equipment, he had, every SD card in
his house, played them all, searched him off. I said,
he couldn't have just done this one song. He had
this beautiful setup, recording set up. He was just such
(40:48):
a perfectionist that he I just believed for him to
have actually put that one down and said, I'm happy
with that and it's just our time listened to about
breaking me out.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
Brent was there for all of it.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
He watched his brother on stage as a teenager, playing
music with the coolest kids in town and then heading
out on the road. He saw Mark struggle after the
Zombies tour, when his brother got sick and didn't have
the strength to get out of bed, Brent dragged Mark
to college classes. Brent saw the best in his brother,
(41:41):
even when Mark didn't see it in himself. Brent Ramsey
and I have one thing in common. We both know
how fucking cool it is that his brother Mark is
a fake zombie. This is Mark's song. I think of
(42:03):
Mark on those nights alone where he turned his amp
all the way up and tried to make some perfect noise,
never sharing his music with the world like his old bandmates,
never getting back in the van and playing on stage again.
But on those nights, when his memories were alive and
he'd fired off a message to me, Mark left something behind,
(42:24):
a breadcrumb trail of names.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
And faces just waiting to be found.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
Fifty five years later, Mark Ramsey, Seve Metter, Dusty Hill.
Speaker 2 (42:35):
And Frank Beard, the original Zombies.
Speaker 1 (42:39):
Those four guys pulled it off for a little while.
They were the Zombies, and thousands of people paid to
see them play, and that's the end of their story.
But those Texas boys must have been really good, because
(43:00):
back in Michigan, Delta Promotions decided that the only thing
better than having one group of zombies out on tour
was having two.
Speaker 5 (43:09):
They learned some Zombies songs, the lead singer tried to
pull off an English accent, and they went on the road.
Speaker 3 (43:16):
List of Zombies.
Speaker 5 (43:18):
They sounded great and they could do all the zombies.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
Yes, you know, much better than the Texas Zombies. On
the next episode, we meet the second Fake Zombies.
Speaker 1 (43:31):
If you want to get in touch about the Fake Zombies,
we've set up an email address Fake zombiespod at gmail
dot com. This podcast was written by Daniel Ralston. Executive
produced by Ian Wheeler, Melissa Locker and Daniel Ralston. Produced
by Anna McClain and Nick Dawson. Score, original music and
additional audio engineering by Robin Hatch. The voice of Mark
(43:55):
Ramsey was provided by Jason Simms in Huntsville, Alabama. Additional
product support from Cooper Mall in Los Angeles and Matthew
Sneat in Huntsville. The True Story of the Fake Zombies
is a production of iHeart Podcasts, Talk House and never
Mind Media. For more podcasts from iHeart Podcasts, visit the
(44:17):
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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