Listen Up, All You Punk Rockers Who Call the Rolling Stones Old Wall Street Journal, July 19, 1991 By Dave Kansas, Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal Throughout the calm retirement community of Sun City, Ariz., residents are turning down their hearing aids. Interrupting the hum of lawn mowers and golf carts is a wailing electric guitar. A visiting grandson? No. It's the latest sound in the Phoenix area, a senior citizen's punk-rock band called One Foot In The Grave. "They play some hard-driving music," says disk jockey Mary McCann at Tempe's alternative-music station KUKQ, which has played one of the group's songs. "But sometimes it gets a little polkaesque." The polka-punk sound, which threatens to put Sun City on the music map, has been maturing for three years. With two recent local performances and some Phoenix-area air play of a group-made tape, the band may be on the verge of breaking out. The driving force is lead singer JoDina, who founded the group after placing newspaper ads for musicians. Ms. Dina, a 51-year-old retired mortician, has penned such songs as "Menopause": "Hit my son during my hot flash/ For pointing out my new mustache/ The house is a wreck and I don't care/ I just sit around in men's underwear." Another of her downbeat ditties: "Aches, pains, capital gains/ We're senior citizens in the slow lane/ Life gets nutso, sometimes it's the pits/ When we see our friends' names in the obits." Guitarist Danny Walters, 74, may be responsible for the polka sound - he spent 20 years as music arranger for Lawrence Welk. Mr. Walters, who says he only recently discovered the distortion button on his guitar amp, performs in a jacket with a patch of heavy-metal band Megadeth. Cloaked in a leather jacket, with rhinestones proclaiming that "Elvis Lives," drummer Gene Costa, also 74, hardly seems like a punk rocker. Mr. Costa, a retired court reporter, didn't pick up the drums until after his 60th birthday. Keyboardist Gavan Wieser, at 48, is the baby of the group. In high hopes, the Sun City troupe has put together and sent off to record companies a demo tape with seven original tunes. And like any new band, they are dreaming of national exposure. "We would love to tour, if we could find a corporate sponsor to back us," Ms. Dina said. "I figure that Geritol would be a natural." Of course, punk rockers rehearsing in a retirement community have some special constraints. "We generally have to quit by 9 p.m.," Ms. Dina says. Last update 10-Mar-2002. © One Foot In The Grave. Contact us or sign the Guest Book.