INTERVIEW: Blotto Re-introduce Themselves Via New Documentary
“We're all just so high with anticipation that it's just going to be fun to be in a room with 400 friends.”
In the early 1980s, the beloved Albany band Blotto had gone from building a loyal local fanbase, to getting immediate national attention thanks to the quick decision to allow some local filmmakers to shoot a video to their song, “I Wanna Be A Lifeguard.” That video was featured on the very first day of a new cable TV station called MTV and the rest is 518 history.
Recently I had the opportunity to talk with surviving members of Blotto (Paul Rapp aka F. Lee Harvey Blotto, Paul Jossman aka Bowtie Blotto, and Bill Polchinski aka Broadway Blotto), as well as Rob Lichter (aka Bert Blotto), who is the filmmaker behind the documentary Hello! My Name Is Blotto: The Movie!. Within this extremely fascinating and in-depth conversation about Blotto’s rise to fame amid the MTV boom of the early 1980s, I asked the guys about the making of the film, their legacy, and more. The following is a truncated retelling of our conversation. For the entire conversation, check out Unsigned518’s special episode on Blotto that will be out later this week.
Andy Scullin: Do you think you would have sanctioned the documentary if it were not being made by Blotto insider Rob Lichter, aka Burt Blotto, or was having someone you can trust essential in telling your story?
Paul Rapp (Drums): It's hard to say. I mean, anybody could do a documentary about us with or without our approval, but I don't think that just anybody could because a lot of the source material was stuff that we had in our personal archives and probably not available anywhere. You wouldn't even know where to look or what it was. Burt's been collecting this stuff for decades, so, Burt's the best person in the universe to do this.
Paul Jossman (Guitar, Vocals): I'm glad that it was an insider, because although I would say Burt had considerable leeway and freedom in how to organize it, sequence it, and choose what pieces were used from all the videos and interviews, he picked stuff pretty much with all his own autonomy. We have made comments, but I'd say it was mostly tweaking and fine tuning things. A little bit more of this, a little bit less of that. That kind of thing.
AS: How important do you think Hello! My Name Is Blotto: The Movie! is to the legacy of Blotto?
PJ: We started playing together back in the ‘70s and, in the documentary, it talks about how we were in the Star Spangled Washboard band before Blotto. Then, all the time we're in Blotto. Then after we were playing full time, we were still playing part time and so forth. All that time we were playing, I mean, I wasn't thinking about a legacy. Really, we're just playing stuff that we enjoyed. We enjoyed each other's company, and we had an audience that was pretty supportive. You're really thinking about what you're doing and not saying, “Well, let's do this now because we're going to make a movie 30 years from now.”
AS: Rob, after having compiled footage for so long, what made now the right time to put out the documentary?
Rob Lichter: The short answer is that Sarge (Blotto vocalist Greg Haymes) died. I had tried to get this off the ground back around 2000, and I had intentions of getting all these guys—including Cheese (Blotto bassist Keith Stephenson)---and then before we could get together, Cheese died. I was able to get some interviews, and I'd been shooting and collecting footage of them in the years after that and always had in the back of my head that it would be so cool to put it all together in a documentary. But who's got the time, you know? Then Sarge died, and I was like, “What am I doing? What am I waiting for?” So I just said whatever has to be done, it needs to get done. I said to the guys, “OK. I'm serious this time.”
AS: Back in the ‘80s, was there an outlet for releasing videos? Were you just kind of making it for fun or did you have sneaky insider information that videos were going to be the thing?
Bill Polchinski (Guitar, Vocals): It was a happy accident. Two guys, Tom Glisserman and Dave LaFavre were students that had to do a video project and they approached us in March or April of 1981 and said, “We'd like to make a video of ‘I Wanna Be a Lifeguard’.” We asked what it would cost us and they said “nothing.”
We said, “OK, we'll do it.”
They did it with one camera so, to get the effect of a video from all angles, we had to do “...Lifeguard” and then do “...Lifeguard” again. Close up on Bowtie, close up on Sarge.
PR: And lip syncing with a live audience at J.B. Scott's over and over and over again.
PJ: Bands were making videos and I can't remember exactly where you would see them, but bands were making videos. But, you know, we didn't know that there would be a national forum called MTV for these videos to play. But it's like, well, just do it and then see what happens.
AS: What are some of the advantages that smaller bands have today, compared to the ‘80s?
BP: Bowtie and I went to the Eddies Hall of Fame last week and there was a duo there (Sirsy) that has made a lot of music and toured all over the country based on the power of the Internet. That's what bands today have. You can record a studio album in your bedroom and put it out there, put it out for sale and people will buy it and they'll clamor for you in person. So we didn't have anything like that.
AS: What are some of the disadvantages?
PJ: Back in the early ‘80s—or even go to the ‘50s or whatever—there were gatekeepers. Let's say the phenomena of Elvis Presley or the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show where you had, I don't know, 80 million people all watching at once. There was mass viewership, you know, even into the ‘80s, because there was control and focus on television. Now that's just unheard of. It just doesn't happen that there's any mass phenomena like that.
AS: Thank you all so much for your time. Before we go, is there anything you would like to add?
PR: The film premiere is going to be really fun. We're going to be doing a Q&A afterwards with our pal, Chris Wienk (of WEXT). I think we're all just so high with anticipation that it's just going to be fun to be in a room with 400 friends. It's just going to be great.
PJ: I'll probably know every person that's there. And the last time I saw a movie, when I knew everybody in the audience was, I think, when I saw Eraserhead at the Third Street Cinema in Rensselaer in 1979. But it is kind of fun.
Yes, it's flattering too, to have a movie made about the group. And it is fun to go back. There are a lot of highs when you're touring and the gigs are really fun. But there's 24 hours in a day and you're only on stage for maybe two. So you've got the other 22 hours in the day, which can be tedious and boring or really stressful and not glamorous, I guess I would say. But looking back on it, you just think of all the really good times.
Hello! My Name Is Blotto: The Movie!, premieres at the Cohoes Music Hall on 4/12/25. For tickets and more information, visit https://www.thecohoesmusichall.org/events/2025/blotto.
