Lily grew up in Michigan but spent her HS (class of '77) years in Oxford NJ. As a young child in the early 60's Lily's brother Dan, who "was always a genius but now was like a total genius" had a garage rock band that rehearsed in the Dennison's basement. Dan started the band- they called themselves the Exiles - in late '64 or '65. From the little room downstairs Lily was exposed to the sounds of the Exiles reverberating throughout the modest suburban tract home. This was at a time when everyone in town worked for car companies and hot rodding was their idea of the national sport.

"My father was a light-purple collar worker- in between white and blue. We lived one block from Dearborn High from the time I was 4 until I turned 16. Before we left Detroit we lived one block from Dearborn High right on Michigan Ave, and out of my bedroom window in the summer I'd hear Bob Seger, Ted Nugent, Iggy Pop, the MC5- basically all the heavy Detroit white rockers. Once in the late 60's my older brother Bob (now a Yuppie architect) was about to leave a concert because he thought that was a folk singer! When he heard the band start playing he turned around and went back in, though." It's no wonder what with the Exiles coming through the floor and Iggy Pop rolling around on broken glass a few blocks away and the MC5 coming in the wind ows that Lily Dennison rocks hard.

"The 1970's gas crisis kicked the fuck out of Detroit. My dad worked for Ford and then in many facets of Chrysler's public relations division. Next he did PR during the Energy Crisis for Plymouth- they needed it as they had introduced the giant Fury III at this extremely wrong time. Later Plymouth tried to sell some of the zillion Fury III leftovers as Turtles with green roofs and avocado paint! Dearborn Michigan was a Ford town and being a Chrysler employee was like being black. Dad got laid off and suddenly it became a project to find a job in the auto industry. Now we're up to the sixth grade for me. Finally after much effort my dad got two offers; he turned down a job in Colorado, and he took one at Mercedes Benz in NJ. I was around 11 or 12. My parents went from middle class or lower middle class in Dearborn, where everyone had gone through the war together, bought homes together, etc., to...well, after the lay off: ENTER RAT RACE! Both my parents were really smart people, really cool and smart and they wanted to take their kids to where there was good education and all. So they bought the cheapest house in an upper middle class neighborhood of an upper middle class NJ town, one with a fantastic educational system and all but it was a TOTAL rat race scene. My mom started to take me into NY then." Mrs. D dressed Lily in kooky fashions like Charlie Brown shoes, stuff that was way beyond Jersey fashion sensibility. So here's this new student type gal in these off clothes and her new schoolmates think she's a nerd, which really cramped her lifestyle since she had been one of the "hip" crew in her previous situation. By the end of the sixth grade, however, she'd proven herself to be a good athlete as well as a "joi de vivre expert" and was accepted in her new environment.

Lily's key qualities were " a balance between a real good student and a real bad kid", and before long guidance councilors were asking her help in dealing with other smart problem students. Her role as "delinquent liaison" was in addition to membership on the curriculum committee and other stuff like that. "I was really into learning- I still am" The administration was always shifting her schedule around trying to get other problem students into contact with her in the hope that she'd influence them. Later in high school Lily became involved in the Alternative Program. By 1975 this program had shifted from the hippie-style alternative school agenda to one geared towards finding "the ultimate way to study and discover truth". Students wrote their own contracts and curriculum, and Lily fit right into this way of learning. She abandoned the wild style of puberty- "drugs, etc" -and got down to hard core work, using the newfound contract system to drive herself on. She decided at this point not to apply for any East Coast schools but instead to apply her alternative program skills to Michigan State University. An avowed "left winger type" she declared no major, but became very involved with the MSU Iran film project (this was when the Shah was still in power). Having learned much of the "secret" side of Vietnam through the truth-oriented alternative program in HS, Lily now took the Iranian situation very seriously.

Very involved with the Jazz scene in New York and had worked at WBAI in 76 and 77, where she got into Jazz, radicalism, the Sex Pistols, and "some left over hippie shit like the Dead and Hot Tuna. Frank Zappa was my GOD- that was the bottom line!" Lily's father had been a jazz drummer so she had grown up listening to Charlie Parker, Coltrane and "big band type shit".

It was at this critical juncture, when Lily discovered the Sex Pistols, that her world view changed for good. She realized that "greater knowledge could be gained hanging out in bars than in school, and met many interesting maniacs and people 15 years older" than herself. In 1977 in Lansing Michigan there was a strong scene building around the Ramones and Talking Heads, and she immersed herself into it with gusto. "I was drinking, doing mucho bad speed, even worse coke, and I ended up in the hospital. Now 19 years old I was politically conscious but not into school. Punk rock meant more to me. Since Michigan "was obviously killing me and all of my friends", Lily says, "I knew I had go to the East Coast, where all the music I listened to was happening".

Stopping over in NJ Lily spent most of her time hanging out with the Power Pop bands- like the Boyfriends -that were prime movers in the Jersey scene. She then made the momentous decision to visit her friend Lori in Boston. Lori Hinzman was Lily's best friend from HS. After HS Lori had gone to Pratt University, but she dropped out of Pratt and moved to Michigan while Lily was attending Michigan State. Lily "was learning about life and working in a Mexican restaurant" at the time, and Lori moved in with her. Now Lily would drop in on Lori in Boston. On December 13, 1979 Lily Dennison arrived in Beantown. Arriving in Boston she went directly to the Rat, where Lori was supposed to be, and made her way to a table at the back. She picked up a Subway News and started to read. She didn't know it was a sound check so she ordered a pitcher of beer from Mike Hopper. Mitch came down and said it was OK for her to be sitting there- this was when he still had a voice. (Weasel interrupts with a picture of a Bunny; Skeg is heard loudly shouting the phrase "love thing" to Jack Hickey). The sound check bands were Dutch Courage and Walter Clay- later of the Peytons and Sex Execs, plus Thrills and Granny on sound. A brief misunderstanding led to words with Mitch. "Mitch gave me a bunch of shit and then later that night he gave me a job!" She had only been in town a few hours and she already had a job at the epicenter of the Boston rock scene. She finished her brewski and walked out of the dark club onto Comm. Ave.! Lily had walked in to the Rat a visitor passing through and left a resident with promising prospects. She more than fulfilled that promise and never looked back.