If You Can't Have Fun, You Ain't No Fun

Matt Odietus, 40, passed away June 28, 2008 in Virginia Beach, VA. The cause of death is not yet determined.

Matt was crazy and contentious at times, whip-smart and amazingly congenial at others. All of that combined with his axe-welding whirlwind licks helped make The Candy Snatchers part of the local legend that they already were since the beginning. Matt might get naked on stage and slice his forehead until he could barely see from all the blood, and most folks might remember him just for that. I will remember him more for the conversations we'd have hanging out at Electric Smiles, since we always had a way of showing up at the same time. I remember the night back in 1993 when Joe and I were stranded after a Buzzcocks gig at the Floodzone in Richmond and it had snowed like crazy during the show, but Matt happened to be there with his van-ful of friends and offered us a ride back to our hotel. I was sitting up front in the passenger seat with Matt when he leaped out of the van with a cassette case -- something most of us music geeks know used to make a pretty handy ice scraper for car windshields -- and Matt was scraping and scraping and finally in a punk rock fit 'o rage threw the cassette case at the windshield, inches from my face, plastic shattering like an echo in the snowy dark alley behind the Floodzone, before climbing back behind the wheel and cheerfully driving us all away into the night.

Matt's trademark troublemaking unpredictability coupled with his generally good-natured personality is what I'll remember about him the most.

R.I.P. Matt. May there be no ice on the windshields in heaven.