If you’re going to name your band “Oh My God,” it better live up to it’s namesake. Billy O’Neill, bassist for the Chicago rock trio Oh My God, has a tale to tell. On some nights, O’Neill has trouble controlling his impulses.

“I’ve had a couple of special evenings where I took off my pants – and underwear, I think – and broke my bass guitar. Yeah, in Milwaukee one time. Everyone was totally tripped out – I was completely tripped out that night. Something was in the air,” he said.

Outside of rocking out with his guitar out, O’Neill recalled a particularly traumatic experience that occurred a few years ago at a place familiar to ISU students.

“Oh my god – that happened at the M-Shop. I was definitely ill. I was so sick that I was freezing to death. It was one of those things if it wasn’t the M-Shop, if it would’ve been almost any other show, I would’ve been like ‘screw this, man, there’s no way in hell I can do this.’ I was shivering, just feeling like total shit, like really, really sick,” he said.

“So I got a sweater on underneath this three-piece suit and as soon as I get up on stage I started sweating buckets. Everything was soaking wet. We got to about the 10th song in the set and I knew – uh oh – I’m gonna throw up. But I wanted to hold on so I could do it on cue, on the last chord, so it would be in time and everything – so I could vomit rhythmically. I just puked all over the place and in this bucket.”

O’Neill said he passed out as he tried to walk off the stage.

“And here’s the real nasty part of the story . I had diarrhea [and] passed out . People were wondering ‘did this guy have a drug overdose or something?’ But fortunately one of the guys in the opening band was an EMT, and let’s just say I was very glad to be somewhere where the room was right upstairs, not some bar somewhere,” he said.

O’Neill said several people came onstage to finish the last few songs for him.

“This one guy, kind of an odd character, he gets up there and he’s so excited to be singing but then he sings this wrong note and so he’s really disappointed at himself and he needs to do something crazy,” he said. “So he picks up the bucket of my puke and dumps it over his head. And of course everyone was like ‘ughhh.’ And actually the people who ran the M-Shop were pissed as hell – he was banned from ever going back there again. So he has to wear elaborate disguises if he wants to show up at the shows at the M-Shop.”

Fortunately for O’Neill and his band mates, bodily fluids aren’t a special effect often used in their performances, and as far as showing organs onstage, Oh My God band member Iguana plays it – and piano, too. With Oh My God’s next album, guitarist Jake Garcia of New York trio Darediablo is coming aboard to add to their progressive rock sound.

“We do have a unique tone with the organ approach, but I think our identifiable sound will only be enhanced by this,” Iguana said. “With this album it’s not only going to have guitar in it, but monster guitar. It’s going to knock you down with the first note.”

O’Neill said Garcia’s addition to the band spurred from talks of the two trios making music together and eventually led to the band employing his services. Iguana said he thinks Garcia’s unique style will make for a more focused album.

“Our albums have always been so eclectic and we have all these ideas flying around. I always thought of our albums like mix tapes. It’s interesting for ourselves to just go ‘let’s just make one that is really cohesive,'” he said.

“When the discussion with Jake [Garcia] started, it became apparent we could crank out a 33-minute rock extravaganza pretty quick and easily.”

O’Neill said fans know what to expect from an Oh My God album: A hard-rocking song next to a piano ballad. With its next album, he hopes the straight-up rock will make for a bigger sound and better story – assuredly things Oh My God isn’t lacking.

“This one is going to be a balls-to-the-wall rock record. It’s going to be big and chunky – our stadium rock record,” he said.