I have recently been reflecting upon the time I spent at Midnight Records. I have to say that I am thankful for my time there in some respects, as I learned about some great bands that not very many people remember. Quatermass is one of those bands (maybe some of you have heard of them, and you can take advantage of this opportunity to reacquaint yourselves with their tunes).
As far as progressive rock goes, they are a pretty classic example of a bass organ drums trio. It doesn't hurt that it was recorded at Abbey Road with a 16 piece violin section, 6 piece viola section, 6 piece cello section, and you can't forget the 3 piece double bass section. I mean, the record just wouldn't sound the same without all those strings, etc.
This is the sort of record I enjoy listening to whilst bicycling stoned (I wear a helmet, don't worry). It helps me "think".
I don't own the original vinyl, as I wasn't born rich or in the early 70s. This reissue sounds fine to me, and has bonus tracks too (it was originally issued on the Harvest label out of the UK in 1970).
Look out for the drum solo. It's in there. If you are looking for over the top (and I always am), look no further.
Ladies and gentlemen, for your listening pleasure, Quatermass.
Quatermass (Akarma)
1. Entropy
2. Black Sheep Of The Family
3. Post War Saturday Echo
4. Good Lord Knows
5. Up On The Ground
6. Gemini
7. Make Up Your Mind
8. Laughin' Tackle
9. Entropy
10. One Blind Mice
11. Punting
I have to say, Andy and Jess make me laugh and laugh. In fact, it is hard for me to even think about them without laughing. Go ahead, try it.
I mean, the first time I saw She Keeps Bees I got so carried away I started drunkenly yelling at them during their set. I walked up and introduced myself to them afterwords and not missing a beat, Jess handed me a 12" they had pressed themselves. My kind of people, etc.
This is the sort of email you are likely to receive from Andy, should you be the sort of person to receive such things:
"Andy here. Attached is the artwork you requested. Also, you will find a picture from an indoor ski hill which we played at recently. This may or may be of interest but we thought it was hilarious.
About the record: it contains two songs from an EP we recorded in 2007 on side A (1. Pile Up 2. Stutter) and two songs from our most recent record on the Bee side (3. Get Gone 4. Cold Eye). It was released in 2008 and limited to 100 copies, each with collage cover art made by Jessica. The art attached is the one we made for ourselves, so we figured it would work as general artfor your post.
Trying to think of interesting things about the recordings... at the end of Get Gone you can hear me stand up and start walking over to the computer to hit stop.
The A side is two of the four songs we've ever recorded at a real studio.
Ummm, we haven't left the house for three days. Thank you thank you thank you!
Andy
P.S. I also attached a new photo of us if you need it."
Jess has recently become interested in lunar trivia, and wanted to share this:
"NEW MOON in Scorpio was on Monday night Nov 16th kids.
Here's some good old facts about the moon:
-The moon rotates at 10 miles per hour compared to the earth's rotation of 1000 miles per hour.
-More than 400 Moon trees are are planted all over the world. They don't know where though. Grown from seeds that were taken to the moon and back on Apollo 14 in January 31, 1971. Pilot for the mission brought along a canister full of Sycamore, Redwood, Sweet gum, and Douglas Fir.
-The Moon is moving away from us. Each year, the Moon steals some of Earth's rotational energy, and uses it to propel itself about 3.8 centimeters higher in its orbit.
-The Moon is not round (or spherical). Instead, it's shaped like an egg.
-High tide aligns with the Moon as Earth spins underneath. Another high tide occurs on the opposite side of the planet because gravity pulls Earth toward the Moon more than it pulls the water.
Moon lady says:
-During the new moon (RIGHT NOW)... we should honor the time we need to receive and gain guidance. In the darkness you can let things germinate. Take it all in.
-During the full moon... see what is brought into the light. What needs to be stripped away. What is necessary to continue growth rather than what has become habit.
-The moon is far older than previously expected. Maybe even older than the Earth or the Sun. The oldest age for the Earth is estimated to be 4.6 billion years old; moon rocks were dated at 5.3 billion years old, and the dust upon which they were resting was at least another billion years older.
-Moon rocks are magnetized. This is odd because there is no magnetic field on the moon itself. This could not have originated from a 'close call' with Earth—such an encounter would have ripped the moon apart."
Ladies and gentlemen, for your listening pleasure, She Keeps Bees.
BJ Warshaw and myself have both lived in Brooklyn for some time now. When we were younger and both clean shaven with thick black glasses we used to get confused for each other, much to our chagrin and/or amusement. I asked him to elaborate:
"There were a lot of mix-ups back then, and my friends and I only knew that there was some other dude walking around Brooklyn with similar haircut, sideburns, and glasses. We called him the Doppelganger.
One time me and my roommates were throwing a party. A couple of friends were on there way over in a taxi. One of them was bringing a girl he'd just started dating (I can't recall her name, let's call her Bridgette). She asked him, 'So who's party is this?' He replied, "My friend, BJ." She was like, 'I hate that guy!' My friend described me, and it fit the bill. She flipped out, refused to go, and demanded to be let out of the car! When he got to the party, he asked me what I'd done to piss Bridgette off. And I'd never heard of the girl. I chalked it up to the Doppelganger.
For a year in 1998-99 I lived around the corner from this bar, Mona's, in the East Village. I used to spend a ton of time there shooting pool and drinking cheap Guinness. One time I went in and my name was already on the chalk board for pool matches. I figured my buddy Ray had put my name up, as was the customary thing to do when you saw a pool regular walk in. I got a drink, sat next to Ray, said, 'Thanks for putting my name up.' He replied, 'Uh... you put your name up, I just saw you do it.' It totally fucked with my head, to the point where I was seriously questioning my short term memory.
Another time I remember being at a party, talking to a girl, and introducing myself. She said a guy named BJ once put a cigarette out on her friend's jacket. I had to explain that it wasn't me, but I'm not sure that she believed me.
It was months before we actually met. We frequented the same places, the early Todd P shows, loft parties, etc, but somehow never met for, I think, almost a year. I was friends with other Oakland transplants that had known him on the West Coast. And I remember just missing him over and over again. Friends of mine wanted to plan a showdown in the street, a BJ battle royale.
I DO remember when we finally first came face to face. It was at a Melt Banana at the Knitting Factory. BJ was sitting alone at small table against the wall and I knew, immediately, that he had to be the Doppelganger. I bought a drink and walked over to his table and said, 'Are you BJ?'
He looked up at me and skeptically said, 'Yeah.'
I slammed my beer down on the table and said, 'I'm BJ, too, and this town ain't big enough for the both of us.'
I was trying to be half-funny, but he just looked at me like I was a total fucking dick, kinda shrugged, and kept drinking his beer.
After that, though, I think we became pals, although it took a while and was certainly weird having the same unusual name within a relatively small community."
You want to know something? I did think he was a dick at first because of that, although now I realize it was just his way of being friendly. It wasn't until some we ran into each other some time later at a weird party in DUMBO that involved cars being set on fire that we really became friends, however.
My favorite anecdote involving myself and BJ being mixed up for each other happened in the spring of 2003. We were at a loft party in Williamsburg, which wasn't unusual for the time. There was a long line for the bathroom, and a note on the door informing us that the toilet was busted and that nothing should be deposited there.
I was not waiting in line to dispose of liquid waste, unfortunately. As this was during an era of heavy drinking (for both myself and Warshaw, I would imagine), I started drunkenly claiming that I was going to relieve myself in the bathtub. When I finally gained access to said facilities, I noticed that the toilet was backed up but still servicable for my purposes and thus did not utilize the bathtub as I had claimed I would.
At some point in the evening, someone actually did.
A few days later, the following appeared on the Troubleman website:
"04.03.03
You know how we do. Represent for PAPER magazine's "Beautiful People" list for 2003: ROGERS SISTERS, TOUCHDOWN, and ABCS. Also don't forget our friends FORCEFIELD.
Go here or buy it at the new stands. Also quoted in that issue "The hottest NY label". Fuck you, we are from JERSEY and Buy Our Records is the best Jersey label EVER.
Playlist: BJ taking a shit in Pete's bath tub at the Fat Day show last weekend."
I saw this and emailed Mike Simonetti to clear up the matter. Apparently I wasn't the only one, as he later printed the following retraction:
"04.08.03
Ok, BJ told me that he did not shit in anyone's tub this weekend. I also heard that the other BJ in NYC (from Parts & Labor) is getting shit (no pun intended) for it as well. Either way, whether BJ shit in a tub or not, you gotta admit it is a funny story!"
The real culprit was never found.
I've heard tale that there was a third BJ in town at the time, although I'm not sure if I ever met him personally. As for the other allegations, I will say that as we both had a habit of drinking excessively and doing stupid shit that any of it could have been either of us. I don't specifically remember putting out a cigarette on anyone's jacket, but I don't specifically remember not doing it either.
At the time it wasn't unusual for someone I didn't recognize to come up and greet me by name. Occasionally I was able to deduce that they had mistake me for someone else, but I imagine some of the people who got upset at me for not remembering them had nothing to be upset about, after all.
I imagine the rest of them had every reason to be, however.
BJ wrote me the following note when I informed him that I had tracked down an open copy of the first Parts & Labor tour EP for inclusion:
"Hey BJ,
Attached is my copy's cover of the Oh My God The Van Is On Fire EP. This was our first release, a limited run of CDRs that we sold at our early shows and during our first tour in 2003. Each copy was hand made using torn, colored gaffers' tape wrapped around a cardboard CD case (so the buyer had to cut/tear the tape to get the CDR out). We used one of those crappy label makers to write the band name, and often a little personalized message. I have no clue how many we made, definitely over 100 (but fewer than 500).
I'd spend time in the van or at the merch table wrapping the covers. After that first tour, I quit smoking. The covers became increasingly intricate and labor-intensive as a sort of physical addiction therapy to missing cigarettes. This scan is the one copy that I kept, and I think it probably took me a solid hour or two to make.
I'm psyched Chris had a copy of this, so I didn't have to tear open my nostalgia copy. Also psyched to hear these songs; I haven't listened to this EP in, literally, years!
-BJ"
The Chris he is referring to there is Chris Weingarten, former drummer of Parts & Labor. He had this story to tell about the band, circa 2005:
"One of the oldest journalismo tricks when interviewing a band is to ask, 'Did anything interesting or funny happen when recording the record.' Eighty percent of the time, that question yields a flat-out 'no,' because bands are generally boring, recording records is tedious and, let's be totally honest here, it's kind of a dumb question. However, the other 20 percent usually brings out a story so good that you can build an entire article around it. Stay Afraid was the first full-length record I ever recorded with Parts & Labor and damned if there wasn't a completely phenomenal recording story to go with it. When we did press for the record, I waited with baited breath for someone to ask me, 'So, did anything interesting or funny happen when recording the record' because, yes, in fact, this time something interesting and funny happened. Alas, in the dozens of interviews we did, no one ever asked. So now I have to spend my Tuesday night typing it out myself.
We recorded Stay Afraid in 2005 at Brooklyn's Headgear Studios. Dave Sitek and TV On The Radio were recording Return To Cookie Mountain exactly one door down in Stay Gold. It was inspiring to walk by that door on the way to the studio and hear all kinds of oboes and weird clangs coming from behind the metal door. Our studio was pretty incredible too. We had producer Scott Norton who was a sweetheart and a badass and had tons of tape--tape!--that we could record on.
Anyway, one thing you should know about Dan and BJ of Parts & Labor is that they are notorious perfectionists. Their attitude towards getting the exact right sound, the exact right melody was at once inspiring and infuriating. I usually stuck around to break ties. Those dudes were total sound nerds who loved to produce and tinker. I spent a lot of that session chilling on the couch while they tweaked. At the time I was reading John Hersey's Hiroshima and the Spin magazine '100 greatest albums of the last 20 years' list, silently wondering to myself what kind of magic we'd have to stir up on this record to be in the next edition.
One day, I was laying down reading my book, with my feet facing out the door. I'm near-sighted and I take my glasses off when I read. So when I saw this blurry figure coming down the hallway, I didn't recognize him at first. I THOUGHT I knew him so I waved anyway. He waved back. I put my glasses on and saw that, yes, I did recognize him--but I've never met him before. I guess you can say he was a notorious figure whose name had gotten around Brooklyn a little bit at the time. BJ, Dan and Scott were hunched over the mixing console intently working out a song that was blaring through the Headgear speakers. Our guest patiently played the wall, chilling next to me, dead silent for the few minutes it took for them to wrap up.
'Excuse me, is David here?' he said, inches from me at the back of the room, asking for David Sitek. Scott turned around, clearly caught off guard by our guest, and immediately stuttered out, 'Yeah, let me take you to him,' and, without hesitation, immediately escorted him down the hall.
This dude was pretty well known around Williamsburg, so I was clearly impressed by this stranger's presence on our humble session. BJ and Dan, however were totally unphased. They were older than me, they had played more shows than me, and they had made more records than me, so I thought they were just over things like gossip and celebrities. I didn't want our strange guest and our producer to hear us talking, so I went up to where my bandmates were and started whispering.
'Oh, you guys are too cool for school, huh?'
They looked at me like I was a jerk. I was kind of being a jerk about it. I couldn't believe these two were so jaded!
'You two don't want to look like dorks in front of Scott? Is that it?' I whispered as low as I could muster.
Again, blank stares.
I continued to whisper: 'It's like the dog humped the couch and everyone's pretending nothing happened.'
BJ picked up the cues and whispered back. 'The dog humped the couch?' he said to me, clearly confused at my line of questioning.
'Guys, I'm talking about the amazing thing that just happened, that you two are pretending didn't happen.'
'Chris,' BJ said to me, very quietly, with what must have been remarkable patience, 'What the fuck are you talking about?'
'That David Bowie was just in our studio!'
The room was dead silent for a few seconds. We stared at each other. The tension was broke when BJ loudly blurted out, 'That wasn't David Bowie!' When Bowie came in, Dan had been too involved in the production to turn around. BJ, hilariously, actually DID turn around, saw him in the corner of his eye, and didn't process that it could actually be Ziggy Stardust back there.
We went back and forth for a few minutes until BJ hopped off his stool to investigate. He comes back 10 minutes later, and says, 'Well, that was David Bowie.'
Turns out David told the TVOTR dudes that he kind of liked what we were putting down (yay!) and even chopped it up with them a little about his love of Lightning Bolt and a pre-Battles Tyondai Braxton. Shit, most people in Brooklyn weren't even hip to Tyondai at that point, that's how cool that guy is. Anyway, David Bowie, thank you for providing us with an interesting story."
So now you will always know which BJ is which, etc.
Ladies and gentlemen, for your listening pleasure, Parts & Labor.
Oh My God The Van's On Fire EP (Self)
1. RC1
2. Autopilot
3. Groundswell
4. Railgun
5. Broken Man Going To Work
6. RC2
7. The Intervention
8. Parts & Labor
Parts & Labor (JMZ)
1. Parts & Labor
2. Mike Burke For President
3. Japanda
Groundswell (JMZ)
1. It's Not the End of the World
2. Autopilot
3. Mike Burke for President
4. Intervention
5. Parts & Labor
6. Happy New Year
7. Railgun
8. Broken Man Going to Work
9. TB Strut
10. Groundswell
Rise, Rise, Rise (Narnack)
1. Don't Just Fucking Stand There
2. Days In Thirds
3. Jurassic Technology
4. Good Morning Black Eye
5. Voltage
6. Probably Feeling Better Already
7. The Endless Air Show
Confuse Yr Idols: A Tribute To Sonic Youth (Narnack)
Justin Melkmann is a senior producer at The Daily Show, draws comics (one hilarious one involves GG Allin and is included in the download) and plays in a punk rock band. How do you spend your time?
Ladies and gentlemen, for your listening pleasure, World War IX.
Slap in the Face: My Obsession with GG Allin (Self)
1. Slap in the Face: My Obsession with GG Allin
Brown Bagging It (Red Black & Blue)
1. Portrait of Sobriety
2. Treasure Hunt
3. Jesus Freaks
4. Employee of the Month
In 2006, Paper Rad put out a DVD called Trash Talking. Hidden somewhere in that DVD is a hilarious television pilot for a show called Alfe.
I was involved with some friends in a production company at the time and we were working on bringing Alfe to series. Meetings were even had with Adult Swim, etc.
Television is a difficult business.
As a result of these dealings, I acquired a copy of just the Alfe pilot. I recently wrote to Ben Jones and inquired about posting it here for you, the world, to see. This was his response:
"If it has an artistic value to you and the site then you should post it outside of anything I think or the label that released it (Load Records) thinks."
Here is it, presented alone and in its entirety for the first time:
Ladies and gentlemen, for your viewing pleasure, Alfe.
Jon Lukens is a misunderstood genius. I have been a fan of Retconned since the first time I saw him play in 2001. His performances are astounding, strange, and alienating in all the best ways. He told me once that I was somehow involved with just about every show he ever played in New York City. I asked him to put his work in context for you, and this is what happened:
"My punk band broke up.
When I started writing songs as Retconned in 1997, I'd had no real musical sustenance since the breakup of Year Zero, a punk band I had fronted from 1994-1996. So, I was getting antsy. Talking to Long Hind Legs and Thrones when they played at 485 Robinson, Valery Lovely’s house in Atlanta, encouraged me to go ahead with what I'd been considering: I bought a sampler.
I started out playing guitar and using the sampler as a rhythm section. I'd very little musical experience outside of 'singing' for a few punk bands, and was excited to take on songwriting. There were a few other factors at work, though. I was born with a chip on my shoulder, but that was compounded by an unspoken and one-sided competition: I was motivated by my desire to make up for the fact that my brother's band, the hal al Shedad, was (very deservedly) quite popular, while my previous band, the aforementioned Year Zero, seemed to work hard but go nowhere. Of course, The hal al Shedad were by far the better band, but I was younger then, and it was a lot more difficult for me to accept that there were factors (like talent, luck, catchiness, and social network) outside of my control. It seems that my general attitude at the time was that all problems could be solved by a humorless soul-crushing dedication to poorly defined objectives.
So, while many people pick up a bass or guitar sometime around middle school, and then get a few years of practice in before starting their first 'real' bands, I was trying to do it all myself in a manner of months. A poorly designed Ensoniq sampler and my cluelessness were my only assets. I started playing out relatively frequently, and soon cut a seven inch, RET-1, which I released myself. I followed that up with the CD Simulant Skin Included, my first full-length for Gavin Fredrick's Stickfigure Records. Both were recorded with the Ed Rawls.
RET-1 and Simulant Skin Included were (and remain) huge pieces of shit. They drew quite a few comparisons to 'industrial' bands I had never heard of, and the idea that dudes in kilts with shave-arounds might be into Retconned was just another blow to my already low musical self-opinion. At the same time, my live shows were becoming increasingly depressing: I'd come up in a scene where people like Scott MC, Craig Dempsey, Frank Jensen and Rebecca Merchant would be up front at house shows dancing and visibly enjoying themselves. By '98, a lot of that seemed to have faded, and, in spite of my intentions, my music just seemed to freak people out. The more uncomfortable the audience got, the more alienated I felt; and the more alienated I felt, the more uncomfortable the audience got. So it went. I tried incorporating props and slide shows into my live set to counteract the weirdness, but people began to expect those things, and soon they felt like gimmicks. I felt like I was caught between being considered a joke or a novelty and being considered some sort of bad avant-bullshit.
I remember one gig in Knoxville being particularly heinous. After being accosted by some fat fuck in sweatbands with an unplugged electric bass and a fanclub of wailing sorority bitches, I cut my set off early and started to pack out. Someone who worked at the show space tried to cheer me up.
'I think you'd go over really well at this place up the street,' he said.
'What is it?' I asked.
'It's a bondage and fetish club.'
'Is it all ages?' I asked.
I don't think he realized that I was joking, but I think that that dialogue really highlights the disparity between where I came from and where I found myself.
I moved to Brooklyn. At first, the change was good for me. I gave up on trying to sound like a punk band, and started listening to Pole, Panasonic and Scientist. Subpoena the Past's This Year's Eclipse was one of the few records that made me feel like things weren't hopeless. I wrote a record of minimal instrumental material called Triangle, but never released it. I was also working with my brother and James Joyce on a project called Ultivac. I learned a lot from that, but In the interests of brevity I need to refrain from discussing non-Retconned projects. There were a lot of them.
I played shows infrequently in NY. Reception was mixed, but generally poor. I don't think I had any idea about the way that what I was doing went over, but I did it anyway. Watching a guy play a show with a sampler or a laptop has more in common with watching grass grow than with watching a band like The Ex or Fugazi. Soon, I was spending most of my free time playing with Amverts, a short-lived NYC band made up of other ATL xpats.
In 2002, Stickfigure and volumeone jointly released my second full-length record, Game Sounds. I recorded it myself.
Through my old friend Rob Hallowes I arranged to tour Europe with Bilge Pump, a great band from Leeds that few people over here seem to have heard of. I had a good time with with those guys, though my shows were generally poorly received - just more of me freaking people out in spite of my intentions to the contrary. I guess there were not a lot of solo acts playing electro-punk off laptops in Swiss squats back then. I remember playing in the deep-end of a drained, graffitti-covered indoor swimming pool in Kranj, SI. The next night I played at an outdoor fest in Zelezniki. I went on second, following a pretty heavy band. After I played, their guitarist approached me.
'You are the freaker.' He said.
'But you are the rocker.' I replied.
'But YOU are the freaker.' He said.
'But you, YOU are the rocker. I said.
After a pause, he said 'Yes, but I come from many places.'
After a few more years of NYC, I moved back to Atlanta, hoping to start a band with my friend Joshua Fauver. I replaced all of my equipment, wrote a record called "Just Keep Shooting" that I never released, self-released a CD called IN ALL CAPS, and went on a strange tour of New York, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Florida (Yes, you read that correctly) with a an act called Recompas. The similarity of our names was confusing. Soon after, Army of Bad Luck and Stickfigure released Unhappenings, my first record that I actually liked. Last year, Stickfigure released Has Been, another full-length CD. My infrequent shows in Atlanta have generally been ok. It even seems like I have a few fans. If you do something for ten years you get better at it.
I have a single coming out on Army of Bad Luck this spring, which will be followed up by a full-length titled The Former Miss USA."
I asked Josh Fauver to speak about Retconned, and this was his response:
"My favorite Retconned show of all time was this show he did at c-12 warehouse (at the time, Stickfigure HQ) and he had brought with him all these wind-up walking toy cows that he had let loose into the audience. Sounds harmless enough, but he had torn some of the plush covering off of some of them so that they were these terrifying little fleshy robots poised to invade the audience. Sometimes he would pick them up and turn them the other way if they got to close to an attendee's foot. What I learned: 1) Technology is both furry and terrifying. 2) Retconned will do what he can to protect us from harm, but you're on your own where the nightmares are concerned. 3) Not only is Retconned a step ahead of us all, so are his toys."
James Joyce (formerly of the Hal al Shedad, Ultivac, etc.) had this to say:
"Jon Lukens is one of the most artistic and creative persons I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. He is not a musician in a traditional sense – he is an artist making music. Ever since 1997, I have watched him develop his craft and get more and more effective at realizing his intended expression, with every album becoming better than the last. Sometimes I have been able to help him with some live drums, or as a person to bounce ideas off, but he really is a singular visionary of our era. I always look forward to hearing his new songs and the sounds he is able to create through those gadgets of his, and hearing about his ideas and approaches to songwriting. I think my favorite Retconned show was the Retconned Cover Band show I helped him with back in January 2008. Josh Fauver was able to take several Retconned songs and transcribe them to guitar, which we played in a live guitar/bass/drums setting with Jon as the lead vocalist and his brother Benjamin on bass. It showed how unique and interesting his music really is when you present it in such a stripped down, classic format. Jon and his music are truly originals."
Ladies and gentlemen, for your listening pleasure, Retconned.
1. The Lice On The Lion
2. Beat The Crowd
3. Fight Scene
4. Light And Filth
5. Syntheskinned
6. Multiply, Multiply
7. Childbirth On Video
8. Seed Me
9. Hang On Over
10. It Has Its Moments
11. Processorized
1. Capacity
2. Grid
3. Live At The Driverdome
4. Endless Summer
5. At The Border
6. Ask God For Money
7. Tomorrowville
8. Coptography
9. Tshirt
10. Pyramid
11. Untitled
12. Impotential
13. Lead Into Wine
14. Postcard
1. A Cool Million
2. The Interview
3. Penetration 3
4. Repeat It
5. Volunteers
6. Heaven
7. Expert Witness
8. Snowflake
9. The Color No
10. Bring The Jubilee
11. Flags
12. Home Before The Sky Falls
13. Blue Air
14. Boxcar
1. Opposed Thumb
2. The Interview
3. Survival System Same
4. The Crusades
5. Obvious
6. In The Lines
7. The Cars That Go Boom
8. Bring The Jubilee
9. Public Address
10. Public Image
11. Boxcar
12. Flags
1. Tiger Mountain
2. Has Been
3. History Lesson
4. Babys On Fire
5. High Speed Dubbing
6. All My Children
7. Home
8. October 20
9. Santo and Johnny
10. Fist Full of Dollars
11. Saucer
12. Here Comes Goodbye
13. White Horse
"Bad Thoughts' first rehearsal was the day after Nikki Sudden died, in Warn Defever's well-appointed basement (still my favorite rehearsal space that I've ever used). The group's primary motivation has been a social one; we mostly just enjoy each others' company, and if we get around to writing songs and arranging them, then great. I was tired of being in groups with people I didn't know particularly well, and to that end, asked three of my closest comrades to join. Copped our name from my favorite Funkadelic song, and set out to play very repetitive music. I remember being in a deep Malcolm Mooney appreciation at the time, and was also really enthusiastic about Mancunian sounds and Steve Marriott and Ana Da Silva's guitar styles. Oh also, there's this incredible song by Flowers that Sam and I were obsessed with. Played our first concert a few weeks after forming; Bohemian National Home in Detroit with Shoplifting and Slumber Party. Everyone's gear was massacred by the end of the set. People seemed indifferent, but that's not uncharacteristic of a show here.
Waited about a year before we recorded properly, again at the Bohemian with Warn, Dion Fischer, and Hitoko Sakai engineering and telling us to do it again or not. Recorded a lot of songs that afternoon, like nine in a two hour session? We always recorded live (vox too) so that helped expedite things considerably. Anyway, four of those songs were up to snuff and we used them as an excuse to start M'lady's Records and issue our first two singles. Played many insane shows, my favorites to date were my birthday party in 2007 (which was also Finally Punk's Detroit debut), and the opening of the UFO Factory (was that 2008? no it musta been late 2007). UFO was sort of our Mercer Arts Center, but instead of the Oscar Wilde Room, there was just the one room, and considerably less people in attendance, and um also we were not a party band.
First single came out in August 2007, second in January 2008. Wade and Sam designed the first sleeve (rather menacing), and Veronica Ortuño (M'lady's co-chief) designed the second (Malevitch homage / new suprematism). M'lady's really has its foundations in those two singles.
We waited yet another year, and recorded two more songs that we were very excited about. Morgan wrote 'Oh Jena' as a response to the insanity that was national news for a minute coming out of Louisiana, lots of talk about nooses and trees and things that didn't make any sense. 'Keep It Easy' was written by our hero Mark Perry. We borrowed the arrangement from the Folk In Hell cassette, not the Reflections' version, for those keeping score at home. This comprised our third (and my favorite so far) single, with a beautiful sleeve designed by Morgan (in tribute to the Jena Six and Henri-Georges Clouzot - put that in yr pipe and smoke it!)
Bad Thoughts hasn't performed in about 18 months; Sam moved to New York to attend NYU, and now he's in Queens. I miss him. Right after we stopped performing, I ran away to join Chain And The Gang, Morgan's deeply in school getting her doctorate, and Wade is the saxophonist in Druid Perfume. We promised one another that we'll meet up again soon, especially if its to back Vivien Goldman on a nationwide tour. Or the Anxious Rats; they were excellent."
-- Brett Lyman
Ladies and gentlemen, for your listening pleasure, Bad Thoughts.
Make Yrself Necessary b/w G.E.D. Defiance (M'lady's)
"Pyrodydacts was Doug Russell on guitar, Tristana Fiscella on vocals, Josh Blair on drums, and me, Sara Jaffe, on guitar and keyboard (namely, a little Casio with an output jack that we amplified through boombox speakers so it would sound blown out). We were a band in Middletown, CT from approximately October 1998-June 1999. Most of us were students at Wesleyan University. Doug and I met on one of our first days of college, and had been talking about playing music together, but it didn’t happen until our senior year, when Doug started playing with Josh and Tristana and invited me to join in. The two records I heard during my college years that probably affected me the most were the No New York and Wanna Buy a Bridge compilations—I was really interested in making music that had some kind of hooks or pop elements, but that was also open to fracture, implosion, noise. Without, I think, ever talking about this as our goal, that is what Pyrodydacts ended up being. Josh’s amazing sense of control on the drums, his impeccable sense of when to fill in space and when to back off, Doug’s perfect equation of riffage and feedback, Tristana’s sometimes spoken, sometimes quasi-operatically-sung lyrics, childhood-memories-meets-pissed-at-the-world—I loved being in this band! We practiced in my basement at 42 Miles Avenue. In some songs I would have to make really quick switches between guitar and keyboard, so I devised this system where I put a hole through my guitar pick and tied it to a string around my wrist, so I could let it go for the keyboard parts and scoop it back up for the guitar. We played probably only like 8 or 10 shows, most of them at Wesleyan, and then I think one at Sarah Lawrence College, one in New Haven, and one in Brooklyn at the Happy Birthday Hideout. At the HBH show, this kid did an amazing Sharpie drawing of us playing, I need to remember what I did with that, and Michael Azzerad came up to me after and gave me his card. I didn’t know who he was.
We made this recording on Josh’s 8-track at 42 Miles. Doug went on to play in the noise-guitar duo Open City, Tristana in Caution Curves, and Josh in Orthrelm, El Guapo/SuperSystem, and a zillion other projects. I played guitar in Erase Errata, which, incidentally, was rejected as a band name before we came up with Pyrodydacts."
Sara first played Pyrodydacts for me one wild weekend in 1999. I asked my old roommate Ben Nugent to tell that wild tale:
"It was my first fall in New York. In the summer of 1999 I had moved to South 4th between Driggs and Roebling, and BJ was my second roommate in an apartment where we shook roaches out of our shoes in the morning. Dirt, humidity, some danger. South 2nd was rough back then, but South 4th was friendly in a hood way. The Rapture and Black Dice played an amazing show at The Cooler, I went with BJ and Jonathan Stuart and Alex Klein. I eventually started The Cloud Room with Jonathan. But that year I wasn't thinking about my own music or writing. I was panicked. I had just turned 22, and I worked for the city, out in Brownsville, trying to persuade aging welfare recipients to pound the pavement harder looking for service industry jobs. They were people falling through the cracks in the workfare system, forced to spear trash in parks to keep their welfare check coming, just about unemployable. My purpose was to help somebody strike them off the ledger, get them some kind of job somewhere, no matter how bad, to erase errata. It was my first job. My title was Employment Expert.
I was learning how to lie. The notion that I could be helpful to these desperate single mothers by reciting received wisdom to them and calling Au Bon Pain managers on their behalf was of course itself a lie. I lied to my supervisors and spent a lot of my time finding myself a magazine job instead of trying to get the 'clients' jobs. The glorious beginning of my literary career.
One weekend BJ and I and Mel Flashman, my girlfriend at the time, went up to Wesleyan, because Mel had gone there and had friends who were still there. Calvin Johnson and Mirah were playing at a coed frat, Eclectic. BJ and I decided I would tell everyone I was Ted Nugent's nephew. I didn't know if I was actually going to go through with it. I couldn't decide if it was the kind of lark people would talk about in my biography once I got famous, or if I was never going to get famous and it was therefore pointless. Youth.
We stood outside Eclectic smoking with Sara Jaffe, who was still just starting to get Erase Errata up and running at that point, I think. BJ was like, did you know this guy is Ted Nugent's nephew? People started asking me all kinds of questions. I found myself pulling answers out of the ether that felt correct. He and my father hadn't spoken much in a while, my father was the good boy who went to college and became a liberal, we used to love to go to Ted's place in Dearborn, etc. BJ kept a straight face and nodded. It felt like writing a character, like making something. Everyone nodded, interested, and we talked about the history of conservatism in rock. Then we went inside and saw Calvin Johnson pretend, listened to him sing like a child in his man's voice. It was beautiful. I thought: better--more moral, more fun-- to play pretend with your friends, than to pretend for an employer, according to plan. Far better to tell a childish lie than a smug, adult lie. Or at least I hope I thought that.
I saw Erase Errata years later at DUMBA and they were great, as good as that early Rapture show, and different."
Ladies and gentlemen, for your listening pleasure, Pyrodydacts.
Through a strange turn of events I have found myself producing an official CMJ party this year (on October 20th of all nights, at Cakeshop of all places), with the kind help of some friends at Subbacultcha! and Viva Radio. I can hardly believe it myself, it will be a real New Amsterdam meets Olde Amsterdam sort of time.
I thought long and hard (truly) about who I might like to invite to play this, my first corporate event. It occurred to me that (ostensibly) people read the magazine (if people still read magazines) in order to find out about new music. It only made sense that I would ask three bands who not only didn't have albums out, but hadn't played New York City before. Thus I found myself asking Best Coast, Surf City, and Male Bonding to perform, and surprisingly they all said yes.
Subbacultcha! probably had an easier time deciding on their acts, as they are bringing The Moi Non Plus, zZz, and Hospital Bombers over from The Netherlands.
Some of you might have noticed that I have started listing "Pukekos Parties" on the starboard bow. These are my upcoming gigs as a comedian, although I have to warn you that I have suffered for my art and occasionally believe that it is now your turn (should you be in the audience that particular evening). If I were the sort of comedian who told jokes I would say that I will be telling jokes on Tuesday evening; but since I'm not, I won't. I will be speaking humorously, however. My olde friend Dan Selzer will be manning the wheels of steel (whatever that means) in between bands, and then again until the break of dawn, etc.
Yow, yow.
TIMESCHEDULE
07.30 - 08.05 Blondes (USA)
08.25 - 09.00 Hospital Bombers (NL)
09.20 - 09.55 Best Coast (USA)
10.15 - 10.50 The Moi Non Plus (NL)
11.10 - 11.45 Surf City (NZ)
12.05 - 12.40 zZz (NL)
01.00 - 01.35 Male Bonding (UK)
01.35 - 03.00 DJ Dan Selzer
"As time goes on in the cyber-verse, I'm constantly amazed that both coasts, the midwest, the south and everywhere in between seem to have their fair share of 'deep cuts' that are uncovered over the years. But Pennsylvania? Forget it. Most of this stuff has been ignored and/or relegated to the dollar bin. Such a fucking crime. That brings me to Slag. I think I've known Slag guitarist Mike Banfield (later a founding member of Don Caballero) for the better part of 20 years and it wasn't until he contacted me to promote a show for his new band Knot Feeder that it piqued my interest in knowing more about Slag who put out a total of one single on Mike's Broken Giraffe label (whose only other release was the 2nd Don Cab single) and a song on a compilation called Magic Ribbons. Formed in State College, Slag were a precursor for Don Caballero and sound, fittingly, of that pre-1991 hardcore/postpunk aesthetic. Get ready to have all your questions answered."
So Slag, when did the band form? How did you all meet? Who was in the band?
Slag formed sometime between 1987 and 1988. I’m a little hazy on the exact history. When I moved to State College to go to college in 1987, I eventually fell in with the various punk rocker types. As you can imagine, during the 80s, that group of people was somewhat small. Two of those people were George Draguns and Len Jarabeck. George and Len played in a band called Heart of Darkness. When they left the band, I was somehow recruited to play guitar. I think I was on the verge of giving up the guitar before they asked me to play. George was a State College local and he knew another local guy who played drums: Neal Witmer. And, that was the original lineup:
Mike Banfield – Guitar and Vocals
George Draguns – Bass
Len Jarabeck – Guitar
Neal Witmer – Drums
Neal left the band for some reason I can’t remember. We recruited a great young drummer from Pittsburgh named Darren Zentek. We had played some shows with his band in and around Pittsburgh and recognized how good he was. For some crazy reason, he moved to State College to work at Burger King and play in our band. Darren would go on to play in bands such as Donora, T4, Kerosene 454, and Channels. That lineup lasted a while before Darren quit the band. We then asked Neal to come back. Around this time we had been talking to our friend from Pittsburgh, Jon Good, about joining the band to take over vocal duties. We had met Jon at some shows and he had done the artwork for our 7”. As we were talking about the vocals, George left the band.
Conveniently, Jon was a bassist and had been playing with Punching Contest. He too moved to State College to work at a restaurant and play in our band. Hmmm….seems to be a theme here. That lineup played a few shows. Sadly, though, things kind of fizzled out.
How many shows did Slag play? Mostly in State College? Touring? Any notable shows worth mentioning?
We played sporadically both locally and regionally. The two shows that stand out in my mind thought were playing with Government Issue in Morgantown, WV and with Scream in Harrisburg, PA. The Government Issue show was notable both for the size of the crowd and the fact that both J. Robbins and John Stabb bought our demo tape. We also played the Electric Banana in Pittsburgh. I don’t think Manny (Theiner, Pittsburgh promoter/figurehead/massively annoying Jew) or Norm Veenstra (another Pgh promoter who soon went to succeed at the 9:30 Club in DC) would ever give us a show in Pittsburgh. I specifically remember Manny saying to me, “Why should I give your band a show?”
It took me an eternity to find the Slag single which leads me to wonder that there probably weren’t many pressed. Am I correct? Do you have boxes of them at your house?
Where did you find it? [I found it on eBay for quite a bit of change - h2o] We probably only pressed 100. Maybe 200. No boxes left at the house.
How much did the band record? Is there anything else lurking around other than these three tracks?
That was it from that session. The original line-up recorded 9 songs in December of 1988 that were released on a cassette titled I Want Some Life. I haven’t listened to this in well over a decade and I’m not sure that I want to. Lots of screaming vocals from what I remember. I also stole a lot of the song titles from Flannery O’Conner short stories. Ha.
When did you move to Pittsburgh and what was your motivation? Were you from there initially and just went to Penn State?
I grew up in the suburbs of Pittsburgh and lived there for the first 18 years of my life. I moved to State College to attend Penn State. I ended up working there every summer. So, you could say I moved there permanently for 4 years. After graduation in 1991, I moved to San Francisco with the idea of starting a band with my friend Jon Good who had moved there after Slag threw in the towel for good. After working as a bike messenger for the summer, it didn’t seem as though anything was going to happen in the music department. I heard that Darren was moving back to State College to play with Len and George. I immediately called to get the scoop. It turned out they had already found someone for guitar and vocals. That was Travis Etling. That band became T4. I was kind of bummed out and I finally decided to move back to Pittsburgh. Talking to his friend Damon on the phone one day, Jon mentioned that I was moving back to the ‘burgh. Damon told him that I should call when I get back to get together and play. That of course led to Don Caballero.
Officially, I think I moved back to Pittsburgh to get my MLS at Pitt.
Seeing as how the 90’s were wide open by the time Slag broke up, what did everybody in Slag go on to do? Do you keep in touch with them?
As mentioned before, Darren has played in a bunch of bands and I’ve seen him frequently over the years. Darren has lived in the DC area for some time now. Len and George both played bass in Don Caballero. Len went on to play with Karl Hendricks. Len lives in Pittsburgh.
George played bass in Don Cab for a good bit including the tour with Wool and Laughing Hyenas. This was during the formative stages of the Don Cab 2 era. He quit the band and later was the first Storm & Stress bass player. George now lives in Philadelphia. I have no idea what happened to Neal Witmer.
Ladies and gentlemen, for your listening pleasure, Slag.
I Want Some Life (Self)
1. Intro
2. Burned
3. Five Minutes To Eternity
4. Life Is To Live
5. No Windows No Doors
6. Watch It Burn
7. Burned Clean
8. Only Way Out
9. Close Your Eyes
10. Low Visibility
11. Outro
Everything is Nothing b/w Don't Like (Broken Giraffe)
"Take It Out Of Our Deposit was put together so I would have something new to sell on this last tour... 1-5 is 4 track stuff, 6-10 is otherwise unreleased songs from a radio broadcast on KVRX from June 2008, and 11 was recorded for a compilation my friend Charlie does called the New Moon Vol. 2 Compilation. It was CD-Rs with no packaging and sold for donation or given away. Both were released as 'EMHU' but we toured as 'Spiked Punch' and that will be a moniker for future releases. Also we are becoming a reggae band, or at least we will be going through a protracted reggae phase. Fun fact, Mike, of track 3 fame is now in the band, and he's the guy actually teaching us all how to play reggae."
-Ethan
I saw Spiked Punch at Cakeshop recently and they were hilarious. There weren't many people at the show, but it matters little if the room is full as long as the right people are there.
1. The Part I Like
2. Eight Note Run
3. When I was Younger
4. Noise Band
5. The Rain Came Down
6. I Hope You Don’t Think That I’m Upset
7. Out of a Rut
8. Poker Game Song
9. If You’re Actin’ Like a Baby (How’re You Gonna be Her Man?)
10. So Nice
11. When You’re Feeling Lonesome
12. So Real
13. He Said, She Said
14. Emotional Guardian
15. Wore Out Your Welcome
Take It Out Of Our Deposit (Self)
1. Sleep on Top a Rope
2. Christmas Eve
3. Keith Richards Mike In Oregon
4. Its a Funny Thing
5. Let Go By
6. *******
7. I Never Met a Navigator
8. Fortitude
9. Norma Jean
10. Trusty Whiskey's Caramel
11. Bones for Emily
