EVERYTHING WENT PINK - Compilation - Tape - 2000

   "Everything Went Pink" is a tape that was released by Dan B back in 2000 that specifically covered the DIY punk scene in Asheville, NC, which was mostly centered around a giant punk house called the Pink House (located at/near 201 Broadway...it's now either a parking lot or condos.) It was kind of a magical time in the history of that town. A whole bunch of freaks happened to converge on the town all at once, from Minneapolis, New Orleans, California, Montreal and even the suburbs of Buncombe County. Some lived in cold-ass houses in Woodfin. Other lived in makeshift shacks out by the freeway (like everyone in MARGARET MOTHER OF THIEVES). Many others, including myself, lived in the Pink House, right in the middle of all the chaos. The house itself was kind of a freak magnet since it was a giant two-story pink place, the door was almost always unlocked, it housed a teeming library and it welcomed just about anyone who walked through the door. The landlord was a member of CRASH WORSHIP and he could often be found smoking weed by the toxic creek in our back yard. I'm pretty sure that, at one point, 17 people were living in the house.
    There was a time when there was almost nowhere for DIY punk bands to play in town, so a bunch of folks from the house decided to clear out piles of the landlord's bikes and crap in the basement to make their own show space. There was a big problem though. Raw sewage and toxic creek water leaked straight into the basement, right into the area where bands would play. No problem...a group of punks (namely Joseph, Big Mike and Ed....possibly Luke too) built a retaining wall / ditch all the way through the basement and bored a hole though the back wall so that water could drain out though ANOTHER drainage ditch into the toxic creek! Thus, the punk club, Oh My! was born. Every time a band played there, the audience ran the risk of falling into the shitty toxic trough and the band ran the risk of getting a huge electrical shock! Still, it was the best place for shows and it's where I saw many life-changing events.

  Most of the songs on this tape were recorded live on a handheld tape recorder at Oh My! Others were recorded at clubs in town, other houses and shacks. Most of the sound quality could be described as "assy", but I respect that the bands worked with what they had, which was almost nothing. Lots of bands on this tape don't have any other recordings. Many do. You can try and differentiate that distinction for yourself. Bands include WAR TORN BABIES, CRAP FACTORY, ASTRID OTO, RAT ATTACK, CHRIST FILTHY DOGS (which I've been wanting to re-use as a band name for years), DEAD THINGS, TRASH NIGHT and more. There's 43 songs in all. Enjoy or don't.

DOWNLOAD

Did I upload this just to have digital copies of SLATTER HAGS and the final song on the tape? Possibly, but don't tell anybody. 

Tape hiss abounds. Terrible sound quality. Totally beautiful. 

REMOTE OUTPOSTS WEIRDO MIX VOL 2 - Tape - 2013

   This is the second in a collection of songs and random bullshit that doesn't really fit elsewhere. I make no excuses or apologies for sound fidelity. You can find the first installment of this collection right here..
    The intro is the beginning of one of the worst songs of all time. Unfortunately, it got stuck in the heads of Cinque and I when we were working on a farm, picking basil for a few weeks. We would scream out the lyrics to each other across the field at 7 am. One day, I went into town and was looking at the 45 at the record store when the clerk said, "Oh God, please take that record! Just get it out of the store."
  The second is a lost RICE HARVESTER song that never made it onto any releases or into a recording studio. By this time, I had moved from Huntsville back to Birmingham, AL, but was still driving back to Huntsville (around a 3 hour drive, round trip) once a week to practice. I think we intended for this song to be on a compilation of Alabama bands that never got off the ground. It's about a homeless man in Huntsville named Gene who, rather than simply sleeping under overpasses, would build a little shack / house under the bridge in plain view of everyone. I immediately felt weird about writing this song because after talking to him a few times and being only 20 years old, I really had no grasp of the complexities of homelessness and mental illness. It's written from a place of privilege that just embarrasses me now. Luckily, the recording quality is abysmal.
   It's followed up by one of my favorite EFS songs. They were the house band at a punk house that was allegedly above the Black & White Liquors by Ashby BART in the East Bay way back in the dark ages. Following that is a band containing members who have won Grammys and shit. I'm not saying their name because I want to avoid the fiasco of being linked to slobbering fan site messageboards (again). If you listen to melodic punk, you will probably recognize this song, but maybe not this version. Sound quality is total trash. CBDS is after them with a different mix of one of their great songs. Sound quality has deteriorated so badly that you will wonder if there has been a turd stuffed into the cassette.
    Quality takes a step up for the intro to the long lost Alabama rock band, BUCKET FULL OF HERESY. The intro is the best part of their tape. The rest is an endurance test of having to listen to teenagers try to write a song while the tape is rolling. I know that this hasn't stopped me in the past, but I'll spare you the gory details this time. SMEGMAGICIANS are next. They've been a band since 1993, but only played one show in 1994. They're mysterious and choose to stay that way. This song was recorded in 1999.
   Next up is a recording from a FORCED VENGEANCE show that took place on my birthday back in 2000 (?). Details are hazy, but I do know that Harry (guitarist) and I played this show nearly blacked out drunk. This show was also when the proverbial line in the sand was drawn between the towns of Bloomington and Chattanooga because a bunch of Bloomington residents came down to this show and decided that we were some of the worst people to ever exist because my friend Piper (who lived in Bloomington most of the time, mind you) decided to construct a 3 foot long, paper mache cock to hang from the ceiling. I'm sure I'm missing some details here, but instead of talking to us and figuring out that we were not the worst people ever, a lot of folks just decided to go with that story....some of the debris of this show still lingers around to this day (obviously). ANYWAY, This recording comes from the beginning of the set when Harry needed to borrow an amp because his was crapping out. Rather than just wait around for this to happen, Eric (other guitar) and I (drums) started fucking around. Harry, who is usually fairly quiet and shy, took this opportunity to bust out a ridiculous, entirely ad-libbed 80's style rap. When Chrissie (bass) joins in, the whole thing gels together in this way that none of us expected, I'm pretty sure we were all laughing so hard that we cried. I know that I did when re-listening to it. I vaguely remember the audience laughing and dancing.
   Now, we do a 180 and switch gears entirely. DOOMSDAY CAULDRON is the best thing on here. I was never a huge follower of their music, but got a few things passed on to me through mix tapes that blew my mind in different ways. Coming from the background that I do, their songs initially sounded overbearing and unnecessarily serious to me, but as they grew on me, I knew that they meant every word with every fiber of their being. Their song "Song for Sera" is one of my favorites to listen to in the middle of the night on long drives in the middle of nowhere. Coupled with their song "Darkness Is Falling" and THE BODY's "Just Wretched", you can almost perfectly picture the world in the moments just before it explodes and destroys every last bit of life on this planet.
   To close out the tape, I switched gears again and went back to ridiculous. If you grew up in the 80's, you may remember those weird answering machine greeting tape commercials....They advertised tapes that you could buy for your answering machine that sang ultra corny greetings to the tune of Beethoven's Fifth and bad 50's rock. Here's a whole tape of them (2 and a half whole minutes) so that you can confuse people who call your cell now...if anyone ever calls you anymore.

DOWNLOAD

THE NEW FLESH - Demo - Tape - 2012

   The problem I usually have with punk bands who are inspired by goth, coldwave, dark shit or whatever you want to call it is that most of the time, they lose their urgency and spark. To me, it just ends up sounding like bad new wave from 1986, which (trust me) was terrible the first time around. Luckily, I don't have this problem with THE NEW FLESH. While their jams may make you want to sulk around your room and dance alone while feeling like shit, they also sound right at home blasting out of a boombox while you sit by some water drinking with your friends. It still sounds urgent, punk, sinister and desperate. This is exactly what I want in music. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to cut this short so I can bike across town to catch them playing a house show in SF.

DOWNLOAD

Be sure to catch them on their east and west coast tours that are coming up in the next couple of months. You should probably also buy their new self-released LP, "Reality" while you're at it. You can find more info on their blog and their bandcamp page. 

Features ex-members of VAASKA, DESKONOCIDOS and NEON PISS. I guess now is a good of a time as any to tell you NEON PISS broke up. More info here.

RUDIMENTARY PENI - "Pope Adrian 37th Psychristiatric" - CD - 1995

   I know, I know...I usually talk about totally random tapes and CD-R's that have been stuffed in boxes for eons, but I couldn't resist posting this after borrowing it from my roommate Matt and listening to the whole thing in my room last night. To be fair, this was also stuffed in a box under some shit in Matt's room. I also know that I constantly refer to bands as "one of my favorite bands of all time". I'm telling the truth. I have about 100 favorite bands of all time, but then there's the top ten favorite bands of all time....and RUDIMENTARY PENI is most definitely in the top ten.
   I first heard of RUDIMENTARY PENI in 1995 (the year this album came out) in the van on one of the first real punk tours I ever went on. My bandmate Joey put on "Cacophony" on a long drive and it completely blew my little teenage punk mind forever. I never realized punk could be so weird, fucked up, inspired, damaged, dark, creepy and catchy all at the same time. When we got home from that tour, I started rounding up all of their vinyl that I could find and began to notice all of the fetus tattoos that adorned many of my friends. I would lay on my floor in my tiny apartment alone listening to their records for endless hours, obsessing over Nick Blinko's insanely detailed, hand-drawn record covers. I would notice something new every time I looked at it. I still do.

   One day, when I was over at my friend Harry's house, he asked if I had ever heard the album "Pope Adrian 37th Psychristiatric". I hadn't and he put it on. The first thing I noticed was the endless loop of a voice saying "Popus Adrianus" that runs throughout the entire album....even while the songs are playing. The songs are way more subdued than their earlier efforts, but perhaps more deranged in many ways. Some songs seem like they just started off with one line and never got any further, so Nick Blinko just repeats them over and over for waaayyy too long. Part of the reason for the album being so incredibly strange is that Blinko wrote the majority of it while being detained in a psychiatric hospital while having delusions that he was "Pope Adrian 37th".  Arguably, it is their weirdest album ever and, to many people, their worst. I actually like it a lot, although "Cacophony" and their first 7" are still my favorites. If you've never heard this band before, I would suggest to start off with almost anything else by them, but if you're feeling adventurous, go for it.

DOWNLOAD

Fun Facts:

   1. The band started out in the anarcho-punk scene of the early 80's and never really broke up. The last thing they put out was a one song CD single called "The Chances" in 2009, which is only available with Blinko's last book, The Haunted Head. 

  2. My old band with Harry became so enamored by this CD that I recorded a passage from Blinko's book The Primal Screamer while the other two in the band chanted "Popus Adrianus" in the background. We ran the whole thing backwards and put it on the end of our only 7", released in 1997.

SICARII - Unreleased Stuff - 2005

   No art. No fanfare. Today's entry is submitted and written by my good friend, Alex Turner....

   SICARII was a punk / anarchist band in Olympia, WA in the early 2000's. This is a recording they did after they all ended up in Asheville, NC in the mid-2000's. It was never released. Jay-Ro recorded it and I think somebody moved away before they got around to finishing the mix of everything. They are still some of my best friends; people I fly around the country to visit. This band reminds me of the positive aspects of the fucked up punk houses we all lived in. As they say, "It was the best of times / It was the worst of times." So much love. So much coffee. So many bagels and soy dogs. Too much beer. "Accident Prone" on repeat, a rat population that drove us to drink more, OP IVY dance parties, time spent around the wood stove...you get the idea. Regardless, this recording was made after all that. They reformed for a year or so in Asheville. I was never in town to see them as a North Carolina band, but this recording shouldn't be lost. The LP that came out when they were an Olympia band is good and if you're paying attention, you can still find one (There is one new [???] copy at Thrillhouse for $6.)

Download SICARII
Updated Feb 2014

   Matt now lives in Iowa City, going to graduate school. Tammy lives in Seattle, spending time with her nieces, climbing mountains, and spends as much time in nature as we all really should. Eli lives in Northhampton and takes care of his cute-as-fuck kid, Asa. Parker is in a black metal band who's name escapes me.

PASCAL'S LONG LOST MIX TAPE - 2007

   In my last year of living in Bloomington, IN, I made a whole lot of mix tapes for friends, both locally and far away. I would sit in front of the stereo for hours, laboring over 90 minutes of the perfect mix of punk and weirdness. Then, I would hand deliver it to someone's door or drop in the mail at the post office just 5 short blocks away. It took moving across the country to California to realize that I was utterly and morbidly depressed. I don't think that making mix tapes is a sign of depression (far from it), but I do think something is amiss when one is putting all of their free time into tape making or drinking endless pints of whiskey while flipping the same DEAD MOON record over and over.
   I think there is a certain beautiful power in mix tapes that can not be replicated by a mix CD or a play list. Many, many people have explained this in the past, so I won't bore you with the details, but there is something to be said for having to listen to each song in real time as you make the tape.
   Most of the tapes I made for folks eventually reached them...except for this one. I made this fairly eclectic tape for my friend Pascal in Paris and then never, ever mailed it to him. I took it to work and listened to it a lot. I carried it around in my bag with intentions of dropping it in the mail for him. I even flew to Europe, went to Paris and hung out with Pascal but forgot to take the tape with me. So, Pascal if you're reading this, I apologize. If you send me your current address, I'll mail you this tape. I mean it this time.
   In the meantime, I think this is a great tape with styles flying all over the map. Seriously. Have you ever gotten a mix tape that segues from UKE OF SPACES CORNERS to LIMPWRIST? KATRA TURANA to TULSA? OI POLLOI to JOHN DENVER to OMAR SOULEYMAN to ARTIMUS PYLE? BUNKER HILL to MEN'S RECOVERY PROJECT? It makes sense. I like this tape a lot. Maybe you will too.

Download Side A

Download Side B

All music on here is vinyl to tape. No digital.

NO SIR I WON'T - Demo - Tape - 2011

   So, I just got back from tour a couple of days ago and I believe it was one of the best I have ever been on. I have been fortunate enough to play music with some of the finest humans I've ever encountered throughout the years and the three other men that I share a band with now are no exception. In the fine tradition of bad things happening to good people, our bass player Bryan got horrendously nauseous immediately following our set at the Not Dead Yet fest in Toronto and he retreated to our van to hopefully ward off the impending rivers of puke that would soon be flowing from his (usually) impenetrable guts (seriously. I've seen the man eat blood sausage, haggis, beef jerky and obnoxiously phallic bratwursts without batting an eye or vomiting a turd). He fought it all back until 4 am, when we were all packed in the van and headed towards the house to sleep. Bryan calmly turned to me and said "Hand me that bag." I scrambled around in the dark and came up with a stuff sack for a sleeping bag. In mere seconds, Bryan was vomiting seemingly everything he'd ever eaten into that tiny bag while my shoulder rubbed against his and the van ambled along through a sleepy Toronto morning. This set the standard for the next few days, as this fucked up bug/virus worked it's way through each member of the band except for me (thankfully). A couple of days later, we were back in the U.S. and headed towards our next show in Portland, Maine. Looking at the map prior to our tour, I realized that during this drive, we would be headed straight through Littleton, NH which is the final resting place of that dumb scumfuck, GG Allin. I suggested that we stop to check it out and was met with absolutely no resistance from my bandmates. (A little backstory: GG died in 1993 and admirers have been flocking to his grave ever since to pay their respects by pissing, vomiting and shitting all over it. It took nearly 16 years for the priest who ran the cemetery to finally get sick of cleaning up after scumfuck oogles and he removed the gravestone to deter further "defacement". His grave is now unmarked and unadorned.) Upon pulling into the cemetery, it took us no less than 3 minutes to find his grave and it took me no less than 45 seconds to step on a dried up turd next to his grave. Fucking beautiful.

   Soon enough, we were back on the road and soon enough, the nausea started to settle in on Kyle. We tried to determine if it was due to Bryan's germs, expired food or the curse of GG's grave. We never knew for sure, but you can be certain that by the time we hit the streets of Portland, so were the entire contents of Kyle's stomach. Like the champ that he is, Kyle still played the show that night. During our first song, I thought, "Man, Kyle is still playing his guitar lead perfectly even though he feels so shitty." At that moment, I looked over at him and he was puking into a bucket while playing the lead note-for-note. Fuck you, GG!
    After our haggard and painful (for Kyle and any queasy members of our audience) set, the perfectly healthy and energetic NO SIR I WON'T took the basement by storm. With an ex- (and current)member list that includes SURRENDER, LIBYANS, WITCHES WITH DICKS, SHITHEAD, BRAIN KILLER and FOREIGN OBJECTS, I have to admit that I had high hopes. I also have to admit that I was not disappointed for one second. While the trajectory and style of the band are something that doesn't often prick up my ears in 2012(UK peace-punk in the vein of FLUX OF PINK INDIANS and CRASS), NO SIR I WON'T breathe life and excitement into a genre that is often plagued by historical reenactments. Watching their singer Dan perform makes me wish that all frontpersons could be more direct and charismatic. Meanwhile, the rest of the band pounds away relentlessly in a way that will reaffirm your faith in punk if it was lacking at all. Even though I was fighting off my own pangs of nausea, I watched every second of their set, making sure a bucket was in reach just in case the plague caught up with me. A dizzying 25 minutes later, I made my way out of the basement into the cool New England air and bought everything the band had for sale. You should do the same.
   The next day, tour went on. Less than 2 hours into our drive, I was grossing out a cop on the side of the I-95 while Barker was puking into the weeds, but that's a story for another day.

Download NO SIR I WON'T

The band just put out a great two song 7" that is available from Destroy Me. You should get it.

For the record, I think GG Allin was an interesting and entertaining figure in American punk, but ultimately nothing past his tenure in THE JABBERS ever caused more than a brief chuckle from me. It's all shit.

WAR TORN BABIES - Rough Mix Demo - Tape - 1999

   I moved to Asheville, NC for a short time back in 1999 and lived in a huge, dilapidated, musty, drafty, pink punk house on the edge of downtown. There was a library on the main floor, a screen printing set-up, couches for drunk crusties to sleep on, a couple of shacks in the backyard, 15 roommates, a show space in the basement and the landlord was one of the guys from CRASH WORSHIP. I was kind of obsessed with an old Asheville band called EXCESSIVE DEFIANCE and I usually listened to them every day when I woke up. Someone told me that I should listen to WAR TORN BABIES, which carried on the legacy of E.D.'s simple, noisy barrage of crust. I asked a couple of friends about them and soon found out that two of my roommates were in that band. Soon enough, they were playing a show in the basement.

   They started up with a distorted, fucked up bass tone and crashed haphazardly into their first song. I didn't get it. Everyone was dancing and singing along, but I felt out of place on the sidelines. Their drummer was possibly older than me, but played the same way that I did when I was 13. Each of their songs seemed to fall apart, but no one cared. Everyone just danced harder and sang louder. Then, it hit me. I began their set thinking that that they had no idea what they were doing, but then I realized that they knew exactly what they were doing. All of their songs were primal, plodding, visceral, simple and working towards an easily memorable chorus that you could sing along with the first time that you heard it. It dawned on me that this band was genius and by the end of their set, I was up front, fists in the air, singing along to "Dancing On The Ruins Of Multinational Corporations!!!"
   As far as I know, WAR TORN BABIES never released anything...I don't even think they ever got around to releasing this tape, but I could be wrong since I moved away from Asheville and lost touch. All I know is that they (probably) recorded this tape at UNCA in Asheville and then their guitarist, Ed left it in my room. Did it ever get mixed, mastered and released? Until we find out, here is this rough mix of their stuff at it's most primal and raw.

Both photos by Chrissie at the Pink House in Asheville.

Download WAR TORN BABIES

    Some might think that a band might not want their unmixed recording out there for people to consume, but I asked their singer Mikki if it was okay and she said "DO IT!!" Speaking of Mikki, she now runs a bar called the Get Down, that is  the best place to play shows in Asheville these days. They are going through some rough financial times at the moment, so if you want to donate money to them, it would be very appreciated. It's run by some great people, they have an awesome sound system and their politics are rock solid. You can find more info about them here or you can make a donation straight to them on their Paypal page.

HARUM SCARUM - Demo - Tape - 1999

   HARUM SCARUM were an anarcho-punk/hardcore band from Portland, OR who were tough as shit and super fuckin' punk. They recorded this demo in their basement in 1999 and many of these songs appeared a year later on their LP "Mental Health". These versions are rougher around the edges and a little less confident, but still brilliant and fierce. Not only was this band all female (keeping with this week's theme), but they were also openly queer, supporters of Aileen Wuornos, hardcore feminists and anti-capitalists. After putting out this tape, they went on to put out 3 LP's,  a couple of 7"s and a live tape (coming here one day soon) before breaking up and making this world a little harder to live in.

Download HAM-SCAM
Re-uploaded Jan 2016

ARCTIC FLOWERS - Demo - Tape - 2009

   I knew ARCTIC FLOWERS would rule before I ever heard them because my friend (Spiky) Mikey (Napkin) played drums for them and he doesn't fuck around when it comes to playing music (unless, of course, he is fucking around). It seemed like most other people at the time were really excited that a guy from SIGNAL LOST was in the band (full disclosure: I didn't hear SIGNAL LOST until this year).
   ARCTIC FLOWERS started practicing sometime in 2009 without a singer, writing songs and trying to figure out who could front their band. I think I remember them telling me that they asked Alex to sing for their band after seeing her front an AVENGERS cover band at a house show in Portland. They clicked and threw out this demo pretty soon afterwards. This demo is strong, well-produced (the joys of having your own studio) and sounds like a band that has already been playing together for years. Their take on UK anarcho-punk sounds fresh and precise. "Technicolor Haze" sounds bleak and goth in a way that makes me want to pull out my nonexistent BAUHAUS and JOY DIVISION records. These four songs aren't much different from the recordings that later appeared on their self-released 7" and their LP, but I find myself coming back to listen to this demo over and over. Highly recommended!

Download AF
Re-uploaded 2013