Sometimes, I put on tapes like this, thinking "I'm not sure if I'm really into this" and then find later that I just listened to it six times in a row. I mean, that's exactly what happened. It's a great tape. What do I know about it? Almost nothing. I think I saw C SECTION 8 perform once in a crumbling house on Rampart Street in a pre-Katrina New Orleans, but I could be wrong. It also could have been HARRY FROM HAWAII...or DOGERELLA DECIDED UPON...or HUMAN HAIR HAT. No one ever really talked about the names of the bands when I went to those shows, but it was always weirdly fucking mind-blowing. Like the time that a member of one of those bands was playing a table full of pedals and was dressed up in a homemade metal mask. The mask was attached to contact mics and he was hitting it with drumsticks while manipulating the sound into a cacophonous nightmare. He was also making small yelps, which I thought was part of the performance, but I found out later that he hadn't shaved down the metal inside so every time he hit the mask, it was cutting into his face and making him bleed! But was that C SECTION 8?? I don't know!! I don't think so.
As far as ELECTRIC NIGHTS, I have even less information, meaning I have NO information. I did some searching, both online and off, and came up empty handed/headed. There's no trace of this release on the label's old paper order forms/catalogs and nothing online that I can find. Oh well. It's not important.
The important part is that both sides of this is filled with (I'm assuming) blips and drones from busted ass analog and barely digital machines. Tape manipulations and wonky beats will lull you into a different head space. I don't know. I just like it. I've always liked this shit. Don't worry. I'll post more punk tapes soon, but you'll come back to this later and love it because all the hardcore kids will be playing noise by the end of 2016 anyway. Mark my words.
Today's entry is written by my good friend, E.R. Conner.
I've seen Carlos (of RUSSIAN TSARLAG) play a bunch in other bands and I've even seen Russian Tsarlag play too. Once, he and my friend Dorey played a show where they recited this story/play thing and then passed out soup to everyone. The soup was cold and I was very afraid to eat it. In the end I ate the soup and it was pretty alright.
Carlos does a thing where he seems really disconnected when he performs...like maybe he's a quiet guy already. I mean, once I saw him pretty much naked fighting on some train tracks in an alley and that was music too. I think that time there was also some kinda food but instead of getting passed around to eat, it was getting thrown/rolled around in??? Or maybe it was shaving cream? My mind does not remember these kinds of details. So maybe it's just different every time.
I have some other RUSIAN TSARLAG recordings. They sound different from this.
This tape about The Gas Station sounds like shoegaze music but maybe a little more fucked up. I mean, on purpose the way that people do when they make art things or music things. Not like it was an accident which is what sometimes people mean when they say "fucked up". I'm trying to say, I think this dissonance you hear in the recording or this kind of collapsing of sound, I think this guy thinks that sounds cool. He's right!
My favorite song on this tape is called "ON THE STREET". I like it because I like sentimental songs. Like, it seems cool to have an interaction with someone where you want to write a song about how you "wanna see them sometimes on the street". But maybe that's all you wanna do! Just see them around? I like that. Even though in real life my biggest pain is running into people I know on the street because maybe I was just having a conversation with myself inside my head and other people are distracting. Most of the other words are hard to make out, so it could be like that Sting song everyone thinks is like *really sweet* and *super cute* but really it's about a stalker and then it got REALLY awkward when they turned it into a song about BIGGIE'S GHOST WATCHING EVERYTHING YOU DO.
I wouldn't say that this is darker than other RUSSIAN TSARLAG tapes or more in line with conventional pop song writing but there is a way that it's that stuff in a different way than older tapes. Like maybe this guy found a COCTEAU TWINS tape or broke his little heart up or something. Or maybe he found out about some other more delicate part of life and that made shit more mysterious. I don't know what happened to this guy. His music sounds different now. You could call this maturing. Ok, let's call it maturing. He's mature now.
To start off this entry, I would like to point out that this is the 420th post on the blog and that ties into the reasoning for posting this today. I don't care about weed, but a lot of people do, so this is for them...I guess. Are potheads into this kind of shit? I don't give a fuck.
What we have here is a two song cassingle of some totally ridiculous shit, which is the perfect kind of music to put on such a format. In what could possibly be one of the more bizarre DIY collaborations in recent years, members of YOUR HEART BREAKS, TEAM GINA, SUNN O))), EARTH, LAKE and KARL BLAU team up to bring you their own special versions of SNOOP DOGG's "Sensual Seduction" and NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK's "The Right Stuff". I mean, what more can I tell you? Happy 420th post!
What's possibly even more ridiculous is that this tape was pressed onto a 7" record with spray painted (??) covers. I have one. If you want your own, click over to Off Tempo to order one.
I decided to take a break from the barrage of top ten lists today and just share a completely badass tape with you. If you're even a casual reader of this blog, my thoughts on NO STATIK are probably no secret to you. In short, I think they are one of the best contemporary hardcore bands that you could possibly have the pleasure of experiencing. I'm aware than many readers don't visit this corner of the internet to get their hardcore fix, but please do yourself a favor today and push the download button at the bottom.
This tape is the band's 2012 LP "Everywhere You Aren't Looking" remixed and completely fucked with by the band and their engineer, Greg Wilkinson. It starts off innocently enough with the band ripping through their song "Regrettably" , but you quickly know something is different as the guitars start to change tone or just drop out of the mix altogether. From there on out, it just gets weirder and more fucked up to the point where some of the songs don't even resemble their former selves. They incorporate elements of techno, noise and loop effects to tear their songs apart and put them back together anew. I'm still on the fence, but this might be my favorite NO STATIK release to date.
The download doesn't split up the songs at all because, as you'll see, it's pointless to try. Track one is side A. Side B of the tape is 20 minutes of mostly blank space with a hidden track placed ten minutes in. I was confused if I should leave it as is or edit it down. Luckily for you, I decided to crop it down so that track 2 is just the nutso song featuring mouth drums on side B...no blank space.
Is this tape still available? Fuck if I know. Iron Lung Records had some for about 5-6 seconds, but they're gone now. Go ahead and write to the band. If you ask nicely and send them some cash, they might be able to help you out.
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.
Like many bands on this blog, I don't know where to start with THE GOOD GOOD. I think I first heard them when I was sitting around all day in my lonely bedroom in Mississippi, trying to find new music through my roommate's record collections. I knew that my band would be playing with them soon, so I figured I would check them out. I liked it but I wasn't sold. We played with them a few days later. The second that their singer Natalja put down her guitar and played an entire song with just a megaphone, I was in. These were my people. (That song was "Hello Friends", included in this download).
I was also drawn to the rock solid bass playing and the wild, completely unpredictable-yet-still-somehow-solid drumming that sometimes drove the songs into dancey rhythms and sometimes drove it into dark dirges. I don't know how to explain this band and that doesn't even matter....I just know that I loved them when they were around and I miss them so fucking much now that they're gone.
This four song CD_R gives small hints of what was to follow on their later full length LP. If you don't own their full-length LP, which contains insanely awesome art and even better music, then I feel bad for you....but you can order one here, maybe. If you just want to download it, I guess you can go here.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: NO STATIK is my favorite current live band in the Bay Area. There is a palpable energy in the air every time I've seen them that is rarely matched by other bands. Every time I've seen NO STATIK, it's been better than the last time I saw them. Their singer, Ruby is usually stalking the stage before the drums are set up. When the band starts, they don't just ease into it; they explode. They're usually feeling it harder than anyone else in the room and going more nuts than their past experiences should allow (meaning the members have played shows with broken ribs, a broken foot and post-knee surgeries.) I'm not the only person who has stood at the side of the stage, cringing and waiting for the moment one of us has to call the paramedics....again.
Besides their live sets, I am also a huge fan of everything the band has recorded so far. Not only are they quite possibly a perfect hardcore band, but I love that they consistently take pains to offer something more than a recreation of their live songs and energy throughout their recorded output. Most of their records have included ambient soundscapes, noisy remixes and fucked up experimentation, which I have listened to just as much as their "normal" songs. On this tape, two of their songs, "Unclarified" and "We All Die in the End" are remixed by IVENS and DJ EONS ONE respectively. The results are both entirely different from one another and also exciting additions to the NO STATIK collection. I've probably listened to this 10 times today already. It almost made living in this fucked up world more bearable.
As I'm sure I've said before, IMPRACTICAL COCKPIT is one of my favorite bands. Years back, they were getting ready to go on a tour and their drummer, Don broke his leg. Rather than call the whole thing off, Don learned how to use a combination of percussion and electronics, which ultimately sent the band to a new plateau of weirdness. That trajectory took them into a later tour where they would play sprawling hour long sets, employing the use of hand made horns, staticky radios, tape loops, half-broken amps and miscellaneous debris. The results could be hypnotic, challenging, abrasive and cleansing.
I got a ride down to a show of theirs in Kentucky during this time and was dropped off at the bar hours before they even arrived. At the time of the show (8 hours later), they were the only musical act scheduled to play. They took their time setting up and the clientele of the bar eyed them warily. As they hit their first notes of the night, a huge Midwestern storm started brewing in the neighborhood. The doors to the bar were wide open and sheets of rain started pouring in. I looked at the middle-aged, burly, biker-style bartenders standing there...arms crossed, not batting an eye or making a move to close the doors. About five minutes into IPCP's set, every paying customer in the bar got up and left, deciding to brave the potentially tornado-inducing storm rather than listen to this band. I looked around. I was left alone with the band, the guy who set up the show, my friend Christina (who lived there and actually came to see the band), Stella (IPCP's roadie, who was laughing at the predicament) and the still-stoic and immobile bartenders. The band did not bat an eye and played their full set. It was great and the insane storm added an extra element of dreaminess to the whole thing.
At the conclusion of their set, there was an awkward silence after our smattering of applause died down. We were then left with these burly dudes at the bar after driving out their entire clientele. I looked over after a heavy silence and one of 'em said "So, do ya'll like SUN RA and BEEFHEART or something?" Tension broken. The guys loved it and were happy to talk to some other weirdos. Drinks were on the house. The other act was the promoter, Kris, doing a "DJ set", which meant that he would put a record on and let the entire thing play. Then, he would flip it and listen to the other side. (I just now realized that I have told this entire story before in an earlier post. Oops. I am now senile).
On that tour, IPCP had a mailing list and they said that if you signed it, they would send you free stuff. A lot of bands used to say that, but I never got any free stuff from them. At the conclusion of their tour, the band actually did send this tape out to people who signed the list or set up shows for them. It's called "Thanks" and it compiles live sets, field recordings, jams, talks about botox and random sounds. Listening to this reminds of that night and makes me miss their challenging sounds. I think the thing I love most about the band is that they were somehow always a year ahead of me. What that means is that every time a new LP came out (and they have a lot), I would listen to it and think it was pretty good. I wouldn't quite get it and it wouldn't really hit me, but something let me know that I had to hang onto it. Within a year, that record would become indispensable to me. The same thing happened with this tape. It's pretty out there and it's also really, really good.
In 2006, I found myself in a junk shop called Happy Birthday Mike Leslie in Worcester, MA, which was run by my friend, Jacob. As I perused the racks of army men, bad cassettes, broken stuff, homemade stuffed animals, Chuck Norris comics and re-purposed M.U.S.C.L.E. men, I came across this CD. Upon seeing me looking at this, Jacob yelled "Oh, you have to buy that!! It will change your life!" and then I think he gave it to me. Did it change my life? Well, yes, but just about everything in the world changes your life in little ways.
From the description inside the CD, this is....well, just read below. I don't think I can explain it any better than Mike Taylor did here:
After I left the junk shop, I was thrust back into the reality of the total summer bummer, 3 month punk tour that I was on. We were headed to play a lackluster, last minute show at a VFW hall in Hartford, CT while all of my Worcester friends were driving an hour south to go see LIMP WRIST. I put on this CD as soon as I got in the van and it lasted three whole songs before my band mate ejected it, dismissing it as some "weird Providence crap that feels like a joke at my expense." This is weird as fuck and maybe not meant to be listened to all in one sitting, but here it is....
Features members of THE TERRIBLES, COUGHS, TEENAGE WAISTBAND, YONI GORDON AND THE GOODS, PASSIVE AGGRESSOR, REACTIONARY 3 and more.
I thought things were getting a little normal around here, so here ya go. My favorite song topics are "My Favorite Colonel", "????", "Things I Do Not Like To Eat" and "The Next Level"
Oh yeah, there's no real track listing because as the insert states "Just relax and don't get hung up on following it, okay?"
Before we get into the music part, I just wanted to update you all on the Mediafire business (see here for reference). The account is still locked and my emails to customer service were fruitless. My final email mirrored the frustration I was feeling from dealing with them and I simply asked "Can you prove that you work for Mediafire? Can you prove that your names are real? Can you prove that the Earth is indeed round?" Whatever. Oddly, they never wrote back. While it is a bummer that a majority of the links on this site are dead, I am moving forward because That Is What I Do. I am re-upping some old ones and will continue to do so from time to time. Feel free to tell me what you want re-uploaded. For now, feel free to continue downloading CLEANSING WAVE, RYMODEE, HICKEY, FLEABAG, This Alabama punk comp, REMAIN INDOORS, FROZEN TEENS, TOMMY LASORDA and RICE HARVESTER. As I stated way back in the beginning, none of this stuff is copyrighted and if you don't feel comfortable having your music shared on this site, just let me know and I will take it down, no questions asked. There is no need to involve outside sources. We can exist without the Man. Onto the music....
You may know Scott from his manic drumming in THE BANANAS or, more recently, his smooth guitar stylings in THE BRIGHT IDEAS. During the 90's, he ran a great record label called Secret Center, who put out the first BANANAS singles as well as all manner of nerdy, under-appreciated jangly punk bands from the Sacramento area. In the 90's and early 00's, he did an offshoot of the label that specifically specialized in one-off cassingles (for those of you who did not grow up in the 90's, that's a really short cassette with only 2 songs on it) comprised of bands that were usually around long enough to record their 2 songs. The cassettes could be bought through the mail for a buck or two. This download is a collection of all the songs as well as a few unreleased "gems". All bands are from Sacramento except for (US SOUTHERNERS TAKE NOTE) "Gary League". Gary is actually none other than Peter Stubb, the North Georgia wildman who has been self-releasing his own tapes consistently since the late 80's (I think the League recordings remain unreleased by this Sac label, but remained close to their hearts). Here is Scott to tell you everything you never wanted to know about this label and these bands....
I generally consider the cassingle label to be the best idea I've ever had. The inspiration hit me some time in 1996 a few days before the BANANAS headed to Cupertino to play a show. After the show, I mentioned it to Gavin and Hutch - two Cupertino guys I'd become friends with through playing shows and doing Secret Center Records. Hutch was in a rad band called BUNCHA LOSERS, whose tape I distro-ed (now he's in THE THERMALS) and Gavin was in THE NARDS, who were one of my favorite bands to play with. He was also just one of the nicest guys ever. He played in a great band called THE FEVERS later on and is currently in an AWESOME band called THE RANTOULS, who play way too infrequently. Anyway, I told them about the label idea at the show and they were like "we like have the perfect thing for you!", which ended up being THE CARNIES cassingle (which sadly other than one song, is lost at the moment.) A few days later, THE CARNIES master tape and artwork showed up in my mailbox, so I figured "Cassingle and Lovin' It!" had been officially born. I couldn't even believe how perfect THE CARNIES stuff was - they had just done it one bored weekend but it was the ideal cassingle music. To me, it seemed like a sign that I had to do the label.
The first one we did was at U Street (aka The Gentlemen's Club and basically cassingle headquarters) was THE ICE BUCKET HEADS, which is me, Tristan, Davey and Jay. We all lived there and were sitting around talking about doing a cassingle & there was this styrofoam ice bucket that had been lying around in the front room & we were sort of discussing how rad it was that a cassingle could just be any stupid idea that you could possibly think of. I think originally we were going to make a band called THE QUESADILLA MAKERS (I believe Jay was making a quesadilla at the time) & then somebody put the ice bucket on their head, so we did that instead. It's amazing how freeing it is to write songs for a fake band. I sat down and wrote "Everybody Loves The IBH" the next morning in like 10 minutes and Davey wrote "Stay Cool" which came out pretty bad because he's the worst at articulating how he thinks something should sound. But it was a great start.
"Dude With The Shirt With The Dude On It" was an inside joke from BANANAS / FOUR EYES tour where some guy walked in to the house we were staying at in Chattanooga at like 3am looking for someone (the guy was wasted) and he just kept saying "I'm...looking for the dude...with the shirt....with the dude on it!!" So, we sort of wrote that one in the van & recorded it when we got back home. (Ed. note: this song blows my mind) That was the funnest one because we had a party to provide the backing vocals & party sounds. This one is Jay, Joel, Mike and me.
SACTO APES is these two Japanese kids - Kei and Naomi - that were visiting California. They had mail-ordered stuff from me a few times. My friend, Dave Smith, who lived in San Francisco, met them. When he was visiting Sac that weekend, he said "I met these two Japanese kids who knew what Secret Center was. They seemed bored in SF." So, we decided to go kidnap them and bring them to Sac. Banana Mike was moving out of his house that day so he had an empty house that we could throw a show in for those kids. LIL BUNNIES, BANANAS and ICE BUCKET HEADS played (the only cassingle band to play a show. We did the cassingle and a cover of "Never Understand") & these kids were completely sold on Sac. They stayed for a few days at U Street. One day, I came home and they had written a cassingle about liking Sacramento. Their lyrics are the sweetest. They're printed on the cassingle cover (Ed. note: included in download). Tristan plays drums and several drunk people provide the chorus singing.
THE ROMS was the most grueling tape ever. After it was done, I realized that it took 18 hours to finish. We found a drum machine that my friend, Jason had left over at U Street. It had a bunch of dancehall beats on it. He had gotten super into Dancehall a few years earlier (he actually started a dancehall label called "Ruff Chicken" that put out dancehall LP's and tapes). So, he had all these beats he'd programmed into it and we built the cassingle around those. There was a Rom comic lying around that provided the inspiration. We had a Moog that only worked some of the time and it kind of broke in the middle of recording. Somehow, we salvaged it. Everyone was playing something they weren't good at on equipment they were totally unfamiliar with & to this day, I can't believe it sounds as good as it does. It could never be duplicated in a million years! This one is Joel, Jay, Lisa, Davey and me. FANCY LADS was written by Tristan in the middle of our house-wide obsession with the TELEVISION PERSONALITIES. No B-side was ever written, so this one is "unreleased", but it's always been one of my favorites. I rememeber being in my room when he and Jay started working on it and being totally jealous that I wasn't involved.
VERUCA SALT FAN CLUB is pretty self-explanatory. Based on my celeb crush on Louise Post. "Forever Nursing Brew" is another unreleased one thanks to no B-side. I've always loved this song and it's absurd stance that someone was trying to "stop us from drinking our brew". It's like the "legalize it" of beer! This one always reminds me of Eric Copeland because we used to quote it to each other whenever we were drinking brews on BLACK DICE tour, which was most of the time.
SIMILAR GUYS is Gavin and Mike, who do sort of look alike. Gavin was coming to visit and do a cassingle, so Mike wrote "We're Similar Guys" the day before, but we still needed a B-side. (Ed. note: I listened to this song exactly once and it was stuck in my head for a week straight) Before Gavin got to town, I was going to a beer fest down the street and I wrote "We're Similar" in my head on the walk there. I spent the whole fest constantly repeating it over in my head so I wouldn't forget it. That one was super fun. I was proud of the line "We've got a lot in common, just like soup and ramen."
The HONEY I SHRUNK THE BAND cassingle was the last of the golden era of cassingles and it's one of my favorites for sure. Mike wrote "Hip To Be Small" and we sang it with the 4 track on slow speed so it would sound like munchkins. I wrote the theme song based on that annoying riff, which is something I used to play whenever I picked up a guitar for a while. I was dating the girl who talks on it and she used to live in Berkeley, so we only hung out on weekends. She already didn't like Sac that much but this particular weekend I was in a fit of cassingle fever so I was totally distracted with working on HISTB. She was super annoyed, hanging out in my room, when I was like "hey, will you do this talking part?" She immediately got all psyched and into it - the magic of the cassingle. We started the label back up again for a bit in 2000 or so with the YAWNING MUSHROOM, which was the "psychedelic cassingle". My friend Marie and I were working on BRIGHT IDEAS stuff and she had some mushrooms...so, we took them and decided to write a cassingle instead. One of the weird side effects of the mushrooms was that we couldn't stop yawning, hence the name. She had this little contact mic that she put inside an acoustic and it sounded so incredible high in headphones! I had written those songs a few weeks earlier and they seemed to fit together. JUNIOR QUENCH is one of my best friends, Josh, who lives in NYC. He used to live in Sac and is Sac through and through. So, when Marie called him at his apartment in NYC and said "hey, Dillon and I wrote a reggae jam. Do you want to sing over it?", he, of course, said "yes". He's way into dancehall as well and I guess there's a little-known dancehall DJ called Quench Aid who Josh loves. He was already making these funny tapes of him imitating Quench Aid over instrumental reggae tracks and calling it "JUNIOR QUENCH", so he grabbed some lyrics he had written, went outside his apartment and sang over the phone into the 4 track while they cranked the track so he could hear it. One take! There are a lot more...some that even I've forgotten. Some were recorded on long lost tapes. Some were just REALLY bad. There are some good ones not on here, but these are the ones that have the classic spirit of what was going on for that glorious, heady year or so.
This tape was compiled by Dan B (of IMPRACTICAL COCKPIT and VILLAGE OF SPACES) to showcase some of his and friends' bands who play noise, outsider sounds, lo-fi dance music, drone, punk and more. The physical tape starts off with MARGARET MOTHER OF THIEVES, but I didn't add them on this download since it's just the same songs from their demo, which you can find by clicking on that link above. So, your download starts with COUNTY Z, who are still one of my favorite bands of all time. Their one and only song on this comp sounds like it was a rehearsal improv jam and it is a definite "work on some stuff in your room and let this drift out of the speakers" kind of song. They are followed by HARRY FROM HAWAII, who drone out some fucked up, blown out "dance music" for total fuckin freaks. The one time I saw them (I think it was them), they featured Drew on noise. He was wearing a full-body foam outfit with a huge helmet made out of sheet metal with contact mics all over him. The mics were running through an overflowing table full of pedals and Drew was banging on the helmet with drumsticks. I found out later that the jagged edges of metal were cutting into his head the whole time and that his jumps and hops were not for effect, but were produced out of sheer pain!
Next up is IMPRACTICAL COCKPIT (another all time favorite) who also jam it out for a bit in that improv, droney way that they do. Dan B told me that they have hours of this stuff on tape somewhere. They are followed by UKE OF PHILLIPS (who has evolved into VILLAGE OF SPACES) and their brand of gutter-country/acoustic-noise. New Orleans' THE FOREHEADS play 3 songs that are the closest you will get to a standard punk band on this tape, even though nothing about them is standard. Occasional IPCP member, Stella plays guitar and yelps some vocals here and there. Merrydeth plays drums and does a fair share of the singing. Icky rounds out the rhythm section on tuba. They did a tour or two (I would've loved to have been their roadie) and put out a split 7" with THE NAZIS FROM MARS on Raw Sugar Records before breaking up.
HUL (not to be confused with the Danish band HUL) is just Don Godwin (of IPCP, Vector Set and much more) playing sleepy, lo-fi electronic music. Two of these songs were recorded in a Motel 6 in Lubbock, Texas. C/O NOAH CANNON closes out the tape with a mess of drone, noise, soundscapes, tape manipulation and more. I have a 90 minute tape of theirs and like the stuff on this comp, it can be meditative and wash over you.
Most of this tape will not sit well with many of the people who like the bulk of the stuff I put up on this blog, but that's okay. This is my trip. Get into it. Plus, I'm still getting over being sick and sometimes you don't feel like excitedly writing about punks getting wasted and penning the best song ever about killing Marines.
