THE TERRIBLES - "In Congrefs" - CD - 2008

   As a vague testament to how shitty 2016 has been, I've only posted three things in the past three months and they've all been about dead friends. This one is no different. (FYI: No one in THE TERRIBLES is dead).
    I'm sure you've already read the terrible news about the Ghost Ship fire in Oakland. I don't know if I can offer anything that hasn't already been said, but the outpouring of support from people in our community has been incredible. Most of the media and local government continues to get it so, so wrong...incredibly, frustratingly wrong and insensitive. What We Do Is Secret, but that statement hasn't actually been true for at least 20 years now, but people still can't seem to understand what the fuck we're doing (and yes, a lot what we do still is secret, actually).
   If you'd like to read articles about what is happening here, I would suggest these following things, because they're all good and these people took more time than I did to collect their thoughts.

 From KQED
 From East Bay Express
 From Huffington Post
 From We Are Your Voice

   The article from KQED really hit home with me because this is a tragedy that could affect just about anyone who reads this blog. Let's do some quick math. There's been 550 posts on this blog. Let's say that's probably 500 different bands (estimate). Let's say that there's an estimated three to four people in each band and that equals roughly 2000 people. I'm willing to bet that nearly ALL of those 500 bands have played shows in venues (I use that term lightly) that are non-traditional and don't have the best exits or wiring. That's 2000 people who put themselves in danger just to have a good time or find their community or feel less alone in an increasingly harsh world. But also, many of these people put themselves in danger just by leaving the house every day. This danger exists because of expensive housing, shitty paychecks, no paychecks for seriously marginalized people, because some of us enjoy putting ourselves in danger and many other reasons.
   Ugh...I don't know what I'm trying to say. Fuck it. I hate it. I hate that this happened at all. I hate what the media is going to make it into and I hate what it's going to do to so many spaces across the globe that people hold so dear to their hearts. Our gathering spaces aren't equipped with fire exits, bouncers or good wiring. Our ideal spaces provide us with love, acceptance and open arms in a world that wishes that many of us would just go away.
   Take care of each other out there. It's not getting better right now.

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This TERRIBLES CD is really good. I've written about them many times and you can go find it somewhere else on the blog. 

There's a phone number embedded in the 4th song  and it's one of my favorite songs by them. 

JACOB THE TERRIBLE - "Sings Songs of It's Complicated" - 7" EP - 2014

    When I wrote about JACOB THE TERRIBLE's demo, I said just about everything I could possibly say about the band. By the band's account (not mine), that demo sounds like dog shit, but I like to go back to it to listen to the timeless and now-classic songs that didn't make the cut for the jump to vinyl. So first off, I'll tell you what you're missing with the vinyl. Oh, you wanted to sing along to "Twin Elephants" in a well-produced, studio-recorded fashion in the privacy of your own bedroom? Nope. Sorry. You'll just have to imagine the chunky guitar and pounding drums as you scream out "The world can be so fucked!! But there's only so much shit you can shit....ON A FACE!!!"  You're also missing the gripping story of waking up in the morning to face another day of working at the Hello Kitty factory. Look, every JACOB THE TERRIBLE song is a perfect fucking snowflake but you can only cram so much music onto a 7" record before it starts to sound like a 9th generation Misfits dub from 1982.
   I'm gonna assume you didn't click over to the demo since I said the band said it sounds like dog shit. JACOB THE TERRIBLE is a band from Providence and Worcester. THE TERRIBLES are a pre-existing band. Jacob is a pre-existing human. They all got together to make full rock versions of Jacob's pre-existing songs, which had previously existed in more minimal forms. They ended up being one of the most charismatic bands I've ever seen. Any band can write a good song (JTT has many) but not many can engage you in their live performance in ways that feel real and inviting to nearly everyone in attendance. They also write good songs. Some are anthems in ways that I didn't perceive when I was first hearing them. Nary a week passes when I'm not singing "Things mean things! From Milwaukee to Osaka, does the postman know the joy he brings?"...usually in the post office. As I said in a print review, Jacob manages to fit ten pounds of words into five pound word-capacity songs. In other's hands, this might sound clunky and awkward, but Jacob lets it flow out of his lungs with an ease that sounds nearly effortless. I love the way he bends the word cigar to make it rhyme with roar. The song title "What I Love About You (I Hate About Myself)" is an easy comforting genius line and the song can fit that description as well.
   Okay, I'm done babbling. The record is great. I like all of these people who wrote it. It's not leaving my head anytime soon. I'm gonna go over to the bass player's house and screen print in his living room while listening to this to annoy him. You should order this record so that you can play it on your turntable while gazing into the beautiful Mike Taylor-penned art. I'm not sure where to order it though because the record label's site is down. Maybe try here or maybe here or just send some cash in an envelope to Corleone Records at P.O. Box 65, Providence, RI 02901 and hope for the best. I know that I could go back and erase that stuff I just typed, but I just got a text that said that the record is SOLD OUT, so don't send money anywhere for anything ever, okay? Okay. Enjoy this digital file instead.

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Thanks to Jacob for the digital files

Thanks to THE TERRIBLES for not being terrible.

 

TRACEY TRANCE - "101" - Tape - 2013

Today's post is brought to you by Jacob Khepler 

 It's common for a band to make a "tour release"- a limited object you can only get direct from them at shows on tour. Oftentimes it is hastily put together, by bands that don't have a new-enough record to sell at the gigs. As a consequence the tour release is more prone to have goofy shit, live stuff, weird covers, noise parts, and collaborations that would never make the cut on the official release. And as a result of this, a tour release can have a behind-the-scenes feeling, that really makes you think of the band members as human beings. The full release is like a band's thesis. The tour tape shows you what the band is like at home- who they're jamming with and what they're riffing on.

   Anyway, this tape isn't a tour tape, it's like the reverse of a tour tape. It sounds recorded on the road, about being on the road, named after the road, with sounds of the actual road, for the benefit of the friends at home. "Our car broke down in the following 8 places, and each place had a nice new friend, a sunny ditch, a kooky animal, and a romantic feeling". It's very sweet!!!!

    This tape contains Tracey's high wavering falsetto singing a nice little ditty about experiences on the 101 highway (i think), and another song about friends, intercut with road sounds, alternate takes, the same songs fed through effects, and brief verses and bits of other songs that come and go in a nice natural way. It's basically an EP of filler material, but as I said before, that can be very nice. The songs have an easy fun melody and a simple rhyme scheme that really makes them seem like they were initally written while driving, maybe even freestyled, for the amusement of the passenger or passengers. Many parts feature a keyboard, Tracey's main instrument, played in a loping circular manner as fingers slip and slide across the plastic. The whole thing seems to be recorded on a handheld walkman recorder- in quieter moments the compression on the tiny built-in condenser mic swells and you hear the background rush in. Lots of nice highway sounds too- trucks, trains, bridges, bells. Very nice.

    If you are not already a Tracey Trance fan, this tape may be your "101" (qua "introductory class")- these sounds are all present to varying degrees and yes, the music is basically this high all the time (at least). If you like it definitely seek out other releases (especially "Pyber Kub"). If you don't like it, that's totally valid. Do not seek out other releases.

    I have no idea if this title is in reference to the Depeche Mode live album / documentary of the same name. It easily could be, and I don't think it's hurting anyone to pretend it is. I would love it if Tracey did a full-on Depeche Mode cover tape- Tracey if you're reading this, think about it.

 In conclusion, I like Tracey Trance, and I like this tape.

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2X4 - Demo - Tape - 2014

   So, this tape will sail right by the folks who look here to find the lowest fidelity melodic punk on the internet and that's their loss. 2X4 is from Boston. They play hardcore. No hyphens. No bullshit. It's what is blasting out of the back door of my room right now to annoy my neighbors. Fuck everything.

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"Society's a mess

Survive the mess

It's yours to deal with too"

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTIES - Demo - Tape - 2013

   Look...I know that there's been a time in your life when you were sitting around in the gutter in a shitty part of town and thought, "Whoa, I wonder what it would sound like if members of ORCHID, AMPERE, VACCINE, FOREIGN OBJECTS and LONGINGS were sitting around talking about how much they loved the ANGRY SAMOANS and then decided to form a band and record it in one day?" Wonder no longer, my friend.

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Two songs

Roughly 2 minutes

TREMARCHE//MOTEL MATTRESS - Tour Split - Tape - 2013

   TREMARCHE and MOTEL MATTRESS are two bands from the great state of Massachusetts. The former is from Worcester and the latter is from Boston. TREMARCHE lives in my favorite house in Worcester: Distant Castle. That's about the point where my familiarity with these bands end. I've never seen either band and had never heard either one until receiving this tape, although I briefly met one of the dudes in TREMARCHE and he was super friendly. I was out of my mind while wearing a dress and bird mask. 

  MOTEL MATTRESS plays one, long seven minute, proggy, vocal-less super jam that dissolves into tape loops at the end. There's some hints of USAISAMONSTER or KING CRIMSON in there somewhere or maybe I'm way off the mark. Maybe they're just a jazz fusion band. Either way, if you had given me a tape by them ten years ago, I might have smashed it into bits with a hammer and let monster trucks run over it in the street, but now I'm really into it. Now, I want a 21 minute loop of it, which just means I'll let it play three times in a row and be happy as hell. 

  On the flip, TREMARCHE throws out three hardcore blasts in less time than it took MM to play their one song. "Hardcore" might be too simple of a term for this band. There's a lot more going on. There's some noodly bits. There's some parts that sound like they might have been really into FUGAZI when they were 16 or 17, but actually haven't put on "Repeater" since they turned 19. There's some parts that show that they live in a heavily creative environment and it would just be too easy to write a simple verse//chorus song. Basically, I don't know how to easily tell you what they're playing, but I can tell you that I like it. 

   

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Also, I was surprised when I looked up these two bands online and saw the "official" cover of their split. Even though both bands live about 990 miles from my old home of Chattanooga, TN, the cover features a nice photo of Parkway Towers, which is an abandoned building on the south side of downtown Chattanooga. I once tried to squat that building with two friends of mine. We spent a couple of nights there, but the building was too fucked up to safely and comfortably spend a winter. That was in 1998. The building is still abandoned, as far as I know. 

More from TREMARCHE

More from MOTEL MATTRESS

DAS BEACH BOYS - "New Das Beach Boys Experience" - Tape- 2007

   Sometimes, you're sitting around the kitchen drinking whiskey, listening to tapes late at night and your friend puts on some harsh noise and it hits you in just the right way. This tape hit me in the right way and I'm actually not sure if it's harsh noise because I don't really know what that shit is. Nonetheless, I like this.
  This was volume 3 in a "Singles Going Steady" series. Volume one was a Worcester party covers band. Volume 2 was a huge punk band covering frat rock , like "Louie Louie" and "Wooly Bully"...with 4 guitars and 6 singers and Mike Leslie stomping on a piano and Crusty Tim throwing up a raw egg. In this volume, the band DAS BEACH BOYS assaults your eardrums with layers upon layers of the sounds of things on fire....phone books, record players, hair, light bulbs, AM radios, fireworks, leaves,etc,etc..., Members of the band might have been Dan Wars, Crusty Tim, Sela, EZ Bake, Marky Metal, Mike Leslie, Nixie and a woman who sang on some AGAINST ME songs. The tape originally came with a booklet and a book of matches. Turn this up and burn some shit.

DOWNLOAD OR DON'T

Thanks to Caitlin for the tape.
Thanks to Dan Wars for info.

SUBCLINIX - Demo - Tape - 2011

    Do you ever have that feeling that you want to see a punk band who sounds like they only have a record collection that consists of "Killed By Death" compilations...or even better, they just own the original records compiled on those comps? Well, I do sometimes. I feel like I've tried to voice this to friends in the past and then they try to turn me on to some crappy pop-punk band who probably listens to fucking NOFX records at home.
   SUBCLINIX is the band I'm looking for in these moments. They're just fucking punk. They're great and they have hooks. My band played with them in a dingy Oakland basement a few years ago and I could have just gone home happy immediately after their set, but we still had to play. I bought their fucking tape and here it is. They're still a band, but they don't play too often. Deal with it.

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FUNERAL CONE - "Peel Back The Foil" - Tape - 2013

  I already knew I liked FUNERAL CONE before I ever even heard them because the band was comprised of total winners in life. My band played three shows with them in New England last year and I liked them more each night they played. Besides the fact that the band played chaotic, melodic, fucked up, fun punk, they also seemed immune to outside forces...meaning they just kinda brought their world on stage (or to the floor or basement) and you had to just deal with it. Like, the whole show could be boring and the other bands could be soul-sucking (luckily not the case in New England), but then FUNERAL CONE would just be this bursting bubble of total fun. Deal with it....or don't.
   After seeing them three times and hearing absolutely no recorded music, I told them I would set up a West Coast tour for them anytime they wanted it. Then, they surprised me by actually agreeing to it so I had to stick to my word. Before the tour, the band was asked by 100% Breakfast Records to put out an EP. This was really exciting to some members of the band because the label is run by Doug from FAT DAY, who were really influential and important to a bunch of New England punk/weirdos (I'm still baffled that FAT DAY is not as well known and highly regarded as many other seminal 90's punk bands.) They recorded these 6 songs at Doug's house, rushed it onto some tapes and flew out to SF for a week long tour of the Northwest.
   I went with them and it was the best tour I've ever roadied for. Besides the fact that they're a great band, they're also a wonderful group of people to travel with. I loved getting to watch them win over a room full of people every night. I would turn to the audience to watch them apprehensively approach the band as they started every set straight away with an abbreviated cover of "Louie Louie". Then, I would watch the crowd's look go from concern to wild abandon as the band launched into their original songs. So, so much fun.

  I got copies of the songs before the tour and thought they were great, but they grew on me even more after seeing the band play them live over and over. They had new songs that were even better. My favorite on here is "Dental Plan", but all of 'em are great. Towards the end of "Blindfolds", there is a freak out part that not only sounds like a freak out part, but (to me) sounds like the musical equivalent of walking around a bustling city while everything is exploding, crumbling, falling apart at the seams in a cacophony of guitars, farfisa organs and screaming. It's cool.

Fuck it, just DOWNLOAD it

The tape is sold out, but it has been pressed onto vinyl by 100% Breakfast. Please order your own copy of it right here before they're all gone. 

Members of THE TERRIBLES, BONEZONE, BLISTER PACK, ANCIENT FILTH, POISON CONTROL, DUNGEONEERS, SKIMASK, FRENCH IN ACTION and GUNS N ROSES.

Peter Bagge art on the back of the tape is an original. The artist drew it for singer Dan Wars when Dan watched his table at a comic-con for a while so Bagge could take a break. 

THE TERRIBLES - "The Doomsday Device" - CD-R - 2001

    Rather than have me prattle on more and more about how A: I love THE TERRIBLES and B: they've been a band since 9th grade, I figured I would let someone else do it. (If you want to see that writing or hear more great music by this band, then check here and here.) I asked Jacob Berendes to write up a release by the band because he has previously unleashed music by them (including this CD-R) on his now defunct (??) label Fujichia and has been a close friend of the band for years and years. In addition to releasing financially dubious musical endeavors, Jacob also puts out a top-notch monthly newspaper called Mothers News and posted my #1 go-to video to watch whenever I am feeling uninspired. Here's Jacob Berendes....

   This record (which was a tape and then a CDR but I will still call it a record) is from 2001,...and is the band's 3rd full length self-release. I'm not exactly sure what this record sounds like in a list of bands way, I'm sure an astute listener with a background in punk music could put together a nice grip of influences. i would sayyyyyyy Meat Puppets, Rudimentary Peni, and Dead Milkmen, Those were the t-shirts being worn at the time. There are a couple different ways that the singer (Jamie) sings, and a couple different guitar tones at play. some of the songs are fast and some are slow. While still clearly the same group of people, it's less self-similar than most punk records. It's harder to describe, harder to sell. Is it the best record ever? No. It's not even the best record of theirs, which is... whatever the newest one is? The yet to come out one?
    I tend to contrast The Terribles with other punk bands I see that seem to form with the expressed interest of making music that sounds like a specific band or scene. I guess that makes sense given the practicalities of being in a band, but isn't it dream-preferable to get a couple people together and play the music that you all like? Isn't it preferable to do this over the course of 18 years? That's what The Terribles did, it's cool. All their other records that came after this sound like this record except that the things that are weird about this record, there's more of them (on the other records) and they're weirder. Like all Terribles records, this one has a weird goblin-voiced intro track and at least 1 twangy instrumental number. There are some live tracks at the end, enforcing the magazine-feel of the record.
    The artwork on the cover is drawn by Matt, the drummer. They trade off doing the covers for each release, which is cute. Matt wouldn't get cover duties again until [i don't remember what year and i loaned this cd away]'s "In Congre∫s" (ed. note: coming to the blog one day soon), which took a while to come out because the typesetting was so elaborate. But this record is pretty early, so typesetting is a non-issue. The cover is a spaceship that looks like a skull, no problem. The band name is written in goofy bones, looks cool.

    Full disclosure: I helped record this record and they did a cover of the Conan the Barbarian theme by Basil Poledouris and I heard the name "Basil Poledouris" about a million times. They couldn't stop saying "Basil Poledouris", They're such dicks. AHHHHHH this band rules. If you have a record label please contact The Terribles (c/o matt's mom's house)(ed note #2: her phone number is buried in code in a Terribles song) about releasing their next slab "Frig: entire CD", Maybe they'll go on tour behind it, Maybe you'll send it places for review, maybe anyone (other than me (and possibly Greg)) will care!

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BASIL POLEDOURIS

MUFFSTACHE - Demo - Tape - 2006 (?)

   I tried to track down information about this band, but I know next to nothing. I only heard about them for the first time last week when my friend Caitlin started blasting this tape in her kitchen. Our friend, Ray showed up and said "Whoa, this is cool! It sounds like JJ FAD!" I even had Caitlin tell me everything she knew over a couple of beers. I wrote notes, but when I woke up in the morning, it just looked like this....

   What the fuck does that mean?! Anyway, it doesn't matter. The most important thing is that I remember Caitlin saying "This band made me feel good about being a woman in Boston." 

    The women in MUFFSTACHE lay out sometimes-funny, sometimes-serious rhymes that cover everything from getting the shits at McDonald's to cutting off the dicks of shitty bros to personal body acceptance. Don't worry about the background info this time. Just blast this in your kitchen. 

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TOUR // BREAK

   I'm taking a bit of a break from the blog again to work on some real world stuff. If you live in the Pacific Northwest, go see FUNERAL CONE on tour this week. They're awesome and I'll be selling stuff for them. Here's the dates:

Saturday April 13th in Portland, OR at The Ranch w/ Wild Mohicans, Sick Rats and Vicious Pleasures.

 Sunday April 14th in Tacoma, WA at Redroom with The Wrath, Earth Control and more.

 Monday April 15th in Victoria, BC at Talk's Cheap w Line Traps

 Tuesday, April 16th NOWHERE

 Wednesday, April 17th in Seattle at Victory Lounge w/ Fugitive Spot and more

 Thursday, April 18th in Olympia,WA at Grandmaw's House with Dogjaw (euro homecoming!)

 Friday, April 19th - just chillin in the van and Black Butte

 Saturday, April 20th - San Francisco 4/20 party at Thrillhouse with Nasty Christmas, 17 Reasons and Make Me Sick. $5. All ages.

For more info, look here and here. If you want to hear Funeral Cone, they were on this week's MRR Radio. You can find a link in the previous post.

I'll be back a bit after that with more moldy tapes.

LUDE BOYS - Demo - 2012

   When I was really getting into punk in the mid-90's, it seemed like there were so many fucking pop-punk bands that just aped THE RAMONES (badly) and it got really annoying. It got to the point where I actually said "I might kill the next band that covers 'Blitzkrieg Bop'." Don't get me wrong. I looooooooooove THE RAMONES, but it was just too much to be in the audience yelling at a band for not being able to get 3 fucking chords in the right order.
    Around 1999, I'm not sure what happened: either I stopped noticing these kinds of bands or they just dropped off the face of the planet. Either way, it's fine with me. All of that distance actually made it refreshing to hear a punk band in 2012 that is obviously influenced by those long haired cretins from Forest Hills without coming off as a crappy pop-punk band like so many lesser bands have in the past. Turn this up. Turn off your brain. Pogo around your bedroom.

Download this shit now!

Apparently, this is members of BLOODKROW BUTCHER and MALE NURSES.

BRAIN KILLER - Demo - Tape - 2008

    I'M WRITING IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE I JUST LISTENED TO THIS DEMO, SNIFFED A BUNCH OF GLUE, TIED A FUCKIN SHOESTRING AROUND MY HEAD AND BROKE OUT OF ALL OF MY WINDOWS!!!! I DYED MY HAIR BLACK AND KINDA CHARGED IT BUT I ENDED UP LOOKING LIKE A DUDE THAT GOT KICKED OUTTA MOTLEY CRUE SO I JUST PUT ON ANOTHER BULLET BELT AND IT KINDA HELPED. SHIT'S BEEN REAL FUCKED UP LATELY AND I DON'T KNOW HOW TO DEAL WITH IT BUT THIS TAPE MAKES ME FEEL REAL FUCKED UP TOO...YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN?

   MAYBE YOU WILL FEEL JUST AS FUCKED UP AS I DO WHEN YOU LISTEN TO THIS. IF ANYBODY WANTS TO COME OVER WITH THEIR STUDDED FUCKIN GLUE BAG AND GET SHIT HAMMERED, I'LL BE HERE ON THE FUCKIN FLOOR.

DOWNLOAD BRAIN KILLER DEMO

THIS TAPE IS FROM THE JUNK DRAWER OF BARKER GEE, THE PUNKEST MOTHERFUCKER I KNOW!!!!

    (P.S. I don't know what that's all about. I don't even like this band. Could someone mail me the new WHO KILLED SPIKEY JACKET LP?)

FRENCH IN ACTION - Demo - Tape - 2005

   Since I know next to nothing about this band, today's installment of Remote Outposts is brought to you by their old bass player, Mike Leslie....

   French in Action (named after the French language textbook) was a Worcester/Providence trio that I joined as replacement bass player when Mike Taylor moved on to become the band's visualist. I had lived with the singer, French born Matt Coe, on and off for years, who, though admittedly tone deaf, had a knack for pop hooks. He asked me to join, even though he described the band I had been in since I was 13 as "maybe not music." (Editor's note: that would be THE TERRIBLES) Differences aside, we were really tight friends, and we even lived in a shack together and I liked the band, so I enthusiastically joined. The frustrating part to me is I had never really played three chord pop at this time and had no understanding of musical chord progressions, so I would constantly get mixed up moving around the same part of the fret board and get songs confused. Rounding out the rhythm section was Dan Langlois. When I had met him when I was 14, he was the punkest person I had ever seen He even lived in a cabinet under the counter of a laundromat for a short time.

This demo was recorded at a practice space in Olneyville, I borrowed a car from a friend and got two parking tickets in about two hours. We ate breakfast at New York System Hot Weiners, where the home fries are just chopped up french fries (how appropriate). The whole tape is in French! And though I took it in high school, I'm still not really sure what he is singing about. I ended up having too much on my plate, the band got a new singer, became a four piece, and toured as "Frenching Action,", which is what people thought we were named anyway.

   (Editor's note pt 2: I'm sure I massacred the spelling of the song titles, but so did their artist, Mike Taylor. I never took French lessons and Mike explains on the tape insert, "I don't speak French and Matt has handwriting like a little baby chicken."

 (Editor's note pt 3: Don't ask me what happened to the font sizes on this entry. I tried to fix it and it didn't work. Whatever. Blogspot has a horrendous editing program that defies all logic.)

Download FRENCH IN ACTION
Link updated Dec 2017

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.

JACOB THE TERRIBLE - Demo - CD-R - 2010

   Okay, I admit, it's been a while since I updated this but that's not because I've been burned out or lazy. On the contrary...I worked 14 days in a row at my job while simultaneously practicing with my band, helping to put out a tape, booking a US tour, getting together t-shirt designs, trying half-assedly to find a subletter, buying a bike and celebrating another year of being alive on this weird rock we call Earth. I also spent a week in Worcester, MA, visiting some good friends and getting some much needed time to relax, read and drink coffee.
    While out east, I was lucky enough to roadie for one of my favorite bands, THE TERRIBLES and got to see a punk show in a state where I had never seen such a thing....New Hampshire. It was weird. It was in a martini bar. I also ate the worst taco I've ever eaten in my life. When the band got to their show in Providence, they morphed into one of their few alter egos, JACOB THE TERRIBLE. You see, the band has a long time friend named Jacob Berendes, who has been performing solo for years (You can order one of his CDs here) and also publishes the monthly newspaper, Mother's News. In addition to this, he runs a distro called Chipsylvania and formerly manned the massively missed mission, Fujichia. Anyhow, Jacob wrote many songs that should be (and still could be) classics, but haven't had much of a life to speak of outside of the greater New England area. At some point, he (or perhaps they) decided to turn his formerly quiet songs into full-on rock songs, using THE TERRIBLES as his backing band. Thus, JACOB THE TERRIBLE was born. This shoddy and hastily recorded demo is not quite the representation that the band had in mind when they went down to the basement with the four track, but this is what they got when they emerged a few short hours later. I think the true strength of this band lies in their live performance because Jacob is a front person to end all front people and the TERRIBLES are just a great fucking band.
   Take the Providence show for example...They were slated to play second, just after the smooth indie-garage rock stylings of some hacks with half of JTT's energy or charisma. Instead of discussing the lineup with JTT and talking about how they didn't want to play first, the boring indie rockers just did that thing where they simply disappear and make everyone's lives a little more difficult by not being available (emotionally or otherwise) when it is time for them to play. Berendes and THE TERRIBLES are no strangers to chaos and are well aware that the show must go on. They set up and started the proceedings with no temper tantrums or complaints (the rockers not-so-mysteriously re-appeared just as the band was gearing up for their first song). By the time Jacob yelled "The world can be so fucked!! But there's only so much shit you can shit....ON A FACE!!!", the audience was sold. The next half-hour was filled with wildly flailing, dancing bodies and impassioned sing-a-longs. Simply, they killed it. I briefly peeked in later when the indie rockers were playing their coveted time slot and the crowd was barely managing to stay awake (I know that this isn't a competition but when a band can't manage to do the simple thing they are expected to do on tour [i.e. play the show when asked, interact with the other people involved, not be unavailable], I have little-to-no sympathy for them).

   Since recording this, JACOB THE TERRIBLE has re-recorded some of these songs at Machines With Magnets and the new versions sound a billion times better. They are currently looking for someone to release it (like, say, Corleone Records) and I, for one, would greatly appreciate it's existence in this world.
   When not being in this band, drummer Matt Carroll takes amazing photographs, greatly analyzes seemingly pedestrian endeavors and performs dramatic readings of Victorian-era erotica while dressed in period clothing. Guitarist Jamie Buckmaster enjoys a charmingly bizarre sleep schedule (others might call it insomnia), works on beautiful art and almost effortlessly plays any instrument at an expert level. Mike Leslie, the bass player, skates better than you, works tirelessly on meticulous art and is one of the better people that I am lucky to know in this world. After downloading this, be sure to also listen to THE TERRIBLES and then smack yourself for not having them in your lives for the past 15 years.

Download JACOB THE TERRIBLE
Updated Jan 2013

Taken from a comic by John Isaacson

SOCIAL CIRCKLE - Demo - Tape - 2006

   Sometimes, I get my hands on a badass tape and then I realize that I've never seen the band and I have no frame of reference for what this band meant to the people in their scene. That's fine. I realize that I could just leave it at that and give you the download link. No one would lose any sleep over it, but that's not really how I like to do things. I got in touch with my good friend, Terry to see if she could dig up some info and she was happy to talk about these dudes for a bit. You may know Terry from her completely awesome band, FOREIGN OBJECTS or you may remember her writing from this blog when she schooled us all on RED THREAD. Either way, the rest is all written by her.

   I feel like once, long, ago, there was a time when a new band didn't pop up every weekend...at least around here ("here" being Boston). It's hard to remember but I swear it happened. Summer of 2005. when the now-long-gone (at least as a show space/record store) Regeneration was getting ready to start doing shows upstairs, three new Boston bands played their first show together in the basement. It had been a while since a bunch of new bands had started, so having three play one show was exciting. One of the new bands was called SOCIAL CIRCKLE (POISON CONTROL and CONVERSIONS were the others.) I'll never know what the deal with that extra "K" was, but SOCIAL CIRCKLE ripped through their set with a bunch of fast sloppy songs...punk with a Southern California edge that teetered on the punk/hardcore line, clean guitar tones and snotty vocals. Their original line-up (which changed after the first EP I believe) was a lanky, weird bunch. Boston has always been notorious for having fairly divided scenes. Hardcore kids are hardcore kids and the punks are punks. But, when SOCIAL CIRCKLE came to be, there was suddenly this band that toed the line; a band that both hardcore kids and punks liked. Spikes and flip-flops. The gap was a little smaller and, dare I say, it closed up when the band played. With lyrics about people who make you want to throw up, not wanting to go to work and fucked up cops, they became an instant Boston favorite. Everyone can relate to that. Similar to what I said in the write up about RED THREAD, there was something charming about a lot of Boston bands at this time, something about the way they played and the things they talked about that made people flip out, made people feel like friends and made their shows a sweaty mess. Something about the way everyone came together to see them play. It was a thing and we were making it happen.

"Standing on the corner,

 Blue shirt, red face

 No such thing as law and order,

 You're just a big disgrace!"

 Need I say more?

Download SOCIAL CIRCKLE

Thanks to Barker Gee for loaning out the tape.

THE HUMBLEBEES - "The Face Of My Heart" - Tape - 2006

   THE HUMBLEBEES were a very short-lived band from Worcester, MA. They probably weren't the most short-lived band from that magical town, but I'm sure there aren't many more who wrote, rehearsed AND recorded their demo in three hours. Does it sound like a demo that was written, rehearsed and recorded in three hours? Well, yes...but there is also something about it that makes it sound like a long lost demo from 1984, rather than a long lost demo from 2006. They kept it short and so will I. I like this. You might like it too. Get some mold on the face of your heart.

Download THE HUMBLEBEES

   Band members: Mike Leslie from the almighty TERRIBLES played guitar and sang. Erick Lyle from ONION FLAVORED RINGS (and much more) played bass and sang. Jim, who I may not know but I'm sure has much to offer, played drums. This tape is from the collection of Erick Lyle.

THE TERRIBLES - "The Future As Seen From The Future // There's Too Much Everything" - CD-R - 2005

   This is the first album that I ever heard by THE TERRIBLES and it also the one that enamored me to them, thereby making me a lifetime fan (as opposed to a LIFETIME fan, which will never happen). As mentioned previously, they have been a band since 9th grade (going on their 15th year now) and they have rarely stepped foot outside of their environs of New England. It could be insularity. It could just be laziness, but THE TERRIBLES have stewed in their own town for so long that they have crafted a sound that, while inspired by many random sources, is wholly their own.

   This CD-R is apparently a concept album on chaos theory and shows the band still digging into their love of the MEAT PUPPETS, but also getting truly weird and delving into some elements that sound inspired by "Cacophony"-era RUDIMENTARY PENI. One of my favorites on this album, "Romancing the Bunsen" is about the universe unlocking its secrets and chaos, but sounds sort-of wistful and romantic. When I listen to this album, I can't help but conjure up images of a rainy Worcester, MA, goofy kids falling all over each other while dancing and big rotting houses.
   The packaging on this is insane. The front and back cover is a 3 color, intricate screen-print (see above) and it's sewn together to make an envelope (made by bass player, Mike Leslie). The lyric sheet is a giant 2 foot by 18 inch, 2 color, double sided print that is folded up into the envelope (made by guitarist Jamie Buckmaster) . There is also a second insert that is just a great drawing of their drummer, Matt Carroll with all of the song titles around him (made by...Matt Carroll). They did all of this crazy work for a CD-R release about chaos theory and they probably made 50 copies of it...many of which did not make it very far outside of Worcester, MA. It's this kind of weird, obsessive vision that really draws me to these people and this is exactly the kind of band that makes me feel like i'm not alone in this world.

The poster.

Download THE TERRIBLES

Ever since I first heard this, I can't stop thinking that there really is too much everything.