PETER STUBB - "Blueberry Masturbator" - Tape - 1992

 
   Peter Stubb has gone by many names in his life: Gary League, Dewayne King, Cannibalistic Retard, Gary Lee Austin, Gary Spit and many more. Peter Stubb, for whatever reason, is the one that has stuck around the longest. He began home recording his own songs on cassette sometime in the late 80's, just banging on things and making guitar noises with his mouth. The lyrics could be funny, disturbing and demented. Other times, they were crushingly depressing, especially when he delved into the topics of the reality of his everyday landscape, which included the mental wards and psychological education centers of North Georgia.
   I had heard stories of Peter Stubb throughout the south for a while and got a chance to play a show with him in Chattanooga in late 1995. To put it lightly, it was life changing. Throughout the show, the punks had been flying all over the room, singing defiantly and going nuts. As Peter started to set up to play, most of the people in the room politely sat on the floor in front of him and a hush grew through the building as if something important was about to happen. Peter sat in front of the assembled audience, struggling with some papers and a music stand, his face painted in fucked up, dripping corpse paint and his shoulders flanked by football pads. His battered acoustic guitar was covered in fading stickers and his arms were completely covered in scars from self-inflicted knife wounds. He appeared to be nervous and too anxious to be in front of all these people. All I could think as he was about to strike the first chords was "What the fuck is going on?!" He belted out a quick 40 second song devoted to the love of cunnilingus and the crowd howled. Seconds after finishing that one, he completely changed gears and destroyed the audience with one of the most honestly depressing songs I had ever heard. The punk kid next to me who earlier looked so tough and bulletproof was sobbing like a baby.

    Soon after, I was visiting Chattanooga again and I asked my friend Eric Nelson if he could copy any of Stubb's music for me. He obliged with this tape, "Blueberry Masturbator". He joked around about the less serious songs on the tape but he added, almost gravely, that Peter Stubb is the most honest songwriter that he has ever heard in his life. On the drive back to Alabama, I put it on and got a chance to really immerse myself in it. It starts off almost abruptly with "Social Phobia", which feels as if you just stumbled into an internal monologue that had been occurring long before you arrived. Stubb palm-mutes like crazy in a way that recalls the best RAMONES songs and introduces you to his world of anxious paranoia. The next couple of songs are a complete 180, telling stories of pot heads and objectifying women. While stuff like the latter may offend the ears of my more radical thinking readers (like say, me), I think this is part of the Stubb experience. His songs are uncomfortable, untamed and dark. To only listen to the ones that line up with your political outlook is cheating. "Bodies in the Tub" is about stacking up the dead bodies of his oppressors in his bathtub. "I Don't Care If You Go" is about Stubb's mom. "Crashed and Died" is about a motorcycle wreck in which Peter crashes and dies "like a motherfucker". Towards the end, Stubb launches into some odd speech that is part possessed/part childlike that permeates some of his other songs, but this is it's only appearance on this tape. Just when you thought he wasn't gonna get too serious again, he comes back with "Committed", a crushingly sad song that details his early experiences with the north Georgia mental health system, which I can only imagine is less than stellar. In the song, he sings...

    "One teacher asked me, what would I like to be. I said 'A werewolf...a demon inside of me.' She kinda flipped out. She said I needed help. She said 'How long have you felt this way?'. I said 'I don't know. I'm like this everyday.' She said 'We'l get you help..you can count on it.' Next thing I knew, I was committed."

   Later, he says that they won't let him out until the sanity is back in him, In the next song "Bu-Doing-Schwing", you're finally convinced that Stubb has lost it in this song about hyper-sexualized lust....and his dick. He makes weird sounds with his voice, which recall many of his earlier tapes and the whole thing is just kinda bizarre. Abruptly, Stubb launches into the last two songs, which take you into the lowest depression of the whole tape. "Just One More Time" is about feeling bad about the things that have happened in your life and wishing you could change them. The final song, "They Took It Away" is epic, destructive and possibly the single most depressing song I have ever heard in my life because it is 100% real and nothing but honest. I can't even do it justice by talking about it. You just have to listen to it alone and let his words pull you into the darkness. 

   Long before this release, Peter Stubb had been releasing his own self-recorded tapes and he still continues to this day. Many of his early tapes were one of a kind...he would record a couple of songs, make a cover and just give it to a friend. Others were released in a edition of ten or less and you might find a copy of it that Stubb left in the bathroom at a Dalton, GA Wal-Mart. There are countless tapes of his music all over the place. You never knew what you would find on these tapes, but it was/is always interesting. He's still releasing a few tapes a year and if you send him $4-6 cash in the mail, he will send you a new one. You can find Peter here on his FB page and he'll send you his address to order tapes. 

   I'm putting this up on this site to archive it and for all of his old friends and fans, but mostly I am sharing it in the hopes that someone in a small town in the middle of nowhere will find this and have it change their life in the way it changed mine (as well as many of the people I love).

Thanks to Eric Nelson for everything.

Thanks to Josh Mayfield for being such a dutiful archivist of Stubb's music for so many years. 

Thanks to Peter Stubb for making all of this music and for giving me permission to put this tape online. 

Download "Blueberry Masturbator"

...and here is a link to the short film "I'm Like This Everyday", made by Mitchell Powers in 2008.

CASSINGLE AND LOVIN' IT - Compilation - CD-R - Mid-to-late-90's and beyond

   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. 

Download

P.S. I am still figuring out the kinks of the new file-sharing service. Let me know if you have problems. 

PETER STUBB - Powdered Doughnuts - 1994?

  To some, PETER STUBB is a legend. To others, he  is some crazy guy with a guitar. To many people, he is both. He's been writing his own songs and putting out cassettes (an average of 2 a year) since the late 80's/early 90's. My favorite tape, "Blueberry Masturbator", has some heartbreaking songs about mental health problems followed by jams that are sort-of indescribable (the song "Ba-doing-schwing" comes to mind). Other tapes have featured Peter and his friend just making race car noises and singing. Still others have been full of drum machine death metal, odes to Christmas, songs about whiskey, and stories of sticking drumsticks up his ass. You really never know what you're gonna get with one of his tapes, but it's always memorable.
    This epic love song to powdered doughnuts was recorded live by someone somewhere in the early to mid 90's and stands as one of my favorite Stubb songs of all time. I believe it catches him at his best: both playful and brutally heartfelt at the same time with the audience hanging on every word for the full eight and a half minutes of this song.
  My friend, Mitchell Powers made a short documentary about Peter that you can find a clip from HERE. You can find a really old interview with Peter Stubb here and find some live videos of him here, here and even here.

         Download Powdered Doughnuts Here

  (the recording cuts out for 5 seconds around the 7 minute mark. Every recording of this that I've ever heard does that.)