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. 

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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

JACKWACKER - "Things From Inside Your Body" - LP - 2006

   In 2005 or 2006, I hitched a ride to Louisville, KY to go see IMPRACTICAL COCKPIT play at a little neighborhood bar. They were the only band on the bill and they played a great, sprawling hour-long set that literally cleared the room of every paying patron in the building. They had opened up the doors to the bar and the torrential downpour outside was blowing into the building. We thought that the burly biker-looking bartenders and door-guy were gonna be pissed off that the band had driven away their customers and left them with a weirdo band, their friend (me, who wasn't buying anything), the guy who set it up (Kris) and the one other spectator (hi Christina!). After playing the last note of the set, the dudes at the bar, who had been staring sternly the whole time with their arms crossed, asked "So, are you guys into SUN RA and BEEFHEART?" It turns out that the guys at the bar were stoked to hear improvisational noise and skronky sounds. They didn't give a fuck that we ran everyone off and they gave us a lot of free drinks. We went back to Kris' house afterwards to see his insanely huge record collection and talk nerdy about FRED LANE and DAVEY WILLIAMS until the wee hours. He said that he helped with a collective called Black Velvet Fuckre that had just put out a triple LP by his group VALLEY OF ASHES that had already sold out before it even got pressed. I knew that this guy must be up to something good if he can manage that.
    After getting back home to Bloomington, I found this LP by a band called JACKWACKER and bought it for these two reasons: They were a local band from the early 90's and Black Velvet Fuckre had put it out. When I got home, I was not prepared for the weird, mega-distorted, totally fucked onslaught that greeted my ears. At first, I couldn't really tell what the hell was going on, but I knew that I liked it. The band consisted of only two guys, but it sounded like three or four. The guitarist was playing a guitar that had 3 bass strings and 3 guitar strings on it. The drummer was playing...well, a drum set. There was some intermittent howls and yelps, but most of the vocals were minimal. Some hacks in the music journalism field keep comparing them to LIGHTNING BOLT, but I don't really think it's an apt description. For one, they predated LIGHTNING BOLT by years and they were far more minimal, more jazzy and way more drone-y at times. A lot less freak-out and a lot more straight-up improv.
  I had a really hard time finding out any info about them when I got this record. From what I could tell, they lived in Bloomington, Indiana in the early 90's and recorded a lot of these songs live in basements around town. Then, they moved to Madison, WI and recorded the rest before breaking up. I asked people around town if they knew anything about the band and no one really did. I asked old-timers and lifelong residents, but no one I asked had ever even heard of them.
   I played 3rd guitar (!!) in a doomy sludge band called GOURMET SCUM and we were invited to play with a lot of other folks on a local radio show where each band was asked to do one original song and one cover by a local of any era. We chose to "interpret" a JACKWACKER song ("Hashslinger") live and in front of an audience at a downtown auditorium. After our ramshackle barrage of drop-D sludge, a guy walked up to me, said he appreciated the JACKWACKER cover and he didn't think anyone remembered them. I asked if he ever saw them and it turned out that he was the drummer, Rob. He said that they played a lot around Bloomington, but no one ever seemed to "get" them or appreciate what they were doing. After moving to Madison, they broke up after a year or so and life led Rob back to Bloomington, where he stopped playing punk/noise and got more into free-form jazz and improv. I didn't ask him much more about it because he seemed wholly uninterested...and there was a noise nerd around town who kept completely fucking hounding him for info...so I backed off (also, after this show, the noise nerd assumed we were a JACKWACKER cover band and was trying to get us to play shows as JACKWACKER, which we never did or acknowledged...because we were our own band.)
   This record came from out of nowhere for me and I am really glad to see that this kind of noise was going on in the Midwest in the early 90's. It's destructive, cathartic, and insane. I love it.

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CASTLE DANGER - "Levels 1-4" - Tape - 2000 (?)

     CASTLE DANGER played a sparsely attended show at the all ages space in Chattanooga, TN back in 2000 (or so) and blew our fucking minds. No one actually knew what they sounded like before the show. Then, they melted our faces off with expertly executed proggy insanity riffs that sounded like the world being attacked by rabid dinosaurs with lasers for eyes. Really. Afterwards, I bought their tape, met these three insanely friendly guys and loved life.
   This download is just one track since it's mostly just one long 12 minute song split up into 11 movements. The names of each part are as follows:
Intro
Exodus
Sasquatch
Wolf Serpent
Rapids / Serpent
Waterfall
Pack
Prophecy
Attack
Hawk
Exit

Features members of ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS?, TIGERSHARK and the first drummer of MUNICIPAL WASTE (when they were a joke band....like, on their own terms)
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   And now if I can take just a moment to tell you about their drummer, Jonny Z...I guess I met him at this show, but the details are pretty hazy. I didn't really get to know him until a couple of years later. You know that feeling you get when you meet someone for the first time and you can just tell that they're a fucking badass? That's how I felt with Jonny. He played drums like a maniac, always had a smile, always had some good conversation on hand and was usually doing something to help others out, such as organizing activist events and putting together the Bizarre Market.. He was on a particularly aggravating tour one time where none of his bandmates could hide their frustration, but he still remained positive and even tempered. The two of us got jacked on Vietnamese coffee on 6th Street in SF and proceeded to walk all over the goddamn city, talking one million miles an hour to each other. So much fucking fun. So full of life, so inspirational and he had so much to give to this world. That's why it's so hard to believe that he is not IN this physical world anymore. I don't even want to talk about why he's not alive (if you want to know, it's right here). It's just so unbelievable. Still, to this day, I'll wonder when one of his bands will come through town and then I remember...it's not gonna happen. Jonny would probably feel weird that I'm talking about him so much, so I'll try to do what he would do, which is deflect the attention elsewhere. Be sure to tell those special ones in your life that you appreciate them while you still can..This life, while unpredictable, strange and scary, is also full of outstanding people who will make you wish you could live forever.
    Now, as an attempt to end this on a positive note, here are some buck wild videos I just found that correspond to this tape.


 If that doesn't work, I'm sure there are some videos of kittens online somewhere.

TERRIBLES - "White Baby" - CDR - 2009

   The TERRIBLES are hard to explain but I love them. They put a lot of love and art into their handmade releases and nothing they've done has ever disappointed me. That's really saying something since 1. I'm an asshole who has really strong opinions regarding music and 2. they've been a band since 9th grade (that's 1997) and have put out A LOT OF STUFF. Worcester breeds some lovable weirdos and these are some of my favorite weirdos of all. They kind of fall into a prog rock vein at times that is closer to early MEAT PUPPETS rather than like, KING CRIMSON or something like that. I mean, they're punks...it's cool.
    This release is a short 2 song single that has one original and one badass QUEEN cover that blows my mind. Expect many more TERRIBLES releases on here in the future.
   If you want to keep up with their never-changing website, you can find it at Terribles Gram and Gazette

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