OFF DA PIGS - 12" EP - 1998

   Before I get into the story behind this record, let me get into the story behind the story. You see, I know next to nothing about this record and, to be honest, I don't even really like it that much, but I actually had a few requests to put this one online, so here it is. I emailed the drummer, Scottzy, a while back to ask him a few questions and he said I should give him a call. Rather than blindly ask him stuff about a band I know nothing about, I asked an old friend named Jason (who is a legitimate fan of this band) to interview some ex-members. Jason was happy to do it, but time passed, I freaked out and quit all social media for a bit...and then I lost contact with Jason. Shit happens. So, I'm sorry if you're into this band and this isn't the info you wanted. Jason, if you see this and got around to writing up anything, feel free to send it to remoteoutpostsATgmail.com, and I will repost this whooole damn thing.
    So here's what I know..or think I know...Some SF Mission gangbanger kids worked in a kitchen with some SF Mission punks. They probably bonded over the menial drudgery of soul-sucking wage slavery, cheap drugs and burritos from Taqueria Cancun. I don't fucking know. What I do know is that they eventually ended up playing music together and putting out a 4 song 12" EP on Probe Records. What does it sound like when members of HICKEY and THE FAGGZ get together with some neighborhood rapper kids and collaborate on a record? Well, why you don't you click on that download link and hear for yourself.

DOWNLOAD

I just think it sounds like Judgement Night

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. 

DOWNLOAD

FULL BLAST - "Tight Sweats" - Tape - 2000

    I'm not even gonna pretend like I know shit about rap, hip-hop or anything resembling that genre of music. Besides some short stints with ICE CUBE and PUBLIC ENEMY (I saw them live in the 90's and it was fucking awesome), the only group I really even marginally pay attention to is THREE SIX MAFIA and some random super local people that show up from time to time.
    ...And then there's FULL BLAST. Fuck. I don't even know what's happening here. It's a trainwreck. It's awful and genius at the same time. Can you legitimately make fun of music if it's stuck in your head constantly? Well, yes...but who is the joke on? I'm just gonna leave it at that.

DOWNLOAD

GLUE WILL NOT BE SOLD TO CHILDREN - A San Pedro Compilation - Tape - 1998

                                             
    Most of the time, when punks think of San Pedro, CA, the first bands to come to mind are THE MINUTEMEN, FYP or maybe TOYS THAT KILL. Maybe even CAN OF BEANS or NIP DRIVERS (even though they were from Torrance). Did you know that there was a crazy, burgeoning scene laying just below your radar in the late 90's in Pedro? Well, of course you did, but you probably never heard them because most of those bands never played outside of town and never released anything besides the songs on this compilation. The scene revolved around an unnamed record store where the punks hung out and caused trouble. Once, they even built a pyramid out of empty 40 bottles in front of the shitty tattoo parlor next door to them. When the rockabilly dude who ran the place walked out to yell at them, the entire thing collapsed, causing shards of broken glass to slice the dude's vintage suit and eyebrows. This was the beginning of the end for this little local scene and the record store was soon defunct. Many of the bands broke up soon afterwards.

    So this tape is your only exposure to the small geniuses that leaked into the Pedro scene for a short little while. There's the sleaziness of THE MOISTMAKERS, hardcore punk by CARBONATED GENOCIDE, the creepy dudes in CREEP ALERT and the sketchy drug-dealers of Sunken City who played in THE VANS. SWEATS AND TIGHTS kept playing as their acoustic duo at open mic nights for a few years until they moved to Goleta. THE DRIVEBYS were one of the first of these bands to break up after their singer Matt "One Lung" was arrested for first degree murder (Too long of a story for this venue). NOBODY LOVES ME kicked around Pedro playing their brand of low-fi pop until the couple in the band broke up. BACKYARD PARTY played wild, teenage, fucked up skate thrash and refused to play any 21+ venues...until Dan turned 21 and became a barfly. Their best line is "Hop on my board, can't land a trick. Let's see how many times WE CAN FLIP IT!!" JON BENET AND THE COVERGIRLS were fucking awesome and spent most of their time trying to get old men to buy them beers at the liquor store. They had a line up change and became THE JAG OFFS. Their best line is "Don't try to impress us! I think you'd rather undress us!" HATE MY JOB was some sad sack who always came into the record store and played guitar in the corner, so they let him be on the comp. PRIEST SLAPPER was a group of Black Metal dudes who played satanic thrash. I remember seeing them around town when I visited and they seemed really out of place wearing all black and corpse paint among the palm trees and 95 degree weather. THE WAKE UP LATES played kinda shitty street punk. They were cool people though. FLAME RETARDED sucked. THE PINK MC'S were a gay rap group who hung out with the punks because no one else liked them (San Pedro is pretty fucked up).
   Most of the people in these bands became squares and dropped out of punk. Lots of them got jobs at the tattoo shop they used to make fun of. You can still find the guys from BACKYARD PARTY hanging out at Harold's Bar on any given night. HATE MY JOB still plays open mic nights on Tuesdays. PRIEST SLAPPER moved to LA and fizzled out due to drugs...
   I hope you enjoy this tape. It's a brief time capsule into a forgotten part of San Pedro punk history.

DOWNLOAD THE COMP

    Wait....are you just gonna believe me? You are, aren't you?  Okay, here's the real story: Back in 1998, my old band THE GRUMPIES were on tour with FYP. At some point, we were driving from like, London, Ontario to Winnepeg, Manitoba...which is about 25 hours of absolutely nothing but beautiful vastness, moose, bears, tiny towns and two lane freeways. Sean (from FYP) and I got on one of our long rambling talks about music and we soon started discussing plans to construct an entire fake punk scene, complete with a record store, back story and compilation tape. I had found a Polaroid on the ground in NYC and wrote CREEP ALERT on it. Thus, that became the first band....

   Tour continued and we kept discussing the plan and constructing bands in our heads. When tour ended, Sean stayed in Pedro and I went home to Chattanooga. A few short months later, this tape and zine showed up in my P.O. Box. He had actually done it! I had forgotten about it, but he had gotten together punks in Pedro to carry out the plan....and a lot of the songs are really good! I even covered the JON BENET song in a band I played with...which begs the question, "Does that make them a real band?" Real or not, I think most of this compilation is great. 

Features members of FYP, TOYS THAT KILL, THE JAG OFFS, THE LEECHES and more..

REMOTE OUTPOSTS WEIRDO MIX VOL 1 - Tape - 2013

   So, I've been trying to figure out where to fit in these different recordings ever since I started this thing a few years ago. I decided to just throw out a few things at once and I may continue this trend in the future with the weird shit sitting around on my shelves. So, here's the first installment of the Remote Outposts Weirdo Mix which, honestly, isn't that weird.
   You may remember from a few posts back when I mentioned listening to the North Georgia AM Christian radio broadcasts when I lived on the Georgia state line. I was a little obsessed with it because the quality and presentation was so alien to me that I liked to believe that it came from outer space. I grew up in Alabama going to Baptist churches, so these radio broadcasts aren't too far off the map for me, but my life is so far removed from this reality now that it just sounds other-worldly. In the first 11 minutes of this download, there is some singing, preaching and talk of anointing doors. There is a man who says "Praise God" every 4th word or so. I don't mean to make fun of people because everyone  has to do what they have to do to get through the day...but also I don't believe in God and I'm not trying to steer you in that direction.
  Secondly, I lived on a houseboat on the Tennessee River for close to a year back in the early 00's. It was a really simple time in my life where I mostly just ate a lot of potatoes, wrote a bunch of letters and listened to the radio while waiting for people to visit. Occasionally, I would canoe to land and ride my bike to a friend's house, but most of the time, I read a bunch of books on the boat. Something that was a constant on the boat was the weather radio. There was something soothing about the robotic voice being broadcast (presumably) from a tin shack somewhere in Moorestown, TN. I liked the way he sounded so forlorn when he pronounced that the weather was "partly cloudy." I spent a lot of time huddled up in my sleeping bag listening to this guy and waiting for the temperatures to rise (listen to the temperatures and remember that I was on an unheated, uninsulated houseboat in the middle of a river). I remember the uproar (from myself and at least 3 other friends) when they changed the robot's voice to make it more "human". Is the second track just a robotic weather report? Yeah, you bet it is!

   The last 2 tracks in the download are from this tape (above) I found on the ground in an alley in Bloomington, IN in 2007. I carried it around with me all day while I ran errands and just wondered what the hell "EASTERS" could mean. I still don't know what it means and the music on the tape was not what I expected. Nevertheless, this tape became a staple of many backyard hangouts at my house and started to get requested by folks who came over to drink beers in the yard. Download it for yourself to find out if it'll be your new backyard jam.

DOWNLOAD

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. 

DR DRE DEL - "Mic Of Defiance" - Tape - 1999

   In 1999, I was visiting friends in San Francisco and Ivy took me to the Hickey Hotel on 24th Street. It was a bustling den full of lovable freaks, assholes, musicians, artists, photographers and more. Like most of the inspiring and free-thinking enclaves of 90's-era SF, it was later evicted, whitewashed and stripped of any remnant of its former glory and it now sits anonymous and culturally barren atop a coffee shop that no one in their right mind would enter unless they long to sip lattes inside of a GQ magazine. But, I digress...While visiting the denizens of this particular abode, one resident named Aesop handed me this tape and said "You should check this out. It's a local Jewish rapper." My exterior self calmly took the tape and nonchalantly threw it in my bag while thanking him. Meanwhile, my interior self was running circles in my brain, exclaiming "Hey, your favorite drummer from your favorite punk band just gave you a fucking tape. Don't throw it around!" Aesop also showed me an 8x10 glossy picture of DR DRE DEL that made me think that this rapper could be his cleaner, smoother brother. Seconds after leaving the house, Ivy told me that DR DRE DEL was Aesop and that the DJ featured on the tape, DJ QUEENIE, was none other than Matty Luv. Both guys had formerly been 2/3's of the runaway train known as HICKEY, who had broken up the previous year. I don't know what was going through their heads at that point in their lives (literally, theoretically or pharmaceutically), but one can surmise that after years upon years of being in a band-turned-cult that took up mostly every second of their lives, these guys might want to take a break and churn out something ridiculous.

   If you are familiar with the output of the aforementioned gentlemen, you'll know that even the seemingly lighthearted, ridiculous, jokey shit has a lot of thought and effort behind it. If memory serves me correctly, Matty spent hours teaching himself how to sample beats and songs just for this project. No matter how scatalogical or sexual the lyrics got, Aesop made most of the songs on here insanely memorable by having an ear for a good hook. Starting off with the unforgettable "Dr Dre Del Is The Master", the duo sets the bar rather high in 56 short seconds with an unmistakable metal riff and flawless MC skills. From there on out, the tape is filled (i mean filled...48 songs) with fantastical imagery ("Fuck ALF"), still-relevant social commentary ("Make Room For Whitey"), typical shit-talking ("Fuck You Cecil" trilogy), a fucking RUDIMENTARY PENI sample ("Weird Ass Sisters"), fairly legit hip-hop ("Mic Of Defiance"), straight up awesome weirdness ("Smokin' Crack and Killin' Pigs") and so much more. If that doesn't work for you, DR DRE DEL also raps about his dick...a lot.

Picture of an ultra rare live performance.

Download DR DRE DEL

48 songs. None are over 2 minutes.
Matty Luv passed away in 2002 and his musical accomplishments are too numerous to name. You can find more info about him here. Aesop is still killing it on the drums in the bands AGALLOCH, WORM OUROBOROS and VHOL.