YOUR HEART BREAKS - Tour EP - 2003 - CD-R

   This is not the first appearance of YOUR HEART BREAKS on the blog. For more info, you could look here or here or even here (kind of). This was my first introduction to the band though and I would blast it through my headphones while walking around in the cold of the small Midwestern college town where I used to live in 2004. I didn't know Clyde (the main songwriter and core member) that well then, but I agreed to quit my job and roadie for his other band for a month anyway. Sometimes I look back on that trip as a mistake, but most of the time I know that it wasn't because it solidified our friendship in many ways that might not have happened otherwise.
   On the tour, I would sit behind the merch table while oogles talked to me about their dog or people handed me a beer or a college student would hand me a check for a few hundred dollars. I would sell their band's music and sometimes people would pick up this YHB CD. I'd sit there and try to sell them on it while they looked at me skeptically. "Yeah, it's this broken hearted queer pop music...no, it's not folk-punk...no, it's not on Plan-It-X records....yeah, I know that Rymodee from THIS BIKE IS A PIPEBOMB is listed as a member but he only plays the harmonica on one song for about 45 seconds...but, anyway, YOUR HEART BREAKS is this really cool...huh? Yeah, I know Rymodee and his band..yeah, they're really nice....no...I, I don't want a CD-r of your folk punk bedroom project...yeah, I've toured with them.....so, anyway, this CD is like this cool pop band and....oh, yeah, there's a beer store right down the street. No, I don't have any extra beer for you but a tall can is only like $1.50 over there...okay, thanks, bye."
    Most of the time, kids would buy this YHB CD after seeing that Rymodee played harmonica on it and after I explained that he only played for a minimal amount of time. I would sit there and hope that they would get past that. I liked to imagine that we were coming into some of these small towns like Goldsboro, NC (where the band was asked to not use "curse words" at their show)  and passing along this nugget of queerness into a deeply religious military town. Like, maybe they listened to the words and discovered some new shit about themselves and didn't feel so alone. Maybe they started their own queer pop band and helped marines come out to each other while realizing that it's not really a bad thing to be gay around a bunch of really fit men. Maybe it helped them realize that they needed to get the fuck out of that town and never look back. Or maybe they just filed it away in a pile and never listened to it again.
   I like these songs a lot. I'm pretty sure it's the only time anyone has sang anything about the band NEW BAD THINGS.

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YOUR HEART BREAKS is still a very active band and only gets better. 

Clyde made an amazing movie called Torrey Pines and he'll be touring the US with it this fall and winter. 

IT GETS WEIRDER - Tape - Compilation - 2015

   Olympia, Washington. Love it or hate it. For whatever reason, it's a small town that brings up a lot of different emotions for people, but I've rarely met anyone who feels indifferent about the place. I myself have been on both sides of the wall at different points in my life. Once, I went there for a week just to lay on a couch while it rained.
    It's gotten a lot of attention in the past because of K Records or BIKINI KILL or whatever-the-fuck and now they're maybe getting a lot of attention because of G.L.O.S.S. or K Records or whatever the fuck. I've come around to liking the place again (and I have for years now) but I'm not about to pack my bags and move on up. I think it gets a bad rap, but imagine fighting to live your life in new and interesting ways while being somewhere small enough to see real, actual results. I'm not saying it's easy by any stretch of the imagination. I'm mostly telling you this convoluted shit to bring light to the fact of all of the hard work that my friend Meg and a lot of other hard workers do in Olympia. They helped to open the Interfaith Works Overnight Emergency Shelter, which is a shelter for people living on the streets of Olympia. I can't get into the details of the whole thing because I don't really know them. What I can tell you is that I went to a party at the shelter while a hardcore fest was happening 2 blocks away and all of the interactions I had there were so genuine, real and positive that I had to walk around the corner at least 5 times and just fucking cry. I know it's not like that all the time and I know it's a lot of hard work and I just wanted to point that out. Going back over to the fest felt like a step down, even though I would literally kill someone to relive that CCTV/BIG ZIT/VEXX show again.
   Also, I like eating tater tots at the Reef...a diner downtown that has burned down like 2 or 3 times.

   Oh yeah, there's music here. This tape was compiled by Sadie (G.L.O.S.S./DYKE DRAMA) and Joey (a true genius/madman who is responsible for most of the sick recordings you like from Oly) to showcase the myriad of punk shit coming out of the basements and dives of this small town. I love that this tape is truly all over the map of punk...it's not just hardcore or pop-punk, but those things are there too. I think my favorite discovery from this tape is DEFACEMAN, who I'd never heard before...just true fucked, chaotic, messy, brilliant beauty. I want to hear everything by them now. Other heavy hitters featured here are VEXX, GAG, G.L.O.S.S., BROKEN WATER, CC DUST and NASTI. The entire tape is worth your time though and provides a perfect glimpse at all the new shit going on there...or at least what was happening in 2015. Some of these bands have broken up already. Get into it.

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I don't think this tape is available anymore. 

I took a long break from the blog for many reasons and one of them was archiving makes me feel weird now. That's all I'm gonna say about it, but I'll keep doing it for the time being.
If anyone in the Bay Area wants to give or sell me a functional cassette console, please get in touch. I had 4 break in one week.
Thanks to Alex Turner for digitizing this one. 

SNUGGLE - Lost LP Demos 2008?

Today's post is brought to you by frequent contributor and friend of the blog, Alex Turner.

   SNUGGLE is one of those bands, the bands you love that nobody else gets. I've seen them play in the basement of the FBK so many perfect times, the best times, the worst times, the drunkest times. Mad Dog 20/20 and shotgunning Sparks is what happened. A long time ago, SNUGGLE thought they might get paid to play a show or maybe they were surprised by getting paid? Regardless, they spent all that money on Mad Dog. I'm sure they got paid a few times on tour and didn't buy all their friends booze with the money, but that's the way it goes. They recorded this and lost it. like really fucking lost it. They had to re-record it because everybody they had given a copy to had also lost it. A real time and a place band. The 2000's in the basement of the FBK was SNUGGLE's time and I'm not sure why I have a copy of this lost recording, but if you'd like you can too.

     Rumor has it that Robert 'found' this at a coffee shop in Philly a year after it was considered a lost cause. I dunno. I guess this is like the demos for the LP that finally came out eventually on 1234 GO, Don't buy that, just download this.

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THE WHIP - Live - Tape - 2002

Today's post is brought to you by Alex Turner

   THE WHIP was a band from Olympia. It's what happened after KARP. Joe Preston, Jared Warren and Scott Jernigan. They didn't play that many shows, but they did put out a 7", which is great and K Records might still have a few copies of it (?) (ed note - Wantage has copies of it here). These two shows have only 5 songs. I think the ReBar show was their first show? I recorded both of these on a handheld tape recorder and don't even remember being at the Backstage show. Whatever. Enjoy. 

DOWNLOAD  THE WHIP LIVE AT THE CAPITOL THEATER BACKSTAGE AND AT REBAR.

KARP - "Live At Yo Yo A Go Go" - Tape - 1994

Today's tape and write-up is brought to you by Alex Turner.

This show happened in 1994. 21 years ago, RANCID and KARP played together at an indie rock fest in Olympia. What the fuck? KARP is Olympia's best band. Enjoy.

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(ed. note: Sorry if it's misleading that I used the cover of their demo tape for the art.)

RANCID - "Live at YoYo A Go Go" - Tape - 1994

   In the mid-90's, I went on tour with my band through Florida and the south. On the tour, we played a generator show in the Everglades next to a rotting cow carcass, we played a VFW hall and we played in some living rooms. One night, we were in Cocoa Beach, FL with a night off and heard that RANCID was playing an hour away in Orlando. At this point in time, none of the members of my band paid any attention to major media (or any media for that matter) and we had the idea of driving to the show to see if we could jump on to the bill. Our guitarist, Joey had slept on Tim Armstrong's couch in Berkeley and was pretty good friends with his neighbors in SCREW 32, so we thought it would be easy to play a short set before them. Little did we know that in the intervening years, Tim's roommates would come home to find RANCID shooting a video complete with a camera crew and deli trays in their living room. That video was played on MTV, the band found their way to magazine covers and were now touring in a completely different style than we were. I doubt they had to jump start their van every time they tried to move it or fixed the alternator belt with a shoestring or chewing gum.
   So, when we got to Orlando, the security guards fittingly laughed in our faces when we asked to talk to the band about playing a short set at the show. We dutifully paid our 10 bucks like everyone else and went in to watch the bands. The LUNACHICKS made some speech about how it took a lot of hard work to get to where they were on that big stage. I laughed my ass off at them. Thinking about it now, I can imagine that it was a lot more frustrating for them to get to that point than RANCID, being four women playing punk and metal in the late 80's and early 90's. I'm sure it was also frustrating to think about how Dino, GG Allin's drummer, thought that he had a psychic connection to them and regularly masturbated to pictures of them...but I digress.
   RANCID was good. I also laughed at them. A lot. "And Out Come The Wolves" had just been released so they played a lot of songs from that one.
    We drove back to Cocoa Beach. I took off all of my clothes and walked in to the ocean.

  This tape (that's not it pictured above) was sent over by Alex Turner. It's from the year before I saw them when they played at Yoyo a Go Go in Olympia, WA back in 1994. We're both pretty sure that it was recorded off the board. Alex believes that the details are this: Somebody recorded it, Tobi Vail owned the tape for years, gave it to someone else in Olympia and then it made its way to milk crate at Punkall. Alex brought it back to Oakland and digitized it for you to enjoy. The sound quality is not bad, but a little assy at points.

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TRRASH - Demo - Tape - 2014

   I've been away from this blog because I couldn't think about posting demo tapes by obscure bands while my mind was filled with all of the atrocities of the last few weeks...while black and brown people were getting murdered by white cops...while queer people..while trans people were getting murdered by cops and idiots and idiot cops. Clearly, I still can't think well enough to form real sentences. I don't know how to personally fit myself in to modes of resistance while taking care of my own mental and physical health...while being aware of giving space to the voices that truly matter in this whole debate. You don't need the updates from me, because the updates are being reported every second from more eloquent and important independent sources. Please stay informed. I keep learning new things as I get older and they work to re-enforce the important things that I already know:

• Cops are useless
• There is no such thing as a good cop because in order to be a cop, you have to already believe in an outdated system of "right and wrong" that is built on racism.
• Smashing the windows of corporate stores is not "violence"
• Everything is fucked.

    Moving on....TRRASH is fucked. It sounds like everything falling apart into a cacophonous mess (but not like the world falling apart...which is a big difference...that sounds like this at the 45 second mark turned all the way up on headphones). It's like a storm cloud moving through your living room and breaking everything in its path....like someone just grabbed all the instruments and threw them down the stairs with a maniac, foaming at the mouth, crazed animal surfing on top of it with a microphone jammed down their throat.

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They have a Soundcloud thing here.

4RVR 21 - Demo - CD-R - 2014

    Ten days ago, I posted a tape on the blog and said something like "I'm back from my break!", but then insisted on a self-imposed computer vacation. Partially, I imposed this break because I went on "vacation", but also because the world is too much to handle some days. On my trip away from my home, I was joined by some old and new friends. We spent a lot of time casually talking shit and gossiping in the car. We followed that up with intense discussions of unjust police brutality in Ferguson, MO, unjust (and never-ending) invasions of Iraq to combat against ISIS, kids (and everyone else) being fucking bombed in Palestine and even more cops killing innocent people in St Louis. We usually followed that up with long stints of looking out the car window at beautiful mountains while listening to heartbreaking music.
     While traveling, we all separately (and together) had a great time, but these issues stayed in the back of our minds. At one point, I watched someone accidentally fall from over 15 feet up and immediately go unconscious. I was surrounded by drunk punks on all sides and was immediately ready to put my meager medic training to good use. Luckily, the woman with the face tattoos who I had just met was a nurse. Another woman was a medic. My travel partner from the needle exchange was on the phone with 911. CPR was being administered. Everyone else was collecting all the dogs, opening up the gates, giving people space...no one panicked. It was intense, but everyone (by everyone, I mean over 150 drunk punks and dirtbags) did exactly the right thing and the paramedics were wheeling the person out within 10 minutes. They're gonna live. Trust me, if shit ever goes down, I want to be surrounded by smart punks like that and not a bunch of fucking norms.
   In the midst of all of this, a friend of a friend in the community had just taken their own life. I didn't know them, but it had directly affected nearly everyone around me. I found myself vacationing in their town while everyone was in various states of crisis, disbelief, shock or self-care (or self-harm). I spent my time reading on the sidewalk, laying in the park, giving all of my anti-anxiety meds to people in shock and hanging out at the punk show. I didn't know what else to do.
   In a meager attempt to make a long story short, I have been finding it hard to just simply and casually write about a punk band's demo when there is just such an overwhelming amount of fucked up shit happening in the world (to put it into the simplest terms possible). Concurrently, I still want to actively put positive energy into the world or I will crumble up into a depressed, unwashed, slimy ball of a useless human being and never leave the four walls of my tiny room ever again. So, here's your fucking demo....
    4RVR 21 played the basement punk show that I went to in Olympia, WA. In the beautiful spirit of everything punk, they had formed their band less than a week before the show, wrote three songs, learned a cover song AND recorded a demo. This demo is being posted online within a week of the band forming. Purportedly, the show I attended was rumored to be the only show that the band will ever play, but time will tell the truth. During their set, their singer Jeff made some sort of off-hand comment about insurrectionary anarchists having their rent paid by their parents, which later led to him being angrily confronted and pulled into a lengthy discussion with the anarchists about the things he said. I think it's important to back up the things that you say and I'm sure that I'm missing some nuances of Olympia life, but....I thought about Gaza, Ferguson, the cops, Iraq, ISIS, people getting concussions, people taking their own lives, children getting bombed, the ever tightening grip of the all-encompassing police state that we find ourselves living in and I thought to myself, "You have nothing better to do than get unreasonably upset over an off hand comment made to 20 people in a basement?"

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Members of SHARKPACT, OUTLOOK, THE CHAIN, (legendary band) SOCKS N SANDALS and many more. 

Thanks to Alex, Ken, Shannon and Millie for making me leave town. Thanks to Mary, Claire, Punkall, 5D, Tammy, Hayes, Cinder, Goddammit Pat, The Quack, Erin, Marat, Katie B, Spikey Mikey Warm Napkin, Chop Kong, B-Man, Lucy and so many more for keeping it really, truly real. 

SOCKS & SANDALS - "No Biggie" - Tape - 2009

   I had to take a break from the blog for a minute to move my hundreds and hundreds of tapes to a different location (in addition to all of my other belongings), but this remote cave on a cliff overlooking the Adriatic Sea seems like a good fit for me. Back to the music. 

   During the break, I got a few submissions and some good new tapes, so maybe I'll throw those out over the next few weeks. Maybe I'll just dig up another forgotten band from 85 years ago. I don't really know. Today, I'm bringing you a submission from my friend, Alex Turner, who you may have seen working behind the merch table at a SHARKPACT show or you may have seen him setting up the lighting for the recent BEYONCE shit-show in SF. Here he is to tell you what little information is known about the legendary, short-lived band SOCKS & SANDALS. 

   SOCKS & SANDALS was a mysterious group with obvious 90210 influences. Little is known about this (self-described) very influential Olympia band. The members have split up between Olympia and New Orleans. They can be seen playing in THE CHAIN, CHIN UP MERIWETHER, RVIVR, SHARKPACT and ROCK BOTTOM GIRLS.

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YOUR HEART BREAKS / STEBMO / KARL BLAU / TEAM GINA / LAKE - "Sensual Seduction / The Right Stuff" - Cassingle - 2008

 To start off this entry, I would like to point out that this is the 420th post on the blog and that ties into the reasoning for posting this today. I don't care about weed, but a lot of people do, so this is for them...I guess. Are potheads into this kind of shit? I don't give a fuck.
  What we have here is a two song cassingle of some totally ridiculous shit, which is the perfect kind of music to put on such a format. In what could possibly be one of the more bizarre DIY collaborations in recent years, members of YOUR HEART BREAKS, TEAM GINA, SUNN O))), EARTH, LAKE and KARL BLAU team up to bring you their own special versions of SNOOP DOGG's "Sensual Seduction" and NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK's "The Right Stuff".  I mean, what more can I tell you? Happy 420th post!

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What's possibly even more ridiculous is that this tape was pressed onto a 7" record with spray painted (??) covers. I have one. If you want your own, click over to Off Tempo to order one.

COLD LAKE - "Live on KEXP" - Tape - 2010

  I met my friend Clyde way back in the early part of the 00's when he played guitar in an old time band. I even went on tour as their roadie after walking out of my shitty kitchen job. I lived in Clyde's room for a short time after that tour and would listen to old tapes of his long-running (and still running) band, YOUR HEART BREAKS while hiding from the world outside. These times made me associate Clyde's musical output with old-time music, homo-pop love songs and punk songs about fucking on rooftops.
  That's why I was surprised when Clyde handed me this tape a few years ago and said "Here's a live recording of my new hardcore band!" Like all of us, Clyde is multi-faceted and sometimes wants to play a short-scale bass through an amp that could kill you while screaming their fucking head off. So, he got this band together with some old, old friends in Seattle and made it happen. Corey, James and Zachary handle the vocals, guitar and drums respectively and take their influences from a place where I never took mine, so I don't really know what they are, but I'm gonna take a guess that it's a lot of thickneck 90's hardcore from the Pacific Northwest with singers who sound like they wear cardigans.
   This tape features 4 songs from a live broadcast on KEXP in Seattle and oh-my-god-the-bass-is-loud-in-the-mix, but it still rules. The fifth song is a demo for a comp the band was on. The band went on to put out two tapes that came packaged in a DVD-sized box along with a box-cutter. If you'd like to hear that stuff, look over to the COLD LAKE bandcamp. If you want the box set, I think you're shit outta luck.

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SHORE BIRDS / SON SKULL / COMIN' UP ROSES - "Oly Punks Tour '07" - Tape - 2007

   I'm back from travels and it feels good (sort of) to be back home. I stared into dark oceans, looked into the fire, went on a 40 mile bike ride, hung out in the rain, lived life and all that. I have a lot of good stuff lined up for sharing online and I'm starting off with a contribution from my good friend, Alex Turner. Here he is to tell you about it....

   2007. Upwards of 15 people. 2 Vans. 3 Bands. 5 or 6 shows (Olympia, Portland, Oakland, Berkeley, Arcata, Eugene)? 10 days? I don't really know how it all came together, or didn't come together but in 2007 COMIN UP ROSES, SHOREBIRDS, and SON SKULL all went on a west coast tour together, and put out this tape for the occasion. I was there as a nanny for Lilly, Erica was there to help drive, Brother Ben is just really helpful, Kendra and Tinsel, we picked up in the bay, Lilly was almost 2 and Frida was in Mary's belly. Matti, Hendo, The B-Man, Swire, Mary, Nell and Hayes made up the bands. I hope I didn't forget anyone. Thinking back on it, it seems like we were on tour forever, but also I can't remember that many shows, and we went 'tour' camping at least a few times.
    It was one of those times in life where you and your friends felt invincible to the world. What we were doing was the most important and interesting thing, and that we would all be friends forever. This, of course, didn't turn out to be true. We had a lot of fun on that tour and the time leading up to it, and afterwards, as the house it was all centered around (rumbletowne) was evicted it all seemed to loose some steam. Anyways these three bands were great! I had a blast at (nearly) every show that all three of them ever played. I miss some of the friendships and that moment in time, but they are what they were. 
    Thanks to lilly, the track house, the yellow van, olympia, rumbletowne, the glass house, and milk egg.

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PIG HEART TRANSPLANT - "Land Of Marred Normalcy" - Tape - 2007

   I JUST DRANK WAY TOO MUCH COFFEE AND I'M FREAKING OUT!! Anyway, This is perfect for the anxiety-inducing part of a major coffee buzz, but maybe not in the way you might expect. PIG HEART TRANSPLANT is/was the project of my neighbor, Jon Kortland, who is one half of the rumbling mind-fuck that is known as IRON LUNG. Just about everything those guys touch is unstoppable and this tape is no exception. Noise, digital static, tape manipulation, fucked up guitars, industrial landscapes and howling cacophonies all combine to provide a deeply challenging but satisfying listen. I was listening to this on headphones once while trying to go to sleep in a pitch black boxcar and got so freaked out that I had to turn it off. Music can move one in many ways and that is one of those ways that I truly enjoy.

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   Sorry for the lack of consistent updates lately. Real life has been really real and extremely busy with non-digital happenings as of late. I'm going to make a more concerted effort to update this more regularly and I'm even going to pay more attention to improving the writing. With this entry, the blog has been viewed over 200,000 times, which means that someone somewhere might be paying attention. Thanks to longtime readers, supporters and people who just stumbled upon this and enjoyed it. Thanks also to naysayers, critics and shit-talkers. It takes all kinds to make the world go round. See you soon. 

BROKEN STRINGS / ICKY GIRLFRIENDS - Split - Tape- 2006

   I was just gonna write "fuck you" for the entire text for this one, but then decided against it. I don't really know anything about this tape. BROKEN STRINGS is Adam from TOMMY LASORDA, RAINBOW BRIDGE and LOS RABBIS playing home recorded solo stuff. He put out an LP a few years ago under this name that was just phenomenal. These two songs are more lo-fi (somehow) and "out there". I like them a lot.
  ICKY GIRLFRIENDS were screaming out of weird little holes in the Bay Area some years back and they completely eluded any notice from me. I never really knew they were there until they were gone. This tape is the only thing I've ever heard by them and it sounds like screamy, bratty teenagers having more fun than I was in 2006. Their full length CD is still available from Starcleaner.

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This one is from the bag of Mike Wilson's tapes on my floor.

TOMMY LASORDA - "Live At The End of the World" - 2002

   Yesterday, I probably told you everything I know about TOMMY LASORDA, so today is devoted to things I don't know about them. As mentioned previously, Mike from TOMMY LASORDA got in touch and sent over a live set that was intended for an album, but never saw the light of day. So, I'm featuring it here for the first time. Here's what Mike has to say about it....

 The show on this album was the first day of what turned out to be Tommy's longest tour, five weeks all over the country. We set off in a minivan with tons of oatmeal and spaghetti which we made anywhere we could along the way. I'm pretty sure that was all we ate the entire trip. Going into the Frontier restaurant in Albuquerque to get hot water for the oats, we saw Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top getting into a limousine. (Coincidentally we would skip our show with Fleshies and Sexy in Albuquerque on a later tour to see the Top at the local amphitheater.) Later on this tour we played for a room full of neo-Nazis in St. Louis who were really, really into us. We ended up canceling our last show in northern Montana after spinning out on a snow-covered mountain pass en route. We were so freaked out that we turned right around and drove all the way back to SF in time to see the Melvins at Slim's. They were awesome.

TL in Tulsa, OK with Hammy from FLESHIES on 2nd drums. Photo provided by the band.

   This show was at a teen center called The Don in Visalia, CA on 4 April, 2002. Despite our frequent onstage pleas for a place to crash, we ended up sleeping in the van, but the guy that recorded this did give us a Danelectro distortion pedal after watching us pause in the middle of all of our songs to manually push the button on Adam's Sunn bass head. That amp was really loud but a huge pain in the butt, as evidenced by our broken amp song on here, played by Adam while I changed a fuse. We were constantly having to change fuses and the tubes were shot like, once a month it seemed. Most of the songs on here that aren't on the tape or the 7" were going to be on our LP which only ever got halfway recorded. The exception is "Lloyd", which was going to be on a split 10" with the Ovens, which also never came out.

    Five or six years ago, I started a label called Swiss Army Records just because I wanted to release a 7" from San Pedro's Can of Beans. I later ended up putting out a 7" by my instrumental band Chinese and a full-length by my quieter pop band Sorry Safari. The label unceremoniously folded before I could release the Lasorda live album (as well as Sorry Safari's second album). Adam and I created some album art for this live joint, Adam did the cover on glossy silver paper and mixed it with glitter and construction paper. The insert was going to be pictures of kids slam dancing at small town shows we had played on tour. I've been able to track down the photos of the punks but the cover art is nowhere to be found. 

Thanks to Mike and Adam for everything and without further ado....

Download Live At The End of the World. updated aug 2013


(not the same show)

TOMMY LASORDA - Demo Tape and 7" EP - 2001-2003

   You may remember a while back when I told you about the teenage punk band LOS RABBIS and all of their exploits (or some of them) in the Bay Area. Mike and Adam, who made up half of that band were also wailing away at another band called TOMMY LASORDA, where they constantly traded off instrument duties. The latter appeared to take the teenage freakout abandon of LOS RABBIS and mold it into wildly addictive pop hooks. They didn't ever have an easily classifiable sound, but they seemed to take equal parts of HICKEY, MELVINS, BEAT HAPPENING and anything else rattling around on their bedroom floors and just meld it into some kind of low-fi hodge-podge that was wholly their own.

"Planetary explorers" - Provided by the band.

   LOS RABBIS were supposed to come to Chattanooga many years ago when I lived there, but they ended up cancelling due to a family emergency (possibly?). Less than a year later, I got a call from Mike or Adam asking if there was a show that TOMMY LASORDA could jump onto that night because they would be driving though Chattanooga. Luckily, there was already a show set up for RESIN at our all-ages space, so I told them they could jump onto the show, even though I had never seen or heard TOMMY LASORDA in my life. They showed up in a busted ass minivan and loaded out their shit to play first. They played their hearts out to the 20 or so people in attendance, belting out two-minute-or-less ragged punk songs; each one better than the last. At the end of their set, they played "King Solomon's Reef" (included on demo tape), which is a complete departure from all of their other songs (to put it lightly) and blew my mind. I didn't watch the other bands that night because I knew that it wouldn't get any better than that (luckily, for the other touring band, the room soon filled up with people and weed smoke).

TOMMY LASORDA live at Rear Entry in Chattanooga. Photos by me.

    Later, after I moved out to SF, I was "working" one day at Mission Records when Adam and Mike walked in. They asked if they could borrow an extension cord. I rummaged around and found one behind the counter. I asked what they needed it for and Mike casually said that they were going to play a set at the BART station as the two of them walked out the door. Sarah T and I hurriedly locked up the gate to the store and rushed down there. Five minutes later, I saw one of the best sets I ever saw by the band in the middle of the day, as they played to drunks, freaks, commuters and addicts on the street corner. Mike started off the set by saying "Hi, we're TOMMY LASORDA and we really don't give a fuck!"

TOMMY LASORDA at 16th and Mission (a different time). Pic provided by the band.

   This download includes both the band's demo tape and 7" Ep, which was released by S.P.A.M. Records. The demo tape is chock full of classics, in my mind. The tape kicks off with "I Can't Swim", which passes itself off as a lackadaisical pop song until the screaming kicks in. Its followed by "Artful Dodger", which is a slice of catchy genius. Later in the tape, the listener is greeted by "Mr. Frogman Superhero", a song that suffers from something I like to call "The Sugar Bear Syndrome". Let me explain. When I first heard the beginning of the song "Sugar Bear" by THE BANANAS, I thought "Oh my god, this song has stupid cutesy lyrics. I almost can't listen to this". Then, the whole band kicked in and it became the best thing ever. This TL song did the same thing to me when I first heard it. Recently, I listened to the TOMMY LASORDA song 20 times in a row and loved it every time (nevermind that I was on a plane over the Grand Canyon, freaking out and on pills). The EP does not let up one bit and is just as good as the tape. "Racing My Ego" off of that record has been a mixtape staple for years. 

   As I've mentioned before, maintaining this blog has put me in touch with a lot of unexpected people. One of those unexpected people is Mike from TOMMY LASORDA / LOS RABBIS. He was nice enough to send some unreleased TOMMY LASORDA recordings (check back tomorrow!) and he got together with Adam (digitally) to answer some of my dumb questions. So, here is an interview with TOMMY LASORDA....

Remote Outposts: First off, why the name Tommy Lasorda? Really, why any band name? But specifically, is there any meaning behind the band name?

 Adam: I’ve always thought of it as just an opener, a first move, a gambit. I can not recall when we actually thought of the name or if any decision making process actually even occurred. Personally, I believe the name had something to do with the canary yellow walls of the room we dubbed our tapes in. Then, it may have went something like this: Kirk Gibson? No. Fernando Valenzuela? Naw. Sandy Koufax? Naw. Yeah. Maybe. Orel Hershiser! Yeahhhnaw. Should we just be Lenny Dykstra? Dykstra? Dykstra! Yeah. Dykstra! Probably. No. For all I know, that may have been more a’ pro pro. Hindsights 40/40-- a hot bat, many a-stolen bags, and an above average amount of base hits.

 Mike: Because Boone Logan wasn’t in the Majors yet.

 Adam: Because Tommy Lasorda was in the Majors. Because Logan Hatch didn’t exist yet.

 RO: I could never really figure out if your band was from the Bay Area or Olympia? In the long run, it really doesn’t matter, but what would you say?

 Adam: Olympia. Shortly after Y2K.

 Mike: After high school everyone went off to far-flung colleges except me. I stayed in the Bay Area and enrolled at Skyline Community College only to drop out and spend all day at the Burlingame library. When I exhausted all of their books on silent movies and lucid dreaming, I moved up to Olympia where Adam was enrolled at Evergreen. I convinced him to drop out. We shared a bedroom at a house on Edison St. near Ralph’s Thriftway, both of us paying $100 a month in rent. Tommy Lasorda started in the basement of that house. We moved back and forth between Olympia and the Bay Area a couple of times during the band’s lifespan but the germ of the band began in Olympia. Olympia was good for us because it was a scene we had absolutely nothing to do with. We played maybe four shows in town the entire time we lived there. We spent all of our free time in the basement writing songs.

 Adam: Far-flung.

 Mike: Flung far.

 RO: The band started pretty soon after the disbandment of LOS RABBIS. What made the two of you keep playing together?

Mike: That’s actually a bit of a misconception. Los Rabbis was still a seasonal concern while Tommy was around. For a few years, the four of us would get together in the summer when school got out and go on a multi-week tour. Tommy Lasorda was basically what Adam and I did while Dean and Mike were in school. This caused tension down the line because at a couple of points I felt like we shouldn’t have to put Tommy on hold so Los Rabbis could re-form. It felt like we hindered ourselves by putting everything on pause for two or three months.

 Adam: Music, like a Maui timeshare: its amazing that we made it, even if but for the few times that we did!

 RO: LOS RABBIS, to me, seemed like pure unbridled teenage anger but still had a goofy, almost nerdy edge to it. Tommy Lasorda definitely retained that edge but seemed more focused on writing unhinged pop songs. Was that intentional? Were you guys just trying to be a pop band that was informed by the MELVINS?

Adam: A few descriptions I’ve heard: Dirt Pop, Camaro Rock, and Two Man Rock Armada--there may be more. We had an interesting amp-to-speaker ratio with some decent output levels. We had some fairly oversized drum skins and cymbal radii to contend with and we just kinda took it from there -- worked within that framework. Occasionally the circuits got hot, the sticks got hotter, and at that point some might have said they were in to see a pretty good fight.

 Mike: Nothing was planned, it was just a natural progression of where our mutual musical tastes were headed. As most people probably do when they move to Olympia, we were listening to a lot of Beat Happening at the time. But also a lot of godheadSilo and the Wu-Tang Clan. The Melvins were always a constant, more as a template for what was possible than actually trying to sound like them, although we played a few shows, most notably in a Manhattan bar, where we did all Melvins sets.

 RO: I got your band on a show in Chattanooga where you won the audience over with your catchy songs. At the end, you asked if you had time to play one more and then played “King Solomon’s Reef” (from the tape), which kinda blew everyone’s minds. What’s up with that song? It’s totally different from everything else, really intricate and weird. What was the inspiration for it? (besides maybe the diner in Olympia?)

Adam: Riff obsessed demolition derby Robert Christgau has never dissected. A+

 Mike: “King Solomon’s Reef” was a test. We basically wanted to see if we could do it. The jury is still out on if we succeeded. A lot of that was written outside the basement while we walked around town, just vocally passing off riffs and fills. We woodshedded it for hours and just kept adding more parts to it. The very beginning is a direct rip-off of the song “Charlotte” by the all-girl Canadian metal band Kittie, who we were kind of obsessed with at the time.

 Adam: We wanted to be actual “merchants of the riff”...like “Hey..(opens coat)...would you like to see a riff collection...allow us to respectfully pull out a few licks...tell us if you see anything you like or should I say lick...oh?...(sigh)...that one’s not for sale...

 Mike: Speaking of that show in Chattanooga, there was a local guy there filming all of the bands that night and he asked us what our band name was. We said “Tommy Lasorda” but he didn’t understand us and all night he kept calling us “Time and Disorder”, which is still the greatest punk rock band name ever. That’s what Adam says at the beginning of “Punkest Girl in Town” on the 7”.

 Adam: I also say The Reef should change it up and try going with “King Solomon’s Riff” for a while.

 RO: What do you guys have against bass players? Tommy Lasorda, Chinese, Poser Posse, Rainbow Bridge, etc,etc...No bass.

 Adam: On one hand, the lack of traditional and/or orthodox lineups is to warn against the pratfalls of anti-establishment ethos and lifestyle; a visual, if you will, symbol. On the other hand it shows and proves that there is quite possibly many more and still, yet another way. Bassist wishlist: Old St. Nick, Mickey (and Minnie!) Mouse, Vaclav Havel, Don Rickles (No!), Branch Rickey.

 Mike: And Thelma Ritter.

 Adam: A symbol, if you will.

 Mike: Our next band will be ALL bass. No drums, no guitars, no performers. Just six or seven basses all lined up in a blue bedroom. Not even plugged in.

 RO: Speaking of Poser Posse, what led to the formation of that band? (for the reader, Tommy Lasorda was Mike and Adam switching off between drums and guitar. Poser Posse was Mike and Adam both playing guitars with a drummer.)

 Mike: Like Los Rabbis, Poser Posse was originally a Dean and Adam project. They started playing with Patrick at his house in Oakland and I went along once or twice before weaseling my way into the band. Dean ended up leaving to do a million more important things while the three of us ate burritos, talked about burritos, and covered The Flying Burrito Brothers.

 Adam: The name Poser Posse originated in Olympia, but truly it could have been discovered anywhere.

 RO: What is your favorite MELVINS song and why?

 Mike: Easy. “The Fool, the Meddling Idiot” off of the band’s best album, 2002’s Hostile Ambient Takeover. There are three components that make up the Melvins’ music: heavy, noisy, and pretty; and over its generous seven-and-a-half minutes “The Fool, the Meddling Idiot” covers all of these bases with utter aplomb. It is the perfect desert island selection. The song contains some crazy ass Kevin Rutmanis slide bass, a terrifyingly awesome vocal performance from Buzz, and one of Dale Crover’s greatest drum fills. Oh, and it ends with a coda that sounds like Captain Beefheart writing music for Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion.

RO: That is also my favorite Melvins album!

 Adam: There is one song that comes to mind, one song any Melvinaut should they, if they have not already, take some time to seek out. This one song is a b-side that begins with some talk about a “Principal’s Office” before settling into a nice, easy groove. The title and lyrics rhyme with “Banal Straighten”.

RO: I have no idea what you're talking about but it made me think about their Mott The Hoople cover, which is awesome....oh wait, I have that 7".

 Mike: Wait, is it too late to change my answer?

 RO: Guest question from Morgan Stickrod: Just to see if your views have changed over time, which La Cumbre taqueria is the best, in your opinion? The one in SF or the one in San Mateo?

 Mike: Well, the San Francisco La Cumbre has way better tortillas but the San Mateo one has a framed photograph of Los Rabbis hanging above the door, so the best one is the El Farolito in South San Francisco. 650!

 Adam: I fondly remember a wonderful summer time deluxe burrito from La Cumbre in San Mateo. It was really, really, really, really good. I was very impressed and it was far and away more better than the usual “its just as good as I remember, but even better,” burrito. Honestly, I just cannot tell you the last time I remember eating a burrito in that ol’ Baghdad by the Bay--so San Mateo, handily.

 RO: And since we are not living in the past, and I have no desire to do so....what projects are you both working on these days?

 Mike: I have spent the last year working on a book of essays about Disney movies. That should be coming out soon. My brother and I have also been working for the last couple of years on a hip-hop concept album all about, and for, our father. It was originally going to be a Father’s Day present, then birthday, then Christmas, and then the year was over and the cycle started again. The songs are about the Green Bay Packers, Steely Dan, and living in a retirement community in Santa Rosa. It’s my magnum opus.

 Adam: Work? I like a recently cleared desk. Thanks for the questions!

Download TOMMY LASORDA Tape and EP
Updated Aug 2013

Check back tomorrow for more from this band.

Thanks to Morgan Stickrod for loaning out the tape to digitize (mine broke years ago) and to the MRR house for their advanced digitizing capabilities.

FUCK YEA! AVOCADO / MAURICE'S LITTLE BASTARDS - Split - Tape - 2001

   Morgan (from SHARP KNIFE, STAMPEDE and TULSA), Dean (also from STAMPEDE and LOS RABBIS) teamed up with a person named Zane (who remains mysterious to me) to bring you this ridiculously monikered band, FUCK YEA! AVOCADO...actually, come to think of it, it's not that ridiculous. If you live in San Francisco, buy avocados from the corner store and put them in your sandwich, you'd probably feel the same way. Avocados are different out here. Trust me on this one.
   Anyway, FUCK YEA! AVOCADO were around for the shortest of times out here in SF and put out this screamy tape of fucked up sounding, breakneck-speed, melodic punk. According to Morgan, there is a VHS tape somewhere of their one tour on the Northwest, where every show was a renegade / generator show. In Portland, they played on a half-sunken pirate ship. In Seattle, they played on the street. On the ferry to Bainbridge Island, they played in the bathroom...etc,etc...
    Speaking of Bainbridge Island, that is where MAURICE'S LITTLE BASTARDS hailed from. I hardly know anything about them except they took their clothes off a lot and their songs seem to be about masturbation and stuff. Fast, catchy punk. Maybe you'll like it? Justin from this band went on to play in CLOROX GIRLS.

DOWNLOAD
UPDATED 3/2015

I can only describe the sound quality as "assy"

This tape comes from the mysterious paper bag of Mike Wilson.

RVIVR - Demo - Tape - 2008

  In 2008, I went to see RVIVR, not knowing anything about them besides that Matt from LATTERMAN was in the band. I never liked LATTERMAN at all (sorry Matt) so I didn't really have high hopes for this new band. I was pleasantly surprised to hear energetic "crust-pop" with female and male vocals sharing the microphone. I feel pretty lucky to have seen them at that time, when they were still in the formative stages and figuring out what they wanted to do. I mean, I still go to see them now too, but I usually don't have the energy to wrestle with 200 other people to catch a glimpse of my friends playing music in a basement or a warehouse. Often, I feel like I'm running after a train that just left the station, if that makes any sense.

     This demo is the first thing they ever put out and was only available for a West Coast tour in an edition of 50, or something like that. It only has three songs that were all re-recorded later for their first 7"s. For a demo, it's pretty fuckin' great and shows the band's early confidence in songwriting that has only gotten stronger over time....and here comes the weirdest comparison I've had in quite a while. "Can't Stand It" really reminds me of KISS in the weirdest way (If you want a glimpse into my mind, synch up the chorus of the RVIVR song with video [no sound] of KISS at 1:50). None of this makes sense. You're just here to download the demo anyway, so get on with it and get out of here. Get out of my house!!

Download RVIVR
Re-uploaded Jan 2016

RECKLESS - "Taking A Beating" - Tape - 2010

   I'm just gonna go ahead and put this out there. I've only ever said this to my friend, Alex because it's just hella embarrassing and misleading, but the first time I heard RECKLESS, I thought they sounded sort of like THE DISTILLERS (p.s. I like THE DISTILLERS). Now, becoming more acquainted with the band, I don't hear that at all anymore, but I just thought I would get that weird tidbit out of the way.
  Anyhow, RECKLESS are real, living, breathing punks...not fake posers who look the part and put out records on major labels. They play melodic, driving punk that loosely connects with the (unfortunately-named) sub-sect of crust-pop that permeates the Pacific Northwest, like SNUGGLE, COUCH WAR (sorry, that one is really obscure if you're not from Seattle) and SOMETHING'S WRONG. The first time I saw them was at a pretty boring bar show in San Francisco, but when they played, a ton of punk kids busted through the doors, started wildly dancing and throwing each other all over the place. It made it a lot more fun and the band sounded great. I have since seen them play better shows in record stores and on the street in SF.

Here is the band somewhere. Photo by someone.

   This tape was the band's first recording and they put the sounds to tape in the living room at the FBK, one of the USA's punkest punk houses. It was late, muddy and rainy. The band was drunk and laughing. There was a moment when Chainsaw (vox/guitar) was doing the vocal tracks in the gross-ass bathroom and she started puking, mid-song. The band could not stop laughing at her. I wish that moment was on this tape, but unfortunately, it isn't. 

FBK bathroom. Photo by Alex Turner.

   RECKLESS went on to put out an LP that got a horrendously uninformed and unfair review in Maximum Rock N Roll. I'm convinced that the reviewer did not listen to the record on the right speed and never noticed, somehow. The record is great though! Then, the band went on a US tour, Chainsaw moved to Mexico City and the band broke up. You can now find their guitarist, Craig playing in KOHOSH and setting up bad-ass DIY shows in Seattle. Their bass player on this recording, (Godamnit) Pat moved to Kansas City, MO and played in STREET LEGAL until they broke up (or I think they broke up...don't quote me on that). I have no clue what their drummer is doing. As mentioned before, Chainsaw moved to Mexico City and has the cutest puppy known to humankind. It's too much.

Download RECKLESS

Radio, the puppy
Thanks to Craig for info.

DRAW THE LINES - Olympia Music Compilation - Tape - 2011

   I was tricked into buying this tape, but that's okay because it's really good. You see, I ran into the band DOGJAW a couple of times and our bands even played together in Seattle last year. I like them a lot. They play slow, driving, droning music with two intertwining female voices that are both haunting and commanding. I saw them play at a great house show in SF and wanted to buy something by them. I bought this tape without looking at the track listing and then later realized that it was a compilation of bands from their hometown of Olympia, Washington. Their guitarist, Meg offered my money back when I said something about it, but I decided to keep it because DOGJAW are quality folks and I would expect them to have some quality shit with them on their tour. I was right.
   DOGJAW opens up this tape with two sprawling, beautiful, epic songs that break the ten minute mark (combined). They are followed by CRUDE THOUGHT who blast through 3 fast, driving punk songs. Bay Area locals may be happy to know that CRUDE THOUGHT will be in the area at the end of February with the ultra-hyped (all deserved) HYSTERICS. (also, DOGJAW will be here again in March). Next up is ANASTATICA, who I initially wrote off as being kinda dramatic and hokey, but then they grew on me immediately and became one of my favorite songs on this comp. It's super stripped down, DIY, feminist black metal. Unfortunately, they broke up, so my hopes of headbanging to these songs live, ever so slowly and forcefully are now dashed. They remind me of the best parts (read: all of it) of the acoustic songs by DOOMSDAY CAULDRON. Next up, I feel like DOGJAW (the organizers of this comp, I believe) is trying to pull one over on me by throwing in a French band called BIT PART. They're from France, right? Is there an Olympian BIT PART? I don't know, but whatever nationality they choose, they are fast, punk and great. Side two starts of with HARK HOW THE BELLS, which takes a few songs from their demo, which you can find by clicking on that link. PITTED YOUTH follows it up with a dirge-y, screamy approach that rules. I regret not watching them when my band played with them, but I was just too sweaty and tired to deal with anything (because I'm old). MARGY PEPPER is kinda minimalist and reminds me of early K Records stuff. BROKEN WATER closes out the tape with a ruling song that sounds like it could have been out an outtake from "Daydream Nation" with elements of MY BLOODY VALENTINE, which I'm sure they're not too happy to hear, but that's what it sounds like to me. Deal with it.

Download DRAW THE LINES

If you'd like to get your own copy of this tape, don't hesitate to write to dogjawolympia@gmail.com and they will hook you up.