New Links #5: An Interview with the Mitchell Brothers

Hi Again,

The fourth TLASILA album (at least from a chronological perspective), An Interview with the Mitchell Brothers was created in a single day (August 11, 1995) in response to a dare issued by Sir Ned Hayden of the august Audible Hiss imprint. Using Kenneth Turan's invaluable 1980 reference work Sinema: American Pornographic Films and the People Who Make Them as my primary template, I dashed out ten lyrics and edited the cut-up backdrops over which Ben and Rat would shade and abrade. We hit record, tracked the lot, and then the boys cleared out to prowl the night. Meanwhile, I mixed until morning. There was no mastering stage - we went straight from studio to CD-R (which took about two hours to burn in those hoary old days). Ned had asked us to deliver a 45-minute album, so we had to leave off "Desires for Men" (the songs on the album took their names from titles of films directed by the ill-fated Artie and Jim Mitchell); "Desires" eventually appeared on the Les Tricoteuses album (which was completed in 1996 but remained unissued until 2008, when Savage Land stepped in to suture the breach to temporality.

Here.



Above, the original sleeve, created by the great Syd Garon and rejected by Caroline/EMI's lawyers. We ultimately were forced to choose a less scabrous image. (See below.)



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01 Kopenhagen Lounge
02 Flesh and Brimstone
03 Scrimshaw Woman
04 The Resurrection of Eve
05 Beyond De Sade
06 Never a Tender Moment
07 CB Mamas
08 Inside Marilyn Chambers
09 Sodom and Gomorrah

Engineered at The Studio, Miami, on August 11, 1995 by Rat Bastard (bass parts only) and Tom Smith (the rest).

Mixed and Produced by Tom Smith.

Tom Smith - voice, tape edits, shortwave
Rat Bastard - bass
Ben Wolcott - oscillators

Music Tom Smith & TLASILA / Lyrics TS

New Links #4: Vedder Vedder Bedwetter (rejected contiguous mix)

For your continued aggrandizement: the original, rejected version of To Live and Shave in L.A.'s 1995 album Vedder Vedder Bedwetter, mixed as a contiguous seventy-one minute track. For hardier souls and well-lubed spools...



Here.

Yours, as ever,

Tom

New Links #3: Vedder Vedder Bedwetter (release version)

To Live and Shave in L.A.'s first full-length album of 1995, Vedder Vedder Bedwetter, in which my preoccupations with Rashomon, Pound, King Tubby, and (ahem) power-fucking were co-mingled in an ungovernable torrent of splintered hubris. Whatever "full-on insane" you think you have, believe me, we beat you to it, forever.



Links to the Fifth Column release version here; the original, rejected contiguous mix will be posted here tomorrow!

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To Live and Shave in L.A. - Vedder Vedder Bedwetter (original 1995 release version)

01 5 Seconds Off Your Ass (3:26)
02 Grams, Paths (0:25)
03 Pig Off, Ass Full (1:40)
04 Bucks, Rears and Throws the Rider (2:34)
05 Dungstar Supervivisect! (0:28)
06 Throws Cunt a Tear (2:10)
07 O. Ruddock d. "H.S. Mauberly" (0:27)
08 Long-Drawn and Staccato "Lousy Dime" (2:34)
09 Shits Upon the Debris and Burns (3:04)
10 Handballed Viet Clasp (0:24)
11 The The, Which Radiance Overdrenched (2:59)
12 In Such Wise She Cannot Stir (3:15)
13 Miff Mole, Witch-Leery Scot (0:28)
14 Shut the Second She Clawed (3:15)
15 Rug Trilogy: Christus (0:21)
16 Like the Two-Part Nod (3:20)
17 Nigh to the HM Threshold (3:22)
18 M. Polk, Prop. (0:32)
19 Cobwebs with "Trap" Primrose (3:28)
20 "Glas" Employed an Urn (0:28)
21 Schwann Death in June Reference (5:00)
22 "Good Bait" Made Butt of Insult (0:40)
23 The Sink Mentioned in the Scriptures (3:12)
24 Rubberist, Unwept (0:22)
25 The The Perms (3:20)
26 And Hammer, the Crown of Thorns (1:56)
27 From Gloss "Polytope" Flexi (0:25)
28 "A," the Swinging She-River (2:05)
29 Blind Hole Without a Piss-Eye (2:45)
30 "Ulaume"/Fram Decal Split (0:27)
31 Brother Falling, Twat from Fool (2:41)
32 Left Bro. at Doors (3:46)
33 T.C.B. Drop-Skirt (0:52)
34 Die, One and Five (4:59)

Recorded at Waterworks, New York; The Studio, Miami; Lounge Ax, Chicago; Zoot's, Detroit; Local 506, Chapel Hill; The Knitting Factory, New York, and The Green Room, Ypsilanti, from December 1994 to February 1995 by Greg Tallenfeld (Waterworks), Rat Bastard (bass engineering at The Studio), and Tom Smith (everything else, plus a few tracks recorded at Waterworks).

Tom Smith - voice and exteriors
Rat Bastard - bass
Ben Wolcott - oscillator and treatments

Bill Orcutt - guitar
Don Fleming - guitar and backing vocals
Ned Hayden - alto sax
Jared Louche (nee Hendrickson) - guitar and backing vocals
Nandor Nevai - trombone
Weasel Walter - tenor sax

Music Tom Smith & TLASILA / Lyrics TS.

Mixed and Produced by Tom Smith.

New Links #2: "Helen Butte" vs. Masonna Pussy Badsmell!

Hello Droogs,

Continuing: TLASILA's second full-length album, "Helen Butte" vs. Masonna Pussy Badsmell. Recording began in June 1994 at the Studio, Miami (two live tracks recorded at Churchill's, the infamous Little Haiti nightspot, were also included), and was completed in October. (Note: many of the album's backing tracks were re-edited versions of cut-ups I'd completed in 1985 for Peach of Immortality's 'E' Making of Salisbury epic!) Bulb Records were originally scheduled to issue the album around Thanksgiving '94, but inter-label rancor scuttled the release. Eventually, Full Contact, a short-lived offshoot of the soon-to-be-doomed Fifth Column logo cabal, dumped the disc into the nation's cut-out bins rather later than planned: 1996. Fuck. We suffered quite a lot of blowback in those early years...

Anyhow, this album is way, way gone, and now you can go full truck stop on it at your leisure.



Link here!

Cheers,

TS

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From the info file:

To Live and Shave in L.A. - "Helen Butte" vs. Masonna Pussy Badsmell

(1994, released 1996, Full Contact CD 9868-63235.)

Avalability: long out of print.

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01 Root of Pop Compulsion
02 Tina Russell, Free
03 Take a Lot of Ofay
04 The Ass God
05 Open City '72
06 Shit If They Hit
07 Spelvin, the Righteous Bush
08 Veinsearchin'
09 Superhype Security Probe
10 My Third Decade of Ultrafuck
11 Crypt Rocket, Tomb Rocket, Turd Rocket
12 The "Six" in The Six Wolves
13 Mizrahi Speculum
14 I Learn to Inject Morphia
15 Lady Dedlock
16 Hypecuff
17 A Low Mass Will Be Said
18 I Suppress Nothing
19 Wanna Bust Up a Virgin Ass?
20 One Navel of Decline
21 Rexroth, Cozy Cool
22 I Used to Pay a Heavy Bribe
23 Kama Sutra '71
24 Anne's Eager Bottom
25 Shivman Destroys Spoonman
26 "Godspike" Soph. Hoax
27 Theresa Soder in My Hot Hands
28 Television's Over
29 "American Car"
30 Gone and Bitched Up
31 I Slur a Name
32 Tealink
33 First Pop Novice
34 Lock of Gut Twine
35 Balling Andrea True
36 Bataille = No Stipe
37 In the Assworks

Recorded June 1985 (assembled from loops created by Tom Smith for Peach of Immortality's 1985 album "'E' Making of Salisbury") and June-October 1994 by TS and Rat Bastard at The Studio and Churchill's Hideaway, Miami (tracks 4 & 19).

Mixed and produced by Tom Smith.

Tom Smith: voice, exteriors
Rat Bastard: bass
Ben Wolcott: oscillator and treatments

Music TS/TLASILA. Lyrics TS. (Except 28, music & lyrics by T.V. Smith/Adverts.)

New Links #1: 30-Minuten Männercreme!

Hello Again,

New links, as promised earlier. The first will lead you to TLASILA's debut album, 30-minuten männercreme. I wrote and produced 30-mm from August 1991 (when "Shot Your Mouth Off" began to take shape) to October 1993, the point at which I seriously began pruning the 80-odd tracks that had been assembled. Forty ultimately made the final, befouled cut. The band was just me at this early juncture, but some of the names that would later become familiar were hovering: Rat Bastard mixed eight of the 40 tracks, Bill Orcutt played guitar on two of the selections, and Oscar Perez, Tigra L'Trimm, and Tracie Phillips, all of whom appeared on the Doris Wishman-directed Spatters of a Royal Sperm long-form video, explode over several shrieking shards. I started a label called Love Is Sharing Pharmaceuticals out of my Miami Beach apartment, had 1,300 copies pressed in June 1994, and finally sold the last remaining handful in 2008. Scoop it up, dear friends, if it's rigorous aesthetic convulsion you prefer...



Here.

Cheers,

TS

New: Rope Cosmetology Web!

Hi Again,

Good news from a related front. Tim Lane Seaton, erstwhile Peach of Immortality titan and suave multimedia counter-conceptualist, recently unveiled the official Rope Cosmetology domain. It's exact and precise and perfect on all counts. Tim, one of the five core members of Ropecosm, worked on the site for as long as it took.

The rest is up to you and your itchy orbs...

Yours, still,

TS

Postscript: a cross-edict from F'buch:

Rope Cosmetology? It's the group that TLASILA morphed into following the Shave's 2008 European tour. It was too fucking obvious that the lithe, intensely focused Euro group was a far superior beast compared to the lumbering, often oafish performance of the 2007 ensemble (which on occasion featured eleven members, most of whom were hauling foul guitars from A to Zed); I needed to swim out of the morass, smash the framework, re-tool the lathe, locate the worm born of Selbstzufriedenheit, etc. And in the autumn of 2008, Ropecosm emerged. We're five years, five albums and one micro-tour into our regimen of aggressive angioplasty, and recently, co-member Tim Lane Seaton unveiled our official web. Go there, now.

Murkier Hew Receding...

Droogz,

The debut performance from Merkwürdig Riechen (a new collaborative project featuring ex-Child Abuse-r Luke Calzonetti and myself) is cuffed and gagged in the bag. One rehearsal, a few files exchanged, four new compositions conjured, one cover de-Gestalt-ed, and one of my solo vocal pieces detourned/re-deployed. Our faces ripped too-ripened facets, etc. Evidence of documentation may soon be found herein. DJ Boiled Ryce spun solid FSK sides, and all was luminous within the void...

Yours in Silver,

TS

Mega-Urgh.

Dear Comrades,

Links to several dozen official To Live and Shave in L.A. mixes, free album uploads, and other effluvia/ephemera originally posted here on TLASILA Blog are now presumed lost, due to the recent eradication of the Megaupload domain cabal. Uploads will commence ASAP; cross-linked posts will appear on our other sites...

Already quite behind schedule in 2012 - as soon as we returned from our Stateside sojourn, the avalanche began. Massive KSV update (once foolishly scheduled for December 30th) due soon.

Yours,

Tom

Via M.P. Lockwood / No-Core: Death by Audio, January 4th, 2011...

Courtesy of M.P. Lockwood:

"Sightings were doing their thing, sounding as focused (yet blurred) as ever. I was told there was exactly one practice for this show but it would have been hard to guess they hadn’t been playing this set for a month on tour. Everyone seemed 100% in command, holding back or cutting loose exactly when needed with no nervous or puzzled glances. It’s a pretty perfect pairing too, Sightings and Tom Smith, as they both work in a similar mode: composed but loose, planned but spontaneous. Sightings works with sound shards and Tom works with words, both of them stretching their material to the breaking point."



Follow the link!

Cheers,

TS

A Parental Enquiring Sigh...

(Cross-posted from F'buch.)

Re Peach of Immortality: although I failed to transfer POI's unreleased third album, The Baptist Hymnal (I thought I'd already done so during my 2010 trip to the States), I brought back a motherlode of unissued titanium. There's more than enough extant here at HQ to assemble a sick, sick, sick compilation album/box/etc. Fifteen albums, lots of shows from the Peach/Pussy Galore tour, all the existing mixes for Taxi zum Shoah (about eight hours' worth), live and studio oddments from the Smith/Ginsberg '88 group, and many recordings from the magisterial (and, of course, much-ignored/loathed) Tim Lane Seaton period (late '88-early '91). Bad news for dullards, but a Tory Lane squirtgasm for glorious and fetid wanderers...

More on this as the encroaching apocalypse merits,

TS

6,000 Red Splatters for a Krone... (USA Day 21)

Hi All,

Flying into Copenhagen earlier this morning. We still had another seven and a half hours to go, but the vast swath of those were layovers. Brain dead from the day-long slog...



Yours, as ever,

TS

USA Day 20 (cont..)

Hello All,

Brothers united against all banality, including their own! Andrew W.K. and me at Death by Audio in the early hours of January 5th, before lighting out to after-party #1!



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Wearily,

TS

Happy New Year! All Hail 2012!

Droogz,

All the best from everyone at TLASILA Zentrale / KSV HQ!



Love,

Tom