Replacements, Stache's, 10.4.84

so, remember how we was talkin' aboot that thing i was gonna do where i post shows that happened in col's but not necessarily by bands that are fROMOHIO™? well hey here let's start it off with a muddy bang since its mr. w'burg's b-day to-day. this is AT LEAST a third generation tape and yeah i sorta know how i could get a better copy but whatever, this is like good too ok an' i never seen it anywheres else (yet).

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photo credit: stephanie chernikowski (©1985)

Gaunt Live Tapes

here's some iffy performance reproductions - one from the casbah in san diego in 1995 and another from little brother's here in columbus in '98. if anyone's ever wondered about the time i spent in gaunt, the casbah tape is somewhere between a third and a half of what there is to hear, so there ya go. the little brother's tape is a little bit harsher of a listen (man *someone* should really remaster this stuff, don'tcha think??) but it's pretty notable for the inclusion of a rough new song and the alternate lyrics to "worry" and "pop song" and whatever else they were fucking around with at the time. now if only the stache's tape would surface with their crazy medley including the 'buzzkill' theme…that would REALLY be somethin'…
casbah
little bros

Unholy 2 release show blogged

yeah i'm not gonna po$t the album for whatever rea$on ($$BUY$$IT$$) but hey go download live $$hit:::::::::

banalization

jfotoman

the small, charmed group of you who poke around here on a semi-regular basis are either familiar with jay brown's photography or need to be. every "scene" deserves a guy like jay - and every guy like jay deserves a scene. (you can try to make somethin' outta nothin', but i'll leave you to do the math on that one.) jay tirelessly documented the somehow both glittering and dingy rock'n'roll world around him - for the most part, here in col's - fer a healthy span in the '80s and '90s (and now again!), and to see one of his photos is to glean the largest portion of the essence of the experience that ya can without havin' been there. to get to the point, here's a note i got from him today:

Hey Nick,

Jay Brown here. I'm trying to raise some funds to put together a full blown traveling gallery show of my concert photos. I have some galleries interested, but I need to come up with the framed photos, and I simply don't have the funds. To do so, I've started a a project on the fund-raising site Kickstarter. It's kind of like pledging to a public radio station or something similar. Here's the link to it.

i can think of few endeavors more deserving. SO GET GOING PEOPLE!!!!

here's that link again!

Army Of Larry

one day i'm a-gonna git my hands onna acid black tape, yessiree. till then plz go bug th' shiz outta larry aboot it:

well, it ain't the kiss army

also let's all hope there's some limb trial tapes laying around over there too.

Alive comps

the columbus alive newspaper thingy has had its hand in quite a few comps over the past, um, period of years, sorta filling a gap where/when th' cringe.compilations trailed off. here are two of them. no token vol. 3 is notable for, among other things, the inclusion of the fantastic orchestraville song that super desserts have been known to perform as of late; amplified happens to include one of the only you're so bossy songs anyone can seem to get their hands on.

download amplified
download no token 3

Guided By Voices

you were kinda thinkin' this might happen, yeah? even tho' they're from a buncha minutes over thattaway from col's, bobco™ spent many an afternoon/evening more closer to here and even has a wayward member (<---i retain the rights to all unintentional possible new band names accidentally suggested by this post) or three living like in and/or around here. so were i to be a little less bored with running cassettes into th' computer right now i'd start both a short glob of stuff from them as well as the rumored bands-what-aren't-from-here-playing-here-taped-with-my-shit-handheld-tapemachine *NEW SEGMENT* i've been meaning to get to with th' tape of weird inbetweener ric ocasek lp lineup playin' at bernie's but we all know that ain't gonna happen 'least till later so how about this: instead i give ya what are in my not-so-humble-opinion the best two gbv elpees to never quite see th' light of day? ok? ok. little setup: gbv made lotsa songs and therefore lotsa recs but once someone else was payin' that someone (pre-fading cpt. sycophant b.s.) would sometimes say hey you can't put out a rec every month and a half which ended up unfortunate cuz then a lotta th' time ol' bobareeno would keep foolin' with his finished product until it was completely diff sequence-wise or even totally made up of like other newer tunes. in th' case of bee thousand (you can see th' wreck that was on that oddball idea director's cut thingy) and alien lanes (which iz appr. 400% more swell than earlier version 'scalping the guru') well that all ended up swingin' but as far as th' next two albs go th' versions as originally intended are just megagreat and very sadly lost to th' presses and th' masses. under the bushes was called under the bushes when i got this here copy but fer delineational porpoises (again here reminding you aboot that band name ownership deal) i've just gotta use the way-excellent working title 'the flying party is here' for it. a more apt followup to alien lanes, 'party' bears little resemblance to its actually-released cousin, and is probably th' only time a big mishmash of everything from 1- to 24(more?)-track recordings reallyreally gelled for th' dudes. ok, enuff. th' other one iz th' slap from th' gbverde version of th' groop an' prior to release as 'mag earwhig' it was a differently-sequenced, different-feeling piece known as (really!) 'do the collapse,' and since i ain't got anything else to call it (edit: n.c. reminds me that th' version directly after this one - eggzackly thee same 'cept with th' then-freshly-wrote 'sad if i lost it' tacked uncomfortably onto th' start - was indeed titled 'panic on landlord street,' so goes ahead an' retitle it thus if yer itunez brainz iz all con-fuzzed…), 'do the collapse (1997)' it is. caveat: collapse is duped straight off th' tape bob gave me and party is from a tape of th' tape bob gave me (orig was lost by somebody i loaned it to, i am an idiot, yes), so these aren't like museum quality but i mean fuck, it's gbv, and they sounds fuckin' quite quite allreet still.

the flying party is here
do the collapse (1997)

Everyday Heroes

zac szymusiak, now of washington beach bums, el ron house y los brujarenas, and highschool substitute teacher programs all over th' mid-ohio area gettin' serious a couple/few years back now with his first (i think) combo after leavin' supergroup-in-retrospect the ex-boyfriends. supposedly one of the songs is about me although i didn't meet him till like more recently than that an' i still think they got me confused with some other douche but hey i'm into it whatever it's got a good beat an' i can dance to it. should i choose to dance (and i should).

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Nick Tolford

before sir tolford became th' soul-stirring soul-stirrer we all now know and luv, he played bass in slide machine, sure, we're all familiar. but. did. you. know. he. was. totally. emo? yep, here's some (not entirely unsoulful!) relatively unassuming piano/acoustic & drums tunes from a few years back. mebbe not th' boy you've got yer panties all bunchy an' wet over, but all great another way.

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Favors, yep.

ok. i'm not gonna profess to likin' EVERYOLDTHING on this blog - that wouldn't be all true an' it wouldn't be all's fair fer me to only post shiz i do like anyhow, but, um, i can't say anything aboot this band that hasn't already been said i don't think so hey here's someone else's words…

JD Dallas figures out what's next

The Favors may or may not be anymore, having definitely played their last gig with their current lineup at Skully's at the end of June. Will one of the best powerchording guitarists in town, JD Dallas, carry on with his glam rock?

"Well. first of all, we always considered ourselves cock rock," said Dallas with perhaps as much pride as a man can have while still keeping his jeans on. "I mean, it was Shannon me and Steve as what we thought would be an irresistible force of nature, with the right guys backing us up."

But now bassist Steve Patrick is leaving, thanks to marriage, owning his own business and a bad case of tinnitus.

"Shannon and I are thinking of carrying on, maybe as the Dirty Favors, we're not sure," said Dallas. Singer Shannon Malone, surely this town's finest example of half-man/half-lizard front man, is still in it for the long haul.

"At least at our last gig we went out on top," said Dallas. "Skully's smelled like a bait shop."

Like Picasso, Norman Mailer and Miles Davis, he may have a touch of the sexist pig in him, but trust me, JD Dallas is a mother on the powerchord.

(from johnny go's column in th' other paper like three yrs. ago)

*this file incl. two eps and a full-length. haha. full-length. OHNO, favors vibe has gotten to me…

(ps. shannon was in throat and jd was in dogrocket and mediawhores, among other deals.)

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True Moves - Wild Weekend

eric wrong of do-right(s) fame(?) with very-rockANDroll-positive combo feat. #1 supporter of col's musicks bob starker (he's in every band!) and a coupla magic city alumni and john from gut piston(lookout behind you!)/diverters(lookout ahead!) wiggle their way thru their first single (hey it's got three tracks who's counting) on d-panik and man. awhile back it occurred to me that it's not outside-the-realms-of-possibility that no humyns rilly (RILLY) ever liked rockANDroll musicks. so anyhow, it should come as no surprise that they still don't. i suppose i am some weird flower then, cuz this shiz is top. they gota another single out an' an el-pee in th' can an' we'll get to 'em okok…

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Flu Faker

JP's (he were in th' 84 nash) newish family-centric popcombo gearing up fer their first live outing an' givin' out th' proof on solid cdr. ok they ain't all that pop. actually kinda scary. (evidently nobody thinks that but me.)

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Bumped By Karaoke

afore that weird and worthless get hip seedee showed up this here "volume 2" was out and about pissing on yer daughters and fucking yer lawns. THEE document of col's circa:199_ (i.e. it made it look way cooler than it actually was, and it was PRETTY DAMNED COOL), you can blame regala and half th' rockcombos on this piece of digital retardo fer all that smeg' in yer head sayin' you live somewhere that's like cool fer musick er somethin' (given that you live here --- HEY! you aren't pee-roozin' this in SOME OTHER CITY, are ya? whooo, now i's seen EV'RYthing…) - just cuz you don' know it don' mean it ain't true, compadre…

watch the daylight colors fade to grey

For Your Ears Only

eardrop prods.=craig "big daddy" dunson of magnetic planet/vibralux/pica huss/tjsa/codename: stingray (non-)fame. they/he put out some other stuff too (ishkabibble tape maybe? oh and somebody send me that plz…) but this is their/his hour of power - perhaps even more indicative a snapshot of teh sceeene at that pt. than 'bumped' (keep yer hat on, it's next). oh just go on and click th' damned thing, it's OUT OF PRINT…

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Michael Joseph

aka skip from speed of fright and throat on his native-americano-influenced acoustickal/magickal tipp. very worth-yer-proverbial-while and he's got a mess more of this stuff up his sleeves so go see him some afternoon out at that coffeeshop in powell or something and give him a pointer, say hey! ni…(oops! almost gave it away!!) over there on the interwebs told me to tell you keep up th' good werk, make scads more el-pees and keep on truckin'!! (some of you may see what i did there.)

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Floorian

i met john from floorian back in 19__ when i was werkin' at th' video store there on bethel…him and also tim g. from unfortunately-named local copyband x-ray specs (they kicked him out) useta be the only hanger-arounders who'd keep me sane/drive me nuts with worthwhile conversationinfo over th' longlonglonglong 12- er 18-hr niteshifts. who knew he had a kickass trancerock combo brewin' th' whole time? even greg shaw & th' brian jonestown weirdos agree you should listen to this ooze at least ten-hundred times so get to it.


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FUCKING DOWNLOAD THAT MAD MIKE CD! I CAN'T SAY IT MORE TIMES!! OK I CAN!!!

S R S L Y !!

two years from now when it's been on th' 'fmu blog and everybody's tired of hearing aboot it fer th' eleventy-umpth time you can say, "hey. i actually had a good time listening to that once a long time ago."

MAD MIKE

our boy mad mike is not from col's he's from cinci but so's spittin' image and that don't shut c. nini up any aboot 'em, does it? m.m. made the excellent, excellent decision to give th' Hi-V a copy of this wondrous little plasticky disc and now, o friends and foes, you may all feast yer earmitts on it. sorry to sleaze, i think he thinks it's rightfully his - and hey he can have it back fer mebbe $3 from used kids after i sell th' fucker asap.

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1.3

if we're gonna talk aboot th' cherubs well let's talk aboot th' unsane too ok - HEY! - i have this theory (shouldn' even bother t' be so nice as to call it just a theory cuz hey i ain't boastin' i'm truthin', amirite) 'bout how at a certain point in time all towns had to have one band that was like th' we're-the-band-in-town-that's-really-into-unsane-band and like the method was fer dayton hey well we gots onepointthree. which is sellin' 'em hella short as it is with every band that takes that particular honor we was just talkin' aboot, but that don' make it any less of true. they made a coupla recs and here's one of 'em. also scott art/bass is in lopan and they got signed or something. also mike is probably the funniest person on the interwebs.

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Big Meat

little bit of a joke here as over on fb there was just a discussion re: how many people have boxes of these takin' up space in their closets, but hey - just cuz nobody bought one don't mean YOU can find it on yer local shelves and it SURE don't mean it ain't worth way more than free. history: when my uncle wayne quit being existing ('nother jokel there) davey went on his own merry (ok maybe not) way which eventually = altered states of the united snakes and them other dudes (drummers don't count but hey bim moved to clevo and made them this moments, ok we'll talk aboot it later) started this here band which eventually morphed into one called sons of solomon and chris was in pillowbiters, whatever, but let's be sure to not talk aboot drummers, ok. people who like the cherubs like this, how's that fer some kinda modern-internet-styled bullshit what's true, erm.

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mirror

Sinkane 'Color Voice'

ahmed wears tight shorts and has amazing ideas which he actually bothers to follow to fruition. where he finds th' time to do even half of th' stuff he does i have no idea. oh yeah and he's on th' interwebs: http://sinkane.wordpress.com/

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The Go Figure

four-song ep from th' aforementioned mr. matt wagner, late of earwig, the bygones (post=soon), & th' unkillable preston furman (or 'presto furmo' in bim-speak). all tunes rough mixes from as-yet-unreleased (unrecorded) full-length.

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maybe look over here

no idea how used up th' links are over there, but decrepit tapes has a buncha col's-related posts crappening. dig.

Earwig 'Center Of The Earth'

news! longtime earwigger matt wagner recently stood up from his bass throne long enough for most-of-the-time-earwig-drummer george's brother costa to sit down in it. word has it costa's first 'show' will be one of those live-videotaping deals out at electraplay or whatever it's called. in th' meantimer, here's a classick in th' earwig canon, featuring their biggest hit since "dinosaur song" - a little local number sorta concerning a little local record shoppe. (plead: if anyone has the very first version of "used kids" which th' band recorded with mssr. steve evans, plz send it over!)

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so this might just turn into a gossip column yet

just saw ex-used kids annex employee bill walking down high street in front of mcdonald's, so, if you were wondering - as i was - if he was like still alive, he is.

more gossip next post!!!

Brown Notes

well if we're gonna talk aboot th' sun and we're gonna talk aboot th' hexonwheels an' we're gonna (eventually) talk aboot th' crazy ray well we gotta talk aboot th' brown notes. another col's institution that, alas, is no more, them brown notes did love their ween…but also - LUCKILY FOR US - was too retarted to rip 'em off too bad - and heck, let's face it, had frankly been writing (together and seperately, depending on which year ya caught 'em) their own goofy/not goofy tunes since way afore mssrs. gener & deaner was kidnapped by aliens and forced to write a zlillion songs er whatever th' original party line was there. so yeah, 57,000 afterhours parties later they called it quits (QUITS! QUITS!), but this disc - th' lone offish recorded document from these doods - should set y'all to petitioning fer their imminent reformation and national tourage toot sweet.

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The Bogtrodders

irish musick in ohio??? but of course! i mean, "we" even have our own fun-filled (*cough*) irish fucking festival just down th' street in dandy old DUBLIN… but srsly, them bogtrodders was purty damned great at that thing they were into doing, and for a time boasted a lineup with not just one (as on this release) but two (!) out of three (orig. - for yes, at one time there were indeed four) members of local prog-metal pioneer heroes acid black!! now that's ultra-genrefied ethnicky spizz i kin get behind!

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Jason Quicksall

sometime soundguy, sometime open mic host, j.q.'s following fairly closely in th' footsteps of onetime col's great white hope tim easton without - to jason's credit - sounding all that much like him - tho' th' template is certainly similar.

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Hex On Wheels 'Bloodlust'

casella, current photo editor extraordinaire at 614 mag and later-period rackets guitarer #2 started this here heavy rockin' thing with bass player/sanger carrie and all-around drum guy joey sturma. by the time of this recording chris (of crazy ray/brown notes) was guitarer #2 and fill-in man among fill-in men larz raymond (call 4 lessonzzz) was on drums. recorded in some weird shed in pataskala or something, sounds insane. also they like fu manchu, or at least like their song titles. har. one of those bands it was always fun/funny to see at treebar. you just can't be tuff there. anyhoo, i like this band and th' cd's on the pretty good side too.

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SHIZ

well um i've (srsly) got 35 new posts all lined up so of course mediafire is down (some servers out due to a storm so maintenace is nec., i hear - hopefully no lasting damage and everyone's files including all the ones here emerge unscathed…). ack, ugh. this is going to lead to my mirroring everything here - an endeavor i've long been putting off…but an idea whose time has come™.

gaunt on dustdevils blog

yer mom


euro sleeve even!!

(i highly encourage you to stick around there and download not only all the excellent, excellent dustdevils recordings, but to dig thru all the posts - shoo, the amazing first dEUS rec' iz on there if'n ya need somewheres to start…)

The Sun

chris burney used to climb all over his bass whilst playing in a combo by the name of ashtray. a little touring on their part led to him playing alongside tim easton and, long story short, ending up bored in LA. this in turn led to him writing some songs, natch. i guess the '1999' collection of tunes is pretty much these demos, cut in chicago with some wilco dudes. this then led to labels almost giving a shit, so chris called some friends back in columbus (incl. sam brown of feversmile etc etc and eventually brad caulkins of monster zero etc etc) who flew out to LA to actually start the band (other possible names: "zeppelin," "the stones," and "the dead"). they got signed to warners and put out an ep called "love + death" (which i'll dig up soon). years passed and another ep called "did your mother tell you?" showed up. tracks from that ended up on the bizarrely marketed but pretty much completely whupass "blame it on the youth" lp (and dvd) (not cd tho') and world domination was imminent. or not. shows were played, dudes moved back to columbus, dudes moved away from columbus, dudes started other bands, &c. more years passed. down to a trio, the sun played a small handful of (incredible, i must add) shows and recorded a more concise and almost as whupass followup lp, "don't let your baby have all the fun," and without any fanfare pretty much ceased to exist. chris currently fronts dead indians (or adult fiction) (or whatver they're called today) with the rhythm section of greenlawn abbey and sam fronts you're so bossy with phil and jovan from haynes boys; caulkins is in a band called fool's gold out in LA.

don't let your baby have all the fun.
blame it on the youth
did your mother tell you?
defeated unicorn
digital palm trees
teenage commie
1999
ohio tigers

Triceratops

FAT (fun all the time) crew honchos recorded a demo (cassette release on tapes that jam) and then had three goes at their record. third time was the charm but still it never got released and that had a big hand in doing 'em in. i'm partial to their second attempt and here it is: snaky, sinister guitar lines that fuse with blitzkrieg three-chord stun-runs, lyrics runnin' from the intensely personal to the entirely ridiculous, gang and guest vox, and a joie de vivre so sorely lacking in hardcore until these guys and groups like bones brigade started reminding everyone what it was all about in the first place.


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photo credit: katie dance

so i was sorta in the alive

man, i shoulda known. the last time the alive asked me fer a sunmission they edited it until not only did it sound stupid but it didn't even make any sense. and well, they got me again. anyhow, here's what i actually wrote, in case any of you care. it'll make me feel better putting it here so please indulge me and don't see this as completely solipsistic. thx.

kedamono no arashi, unicorn (sony japan, 1990)
akin to spending an hour trying to dial in the best freeform radio
station on the planet, maybe skipping between two more unknown yet almost equally fantastic stations in the pursuit. a playful hawaiian number gives way to a soaring ballad with jet planes for a solo; a song with dogs barking the snare hits is one-upped by fifty seconds of thrash that disintegrate into a man quietly counting down from ten under a mournful string section. supposedly the lyrics are great too!

deceit, this heat (rough trade uk, 1981)
the sounds come from everywhere. sometimes they rise to a glorious din of polyrhythm and sometimes they ease disquietingly by, tense static tones that raise butterflies as they hint at some oncoming unknown explosion. the politics are never overt; the dub leanings never obvious or genrefied. performance tapes merge seamlessly with controlled environments. if you try to pick a song to put on a mixtape you'll just end up taping the whole thing.

dinner music for people who aren't very hungry, spike jones (verve, 1956)
along with delirium in high-fi (elsa popping aka andre popp, columbia,1957), the pinnacle of mono possiblility. in conjuring a dubious concept album of sounds and songs to test the limits and reveal the wonders of yer stereo set, spike jumped from single sides to a cohesive album filled to over-bursting with his and the city slickers' myriad talents and brain-blooms. i am constantly amazed at the thin, thin line they walked being complete badasses, completely serious, and completely absurd. a major coup.

ft. lake, his name is alive (4AD, 1998)
on their prior lp, stars on e.s.p. (4AD, 1996), hnia revisited one of the songs (a reworked gospel tune that goes back at least to the carter family) three times, eventually enlisting a full church choir for the transcendent, armhair-raising end piece. it was in this pursuit that a member of that choir found her way into the groop and onto this lp, broadening their already quite-a-bit-farther-than-the-eye-can-see horizons even more. their glorious schizophrenia isn't so much reigned-in as focused, and the songs themselves are an aural fourth-of-july slowed-down and drawn out to sparkle and linger in yer ears long after they've faded.

today's empires, tomorrow's ashes/potemkin city limits/supporting caste, propagandhi (g7 welcoming committee, 2001/2005/2009)
in the thirteen years since the bass slot in propagandhi was permanently filled by todd "the rod" kowalski, the band has made three albums that, for me, have meshed voltron-style into one giant document of their ridiculously wicked existence. sonically and politically each one has been built near the last's foundation, but reveals differences that serve to broaden the scope set by its antecendent - maybe even change the way you understand earlier stuff you might've heard a thousand times. and as was sorta written about a book i recently finished, you will emerge from the experience of listening to these a more clever person.

yes i used the word glorious twice. oops.

We Never Learn

so i spent the better part of the day downing poptarts, jellybeans, and mixed nuts (less than 50% peanuts!) and plowing thru davidson's book on "gunk punk"…oddly i don't find myself energized in any way (tho' to be fair it is about 175˚ in here) - and i flat-out LOVE pretty much all of the groops he's talkin' aboot. the book doesn't really drum ya up into a frenzy of how great this supposed genre is/was supposed to be, and shit, the last third is ENTIRELY about how fucked/fucked over some of the bands were (still dunno if that's what the point is and oddly he brings some as-yet-unmentioned songsters into here that sorta dilute the focus). mebbe the significance is meant to be understood - what with there bein' this tome there an' all - but i thot that was mayhap what the point of havin' all the words was, not to show how tuff it was fer all everybody involved after awhile (to their credit lots of 'em talk aboot what a blast it was and how well they's now gots the memories even thru their grimaces) but rilly here i just wanna say one thing an' that's how fucking little i care about how much anything sucked for a band or how the industry didn't care or absolutely any mention of any of that. rock'n'roll - and ESPECIALLY the bang-zoom screech and spuzz we're talkin' about here - is interesting in two ways outside the pure exhilaration of lissenin' to it an' that's 1) hearin' all the background anecdotes and hows and whys and whos and wheres when yer a geek like me and 2) hearin' about shit i ain't never heard that i just gotta-gotta-gotta cuz damn you got me all amped up and into it! but this, fer all intents, is a slow read (tho' not a long one), and doesn't much conjure anything more than hazy resignation and an odd dull sadness. don't worry if you don't get on this real quick (tho' you'll read it in time, i'm sure) - just let the action rock itself be yer action rock fer now an' always, true believers.

dot com

requests

comment them to here. k.

The Mice

yeah i know they weren't from columbus. we've been over this. but, should you need some convincing, the mice were a GIANT influence on a handful of bands here, most notably gaunt and moody jackson, who both covered tunes of theirs ("second best" and "pharoah", respectively). so, in honor of frontman bill fox's excellent, double-length performance at lost weekend here in town the other day (highlights: "over and away she goes", "lonesome pine", & "and now again"), here's all the at-one-time-commercially-available mice recordings, plus the track that sat on the scat records site for download at one time, "public television". this is NOT the scat release "for almost ever scooter", which you can still buy, and should (and while yer there pick up some other gems like the new first-ever vinyl issue of bill's debut alb' shelter from the smoke); these are direct rips from the US vinyl of their three records - and therefore it includes the debut 45 missing from the scat release and shares no sources with that kickass disc. in other words, you guys don't be afraid of some surface noise and griffin plz don't get on my case aboot it.

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V-3 - The Other Side Of Darkness

roxanne-era stuff that nudge released, i think. sorry no cover, i got it from the library. you probably can too.

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V-3 Radio on the Beyondo Mondo Record Party

got this from the dude who useta run v-3web in trade fer a burn of the evil twin. in which charles cicirella shows up at 91.3 the summit (akron/canton) to push the upcoming shep trib rec and they just play jim-related stuff and throw stories around fer the better part of an hour.

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Bill Shuster interview with Jim Shepard for Moo Magazine, spring 1996

exactly what it says. there are some glitches in the file - repetition, channel drop-outs - but i don't doubt that you folks who've made shep the most popular cat on this blog (and elsewhere) will dig it.

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RC Mob 'Spin The World'

as mentioned in the pica huss post, this is the first "local" tape i got, courtesy of the columbia house record & tape club (note: this file is ripped from that very same tape). the mob were perhaps even more legendary than pica huss amongst my small circle of friends prior to me visiting campus on any sort of a regular basis - they even played the newport and (supposedly) packed the joint! unfortunately, not much stuck for anyone outside 270 - they never got into heavy rotation on 120 minutes, and the toll probably did better on tour, which is a damned great shame 'cause they were that all-too-rare combo of silliness and professionalism, and they could play AND write a stinkin' tune or two. oh well. their bass player is like still famous sorta and, um, yeah. if you saw the devillain article on columbus recs, this one (along with the 'skulls & balls' coup!) got in there due to yours truly; in my not-so-humble opinion it's the only truly great record the mob made, tho' the earlier ones are certainly more along the lines of their live show and the next one after this poised 'em more fer alterna-nation superstardom.

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earnest - claustrophobia

the last earnest tape, and, like the earlier video 2, quite short (less than the normal 1/2 hour established on the first two anyway) & never really released to anyone except a coupla friends (and i dunno if that's even true in this case) so there's no real cover or anything. again, it's here due to persistent badgering on the part of kevin elliott.

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Beano

"they're inept, but that's their charm." (jerry wick, in a columbus monthly article in which we were voted "best new band" simply because they just went to used kids and asked who the best new band was and jerry was the only one who would talk to them and he had just seen us play the afternoon prior and thought we sounded like wire.)

so by popular demand (i.e. kevin elliott not remembering what we actually sounded like and hounding me), here's more beano than anyone should rightfully listen to in one sitting. it's missing a few things since either there were no recordings i could remember ("scrapmaster") or recordings i just couldn't find ("study hall") or recordings that were fucked up ("telly") or recordings nobody needs to hear ("carpet burns"), but seriously, you aren't gonna be begging for more or anything (although if you do i have a tape of our very last show, which took place in birmingham, alabama, in front of the promoter, two of his friends, the bartender, and the bartender's dog. that tour experience is chronicled in the final track in this file - also the final beano tune - "spencer rocks the universe" as well as the oddball matt tune from the uptighty whitey ep, "bluefield song").

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Kevyn & The Kasualties 'Lemmings'

lattice of coincidence update: a few weeks ago my housemate colin finds this tape in a walkman in a dumpster, and then ron house writes an overlooked in ohio column about 'em (about a diff rec, to be sure, but still), and then squidfish posts an essay-length comment on ron's piece where you can find a little more info about this tape. suffers in a sense from jeff graham's attempt to make everyone sound like the karma farmers, but whetever. dig it.

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Creeper Ohio 'Double Dwa' cassette

fairly early on, mike rep jumped on the creeper bandwagon and this tape surfaced soon after. contains two kickass 45s ("new hit single" and the super-limited paper-bagger of "scalding creek" b/w "little black egg") and a mess of other tracks, all way great & way fun. enjoy.

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Skull Bank

rep released this tape in a really small, private batch just after jim passed. side one is the "under a blood red lava lamp" tape (later on cd and probably you can get it at the library or something) with a song from the 1980 vertical slit ep tacked on, and side two is this - the only skull bank release that i know of (plus a track of jim and mike from 1983 at the end).

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not my favorite shit but it was within arms length and within crawling distance

a mixtape made by one mr. jim shepard for one mr. craig regala in 1996 ("1 copy of 1 - your move, china man," go the liners). i messed with the volume levels considerably to make this more worthwhile listening as something other than just a curiosity, 'cause it's really a killer tape. maybe most of the stuff on here is to be expected, but that doesn't make it any less great: live tapes of bands jim played alongside, released and unreleased stuff from a few different projects, some whacked-out jazz and a bunch of new zealand stuff (including the puddle!!)…this is just fucking excellent.

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Pica Huss cassette

when i was still stuck out in the suburbs and first hearing thirdhand about bands in columbus (and delaware), pica huss were already legends. the first comfest i attended - the last before it moved into goodale park proper - closed the night i went with pica huss and r.c. mob (who i had already heard since their tape was in the columbia house catalog!), and that was the first time i saw 'em. loopus - their singer - was in some ultra-skintight lime green bellbottom bellyshirt getup with tassels and they had these three old dudes playin' horns. gawd they were a monster: WAY fun and all the normals dug the shit out of 'em too. i suppose there are any zillion reasons a band doesn't "make it" to wherever making it is, but man did it seem like pica huss were destined for everything in those funk-driven early '90s.

this is a new rip from my copy of the cassette, not the cd gus gave me a few years back, if that's of interest to anyone.

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Knumskull

the econothugs' sorta-filthy, sorta-evil cousin (yet not without their own special brand of charm), knumskull played a few (hundred) of the weed- and black label-fueled nites at bernie's that have all melted together into a kind of over-humid, over-colorful blur of four or five sticky summers in my mind. if i start talking in depth about who from what band was also in x other band and all that crap i'm going to be here all year but it's worth mentioning that anne spurgeon, sister to the greenhorn spurgeons and quite the guitarist herself, was in this here combo.

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Econothugs singles

all the econothugs singles fit on one disc. twice. with room. i should mention that there are a BUNCH more 'thugs tunes here, along with tons of other stuff (mostly) recorded at the recording workshop in chillicothe by 'red hot scott' waters (singer of my white bread mom/spiderfriendz/gypsy witch).

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crap from the archives

this is the first time any of us saw gbv. went to see truman's water (at that time there was a big joke going on in the british press about how they sounded just like pavement) who were completely insane, throwing ashtrays back and forth with us while they played and basically bouncing off the ceiling and doing these a capella primalscream barbershop nonsense rounds inbetween songs and stuff, and these old dudes opened (seriously & sadly don't remember belreve playing, but maybe we got there late). they had these two other old dude fans who were the only people there but us, one of whom was wearing a hipsack (later i.d.'d as jimmy pollard & pete jamison, natch). nothing about their music stuck (it was bernie's, tho'), but like two days later my friend travis called me up and said, "remember those old dudes? i got their record and IT"S AWESOME." i laughed but later that day he brought over 'vampire on titus' & 'propeller' & we all lost our minds for a coupla years.



sorry fer the bad image quality, i stole it from some guy who was SELLING IT ON EBAY. riiiiiight. i was probably at this show. or probably not. hmm. i wanna know what song is referred to as "Let's Active."

REVELERS LPS

ok as promised here are them wild wooly revelers lps, except for the best one (hard times, sunday spirits), which i'll get to asap but i only gots it on vinyl so it takes that special xtra step. boogie!!

better get hit in yer soul
91st street stomp
on top
day in, day out

…and finally!:
hard times, sunday spirits

Pillowbiters 'Better Luck Next Time'

more than the sum of its parts? well, it'd be hard not to be with these losers. along the lines of the good grunge-era punk bands (derelicts, pipe, seaweed) and if it weren't fer the staggers (and, later, smashysmashy) the most misogynistic columbus bullshit this side of ron house's feverdreams. recorded another ep (it's pretty country, what) before we (yeah, like, sorry) stopped doing anything. insufferable.

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Sunshine/Moonshine Room

sometime/where between grave blankets and fey gods lies sunshine/moonshine room and i like it best of all nick & lula's crazy good/weird psychorubble. it's never what's on the surface with those two but what lies just beneath and i don't mean that in any way that seems cliche - nor am i referring to the everything's-just-a-bit-behind-everything-else sonic qualities they stomp all over and out. i mean they're pretty much always gonna be likened to some kinda garage idea of things but when you play the eric davidson game with 'em it's just fucking impossible 'cause i mean yer past two influences in the first second, like fifty swirl by in less than a minute and you realize they aren't even able to think about their record collections once they get going and then they just stop dead when you think it's stretching out or play forever when you think it's the two-minute "hit"…blissfully confounding. dustdevils and shimmydisc fans take major note.

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Marvin The Robot 'Hands To Ourselves'

MILES LIVES! i'm sure he has pretty much everything he's ever done available somewhere on the interwebs for ya but here's a great one with songs about girls and parties and all the other good stuff that'll make ya sure to wanna track down all the others (and oh, there are others) and also send miles loads of yer $$. i can't figure out where the hell he's is coming from about 80% of the time and for that i'm quite glad.

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Kentucky Click

relatively short-lived don't-bother-callin'-'em-stoner-rock combo with marcy (scrawl, duh) mays on guitar and craig (datapanik, duh) regala on throat. more than anything they sound like rose tattoo, but there's rhino bucket, mid-period riot, stepson, april wine, and any amount of other influences in there, all filtered thru a really nasty we're-so-punk-we're-not-even-punk-anymore thing that just kills me. appr. 85,000,000x more necessary than anything rollins ever did outside tell the occasional joke.

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The Flukes 'Nocturnal Emissions'

devillain, in th' alive:

The home-recorded set sounds tossed off — not as if its makers slacked off, but rather like they didn't think too hard. The blend of lo-fi scrappiness and a slight punk sneer calls to mind Superchunk's nervous tension and Built to Spill's early work, when Doug Martsch sang with doe-eyed sincerity and a trace of menace.

Nocturnal Emissions isn't some breathtaking masterpiece, but it gets deeper under your skin with each listen. New favorites emerge with each spin — the full-throttle pop-punk of "Kamikaze," the brooding build of "Heat Lightning," the melancholy waltz of "Twilight Rendezvous."

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The Black Cloud

three songs that function as a demo/foundation for the patterns of static "no more america" cd later released on datapanik after these guys realized there were a million other bands called what they were and denied my suggestion of "the brak crowd". over the course of an entire album this stuff can really wear out yer ability to differentiate (as regala noted about the our flesh party disc), but taken in smaller doses (like yer gettin' here), it's fucking menacing and mesmerizing stuff.


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Audible Detonation!

dunno why but i always wanna put an exclamation point after their name…audible detonation (!) went from different lineup to different lineup and back again (even pretty much changing their name to the fancy lads, tho' in a certain sense that was a different thang) but this is from my fave period of their existence and includes the bonafide disco sensation "party town" as well as a killer version of the motown/mod/motorhead classick "leavin' here". we met these guys because a few years ago if you put the sonics in myspace as a search strain in the influences category and limited it to within fifty miles of columbus, they were the only guys who showed up.

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The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms

pretty much this amounts to demos for the slumps lp due out sometime in the next decade on mind of a child/datapanik but on the right days i think these are the better versions. jay from crazy ray/pillowbiters and heather from the rackets.

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The Kyle Sowashes 'What's Important (And What's Not)'

well since everbuddy's buddy kyle & his band of merry dudes who look quite similar to him are releasin' a new rec this wknd i figgered i'd dig up one a half-decade old and let ya feast yer ears till at least friday. ain't no one in this town able to even approximate th' magickal melange that comes natcheral to kyle - he's just the damned finest fellow you could ever hope to meet on top of the fact that he books some of the best shows ever ignored by the greater populace of this burg and at the same time he has an emotional intensity level somewhere around 600% of the normal human bean which he focuses on the neverending stream of constantly hi-quality gems he seems to effortlessly sweat from his busy, busy pores. AND he recommended me a wonderful dentist! i'm sure that if you wanted to you could buy all of kyle's releases still, and i would recommend you do so, preferably from th' man himself.

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