Tellers "In Loving Memory Of Rock'n'Roll"

tellers were an INCREDIBLE cle band that no-one seems to know much about.

"great CLE band that I saw many times. Lead singer & creative force Samantha 'Starborn' Schartman & incredible lead guitarist Derek Deprator were just out of high school when they recorded this lp. MANY line up changes over the years with Sam being the only constant." [jay brown, via fb]

years after this record came out they played at highfive but i missed out - tho' word was it wasn't all that good; this record, on th' other hand, is FUCKING GOLD th' whole way thru, power-pop-punk better than th' three good songs on 'the dwarves are young and good looking'/garage ripoffs about 60x more enthralling than anything other than maybe the fall-outs/riot-grrrl-isms that don't get overly total-bullshitty OR ANYTHING. if you like nasty facts or busy signals you need to hear this, tho' it's way more all-over-th'-place (and yeah that's a compliment) than those bands' records. one of these is usually sitting at used kids for between $1 and $4 or you can buy a copy off th' interwebs for $40, yr choice.

and oh yeah, there's no track listing on th' sleeve or record or insert or anything. SO THERE.

new download link
clepunk listing



photo credit: jay brown

PORK CITY U.S.A.

as i was running in all th' hairy patt stuff i figured i wouldn't stop with just their track from this comp since th' others are so good. released on blank generation outta williamsburg, oh in 1996. also features the beel jak, lee harvey keitel band, & slur (whose track is one of my favorite, favorite lost fuzz-pop tunes of th' '90s - if ANYONE can tell me more about them or send some more songs over, i'd be deeply indebted to you).

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HAIRY PATT BAND

here's all the vinyl i have from these guys. missing th' split w/whiteouts, i have no idea where that went. my copy of th' 'belly fu oh happy whale presents' rec is pretty jacked but i mean you can listen to it. anybody wantsta send over th' two cds i'll post 'em. yup. tons more stuff from jason and hpb over at red hour (i've warned you before).

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HORNY RECORDS

anyone who enjoys this website right here might wanna think about skipping over to th' horny records site, as well as all th' sites linked at th' bottom of their page. records downloadable over there include (as of today):

GRAFTON:Jumpstart Wire
BUSH LEAGUE ALL STARS: Cedar Knees
VESPIN: Model Citizen
OWL: Lifted
BRADLEAH CAULKINS: Dumb Angel
SPIVEYS: By Caeserian
BOB CITY: Bob City

which means i don't hafta run in th' spiveys record. joy!

horny records website

Magician Killer 'Hoodoo Dub'

pretty much my favorite blistering noise record of all times, different facets rise and recede with each listen, of course, but the pure chakra-fuck that some of the frequencies have on yr very soul coupled with the caffeine-got-nothin'-on-this magick of the sometimes almost indiscernible beat machine tempo fuckery will have you cackling maniacally at its genius in no time. had a field day listening to this while reading theo ellsworth's mind-bending 'capacity' book on the bus at least 1000 years ago and i suggest you do the same. morpho-weirdo. none better.

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A Planet For Texas

got-damme do i l-u-v th' way this record sounds! such a perfect destruction of th' prolly purty nice 'n' shiny rec. w-shop master by way of another shitty musicol pressing, this thing fucking SHREDS. "snatching kisses…" damn! anyhow, if ya dunno, APFT were one of th' things that was goin' ahn in th' late-'90s - a time when some people would have ya believe there was nothing goin' ahn. they is wrong. ike from dogrocket joined up with reasonable steve (now in sick thrills, when they feel like existing) and th' gunn brothers and came up with some kinda blitz-speed concept that involved aliens and th' southwest, i dunno, but it was GREAT. they made another 7" - a split w/bobcity - and a coupla full-length (i still chuckle everytime i write that) discs and traded one joel for another before they snuffed out of existence sometime before little brothers did. i don't have th' other records anymore but i'll post 'em if anybody wantsta send 'em over.

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Lost Bob City, 1998

in july of '98 donovan asked me to record his band at bernie's. i took my reel to reel down there only to find that the desk wasn't gonna accomodate both a recording and live sound, so i ended up only running th' handheld tape recorder i'd brought to cover any problems with the reel. the resulting tape has four unreleased songs on it as well as a cover of motörhead's "jailbait" (which, along with "am i evil?" was a staple of their earlier shows).

a month later (august 28, 1998) bob city came over to the garage behind my house and recorded a few songs they had been working on. lyrics were still being riddled out inbetween takes and little pieces of new tunes (some of which are preserved here) were constantly fooled around with. this tape (also known as 'little ball') never saw anything but a rough mix to cassette (eventually lost, o'course) until a coupla months ago, but is the first "studio" recording the band did; a short while later they made a few trips down to the recording workshop and knocked out the stuff that became the burnt herd 45 and the 'softball'/'hardball' discs.

after awhile bob city got themselves a new singer and morphed into a more traditional '70s-styled metal band, another foghat update for punks growing back into their redneck roots, but when they started (and especially right around the time these tapes were made, when they were writing their second batch of songs) they were their own twisted vision: a lurching, heavy, and downright scary (jeremy is, to this day, the absolute loudest singer i've ever recorded - taking off the headphones in the middle of a take was frankly borderline terrifying) - both in terms of how just plain good they were as well as how sinister their riffs and lyrics could be. of course they weren't without humor - in many ways they're the rock take on whatever nine pound hammer is the punk take on - but they weren't a schtick. and it's probably about time you drained off that last mason of 'shine and opened up th' windows so th' neighbors can get in on this shit.

download:
little ball
bernie's, july 31, 1998

Pillowbiters 'I Don't Even Know You And I Hate Your Guts' EP

p-biters' second and final recording, this time a five-song ep of MONUMENTAL proportions. or just a pile of sparkling mud-punk from some dudes pretending to be more talented and smarter than they were and fooling no-one.

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Bigfoot 'Dark Old Days'

with rick allen's article about th' recent long-overdue release of the bygones' second lp right here at mtf also heralding th' reissue of ugly stick's first two cassettes, we have ourselves what's commonly referred to as a perfect time to discuss a record that might be seen as th' link betwixt those aforementioned recordings. somewhat similar to but a touch closer to my heart than the jayhawks' incredible 'tomorrow the green grass', 'dark old days' is too much good to be absorbed in one sitting; it's the polar opposite of those hip-hop double cds with roughly 3-4 mins of quality juice that were so common back when this record was released, a 45-minute long work of such depth that it seems to take up yr entire afternoon. likewise, it ain't a good background record - you'll just keep skipping back to th' beginning of th' last song over and over. hell, you'll do that anyway. and if "hey nadine" - spiritual cousin to the dexateens' "cardboard hearts" and glossary's "only time will tell" in th' heavenly family of album openers - doesn't climb right under yr brain blankets and live with you for th' rest of yr life in holy blissimony, you might not actually be living. a daily affirmation of a record.

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Scrawl 'Nature Film'

combo that's less 'best band in town' and more 'too fucking awesome to belong to one locale' gets new drummer and major label deal, re-records some shoulda-been-hits, lays 'em down alongside some new ditties and a CHOICE cover and makes th' best record of their career.

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Washington Beach Mayor Sergio Pantalone 2008 Re-Election Benefit Comp

three years ago we ran a campaign for the re-election of an official (under an assumed name) who had never served before to an office that didn't exist in an imaginary borough. the scoot-a-que then gave away a benefit compilation disc. a sadly lost (not anymore) document of a moment and corner in the great time-space continuum that is col's rock band schmistory.

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The Revelers 'Hard Times, Sunday Spirits'

here's that last revelers record i've been promising for-effing-ever (not their last, just the last of theirs that i hadn't posted…the rest are here & here). 'hard times' is the best recording they ever did, and unfortunately i don't have the weird japanese pressing with them doing "pressure drop" (!) on it. seek it. lemme know how it turns out.

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Lydia Loveless

here's sperry's tape of lydia's set at comfest, with the volume jacked up and the tunes titled and tagged. assuming he was situated more back towards th' soundboard as there's quite a bit more ambience than we heard being about 10 or 12 feet back directly in front of the stage right stacks. no matter, her set was fucking magical, and you can hear it (most) all here (caveat: it's missing a coupla encore tunes 'cause evidently someone dicked with sperry's deck - don't fret, just a bonus for those who were actually there): pretty much all of her new record minus a couple tracks which she throws a few off the first lp in place of and a KILLER ke$ha cover. no lie.

i've gotta admit i've only caught lydia about once a year since she started playing this type of stuff cuz tho' i dug it when she first started i wasn't i guess you could say blown away. WELL NOW CONSIDER ME BLOWN. she's better than neko at her own game at this point; that's a decent reference point for starters, but she's way more of a belter a la miranda lambert (and that ain't faint praise, neko and miranda being th' only two girls who've bothered to sing country music in recent memory, 'cept mebbe if yr countin' donna hughes), and her ridiculous gift for twisting melodies and lyrics so goddam effortlessly thru th' shouldn't-it-sound-way-less-revolutionary-than-it-does? relatively/seemingly-trad bed her impeccable cohorts are layin' down (alongside her own guitar, of course) is somethin' neko can't claim (tho' hell she sure can pick them covers good - excepting that ugly nick cave thing that was shat behind th' true blood season debut last wk). lydia's gonna be our own paul westerburg real soon (hell she probably already is…paul was all of 21 when 'sorry ma' came out) - and here ya thought she was gonna be our tommy (hey don't count it out she might up an' join g'n'f'n'r) - and i damned sure ain't gonna miss any of her shows around here anymore if i can help it.

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photo credit: paula masters travis

SPERRY FESTIVAL

i hope you guys know that mike sperry has been documenting th' col's live "scene" in a very big way over th' past few years. very early in this blog's career we posted an el jesus show he recorded a while back. many more of his recordings are here:

mediafire folder

it is very suggested you grab some and enjoy what you've been missing due to inebriation &c.

THE BYGONES 'In Threes'

here's a comfest special for ya - and probably the most important (insofar as posting records on the internet can be considered important) thing we'll ever do here at th' mtf blog. 'in threes' is the bygones' belabored, gorgeous, & as-yet-unreleased second lp. who knows why nobody's had the sense(¢) to make this a plastic reality but it's been done since spring 2007 and it's high time everybody heard it. HIGH TIME.

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photo credit: c a s s e r o l e

PAGANS: Pirate's Cove 9/24/79

been awhile since we delved into any cle rock lore (dammit yes that last revelers lp i need to post is in th' queue!) so here's th' REAL pagans live LP you NEED. sorta-boot, sorta-legit release from sometime in th' '90s on thermionic… young fast drummer era… definitive take on "heart of stone"… fuck, if i hafta SAY SOMETHING to convince you to grab this you can't be helped in th' first place.

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Cheater Slicks 'Bats In The Dead Trees' LIVE

here's th' disc that came free with th' second pressing of th' slicks' improv LP - live tape from th' release show i think where they extrapolated on some of th' ideas they used on th' recording. i figure you can probably track down lots of their other stuff some way or another but this might be one you've overlooked. don't keep makin' that mistake.

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and yes i realize there's some hey this cd is fucked up clicking going on for two or three minutes of th' second track & then it stops like 5 minutes before th' end but th' rest of th' bits are good ok! i guess th' burn's bad cuz it ain't scratched or nothin'. anybody's got one that works real good plz send it over.

Tolford & Co.: 'Extraordinary Love'

as i've said elsewhere it ain't rilly my style to go posting shiz you RILLY SHOULD BE PAYING FOR, but this WAY deserves to be heard by everybody, so please - if ya like it go buy it on wax or get one of th' funny little cd copies or go to a buncha shows or buy some t-shirts or tank tops or just hand nick or mike o. or lara or eveybuddy blank checks when ya see 'em on them streets ok?

anyhow if ya didn't see 'em at comfest last year and no-one has told you, there isn't anyone of any persuasion who doesn't fucking fall in in deep lust with this band right whenever they hear 'em - nick being like th' ferris bueller of redhot soul except he ain't lip synchin' an' it ain't the god-damn beatles it's sam cooke - so why they aren't like all over them late nite shows and euroweenie festivals i dunno but DAMN are they REAL REAL GOOD at being REAL REAL GOOD.

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Ohio Penitentiary 511 Jazz Ensemble

name of this record is 'hard luck soul' (don't doubt it) - my housemate procured a rip from an acquaintance of his and suggested it go on here. already posted elsewhere on th' webs but mebbe this is better quality, i dunno, sounds REAL NICE. all killer no filler souljazz, lotsa good reverb. never heard th' full story about this project or record specifically or i'd tell ya more.

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THE BLUE VOTZ

i had an idea that this guy mitch i knew from softball should sing in a band tho' i had no evidence that this was in any way a good idea an' lazor i guess wanted to play guitar but her finger was fucked up with this splint on it so we tuned it to drop d and i hadn't played drums in a long time but whatever, we never played out just in a coupla garages next to mitch's fucked-up dodge (soundboard was in the trunk when this was recorded). we had a buncha songs but all i can find is these two which were done on a tape machine with such dirty heads that you can still hear vocal tracks we redid and actually it sounds pretty great i think.

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The Stapler 'Very Clean'

i dunno what you do when bands are punkish and poppy - pop-punk is th' worst thing to call anyone ever and power pop is way too specifick - & ya actually wanna describe them rather than just say they're good. the stapler's got these great clanging hihats an' a lot more hüsker dü than there was in say 84 nash, & lotsa lou barlow bass under th' guitar scrape that ya wouldn't expect from like the cusacks or somebody - an' while this doesn't have a bonafide H-I-T onnit "gin and phonics" will make you wanna get wherever yr driving at least three times faster than you are getting there presently so go ahead, get more shit done.

(also in like top three reunion type shows i've ever seen: w/carter on drums that one time w/dolby fuckers at bobo.)

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El Jesus de Magico s/t

word is the new el jesus record is some seriously next-level shiz but i don't have it yet and this is th' one thing you can't totally steal from th' free music archive so hey here it is.

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THE LINDSAY 'Dragged Out'

the lindsay had a big show last nite celebrating th' release of their second LP so it's HIGH TIME we got the first one up here. top ten col's elpees of alltimes, folks, an' that's no lie.

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HELP IS ON DA WAY

evidently everyone's favorite rhyming panhandler has recorded two discs but this is the only one he's ever sold. i salute you if you can even make it thru th' intro. here's to wishing this had been made 15 years earlier, at least.

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BEAR #50

i found this little canvas (maybe 4"x4") months ago against a building on high street, somewhere south of the udf at first. little slip of paper says 'you found me! you can post comments to foundbear.blogspot.com' but of course you can't, whoever made it didn't even make one post, so there's nowhere to comment. but still, i like this bear.

obviouslies

obviouslies bandcamp = pay what you want (nothing is a viable payment) for recordings in whatever digital format you like…any donations go towards pressing vinyl. and/or buying pizzas.

hit it!

also, the 'brokedance' cassettes exist. should be at lost wknd &c by tuesday. still "wish for you" 45s left too. ask kyle or go to a show or something.

The Rackets

so today i finally came to the conclusion that i'm never gonna mix or 'release' th' record the rackets made; i mean i did a rough mix of one song for costa the other day and that was painless enough but i still don't have any real interest in revisiting that stuff. we weren't a happy band; we weren't happy people…well, ok, we weren't like miserable all the time - we had some pretty great times, come to think of it - but that don't change the fact that most of it was about things that went wrong or were going wrong, and sadly lacking in any possible solutions except the ever-present get-the-fuck-out. more than that, anyhow, it was about drinking and scattering our presents and our futures (nothing doing with the past - it's always gonna be there) to the cosmos with overamplification and large-caliber gunshot drums (i like to think that sometimes we succeeded) - and what does a record have to do with any of that? in any case sperry taped us playing at comfest, summer of '07 - what would, though we didn't know it then, be pretty much our last show - and while there are the requisite amounts of flubbed notes, offkey vocals, inside jokes with friends in the audience, guitars falling steadily outta tune and wonky monitor levels (as one should expect at an outdoor festival run by semi-inebriated - yet by no means apathetic or anything less than highly skilled - volunteers with seventeen time constraints at a time hovering all around their heads), it's a pretty good document of us in general. if yr into that sorta thing.

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Lestat 'Grave Desires'

back in the early '90s this tape would always be sitting in the bin at mag's; i dunno why i always noticed it but for some reason every damn time i went i'd be thinking, "there's that damned lestat tape, still." anyhow i don't remember who actually BOUGHT the thing or why i ever heard it but i did, once or twice…my memory fouled it up a bit so when i got it from halfprice awhile back and threw it on it wasn't quite as "good" as i thought. of course by '91 th' conventions of what we useta call "industrial" music (tho' what this has in common with einsturzende other than maybe that beating-on-a-girder sample they stole from nitzer ebb is anybody's guess - but heck, "EBM" ain't all that much better) were well in place and this band was way into followin' 'em wherever they may've lead (i.e. right onto that 'goth box' and nowheres else). it ain't a bad listen if'n yr into this kinda thing and lard-knows there weren't all THAT many greater combos eminatin' their moody soundscapes from PARMA HTS. at the time but gimme that 'within the realm of a dying sun' tape instead, myself, anyday.

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New Bomb Turks

if you like rapidshare and i don't but if you do there's a place where you can get pretty much all th' turks stuff:

part 1
part 2
part 3

so instead of posting any of that here's mp3s off a tape labeled 'austin city limits 5/94' that i found somewhere.

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photo credit: jay brown, duh

VILE GASH

i think this is not the tape everyone wants to pay for. so here, don't pay for it.

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Married Life Quarterly, Autumn 2010 Bonus CD

Washington Beach Basement Blues put to tape by an unknown band and found in an alley by me about 5 years ago when I was making a "living" recycling scrap metal. Out of the 400 cassettes of early '80s radio talk shows I found behind some North Campus apartments, there were about 5 that I accidentally discovered had jams on them.

Really awesome prychedelic crud here. Great old man vocals. Check. Crappy drum machine rehearsal tapes. Check. Ugliest solos ever. Yeah. An entire zonked live set in front of an audience of like 5 friends. That's here too.

-van fleet

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married life quarterly online

Bob Starker

one day i was perusing the alive or the guardian or something and i saw a businesscard-sized ad that said call bob about starting a band which was illustrated just like the cover o' this here rec, so havin' fallen in deep lust with the skronk eminatin' from them grooves awhile prior (friend in va. befriended andy from swirlies and hipped me to them soon after/swirlies lumped into+onto their friend morgan's label+genre CHIMP/bob put record out on chimp/i ordered it) i thot lo' it can't be cannit? 'course it was i found out - bob having then-recently relocated to here from there (MA) - after ringin' him up and tho' we neverstarted a band or anything we chatted for an hour or three and have remained well-acquainted ever since. you should be aware of bob's musical exploits since he's been 'round these parts (short story: sovines/whoa nellie!/wildrock goto saxman EXTRAORDINAIRE) but HEY! if'n ya don't have this rec' yer missin' th' sweetest spot. perfection like this comes along oh only ten or twelve times in any idiot's wax stax. i can't bother explaining what these seven titles soun'like so jus' download it sorry ever'body else IT'S THE BEST RECORD THAT WILL EVER BE ON THIS BLARG.

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Dogrocket

well i've been putting this one off for awhile b/c
1) it's all on cassette and running casstettes into th' computer is something i hafta be inna fairly specific mood for, like say totally sick and laying around reading the (7th)last samurai again and
2) i had it in my head that i NEEDED to scan all the dogrocket newsletters in and post them as pdfs concurrently with th' music
but when i realized i could just do that later and i realized that i was totally sick just laying around reading the (7th)last samurai again i thought hey it's probably high time i did that dogrocket post.
so.
one day i was sorta skating with my friend sonny and sorta having one of those hearttoheart conversations one tended to have with sonny when he mentioned that hey that evening he'd promised some friends he'd go see their new band at stache's and would i wanna come along. well it was getting along past one of those wonderful late summer sunsets and the parking lot we were in outside the mall where windbreakers useta be wasn't getting to be any better of a skate spot so i said sure let's go to that show what the hey. tho' it's interesting to no one, the fact is that this was the first time i had gone to stache's to see a local band. i don't know if i really believed in local bands. i had tried to have a couple and we played at houses or nowhere and i had heard rc mob and pica huss and seen basement underground too many times in garages and earwig in storefronts and everything but still it was awhile (well ok not a long while) before i saw greenhorn and it all came together for me. so we went to the thing and his friends were in broadcaster the band eric had before tiara that had brett who runs spoonful in it and matt duckworth maybe the best guitar player this town has ever seen and brian freshour who is in the top 3 just plain nicest guys i have ever met who also can-not seem to have a bass sound anything but way rad. [inhale] so they went on and man did they have it together and i thought HOLY SHIT there are other dudes who are trying to make the same musick i am listening to and trying to make as well which at the time was like a whole bunch of my bloody valentine and a smattering of the wackjob original pavement drummer's drumming and a lot of my own naïveté and retardation of course so that was an eye-opener and here i am still reeling from that and the perfect late-summer evening that feeling that is just teetering on the edge between two EQUALLY GREAT things but somehow it maintains and then dogrocket go on and i'm just blown away again.

i should stop to explain something here:
i had some friends in highschool who did not believe in anything but bob mould. and although i did not share their perspective (i like him fine), well what with hanging around with them and especially knowing that there were OLDER BROTHERS who were even more cultishly convinced made it into some arcane construct that i could not fuck with tho' i was not - as mentioned - chosen. it was a background hard truth to me that there was something about bob mould which i was never going to understand but which i should probably in some way feel a little less whole for not understanding.

anyhow - dogrocket being possibly the greatest of all the mid90s hüsker dü worshippers (overwhelming colorfast, arcwelder, &c. - who the aforementioned cult oddly not only accepted but pretty much universally revered, kindred souls i guess) my first thought was hey i hafta report back about this! but then i just fell into loving them all by my own self. this may seem runofthemill when you consider the degree to which their love of cheap trick parallels their love of bob/grant/greg and therefore warps their mpls angst blasts into something entirely more muscular and CHUNKED FULL of unabashed pop wizardry (not to mention childhoods obsvly sat in front of th' AM receiver sapping up th' sappy sounds and fostering an infatuation with th' sentimental side of th' radio dial), but there are a couple things here that roll against that assumption: dogrocket were not that easy to love. for starters there were a whole lotta shorts onstage. and tanktops. whoo. turquoise and white, even. no matter the time of year. and injokes. man were they all about the injokes. but hey, so was my band, so what could i really say against that (except that it was hard to feel like you were part of something that kept making it abundantly clear that you were not). but hey a band's gotta entertain themselves, first and foremost - and if we have anything to be thankful for in this town it's a take-me-as-i-am attitude from our entertainers when they climb onstage and dogrocket spent so little time up there NOT KICKING ASS that you didn't have any time to worry about it anyways. but i digress.

dogrocket remains one of my very favorite col's bands even tho' some day in 1997 or so they got a different bass player and when they lost their office temp jobs they stopped making that newsletter (which i really will scan soon ok). later they went on to be in other bands, SOME OF WHOM ARE/WILL BE *FEATURED* ON THIS HERE BLARG!

this file has three of their cassette eps and the rest of the tracks they did at thornapple while recording the third tape, 'blown' (which has absolutely no hidden tracks on it if you can believe that). the michelle era, if you will.

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myspace

there is an ishkabibble one.
that is all.

go to it

Thunderbird

jason from preston furman/grafton/bygones/&c came over one day with his wonderful wife joyce and this tape and we spoke of books and made a cd of the tape and they left. that tape and this here download are of course jason's solo project, recorded sometime prior to a coupla years ago.

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Swivelarm Battlegrip tapes

onetime when we useta get th' vinyl ink catalog they had written that kill sybil sounded like mbv (or at least, enough) and n.c. ordered th' record which is ok but i got another of their seveninchers awhile back and it hasn't stood too well which is beside the point cuz even if it had they don't hold one candle up to th' swivelarms here. my memory isn't what it once was (i don't even remember what it once was as shirt-tail has said) but one thing i do remember having seen these dudes/dudelady more than way too many times in those mid90s is bill just minding his own business rocking the absolute snot out of the bass there and then BAM! flying across the stage and landing in that "hey guys take a knee" stance and ruling it, ear dead inside th' monitor for the rest of whatever song - i mean it could happen ANYTIME, not when you'd expect it fer shirley BAM! loved it. what i did not remember was how gosh-damned SATURATED eric's guitar is, it's fucking MASSIVE, futbol fans, and val's enuff of her own singer that she don't get too bogged down inna riot grrl thing and therefore hers isn't as dated a wail as some o'those ladies' in teh retrospect. one doesn't hafta ask around too much to git at th' fact that i've long been known to admire benco's drumming idears so rilly i kinda been havin' a blast lissenin' to these tapes today and well i say you should too.

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Soups & Sauces

gigantic thankyou to colin for being the first (of many, hopefully) guest blather contributor:

Summer camp is among those liminal experiences that are fundamentally about being in some moment or other but are often of greater consequence to broader life trajectories than anyone involved could anticipate. Me, I met a Gahanna-Lincoln high schooler named Justin Coons, we talked politics on the phone FOR HOURS and went on a hot date to the Ross Perot campaign stop at the Nationwide Hilton. Justin introduced me to his schoolmate/bandmate friend Jim Graham, c/o 1992 (now a professor of psychology at WWU). Their band, Soul Kitchen (only zine review I ever read of their demo tape suggested that 'Devoid of Soul' was a more fitting name), was one of the Gahanna+Westerville high school bands I'd go see at metro park gazebos and VFW halls, with the occasional Apollo's show. I think their singer died of autoerotic asphyxiation, plus we were listening to lots of ska and made pilgrimages to Chicago for the JumpUp! fests. We spent a lot of time in cars and 24-hr restaurants and were among the cohorts of 90s high schoolers who annoyed the hell out of older Stache's patrons and staff, worshipping Ishkabibble and The Repairmen and standing outside shivering when less sympathetic sentries worked the door. 1991-92.

Jim met Lizard (then Tod) McGee at a wedding and when we weren't breaking into the remains of Cinema East or the Ohio Penitentiary the younger among us spent out time being fans of Earwig and getting better acquainted with bands like Greenhorn, Ugly Stick, Girly Machine (in retrospect those having less to do with each other than the schema we developed would suggest) -- having a guide a few years older was invaluable. Lizard had Lizard Family Music and a garage studio in his Whitehall home rivaling anything we'd heretothen experienced on a personal visit. To us, separate mixer & tape machine + control room glass = pro.

Through frequent-enough exposure to Stache's plus Shave the Baby and the Eardrop comps, we figured out some other stuff to listen to, and the idea of a Columbus V/A wasn't out of the question. All HS: Preston Furman at CAHS, Parsnip at Fort Hayes + UA, Mindchild at Westerville, Liquid Circus at Gahanna, and Enlargements/Boners admittedly from a less coherent background.

Right. So, Jim got some money (he was the one with a job) and Why Not Make a Comp w/ Aforementioned Money? Lizard McGee recorded Parsnip and the Boners, Preston Furman gave us a tape, Mindchild recorded at Thornapple, and the Enlargements borrowed a 4-track we didn't really know how to use. I think Lizard plugged tracks together and gave us a DAT that we took to Rome Recording, A Christian Recording Studio, in Obetz. Apparently some poor guy had to ride faders through that entire tape to get the noise reduction right -- I still feel a little guilty about that. J-cards at Kinko's, I think, maybe using the copycards that replaced $US as currency for awhile. It came with a zine with features on lockpicking and teenage-quality (at best) rants: cf veganism and what the fuck's up with society?. I think maybe Jim went to college before this was out, so we worked on it when we were both in town. I think we made 300, and we never bothered to see whether we were making our money back.

Without much in common musically and not much reason for social cohesion, there wasn't much thrust on any band's part to promote it or make anyone do it again. College helped the organic sorting into scenes without high school as the fundamental geographic delimiter, and group identity became more a consequece of where one chose to spend time than where one was required to spend it. Even humble events can reveal broad themes.

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Parsnip

well as with lots and lotsa bands from the blast from the past you've probably heard of/from one or some of the dudes/dudeladies since and of course with parsnip here that is no exception it's a wellknown FACT that one ramble john krohn played the guitar in this here combo and if you don't know who that is you better ask somebody ok. parsnip were a BLISTERINGLY GREAT live band i mean good lord mindblowing fer serious but this single isn't all that good (at least i think that every time i listen to it and it ain't all that much) and the soups & sauces (v.soon!) tracks are meh inna diff way but you can argue that amongst yerselves now that i've gone and put this on th' innernet. my copy is cracked which will be apparent tho' it plays thru fine but still if you wanna buy it lemme know.

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Lost My Uncle Wayne, 1998

it occurs to me we have something* akin to cryogenics like as far as (shit) musicks are concerned 'cause i think a lot of the problem there is getitoutgetitoutgetitout whether it's because you wanna move on or you wanna sell it or what it doesn't matter but really i think so many of us can agree that we'd like or at least we'd have liked things to happen sooner not later even where our creativity is concerned and like even if we have one or two or five day job(s) but hey it's probably not gonna happen anyway (amirite?) (?) so let's maybe stop with that there. this *=the ability we have to make something and just let it sit there and i don't mean finish it and sit on it not release it i mean just make it, write it down very notatedly or even better put it on a multitrack something or other and wait, oh eight or twelve years and then see what kinds of toys you can rustle up or maybe even just have sitting in your room by the later date when you've totally forgotten about what it sounds like or why and how you did it and just make it a real thing again, let it live and breathe and amaze you and it's easy esp. if it's all on tape already to not be too precious about it 'cause really the amazing thing is that it's there at all and then of course it's taken on this whole life of its own - revealing things you did and choices you made all those years ago so that without any extra effort those things are going to be there no matter what you do (in the case of a multitrack tape here we're saying it doesn't matter all that much what fiddly effects you mess with or how high the levels are or are not) which is always true but it's just that here with this kind of deal you FUCKING REALIZE THAT where with something yer like in the midst of all caught up in you worry that your great concept might not get across and you mix 37 times and you worry that your statement will be lost and your genius will be unsung and you will die in obscurity but with this old crappe obviously you are still here and there's such a sweetness to the whole endeavor.

anyhow i think i had a point and if so that point was that it would probably befit us to wait until there's a cure for the sickness sometimes. maybe all the time. i mean we've been trying to release the music of the future for so long (even if it's based in musics of the past) it might be nice to do it the wrong way 'round.

there were two rough mixdown cassettes of this my uncle wayne stuff from 1998 or so and i lost mine and davey lost his and i thought the reel was lost but it turns out when someone spilled coffee all over some tapes once i put it in a diff box and didn't label it and didn't find that to be true until last year. i mixed it again this morning and even though there is a lot of snot in my head i think it sounds real good and i am very happy to put it here for you. photo above is of the one and only real uncle wayne.

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badoobadarber

well i got a cease and desist for the gaunt post. at least i think i did. no info is available anywhere the blogger ppl are telling me to look. feel free to guess whether it's hazelmayer, bettina, or those warner doods who couldn't sell all those cutout vinyl copies of bricks & blackouts who's being bitter aboot it. y'know whoever it was coulda just made a fucking comment. GROSS.

EDIT: reposted

Ass Ponys - Mr. Superlove

dunno what needs to be said about these guys/this rec (TAPE) - as nec. as scrawl, prolly, as far as oh musicks go, and just as unavoidably original as those gals (and later guys) in of course their own bizarro way. takes probably everything you'd wanta know about "americana" (proto-, right?) (i mean, like, divine horsemen or something) in teh '80s and ridiculizes (everyother take)/legitimizes (their version) (natch) it in the most DEAD-SERIOUS way imaginable - where later (watch these skies) they trafficked in something akin to novelty numbers on their catchiest material here even the most silly stuff (opener "hey swifty") can be pretty fucking harrowing er scary depending on what hole yer looking up out of/down into at the time. fun and lean and important, all at the same time - the modern-day (yes the late '80s are the modern day) equivalent of the carter family as far as entertainment goes - and had the mass marketability of the cult of entertainment in america not gone FUCKING CRAZY between those two's respective eras i'm POSITIVE they'd be heralded as such.

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HOT PURSUIT

DOUBLEFUCK this record. i can't even BELIEVE what i do for you people.

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Snapshot

kinda excellent rick springfield-era (1984) radio pop with enuff power innit to align it favorably if not quite with "goodbye to you" then at least with that great holly penfield rec. songs are short blasts with diff fleeting & transparent reference points under the hooks - beat street hiphop, footloose-style antheming, those huey lewis-esque new wavers that weird al ripped off for his originals circa 1983… man do they lay on the FEATURING JULIE IVORY schtick heavy tho', i mean the "write to " addy is th' JULIE IVORY FANCLUB, whatever, shoulda scanned th' back sleeve so you could see them betwixt-th'-waist-an'-knees (front et rear) shots of julie's red jeans too. evidently she was some kinda local celebrity with some kinda boobtube mag on channel ten, whatever - if you know more and feel like commenting aboot it i'll read it and not feel bad. interestingly (or not) she's still here and sangin' up a storm in TWO copybands. you look 'em up.

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Great Plains - Cornflakes

udds & suds companion piece to th' career-spanning double-disc length of growth set, chockfull o' charmers incl. rockband version of ron house staple "five o'clock" that i didn't know existed till one them wyatt's shoved a copy of this disc down my pants. nowhere is a bad place to start as far as great plains are concerned so if you haven't started yet do it here and if you have well go ahead and start over, it's never too late.

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The Bassholes Make A Record For Matador

TRUE.

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Anna Ranger

nowadays people are prolly lazy and underinformed (mildly) enuff to just say nathan is like perhaps a stephen merritt fan but every time i see him play it just sounds to my ears like he's fucking channelled pretty much my exact experience of being alive in 1988: it's a morrissey/new order fest fer surely but it's so much more than that; ripping shit off is one thang and it fer shirley can be fine but got-damn if it isn't something else entirely to conjure a coupla groops yet be completely ON THEIR LEVEL and conjure an era without being the least bit anything but right-fucking-now. this tape's new but who cares, it's effin' timeless.

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MONSTERTRUCKFIVE

about the same time i was putting together the gaunt…but not forgotten comp and amassing greenhorn cassettes some dude was doing these cdrs called please don't sue me or something - real nice and all but i don't mind kicking his ass with more and better shit so here's the mt5 version, fuck that guy (j/k, luv ya!).

gimme five 10"
columbus, ohio
dry leaves hot wire
singles and comp tracks
breaker

Human Sufferage

so two new year's days ago i was living with bumbico and we met up with gary and whoever down at the dube and then it seemed like a good idea to buy a bunch of whip-its and head back home…eventually there was a nice little party goin' with entertainment consisting basically of those whip-its and leftover champagne or fresh beers and someone spilling something on the floor every twenty minutes to a rousing chorus of "sham-wow! sham-wow!" since we had gotten a box of them for xmas and also me playing some records, these two included - mainly for lutzko. sometimes you just gotta lay a history trip on a motherfucker. so in tribute to the anniversary of that heartwarming soirée and ALSO to lutzko's brand-spankin'-new wwf-style feud with certain members of the washington beach bums (is he th' ted dibiase of col's??), here's a lesson in how to make fucking punk rock in oh, circa 1983-4.

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