Nocturna 'Periwinkle' + 'Stardust' EP

i know, i know, i've been bagging on high schoolers and college students pretty ruthlessly lately, but man, i don't have a fucking plan for this crap. i get a big pile of tapes and shit there and sometimes i just start running em in, barely knowing what to expect. it ain't my fault all this garbage coalesced in front of my stereo this time.

anyhow, if you were wondering what th type of kids (namely carlos avendaño, later of flotation walls) who woulda started arcade fire (no i still don't know what they sound like, just that there are a lot of them) ripoff bands had it been 2010 were doing in th mid-'90s, well OF COURSE they were ripping off th most over-over-overwrought pseudo-orchestral smashing pumpkins melodrama. and yes, it's chockfull of KILLER lines like "all the pain that comes with you" and "this is who i am" and shit (fave: "some things we find by losing").

what puzzles me MOST about this stuff (and yes, many things about it puzzle me, including th brain-fucklering fact that these tapes were recorded at schwab and ultrasuede - not cheap studios - while everybody else was bugging out on th fact that 8 track cassette decks were being made) is th way th girl/boy vocals don't harmonize or even exist on th same plane. i guess it's maybe just a symptom of young women who listen to too much tori amos (still not really sure what she sounds like either but there's definitely too much of her) or something, but there's NO EFFORT made to conjure a collective [good] thing out of th various parts - and i guess that could be applied to th entirety of th music. everyone's playing th same song, in some way, but it's like after they agreed roughly on however to do that they just never listened to each other or th collective result, and it doesn't form anything attractive - much less magical. and i'd think that's what billy corgan-obsessed kids would be interested in - some kinda hokey "magic" (via feigned depression, natch) - but maybe they were just trying to grow ponytails and touch panties. in which case i hope they succeeded (i don't. -ed.), 'cause there's nothing about this that satisfies even th most vague and forgiving notion of why one wants/needs music in their life; it's utterly joyless navel-gazing schlock made by people who haven't actually had any experiences yet but have evidently been GRAVELY affected by their few attempts at spin the bottle or something. (i honestly don't want to give th impression that i don't think childhood/adolescence/etc can't be/isn't a bizarre, fuckedup time or that i refuse to acknowledge how oddly/deeply [seemingly tiny] gestures/occurrences/etc can punch into a kid's unconscious, but when it manifests itself into tchotch like this a) i have trouble believing th experiences aren't simply invented and 2) well, sometimes BAD is BAD.) all in all it sounds like they simply hadn't yet figured out that they could just go to th fucking renaissance faire…and, actually, if all th lyrics were about quests and mythical beasts and shit i would probably like this enough to tolerate th fucking girl's voice, even.

but maybe you'll like it.

download

"through my looking glass i see all the ache inside of me."

SERIOUSLY.

doubting Thomas 'Heaven Gave Us Money' LP

and we continue with the crappe! at first i thought there was exactly one good thing about this lp (th overuse of th phrase "the fields behind k-mart" in th track "once you remember"), most of th rest of it being entirely forgettable/somewhat grating consciously-outsider alterna-gunk seemingly influenced only by mitchell froom's soundtrack to 'café flesh' and warren zevon, but th tune "minute forty-five" is actually pretty great in its nash the slash-isms (tho' i doubt i'll ever listen to it all that much). unfortunately overall this is th kind of thing that "helped" widen collegiate consciousness into half-acceptance of stuff like school of fish and crash test dummies a few years later. i dunno what these dudes were going for really - maybe they were just wasting time while they got thru dental school (obviously they didn't have any other friends so recording in their attic was probably their only recreational avenue) - but most of this is just kinda not-dark-enough but sorta depressing, not-poetic-enough but overly verbose and not-funny-enough but fairly cringe-worthy. come to think of it this might be a pseudonymous brian ritchie solo effort. better luck next time.

(note: extensive restoration and digital gobbledygook had to be done in order to salvage th frankly excruciating a capella intro to th fourth track due to a big ol' scratch on my dollar copy. you can thank me later. and if you feel like beating up whoever lives in their old house for th crimes these guys perpetrated against humanity, th sleeve lists their late-'80s residence as 123 clinton street.)

download

spyglass cassette

now here's something unlikeable. let's first address some words that should never, ever be used in yr lyrics: trust, distrust, forgive, drown, sentiment, & pride come to mind…and that's pretty much because i decided to pick one per song from th convenient lyric inner sleeve of this tape - glad they thought their crap important enuff to print! should you be unfamiliar with spyglass's ouevre, lemme sum up th sucky little corner of mid-'90s emo that they felt rad enuff about to ape: take th extrovert "weird" girl at yr school with th clunky shoes, find four dudes who tuck in their shirts and get opie cunningham haircuts, add one lowercase word as a collective title for their music-ish meanderings, rinse, repeat. so where on th one hand you have th FUCKING FANTASTIC and genuinely interesting and arresting discount, on th other you have th mildly tolerable samuel and th distinctly execrable copper. one guess from whence th lads and lass of spyglass pull th entirety of their influences - tho what ANYONE sees/saw in these acts (other than 'hey, a GURL'), i can't fucking fathom. literally th most tuneless tunes and overwrought non-emotion applied to STOOPID (and not in th good way) sentiment PLUS th most chalk-scrapingly AWFUL style of singing i can imagine. i'd rather spend th rest of my life on an island with those horrible gurls from sleater-kinney sing-shouting at me about tampons than listen to this tape (or th youtube vids of copper and samuel that i pulled up to make sure my memory wasn't being unkind) one more time. pretty much th exact opposite of th frog a mungus tape (tho that one's got lyrics just as embarrassing).

you might like it, tho'.

download

Gut Piston Demo (1992)

finally, some more gut piston for ya - this time it's an early 'demonstration tape' recorded at pica house (these days aka legion of doom). ENTIRELY more ramonesified than th other tape already posted here, you can tell that th dudes hadn't yet been completely infested by col's scuzz (just lima scuzz. and that's some scuzz indeed). fortunately none of this comes to bear whatsoever on these four tunes' respective abilities to kick major fucking ass.

download

frog a mungus 'velour' cassette

1995 shining moment for these guys (and, at that time, gals). th three places on th interwebs that mention 'em these daze make a big stink aboot their shoegazerness, but i sure don't remember 'em that way. anyhow this tape has lotsa splatty guitar lines all over but i wouldn't call 'em sonic-youthy (certainly not in th way that say, th neon blud tape is sonic-youthy, anyhow) and tho' there's some judicious use of stompbox delay on some of th vox (thx to billy h., producer/engineer extraordinaire), th singing is pretty straighforward. i'd go as far as a very ruff velocity girl comparison in that department, but even that's reaching and anyhow v.g. were shoegazey for only about 2.5 minutes anyhow ("my forgotten favorite"=alltime jam, tho'!). so to oversimplify, end-result-wise, f.a.m. were dancing around swivelarm battlegrip and kill sybil territory more than anything else (tho' in reading th lyrics mebbe a better uncomfortable pairing would be copper and samuel - plus bonus local wanna-be's spyglass [don't worry i've got that tape cued up]) but coming from a completely different perspective than those bands - which is probably best-evidenced by th trajectory that these folks took musically after th 'mungus ceased to be; even if you just follow th rhythm section you come up with th cherubs-meet-linda-blair-isms of subdevil and th what-if-fu-manchu-really-were-funny tack of their current project (with bogtrodder/acid blacker/limb trialer mike sliclen) chomp-chomp. which is to hint that all musical comparisons are largely for descriptive purposes only as th frog a mungus contingent were then and are now expressly about conjuring whatever they can/whatever tickles their fancy out of their personal musical ether - influences and contemporaries be damned.

download

Daniel Gold 'The Magnanimous Cuckold'

EXCELLENT 1996 arp-based mini-lp from th elusive dan gold. misplaced my copy years ago and had been telling myself i'd pick up th next one i saw - which i had th opportunity to do at spoonful th other day. cheers to ruland!

download

Ass Ponys 'Electric Rock Music' + "Earth To Grandma" CD5

homespun EXPANDO edition of major label debut includes non-alb' traxx from one of th two singles released off th rec. should you be in po-zeh-shun of th other ("little bastard"), do please send it over.

download

Peter Laughner

"he catalyzed a scene in Cleveland that, one could safely say, is the virtual blueprint for the independent music scene, even today."

not th type of guy to enter reliable studios on a regular basis, pete made sure to keep most all of his genius a COMPLETE SECRET for all his years (much like his good pal l. bangs), but th fact remains that whatever his musical motivation at any particular time, th guy helped INVENT PUNK ROCK (dubious achievement that it is) AND NEW WAVE AND POSTPUNK (AND he DIED before any of those even gained a foothold in th popular consciousness!) all during a coupla years when most people just wanted to forget that rock'n'roll ever fucking existed in th first place, and for that he deserves a goddam giant statue in tower city, yet hasn't even been "awarded" entry into th "rock" "hall" of "fame" just up th street. gawd humans is stoopid.

Take The Guitar Player For A Ride (not my rip, CBR 192, 18 tracks including both 'vinyl-only' tunes)

Setting Son (CBR 192, not my rip)

Friction at Pirate's Cove, 11.2.76 (not my rip, CBR 256)

Ass Ponys 'Grim'

here ya go, th second ass ponys release on okra and their last before jumpin' to a MAJOR LABEL, back when major labels still had a coupla guys/gals with HEADS ON THEIR SHOULDERS workin' for 'em.

download

(VBR around 192, not my rip. somehow th first two songs got switched both in order and in title. i'm sure you can figure a way to rectify this.)

Beano (Secret) Demo

here's th only thing beano actually 'released' in our "career" - and even then only in an edition of like eight at a neil house show. i think we charged a dollar. each one was in a different color/flavor, with th covers hand-traced (by me) from art thom did. most of th stuff on this probably appears on th beano cd i made to pass out at trevor's wedding, but i thought it was worth it to post this anyhow since i think most all of th takes are different. ALSO, this features two tracks (live at bernie's) with their original drummer!

download

Thom Lessner

i met thom OVER 1,000 YEARS AGO when i got asked to try playing drums for a fellow i had just met's recently-drummerless band. that was beano, we played for awhile. it was great. certain things led to us not playing anymore but that's a whole other thing. sometimes we still do. anyhow, nowadays of course thom has thee excellent SWEATHEART in philly and numerous art gigs like MAKING ALL TH POSTERS FOR TH SCHOOL OF ROCK or MAKING VIDEOS FOR THE DARKNESS but before that he spent a buncha years (starting in high school) four-tracking his way to obscurity. here are all th tapes i have documenting that endeavor:

GUY SMILEY

THE ASHBY STASH

3-D THOMMY

EVERYBODY SING ALONG

notes: th 'guy smiley' tape was done, if i remember correctly, as a project for one of thom's classes at fort hayes. it marks th only time thom used a name other than his own for his solo stuff. th copy he gave me had a whole bunch of stuff on th b-side as well, so i've included it. 'the ashby stash' was in some ways a retrospective at th same time it was a collection of then-current recordings, so it shares some tracks with th 'guy smiley' tape. i didn't edit any tunes from either; i'm sure you won't mind. there are tons of guest stars on these songs, including rjd2, all of beano, peggy honeywell, sonya fix, & maika carter (she's married now, i know). i may have titled some of th unlisted tunes incorrectly, but that's how it goes, eh?

Peggy Honeywell "Bower Bird"

awhile back a buncha dudes got together to throw a raging kegger and watch peggy honeywell sing th same song a lot. forgot aboot it/couldn't find it/&c for years, but now here it is. shot in col's, you may recognize a buncha th buncha dudes.

Jim Shepard + Multiball

        September 12, 1998. Walt's Lounge. Summit Street. Columbus, Ohio, USA. Drinking the cheapest beer in the house. Billy big brother who sells used cars bought me a round. Crazy fucking Jenny bought me one too, as she continued to berate me, shoot me her middle finger, and babble on in her whacked-out Jack Daniel's haze. I've seen her sit by herself and just laugh her head off. She holds a job, has a boyfriend, but she is A-1 nutso. It's mid-afternoon, OSU is winning 49 to zip (like I care), and besides talkin' to Carol the bartender's boyfriend Mick, the highlight of the day is slippin' 4 quarters into the DRACULA pinball machine for a 2 player game and winning 2 free games. You top 110,000 points and you win. It's better than Vegas. I've been THERE, dropped 2 rolls of quarters in the slots, and split. The '96 tour, 7,000 miles. 21 days. Me and Squid, the 'merch-man', had a rental car. Rest of band w/girlies had a van. Left 'em in Venice Beach. They knew the way home…

        I've never been known to play the kind of SPORTS that make ya sweat. I play pinball. At Walt's Lounge, I seem to be one of the only people to play the DRACULA machine. When I was 10 and enjoying my boyhood life in Vermont, my family hijacked me to a sad slow-moving town in central FLAWRIDA. I hated it. When I got out of high school I moved to Ohio w/2 friends and we started the band Vertical Slit.

        The only thing in that hot swamp-land town that made life tolerable was the Hi-Lan Lanes Bowling Alley 2 blocks from the house. I was an addict. It was the machines. In the early '70s, I was a young teenager. I was also a pinball wizard and a pool hustler. Grown men would weep as me and the V. Slit drummer Dave Mikula would call the 8 ball four rails in the corner and make it. Back in those pre-video days pinball was a whole different animal. The scoring numbers rolled around on cylinders and to get the ball to pop up so you could shoot it you had to push in a lever. Big machines back then were 'STUDENT PRINCE', 'METEOR', and 'HOT ROD'. It seemed we spent half of our lives at the bowling alley. The fuel to feed out addiction was quarters. Any way we could get 'em, we'd get 'em. Steal change from the parents, go door to door "collecting money for the junior high basketball team" (which wasn't actually collecting money for any 'cause'), and…well, all the quarters would go into the machines at the bowling alley. Eventually it would go for other things like cigarettes, dope, and liquor. I scored a dishwashing job in the restaurant at the bowling alley. This would provide chump-change for the machines.

        Pinball is pure magic. It's not like playing pool, bowling, contact sports, or playing cards. It's one on one. You against the machine. You can't touch the ball (or the 'multi-balls'). All you can do is pull back the plunger, let the ball go, and work the flippers. I used to push on the machine, shake it around, but I don't bother w/that much anymore. It's a game of skill, and when you can win 2 games on a one-dollar investment…friend, you are a damn good player.

        I create music. I drink. I play pinball. Right now, those 3 things seem to be the focus of my earthly existence, but that's fine. I never wanted to be a prize-fighter, and I won't work with the suits. Every night when I get off my 2nd-shift job I head to the bar. Walt's Lounge. I play pinball. Sometimes, me and a girl friend each play a flipper, but her reflexes are kinda slow and she'll make the ball drain. Hang out w/the middle- to old-age working class drinkers. I feel safe there and lemme tell ya, when I kick the machine's ass I feel a sense of satisfaction unlike any other.

        Pinball is one of the most worthwhile things on the planet, it's been a huge part of my life…and when you're a master player, hey, it makes the evening quite alright…

-Jim Shepard of V-3   9.14.98

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).

download