ONE MAN RUNNING - "Stress" - 7" - 1992

   My partner, Anandi put out this record on Kirbdog records back in 1992, so I asked her to write this entry, but she said "I have nothing interesting to say about it." I said "There's gotta be something...like, why did you put it out? Where did you get the money? Maybe an interesting story about the band?" Then, she told me this:
   "My friend Tracy needed to get from Santa Rosa (where we lived) to Sebastopol (his parents house), but he didn't have a car and was afraid to get caught driving since he was taking his driver's test the next day...he only had a permit. So, he stole his friend's car and I drove him to Sebastopol, even though I didn't have a license and had never driven a car before. Well, we wrecked the car. The owner of the car got pissed and wanted to be paid for the damages. Neither of us had any money to pay for it. My dad had been holding onto some money that my grandmother had left for me to use for college. It was only a couple thousand dollars and that wasn't enough to pay for college anyway, so he gave it to me to pay for the damages. There was still some money left over and I decided that I should put out a record. I didn't really know ONE MAN RUNNING that well, but I liked their band and they didn't have a record out...so, I put this out for them."
    ONE MAN RUNNING existed for a short time in the small town of Arcata, CA. Their only recorded output appears on a demo tape (found here), the Can Of Pork compilation (on Lookout Records) and on this 7". Their songs are simple and poppy, yet insanely fucking addictive. They have that same tinny sound that alot of late '80's/early '90's Bay Area bands seemed to share (think: CRIMPSHRINE, OP IVY, CRINGER). I can't drive down the 101 through Humboldt County without singing the line "Smokestacks and treeeeeees!" in my head (or out loud).
   A digital version of this appears at the end of a FIFTEEN cd, but I put this up on my blog so that you don't have to endure the pain and embarassment caused by actually owning any music by FIFTEEN.
                        Download ONE MAN RUNNING