PHOTO POST

FYP - I-Defy House - 1996 - Atlanta, GA - Photo by Greg Harvester

DEAD MOON - Location Unknown - 2005 - City Unknown - Photo by Shannon Smith

SPAWN SACS - Melita's Basement - 1997 - Dalton, GA - Photo by Greg Harvester

RUSSIAN TSARCASM - Graffiti Bridge - 2006 - Bloomington, IN - Photo by Greg Harvester

QUADRILLION BABES - Sweet Hickory - 2008 - Bloomington, IN - Photo by Joe McCann

PIERCED ARROWS - Black Butte Center For Railroad Culture (They're playing on a wooden boxcar with 100 people in it) - 2010 - Weed, CA - Photo by Greg Harvester

PINK COLLAR JOBS - Gorin's Ice Cream - 1997 - Huntsville, AL - Photo by Blair Menace

BLOODWALL - "Guitar Tape" - 2011

   I had a pretty light-hearted, fun tape lined up for today, but then I thought "fuck it". Fuck your stupid holiday. You see, I haven't celebrated this weird holiday in earnest since I was a teenager and even then I was only in it purely for the gifts. I mean, I just don't understand it. I don't believe in God (or Satan even). Santa is a really weird person that was made up so that you can learn to lose faith in your parents and believe that they're just gonna lie to you about everything for the rest of your life. And how many people got trampled in a Wal-Mart this season? Whatever. Maybe I'm just in a bad mood because this time of year always puts me in a bad mood and my dad is 3000 miles away and currently hooked up to a ventilator as he slowly fades away from this mortal coil. So, I'm gonna be spending the holiday drinking iced coffee (because I live in a godless city that doesn't completely shut down) and hanging out with incredibly depressed senior citizens,because that's what I get paid to do. Hooray.
   I will also be listening to BLOODWALL, which is just my friend Graham playing layers of guitar on this hour long tape. The first side is all acoustic and reminds me a little bit of John Fahey at times if he lived in a cold house in south Minneapolis with a dirt yard. The second side is electric and is both plaintive and meditative. You'll like it or you won't. I truly don't care if you do, but I love it. Live, BLOODWALL sometimes plays behind a wall of amps to the accompaniment of noise, radios tuned between stations and other odds and ends. The results can be truly hypnotic.

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Graham also plays in VISITOR and can put any noise you want on a mono lathe-cut record over at 2208 Records.

If you truly enjoy the holidays or think that making your kid believe in Santa is worthwhile, don't let me ruin your parade. It takes all kinds to make this world interesting.

COLD LAKE - "Live on KEXP" - Tape - 2010

  I met my friend Clyde way back in the early part of the 00's when he played guitar in an old time band. I even went on tour as their roadie after walking out of my shitty kitchen job. I lived in Clyde's room for a short time after that tour and would listen to old tapes of his long-running (and still running) band, YOUR HEART BREAKS while hiding from the world outside. These times made me associate Clyde's musical output with old-time music, homo-pop love songs and punk songs about fucking on rooftops.
  That's why I was surprised when Clyde handed me this tape a few years ago and said "Here's a live recording of my new hardcore band!" Like all of us, Clyde is multi-faceted and sometimes wants to play a short-scale bass through an amp that could kill you while screaming their fucking head off. So, he got this band together with some old, old friends in Seattle and made it happen. Corey, James and Zachary handle the vocals, guitar and drums respectively and take their influences from a place where I never took mine, so I don't really know what they are, but I'm gonna take a guess that it's a lot of thickneck 90's hardcore from the Pacific Northwest with singers who sound like they wear cardigans.
   This tape features 4 songs from a live broadcast on KEXP in Seattle and oh-my-god-the-bass-is-loud-in-the-mix, but it still rules. The fifth song is a demo for a comp the band was on. The band went on to put out two tapes that came packaged in a DVD-sized box along with a box-cutter. If you'd like to hear that stuff, look over to the COLD LAKE bandcamp. If you want the box set, I think you're shit outta luck.

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DAS BEACH BOYS - "New Das Beach Boys Experience" - Tape- 2007

   Sometimes, you're sitting around the kitchen drinking whiskey, listening to tapes late at night and your friend puts on some harsh noise and it hits you in just the right way. This tape hit me in the right way and I'm actually not sure if it's harsh noise because I don't really know what that shit is. Nonetheless, I like this.
  This was volume 3 in a "Singles Going Steady" series. Volume one was a Worcester party covers band. Volume 2 was a huge punk band covering frat rock , like "Louie Louie" and "Wooly Bully"...with 4 guitars and 6 singers and Mike Leslie stomping on a piano and Crusty Tim throwing up a raw egg. In this volume, the band DAS BEACH BOYS assaults your eardrums with layers upon layers of the sounds of things on fire....phone books, record players, hair, light bulbs, AM radios, fireworks, leaves,etc,etc..., Members of the band might have been Dan Wars, Crusty Tim, Sela, EZ Bake, Marky Metal, Mike Leslie, Nixie and a woman who sang on some AGAINST ME songs. The tape originally came with a booklet and a book of matches. Turn this up and burn some shit.

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Thanks to Caitlin for the tape.
Thanks to Dan Wars for info.

GOURMET SCUM - 3x Cassingle - Tape - 2008

    In Indiana, I worked in a screenprinting shop with my friend Benny. In addition to spending 40 hours a week making each other crack up over ridiculous shit, we also rounded out the rhythm section of our band, PEDRO SAYS HI with our friends, Zak and Leah. Sometimes, I would get a ride home from work in Benny's car and we would blast THE BODY out of his shitty factory speakers while sitting with the windows down in traffic. During one of these drives, he told me that he had started a new band that was more inspired by THE BODY, skating, Dinosaurs Attack cards and just being fucking loud and noisy. It was called GOURMET SCUM, named after his favorite fictitious band.
  I went to see them in a basement soon after that. They started off their set by taking big hits off of a joint and then passing it into the audience.I noticed that they had also placed a huge bottle of whiskey on the floor in front of them, free for anyone to take drinks from. For the next 20-30 minutes, they destroyed the eardrums of the audience with downtuned sludge and space-guitar weirdness. While most of the band held the songs down, their second guitarist, Ryan, would just be in his own world, creating noise and going off on a tangent. It didn't always work, but it was more interesting than any other band that played that night. By the end of the show, I was sold. I didn't only like this band, I wanted to be IN the band. I brought it up to Benny and by the next week, I was their 3rd guitarist.
    For the next few months, we hauled our fucked up, old amps to basements and skateparks to play to unenthusiastic punks. I didn't even care if people liked us because the band was so much fun to hang out with. Just as quickly as I joined them, I also quickly left them to move out west because the Midwest was killing me slowly. They moved on and even went on tour a couple of times. A few months after moving, I was walking out of a PIERCED ARROWS show in SF and Ryan was standing there with a hug and this small handful of tapes. I woke up a few days ago and this is all I wanted to listen to, so I thought maybe someone else would like to hear it as well.
 

   I'm pretty sure the line-up on this tape is as follows: Benny on vocals and guitar. Brent on bass. Ryan on guitar. JRD on drums. The covers were screened onto taped up beer boxes. It was probably recorded by JRD in his basement. The band also put out a split tape with LANDLORD on Magnetic South, which is way out of print.

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The three guitar line-up played (horribly) on radio station WFHB's local live radio show,where we were required to play one original and a cover. The cover we chose was "Hashslinger" by 90's Bloomington sound-geniuses JACKWACKER. You can hear those songs here, along with the live songs by QUADRILLION BABES.

BACK IN ACTION

   The blog and computer are now repaired and we will return to our regularly unscheduled program. Multiple truckloads of thanks go to Anandi Wonder for doing most of the repairs while I walked around in circles complaining like a stressball spacecase. Just as many thank-you's and high fives should go to people who donated money to help cover repairs to the computer. You're all very wonderful people.
Expect more music very soon.

SERVICE INTERRUPTION

   One thing I really hate doing more than most things is asking for money. I really don't think that the readers of this blog owe me anything, but I feel like you can make your own decisions. Long story short: the computer containing all the music files ever shared on this blog is damaged. An airline broke it but they don't care about my stupid shit. If you have downloaded music from this blog in the past and think it's worth your time to donate money towards fixing the damn thing, feel free to do so. If I end up getting more than the cost of repairs, I will put that money directly towards improving the operations of the blog and will promise to keep doing the blog for the duration of 2014, if not longer.
    The computer is used primarily to upload music files, check my email and write articles for MRR. That's about it, if you needed more into.

Thanks. You are awesome, whether or not you donate money. 

1. No more need for donations.Thanks!

SUBCLINIX - Demo - Tape - 2011

    Do you ever have that feeling that you want to see a punk band who sounds like they only have a record collection that consists of "Killed By Death" compilations...or even better, they just own the original records compiled on those comps? Well, I do sometimes. I feel like I've tried to voice this to friends in the past and then they try to turn me on to some crappy pop-punk band who probably listens to fucking NOFX records at home.
   SUBCLINIX is the band I'm looking for in these moments. They're just fucking punk. They're great and they have hooks. My band played with them in a dingy Oakland basement a few years ago and I could have just gone home happy immediately after their set, but we still had to play. I bought their fucking tape and here it is. They're still a band, but they don't play too often. Deal with it.

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PHOTO POST

SKIMASK - Charlie's Kitchen - 2013 - Boston, MA - Photo By Greg Harvester

ONE REASON - Rhino's - 2006 - Bloomington, IN - Photo by Ben Rains (?) (Teaching graffiti kids how to spell)

WAR TORN BABIES - The Headquarters - 1999 - Asheville, NC - Photo by Chrissie Lozano

SHONEN KNIFE - The Rickshaw Stop - 2010 - San Francisco, CA - Photo by Greg Harvester

NEON PISS - La  Miroiterie - 2012 - Paris, France - Photo by ???

DEEP TEENS - The Lab - 2013 - San Francisco, CA - Photo by Greg Harvester

DISPLEASURE - Dead Rat Beach - 2012 - Oakland, CA - Photo by Greg Harvester

THE BEST MIX TAPE IN THE WORLD - 2001

   In our world of instant music over-sharing and having every song in the world at your fingertips, I still think the mix tape is important. It's small, breakable and tinny sounding. It's the long post-script to the handwritten letter you wrote to someone. It's all the things you were too afraid to say in person. It's the thank-you note to a house full of friends who let you sleep on the couch when you had nowhere else to go. Sometimes, it's just a plastic case of quarter-inch analog tape that gets thrown in the bottom of a milk crate until it's discovered by an unintended party 20 years too late. My friend, Lisa used to wear a mix tape on a chain around her neck and when any situation got boring, she would put it on the stereo and dance her troubles away.
    I made this tape (pictured above) for myself to take on tour in 2001 (probably). I found a busted 30 minute tape laying around the house and quickly made this mix. As soon as I finished making it, I took it out of the stereo and jokingly wrote "Best Mix Tape in the World" on it (since faded and rubbed away). Over time, those words rang true (tastes are subjective) and friends on tour with me would ask "Can we listen to the best mix tape in the world?" I never put it in a case, so it's beaten up, broken, warbly and fucked up. Also, it was recorded on a fucked up stereo and (I'll put this in caps for anyone just skimming this article) EVERY SONG IS RECORDED JUST A LITTLE BIT TOO FAST, which makes them better, in my opinion. I think I took this tape with me on every tour, hitchhiking trip or random travels for about 7 or 8 years until it just seemed like it would fall apart....yet, here it is, still playing as good as it did when I first made it....kind of.
   All of the songs are fairly well known (to punks), with a few curve balls thrown in, including the band of Ohioan mad man Yuri Garcia (I forgot the band name), who unwittingly offered up his ode to the late night booty call, "Crosstown Booty". Also included is (count 'em) three songs by the wild-ass Florida institution known as the TRASH MONKEYS. One of them is a confusing ballad about George Washington needing to put some clothes on if he's gonna be standing on "that sexy quarter". You should probably know the rest...and if you don't, there's info that is readily available to you via this internet box.

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There is a part during the GEN X song where I accidentally leaned down and pressed "record" instead of "stop" on the boombox between the seats of the tour van. We were getting pulled over by the cops. If that disrupts your listening experience, that song is available for download elsewhere on the internet, as are many of the other songs. 

If anyone has extra info on the prank caller who closes out the tape, please get in touch.