RIOT SOUNDS PRODUCE RIOTS - Tape - Timeless

   Rioting. It is important. It is crucial. Some say it's the unbeatable high. Many want a riot of their own. Where do you find your anger? What makes you flip the switch from simply walking down the street to punching a pig in the fucking face like that crudely drawn human above? What drives you to jump onto the hood of a police car and smash feet first through the windshield, like I once saw someone do on Mission Street? I can't answer those questions for you. It's up to you.
   A few months ago, my friend Jacob handed me this tape in the kitchen of his big, drafty warehouse in an undisclosed area of Rhode Island. He only explained that this tape is intended for rioting. It should put you in the mood to destroy. The whole concept was Mikey T's idea, but maybe ML was the one who was doing the most bugging to make it happen...but then Jacob made it happen. I know that none of those statements made a question, but just act like they did. I can't answer those questions for you. It's up to you.
   Back in San Francisco, my band got booked on a punk show in an art gallery by the ocean. I was borrowing a car and I drove it out. I put this tape in and listened to it LOUD with the windows down. By the time I arrived at the show, I felt crazy and wanted to destroy that entire area of town. I wanted to rip the art off the walls, punch my friends in the face and then walk away from the whole scene in slow motion while an entire city block exploded behind me. I didn't do that though because my friends are great and I really like that part of town. What I'm trying to say is, use this tape wisely and appropriately. Do not trifle with it. Listen responsibly.

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REMOTE OUTPOSTS WEIRDO MIX VOL 2 - Tape - 2013

   This is the second in a collection of songs and random bullshit that doesn't really fit elsewhere. I make no excuses or apologies for sound fidelity. You can find the first installment of this collection right here..
    The intro is the beginning of one of the worst songs of all time. Unfortunately, it got stuck in the heads of Cinque and I when we were working on a farm, picking basil for a few weeks. We would scream out the lyrics to each other across the field at 7 am. One day, I went into town and was looking at the 45 at the record store when the clerk said, "Oh God, please take that record! Just get it out of the store."
  The second is a lost RICE HARVESTER song that never made it onto any releases or into a recording studio. By this time, I had moved from Huntsville back to Birmingham, AL, but was still driving back to Huntsville (around a 3 hour drive, round trip) once a week to practice. I think we intended for this song to be on a compilation of Alabama bands that never got off the ground. It's about a homeless man in Huntsville named Gene who, rather than simply sleeping under overpasses, would build a little shack / house under the bridge in plain view of everyone. I immediately felt weird about writing this song because after talking to him a few times and being only 20 years old, I really had no grasp of the complexities of homelessness and mental illness. It's written from a place of privilege that just embarrasses me now. Luckily, the recording quality is abysmal.
   It's followed up by one of my favorite EFS songs. They were the house band at a punk house that was allegedly above the Black & White Liquors by Ashby BART in the East Bay way back in the dark ages. Following that is a band containing members who have won Grammys and shit. I'm not saying their name because I want to avoid the fiasco of being linked to slobbering fan site messageboards (again). If you listen to melodic punk, you will probably recognize this song, but maybe not this version. Sound quality is total trash. CBDS is after them with a different mix of one of their great songs. Sound quality has deteriorated so badly that you will wonder if there has been a turd stuffed into the cassette.
    Quality takes a step up for the intro to the long lost Alabama rock band, BUCKET FULL OF HERESY. The intro is the best part of their tape. The rest is an endurance test of having to listen to teenagers try to write a song while the tape is rolling. I know that this hasn't stopped me in the past, but I'll spare you the gory details this time. SMEGMAGICIANS are next. They've been a band since 1993, but only played one show in 1994. They're mysterious and choose to stay that way. This song was recorded in 1999.
   Next up is a recording from a FORCED VENGEANCE show that took place on my birthday back in 2000 (?). Details are hazy, but I do know that Harry (guitarist) and I played this show nearly blacked out drunk. This show was also when the proverbial line in the sand was drawn between the towns of Bloomington and Chattanooga because a bunch of Bloomington residents came down to this show and decided that we were some of the worst people to ever exist because my friend Piper (who lived in Bloomington most of the time, mind you) decided to construct a 3 foot long, paper mache cock to hang from the ceiling. I'm sure I'm missing some details here, but instead of talking to us and figuring out that we were not the worst people ever, a lot of folks just decided to go with that story....some of the debris of this show still lingers around to this day (obviously). ANYWAY, This recording comes from the beginning of the set when Harry needed to borrow an amp because his was crapping out. Rather than just wait around for this to happen, Eric (other guitar) and I (drums) started fucking around. Harry, who is usually fairly quiet and shy, took this opportunity to bust out a ridiculous, entirely ad-libbed 80's style rap. When Chrissie (bass) joins in, the whole thing gels together in this way that none of us expected, I'm pretty sure we were all laughing so hard that we cried. I know that I did when re-listening to it. I vaguely remember the audience laughing and dancing.
   Now, we do a 180 and switch gears entirely. DOOMSDAY CAULDRON is the best thing on here. I was never a huge follower of their music, but got a few things passed on to me through mix tapes that blew my mind in different ways. Coming from the background that I do, their songs initially sounded overbearing and unnecessarily serious to me, but as they grew on me, I knew that they meant every word with every fiber of their being. Their song "Song for Sera" is one of my favorites to listen to in the middle of the night on long drives in the middle of nowhere. Coupled with their song "Darkness Is Falling" and THE BODY's "Just Wretched", you can almost perfectly picture the world in the moments just before it explodes and destroys every last bit of life on this planet.
   To close out the tape, I switched gears again and went back to ridiculous. If you grew up in the 80's, you may remember those weird answering machine greeting tape commercials....They advertised tapes that you could buy for your answering machine that sang ultra corny greetings to the tune of Beethoven's Fifth and bad 50's rock. Here's a whole tape of them (2 and a half whole minutes) so that you can confuse people who call your cell now...if anyone ever calls you anymore.

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DAN B'S MIX TAPE - 2005

   Back in 2005, a package showed up in my P.O. box from Dan B (from IMPRACTICAL COCKPIT / UKE OF SPACES / Trd Wrd Records) with this tape inside. There was no insert and no track listing. Just the instructions on the front and the tape. What I found on the tape was strange and entrancing: Tiki music, weird lounge, something that sounds like KORLA PANDIT on too many pills, EUGENE CHADBOURNE, MALVINA REYNOLDS, DREAMLAND FACES, radios between stations and phone calls. I still play it frequently in my room when I'm trying to keep busy and it helps. Maybe it will help you out too.

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Track listing left blank intentionally. 

LUMPY AND THE DUMPERS - "Bat / X-Rod" - Cassingle - 2012

   You may remember when I wrote about this band's first demo last summer. Since then, that tape went on to be my favorite tape of last year. I would walk down the streets of SF, listening to their spiraling, sprawling, fucked up madness and wish that my head would spin off of my body, fly through the air, crash through the shiny windows of a brand new condo, latch onto the face of a tech worker and chew his/her fucking lips off while screaming "ONE OF THESE DAYS, YOU'RE GONNA FACE THE MEAT!!!!" Yes, it's that good. (The link for the first tape is dead now. Go and get it from their Bandcamp page)
    This two song tape was put out as part of a Halloween cassingle series, which also included TRAUMA HARNESS, ORANGE SODA and KOWABUNGA KID. LUMPY AND THE DUMPERS howl their way through one punishing original song about running from a pack of bats. They have a sound that can only be made by cheap instruments, playing everything as hard as you can and a truly damaged singer. Side 2 is a cover of the MAX LOAD song "X-Rod", which is my first intro to this 1979 punk band from LUMPY's hometown of Belleville, IL. Like the first side, it also destroys.

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The band invites you to send them "bones in viscous substances" at 21 W Garfield, Belleville, IL 62220.

OLNEYVILLE KARAOKE VOL 2 - CD-R - 2005

   In 2006, I found myself in a junk shop called Happy Birthday Mike Leslie in Worcester, MA, which was run by my friend, Jacob. As I perused the racks of army men, bad cassettes, broken stuff, homemade stuffed animals, Chuck Norris comics and re-purposed M.U.S.C.L.E. men, I came across this CD. Upon seeing me looking at this, Jacob yelled "Oh, you have to buy that!! It will change your life!" and then I think he gave it to me. Did it change my life? Well, yes, but just about everything in the world changes your life in little ways.

  From the description inside the CD, this is....well, just read below. I don't think I can explain it any better than Mike Taylor did here:

   After I left the junk shop, I was thrust back into the reality of the total summer bummer, 3 month  punk tour that I was on. We were headed to play a lackluster, last minute show at a VFW hall in Hartford, CT while all of my Worcester friends were driving an hour south to go see LIMP WRIST. I put on this CD as soon as I got in the van and it lasted three whole songs before my band mate ejected it, dismissing it as some "weird Providence crap that feels like a joke at my expense." This is weird as fuck and maybe not meant to be listened to all in one sitting, but here it is....

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   Features members of THE TERRIBLES, COUGHS, TEENAGE WAISTBAND, YONI GORDON AND THE GOODS, PASSIVE AGGRESSOR, REACTIONARY 3 and more.

 I thought things were getting a little normal around here, so here ya go. My favorite song topics are "My Favorite Colonel", "????", "Things I Do Not Like To Eat" and "The Next Level"

Oh yeah, there's no real track listing because as the insert states "Just relax and don't get hung up on following it, okay?"

RUDIMENTARY PENI - "Pope Adrian 37th Psychristiatric" - CD - 1995

   I know, I know...I usually talk about totally random tapes and CD-R's that have been stuffed in boxes for eons, but I couldn't resist posting this after borrowing it from my roommate Matt and listening to the whole thing in my room last night. To be fair, this was also stuffed in a box under some shit in Matt's room. I also know that I constantly refer to bands as "one of my favorite bands of all time". I'm telling the truth. I have about 100 favorite bands of all time, but then there's the top ten favorite bands of all time....and RUDIMENTARY PENI is most definitely in the top ten.
   I first heard of RUDIMENTARY PENI in 1995 (the year this album came out) in the van on one of the first real punk tours I ever went on. My bandmate Joey put on "Cacophony" on a long drive and it completely blew my little teenage punk mind forever. I never realized punk could be so weird, fucked up, inspired, damaged, dark, creepy and catchy all at the same time. When we got home from that tour, I started rounding up all of their vinyl that I could find and began to notice all of the fetus tattoos that adorned many of my friends. I would lay on my floor in my tiny apartment alone listening to their records for endless hours, obsessing over Nick Blinko's insanely detailed, hand-drawn record covers. I would notice something new every time I looked at it. I still do.

   One day, when I was over at my friend Harry's house, he asked if I had ever heard the album "Pope Adrian 37th Psychristiatric". I hadn't and he put it on. The first thing I noticed was the endless loop of a voice saying "Popus Adrianus" that runs throughout the entire album....even while the songs are playing. The songs are way more subdued than their earlier efforts, but perhaps more deranged in many ways. Some songs seem like they just started off with one line and never got any further, so Nick Blinko just repeats them over and over for waaayyy too long. Part of the reason for the album being so incredibly strange is that Blinko wrote the majority of it while being detained in a psychiatric hospital while having delusions that he was "Pope Adrian 37th".  Arguably, it is their weirdest album ever and, to many people, their worst. I actually like it a lot, although "Cacophony" and their first 7" are still my favorites. If you've never heard this band before, I would suggest to start off with almost anything else by them, but if you're feeling adventurous, go for it.

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Fun Facts:

   1. The band started out in the anarcho-punk scene of the early 80's and never really broke up. The last thing they put out was a one song CD single called "The Chances" in 2009, which is only available with Blinko's last book, The Haunted Head. 

  2. My old band with Harry became so enamored by this CD that I recorded a passage from Blinko's book The Primal Screamer while the other two in the band chanted "Popus Adrianus" in the background. We ran the whole thing backwards and put it on the end of our only 7", released in 1997.

PASCAL'S LONG LOST MIX TAPE - 2007

   In my last year of living in Bloomington, IN, I made a whole lot of mix tapes for friends, both locally and far away. I would sit in front of the stereo for hours, laboring over 90 minutes of the perfect mix of punk and weirdness. Then, I would hand deliver it to someone's door or drop in the mail at the post office just 5 short blocks away. It took moving across the country to California to realize that I was utterly and morbidly depressed. I don't think that making mix tapes is a sign of depression (far from it), but I do think something is amiss when one is putting all of their free time into tape making or drinking endless pints of whiskey while flipping the same DEAD MOON record over and over.
   I think there is a certain beautiful power in mix tapes that can not be replicated by a mix CD or a play list. Many, many people have explained this in the past, so I won't bore you with the details, but there is something to be said for having to listen to each song in real time as you make the tape.
   Most of the tapes I made for folks eventually reached them...except for this one. I made this fairly eclectic tape for my friend Pascal in Paris and then never, ever mailed it to him. I took it to work and listened to it a lot. I carried it around in my bag with intentions of dropping it in the mail for him. I even flew to Europe, went to Paris and hung out with Pascal but forgot to take the tape with me. So, Pascal if you're reading this, I apologize. If you send me your current address, I'll mail you this tape. I mean it this time.
   In the meantime, I think this is a great tape with styles flying all over the map. Seriously. Have you ever gotten a mix tape that segues from UKE OF SPACES CORNERS to LIMPWRIST? KATRA TURANA to TULSA? OI POLLOI to JOHN DENVER to OMAR SOULEYMAN to ARTIMUS PYLE? BUNKER HILL to MEN'S RECOVERY PROJECT? It makes sense. I like this tape a lot. Maybe you will too.

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Download Side B

All music on here is vinyl to tape. No digital.

LUMPY AND THE DUMPERS - Demo - Tape - 2012

   I have to admit that I didn't have high expectations for a band called LUMPY AND THE DUMPERS, but I was pleasantly surprised to hear 3 inspired, spastic, fucked up, sloppy, feedback-drenched, weirdo punk songs. Each song is reeling and spiraling, always on the verge of collapsing on itself, but held together loosely by a scraping guitar and a truly damaged, manic singer. It's dirty, fucked up and wrong. I love every second of it.
   Three songs may seem short for a demo, but I think this is perfect. If you'd like to get your own physical copy of this, send a lot of money to the band...I'm sure that something between $4 and $50 will work. Their address is 21 W Garfield, Belleville, IL. 62220. Belleville, Illinois? Is there anything going on there? What is in the water? Lumpy, can I play a show at your house?

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"The world's an abortion!

The future is a lobotomy!!"

FRED LANE & RON 'PATE'S DEBONAIRS - "From The One That Cut You" - LP - 1983

    The record pictured above is probably one of the most important records (to me) that I will ever put on this blog. This record is responsible for vastly altering my ideas of music and changing the way I've thought about it since hearing this for the first time. It's just as important to me, musically, as THE MINUTEMEN'S "Double Nickels on the Dime", seeing the CRAMPS when I was 12, hearing the HICKEY LP for the first time, meeting my friend Harry and experiencing my first live IMPRACTICAL COCKPIT show. I came across it at Sunburst Records in Huntsville, AL when I was absentmindedly flipping through the new releases (which is weird since this thing came out in 83, but recorded in the mid-70's) one day in 1996. All of a sudden, this freak (pictured above) was staring me in the eyes and I didn't know what to think of it. I mean, how do you pass up a record with scrawled handwriting all over the cover, accompanied by THAT guy with band aids all over his face? Well, I couldn't pass it up. I bought it immediately without knowing anything about it and I remember Jay (the store owner) looking at it and saying "What the fuck is this, man?"

    When I first put it on, I was a little disappointed. This was just like...lounge music or something. I had some bummed out visions of those people who buy "Exotica" records and think they're really wild. I almost picked up the needle off of the record, but then it started to get weird. It started to delve into a cacophony of horns and weirdness that was approaching free jazz and straight up noise. The arrangements would flow out into a mess that sounded unstructured, out of tune and completely out of focus...but then it would all come back together in one big swell that sometimes worked, sometimes didn't, but I fucking loved it. This record grew on me over the years and started to inform the way I approached music and helped me to gain a better understanding and appreciation of the true freaks of the music world.

     But who ARE these people? That's the question that took me a few years to figure out (I didn't use the internet until 2001, plus no one I knew used it in the 90's anyway). It was next to impossible to find out any info about them in books or zines. The closest thing I found was a tiny blurb in the book Incredibly Strange Music but even that hardly said anything worth noting. After a while, I found out that this was from my very own home state of Alabama! The liner notes say that some of these songs were recorded in a stage production and a musical. After more digging, I found out that the group that played on this Fred Lane LP (the group consists of 21 people) had worked previously on another LP called "Raudeluna's 'Pataphysical Revue", which was recorded live at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa in 1975. It was basically a variety show that consisted of deranged swing standards, noisy improvisations, hardware store noise, a "Concerto for Active Frogs" and more.They needed an M.C. for the night, so they chose their friend Tim Reed, who renamed himself Fred Lane. The record sounds crazy, fucked up and beautiful and I love that it happened in front of a live audience at a school in Alabama. Between the noisy improv, pre-recorded applause, and door prizes (4 used tires), most of the audience walked out.

   Before this even, a core group of folks from this band were hosting group paintings and jam sessions at their house where prior experience wasn't necessary. This was the beginnings of this whole scene of people and improv musicians that continues to thrive to this day. Around this time, the guitarist Davey Williams met and started a longtime collaboration with LaDonna Smith (both on this Fred Lane LP) that continues to this day (incidentally, I saw them perform a performance art piece in Montevallo, AL when I was 12 or 13 that was a pivotal moment in my life that helped me to realize that "something else" was out there beyond mainstream music, beyond suburbs and beyond what I had ever even thought about. It meant a lot to me.).

   Anyway, let me get back to the point here. Apparently, this record ("From the One That Cut You") was literally inspired by a crude note scrawled on brown paper, wrapped around a bowie knife, found in a secret compartment in a 1952 Dodge panel truck when some friends (the owners) came by a house in order to repaint it, in order to elude capture by the naval police. The note, a sort of love/threat/confession inspired Tim (Fred Lane) to write the song, the stage show and create the character who performs the song...all from three sentences written by someone named Fuear. (This info comes straight from an article by Joe Tepperman) The note read " I hope the paine is gone. This is the one that cut you? P.S. Don't wear about Jimmy I will take kear of him the same way I took kear of YOU".

   There was a third album called "Radio Car Jerome" that came out in 1986 and a lot of people seem to love it, but I found it to be too structured and a little hokey. It didn't have the fucked up spark of the previous LP and a lot of the improv was gone. There was also an idea for a fourth LP called "Icepick to the Moon" but it never got past the idea stage and maybe that's for the best. A guy named Skizz Cyzyk has been working on a documentary about Fred Lane for 10 fucking years now and I wish it would come out already. I wrote to him once, asking questions about it and he never wrote me back. If you want to read more stuff about Fred Lane, Say Day Bew Records or the early Alabama improv scene, be sure to click over to the Raudelunas site. Be careful though because it can lead you down a wormhole of misinformation and internet time-suck. Apparently, this crew of folks loves embellishment and Dada-ist wordplay. 

   Also, I could talk about this record and Alabama for another 3 pages, but I will spare you. If you want to talk more about it, get in touch and I will bore you to tears.

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ORIGINS

   Why the name "Remote Outposts" for a music blog? I like the sound of it. I like that it doesn't tie anything down to a certain genre and I like that every time I say it, it reminds me of this article that I actually got the name from, which is about going totally fucking bonkers in Antarctica.   Enjoy.

TEM EYOS KI - 7" - 2000

    I went to a show in Asheville in 1999, not knowing that the bands playing would destroy my mind forever. The bands were SUBMISSION HOLD, ANTI-PRODUCT, THEUSAISAMONSTER, MARGARET MOTHER OF THIEVES and the unfuckwithable TEM EYOS KI. It was kind of a dream show and sometimes I even believe it was too good to be true that all of these bands would converge on this one slimy basement  with a creek running through it all on the same night....but I have the poster to prove it and I'm sure someone somewhere has the pictures.
   For me, TEM EYOS KI destroyed the show and every band after them (which was every band besides MMOT) did their best to top them, but just couldn't do it. TEM EYOS KI had raw power, beauty and so much fucking energy. Their songs sped from raging thrash/metal to utterly triumphant, soaring melodies that get stuck in your head for years.
  Unfortunately, their full LP's power didn't match that of the live show. Their 7"s and their tour CDR got really, really close (by the way, if you have a copy of that, CDR please, please send it to me). Maybe it was economics. Maybe it was the mastering process. Maybe it was a bad day, but I really wish that LP was better.
  This 7" contains my favorite song by them, "Aluminalkalyde" and 3 others that show the range of this band and hints at the utter bonkers-ness of their live show. My friend, Nate Powell, has a VHS tape of them playing at a gazebo in Little Rock that is amazing. I lived with him for a month and seriously watched parts of it almost daily and I'm not really the kind of person who likes to sit around and watch live videos of bands.   Here is one clip from the world wide web:

Play this loud and please go start a band that is just as good or better.

                            Photo by Natalja Kent.
                           Download Tem Eyos Ki 7"