"BIG AND LITTLE SHANK PRODUCTION: SHIT YOU MIGHT NOT HAVE. VOL 1. 17 BANDS, 53 SONGS" - Tape - Comp - 2001

 

     This tape was put out by Big Shank (Jeremy "Big Shank the Bandit" Johnson) and Little Shank {Josh Mayfield) in 2001 and acted as the third installment of the Region Rock cassette comps (links for the first two comps and a slew of other related demo tapes are linked at the end of this post). Region Rock (a term coined by Cinque from the Spawn Sacs, as the story goes) refers to a loose geographical triangle with points in Little Rock, Chattanooga and Miami and does not dictate a certain sound, but rather is a catch-all term for a group of friends playing punk under their own terms. It has been widely defined by people outside of these loose barriers (I say loose because this line has definitely looped up around Asheville, NC from time to time) as something like "bouncy, jangly pop-punk" but I'm certain that these people have never huffed gold spraypaint out of a paper bag while sweating on a porch at 4am with less than 27 cents to their name. Region Rock bands like BRIS, QUEERWULF, SUCKERPUNCH and SPAWN SACS will have anyone throwing those definitions off of the train bridge over the toxic waters of Chattanooga Creek in less time than it takes Ed to shotgun a beer. Onto the tape. 

     The reason that this tape wasn't previously given it's place among all of these other tapes on the blog is this: Josh gave me a copy of this tape when it was released in 2001. When I got it home, I listened to the first couple of JOE SMITH songs before that abruptly ended and I discovered that the rest of the tape was a dubbed copy of the MOTORHEAD album "Rock 'N' Roll", which is a great album. I'm listening to the tape right now. I never got a replacement tape with the proper songs on it, but Orange-SLS Records out of NY was nice enough to send the mp3's over to me to share with you. Better late than never. 

     The main difference between this comp and the earlier ones is that, with the exception of LES TURDS and JOE SMITH, the scope does not venture more than 100 miles out of the city limits of Chattanooga. The tape starts off with JOE SMITH, BRIS, THE MORONS and CAPITAL SICKNESS, who have all been written about extensively on here and you can find links to them below. THE TEENY FLOPPERS were slightly before my time in Chattanooga and I don't know shit about them, but I would see their singer / drummer Carey playing in other bands in Chattanooga and it always blew my mind that he could sing so well while pounding the shit out of the drums. Within 6 songs on this tape, they go through 3 bass players.  

     You will find more info about ADD/C linked below. 

     THE SOCIAL LIES were from Huntsville and Triana, AL and played sloppy, tuneful, screamy, teen punk. They sounded like a tug-of-war between singer / guitarist Brontez's love of riot grrrrl and east bay punk and drummer / singer Tameka's more straight-ahead hardcore approach, Their shows could be intense or just fun, depending on the mood. I saw both. One where they made it through the set with all of us pogoing along with them and another where the two members started yelling at each other and stormed out in front of a stunned audience. Either way, their song "Fuck The Scene" has always stuck with me and they were an important part of this era. The Chattanooga punks basically adopted the band into their town before Brontez moved there. You can find a video of them playing in Chattanooga at Rear Entry (a punk-ran show space) right here.

     COCAINE SUMMER SPLASH was a real rock n roll nightmare fronted by Big Shank, who sadly passed away in 2013. He has so many unbelievable and maniacal stories about him that I couldn't even begin to scratch the surface here. CCS recorded these songs in Chattanooga and the band never had a proper release until 2020 when Josh Mayfield put out a discography tape on his label WereOpossum  Records. CCS was all about drugs, partying and crime, but like, in a real way. I feel like there's STILL things I can't talk about, but I can tell you that the band had to unofficially change their name on flyers to THE PARTY AIN'T EASY because the cops were looking for them. I know that our house was not the only one visited by the Chattanooga pigs...where we were forced to keep a straight face while they asked us if we knew anything about the 7 foot tall graffiti all over town that stated in big bold letters, "COCAINE SUMMER SPLASH." RIP Shank. He was one of a kind. 

     I don't know shit about THE COMPLAINTS either and that sucks. They were from North Georgia and featured wildman Allen with his truly deranged vocals. Sorry I don't know more. 

     You can and should read more about QUEERWULF and THE SHAFFERS in the links below. I think the tracks on this tape are from each of their first demos. If you've heard the lightning-fast live sets from THE SHAFFERS in the past, this slower version will throw you for a loop. 

     THE SPAWN SACS are also written about in the links below, but I don't think most of these songs appear anywhere else and, like just about every other SPAWN SACS song, they are SO. FUCKING. GOOD. Embrace the tape deterioration. 

     JACK PALANCE BAND offers up two songs from their demo (and a re-recorded demo track) as well as one of their shortest, most vicious songs of all time that doesn't appear anywhere else, "Goddamn the Holocaust". 

     There are two tracks from Dalton's most valuable asset (and I know it's the carpet capital of the world), PETER STUBB. The second track "Evil" literally stopped me in my tracks. If you're not familiar with STUBB's long-running musical career, please follow the link below and seek out the short documentary "I'm Like This Everyday", made by Mitchell Powers and Josh Mayfield. 

     LES TURDS, like COCAINE SUMMER SPLASH, were an unstoppable force of drunken depravity led by a very tall, now deceased wild man known as Brian Turd. I don't feel like I can honestly do them justice and they are one of the few bands on here who have a little more of an internet presence outside of this blog. 

     You can and should find more info and an unreleased LP by Alabama's Suckerpunch in the links below. Their two songs on this comp are from their amazing demo tape. 

     F.D.I.A. is another one of those bands from the north Georgia region that I can't remember much about, but their songs on here are awesome. I can't remember everything! Give me a break! 

  All three region demos come from a place of low standards and even lower budgets, so you will have to learn to enjoy the tape hiss and the shitty recordings. But that's why you're here, right? 

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Related links to more info and full demo tapes. 

TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES FRM DAY ONE - First Region Rock Comp 

FUCK THE CURSE - Second Region Comp

JOE SMITH Discography 

BRIS Discography 

THE MORONS Discography

CAPITAL SICKNESS "Toolin'..." Tape

ADD/C Demo Tape

QUEERWULF 18 Song CDr

SPAWN SACS / DRILLER KILLERS Split Tape

THE SHAFFERS Live at Collins 

SHAFFERS - Live at WNYU

SHAFFERS Live at 20 Below

JACK PALANCE BAND - "Get This Shit Under Way" LP

JACK PALANCE BAND - First Demo

PETER STUBB - "Blueberry Masturbator" Tape

PETER STUBB - "Powdered Doughnuts"

SUCKERPUNCH Demo

SUCKERPUNCH Unreleased LP 

JACK PALANCE BAND / ADDC / QUEERWULF - "Monsters of Rock" - EP - 2004

   Nowhere on this record does it say "Monster of Rock", but that has become the (un)official title of this record because all three of these bands toured together upon the release of this record and that was the name of the tour. I set up their final show of the tour when they came through Cleveland, MS where I was living at the time. JACK PALANCE BAND, after being one of the best region bands for the last ten years, were on shaky footing and didn't even make it to this show. Nevertheless, we drained the better part of two kegs and still had an amazing show out in the middle of nowhere in the Mississippi Delta.
   When all the bands left, the next day, I layed on my floor and listened to this record over and over. As the years progressed, these songs felt darker and stranger than I initially felt them to be. In my mind, their hometown of Chattanooga (and my former home) had taken a dark turn and I was afraid it might stay that way forever. I'm being purposefully vague because this is just my interpretation, but I got in touch with Daniel from ADD/C for info about this record and I think I was mostly right. I'll keep it simple so that you can just enjoy the thing. Pretty much, the whole record is about drugs (and not really in that fun way) and losing friends. "Now and Never" is about our friend Allison and sometimes I like to imagine that the song is just simply an ode to drugs themselves so I don't have to think about how they took Allison away from us just a few short years after this song was written. And I'll leave it at that.
   Notes on the recording quality: It's not great. It sounds like an alien transmission to me. I always thought it had something to do with the mastering, but Daniel told me that all the bands recorded on a broken 4 track (or maybe an 8 track with only 4 working tracks) with 1/4" tape on the top floor of the tree house, which was a long running freak abode in north Chattanooga. He blames that. Still, this record retains some weird, dark magic. QUEERWULF and ADD/C went on to do a lot more, but this was JACK PALANCE BAND's final release. Enjoy.

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PEDRO SAYS HI - "The Creep Over" - Tape - 2011

Once I was terrorized by everything

But now I don't fear anything

   The last time I wrote about PEDRO SAYS HI, this tape had been recorded but didn't exist. I wasn't sure if it ever would exist, but now it's been out for a few years. I basically said everything I could say about the band in that previous post, besides that I feel a weird eternal bond with this band and the people associated with it through trauma and just plain weird-ass living. 

    We still don't talk about the hard parts of this band or the all of the terrible shit that happened (in print anyway) because what we do is actually secret and well, it's still fucking hard. You can never tell the whole story because sometimes, it's not your story to tell. I can say that I will always feel privileged to have spent any amount of time playing music with this stellar group of fine human beings. 

I saw Hell

And it was beautiful

So just breathe in the fumes

And suck on the doom

And learn to enjoy 

This eternal pain

    Leah (our guitarist) recorded this tape in 2011 in Chattanooga, 4 years after the demise of the band and 7 hours away from where we originally lived. Crab Jackson (vocals / guitar) couldn't put vocals on it until much later and it didn't get mixed and released until 2014. Let's Pretend  was bold enough to release a tape by a band who had broken up 7 years prior and had no plans of ever reforming (follow that link to buy a tape). Thanks to the 40-75 people who ever saw us and the 15-20 people who cared about it. We're gonna come back and murder you all. 

Open your mind and let the pain crawl in

Open your mouth and watch the fun dissipate

Open your eyes you'll see your friends walking away

Open your heart and let the pain crawl in

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Members of GIANT BAGS OF WEED, JON BENET SASQUATCH, PUPPY VS DYSLEXIA, GOURMET SCUM, TWAT SAUCE, NEON PISS, SPASM LAKE, SILENT ERA and many more. 

ROBOT POPE - Demo - Tape - 2005

   The other night in my room, a compilation of bands was playing on my stereo. Most of them were good, but when ROBOT POPE came on, I put my pen down and just stared at the receiver. I forgot just how good they were, mostly because I never got a copy of their tape and didn't live in Chattanooga (their home / my former one) anymore when they were an active band. Since we now live in the future, I sent a few quick texts and found all of the ROBOT POPE songs in my inbox within ten minutes.
    First off, whoa, this recording is rough, but I think the band's excellence shines through. The band consisted of Cousin Scott on bass, Bill (FUTURE VIRGINS, GIANT BAGS OF WEED and many more) on guitar and vocals, Daniel (ADD/C, BRIS and much more) on drums and Laura on vocals. According to mixed reports, all of this was recorded in a little studio on MLK in Chattanooga above JJ's bar, using a lot of the same gear that was used to record the ADD/C LP Keepin It Real....meaning a big Tascam mixer and a reel-to-reel 8 track. Even though this is recorded in a "studio", why does the guitar sound like that? Laura wanted her vocals to be almost inaudible because she was so nervous about singing for a band, but as you can see, there's absolutely no reason for that fear because she's a talented and extremely capable singer (see "Mortal Medicine" for indisputable proof).
   The band name comes from an inside joke from an ADD/C tour. Daniel was reading "an okay book, not a great book" (his words) called Project Pope by Clifford D Simak. His bandmates, Grady and Cole kept referring to it as "Robot Pope", based on the cover illustration and it became a running joke in the band to point out Daniel's "affliction for science fiction". When it came time to name this band, Daniel suggested ROBOT POPE as a way to neutralize the joke..and it stands alone as a pretty good band name anyhow.

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Thanks to Daniel for sending over the tracks and providing info.

Thanks to Robbie and Shannon for extra info. 

Thanks to Laura for being okay with this going online.    

Scott and Laura live in Chattanooga and keep it real.

Daniel is in Berkeley and moves bacteria around on petri dishes, among many other things.

Bill is walking around with some cows in India. 

HIGHLANDS - "Rear Entry Recordings" - Tape - 2000

   This tape is a companion piece to the DICK VAN DYKES post from yesterday because it was recorded on the same day in the same place with most of the same people. THE HIGHLANDS was our friend, Ryan's home recording project where he played short, fast, catchy songs that rarely, if ever, lasted over 45 seconds. He would include tapes of these recordings with his zine, 5 Minutes of Your Time. We (D.V.D.) encouraged Ryan to play shows with a live band, even though his set would last 5 minutes or less. When we recorded the D.V.D. songs, we got Ryan to play some of his songs with Chrissie and I accompanying him on bass and drums, respectively. It's a little rough, but I like the songs a lot. We even got him to record his epic two-and-a-half minute super pop jam, "Changes Pt 3", which has Bob playing drums and me on bass. If I can track down the original home recordings, I will post those one day, even though you have to turn those up all the way just to hear it.

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7 songs. About 7 minutes of your time. 

DICK VAN DYKES - "Rear Entry Recordings" - Tape - 2000

   THE DICK VAN DYKES started abruptly in the north Alabama bedroom of a teenage boy who went by the name of Bob. Bob started showing up at punk shows when he was nine years old, sporting a 3 foot mohawk and a dress shirt that had the names of punk bands scrawled all over it in Sharpie. Bob was kind of a jerk then, but we all wanted to be his friend and soon, we were.
   By the time this band formed, Bob was 14 or 15. The other members were Blair Menace and myself. We were both in our 20's and being around Bob made us feel ancient. We just formed a band on the spot and wrote all the songs in about 5 minutes, with subjects ranging from receiving postcards about tackling cacti n the desert to the band BLACK DICE to the comedy duo of Don Knotts and Tim Conway. It was bad. We recorded it and went our separate ways.
  Later, I kinda lost my shit and moved away from Chattanooga and into Bob's mom's windowless basement in Huntsville, AL. Our good friend, Chrissie had also kinda lost her shit and moved home to her dad's place in Pulaski, Tennessee, 45 miles away. One night, I drank too much coffee and lost my shit a little more and decided to walk to Pulaski to hang out with Chrissie. When I got there, 8 hours later, my feet were bleeding and I didn't make any sense. Soon, we were both back in Huntsville and Chrissie was in our newly revived band. We decided to spend a little longer writing the songs this time and were happier with the results. Bob was (and still is) the fastest drummer I've ever played with, which was awesome because I only want to play hardcore if it sounds out of control. Oh yeah, we were a hardcore band once Chrissie joined us and began talking about AUS ROTTEN and DS-13. She played bass and sang, I played guitar and tried to yell.

   We never thought we'd play outside of Bob's basement, but we did eventually. We even went on a very short, ill-advised tour in a primer grey, early 80's clunker car that was bought at a police auction. At one of the shows, someone who lived at the house decided that they didn't want a show there, so they locked all the doors and left. The promoter simply broke in and had the show anyway. We recorded this tape back in Chattanooga at Rear Entry (a practice space in the Highland Park neighborhood) with our friend, Ryan. It was recorded live on 2 tracks, mostly in one take and very sloppily. Some songs are good. Some are bad. You can decide which is which. I will point out that our cover of the HIGHLANDS "Changes Pt 1" is just awful. If you don't know who the HIGHLANDS are (and I'm betting that you don't), please check back tomorrow.

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Photo above is by Brontez, live in Huntsville, AL at Stokes St Warehouse. We really were not trying to pose for this pic. It just happened. 

Top drawing by Janelle Hessig

Cellphone hatred pic by Chrissie.

THE MORONS - Discography - Tape - 2012

   I meant to upload some old MORONS tapes ages ago, but I held off because Once Tender Records was planning on putting out a complete discography. Now, I realized it's been out for a couple of years, so here's the whole thing.
   THE MORONS were from Chatsworth and Dalton, GA: two towns in north Georgia that have bred a stunning array of truly unforgettable people in my life. THE MORONS formed (probably) out of utter boredom and a love of substance abuse. I've never really seen a band live up to their name more than THE MORONS. From huffing copious amounts of gold spraypaint to throwing themselves down flights of stairs to their special game of "Sneaky P" to many other things that I don't feel that I can share here without clearing it with them first, THE MORONS were one of the most real bands I've ever seen. I know that punk celebrates (or "should celebrate" as far as I care) the idea of "no idols" and strives to blur the lines between audience and band, but THE MORONS were truly the same on or off the stage (or "stage"). You know that dude you were just shotgunning a beer with by the dumpster? Now, he's that dude shotgunning a beer behind the drumset, for better or worse.
   Anyway, THE MORONS came from trailer parks and shitty situations and put it all in their songs. They got drunk and then wrote classic songs about being drunk. When they said "smoke some crack and go for a beer run", they had probably just done that. They didn't waste space or deal in hyperbole. If you're from a certain time and era (like me), they wrote one of the best songs of all time, which was about living with the spirit of rock n roll inside of you, which no one could ever steal. THE MORONS were utter morons, but they were also musical geniuses.
    Here's most of everything they ever recorded, culled from self-released tapes, unreleased studio recordings and their EP's. If you want a tape of your own, follow that link above and write to Chad at Once Tender.

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MORONS in Dalton, GA. Photo by me.

This one's for Big Shank.

     ADDENDUM 8/8/19: I re-uploaded this because I've been listening to THE MORONS a lot lately and I also wanted to add this note. I went to the Chattanooga punk fest known as Do Ya Hear We last year to see some very dear friends and play in some very dear bands. I had a great time. At some point in the weekend, a member of THE MORONS took me aside to talk about what I had written above. Where I saw nothing but complete praise and adulation, he saw a mockery. He saw his youth frozen in time, played out as a joke. He saw me ending the piece calling him and his bandmates morons, not geniuses...and he is right. Imagine going to read something about about your old band and the author just calls you a Moron and leaves it at that. We talked it out. We hugged and let it go, but I just wanted to add this. THE MORONS were what they were and they represented what we all were at that time and it was beautiful. The people in this band went on to grow up and become enthusiastic dads, animal-lovers, great friends, supportive husbands and even a ship captain. They still write music that is a celebration of life and love that is rooted in anything other than moronic pursuits and I salute them for that. THE MORONS made an impact to me and a whole huge scene of people because they wrote what they lived and it was real. A lot of bands try to claim that but very few actually follow through. So let's just say they were musical geniuses and leave it that, okay? 

SANDAL STOMP - "No Fun Intended" - Tape - 2013

   I want to start this off by just taking a minute to tell you about one SANDAL STOMP member named Danny. I met Danny in 1998 when he showed up to our house in the Highland Park neighborhood of Chattanooga. Danny was born in Peru and made his way to Miami as a teenager. I don't know much about his background, but I don't think life had been easy in Peru. When he showed up at our house driving a hatchback completely covered in spray-painted slogans, bearing a cow skull bolted to the hood and a ladder from a pool welded to the back, I had to admit that I wanted to know the guy. When he told us he didn't have a license and he had stolen all of the gas to get from south Florida to Tennessee, I was even more intrigued. At that time in Chattanooga, my friends and I would walk down the streets in ripped clothes and dyed hair while people yelled insults at us on a daily basis. I watched Danny walk around with even more fucked up hair, knee pads sewn into his patched camo pants, and a bow and arrow strapped to his back. Most people were too afraid or confused to say anything. Danny constantly made fun of me for not eating meat, calling me a spoiled ass white kid (correct!) and once brought home a squirrel he killed with his bow and arrow. I think he gutted it and ate it in our backyard, but I didn't stick around to find out.
  Through the years, Danny stayed in Chattanooga, became more legal than most of the people I know, had a couple of great kids and fell in love with OI. Even though he introduced me to a lot of great South American punk bands and has always been a solid supporter of the Chattanooga punk scene, I don't think he's ever played in any bands, so it's cool to see him playing bass in SANDAL STOMP.

   SANDAL STOMP comes from a town that is well known for having a lot of great bands who play a jangly style of melodic punk. On the underside of that exterior, there's a ton of bands who are screaming and clawing their way deeper into the slimy basement of a punk house called Anarchtica. SANDAL STOMP plays gruff-voiced, falling apart hardcore and judging from their lyrics, they want to fight you...and skinhead cops. I can imagine that they're awesome to see when you're feeling fucked up, a little hazy and wanting to fight something...anything...at 3 am. Get into it.

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You can also order a tape or download this from the band right here.

Sorry I spent all that time talking about one member of the band, but everyone has their story. I could have talked about how I met their drummer at a DEERHOOF show when he played in an ambient noise band, but it's just not as interesting. 

Features members of RAG RAGE, TURD HUNGRY CHRIST and TWAT SAUCE.

GRAVEBOUND - "Stabbing Contest" - Tape - 2010

   Hardcore is a large corner of the punk world that I know very little about. I leave that up to my tape blogging friend with the long beard and the full back tattoo of Willie Nelson. I just know what I like and I like GRAVEBOUND. They probably take elements of bands that people like and do things with it it that are cool and different. Some people might use words like "sick" or "brutal" to describe their sound. The philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein once famously said, "If a lion could talk, we would not understand him." This is similar to how I feel when I'm stuck near a conversation between two or more men (and, yes, it is almost always men) discussing different aspects of the world of DIY hardcore punk. I don't get the references and don't know what the other bands sound like. DROPDEAD? I'm sure they're great. I saw 'em once, but walked out after two songs. INFEST? I went to see FUNERAL CONE instead. It's not really my world, but I dip my toes in from time to time with bands like IRON LUNG, REPLICA, NO STATIK and GRAVEBOUND.
   GRAVEBOUND is the kind of shit I listen to when I want to punch my fist all the way through a cop's head into the wall behind them. It sounds a city being destroyed, taking out the posers, the sycophants and psychic vampires. It sounds like success wrapped in utter failure. It probably sounds like noisy, downtuned hardcore bands I've never heard before.
   I was in Chattanooga for (what I thought was) their last show ever (I was wrong, but they're done now), near the front of the room, I half-expected to be taken out by a room of wildly flailing men (and yes, it was almost all men), but I was wrong. The room just kind of throbbed and sweatily oozed as the band destroyed their set. They sounded about as good as a band can when they play in a 100 degree concrete box in the middle of a heat wave, but they were also one of the bands I enjoyed the most on that day that was chock full of heavy hitters. Download and destroy.

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More by GRAVEBOUND

OLD SCHOOL BEER DRINKIN' ROBOTS - Demo - Tape - 2002

   Today's post is brought to you by Blair Menace because of a few simple facts: He was there, he had the tape and he is a werewolf. Werewolves are smart creatures and have a lot to offer us mortals. The rest is written by him....


   OLD SCHOOL BEER DRINKIN ROBOTS were a Chattanooga band who existed in 2002, and maybe a little bit before or after. They were Josh on guitar, Ramesh on bass, and Daniel on drums.
    In the summer of 2002, I was living on the porch of the Lilside house in Asheville when they spent a week or two in town, raising hell and annoying Jason Cronk. I'm not sure if they were on a tour that failed, or what, but they did manage to play shows a time or two here and dubbed this tape for me. To be honest, this was a pretty blurry summer and only a handful of moments of hanging out with them stuck with me: drinking a jug of stolen wine on top of the used book store and singing John Prine and Tom Waits, cringing as Daniel busted forty bottles on the wheelchair ramp of the church across the street, marveling at Ramesh's tendency to nap under his van, getting my only pair of pants (and wallet) stolen off the porch by a crackhead while all four of us slept on it.
    Regarding the tape itself: I'm not sure if it ever got “officially” released, at least in this form. I never had a cover or song titles, and it's dubbed over a promotional tape for something called “Tamanu Oil” which you can hear occasionally between songs. The vocals fluctuate wildly in volume on some of the songs, and the bass is sadly often inaudible, but it's still in pretty good shape. The only songs I remember are the self-explanatory theme song, the infamous “Sunrise” (“The only thing more beautiful than a sunrise is a dead cop”), the song about Ramesh's inability to cook potatoes or park accurately, and the obligatory Peter Stubb cover. One song even has some whistling! It's so short that I had to listen to it three times while writing this – twelve songs in thirteen minutes, even though the songs feel weirdly epic and complex. Josh's frantic, scale-defying guitar playing smashing up against Ramesh's Rancid-guy-in-a-tornado bass style is the real draw here, along with the “anything goes” mode of the songwriting.

The band in happier times. Chattanooga 2003.

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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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REMOTE OUTPOSTS WEIRDO MIX VOL 1 - Tape - 2013

   So, I've been trying to figure out where to fit in these different recordings ever since I started this thing a few years ago. I decided to just throw out a few things at once and I may continue this trend in the future with the weird shit sitting around on my shelves. So, here's the first installment of the Remote Outposts Weirdo Mix which, honestly, isn't that weird.
   You may remember from a few posts back when I mentioned listening to the North Georgia AM Christian radio broadcasts when I lived on the Georgia state line. I was a little obsessed with it because the quality and presentation was so alien to me that I liked to believe that it came from outer space. I grew up in Alabama going to Baptist churches, so these radio broadcasts aren't too far off the map for me, but my life is so far removed from this reality now that it just sounds other-worldly. In the first 11 minutes of this download, there is some singing, preaching and talk of anointing doors. There is a man who says "Praise God" every 4th word or so. I don't mean to make fun of people because everyone  has to do what they have to do to get through the day...but also I don't believe in God and I'm not trying to steer you in that direction.
  Secondly, I lived on a houseboat on the Tennessee River for close to a year back in the early 00's. It was a really simple time in my life where I mostly just ate a lot of potatoes, wrote a bunch of letters and listened to the radio while waiting for people to visit. Occasionally, I would canoe to land and ride my bike to a friend's house, but most of the time, I read a bunch of books on the boat. Something that was a constant on the boat was the weather radio. There was something soothing about the robotic voice being broadcast (presumably) from a tin shack somewhere in Moorestown, TN. I liked the way he sounded so forlorn when he pronounced that the weather was "partly cloudy." I spent a lot of time huddled up in my sleeping bag listening to this guy and waiting for the temperatures to rise (listen to the temperatures and remember that I was on an unheated, uninsulated houseboat in the middle of a river). I remember the uproar (from myself and at least 3 other friends) when they changed the robot's voice to make it more "human". Is the second track just a robotic weather report? Yeah, you bet it is!

   The last 2 tracks in the download are from this tape (above) I found on the ground in an alley in Bloomington, IN in 2007. I carried it around with me all day while I ran errands and just wondered what the hell "EASTERS" could mean. I still don't know what it means and the music on the tape was not what I expected. Nevertheless, this tape became a staple of many backyard hangouts at my house and started to get requested by folks who came over to drink beers in the yard. Download it for yourself to find out if it'll be your new backyard jam.

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JACK PALANCE BAND - "Heaven" - Practice Tape - 1999

   Way back before the turn of the century, I lived in a tiny little house one block away from the Georgia state line. I spent many of my days listening to the the tinny, north Georgia Christian radio broadcasts (only because it sounded exactly like what I imagined an alien transmission might sound like) and writing half assed songs to record on my tape player. I decided one day that I wanted my half assed songs to sound about 2% better so I borrowed my friend Mike Pack's 4 track recorder. When he handed it over, there was a tape inside and he said something like "I don't know what that tape is, but you can do whatever you want with it." It turned out that the tape was a JACK PALANCE BAND practice, which means I just listened to the tape over and over rather than recording my songs....come to think of it, I never did record those songs on the 4 track at all.
   Most of the tape consists of parts of new songs, crude inside jokes and stuff that appeared later on their full length LP. None of it was anything too essential until I got to the end. Until this point, I had only heard JPB play their now-classic song "Heaven" live at punk shows with shitty PA's. Even though they didn't have a proper recording of it at that point, everyone in the room still sang along with the line "If I saw the God they told me about when I was a kid, I'd punch him in the face for letting his children bleed!" I was pretty ecstatic to finally have a copy of the song to play over and over in my room. For a long time, I preferred this version over the one on their LP. I like how the band sounds excited and stoked on the song, because they're getting it down for the first time. I like how the band sounds like they're putting everything they've got into what they're doing, even though they're just playing for themselves in (most likely) the dark, grimy basement of a now-defunct soup restaurant at 7th and Cherry in Chattanooga, TN.
   I know it's only one song, but I'm not posting the other stuff out of respect for the band. Trust me, this is the best thing on there. Plus, this is my happening and it freaks me out.

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EDIT: For some reason, your metadata will list the album artist as "Bill Evans" and I have no clue why that happened. Oh well.

ADD/C / GIANT BAGS OF WEED - Split 7" - 2002

   This little slab of vinyl came out on Half Day Records 11 years ago and featured two bands very near and dear to my heart. I will start off with GIANT BAGS OF WEED.
   GBOW was already a fully functioning band with a revolving cast of members. The anchor to this band was Billy Joe on guitar/vocals and Matte on drums. The lineup on this release also featured Chris Delaware on bass and myself on 2nd guitar/vocals. I had previously played bass in the band, but when I left Bloomington for a bit, they dutifully replaced me with Chris. When I returned and still wanted to be in the band, they stuck me on 2nd guitar, which was great. I always enjoyed this band as a spectator, but when I was in the band, I wasn't sure if people actually liked us. I spent most of my tenure in the band jumping around drunk. Chris wore the shortest of shorts and probably spent more time in the water than out of it. Matte had secret dredlocks stuffed into a hat and seemed to survive on a diet of Skittles and soda. Billy Joe constantly trekked between Chattanooga and Bloomington to work on this band. Notable things that happened during this time period: Matte and I took our equipment to a show one time by bike because no one in the band drove or even had a license. We played the last show at a Straight Edge house because I begged to be on it. The sXe dudes said we could play on the condition that we weren't drunk and didn't bring alcohol into their house. We agreed but still drank beer out of soda cups and were visibly drunk. Later that night, they kicked one of my queer friends out of the house in a very homophobic way. It sucked. Now, those guys all hang out in bars trying to cover up their huge sXe tattoos and that queer friend is a successful dancer and inspirational force to gay (and straight and otherwise) people all over the world, so whatever. On this record, we played songs and Joe Stone recorded them on a 4 track. You can actually hear the recording deteriorating as each song progresses and the 4 track actually broke on the last song. We couldn't do any more takes because it became inoperable. Maybe you'll like this. I honestly haven't listened to these GBOW songs in 10 years.
   On the other hand, these ADD/C songs have been haunting my eardrums since they were recorded. At the time, I thought that this was the band's apex...they would never get better than this, but then they put out their second LP. (Get ready, I'm about to over-analyze the shit outta this). In the first song, "Bubbling Cauldron of Spirits", Daniel sings about how people spend so much time focusing on inane topics of conversation without really ever saying what they really feel, which has only really accelerated in the intervening years of our technological "development". Was he intuiting that we would keep moving in this direction towards a future that gives anyone a platform to share the most mundane of topics? Probably not, but I like to think so. Also, in our new age of communication, I still love the line "Everyday I see a cell phone, everyday I wanna knock over a tower.", because 11 years later, I still feel that way.
  On the next song, "What's Up Brother?", I thought, "Did ADD/C really write a song about Billy Joe and put it out on a split 7" with Billy's band?!" Well, yes. It's a fucking sweet song though. My favorite thing about this song is that sometimes when they played it live, Billy would just walk around yelling "Fuck these guys! Quit dancing to a song about me!" The line "I wish I was sure of something, I wish I was sure of everything." is brilliant. I feel like I could write a book (a short one) just based on this song.
   "State of the Union", on the other hand, is a full length book just waiting to be written (with a very limited audience). It's starts off with a personal attack on one's self for wasting too much time on the excesses of life. It goes on to explain the anxiety and stress that comes with the onset of mild forms of agoraphobia, due to the existence of cops and the era of George Bush's presidency. Perhaps this is too heavy-handed for a simple punk song, but when confronted with the fact that Chattanooga was ranked #1 for police brutality rates for cities with populations under 200,000, it makes sense. Some of us (okay, me and ADD/C's bass player, Grady) went to Black Panther meetings led by Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin (please follow that link and read it) and participated in marches against the police. With our white skin, it gave us a privilege not experienced by almost everyone else at the meetings, but it still didn't stop groups of cops from throwing us on the ground and going through our belongings just for walking down the street at night. . At the end of the song, the band turns the attack outward to reflect a scene's preoccupation with alcohol consumption and self-destruction. It's always been hard to tell if the conclusion was an attack or a celebration, especially when confronted with it's context (Chattanooga, TN). As anyone who has ever written a song knows, once the song gets out of your hands, it is open to interpretation and the punks of Chattanooga took it as a mantra. Self-critical or celebratory? Maybe that's not the important part. Maybe (probably), I am over-analyzing. 
  On that note, let's let "Cemeteries" stand on it's own. It's also a great song.

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I don't usually upload vinyl, so hopefully it sounds okay. 

If you want ADD/C's first demo tape, it is available once again here.

Fun Facts:

1. The final line "Meet me at the laundromat" in "State of the Union" does not mean that ADD/C is going to wash their clothes. There's a 24 hour laundromat on Cherokee Blvd in Chattanooga where you could sometimes find punks hanging out (many times, that was me). Hidden in the drop ceiling, you could find a coffee maker, a hot plate and (for a short time) a record player with built in speakers. That means, if you needed a warm place to go and drink coffee at 4am, you could go there. Once, we had a dance party there. The laundromat is still there and it's still 24 hours. Someone should check to see if the coffee maker is still in the drop ceiling in the back. 

 2. Here's the significance of everything on the cover: The smokestack on the far left is in Bloomington and Matte claims that he once climbed to the top of it and went to sleep. The house on the left is where Matte lived and GBOW practiced. It's also the last place that I ever set up a show for AGAINST ME. I didn't realize that they had gotten mega popular but I soon figured it out when a couple hundred people showed up for the basement show. The sign is from the Chattanooga farmer's market. Someone in GBOW altered it and it stayed that way for a month. To the right of the sign is a houseboat that I lived on for a year in Chattanooga. To the right of that is the old Chattanooga knitting factory that Matte, Billy and I tried to squat. We woke up there with our lungs coated in asbestos and there were some dudes working on the place that we had to hide from. It's now the antique mall next to the Whole Foods. The Indiana sign is out front of the Indiana Theater in downtown Bloomington. The handsome cover star is Scott Youth, who now plays drums in TREPANNING.

  3. "Raise Ass" is not the name of the record. It is a call to action.

  4. Bill  now plays in FUTURE VIRGINS. Matte plays drums in LANDLORD. Chris Delaware actually moved (back) to Delaware and plays in ELDER THINGS. I run this blog and play drums in NEON PISS. ADD/C is still a band in some form. Daniel lives in Chicago and is expecting a child this year (believe it). Cole also plays in FUTURE VIRGINS. Grady lives about 55 steps from Cole and is one of the calmest and smartest people I know. 

  5. I can't imagine that you'd want to ever know anything more about this record.

DUDE PARTY - "Some Guy Making Noise and a Bike Wheel" - Tape - 2001

   Once upon a time in Chattanooga, a group of women got together and had a party where men were not allowed because they just wanted to all hang out together. Down the street, a bunch of guys had a party where we all took our shirts off, drank beer and threw darts. A few days later, I started a band with my friends and for some asinine reason, we called it DUDE PARTY.
   Daniel, Harry, Billy and I started this band because we all wanted to be in a band that just simply went on tour. We were having problems getting our other bands to leave town, so we specifically started this band to make a tape, go on one tour and then break up. At practice, we would spend hours working on a song and everything seemed so intricate and difficult. At the end of writing the song, we would say "this song has so many parts....it's gonna be too long." Then, we would play the song and it would only last a minute because we would play it so fast.

DUDE PARTY'S first show at the Rear Entry in Chattanooga. Daniel's dad on harmonica.

   We recorded this tape in one night at our practice space in Chattanooga. Some of us were on trucker speed. Others were drunk. Our friend, Mike recorded us on a broken 4 track, got so stoned that he passed out and we had to press the "record" button ourselves. I was playing with a broken crash cymbal that was formerly owned by the ZERO BOYS. Someone stole it off the wall of a pizza place in Indiana. I wish that we had a better recording of these songs because I think that something is really there. We spent a lot of time writing these songs and were, for lack of a better phrase, "going off". This was a special time in my life and I feel lucky to have played music with such gifted people. 

    Setting up our one tour proved to be quite an ordeal since (understandably) no one was too excited to book a show for a band called DUDE PARTY. I feel like we had to win everyone over every night, which was fun...especially in the PC warehouse in New Orleans where we supplied 200 dumpstered beers and proceeded to rationally discuss radical gender politics all night with the residents. On that tour, Daniel decided that no one could bathe, which was fine until the point where we all got bored in the van and started drawing designs on each other's faces with permanent marker. We had a day off in Pensacola and it happened to be the same day that GREEN DAY was playing the enormo-dome in town. We decided to plug in to a light post and play a show in the parking lot as their show was letting out. I somehow ended up getting a free ticket to the show (meaning a scalper got sick of trying to sell it and just handed it to me) and watched them in utter boredom. It was so bad. As they were breaking their shit on stage, I ran outside to set up my broken drums. We played in the parking lot to a few thousand people walking by us, acting like we weren't there. It was bizarre. Some people thought we were trying to get noticed and signed to a major label. Other people threw money at us and Daniel made them take it back. All in all, it was just another night of tour. We packed up, dumpstered some filing cabinets, finished our tour, scammed some food at Cracker Barrel and broke up. 

   Daniel now lives in Chicago and plays in a new band with a name that I forgot. He also finds the time to make it back down to Chattanooga to play in his long-running band, ADD/C...with Harry. Billy is no longer a teenager and now goes by Bill. He plays guitar and sings in the band, FUTURE VIRGINS. I'm just a poor schmuck who writes a blog and plays drums in a punk band. I'm happy to say that I am still friends with these guys and they're still working on amazing projects.

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Updated 4/2020

7-11'S - Demo - Tape - 1997

   I was just reminded of this demo the other day when my friend, Chad put up a Youtube video of it. The story behind this band is a hazy one and one that I don't know too well. I imagine that it was a one day project between 3 friends when there was a four track and some instruments laying around. Carey, who also played in THE DRILLER KILLERS, took care of the guitar duties and complained about how much she hated Jerry Garcia. Eric (also from THE DRILLER KILLERS as well as JACK PALANCE BAND and now in DARK RIDES) sang, played the drums and the trumpet. Michelle, formerly of THE SHAFFERS, played bass and drank hot sauce.
    They were called the 7-11's because they liked 7-11 and sang about it. It's as simple as that. It's sort of dumb, but I've  had these songs stuck in my head since 1997. Sometimes, dumb works in the best way. Love it or hate it, it's only 3 songs and the whole thing lasts less than 4 minutes...about the same amount of time it would take you to lace up some knee-high steel toe boots and kick a skinhead in the face.
   I think this band only played two shows. One of them was at Bandito Burrito in Huntsville, AL where Michelle kicked off their three song set by downing a 4 ounce bottle of El Yucateco Salsa Picante de Chile Habanero in one gulp. The next 4 minutes were very uncomfortable. I don't want to even think about what happened to her bowels in the following 24 hours.

Download THE 7-11's
File updated May 2015

QUEERWULF - 18 Songs - CD-R - 2003

   Back in 2000 in Chattanooga, my roommate, Ryan asked if I wanted to play drums for a recording project that he was working on with my future roommate (Ed), our neighbor (Anthony) and our friend, Josh. For some reason, I declined and Ryan just decided to play the drums himself. The end result of that project was the first 4 or 5 songs by the band, QUEERWULF and when I heard it, I was impressed. The band was too good to just stop right there, so they kept going...for a few more years. The bulk of those first songs ended up being on their first 7", "Cockroach City", put out by This Here Records in Chattanooga.
   Their singer, Josh always seemed to put everything he had into the live performance of any band he was in. In his teenage punk band, CAPITAL SICKNESS, he would fuck up playing bass because he was singing so hard with his eyes closed...and they ruled. With QUEERWULF, he didn't have any instruments to hold him back, so he was allowed to completely lose it while the rest of the band blazed through the songs behind him, which often resulted in broken glass, bloody microphones and/or a destroyed basement. Nothing about his lyrics or performance was an act though. Josh kinda lived this life 24 hours a day. Once, Josh walked out of his job and came to my house to get drunk. We rode bikes all over the city, drinking whiskey and spraypainting shit. I don't really remember the end of the night, but when I woke up on the floor in my room the next morning, Josh was a few feet away and we were surrounded by shards of broken glass. My roommate later told me that he came up to my attic room really late to find the two of us singing along to PETER STUBB as loud as we could while smashing beer bottles against the wall.
   Also, when he sang about pissing on someone's grave and smiling, I could picture it vividly.

Blurry pic of the first QUEERWULF show at Rear Entry.

   The rest of the band were no slouches either. As the band progressed, it seemed like were trying to make the music more and more intense as the years rolled by. Twists and turns in their songwriting became more unexpected and calculatingly precise. Sometimes, I felt like seeing them play was probably something close to what it felt like to see BLACK FLAG during the Damaged years (fortunately, QUEERWULF did not go further than that and start doing spoken word/instrumental albums...but I bet it would have been interesting). 

   The later years of QUEERWULF coincided with my departure from Chattanooga, so I don't know what happened to them or why they broke up, but I can assume that a band with that much intensity can only blow up at some point. The best bands are always the most volatile and difficult to maintain.

Download QUEERWULF

This CD-R collects their first 2 7" records and their side of the split LP with SHARP KNIFE. You can still get their posthumously released LP from Do Ya Hear We.

   Members of the band went on to be in TRAILER PARK HEROES, ASSHOLE PARADE, GHETTOBIRD, ADD/C, ONETIMERS, HIDDEN SPOTS and many, many more.

This CD is from the mixed up files of Anandi Wonder.

SAD LITTLE DONKEY - Tape - 2003

   After the breakup of my old band, FORCED VENGEANCE, I felt despondent and weird about my life for a myriad of reasons (mostly documented here). This band started up shortly after the breakup and we spent a lot of time practicing in a cramped basement overlooking the city of Chattanooga on Stringer's Ridge. Daniel (also of ADD/C) played guitar and sang. Harry (from JARVIS and FV) played the other guitar and contributed a great deal of vocals as well. Chrissie (from BRIS and FV) played bass. I embodied my spirit animal more than ever before (probably from being so weirdly unstable) and played the drums. We practiced a bunch and played one show before the World Trade Center attacks in 2001. On that day, I was reading the RAMONES biography on Harry's porch when I heard about planes crashing into those buildings. I decided then to hitchhike to Asheville, for some reason. If you ever want to feel like an anthropomorphic burning flag driving a tank full of Iraqis through a line of toddlers and into the White House, be sure to hitchhike on the day of a national tragedy. Long story short: I was losing my mind and the band dissolved. I left town for a while, Harry fathered a baby, Daniel bought a house and Chrissie moved to Richmond.

   I ended up out in San Francisco for a while, but soon returned to Chattanooga, living in a big drafty attic on the north side of town. I spent most of my time locked in there writing, trying not to drink myself into oblivion and going to shows at Anarchtica. I was only in town for 6 months and wanted to play music with anyone, but everything I tried to start just fell apart before it got off the ground (including a band with Eric Nelson called SKELETON HEAD, WYOMING that only managed to write one and a half songs. We played on show with only half the band present and shit out an REM cover to try and fill up a 5 minute set. The touring band said it was the best band they had played with on their tour and I felt bad for them.). My friend, Cinque came to town for a month and I proposed that we get SAD LITTLE DONKEY back together with him on bass. (sidenote: the band actually never had a name, I just called it SLD because no one else would come up with anything). So, within a month, we practiced these songs, played 2-3 shows and recorded this tape which never had any sort of proper release.

   This tape was recorded in 2003 in Daniel's room in a big, old house on the south side of town near the toxic Chattanooga Creek and (now demolished) Wheland Foundry. Three of these songs ("Luka","How the West Was Won", and "Dental Magician") later turned into ADD/C songs after Harry joined that band and they appear on their newest LP and a 7" with LANDLORD. This recording is roooough but I love how it sounds. The old mixer for the four track was so close to me that I kept hitting it with my drumstick and you can hear the reverb coils rattling near the end of the first song. It was a fun time. It was also Harry's birthday and rather than sitting around and making this recording sound better, we all went out together, got drunk and ate burritos. A few days later, Cinque and I left town with our other band ALLERGIC TO BULLSHIT and this band never played another note.

 

 

DOWNLOAD HERE 

Re-uploaded June 2023

YE OLDE BUTTFUCK - Live At Gilman - 2003

   YE OLDE BUTTFUCK was born out of the ashes of CHAOS L.R. and shared the same drummer and vocalist. They put out two amazing EP's (you'll be able to get them here again one day soon) before crashing and burning at an early age. Allegedly, they wrote the first George W Bush protest song after he didn't win the election. Within hours of his buying of the vote, Y.O.B. had penned "Double Fuck W" and performed it to a rabid crowd at the Rear Entry in Chattanooga, TN. It sounded excellent, but remained unreleased and unrecorded.
   This live set is very short and very sweet. What the fuck was YE OLDE BUTTFUCK, a hard drinking, Region Rock band, doing at Gilman anyway? Well, I can't really answer that...except for, it's a show space...bands play there....these things happen. The band chose this auspicious gig to unleash their cover of John Ashcroft's "Let The Eagle Soar" to a thoroughly confused and humorless crowd. You can hear a few well-wishers at the end screaming "Fuck you!" Good times all around.

 Download YOB Live

From the collection of Erick Lyle.

TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES FROM DAY ONE - Tape - 1997

   Iggy Scam put out this tape in 1997 and it brought to life a ton of bands that I had only read about (mostly in SCAM, the zine) or heard about by word of mouth. It was a revelation to hear real, live songs by bands with names like DARVIS BROWN AND THE SMOKE ASSES, VANBUILDERASS, LES TURDZ, and KREAMY LECTRIC SANTA. It was more than that. It was fucking exciting and it changed my life. It helped to open up my life to a whole world of complete and utter badasses who mostly have remained that way through the years. This is where I first heard "Revolution Sound" by THE STUN GUNS, where I first heard THE DRILLER KILLERS (who inspired me to make my own shirt with a Sharpie), where I was introduced to the genius of "Can't Take It Away" by THE MORONS and so, so much more. "Stupid Fresh" by KLS still sends chills down my spine every time I hear it. This is also where I first heard THE FUNYONS, a band powered mostly by one man named Steve who plays his simple-yet-insanely-catchy songs only on the streets, which I've always respected immensely. You may also know Steve as the principal songwriter behind ONION FLAVORED RINGS, who have been also churning out quality pop-punk for 10 years, even though they have slowed down in recent years. The cool thing is that Steve still plays FUNYONS songs unannounced on the streets of San Francisco all the time.
   This tape proclaimed "30 bands! 51 songs from The Region!" and that term (the region) has stuck around for all these years and has evolved into "region rock". But what the fuck is "region rock" and why should you care? I can't answer the latter, but I can tell you that the term "The Region" was coined by Cinque Adams. It  is loosely defined as an area in the southeastern US that is shaped like a triangle with points in Dogtown, AR, Tom Foote;s house in Chattanooga, TN and the ruins of an old hotel called "The Mutiny" in Coconut Grove in Miami. Bands from The Region mostly shared (and continue to share) ideologies, band members and much more. I don't want to define it too much because it's not mine to define. It's ever-shifting and belongs to the punks of the southeast. Don't think about it too much. Just close your mind.
   The songs were compiled by Iggy using (I'm sure) the cheapest of equipment and the barest of essentials. The same could be said for many of the bands recording their songs. The music was dubbed onto tapes stolen from chain stores and distributed through the US by touring bands, traveling kids, punk post, and a couple of small distributors. I remember getting 10 of these in the mail from Iggy and they were all snatched up by the punks in my town within a couple of hours. I don't even have a copy of this anymore.

   I did a sequel to this comp three years later, which you can find right here. This comp was originally posted on Region Rock and More, (so you can ask him why all the songs are weirdly numbered and out of order) but is no longer available there since Megaupload was shut down by the feds. I wanted to keep it around and easy to access, in case people want to hear it. It's an important document in the history of southeastern punk rock. This is for Forrest Haye, Andrew Ross Powell, Chris Cottie, Brian Turd, Victor Wiley, Mike O'Brien and any other winners we've lost along the way.

DOWNLOAD///Updated July 2013