SHARKS KILL - Demo - Tape - 1996

   Portland, Oregon's SHARKS KILL may already be familiar to some readers of the blog because I have mentioned them in posts with ALL IS LOST and PUNKY ROCKIT...or maybe you lived in Portland in the mid-90's and saw them playing house shows during that time. If this is your first introduction to them, welcome.
   I haven't had this tape since the mid-90's, but it was mailed to me by a longtime Portland resident who shall go unnamed...because when I received it in the mail, the manilla envelope that the tape originally came in (pictured above) was still sealed, meaning that the previous owner had probably never listened to it. My friend Harry used to play this tape in our shared house in Alabama and he always liked it a lot more than I ever did. Still, it's funny to say that you don't really like a tape, but there are still certain lines from songs that stick in your head for decades, even though you truly haven't heard them since 1998. There's some kind of weird power in that. So, when I pulled this tape out of the envelope and played it in my room in 2018, I was immediately mouthing the lines "Welcome to Portland...it gets dark and dreary here..."
    SHARKS KILL walked that line between catchy indie-punk and emo. Since this is a place where I try to be brutally honest (in a way that has led to many, many awkward conversations with friends and dead friend's parents over the years), I will tell you that I am a fan of being in touch with your emotions, but I am an enemy of emo. SHARKS KILL crosses too far over the line for my tastes in a few circumstances, like "Forever 17", but I would be lying through my teeth if I didn't say that I have flown down dark hills alone on my bike late at night yelling the line "Rock and roll forever!!" "Crush Song" is the kind of song that you can only write in 1996 and even then, maybe not.. Still, it's lodged in my brain and I kinda love it. "Postcard" is such a time-and-place song and really catchy...I couldn't believe it wasn't on the band's 7" from a year later. Something about the otherworldly and tinny recording adds to the charm of this whole thing.
   On this tape, they're a two piece, but they added Tasha on bass for their later 7" record. They didn't last long after that. Members went on to be in HOPE & ANCHOR, VEGAS THUNDER, TOUGH LOVE, BOYS OF SUMMER, DARK SKIES, FUTURE WEST and more.

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THE LAZER//SCENT OF HUMAN HISTORY - Split - CD - 2002

   What the fuck is up? I've been thinking about the ghosts that you see when you walk down the street and you can only look at your neighborhood through a lens of what used to be there. I'm trying to stop doing that, but it's hard when everything changes so quickly.
    One of the last times that I talked about my friend Jamie's bands, I did not use any filters and I didn't think too closely about what I was putting out into the world. Without going into detail, I was visited by different kinds of ghosts and put into sudden serious conversations with people I never thought I would encounter in my life. I don't plan on revisiting these conversations anytime in the near future and sometimes, it's better to let ghosts rest. That is why this entry will be noticeably vague and feel devoid of some kinds of obvious info.
   Both of these bands were from Long Island during the early '00's. Both of them played shows in Chattanooga when I lived there. One of them I liked. The other...not so much. When THE LAZER came into town, it was the first time I met Jamie after being his pen pal for about a year or so. I took him out for pizza even though I could barely afford it. He complained about the pizza because he is from New York and this is what New Yorkers do, but when I went to see him, he returned the favor because that's what friends do.
   THE LAZER broke up and some of the members soon started the freight train known as BENT OUTTA SHAPE. SCENT OF HUMAN HISTORY soon became extinct and did other things too. I can't tell you what those things are, but you can find more info about this release here.

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