WET SPOTS - Tape - 2013

This one is intended as a companion piece to this post

     Barker was starting to wind up WET SPOTS around the same time that our band together was winding down and it was maybe more his speed. While our band seemed to act more and more serious, WET SPOTS liked to joke the fuck around and write seriously catchy songs. Barker wrote the guitar riffs and sang while Oscar and Janelle rounded out the rhythm section on bass and drums respectively. The results are seven excellent songs that help you remember that Barker had an unfuckwithable ear for melody.
    I remember when they were going to record these songs, I ran into Barker and he was excited because Darin from SUPERCHARGER was turning the knobs for them. I was excited too and we privately geeked the fuck out about it for a minute because we were both garage rock nerds at different points in our lives. I didn't even know the guy was still around, but the tape sounds fuckin' great, so he still knows what he's doing.
   When WET SPOTS went to play a few shows in Hawaii, I got super jealous, because I've always wanted to play there. Upon their return, I asked Barker how it went and he played it a little too cool..."Ahhh, it was fine. We played a show or two. The people were pretty nice." I ran into Janelle later and she gushed about it. "It was fucking fun! We hung out in the ocean a ton. Barker jumped off of a cliff!" Then, she showed me a ton of photos and every one of them looked like the best time ever!
    Download this stuff and play it loud. Enjoy Janelle's pounding drums, Oscar's smooth ass bass lines and a voice that should sound raspier knowing the amount of whiskey that has passed by those vocal cords.

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Members of THE TOURETTES, PIZZASAURUS REX, ROCK N ROLL ADVENTURE KIDS, THE YOUNG MEN, HUFF STUFF MAGAZINE, PANTY RAID, THE MUNI MEN, LITTLE QUEENIE, THE GRIS GRIS, BABY JAIL, RINGERS and more and more and more.

Barker in Hawaii. Photo by Janelle. 

BANDA MUERTA - Tape - 2014

   As a teenager, I was really into garage punk, but I luckily fell into quality shit right off the bat with bands like THE MUMMIES, THE BRENTWOODS, THE TRASHWOMEN and whatever the fuck Billy Childish was doing at that point. As I delved deeper in, I just found lots of rehash-trite-bullshit-sixties-rock revival with absolutely no soul. It got boring. It was like hearing the BEATLES but not understanding THE SONICS or PLEASURE SEEKERS. I moved on to pure punk and my usual weirdo vibes.
   Lately, I've been coming back to garage punk because it seems like bands understand it again...or I just wasn't paying attention in the right places (more likely). Letting myself be open to these things again has led me to sitting outside of sold-out MUMMIES reunion shows full of boring fuckheads, looking at overpriced Billy Childish reissues and finding out that Elka Zolot from THE TRASHWOMEN is Kreayshawn's mom. You can't go back, but why the fuck would you want to??!
    Luckily, we can all just look to the future with bands like BANDA MUERTA. I'll admit that when the first song came on, I was not that stoked until about a minute and a half in. Something clicked right then and I really started paying attention. I thought "This singer has no dynamics" and then I thought "This is cool...this singer has no dynamics!" It's just full on all the time and something about it reminds me of the same intensity I feel from the singer of LA URRS. The music itself is raw, urgent and extremely catchy. Like it or don't.

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Members of COPYCATS and CARNE

(Calling this band "garage" is kind of a stretch really)

MIX TAPE - 1995

  Besides my old friend, Heather, who I met when I was 5 years old, I only keep in touch with one other friend from the Nascar days of my youth (that reference is so vague that I'm not explaining it...just roll with it). That friend is Angie, who mailed this tape to me at my two room apartment in Huntsville, AL in 1995. No cover, no track listing...just this tape rolled up into a letter, recorded over a battered GEORGE MICHAEL cassingle. Short and to the point. I had no clue that I'd still love every song on this tape 20 years later (20 years!). I had no clue that the Floyd who is mentioned in the first line of the first song would be the same person who now assigns me CD's to review for Maximum Rock N Roll or that that house he made his phone call from (listen to the song) would catch on fire a short distance from where I live now. I didn't know that the third song would still resonate so much harder with me now than it did back then. The last band on the tape, EVERY ALICE ON EARTH, will not be a hit with many (or any) visitors to the blog, but they were a local(ish) band where I grew up and were one the first DIY (I mean this as actual "Do It Yourself", not as an empty slogan used by hardware stores and Pottery Barn) bands I ever saw in my pre-teen years, which made a big impact. In some very, very tiny circles, they are legendary.

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VARIOUS ARTISTS - "Audio Annihilation" - Tape - 2004

   There are very little details that I know about this tape. I do know that it showed up in my P.O. box years ago with an accompanying zine, but that informative document has been lost after moving between no less than 8 houses, 6 states and 3 time zones. What I can tell you is that this was produced by some stellar folks from San Pedro, CA and was probably meant to document a certain time in their scene, but I'm really fucking it up now. Most of the songs on here are shoddy, lo-fi, live recordings that sound like a really fun time. I can't tell you who any of these bands are because I don't know. LIPSTICK PICKUPS? KILLER DREAMER? You tell me! No, really! I wanna know who sings track 14 because it's my favorite! Also, interspersed between some of the songs are some pretty funny ads for records that were coming out at the time, which is something I wish that happened more often in punk.

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REMOTE OUTPOSTS MIX #2 - 2014

    It's 6 am. I've been awake for 20 hours and I won't get a chance to sleep for another few hours. I'm not complaining. I've got a box of old tapes sitting on my floor that are waiting to be digitized. I'm bugging some other people to write about them so you don't have to only hear my opinion all the time. I think they're good tapes. You might disagree.
   In the meantime, I made this mix for you...just for you. If you download it, you can imagine that I made it specifically with your tastes in mind....and then decide if I succeeded or failed in making a mixtape that you would enjoy. Big surprise: It's mostly punk. There's also some not-punk on it. The years span from 1961 to the last couple of months. Enjoy or don't.

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THE BEST MIX TAPE IN THE WORLD - 2001

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

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

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

NRML PPL // BLACK PANTIES - Tapes - 2013

   I'm convinced that there's something fucked up in the water supply of St Louis. I rode my bike around the banks of the river a couple of years ago, just after the Mississippi had flooded, and everything was slimy and gross. The pavement baked in the hot sun and every surface smelled like mold and rotten ass. I thought about a few years before that when I went to a diner downtown followed by a show in a big, rotting punk house. All of the locals seemed angry, wary of outsiders and very territorial. I wondered what it would be like to live there. I thought about it for a short time and even convinced a couple hundred people to all show up there on the same day for no real reason other than to hang out (All Punks Meet in St Louis, May 25th, 2006). That day was pretty fun, but I've never spent more than a day or two in the town. 

   Fast forward to 2013 and the St Louis punk scene seems to be as moldy, rotten and greasy as the river that flows by the Arch every day. Let's start with the BLACK PANTIES tape. They blast out simple, stupid, rotten punk that sounds like a 3rd generation blown-out FREESTONE demo on pills....any pills...just as long as there's a lot of them. Their singer alternates between not giving a fuck and giving all that he's got while drowning in a pool of reverb. Their outro at the end of the tape will tell you everything you need to know about everything you ever needed to know. 

  The other tape in this download is NRML PPL, who seem to love the shit outta simple, repetitive song structures and trashy, fucked up sounds, not unlike ACTION SWINGERS. They throw out one upbeat, dirty punk rager and one stoned ass sounding instrumental. They released this tape in a small quantity for this year's record store day. Both tapes were released on the always interesting Lumpy Records, who seem to be putting out short run cassettes by stupid, slimy bands at an almost alarming rate. I think I have tapes by 9 different bands released in the past year. If you'd like to start your own collection, click over to Spotted Race and order a few tapes. They're cheap as shit and you too can question the purity of their water supply just like me. 

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CORTEZ THE KILLER - Lost LP - 2008

   Today, there will be no fanfare, art or long-winded stories of all the fun you missed (or caused). I'm very happy and honored to bring you the unreleased LP by Minneapolis' own CORTEZ THE KILLER. They were around for a few years and committed a few songs to tape and vinyl before calling it quits. Will and Ski from this band went on to form the completely unfuckwithable FROZEN TEENS, along with their friend, Wil. If you're a fan of FT, you will not be let down by CORTEZ THE KILLER. Here's Ski to tell you some more....

  "There's an old Chattanooga axiom that pretty much sums up CORTEZ THE KILLER, "The party ain't easy." We started in 2005 as an all Fargoan Minneapolis band, and despite a couple bass player changes, surprisingly stayed true to that. We drank a lot of wine, smoked tons of weed, and managed to write close to twenty songs and tour the country a couple of times in our short years of existence. The keepers were all recorded for this full length, and we had dreams of it being put out on this yadda yadda label and that yadda yadda label, but we barely made it to the final mixes and our physical and mental healths would not permit the band to continue any longer. So our record was never put out (although many people have said they wanted to do it, none actually have) and it always felt like it should. Greg said he'd post it, so here you go. Grab a bottle of Tisdale, smoke a joint, and enjoy!"

Download CORTEZ THE KILLER

When you download this, you'll notice that the track listing runs #6-19. It's supposed to be like that. You're not missing any songs. 

CASSINGLE AND LOVIN' IT - Compilation - CD-R - Mid-to-late-90's and beyond

   Before we get into the music part, I just wanted to update you all on the Mediafire business (see here for reference). The account is still locked and my emails to customer service were fruitless. My final email mirrored the frustration I was feeling from dealing with them and I simply asked "Can you prove that you work for Mediafire? Can you prove that your names are real? Can you prove that the Earth is indeed round?" Whatever. Oddly, they never wrote back. While it is a bummer that a majority of the links on this site are dead, I am moving forward because That Is What I Do. I am re-upping some old ones and will continue to do so from time to time. Feel free to tell me what you want re-uploaded. For now, feel free to continue downloading CLEANSING WAVE, RYMODEE, HICKEY, FLEABAG, This Alabama punk comp, REMAIN INDOORS, FROZEN TEENS, TOMMY LASORDA and RICE HARVESTER. As I stated way back in the beginning, none of this stuff is copyrighted and if you don't feel comfortable having your music shared on this site, just let me know and I will take it down, no questions asked. There is no need to involve outside sources. We can exist without the Man. Onto the music....

   You may know Scott from his manic drumming in THE BANANAS or, more recently, his smooth guitar stylings in THE BRIGHT IDEAS. During the 90's, he ran a great record label called Secret Center, who put out the first BANANAS singles as well as all manner of nerdy, under-appreciated jangly punk bands from the Sacramento area. In the 90's and early 00's, he did an offshoot of the label that specifically specialized in one-off cassingles (for those of you who did not grow up in the 90's, that's a really short cassette with only 2 songs on it) comprised of bands that were usually around long enough to record their 2 songs. The cassettes could be bought through the mail for a buck or two. This download is a collection of all the songs as well as a few unreleased "gems". All bands are from Sacramento except for (US SOUTHERNERS TAKE NOTE) "Gary League". Gary is actually none other than Peter Stubb, the North Georgia wildman who has been self-releasing his own tapes consistently since the late 80's (I think the League recordings remain unreleased by this Sac label, but remained close to their hearts). Here is Scott to tell you everything you never wanted to know about this label and these bands....

   I generally consider the cassingle label to be the best idea I've ever had. The inspiration hit me some time in 1996 a few days before the BANANAS headed to Cupertino to play a show. After the show, I mentioned it to Gavin and Hutch - two Cupertino guys I'd become friends with through playing shows and doing Secret Center Records. Hutch was in a rad band called BUNCHA LOSERS, whose tape I distro-ed (now he's in THE THERMALS) and Gavin was in THE NARDS, who were one of my favorite bands to play with. He was also just one of the nicest guys ever. He played in a great band called THE FEVERS later on and is currently in an AWESOME band called THE RANTOULS, who play way too infrequently. Anyway, I told them about the label idea  at the show and they were like "we like have the perfect thing for you!", which ended up being THE CARNIES cassingle (which sadly other than one song, is lost at the moment.) A few days later, THE CARNIES master tape and artwork showed up in my mailbox, so I figured "Cassingle and Lovin' It!" had been officially born. I couldn't even believe how perfect THE CARNIES stuff was - they had just done it one bored weekend but it was the ideal cassingle music. To me, it seemed like a sign that I had to do the label. 

    The first one we did was at U Street (aka The Gentlemen's Club and basically cassingle headquarters) was THE ICE BUCKET HEADS, which is me, Tristan, Davey and Jay. We all lived there and were sitting around talking about doing a cassingle & there was this styrofoam ice bucket that had been lying around in the front room & we were sort of discussing how rad it was that a cassingle could just be any stupid idea that you could possibly think of. I think originally we were going to make a band called THE QUESADILLA MAKERS (I believe Jay was making a quesadilla at the time) & then somebody put the ice bucket on their head, so we did that instead. It's amazing how freeing it is to write songs for a fake band. I sat down and wrote "Everybody Loves The IBH" the next morning in like 10 minutes and Davey wrote "Stay Cool" which came out pretty bad because he's the worst at articulating how he thinks something should sound. But it was a great start.

   "Dude With The Shirt With The Dude On It"  was an inside joke from BANANAS / FOUR EYES  tour where some guy walked in to the house we were staying at in Chattanooga at like 3am looking for someone (the guy was wasted) and he just kept saying "I'm...looking for the dude...with the shirt....with the dude on it!!" So, we sort of wrote that one in the van & recorded it when we got back home. (Ed. note: this song blows my mind)  That was the funnest one because we had a party to provide the backing vocals & party sounds. This one is Jay, Joel, Mike and me. 

    SACTO APES is these two Japanese kids  - Kei and Naomi - that were visiting California. They had mail-ordered stuff from me a few times. My friend, Dave Smith, who lived in San Francisco, met them. When he was visiting Sac that weekend, he said "I met these two Japanese kids who knew what Secret Center was. They seemed bored in SF." So, we decided to go kidnap them and bring them to Sac. Banana Mike was moving out of his house that day so he had an empty house that we could throw a show in for those kids. LIL BUNNIES, BANANAS and ICE BUCKET HEADS played (the only cassingle band to play a show. We did the cassingle and a cover of "Never Understand") & these kids were completely sold on Sac. They stayed for a few days at U Street. One day, I came home and they had written a cassingle about liking Sacramento. Their lyrics are the sweetest. They're printed on the cassingle cover (Ed. note: included in download). Tristan plays drums and several drunk people provide the chorus singing. 

   THE ROMS was the most grueling tape ever. After it was done, I realized that it took 18 hours to finish. We found a drum machine that my friend, Jason had left over at U Street. It had a bunch of dancehall beats on it. He had gotten super into Dancehall a few years earlier (he actually started a dancehall label called "Ruff Chicken" that put out dancehall LP's and tapes). So, he had all these beats he'd programmed into it and we built the cassingle around those. There was a Rom comic lying around that provided the inspiration. We had a Moog that only worked some of the time and it kind of broke in the middle of recording. Somehow, we salvaged it. Everyone was playing something they weren't good at on equipment they were totally unfamiliar with & to this day, I can't believe it sounds as good as it does. It could never be duplicated in a million years! This one is Joel, Jay, Lisa, Davey and me. 
   FANCY LADS was written by Tristan in the middle of our house-wide obsession with the TELEVISION PERSONALITIES. No B-side was ever written, so this one is "unreleased", but it's always been one of my favorites. I rememeber being in my room when he and Jay started working on it and being totally jealous that I wasn't involved. 

   VERUCA SALT FAN CLUB is pretty self-explanatory. Based on my celeb crush on Louise Post.

   "Forever Nursing Brew" is another unreleased one thanks to no B-side. I've always loved this song and it's absurd stance that someone was trying to "stop us from drinking our brew". It's like the "legalize it" of beer! This one always reminds me of Eric Copeland because we used to quote it to each other whenever we were drinking brews on BLACK DICE tour, which was most of the time. 

   SIMILAR GUYS is Gavin and Mike, who do sort of look alike. Gavin was coming to visit and do a cassingle, so Mike wrote "We're Similar Guys" the day before, but we still needed a B-side. (Ed. note: I listened to this song exactly once and it was stuck in my head for a week straight) Before Gavin got to town, I was going to a beer fest down the street and I wrote "We're Similar" in my head on the walk there. I spent the whole fest constantly repeating it over in my head so I wouldn't forget it. That one was super fun. I was proud of the line "We've got a lot in common, just like soup and ramen."

   The HONEY I SHRUNK THE BAND cassingle was the last of the golden era of cassingles and it's one of my favorites for sure. Mike wrote "Hip To Be Small" and we sang it with the 4 track on slow speed so it would sound like munchkins. I wrote the theme song based on that annoying riff, which is something I used to play whenever I picked up a guitar for a while. I was dating the girl who talks on it and she used to live in Berkeley, so we only hung out on weekends. She already didn't like Sac that much but this particular weekend I was in a fit of cassingle fever so I was totally distracted with working on HISTB. She was super annoyed, hanging out in my room, when I was like "hey, will you do this talking part?" She immediately got all psyched and into it - the magic of the cassingle. 

    We started the label back up again for a bit in 2000 or so with the YAWNING MUSHROOM, which was the "psychedelic cassingle". My friend Marie and I were working on BRIGHT IDEAS stuff and she had some mushrooms...so, we took them and decided to write a cassingle instead. One of the weird side effects of the mushrooms was that we couldn't stop yawning, hence the name. She had this little contact mic that she put inside an acoustic and it sounded so incredible high in headphones! I had written those songs a few weeks earlier and they seemed to fit together. 

   JUNIOR QUENCH is one of my best friends, Josh, who lives in NYC. He used to live in Sac and is Sac through and through. So, when Marie called him at his apartment in NYC and said "hey, Dillon and I wrote a reggae jam. Do you want to sing over it?", he, of course, said "yes". He's way into dancehall as well and I guess there's a little-known dancehall DJ called Quench Aid who Josh loves. He was already making these funny tapes of him imitating Quench Aid over instrumental reggae tracks and calling it "JUNIOR QUENCH", so he grabbed some lyrics he had written, went outside his apartment and sang over the phone into the 4 track while they cranked the track so he could hear it. One take! 

   There are a lot more...some that even I've forgotten. Some were recorded on long lost tapes. Some were just REALLY bad. There are some good ones not on here, but these are the ones that have the classic spirit of what was going on for that glorious, heady year or so. 

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P.S. I am still figuring out the kinks of the new file-sharing service. Let me know if you have problems. 

FULL SUN - "Bare Floor" - Tape - 2012

   Well, the end of the year is approaching quickly, and traditionally it's a time when people start thinking about their favorite musical releases of the past 365 days. Every year, folks always complain about how there wasn't anything good that came out. Then, if you were to fast forward their lives two years, they will complain about how nothing is as good as it was two years ago. My point is, people are releasing great music all the time, even if it's not on your radar. There is someone, somewhere, holed up in a tiny basement writing the new anthems for your life. Now you just have to find them and get a copy of it. That's the part that can be the hardest sometimes.
   This is where FULL SUN comes in. They put out an excellent tape last year that was easily one of my favorite releases of 2011 (you can find it here and here). The newer tape, "Bare Floor" is just as great, if not better, and will top the list for this year. As mentioned in the write up of the other tape, FULL SUN is the recording project of Jeff Grant (from FAT SHADOW and formerly PINK RAZORS) and he writes solid, catchy basement punk songs that offer hook after hook that will have you listening for days (weeks, years). Some comparisons could be drawn to POTENTIAL JOHNS, PLOW UNITED, PINK RAZORS and early SUPERCHUNK, but Jeff definitely has his own thing going here. Like the last tape, there are some awesome dub interludes that come from a love and respect of the genre, so it doesn't make you feel like some white clown in a rasta/dread hat is giving you the wink-nod while he slaughters your eardrums (say, like JAHBREAKER).
   Once again, there's only 100 copies of this tape in existence, so get yours now. I warned you about the last one and now it's sold out. Don't miss this one. You can order it from Jeff's label, Houseplant Records.

Download FULL SUN

Or download it from their Bandcamp

Jeff and I briefly discussed having my band, NEON PISS travel out to the Midwest and act as his backing band for a FULL SUN tour, but it sounds like a logistical nightmare. If any rich benefactors want to pay for 4 people to fly out to Indiana and make this happen, get in touch. Ha!

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.

Download Side A

Download Side B

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

OFVITARNIR - "Stephen Hawking/Steven Tyler" - CD - 2011

   Last night, I went to see a few films at The Roxie that were loosely based on post-punk. The last movie they showed was a surprise screening of "Rock In Reykjavik", which is a all-encompassing overview of the scene in Iceland circa 1980 or so. It was so cool and sort of alien to see this scene flourishing in the early 80's while still being so remote and cut off from the much of the punk world. My only complaint is that there was no indication of the band names anywhere in the film during their performances. I know for a fact that I witnessed a teenage Bjork singing beautifully while fronting her band TAPPI TIKARRASS, but who were those prepubescent mohawked kids that could barely play their instruments and waxed so poetically about huffing gas and glue? Who was that band all cramped together playing power-pop in a basement that was so cold that they were wearing parkas and you could see their breath? Who was that fucking group that had nausea inducing strobe lights blasting the audience as they cut the heads off of live chickens and threw their carcasses into the crowd?! I don't know! What I do know is that it was a pretty cool time capsule to watch and it was almost quaint how the punks politely sat in their seats and raised their fists while a punk band played. It all felt so distant, so remote and like a history I will never truly know.

   Do you know how hard it is to press a record in Iceland? Well, first off, you can't get it pressed in the country because there are no pressing plants, so you have to ship it out to England or the US or somewhere else. You also have to fill out some annoying customs forms and then pay an exhorbitant amount of money on postage. So much money, in fact, that the postage costs more than actually pressing the record. By the time you finally get the record, you have to charge your friends and fans an outrageous amount of money to buy the thing. So, out of necessity, Icelandic bands still put out a fair amount of CD's, CD-R's and cassette tapes, which brings us to OFVITARNIR.

    OFVITARNIR is a young indie-punk band out of Reykjavik that plays mid-tempo, somewhat downcast melodic rock and features some of the nicest people I could ever hope to meet from that town. They draw inspiration from American indie-punk, Danish garage rock and their own long history of Icelandic punk. One of my favorite songs on here is "O O O O", a melodic, laid-back garage rock song with a distant backing vocal that reminds me of PJ BONNEMAN in the best way. Members of this band also run a label out of Reykjavik called PBP (I'm not even gonna attempt to actually spell the name on this US keyboard) that puts out cassettes and CD's by local bands. They also set up punk shows and keep up the struggle to find viable all-ages venues in their town. If you're ever in Iceland, be sure to hit them up for the good record store and cheap pizza. Here is a link to their record label.

Download OFVITARNIR

  I just wanted to add that I visited Reykjavik in May and stayed with 2/3's of this band in their small apartment with their nice cats. That country, while I saw a small fraction of it, is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been in my life. Expensive, but insanely beautiful. I highly recommend going to visit if you ever get a chance.

...and no, I didn't see Bjork.

CHEAP VENTILATORS - Demo - Tape - 2009

   You know how when you live with a band and they practice in the basement, you always have all of their songs stuck in your head all the time whether you like it or not? That's how my life was living in Bloomington with Bobb, the guitarist of CHEAP VENTILATORS and drummer/vocalist of JERK ALERT. In this case, I lived with his old band, JERK ALERT. They would practice once or twice a week in our cramped, cold, moldy basement while me and my other roommates would be upstairs cooking dinner and mouthing the words to "Don't Stand Next To My Ride" seemingly against our will. When they set up their first show, they made a mistake with the dates and booked it at the same time that their bass player would be out of the country. No problem. I knew the songs so well by that point that I stepped in to play bass for them at that show after one practice.
    Depending on which side of the fence you stand on (and this fence is usually imagined by people who have never lived there), Bloomington, Indiana is either a utopian paradise populated by free-thinking acoustic punkers singing about their feelings on every street corner or some rotten shitpile where you can't go to a simple fucking punk show without being bombarded by the most banal goddamn folk punk you've ever imagined. In my reality of living there, I went to fun punk shows in basements that rarely, if ever, featured teenage boys strumming acoustic guitars while sheepishly staring at the ground. My roommate Bobb had been there long before me setting up fun rock n roll and punk shows and he's still there today playing music and running a record label. When he wasn't playing his M.O.T.O. and REIGNING SOUND LP's at top volume, he was in the basement writing new songs or cooking the most delicious food ever (he is also a chef).
   I was happy to get this tape from him in the mail and unlike the JERK ALERT LP, I didn't already know every song on it. In fact, I didn't know any songs on it. Bobb moved from the drums to guitar and took on the vocals in this band, delivering song after song of rock n roll bliss. They take cues from M.O.T.O., THE OBLIVIANS and just plain good garage rock...the kind you imagine being played in smoky bars, cramped basements and dirty living rooms swamped with beer cans. Arkansas transplant, Donovan bangs the shit out of the drums with a huge smile on his face. You might remember him from the early live version of FULL SUN...but only if you lived in Bloomington, probably. The trio is rounded out by Alex, who sometimes hung out at our house in B Town, but he is a quiet guy and I don't have any embarrassing stories about him...good work, Alex.
   I don;t think this tape is available anymore, but you should check out Bobb's record label, Eradicator Records and order some great Midwestern (and beyond) punk.

Download CHEAP VENTILATORS

CORTEZ THE KILLER - "Gas Money Demos" - CD-R - 2008

   Ever since I posted the FROZEN TEENS demo a while back, I have been pretty fuckin' obsessed with it (to put it lightly). That obsession grew after I ordered their brand new LP from Do Ya Hear We, which is even better than the demos and near flawless. It hasn't left my turntable since I got it in the mail a week ago. Seriously...and I listen to a lot of music. This obsession led me to revisit Ski and Will's (drummer and guitarist of FT, respectively) old band from a few years ago, CORTEZ THE KILLER.
   I set up (actually, I can't remember if I set it up or someone else did) a house show for them in Bloomington, IN that was pretty poorly attended, but the band did their best to rock the shit out of the few people there. Everything is pretty hazy because this was a fairly drunken period in my life, but I remember that one of the guys in the band barely talked to anyone until he got good and wasted.
   That's all beside the point though. What's important is that they had this demo with them and it sounds, to me, like a proto-FROZEN TEENS, before they got their bearings. The song, "Brian Jones Haircut" could easily be a deep cut off of their later FT demos, but the rest have more of a Nuggets-era, garage rock sound to them that works for me. The song "Phillips" is especially excellent, showing that these guys really have a knack for giving a song the room to breathe; something that I have always had a problem executing myself. Excellent!

Download their demo
Updated May 2014

Fun fact: After some time, their guitarist Mike Wilson either quit or got kicked out....I don't know which. The band later replaced him with another guitarist named Mike Wilson!

FULL SUN - "High Ceiling" - Tape - 2011

   I totally "got" FULL SUN when I was sitting on top of Bernal Hill overlooking the city of SF and I was blasting this tape out of my boom box the day after my birthday while eating a burrito and drinking a tall can. Meanwhile, at that very moment on the other side of the country, Jeff Grant (the songwriter and instrumentalist behind these songs) was getting married to his longtime sweetheart in a barn (I think) in Indiana. I raised a toast to them and the city and flipped this tape over for the fifth time in a row.
  FULL SUN started out as a three piece band, but never recorded anything to my knowledge before they broke up. Jeff (their guitarist/singer and formerly of PINK RAZORS) kept the band name and pushed onward. He wrote and recorded these six songs at home, playing all the instruments himself and it came out amazingly. While it has an undeniable late-era POTENTIAL JOHNS feel to me, Jeff pulls out some tricks that make the sound all his own...like throwing in a dub song. He has a knack for ear-grabbing pop hooks and the recording has a thin, treble-y (but high quality and clear) sound that reminds me of AM radio, which I fuckin' love. It's flawless.

   Download FULL SUN

   If you would like to buy your own copy of this tape, act fast because he only pressed 100. You can get it from Houseplant Records. While you're there, go ahead and order the LP by FAT SHADOW; the band he plays drums for. Jeff is reportedly hard at work on new FULL SUN recordings and I can't wait to hear them.

WAVY GRAVY - "For Adult Enthusiasts" - Compilation LP - 1960's

   This album (along with John Waters, THE CRAMPS and late night cable access exploitation movies) is responsible for warping my young brain and making me want to be a freak for life. I think I first heard this thing when I was about 12 years old and I felt like I was receiving a transmission from an alien world. These 14 songs are divided between exploitation movie trailers, creepy-as-fuck spoken word bits and weird religious rants. The songs range from weirdo-psychotic country-western to dumb 60's garage songs about gorillas. The highlights for me are PORTER WAGGONER's demented "Rubber Room", WENDELL AUSTIN's ode to psychedelics in "LSD" and the fucking ridiculous stupidity of THE LONE TWISTER. This compilation makes more sense when you listen to it as a whole.
    Also, it's pretty fucked up.

   ...and it has nothing to do with that weird hippie clown named Wavy Gravy.

                                    Download