YOUR HEART BREAKS / STEBMO / KARL BLAU / TEAM GINA / LAKE - "Sensual Seduction / The Right Stuff" - Cassingle - 2008

 To start off this entry, I would like to point out that this is the 420th post on the blog and that ties into the reasoning for posting this today. I don't care about weed, but a lot of people do, so this is for them...I guess. Are potheads into this kind of shit? I don't give a fuck.
  What we have here is a two song cassingle of some totally ridiculous shit, which is the perfect kind of music to put on such a format. In what could possibly be one of the more bizarre DIY collaborations in recent years, members of YOUR HEART BREAKS, TEAM GINA, SUNN O))), EARTH, LAKE and KARL BLAU team up to bring you their own special versions of SNOOP DOGG's "Sensual Seduction" and NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK's "The Right Stuff".  I mean, what more can I tell you? Happy 420th post!

DOWNLOAD

What's possibly even more ridiculous is that this tape was pressed onto a 7" record with spray painted (??) covers. I have one. If you want your own, click over to Off Tempo to order one.

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. 

Download

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

TOMMY LASORDA - Demo Tape and 7" EP - 2001-2003

   You may remember a while back when I told you about the teenage punk band LOS RABBIS and all of their exploits (or some of them) in the Bay Area. Mike and Adam, who made up half of that band were also wailing away at another band called TOMMY LASORDA, where they constantly traded off instrument duties. The latter appeared to take the teenage freakout abandon of LOS RABBIS and mold it into wildly addictive pop hooks. They didn't ever have an easily classifiable sound, but they seemed to take equal parts of HICKEY, MELVINS, BEAT HAPPENING and anything else rattling around on their bedroom floors and just meld it into some kind of low-fi hodge-podge that was wholly their own.

"Planetary explorers" - Provided by the band.

   LOS RABBIS were supposed to come to Chattanooga many years ago when I lived there, but they ended up cancelling due to a family emergency (possibly?). Less than a year later, I got a call from Mike or Adam asking if there was a show that TOMMY LASORDA could jump onto that night because they would be driving though Chattanooga. Luckily, there was already a show set up for RESIN at our all-ages space, so I told them they could jump onto the show, even though I had never seen or heard TOMMY LASORDA in my life. They showed up in a busted ass minivan and loaded out their shit to play first. They played their hearts out to the 20 or so people in attendance, belting out two-minute-or-less ragged punk songs; each one better than the last. At the end of their set, they played "King Solomon's Reef" (included on demo tape), which is a complete departure from all of their other songs (to put it lightly) and blew my mind. I didn't watch the other bands that night because I knew that it wouldn't get any better than that (luckily, for the other touring band, the room soon filled up with people and weed smoke).

TOMMY LASORDA live at Rear Entry in Chattanooga. Photos by me.

    Later, after I moved out to SF, I was "working" one day at Mission Records when Adam and Mike walked in. They asked if they could borrow an extension cord. I rummaged around and found one behind the counter. I asked what they needed it for and Mike casually said that they were going to play a set at the BART station as the two of them walked out the door. Sarah T and I hurriedly locked up the gate to the store and rushed down there. Five minutes later, I saw one of the best sets I ever saw by the band in the middle of the day, as they played to drunks, freaks, commuters and addicts on the street corner. Mike started off the set by saying "Hi, we're TOMMY LASORDA and we really don't give a fuck!"

TOMMY LASORDA at 16th and Mission (a different time). Pic provided by the band.

   This download includes both the band's demo tape and 7" Ep, which was released by S.P.A.M. Records. The demo tape is chock full of classics, in my mind. The tape kicks off with "I Can't Swim", which passes itself off as a lackadaisical pop song until the screaming kicks in. Its followed by "Artful Dodger", which is a slice of catchy genius. Later in the tape, the listener is greeted by "Mr. Frogman Superhero", a song that suffers from something I like to call "The Sugar Bear Syndrome". Let me explain. When I first heard the beginning of the song "Sugar Bear" by THE BANANAS, I thought "Oh my god, this song has stupid cutesy lyrics. I almost can't listen to this". Then, the whole band kicked in and it became the best thing ever. This TL song did the same thing to me when I first heard it. Recently, I listened to the TOMMY LASORDA song 20 times in a row and loved it every time (nevermind that I was on a plane over the Grand Canyon, freaking out and on pills). The EP does not let up one bit and is just as good as the tape. "Racing My Ego" off of that record has been a mixtape staple for years. 

   As I've mentioned before, maintaining this blog has put me in touch with a lot of unexpected people. One of those unexpected people is Mike from TOMMY LASORDA / LOS RABBIS. He was nice enough to send some unreleased TOMMY LASORDA recordings (check back tomorrow!) and he got together with Adam (digitally) to answer some of my dumb questions. So, here is an interview with TOMMY LASORDA....

Remote Outposts: First off, why the name Tommy Lasorda? Really, why any band name? But specifically, is there any meaning behind the band name?

 Adam: I’ve always thought of it as just an opener, a first move, a gambit. I can not recall when we actually thought of the name or if any decision making process actually even occurred. Personally, I believe the name had something to do with the canary yellow walls of the room we dubbed our tapes in. Then, it may have went something like this: Kirk Gibson? No. Fernando Valenzuela? Naw. Sandy Koufax? Naw. Yeah. Maybe. Orel Hershiser! Yeahhhnaw. Should we just be Lenny Dykstra? Dykstra? Dykstra! Yeah. Dykstra! Probably. No. For all I know, that may have been more a’ pro pro. Hindsights 40/40-- a hot bat, many a-stolen bags, and an above average amount of base hits.

 Mike: Because Boone Logan wasn’t in the Majors yet.

 Adam: Because Tommy Lasorda was in the Majors. Because Logan Hatch didn’t exist yet.

 RO: I could never really figure out if your band was from the Bay Area or Olympia? In the long run, it really doesn’t matter, but what would you say?

 Adam: Olympia. Shortly after Y2K.

 Mike: After high school everyone went off to far-flung colleges except me. I stayed in the Bay Area and enrolled at Skyline Community College only to drop out and spend all day at the Burlingame library. When I exhausted all of their books on silent movies and lucid dreaming, I moved up to Olympia where Adam was enrolled at Evergreen. I convinced him to drop out. We shared a bedroom at a house on Edison St. near Ralph’s Thriftway, both of us paying $100 a month in rent. Tommy Lasorda started in the basement of that house. We moved back and forth between Olympia and the Bay Area a couple of times during the band’s lifespan but the germ of the band began in Olympia. Olympia was good for us because it was a scene we had absolutely nothing to do with. We played maybe four shows in town the entire time we lived there. We spent all of our free time in the basement writing songs.

 Adam: Far-flung.

 Mike: Flung far.

 RO: The band started pretty soon after the disbandment of LOS RABBIS. What made the two of you keep playing together?

Mike: That’s actually a bit of a misconception. Los Rabbis was still a seasonal concern while Tommy was around. For a few years, the four of us would get together in the summer when school got out and go on a multi-week tour. Tommy Lasorda was basically what Adam and I did while Dean and Mike were in school. This caused tension down the line because at a couple of points I felt like we shouldn’t have to put Tommy on hold so Los Rabbis could re-form. It felt like we hindered ourselves by putting everything on pause for two or three months.

 Adam: Music, like a Maui timeshare: its amazing that we made it, even if but for the few times that we did!

 RO: LOS RABBIS, to me, seemed like pure unbridled teenage anger but still had a goofy, almost nerdy edge to it. Tommy Lasorda definitely retained that edge but seemed more focused on writing unhinged pop songs. Was that intentional? Were you guys just trying to be a pop band that was informed by the MELVINS?

Adam: A few descriptions I’ve heard: Dirt Pop, Camaro Rock, and Two Man Rock Armada--there may be more. We had an interesting amp-to-speaker ratio with some decent output levels. We had some fairly oversized drum skins and cymbal radii to contend with and we just kinda took it from there -- worked within that framework. Occasionally the circuits got hot, the sticks got hotter, and at that point some might have said they were in to see a pretty good fight.

 Mike: Nothing was planned, it was just a natural progression of where our mutual musical tastes were headed. As most people probably do when they move to Olympia, we were listening to a lot of Beat Happening at the time. But also a lot of godheadSilo and the Wu-Tang Clan. The Melvins were always a constant, more as a template for what was possible than actually trying to sound like them, although we played a few shows, most notably in a Manhattan bar, where we did all Melvins sets.

 RO: I got your band on a show in Chattanooga where you won the audience over with your catchy songs. At the end, you asked if you had time to play one more and then played “King Solomon’s Reef” (from the tape), which kinda blew everyone’s minds. What’s up with that song? It’s totally different from everything else, really intricate and weird. What was the inspiration for it? (besides maybe the diner in Olympia?)

Adam: Riff obsessed demolition derby Robert Christgau has never dissected. A+

 Mike: “King Solomon’s Reef” was a test. We basically wanted to see if we could do it. The jury is still out on if we succeeded. A lot of that was written outside the basement while we walked around town, just vocally passing off riffs and fills. We woodshedded it for hours and just kept adding more parts to it. The very beginning is a direct rip-off of the song “Charlotte” by the all-girl Canadian metal band Kittie, who we were kind of obsessed with at the time.

 Adam: We wanted to be actual “merchants of the riff”...like “Hey..(opens coat)...would you like to see a riff collection...allow us to respectfully pull out a few licks...tell us if you see anything you like or should I say lick...oh?...(sigh)...that one’s not for sale...

 Mike: Speaking of that show in Chattanooga, there was a local guy there filming all of the bands that night and he asked us what our band name was. We said “Tommy Lasorda” but he didn’t understand us and all night he kept calling us “Time and Disorder”, which is still the greatest punk rock band name ever. That’s what Adam says at the beginning of “Punkest Girl in Town” on the 7”.

 Adam: I also say The Reef should change it up and try going with “King Solomon’s Riff” for a while.

 RO: What do you guys have against bass players? Tommy Lasorda, Chinese, Poser Posse, Rainbow Bridge, etc,etc...No bass.

 Adam: On one hand, the lack of traditional and/or orthodox lineups is to warn against the pratfalls of anti-establishment ethos and lifestyle; a visual, if you will, symbol. On the other hand it shows and proves that there is quite possibly many more and still, yet another way. Bassist wishlist: Old St. Nick, Mickey (and Minnie!) Mouse, Vaclav Havel, Don Rickles (No!), Branch Rickey.

 Mike: And Thelma Ritter.

 Adam: A symbol, if you will.

 Mike: Our next band will be ALL bass. No drums, no guitars, no performers. Just six or seven basses all lined up in a blue bedroom. Not even plugged in.

 RO: Speaking of Poser Posse, what led to the formation of that band? (for the reader, Tommy Lasorda was Mike and Adam switching off between drums and guitar. Poser Posse was Mike and Adam both playing guitars with a drummer.)

 Mike: Like Los Rabbis, Poser Posse was originally a Dean and Adam project. They started playing with Patrick at his house in Oakland and I went along once or twice before weaseling my way into the band. Dean ended up leaving to do a million more important things while the three of us ate burritos, talked about burritos, and covered The Flying Burrito Brothers.

 Adam: The name Poser Posse originated in Olympia, but truly it could have been discovered anywhere.

 RO: What is your favorite MELVINS song and why?

 Mike: Easy. “The Fool, the Meddling Idiot” off of the band’s best album, 2002’s Hostile Ambient Takeover. There are three components that make up the Melvins’ music: heavy, noisy, and pretty; and over its generous seven-and-a-half minutes “The Fool, the Meddling Idiot” covers all of these bases with utter aplomb. It is the perfect desert island selection. The song contains some crazy ass Kevin Rutmanis slide bass, a terrifyingly awesome vocal performance from Buzz, and one of Dale Crover’s greatest drum fills. Oh, and it ends with a coda that sounds like Captain Beefheart writing music for Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion.

RO: That is also my favorite Melvins album!

 Adam: There is one song that comes to mind, one song any Melvinaut should they, if they have not already, take some time to seek out. This one song is a b-side that begins with some talk about a “Principal’s Office” before settling into a nice, easy groove. The title and lyrics rhyme with “Banal Straighten”.

RO: I have no idea what you're talking about but it made me think about their Mott The Hoople cover, which is awesome....oh wait, I have that 7".

 Mike: Wait, is it too late to change my answer?

 RO: Guest question from Morgan Stickrod: Just to see if your views have changed over time, which La Cumbre taqueria is the best, in your opinion? The one in SF or the one in San Mateo?

 Mike: Well, the San Francisco La Cumbre has way better tortillas but the San Mateo one has a framed photograph of Los Rabbis hanging above the door, so the best one is the El Farolito in South San Francisco. 650!

 Adam: I fondly remember a wonderful summer time deluxe burrito from La Cumbre in San Mateo. It was really, really, really, really good. I was very impressed and it was far and away more better than the usual “its just as good as I remember, but even better,” burrito. Honestly, I just cannot tell you the last time I remember eating a burrito in that ol’ Baghdad by the Bay--so San Mateo, handily.

 RO: And since we are not living in the past, and I have no desire to do so....what projects are you both working on these days?

 Mike: I have spent the last year working on a book of essays about Disney movies. That should be coming out soon. My brother and I have also been working for the last couple of years on a hip-hop concept album all about, and for, our father. It was originally going to be a Father’s Day present, then birthday, then Christmas, and then the year was over and the cycle started again. The songs are about the Green Bay Packers, Steely Dan, and living in a retirement community in Santa Rosa. It’s my magnum opus.

 Adam: Work? I like a recently cleared desk. Thanks for the questions!

Download TOMMY LASORDA Tape and EP
Updated Aug 2013

Check back tomorrow for more from this band.

Thanks to Morgan Stickrod for loaning out the tape to digitize (mine broke years ago) and to the MRR house for their advanced digitizing capabilities.

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!

MIND SPIDERS - "Meltdown" - LP - 2012

   I could tell you all about some long lost demo tape or some new demo tape by some fucking awesome band, but really, this is all I've been listening to lately. Fuck it.

FRENCH IN ACTION - Demo - Tape - 2005

   Since I know next to nothing about this band, today's installment of Remote Outposts is brought to you by their old bass player, Mike Leslie....

   French in Action (named after the French language textbook) was a Worcester/Providence trio that I joined as replacement bass player when Mike Taylor moved on to become the band's visualist. I had lived with the singer, French born Matt Coe, on and off for years, who, though admittedly tone deaf, had a knack for pop hooks. He asked me to join, even though he described the band I had been in since I was 13 as "maybe not music." (Editor's note: that would be THE TERRIBLES) Differences aside, we were really tight friends, and we even lived in a shack together and I liked the band, so I enthusiastically joined. The frustrating part to me is I had never really played three chord pop at this time and had no understanding of musical chord progressions, so I would constantly get mixed up moving around the same part of the fret board and get songs confused. Rounding out the rhythm section was Dan Langlois. When I had met him when I was 14, he was the punkest person I had ever seen He even lived in a cabinet under the counter of a laundromat for a short time.

This demo was recorded at a practice space in Olneyville, I borrowed a car from a friend and got two parking tickets in about two hours. We ate breakfast at New York System Hot Weiners, where the home fries are just chopped up french fries (how appropriate). The whole tape is in French! And though I took it in high school, I'm still not really sure what he is singing about. I ended up having too much on my plate, the band got a new singer, became a four piece, and toured as "Frenching Action,", which is what people thought we were named anyway.

   (Editor's note pt 2: I'm sure I massacred the spelling of the song titles, but so did their artist, Mike Taylor. I never took French lessons and Mike explains on the tape insert, "I don't speak French and Matt has handwriting like a little baby chicken."

 (Editor's note pt 3: Don't ask me what happened to the font sizes on this entry. I tried to fix it and it didn't work. Whatever. Blogspot has a horrendous editing program that defies all logic.)

Download FRENCH IN ACTION
Link updated Dec 2017

DR DRE DEL - "Mic Of Defiance" - Tape - 1999

   In 1999, I was visiting friends in San Francisco and Ivy took me to the Hickey Hotel on 24th Street. It was a bustling den full of lovable freaks, assholes, musicians, artists, photographers and more. Like most of the inspiring and free-thinking enclaves of 90's-era SF, it was later evicted, whitewashed and stripped of any remnant of its former glory and it now sits anonymous and culturally barren atop a coffee shop that no one in their right mind would enter unless they long to sip lattes inside of a GQ magazine. But, I digress...While visiting the denizens of this particular abode, one resident named Aesop handed me this tape and said "You should check this out. It's a local Jewish rapper." My exterior self calmly took the tape and nonchalantly threw it in my bag while thanking him. Meanwhile, my interior self was running circles in my brain, exclaiming "Hey, your favorite drummer from your favorite punk band just gave you a fucking tape. Don't throw it around!" Aesop also showed me an 8x10 glossy picture of DR DRE DEL that made me think that this rapper could be his cleaner, smoother brother. Seconds after leaving the house, Ivy told me that DR DRE DEL was Aesop and that the DJ featured on the tape, DJ QUEENIE, was none other than Matty Luv. Both guys had formerly been 2/3's of the runaway train known as HICKEY, who had broken up the previous year. I don't know what was going through their heads at that point in their lives (literally, theoretically or pharmaceutically), but one can surmise that after years upon years of being in a band-turned-cult that took up mostly every second of their lives, these guys might want to take a break and churn out something ridiculous.

   If you are familiar with the output of the aforementioned gentlemen, you'll know that even the seemingly lighthearted, ridiculous, jokey shit has a lot of thought and effort behind it. If memory serves me correctly, Matty spent hours teaching himself how to sample beats and songs just for this project. No matter how scatalogical or sexual the lyrics got, Aesop made most of the songs on here insanely memorable by having an ear for a good hook. Starting off with the unforgettable "Dr Dre Del Is The Master", the duo sets the bar rather high in 56 short seconds with an unmistakable metal riff and flawless MC skills. From there on out, the tape is filled (i mean filled...48 songs) with fantastical imagery ("Fuck ALF"), still-relevant social commentary ("Make Room For Whitey"), typical shit-talking ("Fuck You Cecil" trilogy), a fucking RUDIMENTARY PENI sample ("Weird Ass Sisters"), fairly legit hip-hop ("Mic Of Defiance"), straight up awesome weirdness ("Smokin' Crack and Killin' Pigs") and so much more. If that doesn't work for you, DR DRE DEL also raps about his dick...a lot.

Picture of an ultra rare live performance.

Download DR DRE DEL

48 songs. None are over 2 minutes.
Matty Luv passed away in 2002 and his musical accomplishments are too numerous to name. You can find more info about him here. Aesop is still killing it on the drums in the bands AGALLOCH, WORM OUROBOROS and VHOL. 

DIRTY MARQUEE - Demo - Tape - 2009

   When I first moved back to SF in 2008, I lived in an office building downtown that, in many ways, was ideal but also kind of lonely. I soon moved into a big house in Glen Park with a bunch of wonderful people, but I hardly ever stayed there. You see, I hated the neighborhood, I thought my room sucked and I just never felt "at home" there, even though I had great roommates. Within the 9 or 10 months that I lived there, I probably slept in the house less than 10 times.

    Tony hung out at our house a lot and played guitars with my roommate Gaybob. They were starting to amass a pretty good bundle of songs and decided to start a band. I had played with Tony briefly in one of the many lineups of SHOTWELL and he asked how I felt about playing drums for their band. I kinda felt too scattered in my life to actually be in a band at the time, but decided to do it anyway. We asked our other roommate, Sarah to play bass and started practicing later that week. Nothing too noteworthy happened in those early days, besides the time I borrowed a drum set that was covered in mold and it made Sarah really sick (Sorry Sarah).

   We played our first show at Thrillhouse Records and then Sarah decided to move to Athens, GA. We recorded this demo at Tony's house in the Mission, with the help of our friends Josh and Carly (she now works for Metallica). We waited around that day for Sarah to show up, but she never did. We were kinda bummed at the time, but I don't hold it against her (when someone takes away your dog while you are packing up your room to move across the country within 8 hours, maybe you don't have time to record a demo with a band you played in for 5 minutes. That's valid.) So, we recorded the basic tracks without her. While Tony and Gaybob did their vocals, I got drunk in Tony's living room and learned all the bass lines for the songs. On the one or two that I had trouble with, Tony played it.

  The next week, we went to the Pacific Northwest with ONION FLAVORED RINGS with their bass player Paul filling in for us. The morning of our show in Portland, we walked by the house we were gonna play at and there was a funny sight in the front yard. Tony took a picture of it, drew it and then we photocopied the covers at the Multnomah County Library in NE Portland. Needless to say, the residents of the house were confused to see a demo cover of something in their front yard (pictured above).

   When we got home, we got our friend, Mars to play bass for us. We continued on until September of 2011 with a couple more changes on the bass (thanks Jeanette and Cinque!). We put out a 4 song EP that you can get from Squirmy Records and our final six song tape that you can still get from Remote Outposts Analog. 

Download Demo

Playing at a goat farm in Jacksonville, OR.

p.s. This demo is so slow!! We played this a lot faster later on.

CARRIE NATIONS - Demo - 2002(?)

   CARRIE NATIONS was born in the little town of Athens, GA; a town that is known for its vibrant music scene that has produced countless amazing (and horrendously shitty) bands over the years. It's a place where the rent is cheap and the booze flows endlessly til the wee hours. Anyone who has ever given the town of Chattanooga a bunch of shit for its alcohol consumption should try hanging out in Athens for a week or two. You'll be wishing you were back on Cole's porch drinking tea in Tennessee in no time.
   We were talking about this band though, right? CARRIE NATIONS, I believe, didn't actually have a bass player when this demo was recorded (If I'm wrong, sorry Jon) and the other guys in the band recorded the bass parts themselves. They recorded it at Tight Pockets, the now-defunct all-ages show space in Athens, which has many countless stories of its own. Five of these six songs were re-recorded for their 2003 LP, "Be Still", but this demo shows the songs in an earlier, rougher form. I've been on tour with CARRIE NATIONS all over the East Coast, Midwest and the South, but I don't think I've ever heard them play the last song, "Dumpsters As Providers Of". Maybe it was just out of their repertoire by then? I don't know. Actually, I don't know much about this demo at all, except that it is good and you should listen to it. If you want to hear them play all of these songs a million times faster, then click here. Thanks to Chad for sending this recording to me.

Download CARRIE NATIONS Demo

CARRIE NATIONS accepting the Flagpole award for Best Punk Band in Athens. The funny part is that none of these people are in the band.

THIS NEXT PART HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH CARRIE NATIONS.

   By now, you may have heard that over the last weekend in my neighboring town of Oakland, there was a huge political march that intended to take over an abandoned building in hopes of establishing a "command center" for the local Occupy movement. Everyone has their issues with tactics and intent (including me), but I want it to be known that I support these actions wholeheartedly. My band was supposed to play either inside the building or outside of it on a bus, but that never happened because the cops exercised their power as brutish thugs by attacking innocent adults and children with gas and rubber bullets. If you only read mainstream media sources, they make it easy to point a finger at the protesters and see where they may be at fault. From their reports, it's easy to imagine a sea of black-clad people heaving boulders with makeshift catapults at innocent little cops just trying to do their job. What is actually happening is that the cops are completely out of control and attacking people for no reason. Here is a picture of the crowd marching on Saturday:

   There were families, young people, old people and little kids. I watched livestream footage of a cop knocking a middle-aged woman (who was doing absolutely nothing) backwards over her bike and then she was swarmed by 10 cops with batons drawn as she was arrested. Cops trapped people in a park, ordered them to disperse, then wouldn't let them disperse, and attacked them with tear gas in a residential area. City officials try to make protesters look bad by stating that they committed property damage by breaking down a fence. The reason they broke down the fence is because the cops trapped them, tear gassed them and then penned them in to make a mass arrest. People broke down the fence to escape (successfully) from the cops. (as a side note, the fence in question here was erected by the city around a city park at a very high cost to keep protesters out. Neighboring schools had previously used this park daily for physical education.)

   One last thing. The SF daily paper had this quote: "Among the most violent incidents that occurred Saturday night was in front of the YMCA at 23rd Street and Broadway. Police corralled protesters in front of the building and several dozen protesters stormed into the Y, apparently to escape from the police, city officials and protesters said. Protesters damaged a door and a few fixtures and frightened those inside the gym working out, said Robert Wilkins, president of the YMCA of the East Bay."

 For one thing, THAT is the "most violent incident"? That is not violence. That is some smart people escaping cops who are trying to pin them in and arrest them for a "crime" of walking around in the streets exercising their right to free speech. I found a quote elsewhere (I wish I could find it now, but I lost it) from a woman who said she was working out when a lot of protesters started running through the building. She said it kinda freaked her out, but she didn't actually feel in danger until she saw cops chasing them with their weapons drawn.

   The Oakland Police Department has really fucked up and history is going to look back on them in the same way that it has looked upon the cops in Alabama during the Civil Rights movements of the 1960's. I urge you to read articles written by independent sources who don't have corporate interests kicking money to them. If you would like some more stories about this, please check these out. Thanks

Aid and Abet

National Lawyer's Guild

Huffington Post

AlterNet - which includes a great picture of the cops teargassing themselves.

Also, keep in mind, that less than two short years ago, OPD said they didn't have enough money or resources to keep responding to certain crimes, including burglary, grand theft and failing to register as a sex offender. Article here.

ALL IS LOST - Tape - 1997

   It's tapes like these that made me start this blog in the first place. This one was already falling apart and the sound quality was already shit when I bought it from the band in 1997. I set up a show for ALL IS LOST when they came to Alabama with SHARKS KILL and I remember that I set up the show because the latter band was former members of a band that I loved called PUNKY ROCKIT (we will cover this band in the near future). Both bands were from Portland, OR and I remember being mostly excited about SHARKS KILL, but at the end of the night, I was more sold on ALL IS LOST. At the time, I would've called them "emo", but now I know that they were just playing something closer to melodic indie punk. My friend, Harry was pretty excited that half of the band used to be in FIFTEEN (on the albums "Buzz" and "Surprise", I believe, for those of you who care). I was surprised and delighted to find that they sounded absolutely nothing like FIFTEEN and that they incorporated non-cheesy synchronized band moves to entertain the 15 or so people in attendance at their show. Plus they were really nice, even though they seemed genuinely weirded out and scared about being in the state of Alabama.
   I was bummed out to get this tape home and find that it was so poorly dubbed that I had to turn it up all the way just to enjoy it. BUT, the songs were really fucking good and I still listen to it on road trips sometimes when I'm alone, so I don't have to subject people to the tinny sound and tape hiss. "Nothin' But Taillights" has a lazy day feel to it and has hooks galore! Their cover of the old-ass song "Buttercup" by THE FOUNDATIONS is seriously, without a doubt, one of my most favorite punk cover songs of all time by anyone ever in the goddamn history of music. This crappy little tape has seen a long life and I plan on giving it many more listens until it breaks in half.
   Whenever I ask long term Portland residents about this band, no one seems to know about them or what happened to them. My only contact with them was this one dinky show back in the '90's and then they disappeared from my radar. If you know anything more about them, feel free to share some info. If you happen to have better copies of these recordings, please give them to me!

Download ALL IS LOST and turn it all the way up!!
Link updated Sept 2018

POTENTIAL JOHNS - "The 90's" - CDR

    I have already discussed my long term obsession with this band, so I will spare you the gory details. As I mentioned before, Mike Wiebe made me a 90 minute tape of songs by the POTENTIAL JOHNS back in 2000 and I took the tape on every road trip or tour I went on until I lost it somewhere in Phoenix, AZ in 2006. I will go as far as to say that I felt like I had lost a piece of myself. I probably sent Jeff (the sole songwriter and person playing every instrument on these recordings) some long, rambling email whining about losing this tape and how much it meant to me. When I got home two weeks later, there was a package waiting for me containing this CD, other CD's full of home recordings and all of the MARKED MEN albums. Needless to say, I was beside myself with happiness and my roommates had to suffer through hearing this man's voice through my walls for the next year.
   This CD is 33 (one of them is repeated) untitled songs recorded on 4 track during the 90's in Texas. Some of them were re-recorded later and appeared on records. Many of them were only passed around on mix tapes and through the internet. All of them are pure pop genius.
                          Download POTENTIAL JOHNS

re-uploaded 2013