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. 

DIRTY MARQUEE - Tape - 2011

 
   DIRTY MARQUEE was a band that I played drums for from 2009-2011 in San Francisco. You can read about how we started here, but this is more about how we ended. We recorded the basic tracks for this tape in our practice space just before I moved to Chattanooga for three months. I feel like I might have recorded the drums for this just a day or two before I left town and did most of it in a couple of takes. When I returned, Tony and Gaybob were still toying around with layers of guitars and vocal harmonies at their house in the Mission. By this point, we had put out a 7" EP and were beginning to plan a US tour, even though Gaybob was soon moving to NYC and Jeanette couldn't afford to go on the tour. I decided to fly in my best friend, Cinque to play bass for the tour and he learned all the songs like a champ within a week.

   The tour ended up being kind of a shit show, but it had its fine moments...like camping in the Organ Mountains outside of Las Cruces, playing in Chattanooga, getting to see THIS IS MY FIST and meeting my good friend Legs for the first time even though I was terribly, terribly hung over. For the most part though, tensions were high and we all were not in the best places in our lives. The band broke up by the time we got back to the Bay Area. We actually played our last show in Portland.
   Still, I like how these songs turned out. I like how the tape seems like a tug of war between Tony's desire to write slicker pop oriented songs and Gaybob's desire to...uh, not do that. The tape culminates in my favorite song that we ever did, "Death To America", which I feel like is close to what we would have been doing if our band continued any longer. Enjoy or don't.

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Live in San Diego. Cinque on bass and our old bass player Jeanette on back up vocals.

Gaybob now plays in EXTRA FEELER. Tony plays in 17 REASONS (I don't think they're on the internet). Jeanette plays in NASTY CHRISTMAS. Cinque is in RATS REST. I don't play music.

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!

ELECTRONIC RAINFOREST - Tape - 1999

   I never got to see ELECTRONIC RAINFOREST....in fact, hardly anyone did. They only existed for a few months in the year of 1999 and only played 3 or 4 shows in their hometown of Gainesville, FL.Scott and Timmy had played guitar and bass respectively in THE BREAKUPS before that band met its inevitable demise. Afterwards, Scott switched over to the drums and they got their friend, Mike to play guitar and sing a little bit. Thus, the band with the confusing moniker of ELECTRONIC RAINFOREST was born. They managed to bust out 6 or 7 originals and a cover or two. They recorded this quick tape on the same 4 track used to record both THE CRUMBS and THE BELTONES demos. The band broke up within a matter of months after Scott left Florida to settle in the Bay Area. Timmy and Mike forged ahead, playing the bulk of these songs with their friends Cinque and Ski after they all got together to form HELLO SHITTY PEOPLE....and that, my friends, is all there is.

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Thanks to Scott Baldwin for most of this info.

THE JETSONS - EP and Comp Track - 1981

   In 2001 or so, my friend, Amy made me a mix tape that was made solely of bands from Indiana and she included the LP comp "Red Snerts", which compiled bands from the Hoosier state that were affiliated with the Gulcher Records label. One of the bands that really stuck out for me (besides the ZERO BOYS and DOW JONES AND THE INDUSTRIALS) was a little band from Bloomington called THE JETSONS Their track on the comp has a lite power pop feel to it, but has more damaging lyrics like "I wanna puke, I wanna vomit on your feet, but you're such a cliche punk, you'd think I was being real neat."  I wanted to hear everything this band ever put out, but had no idea how to find it.
   I later found out (from the Maximum Rock N Roll archives) that THE JETSONS had one EP that came out on Gulcher Records back in 1981 and then they broke up. The first song "Suicidal Tendencies" has a really warm, totally early 80's feel to it and is just as good (or better) than their comp track. My favorite part is when the singer is chanting "Kill myself ! Kill myself! Kill myself! Kill myself!" at the end. The other two songs "Genetically Stupid" and "Killing" are also great and make me want to hear more by them, but this is all there is since their demise came soon after this recording.
   Members of this band were also in the LATEX NOVELTIES, one of Indianapolis' first punk bands and one of them went on to form THE UNATTACHED in Worcester, MA. That is all I know. I love this band.

Download THE JETSONS

NAR - Sort-Of Retrospective - CDR - The 90's

   NAR was a power-pop/garage-punk/plain-ol' punk band from Sacramento,CA that existed throughout most of the 90's and crafted a ton of catchy songs that still bounce around the forefront of my brain to this day. They appeared on a slew of 7"'s and comps put out by various labels like Moo-La-La, Secret Center and Very Small Records. They even put out a split LP with the LIZARDS on Moo-La-La. This CDR compiles 41 songs (!!!!!) from a variety of sources, including all of the releases mentioned above and more..including some songs from an unreleased LP. I think Scott (their singer and guitarist) explains it succinctly in the liner notes....

   I was lucky enough to see NAR exactly one time. Scott called me early one morning when I was living in Chattanooga and said "Hey, this is Scott from NAR". I was confused because we had never talked on the phone. He was calling from Knoxville, TN and wanted to see if NAR could play in Chattanooga....soon...like that night. I scrambled around and was able to put together a show at a house (in East Lake on 32nd street, for those readers in Chattanooga) and I got THE JACK PALANCE BAND to open. The only problem is that I had to work that night and I was going to miss this great show. I went into work, totally dejected and bummed that I had to miss NAR. I called the house before the show and they said JPB was setting up and about to play. I hung up the phone, told the bartender that I was quitting my job and biked across town at top speed to make it in time for JPB's first song. It was a great show and NAR was excellent. I don't regret my actions for a second..(.especially since I walked into my job the next day as if nothing ever happened and I was still able to work there. ) Unfortunately, that was one of the last shows for NAR on that tour. They were driving through Mississippi the next day, got pulled over, got busted with pot and one of them spent a day or two in jail, which threw of the rest of their tour.
   NAR played a rare show in mid-2011, but haven't really played consistently since the 90's. Scott has always played drums in the BANANAS, as well. It was at a BANANAS show that I asked him if NAR would ever put out a discography and he pulled this CDR out of his pocket and gave it to me. 41 songs!

    NAR Discography
(re-uploaded March 2013)

I found this flyer taped to a pole in North Chattanooga two weeks after the show. Sources believe it was made by Tom Foote.