MAD SWIRL - "[Pop] [Damage]" - Tape - 2007

   Just after the new year of 2008, I was a roadie, on tour with my friends from California when I still lived in Indiana. At that point, I didn't really know what I was doing with my life, but I was almost positive that I needed a big change. For some weird reason, I figured that subjecting myself to extreme temperatures, no sleep and damp basements was a good idea. I was right. I ran around in the snow in Worcester, shot silly string all over SHELLSHAG in Brooklyn, made out with someone in the cold on the hood of a broken down car, rode in the back of a freezing truck for 14 hours, swam in the ocean in South Miami Beach and did some other stuff that should probably not be repeated. It made me want to move away from Indiana...so, I did.
   In Huntsville, AL, I got unreasonably upset over mundane things in that way that one can only get upset when returning to a disappointing town where they used to live. Overall, I don't think Huntsville is disappointing, but I had a really depressing "back in my day" moment that could have been easily avoided if I just didn't care so much about ridiculous bullshit. In short, when I lived there, we had shows in dive bars, parking lots, thrift stores, houses, ice cream shops and parks. The show that night was in a fancy bar and a lot of my old friends were missing or born again. Time marches on. It's fine. Huntsville now has an amazing resource called Lowe Mill and I'm sure there have always been teenage punk bands playing in garages consistently for the past 30 years or more.

  I spent a lot of time walking around downtown...jumped the fence and rang the incredibly loud church bell for old time's sake....ran through my favorite secret alley. It was fine. I walked back in the bar just in time to see most of the bar patrons trying to ignore MAD SWIRL, who were from Milwaukee and a pleasant sight for these eyes and ears.
   The beautiful thing about that era of Milwaukee punk is that almost all of the bands were fun, jangly melodic punk bands who kinda didn't give a fuck but were always good. The other thing is that they always traveled in packs. It seemed like all of the bands shared this one fucked up minivan  and they would somehow pile 15+ people in it for cross-country tours. MAD SWIRL was no exception. Their set was fun and kinda reminded me of ANGRY SAMOANS, but maybe that's only because they covered them, because this tape doesn't sound like ANGRY SAMOANS...but it does sound like fun.
  I should have been hanging out with MAD SWIRL all night and becoming better friends with them rather than trying to catch up with people who seemed like they wanted to get away from me. Lesson learned. I assumed we'd all be sleeping at the same house, but instead, I found myself at 5 am drinking beer and watching a dolphin documentary with my tour-mates while we all muttered "fuck yeah, this is cool."

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Tomorrow is my birthday. Send presents.

REMOTE OUTPOSTS WEIRDO MIX VOL 2 - Tape - 2013

   This is the second in a collection of songs and random bullshit that doesn't really fit elsewhere. I make no excuses or apologies for sound fidelity. You can find the first installment of this collection right here..
    The intro is the beginning of one of the worst songs of all time. Unfortunately, it got stuck in the heads of Cinque and I when we were working on a farm, picking basil for a few weeks. We would scream out the lyrics to each other across the field at 7 am. One day, I went into town and was looking at the 45 at the record store when the clerk said, "Oh God, please take that record! Just get it out of the store."
  The second is a lost RICE HARVESTER song that never made it onto any releases or into a recording studio. By this time, I had moved from Huntsville back to Birmingham, AL, but was still driving back to Huntsville (around a 3 hour drive, round trip) once a week to practice. I think we intended for this song to be on a compilation of Alabama bands that never got off the ground. It's about a homeless man in Huntsville named Gene who, rather than simply sleeping under overpasses, would build a little shack / house under the bridge in plain view of everyone. I immediately felt weird about writing this song because after talking to him a few times and being only 20 years old, I really had no grasp of the complexities of homelessness and mental illness. It's written from a place of privilege that just embarrasses me now. Luckily, the recording quality is abysmal.
   It's followed up by one of my favorite EFS songs. They were the house band at a punk house that was allegedly above the Black & White Liquors by Ashby BART in the East Bay way back in the dark ages. Following that is a band containing members who have won Grammys and shit. I'm not saying their name because I want to avoid the fiasco of being linked to slobbering fan site messageboards (again). If you listen to melodic punk, you will probably recognize this song, but maybe not this version. Sound quality is total trash. CBDS is after them with a different mix of one of their great songs. Sound quality has deteriorated so badly that you will wonder if there has been a turd stuffed into the cassette.
    Quality takes a step up for the intro to the long lost Alabama rock band, BUCKET FULL OF HERESY. The intro is the best part of their tape. The rest is an endurance test of having to listen to teenagers try to write a song while the tape is rolling. I know that this hasn't stopped me in the past, but I'll spare you the gory details this time. SMEGMAGICIANS are next. They've been a band since 1993, but only played one show in 1994. They're mysterious and choose to stay that way. This song was recorded in 1999.
   Next up is a recording from a FORCED VENGEANCE show that took place on my birthday back in 2000 (?). Details are hazy, but I do know that Harry (guitarist) and I played this show nearly blacked out drunk. This show was also when the proverbial line in the sand was drawn between the towns of Bloomington and Chattanooga because a bunch of Bloomington residents came down to this show and decided that we were some of the worst people to ever exist because my friend Piper (who lived in Bloomington most of the time, mind you) decided to construct a 3 foot long, paper mache cock to hang from the ceiling. I'm sure I'm missing some details here, but instead of talking to us and figuring out that we were not the worst people ever, a lot of folks just decided to go with that story....some of the debris of this show still lingers around to this day (obviously). ANYWAY, This recording comes from the beginning of the set when Harry needed to borrow an amp because his was crapping out. Rather than just wait around for this to happen, Eric (other guitar) and I (drums) started fucking around. Harry, who is usually fairly quiet and shy, took this opportunity to bust out a ridiculous, entirely ad-libbed 80's style rap. When Chrissie (bass) joins in, the whole thing gels together in this way that none of us expected, I'm pretty sure we were all laughing so hard that we cried. I know that I did when re-listening to it. I vaguely remember the audience laughing and dancing.
   Now, we do a 180 and switch gears entirely. DOOMSDAY CAULDRON is the best thing on here. I was never a huge follower of their music, but got a few things passed on to me through mix tapes that blew my mind in different ways. Coming from the background that I do, their songs initially sounded overbearing and unnecessarily serious to me, but as they grew on me, I knew that they meant every word with every fiber of their being. Their song "Song for Sera" is one of my favorites to listen to in the middle of the night on long drives in the middle of nowhere. Coupled with their song "Darkness Is Falling" and THE BODY's "Just Wretched", you can almost perfectly picture the world in the moments just before it explodes and destroys every last bit of life on this planet.
   To close out the tape, I switched gears again and went back to ridiculous. If you grew up in the 80's, you may remember those weird answering machine greeting tape commercials....They advertised tapes that you could buy for your answering machine that sang ultra corny greetings to the tune of Beethoven's Fifth and bad 50's rock. Here's a whole tape of them (2 and a half whole minutes) so that you can confuse people who call your cell now...if anyone ever calls you anymore.

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MODERN MACHINES - 4 Tapes - 2001 - 2006

   One of my goals of 2013 is to be a more positive person. I don't mean that I want to kill people with kindness or be fake. I just want to be less negative. The state of this world leads people to just be complete jackasses to one another and there's really no need for it. The internet is a vast network of faceless shit-talking and hate-mongering where folks are encouraged to foist their bile and are rarely expected to hold themselves accountable. I think people should be open about what they don't like, but they should also be able to talk about ways to make it better without being condescending or shitty. It's possible and it's something I'm working towards.
   That being said, I never liked MODERN MACHINES, but I appreciate their existence. I also think Jon Hanson is a fantastic drummer. I understand that the band meant a lot to other people, so I decided to let one of those people talk about them for a while. Here is Mike Wilson (from B ARTHUR) to talk about the MODERN MACHINES:

   THE MODERN MACHINES at their peak were my favorite existing band in the Midwest... I was living in Tower MN (try to find that on a map) and I was obsessed with Bay Area CA punk from the 80's, 90's, and current. I was getting very into bands on the label NEW DISORDER RECORDS. I noticed that label had released a split CD with two Milwaukee bands THE MODERN MACHINES and THE FRAGMENTS (pre-Holy Shit! and others). I got that CD in 2003 when I was 15 years old and was really into it. Really really good catchy poppy punk done the way that I liked. Particularly I was into the MODERN MACHINES side of the split. I contacted both bands separately suggesting that they should play in Duluth, since conceivably they lived not that far away. Both bands responded excited that somebody from northern MN was into them, which was really nice to hear. THE FRAGMENTS broke up probably not that long after that, and I never did see them.. But Nato from the MODERN MACHINES was particularly into the idea of playing up in Duluth / Superior and he eventually contacted me to seriously inquire about getting a show. I didn't really know how to set up shows quite yet (I didn't even live in Duluth) but I knew of an existing show the day that they wanted to play in Superior WI with my friends THE UNDESIRABLES, and a Grand Rapids MN pop punk band THE VALENTINES. I got the folks from that show to let MODERN MACHINES hop on. I was slightly bummed and worried I wouldn't even get in, because it was at a bar and I was 15 years old. But Nato insisted on sneaking me in as their roadie. It worked! All of the MODERN MACHINES guys were really nice, and I was so happy. Jon Hanson, their drummer, had a HICKEY tattoo on his chest which was maybe the coolest thing I had ever seen at that point. PLUS they even covered "Waiting For The Swelling To Go Down" by HICKEY. They KILLED it. I video taped that show and still have it. 

   MODERN MACHINES made a lasting impression and everybody from the show was really blown away by them. Highly energetic raging poppy punk with heart and plenty of rock and roll. One of those bands I'd consider "perfect", having every element a band should have. Constantly compared to bands like THE REPLACEMENTS and HUSKER DU, which is accurate but still were beyond that and were not derivative. MODERN MACHINES had just released their first full length CD "Thwap!" on New Disorder Records, so I got that and a shirt from them at the show. I liked their stuff from that previous split CD but this new album totally destroyed their previous material. That album "Thwap!" is to this day one of my favorite Midwestern punk albums of the 2000's, no question. MODERN MACHINES kept going for years after this, and at least once a year they would hit me up to play Duluth / Superior and it was always a blast to see them and hang out. I was always very flattered they were so into playing up there. Their second album "Taco Blessing" on Recess Records is arguably even better than "Thwap!" but I'm not really sure. The MODERN MACHINES eventually broke up and Nato moved to Brooklyn and started THE USED KIDS (who toured through Duluth as well), and then eventually they broke up and he now resides in Minneapolis playing with NATO COLES & THE BLUE DIAMOND BAND. Over the years Nato's songs progressively were getting less punk and more on the rock and roll (Bruce Springsteen type) side of things. A simple way of putting it, THE MODERN MACHINES were a self proclaimed "basement band", but NATO COLES & THE BLUE DIAMOND BAND are definitely more of a "bar band". I don't mean that as an insult, I think Nato would probably agree with me (even though they play basements all the time). I can't help but strongly prefer those amazing early MODERN MACHINES shows and records over anything after, but still, I love everything Nato has done and I can't count how many times I've seen him play (especially now that he's living in Minnesota and comes up north every chance he gets). He is a great song writer and an amazing performer and puts everything he's got into every show.

   I didn't mention any of these early tapes here yet because I can't even remember how or where I got these, so figured I'd just talk about the band in general. I always listened to their full length albums more than these tapes. I think these tapes pre-date all their albums, but I'm not sure.. This many years later I'm excited to actually listen to these tapes finally since I've exhausted their other material over the years.

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This download includes 4 tapes by MOMACS. "Huberty" was originally posted here, but has since been deleted by Mediafire. You can now download it in this file. 

TENEMENT - Tape - 2009

    The one and only time I ever played a show in Appleton, WI, my band showed up to the house to find some half drunk punks that had little interest in talking to us (even though we were standing in their living room looking confused and trying to introduce ourselves) and an overturned oven range with bloody handprints on it. I asked, "What's up with the stove?" and the punks turned silently to walk out on the porch and ignore us some more. My bandmates dealt with the situation by leaving to find food. I dealt with it by buying a lot of beer and trying to befriend the drunk punks unsuccessfully. Eventually, I struck up a conversation (finally!) with the one and only sober person there; a young punk drinking soda and wearing a BOLD hoodie. He made fun of me for getting drunk. I made fun of him for drinking a three liter of soda. We hit it off pretty well. He revealed that the bloody overturned oven and the broken windows around the house were caused by the ex-drummer of his band. Apparently, they woke him up a few days earlier to leave for tour. Unbeknownst to the rest of his band, he was still drunk and possibly blacked out from the previous night's festivities. The whole band got in the van, started the engine and as they were about to leave, the drummer jumped out. He ran inside the house, started fighting the oven and breaking out windows with his fists. Then, he passed out wasted in a bloody heap...or something like that....my beer started working by this time in the conversation. The young straight-edge punk's name was Jesse and he said that his band's name was TENEMENT. Even though he told me this story about their wasted drummer, some part of my brain categorized them in my mind as a sXe hardcore band, probably because of Jesse's BOLD hoodie and his overbearing straight-edgeness, which for the record, I found endearing and entertaining. Jesse was the only local I hung out with all night, even after we tried to talk to the first band about their rampant misogyny  and after I busted my head open on my bass and blood was trickling down my face as we played.
   It wasn't until I got this tape in the mail that I ever even heard TENEMENT. I was completely surprised and delighted to hear their take on the long tradition of Midwestern punk that was laid out for them so many years ago by the likes of HUSKER DU, THE REPLACEMENTS and many others, but they added a BLACK FLAG-like intensity to it. Their songs take some unexpected twists and turns (in the present more so than on this tape), but retain some insane pop sensibilities. The last time I saw them play a show, they were the most energetic band I had seen in months. They played a short, sweet set of killer songs interspersed with noisy, between song feedback improv that gave me a feeling that was close (but not the same) to seeing HICKEY for the first time. It was great.
   This tape collects seven early ragers that found their way onto their early EP's as well as a cover of the SS DECONTROL song, "Glue", which may be unreleased...I'm not sure. I don't have a lot of their records...just piles and piles of unlabeled tapes. Turn it up loud and kill an oven.

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Updated 3/2020

TENEMENT is touring the US in Aug/Sept. You can find the dates at http://temement.blogspot.com/

LEFTY LOOSIE - Demo - Tape - 2006

   As you can see by the cover above, this tape has a title, but it is so confusing to me that I didn't type it out. Well, you can read it for yourself right there.
   I went to the Mauled By Tigers fest in Chicago a few years ago and the only bands I wanted to see, besides the ones that my good friends were in, was the POTENTIAL JOHNS and LEFTY LOOSIE. Lucky for me, they were playing back to back at the same venue. I wasted a lot of time before going to the show by drinking on a rooftop, talking about RUDIMENTARY PENI at Southern Records and listening to stories about King Buzzo wanting to stay in the same room (the one I would be sleeping in for the weekend) every time he comes to Chicago. By the time I dragged my ass out of the house to bike 20 blocks to the show, I was running late. I rode like the wind, but still found myself drinking outside of the show when I got there. I heard the last notes of a band finishing their set and asked" Who's playing right now?" Someone said "Oh, I don't know...some band called LEFTY LOOSIE or something." I slammed the last dregs of my cheap, flat beer and ran for the front door. The overzealous security guards searched me and came up with a bottle of whiskey. We got in an argument and they almost kicked me out before I even got in. It took so long that I even missed the first POTENTIAL JOHNS song. Bleh!
   I still kick myself for missing LEFTY LOOSIE because their songs were (still are) so good. You can tell that they grew up on crappy pop-punk, but also supplemented that with some quality music like the SHANGRI-LA'S, THE MUFFS and the FASTBACKS. Their singer/guitarist Addie has a voice that exhibits a total fucking knack for pop hooks that she took on to her next band, BORED GAMES (also great great great....and also broken up). These songs are so good that I can look past the fact that I don't like songs about crushes and love anymore. I was too cheap (and probably drunk) to buy their LP at the show and I feel like an idiot for not owning it now. The whole weekend was a failure for me in many ways, but let's just not talk about that. Let's just listen to this tape and get on with our lives, shall we?

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MODERN MACHINES - "Huberty" - Tape - 2002

    The Modern Machines were a revelation to many and a thorn in the side to many more. I count myself in the population of the latter, but I am including them here because what would the early 00's have been without them? What other band would have shown up at a show in Pittsburgh unannounced (after they had a previous show 24 hours earlier in Denver), jumped onto the show already in progress, played for 45 minutes (including 2-3 later REPLACEMENTS songs) and then kept you up all night drinking and playing even more REPLACEMENTS songs on the porch? I mean, besides BENT OUTTA SHAPE? As much as I didn't like their band and as much as they purposefully annoyed people, I have to hand it to the MOMACS for being total fucking troopers. In the face of adversity and straight-up hostility from audience members at times, they appeared oblivious and impervious to outside forces. They toured relentlessly in a beat up, little minivan, often bringing along their drunk friends from Milwaukee, even though they didn't have room for them. They covered hundreds and hundreds of miles in a single day and stepped out of the van, ready to play their hearts out to 10 unenthusiastic kids in the middle of nowhere and act like they were selling out fucking Shea Stadium every night. None of this changes how I feel about their band, but I can say now that I respect them and I think they are good people. Sometimes, it doesn't matter what your band sounds like when your intentions are this direct. (Also, does my opinion matter? Many people loved this band.)
   This tape is from 2002 and is a little confusing to me. According to the insert, all of this is first take stuff....there is even a LEMONHEADS cover. Here's the MODERN MACHINES to tell you about it in their own way:

File has been deleted, but you can download it here now, along with 3 other tapes by the band.

From the collection of Erick Lyle.

JACKWACKER - "Things From Inside Your Body" - LP - 2006

   In 2005 or 2006, I hitched a ride to Louisville, KY to go see IMPRACTICAL COCKPIT play at a little neighborhood bar. They were the only band on the bill and they played a great, sprawling hour-long set that literally cleared the room of every paying patron in the building. They had opened up the doors to the bar and the torrential downpour outside was blowing into the building. We thought that the burly biker-looking bartenders and door-guy were gonna be pissed off that the band had driven away their customers and left them with a weirdo band, their friend (me, who wasn't buying anything), the guy who set it up (Kris) and the one other spectator (hi Christina!). After playing the last note of the set, the dudes at the bar, who had been staring sternly the whole time with their arms crossed, asked "So, are you guys into SUN RA and BEEFHEART?" It turns out that the guys at the bar were stoked to hear improvisational noise and skronky sounds. They didn't give a fuck that we ran everyone off and they gave us a lot of free drinks. We went back to Kris' house afterwards to see his insanely huge record collection and talk nerdy about FRED LANE and DAVEY WILLIAMS until the wee hours. He said that he helped with a collective called Black Velvet Fuckre that had just put out a triple LP by his group VALLEY OF ASHES that had already sold out before it even got pressed. I knew that this guy must be up to something good if he can manage that.
    After getting back home to Bloomington, I found this LP by a band called JACKWACKER and bought it for these two reasons: They were a local band from the early 90's and Black Velvet Fuckre had put it out. When I got home, I was not prepared for the weird, mega-distorted, totally fucked onslaught that greeted my ears. At first, I couldn't really tell what the hell was going on, but I knew that I liked it. The band consisted of only two guys, but it sounded like three or four. The guitarist was playing a guitar that had 3 bass strings and 3 guitar strings on it. The drummer was playing...well, a drum set. There was some intermittent howls and yelps, but most of the vocals were minimal. Some hacks in the music journalism field keep comparing them to LIGHTNING BOLT, but I don't really think it's an apt description. For one, they predated LIGHTNING BOLT by years and they were far more minimal, more jazzy and way more drone-y at times. A lot less freak-out and a lot more straight-up improv.
  I had a really hard time finding out any info about them when I got this record. From what I could tell, they lived in Bloomington, Indiana in the early 90's and recorded a lot of these songs live in basements around town. Then, they moved to Madison, WI and recorded the rest before breaking up. I asked people around town if they knew anything about the band and no one really did. I asked old-timers and lifelong residents, but no one I asked had ever even heard of them.
   I played 3rd guitar (!!) in a doomy sludge band called GOURMET SCUM and we were invited to play with a lot of other folks on a local radio show where each band was asked to do one original song and one cover by a local of any era. We chose to "interpret" a JACKWACKER song ("Hashslinger") live and in front of an audience at a downtown auditorium. After our ramshackle barrage of drop-D sludge, a guy walked up to me, said he appreciated the JACKWACKER cover and he didn't think anyone remembered them. I asked if he ever saw them and it turned out that he was the drummer, Rob. He said that they played a lot around Bloomington, but no one ever seemed to "get" them or appreciate what they were doing. After moving to Madison, they broke up after a year or so and life led Rob back to Bloomington, where he stopped playing punk/noise and got more into free-form jazz and improv. I didn't ask him much more about it because he seemed wholly uninterested...and there was a noise nerd around town who kept completely fucking hounding him for info...so I backed off (also, after this show, the noise nerd assumed we were a JACKWACKER cover band and was trying to get us to play shows as JACKWACKER, which we never did or acknowledged...because we were our own band.)
   This record came from out of nowhere for me and I am really glad to see that this kind of noise was going on in the Midwest in the early 90's. It's destructive, cathartic, and insane. I love it.

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