SEXY - Demo - Tape - 2001

    Tapes like these are the reason I started the blog. Trying to track down these nearly ephemeral documents of a scream in dark warehouses and shitty basements is what this thing is about. I don't own this tape, but I thought that trying to get a copy of it would be a task that could be easily accomplished in a few days. Nope. The first post of this blog is dated June 23rd, 2011 and now it's nearly 5 years later. I asked the people who played the music, the people who loved the band, the people who hated the band, the punks who lived with them and I scoured Bay Area yard sales, free boxes and record stores (and their free boxes). Nothing.
    Baby Ian (we can just call him Ian now, right?) pulled a box of old stuff out of storage and came up with his copy of the demo...and here we are. I haven't heard this thing since 2001 or so and I forgot how goofy it is. If you're just hearing SEXY for the first time (and I'm sorry if you're just now hearing them) I would suggest starting with their first album (it's right here) because it's a completely perfect snapshot in time of an insane band at their absolute best. It contains all of the drunken abandon, the hooks and the trainwreck-style tempos. This first demo shows the band still trying to find their footing and swimming in drunken goofiness. A few of the songs that were later re-recorded for the LP are downright sllloooooowwww (check out "Purple Mini Van"). Half of the songs on here just got fucking dropped and were never heard from again. Maybe you'll enjoy it.

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Technical notes: I'm sure you've come to expect a fair amount of tape hiss on this blog and I will tell you that there is a FAIR AMOUNT of tape hiss on this download. Ian sent over the tracks and I tried to mess with them to lower the hiss and it just sounded worse...so here we are....warts and all. You can even hear some of the tape it was recorded over. History isn't pretty and that's why we all need to keep moving forward. 

Thanks Ian. 

Thanks SEXY.

SNUGGLE - Lost LP Demos 2008?

Today's post is brought to you by frequent contributor and friend of the blog, Alex Turner.

   SNUGGLE is one of those bands, the bands you love that nobody else gets. I've seen them play in the basement of the FBK so many perfect times, the best times, the worst times, the drunkest times. Mad Dog 20/20 and shotgunning Sparks is what happened. A long time ago, SNUGGLE thought they might get paid to play a show or maybe they were surprised by getting paid? Regardless, they spent all that money on Mad Dog. I'm sure they got paid a few times on tour and didn't buy all their friends booze with the money, but that's the way it goes. They recorded this and lost it. like really fucking lost it. They had to re-record it because everybody they had given a copy to had also lost it. A real time and a place band. The 2000's in the basement of the FBK was SNUGGLE's time and I'm not sure why I have a copy of this lost recording, but if you'd like you can too.

     Rumor has it that Robert 'found' this at a coffee shop in Philly a year after it was considered a lost cause. I dunno. I guess this is like the demos for the LP that finally came out eventually on 1234 GO, Don't buy that, just download this.

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SEXY - "Por Vida" - LP - 2004

   One night, I walked over to a show in north Chattanooga at a house with a falling in kitchen (one night, that kitchen's floor fell in during a show, but not this one). I showed up because PANTY RAID was playing, but they were with these two total fuuuuucking goofballs who immediately decided that we were friends and, yes, we were all going to get wasted together. It was a dark period in my life when I lived on a weird, filthy houseboat (no shame. that boat saved my life) anchored in the stinky ass Tennessee River. I was ready to get drunk and die at the drop of a hat. So were these two guys, so we got along great. It wasn't until I saw them tuning up that I even realized that they were in a band playing that night. I thought, "These guys can barely stand. Will they be able to play?" This situation is not uncommon in Chattanooga, but is usually best executed by locals. The touring bands almost always fail and pull off one of the worst sets of their tour. SEXY did not fail. Joined by Baby Ian on bass, they played the best set of the night. The floors were so unstable that their mic stands were bouncing all over the place, but Ashley and Chris (my two new friends) just followed as best they could while wildly pounding out some of the catchiest songs I had heard in years. I didn't buy their demo tape and I still regret it.
    When I moved out to the Bay Area a year later, I hung out with these two fools when I could, at shows, on the street, getting booted out of breweries, on the waterfront, etc, I trekked up to Pacific Heights (aka Specific Whites) to see them play in a cool teen's parent's house (whassup Chloe Puke) and everything seemed wrong. They played two songs and looked at each other...."This sucks. Why do we sound so bad?" Chris pulled a huge jug of wine out of his bag and started chugging it. He passed it to Ashley, who followed suit. As they kept playing, they sounded better and better until they were (as usual) completely annihilating the show.On the bike ride home from the show, I watched Chris get sideswiped by a city bus. He sat on the ground for a second and said "Aw man..." before getting back on his bike and continuing on with us.
   I kept watching them everywhere I could: in shitty bars, in humid Florida warehouses, on the street and in the women's bathroom at Gilman. Once, I yelled "NOOOOOOOOO!!" at them for the entirety of their true-to-form cover of THE BAND'S "Up On Cripple Creek". They almost always seemed to harness that sweet spot of perfect abandon. almost-too-drunk and true freedom when it was all at it's breaking point.
   When I heard they recorded an LP, I wanted to hear it immediately, but I was skeptical. Could this band actually harness the sound of ridiculous, unhinged, drunken abandon? Yeah, they did. This record sounds exactly like SEXY live. Better, even...and to actually read the lyrics made you understand that this band was pretty funny...and fucking sad. Metaphors are few on this LP. They  talk about writing songs on the bus, smoking crack while watching the ships roll in, breaking down in Kettleman City (a shithole if there ever was one), shotgunning 50 beers in the shower to dull the pain, etc. This record also came into my life at a perfect time...when I felt terrible...when I felt okay about listening to songs about pain and heartbreak without thinking too terribly much about how my actions caused serious pain and repercussions to the people around me...when I didn't think too much about how you can write an unforgettable, classic song about someone, but that someone is actually someone, you know? They're a living, breathing human being that has to endure idiots like me blabbing on about this wonderful shit, while they're like "Great...that dude gets to be validated for the rest of his life for being a drunken guy who broke my heart and stole my SMOKING POPES record." That is a simple over-analyzation of a bigger thing, but you get where I'm coming from, right? I love this record. I always will, but I think too much.
 

There's Craig D's face. He wasn't in the band. 

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The song is called "Thank  You Dead and Gone" because the wood block and percussion used on that song was found in the trash outside of DEAD AND GONE's practice space. 

Yes, this is a record...not a tape. It was a request. 

The original press of this LP has a pressing flaw and it has skips in it. The band kept giving me copies of it when I kept telling them that my copy skipped a lot. At one point, I had 8 copies of this record. Thrillhouse Records repressed the LP and made new plates so it doesn't skip. You can still order it from them.

If I wasn't clear, this is one of the best records of the last 15 years. If you've never heard this record and like melodic punk on this blog, this is essential. 

THE MORONS - Discography - Tape - 2012

   I meant to upload some old MORONS tapes ages ago, but I held off because Once Tender Records was planning on putting out a complete discography. Now, I realized it's been out for a couple of years, so here's the whole thing.
   THE MORONS were from Chatsworth and Dalton, GA: two towns in north Georgia that have bred a stunning array of truly unforgettable people in my life. THE MORONS formed (probably) out of utter boredom and a love of substance abuse. I've never really seen a band live up to their name more than THE MORONS. From huffing copious amounts of gold spraypaint to throwing themselves down flights of stairs to their special game of "Sneaky P" to many other things that I don't feel that I can share here without clearing it with them first, THE MORONS were one of the most real bands I've ever seen. I know that punk celebrates (or "should celebrate" as far as I care) the idea of "no idols" and strives to blur the lines between audience and band, but THE MORONS were truly the same on or off the stage (or "stage"). You know that dude you were just shotgunning a beer with by the dumpster? Now, he's that dude shotgunning a beer behind the drumset, for better or worse.
   Anyway, THE MORONS came from trailer parks and shitty situations and put it all in their songs. They got drunk and then wrote classic songs about being drunk. When they said "smoke some crack and go for a beer run", they had probably just done that. They didn't waste space or deal in hyperbole. If you're from a certain time and era (like me), they wrote one of the best songs of all time, which was about living with the spirit of rock n roll inside of you, which no one could ever steal. THE MORONS were utter morons, but they were also musical geniuses.
    Here's most of everything they ever recorded, culled from self-released tapes, unreleased studio recordings and their EP's. If you want a tape of your own, follow that link above and write to Chad at Once Tender.

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MORONS in Dalton, GA. Photo by me.

This one's for Big Shank.

     ADDENDUM 8/8/19: I re-uploaded this because I've been listening to THE MORONS a lot lately and I also wanted to add this note. I went to the Chattanooga punk fest known as Do Ya Hear We last year to see some very dear friends and play in some very dear bands. I had a great time. At some point in the weekend, a member of THE MORONS took me aside to talk about what I had written above. Where I saw nothing but complete praise and adulation, he saw a mockery. He saw his youth frozen in time, played out as a joke. He saw me ending the piece calling him and his bandmates morons, not geniuses...and he is right. Imagine going to read something about about your old band and the author just calls you a Moron and leaves it at that. We talked it out. We hugged and let it go, but I just wanted to add this. THE MORONS were what they were and they represented what we all were at that time and it was beautiful. The people in this band went on to grow up and become enthusiastic dads, animal-lovers, great friends, supportive husbands and even a ship captain. They still write music that is a celebration of life and love that is rooted in anything other than moronic pursuits and I salute them for that. THE MORONS made an impact to me and a whole huge scene of people because they wrote what they lived and it was real. A lot of bands try to claim that but very few actually follow through. So let's just say they were musical geniuses and leave it that, okay? 

EVERYTHING WENT PINK - Compilation - Tape - 2000

   "Everything Went Pink" is a tape that was released by Dan B back in 2000 that specifically covered the DIY punk scene in Asheville, NC, which was mostly centered around a giant punk house called the Pink House (located at/near 201 Broadway...it's now either a parking lot or condos.) It was kind of a magical time in the history of that town. A whole bunch of freaks happened to converge on the town all at once, from Minneapolis, New Orleans, California, Montreal and even the suburbs of Buncombe County. Some lived in cold-ass houses in Woodfin. Other lived in makeshift shacks out by the freeway (like everyone in MARGARET MOTHER OF THIEVES). Many others, including myself, lived in the Pink House, right in the middle of all the chaos. The house itself was kind of a freak magnet since it was a giant two-story pink place, the door was almost always unlocked, it housed a teeming library and it welcomed just about anyone who walked through the door. The landlord was a member of CRASH WORSHIP and he could often be found smoking weed by the toxic creek in our back yard. I'm pretty sure that, at one point, 17 people were living in the house.
    There was a time when there was almost nowhere for DIY punk bands to play in town, so a bunch of folks from the house decided to clear out piles of the landlord's bikes and crap in the basement to make their own show space. There was a big problem though. Raw sewage and toxic creek water leaked straight into the basement, right into the area where bands would play. No problem...a group of punks (namely Joseph, Big Mike and Ed....possibly Luke too) built a retaining wall / ditch all the way through the basement and bored a hole though the back wall so that water could drain out though ANOTHER drainage ditch into the toxic creek! Thus, the punk club, Oh My! was born. Every time a band played there, the audience ran the risk of falling into the shitty toxic trough and the band ran the risk of getting a huge electrical shock! Still, it was the best place for shows and it's where I saw many life-changing events.

  Most of the songs on this tape were recorded live on a handheld tape recorder at Oh My! Others were recorded at clubs in town, other houses and shacks. Most of the sound quality could be described as "assy", but I respect that the bands worked with what they had, which was almost nothing. Lots of bands on this tape don't have any other recordings. Many do. You can try and differentiate that distinction for yourself. Bands include WAR TORN BABIES, CRAP FACTORY, ASTRID OTO, RAT ATTACK, CHRIST FILTHY DOGS (which I've been wanting to re-use as a band name for years), DEAD THINGS, TRASH NIGHT and more. There's 43 songs in all. Enjoy or don't.

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Did I upload this just to have digital copies of SLATTER HAGS and the final song on the tape? Possibly, but don't tell anybody. 

Tape hiss abounds. Terrible sound quality. Totally beautiful. 

FUTURE ADULTS - Discography Kind Of, Sort Of - 2005

  I've been meaning to upload this one for a few years and I'm not sure what has stopped me. I think it was lack of information. FUTURE ADULTS existed largely after I moved away from San Francisco. I think I only saw them once in a backyard in the Mission during the short period when they had a bass player (Buzz). They were inspired. They were pissed. They were drunk. They had awesome, catchy, short, fast, poppy, punk songs. They have a song about listening to RANCID at Dead Rat Beach, which is an Oakland punk house that's still there. You can still go there and listen to RANCID if you want. I'm pretty sure I've done that. They have a theme song, which any self-respecting band should always have.
   Lo and behold, FUTURE ADULTS have their own Wiki page, so you don't even need my hazy, limited memories....here's what it says.....
  Future Adults was a San Francisco/Bay Area pop-punk band, most notable for the song "Oppenheimer", loosely based on the nuclear discoveries of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. Their style can be categorized as bright pop-punk or melodic grindcore.
    Future Adults formed in June, 2003 during the 30th birthday party for Needles & Pens co-founder Andrew Scott at Dolores Park in San Francisco, California. Future Future Adults guitarist and singer Melissa Merin brought an acoustic guitar to the gathering, and, under the influence of friends, alcohol and euphoria, played the five chords she knew in different variations over and over throughout the afternoon (including several variations of "Dust In the Wind", which Breezy Culbertson's mother sang along to with fervor. Ben "Ditch" Taylor and Sarah "Double Ears" Sandberg were also in attendance, and gladly added to the increasingly non-sequitor songs screeching from the guitar.
    As the sun went down over Dolores Park, it was decided that the trio would head back to Melissa's house. Armed with a 12 pack of Busch beer (which they found heavily ironic, given the times), they sat in Melissa's room (in the infamous 225 house), drank all of the beer, smoked too many cigarettes (all three of them were smokers at the time), and made up ridiculous songs about punks, theory, boredom and beer.
    Only a month after Future Adults formed, Ben Ditch moved to Minneapolis, MN, with the promise that he would be back "soon". Double Ears and Melissa held onto that promise and for months the two sat in the same dingy room and wrote song after song, anticipating Ben's return. It can be said that the first ever Future Adults show was performed in the kitchen of 225. 4 songs sung, after meticulous practice to Kat Case and Arwen Curry, among others.
    In the summer of 2004 (?) Melissa took a road trip with Cinque Adams to join John Denver's Airplane and Rotten Living on a tour starting from Minneapolis. There she was reunited with Ben Ditch. One day later Double Ears surprised both of them by driving across the country with Clayton McBride and showing up at a Fleshies basement show. The following day, the three of them converged on Ditch's front lawn and proceeded to drink several beers (about 3 cases) with the help of a few friends. They borrowed a guitar, fashioned a drum kit out of buckets and cans and had the first of many epic band practices. Ben returned to the bay area a few months later and the three began to practice semi-frequently at Idaho Street in Oakland. Their first ever show on a flier was at Adobe Books in San Francisco.

DOWNLOAD at their Bandcamp page

OLD SCHOOL BEER DRINKIN' ROBOTS - Demo - Tape - 2002

   Today's post is brought to you by Blair Menace because of a few simple facts: He was there, he had the tape and he is a werewolf. Werewolves are smart creatures and have a lot to offer us mortals. The rest is written by him....


   OLD SCHOOL BEER DRINKIN ROBOTS were a Chattanooga band who existed in 2002, and maybe a little bit before or after. They were Josh on guitar, Ramesh on bass, and Daniel on drums.
    In the summer of 2002, I was living on the porch of the Lilside house in Asheville when they spent a week or two in town, raising hell and annoying Jason Cronk. I'm not sure if they were on a tour that failed, or what, but they did manage to play shows a time or two here and dubbed this tape for me. To be honest, this was a pretty blurry summer and only a handful of moments of hanging out with them stuck with me: drinking a jug of stolen wine on top of the used book store and singing John Prine and Tom Waits, cringing as Daniel busted forty bottles on the wheelchair ramp of the church across the street, marveling at Ramesh's tendency to nap under his van, getting my only pair of pants (and wallet) stolen off the porch by a crackhead while all four of us slept on it.
    Regarding the tape itself: I'm not sure if it ever got “officially” released, at least in this form. I never had a cover or song titles, and it's dubbed over a promotional tape for something called “Tamanu Oil” which you can hear occasionally between songs. The vocals fluctuate wildly in volume on some of the songs, and the bass is sadly often inaudible, but it's still in pretty good shape. The only songs I remember are the self-explanatory theme song, the infamous “Sunrise” (“The only thing more beautiful than a sunrise is a dead cop”), the song about Ramesh's inability to cook potatoes or park accurately, and the obligatory Peter Stubb cover. One song even has some whistling! It's so short that I had to listen to it three times while writing this – twelve songs in thirteen minutes, even though the songs feel weirdly epic and complex. Josh's frantic, scale-defying guitar playing smashing up against Ramesh's Rancid-guy-in-a-tornado bass style is the real draw here, along with the “anything goes” mode of the songwriting.

The band in happier times. Chattanooga 2003.

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NRML PPL // BLACK PANTIES - Tapes - 2013

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

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

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

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ANOTHER JUAN RIDES THE BUS - Compilation - Tape - 1999

      No long-winded stories today. I wasn't living in the Bay Area when most of these bands were active and hardly saw any of them. To my knowledge, all of these bands are local to the Bay Area and/or nearby, except DBS, who were from Vancouver, BC (I once toured all the way across Canada with them, but that's a story for another time.) . The styles, as well as sound quality, are all over the map on this tape. You've got snotty garage pop (PANTY RAID), hardcore-ish (THE JOCKS), humorous (BOBBY JOE EBOLA and YOUR MOTHER) and lots more. I'll make no excuse for how fucking warbly the sound quality can be or how drastic the volume levels can get. My friend, Morgan, put out this tape in 1999 to showcase a lot of unknown and under-represented bands. Many of them are still some of my favorites to this day, including YOGURT, LOS RABBIS and TOMMY LASORDA. Enjoy.

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This tape comes from the mysterious brown bag of Mike Wilson

SIGFRIED AND ROID RAGE - "Kingdom Of Pork" - Tape - 2011

   I never imagined that when I went to Dresden, Germany, I would buy a tape manufactured in Columbus, Ohio and released in Paris, France by a band from Tel Aviv, Israel starring a guy from my home state of Alabama....but that happened. David grew up, I think, in Alabama and kicked around to Worcester, Rome, Tel-Aviv and a bunch of other far flung locales. Throughout all of this, he has been singing the praises of Chattanooga, TN and Region Rock. I like to imagine that he has talked Israeli punks into shotgunning beers while listening to JACK PALANCE BAND.

    On this tape, you'll find eleven songs in about 14 minutes that scream about getting drunk and hating work and getting drunk again. Many of us like these things, so maybe this will interest you. 

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I was just wondering how these guys go over in Israel and then I remembered that it's 2013 and Youtube exists.

JOE SMITH - Tape - 2001

   This is another band that I feel like I could write a book about: the internal dramas, the external dramas, the lasting friendships it created, the jail time, the utter depression, the failure, the success (however one defines success) and so much more. I won't go that far though.
   To begin, Joe Smith is a man from north Georgia who spent a lot of time sleeping on our couches, drinking a lot of beer and playing guitar every waking second of the day. When he wasn't playing in bands (like DRILLER KILLERS and THE SPADES), he was usually being misunderstood and berated by his friends. Unsurprisingly, he moved away from Chattanooga and settled in Gainesville, FL for a while. In his short time there, he started a band that shattered all of the preconceived notions of his friends back home as he delivered hook after hook-filled song. He called that band JOE SMITH and wasted no time recording their songs and setting up a tour. The cast was rounded out by Cinque on bass, Bill on drums and Ski on 2nd guitar (not on the recording though).
   The songs, I believe, were intended to be released by No Idea Records in some form, but like most bands with Chattanooga roots, many of the usual (and unusual) trials and tribulations kept the band from staying together long enough to see that through. The night before their first (and only) tour, Bill's back went out and he dropped off of the tour. Never ones to be discouraged, they moved Ski to drums and left town as scheduled. In Pensacola, FL, they ran into me and talked me into jumping in the van with them as their third (!!!) roadie. That night, they played an unforgettable generator show on a beach by the tracks along with THIS BIKE IS A PIPEBOMB and a then unknown 2-piece band called AGAINST ME. When TBIAPB said "This is a new song called 'Trains And Cops'", a freight train started whizzing down the tracks, as if on cue. The train passed by for the entirety of the song and as the last note of the guitar was fading out, the last car flew by. It was perfect. That night, Cinque and I walked around town, pushing each other in a wheelchair and came upon hundreds of beers in a dumpster. We filled up the wheelchair, giggling, and headed back to the punk house with our bounty.
   Tour went on and a couple of days later, we found ourselves at a house show in Atlanta with a ton of skinheads. Early in the night, I found myself alone with one of the skins by the keg. As I was filling my cup, he asked "Do you guys have any good tapes in your van? ....Maybe some SKREWDRIVER or any other white power stuff?" I found myself visibly shaking and thinking "Great, we have to kill these people." I looked up and the skin was laughing. "I'm just fuckin' with you, man. We're not racist. Do you have any good mix tapes?"
   The rest of the night turned out to be pretty fun and like any good punk show, there were punks passed out on the lawn by the end of the night. I'm not sure why this happened (well, actually I do), but I ended up falling asleep on the sidewalk right by the busy street. I was rustled awake a short time later and opened my eyes to red and blue flashing lights. I was looking into Joey's face though and not the face of a cop. Joey urged me to go back to sleep in the van. I crawled into the loft and fell asleep again after taking two bites of a burrito (also provided by Joey). I awoke in the morning to find out that the cops were summoned by an alarm set off in the school across the street when Ski and Heather (our new friend who lived at the house) decided to break in. Now, they were in jail and we needed to get to Chattanooga. There was talk of calling the whole thing off, but then we got a message from Ski saying that we should just move on without him and I could play drums. So, we jumped back in the van and I learned the songs by listening to this tape over and over on the 2 hour drive to Chattanooga. We played that night and it was 100% mediocre. Tour continues! I ended up playing for the rest of the tour without serious injury, jail time or any other serious maladies.
   Here's the rest in short sentence fragments with little to no detail, because like I said earlier, I could write a book about this tour: Long drives at night while drinking beer. Joey only being able to ride in the van if he had a 40 and a Gameboy. Total crushing depression. Cody driving for the entire tour while drinking 64 ounces of soda daily. Ed providing words of wisdom and, when that failed, tackling me. More total crushing depression. Watching AGAINST ME in Whitesburg, KY and hearing Cinque say "This band is going to be absurdly famous". It's weird to me that I can barely even remember where we went. It was all caught up in a haze of the heaviest sadness I had ever felt (from the uncertainties of my future mixed with a quarter life crisis) and a tidal wave of dumpstered swill.
   By the end of the tour, the band was basically dead. Back in Gainesville, we played a homecoming show with THE FLESHIES and then Cinque and I hitched up to Chattanooga (basically making it in one ride with an insane, speed-addled trucker who named his first born d'Artagnan, after his D&D character's name). Joey stayed for a bit and then drifted back up to north Georgia. Ed stayed in Gainesville and you can still find him there, being completely awesome. Cody drifted up to his homeland of Fargo and now, fittingly, drives for a living....and demolishes cars, I think. Ski got outta jail, lived in Atlanta for a while to deal with court stuff, moved back to G'ville and then moved up to Minneapolis where he now stays. Heather picked me up hitchhiking a couple of months after this tour and had absolutely no recollection of who I was. Now, we're great friends.
    I can't listen to these songs without thinking about that time. Joey far surpassed all of our expectations and wrote incredibly catchy, heartfelt, beautiful punk songs about our lives and the great people we lost too early in the game. I wish that these songs had gotten the proper release that they deserved, but it never happened. I hope that now you'll be able to enjoy it as much as I have over the years.

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"Everyone I know has given a piece of their heart"

Thanks to Joey, Cinque and Bill for writing these songs.

Thanks to Joey, Cinque, Ski, Ed, Cody and Dutchess for getting me in the van and changing my life. 

Members/roadies have also been in FROZEN TEENS, RATS REST, RADON, ASTRID OTO, LOVE YOU DEAD, FORCED VENGEANCE, ASSHOLE PARADE, HELLO SHITTY PEOPLE, CORTEZ THE KILLER and a hundred more.

p.s. first song is a little cut off in the beginning because that's how my tape is. 

OLNEYVILLE KARAOKE VOL 2 - CD-R - 2005

   In 2006, I found myself in a junk shop called Happy Birthday Mike Leslie in Worcester, MA, which was run by my friend, Jacob. As I perused the racks of army men, bad cassettes, broken stuff, homemade stuffed animals, Chuck Norris comics and re-purposed M.U.S.C.L.E. men, I came across this CD. Upon seeing me looking at this, Jacob yelled "Oh, you have to buy that!! It will change your life!" and then I think he gave it to me. Did it change my life? Well, yes, but just about everything in the world changes your life in little ways.

  From the description inside the CD, this is....well, just read below. I don't think I can explain it any better than Mike Taylor did here:

   After I left the junk shop, I was thrust back into the reality of the total summer bummer, 3 month  punk tour that I was on. We were headed to play a lackluster, last minute show at a VFW hall in Hartford, CT while all of my Worcester friends were driving an hour south to go see LIMP WRIST. I put on this CD as soon as I got in the van and it lasted three whole songs before my band mate ejected it, dismissing it as some "weird Providence crap that feels like a joke at my expense." This is weird as fuck and maybe not meant to be listened to all in one sitting, but here it is....

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   Features members of THE TERRIBLES, COUGHS, TEENAGE WAISTBAND, YONI GORDON AND THE GOODS, PASSIVE AGGRESSOR, REACTIONARY 3 and more.

 I thought things were getting a little normal around here, so here ya go. My favorite song topics are "My Favorite Colonel", "????", "Things I Do Not Like To Eat" and "The Next Level"

Oh yeah, there's no real track listing because as the insert states "Just relax and don't get hung up on following it, okay?"

DEUCE BOLDLY - Unreleased Recording - Tape - 2005

   I don't have very much information on this short-lived band, even though these people are all good friends. Shortly after I moved to Bloomington, IN, I told the band I would set up a show for them and spent a lot of time convincing them that the town, much to their disbelief, was not a boring-ass wasteland of dumb hippies playing folk-punk in the streets. They were sure that no one would like their band. That is, if anyone showed up to actually see their band. They mostly made the trip to hang out with me and I'm glad they set their standards so low because when the day of the show came, almost no one showed up to see them, even though I plastered the town with fliers.  It might have helped their cause if I mentioned that their rhythm guitarist was the original drummer of a very popular rock band, but that seemed like a cheap ploy.I thought it was more important to mention that the band had members of HELLO SHITTY PEOPLE, NO SHIT SHERLOCK, TOTALLY CHAOS and ALLERGIC TO BULLSHIT. You would also think people would wanna see a punk band with an accordion player. Turns out that most of the punks in Bloomington didn't know or care about those bands, but DEUCE BOLDLY still played their hearts out to the 8 or 9 people in attendance. I promptly took the band back to my tiny apartment, got trashed, got in a drunken argument, ran off into the night and woke up with a ceiling fan bonking me in the head over and over (long story). 

DEUCE BOLDLY somewhere in America with a human mic stand.

   The band recorded these eight songs and they never got released in any form at all. These things happen sometimes. So, here's DEUCE BOLDLY in all of their ramshackle glory. Hopefully the band won't hunt me down for letting you hear this.

Download DEUCE BOLDLY

Updated July 2015

EDIT 12/9/12: Stewart from No Breaks Records dug up the insert for this tape (which I never knew existed). Thanks Stewart!

   This next part has absolutely nothing to do with DEUCE BOLDLY.

   I just got word that Sarah Kirsch has passed away after a long battle with Fanconi Anemia, which is a rare genetic disorder that causes leukemia and other cancers. Many readers will recognize her as Mike Kirsch, who played in such great bands as TORCHES TO ROME, PLEASE INFORM THE CAPTAIN THIS IS A HIJACK, JOHN HENRY WEST, PINHEAD GUNPOWDER, FUEL, BAADER BRAINS, MOTHERCOUNTRY MOTHERFUCKERS, BREAD AND CIRCUITS and many more. I never met her but admired her from afar for years. The bands that speak the loudest about how they play with passion are usually trite and soulless, while the people who actually just play passionate music will literally stop you in your tracks. Sarah Kirsch was in the camp of the latter. I admired her integrity (like, say, quitting your mega-popular pop-punk band because a bandmate puts out a record on a subsidiary of a multinational corporation) and strength in the face of adversity. I appreciate her determination to keep creating new and exciting music rather than resting on the laurels of her past accomplishments. I admired the courage it must have taken to go on tour while coming out as a trans-woman in a hardcore scene that might not be too accepting of people who are just trying to feel at home in their own bodies. I don't want to say too much because, like I said, we never met. My thoughts are with her loved ones on this early morning and any people who are reeling from this great loss to the world. Play music like there's no tomorrow and be sure to tell your friends that you love them. 

Seriously, WTF? So good.

You can find more info about the troubles she was facing here. May she rest in peace.

PASCAL'S LONG LOST MIX TAPE - 2007

   In my last year of living in Bloomington, IN, I made a whole lot of mix tapes for friends, both locally and far away. I would sit in front of the stereo for hours, laboring over 90 minutes of the perfect mix of punk and weirdness. Then, I would hand deliver it to someone's door or drop in the mail at the post office just 5 short blocks away. It took moving across the country to California to realize that I was utterly and morbidly depressed. I don't think that making mix tapes is a sign of depression (far from it), but I do think something is amiss when one is putting all of their free time into tape making or drinking endless pints of whiskey while flipping the same DEAD MOON record over and over.
   I think there is a certain beautiful power in mix tapes that can not be replicated by a mix CD or a play list. Many, many people have explained this in the past, so I won't bore you with the details, but there is something to be said for having to listen to each song in real time as you make the tape.
   Most of the tapes I made for folks eventually reached them...except for this one. I made this fairly eclectic tape for my friend Pascal in Paris and then never, ever mailed it to him. I took it to work and listened to it a lot. I carried it around in my bag with intentions of dropping it in the mail for him. I even flew to Europe, went to Paris and hung out with Pascal but forgot to take the tape with me. So, Pascal if you're reading this, I apologize. If you send me your current address, I'll mail you this tape. I mean it this time.
   In the meantime, I think this is a great tape with styles flying all over the map. Seriously. Have you ever gotten a mix tape that segues from UKE OF SPACES CORNERS to LIMPWRIST? KATRA TURANA to TULSA? OI POLLOI to JOHN DENVER to OMAR SOULEYMAN to ARTIMUS PYLE? BUNKER HILL to MEN'S RECOVERY PROJECT? It makes sense. I like this tape a lot. Maybe you will too.

Download Side A

Download Side B

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

THIS BIKE IS A PIPEBOMB - Comedy Tape - 2004

   My thoughts on the music of TBIAPB have already been documented before, but if you missed it, I'm not a big fan. That said, I am a big fan of the actual people in this band. I believe that their hearts are made of gold (not literally) and their ideals are unfuckwithable. A friend of mine referred to them as "one of the worst bands of all time", which I will respectfully disagree with. Sure, they helped pave the way for one of the worst musical genres of all time (folk-punk), but they didn't mean to do that and they felt burdened by the path that they were on. When I would go on tour with them, we would drink whiskey drinks in the van and complain about the caliber of opening bands at their shows. We would discuss how it's important to try and support young musicians as they are starting out, but we just wished there would just be a fucking punk band on the show...and not a timid kid playing a uke while staring at the ground. I remember getting to a show in Tucson and seeing a burly looking hardcore band set up. I got excited. When they played their cover of GORILLA BISCUITS' "New Direction"  Rymodee and I were right up front singing along.
    What does this have to do with this tape? Well, nothing really, but I don't think TBIAPB is the worst band of all time. Far from it. Have you heard....well, nevermind....There's a lot worse bands out there.

   This tape was recorded without their knowledge when they played very drunkenly at the first Plan-It-X Fest back in 2004. I was working "security" for the fest and I was in charge of making sure that all of the bands from the south didn't get too drunk to play....and to make sure they weren't drinking openly in the venue. What that translated to is that I would go backstage and drink with the bands for a while and then say "Oh yeah, don't get caught doing this." The band was given one hour to play and as evidenced by this tape, they talked for a full 30 minutes of that. All the music was cut out and you're just left with their often funny stage banter. I still believe that VENOM and IRON LUNG provides better laughs, but I still find some parts of this to be really funny. Regardless of how I feel about most of their music, you can bet that I will be front and center (or just drinking their drinks when they are onstage) when TBIAPB embarks on their upcoming West Coast tour in a couple of weeks.

DOWNLOAD IT
Link fixed 3/2020

Tape originally released by I Win Tapes.

Something important to remember is that they were playing in front of 600-700 people.

SHOTWELL - "For The Devil Has His Day" - Tape - 2011

   SHOTWELL has put out so much stuff that it's ridiculous. They released this tape back in 2001, which was supposed to come out as a CD on S.P.A.M. records, but that never actually happened. It was released later as a CD on Plan-It-X and packaged in an elaborately sloppy, glued together sleeve. Among many SF SHOTWELL fans, this one is not as popular as their others, but I love it. It starts off with "We're Not Alone", one of my favorite SHOTWELL slow jams to date. It features Jimmy's famously sloppy guitar skronk, Buzz and Jimmy's lax harmonization and even an accordion. Buzz's friend, Ken came out from Delaware and ended up as drummer #10 (or so), lending his own style to the band and helping to make a different sounding record altogether. It's good. Just listen to it.

DOWNLOAD
Re-uploaded 3/17

To learn more about SHOTWELL and hear more of their stuff, you can check here, here, here and even here.

QUEERWULF - 18 Songs - CD-R - 2003

   Back in 2000 in Chattanooga, my roommate, Ryan asked if I wanted to play drums for a recording project that he was working on with my future roommate (Ed), our neighbor (Anthony) and our friend, Josh. For some reason, I declined and Ryan just decided to play the drums himself. The end result of that project was the first 4 or 5 songs by the band, QUEERWULF and when I heard it, I was impressed. The band was too good to just stop right there, so they kept going...for a few more years. The bulk of those first songs ended up being on their first 7", "Cockroach City", put out by This Here Records in Chattanooga.
   Their singer, Josh always seemed to put everything he had into the live performance of any band he was in. In his teenage punk band, CAPITAL SICKNESS, he would fuck up playing bass because he was singing so hard with his eyes closed...and they ruled. With QUEERWULF, he didn't have any instruments to hold him back, so he was allowed to completely lose it while the rest of the band blazed through the songs behind him, which often resulted in broken glass, bloody microphones and/or a destroyed basement. Nothing about his lyrics or performance was an act though. Josh kinda lived this life 24 hours a day. Once, Josh walked out of his job and came to my house to get drunk. We rode bikes all over the city, drinking whiskey and spraypainting shit. I don't really remember the end of the night, but when I woke up on the floor in my room the next morning, Josh was a few feet away and we were surrounded by shards of broken glass. My roommate later told me that he came up to my attic room really late to find the two of us singing along to PETER STUBB as loud as we could while smashing beer bottles against the wall.
   Also, when he sang about pissing on someone's grave and smiling, I could picture it vividly.

Blurry pic of the first QUEERWULF show at Rear Entry.

   The rest of the band were no slouches either. As the band progressed, it seemed like were trying to make the music more and more intense as the years rolled by. Twists and turns in their songwriting became more unexpected and calculatingly precise. Sometimes, I felt like seeing them play was probably something close to what it felt like to see BLACK FLAG during the Damaged years (fortunately, QUEERWULF did not go further than that and start doing spoken word/instrumental albums...but I bet it would have been interesting). 

   The later years of QUEERWULF coincided with my departure from Chattanooga, so I don't know what happened to them or why they broke up, but I can assume that a band with that much intensity can only blow up at some point. The best bands are always the most volatile and difficult to maintain.

Download QUEERWULF

This CD-R collects their first 2 7" records and their side of the split LP with SHARP KNIFE. You can still get their posthumously released LP from Do Ya Hear We.

   Members of the band went on to be in TRAILER PARK HEROES, ASSHOLE PARADE, GHETTOBIRD, ADD/C, ONETIMERS, HIDDEN SPOTS and many, many more.

This CD is from the mixed up files of Anandi Wonder.

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?

Download

THE BANANAS - Live At Mission Records 8-4-01 - Tape - 2001

   As of this year, THE BANANAS have been a band for twenty goddamn years! That's longer than DEAD MOON and SHOTWELL. Their band is older than many of their fans. That shit is weird. It's been said before, but one reason for their longevity is that the band is probably just too lazy to break up. Sometimes, they even seem too lazy to play a show, as evidenced by the fact that lately, they usually play no more than 3 or 4 times a year. When they do manage to drag their asses to a show, it can either be gloriously life-affirming, a drunken chaotic trainwreck or a gloriously life-affirming, drunken, chaotic trainwreck. I've seen them countless times now; from raging, super-tight basement shows to long, drawn out, 3 am wasted slop-fests. One thing remains consistent though. They've always been entertaining and I've never once walked out before their set was finished. Even when they are bad, they are usually better and have more hooks than every other band on the show.
   This tape finds the band at a show back in 2001, teetering on the edge of being a little too drunk to play, but they manage to shambolically plow through their set and keep people entertained. There is the prerequisite 2-5 minute break between each song where Mike and Scott trade jabs with the audience and each other...which makes for a 45 minute set consisting of only 12 three minute songs. I'm not saying it's bad, because it isn't. I'm just warning you what you're in for.
   "This next song is about biting people in the butt! It's pretty good! It's a political song!" - Mike
   "...Political in the traditional sense..." - Scott

Download THE BANANAS

This tape is loaned out by Sarah T.

The quality isn't the best, but it's the thought that counts.

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.