THE REASON WHY MOST OF THE DOWNLOAD LINKS ON THIS SITE ARE DEAD

 
   I'll try to keep this business talk short. It started happening little by little: Mediafire was taking down some of my download links for violating their over-arching and somewhat puritanical terms of service. Bands like TWAT SAUCE, FUCK YEA AVOCADO and SHITHEAD JONES were just too far of a step over the line for them. That's fine. I can deal with that. They were placing "strikes" against my account for these offenses. Then, one day, they took down a number of files all at once (including a live HICKEY set, a practice tape of ME, YOU AND THE BOYS and DR DRE DEL [a musician I actually got permission from]) because they also violated Mediafire's vague terms (seriously, after taking the time to read them, the company can do whatever they want to any of your files at any time with no explanation.). After removing all of these files, they locked my account, thereby turning the majority of this site into less of an interactive fun thing and more into the nostalgic ramblings of a hopeful lunatic. (but you can still download TOMMY LASORDA, the live HICKEY recording and some other stuff)
    I contacted customer service, which I already knew would be an exercise in tedious futility. I was gonna print the entire ridiculous email exchange, but there's no point. Basically, they told me that I need to "demonstrate" that I have permission from all of the musicians that have been shared through my account. A cursory glance at my account tells me that I would need explicit permission from at least 900 people to cover all of my bases. 25 of the bands are bands that I played in. A lot of those people are dead. I tried to explain to them the basic tenets of punk, the lack of copyrights, the idea of community as if I was explaining it to my grandfather who died in 1983, but it just made things way more frustrating.
    Basically, I'm not getting that account unlocked. If any of your music has been on this site and you want to tell them that "hey, it's cool", be my guest. You might get an entertaining email back from them, but don't expect anything productive to happen. DON'T LINK THEM TO THIS BLOG. You can tell them that you're writing on behalf of the account associated with the email address rick_harvester@yahoo.com (don't write me there. I will never, ever respond to it.). Their email address is esupport@mediafire.com.

  I'm taking the next week off to figure some shit out, gather some tapes and decide if this is all worth it. If you want anything re-uploaded, comment here and tell me what it is. I'll do my best. You can also mail me a tape plus $5 cash and I will tape anything in my collection for you (p.o.b. 40786, SF, CA 94140. US only please). Also, if you know where I live, feel free to stop by and tape anything you want.

Stay Punk.

GRAHAM - Top Ten Of 2012

   Graham has weaved in and out of my life through the last heap of years playing in bands like THIEVES, VISITOR and BLOODWALL, creating vast walls of sound, contemplative rumbles and meditative raga-like improvisations. He's also never been anything less than humble and welcoming as a friend throughout the years. He's currently working full-time out of his room, wrestling a mono  lathe to make one-of-a-kind records for people all over the US and beyond (including me). Get in touch with him at 2208 Records to set up your own weird order.

GRAHAM'S TOP TEN OF 2012

This is a list of things and processes people around me have created as results from commitments to creativity, autonomy and any way to make free time completely rule in as many ways as possible throughout the year 2012.

 10. Lathe Cutting.
     There are these clear hand cut records that are known for not playing, sounding weird and being used as a vessel for some of the more misunderstood and possibly unlistenable musical ideas people have invented and enacted. These records and the processes surrounding them have changed my life. Over the last year I've learned how to hand cut lathed records and have had to re-approach every idea of what is possible or acceptable in the world of independently released music. I have never found anything so inefficient, frustrating and prone to resulting in unusable artifacts to be so rewarding. The ability to use an antiquated piece of technology to make as many or as few records as I want or can is amazing to me. This has been the majority of my 2012, cutting records. This is all I do now, ask anyone I know.

 9.Club Med Turns Five.
    Five years of rock, roll and late night goings on. To have an all ages space that encompasses almost the entire scope of music for this long is a phenomenal accomplishment and necessary asset for bands and musicians both locally and nationally to have a venue in Minneapolis. The five year show was a partial recreation of the first show featuring a Jose´Bove reunion set. It ruled.

 8. Ecstattic Studios 
     This fall I recorded at Ecstattic Studios, Ali Jaafar's (Hollow Boys, Zombie Season) recording studio built in the attic of his house. Having retired from his old job working at the guitar shop (Twin Town) he's created and curated a library of amps, mics, keyboards, drum hardware, effects pedals and what-have-you making it possible for bands to make higher end recordings while being in a nonsurgical, low pressure home studio. It was great to work in someone's "in home empire" and have whatever piece of equipment necessary and functional at arms reach.

 7. Sign Painters 
    This is a book and documentary by Faythe Levine and Sam Macon about contemporary sign painters. Faythe is an old friend of mine and has been working on this project for several years. There's a handful of people in this book who I've known for at least 12 years as friends, customers and sign painters who have maintained and updated signage on two restaurants, an art school and a several other buildings I've had connections to in Minneapolis. When I got this book it was great to see the tangible results from years of work put in by people I know creating the content of the book and the book itself.

 6. Yeti Record Mobile
    Yeti Records took their south Minneapolis storefront and packed it into an RV. In an era where brick and mortar stores are more and more challenged to remain open and operational this is one of the better solutions I've seen and it looks really cool. They've taken the RV to different events and shows as a traveling record store. In the past they've hosted shows in their basement and now attend shows as a record store on wheels.

 5. Million Brazillians
     I have several friends in the guise of Million Brazillians . In 2012 the Million Brazillians/Rotten Apples , Dyngia Jazz tour was one of the best shows I got to play and attend. Outside of the music, there are background processes and stories that elevate the sounds presented past being merely rock and roll into an intangible and unnamable form of sonic voodoo. There were also huge swords.

 4. 3 Moons
     Jefferson Zurna has created a lot of music. I have played in bands and spent hours making endless sonic experiments with him. As a one man band he has created anthems and droning ragas incorporating traditional acoustic instruments with a vortex of astral snake charming circuit melted knob turned wizardry. In the end of the summer the 3 Moons tour came from the west coast to Minneapolis bringing the Well Dweller release complete with one of the catchiest songs I've heard in awhile.

 3. Lighten Up Sounds 
     Matt Himes (Mole Hole, Shep and Me) has been releasing hand made tapes as well as records for a long time. This last year he was relentlessly productive. Every time I would see him he had another project in the works with different, more creative and more intricate packaging and production techniques for any number of sonic styles ranging from straight up noise to melodic smoky folk. He disassembled clear tape shells to insert mirror imaged transparencies to palendromically label the SAGAS tape and went so far as to color match and paint the insides of clear norelcos to match the lipstick on the image of the HOUSE OF BATS tape. He hand copied an 8-track release from 8-tracks collected over years! He released two tapes for me and is constantly creating and strengthening world wide distro and production connections. Check it out for yourself.

 2. Hard Times Cafe turns 20
     The Hard Times Cafe has been a collectively run Vegan/Vegetarian restaurant, open at least 22 hours a day almost every day of the year for the last 20 years. I've spent the last seven years as a co-owner and a cook and am completely amazed and impressed that an idea set into motion longer ago than many of the restaurants clients have been alive is still unfolding and working. It was a good party.

 1. End of the World's Fair
    Friends of many of ours gathered on top of a mountain in North Carolina this last summer to catch up for the month of August. The event was hosted by Dave and Janet of Medicine County Herbs on their land "the Last Resort". There's more to say than I can write. I saw a lot of old friends and it was awesome to see everyone healthy and alive.

TOMMY LASORDA - "Live At The End of the World" - 2002

   Yesterday, I probably told you everything I know about TOMMY LASORDA, so today is devoted to things I don't know about them. As mentioned previously, Mike from TOMMY LASORDA got in touch and sent over a live set that was intended for an album, but never saw the light of day. So, I'm featuring it here for the first time. Here's what Mike has to say about it....

 The show on this album was the first day of what turned out to be Tommy's longest tour, five weeks all over the country. We set off in a minivan with tons of oatmeal and spaghetti which we made anywhere we could along the way. I'm pretty sure that was all we ate the entire trip. Going into the Frontier restaurant in Albuquerque to get hot water for the oats, we saw Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top getting into a limousine. (Coincidentally we would skip our show with Fleshies and Sexy in Albuquerque on a later tour to see the Top at the local amphitheater.) Later on this tour we played for a room full of neo-Nazis in St. Louis who were really, really into us. We ended up canceling our last show in northern Montana after spinning out on a snow-covered mountain pass en route. We were so freaked out that we turned right around and drove all the way back to SF in time to see the Melvins at Slim's. They were awesome.

TL in Tulsa, OK with Hammy from FLESHIES on 2nd drums. Photo provided by the band.

   This show was at a teen center called The Don in Visalia, CA on 4 April, 2002. Despite our frequent onstage pleas for a place to crash, we ended up sleeping in the van, but the guy that recorded this did give us a Danelectro distortion pedal after watching us pause in the middle of all of our songs to manually push the button on Adam's Sunn bass head. That amp was really loud but a huge pain in the butt, as evidenced by our broken amp song on here, played by Adam while I changed a fuse. We were constantly having to change fuses and the tubes were shot like, once a month it seemed. Most of the songs on here that aren't on the tape or the 7" were going to be on our LP which only ever got halfway recorded. The exception is "Lloyd", which was going to be on a split 10" with the Ovens, which also never came out.

    Five or six years ago, I started a label called Swiss Army Records just because I wanted to release a 7" from San Pedro's Can of Beans. I later ended up putting out a 7" by my instrumental band Chinese and a full-length by my quieter pop band Sorry Safari. The label unceremoniously folded before I could release the Lasorda live album (as well as Sorry Safari's second album). Adam and I created some album art for this live joint, Adam did the cover on glossy silver paper and mixed it with glitter and construction paper. The insert was going to be pictures of kids slam dancing at small town shows we had played on tour. I've been able to track down the photos of the punks but the cover art is nowhere to be found. 

Thanks to Mike and Adam for everything and without further ado....

Download Live At The End of the World. updated aug 2013


(not the same show)

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

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

"Planetary explorers" - Provided by the band.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 Adam: Olympia. Shortly after Y2K.

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

 Adam: Far-flung.

 Mike: Flung far.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 Mike: And Thelma Ritter.

 Adam: A symbol, if you will.

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

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

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

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

 RO: What is your favorite MELVINS song and why?

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

RO: That is also my favorite Melvins album!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Download TOMMY LASORDA Tape and EP
Updated Aug 2013

Check back tomorrow for more from this band.

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

MARS - Top Ten of 2012

   I met Mars as the shyest of shy solo performers in a college town in the Midwest. Since that time years ago, Mars has gone on to write tons of songs with intense pop hooks that I can't get out of my head in bands like FLEABAG and (currently) AYE NAKO. For such a shy person, Mars has a laugh that is alarmingly loud and intensely infectious. The Bay Area was lucky enough to know him for a short time but is a little bit sadder now that he lives on the east coast.

MARS' TOP TEN OF 2012

A lot of 2012 was a shit stain (excluding the following): 

 *Gender Failure: The way Rae Spoon and Ivan Coyote told their stories, which a lot of the time felt like my own stories, about growing up queer and experiencing many "gender failures" -- I can't even explain. I cried and laughed a bunch. The performance totally blew me away!

(ed. note: This video is excellent)

 *Speedy Ortiz - "Sports" Ep: I never find bands post the year 2000 that I can get into wholeheartedly. Speedy Ortiz is the rare exception. It's probably because I have a strong penchant for "alternative/indie" bands from the 90s and they sound like they could've been one. Last spring, I had the pleasure of playing the most wild ass show with them in Hadley, MA involving a dusty garage, kids spitting on each other, thrashing around, and crowdsurfing their friend who is usually wheelchair-bound. I met Sadie (the singer/guitarist) back in 2011 when we played with her old band, Quilty. She writes the kind of songs I wish I was writing. When I brought the EP home, I lied on my bed, belly down, intensely reading the lyrics as the needle on my record player wore out.

 *Frank Ocean - "Channel Orange": By autumn, I gave in after months of avoiding this one. I was flabbergasted to hear a modern mainstream artist have such powerful and thoughtful lyrics on top of interesting musical compositions and a wonderfully smooth voice. I'd like to point out that he mentions Little Rock, AR (where I'm from). Bad Religion makes me shed tears every time with the damn swelling of the bowed instruments and the passion in his voice singing about unrequited homo love.

 *that dog. at Music Hall of Williamsburg: Speaking of the 90s...Last May, that dog. played their first NYC show in 15 years. I parked it at the front of the stage to get a good look (and they were looking good!) and just geeked out and annoyingly sang along with every song. They played all the hits! Watching them banter was a kick in the butt to work on my own stage presence.

 *Big Freedia at Santos Party House: Never have I seen so many asses shake at once and nowhere else have I seen someone booty bounce wearing ass tassles while crowd surfing.

 *Alice Bag on Violence Girl tour: I got to see her twice on her book tour. Really inspiring to watch her sing/read/talk. She was traveling with a friend, who I am pretty sure was named Angie, who gave me off her own shirt, a brown-skinned vulva pin she made out of felt, lace and a zipper.

 *Jonathan Richman at Bell House: How is he so good at stage banter, playing the guitar standing with no strap and swinging it around, and writing the kind of songs that make me feel nice? It was great watching him, but it took great concentration to forget how uncomfortable I felt among the thick crowd of awkward normal straight people, especially the couple perpetually knocking into me while they made out. Ask Joe -- I ran to the bathroom several times to puke.

 *Nightmares about Satan: There was a 3-month period that destroyed me in which I had nightmares almost every night. A number of them starred the Devil herself, an attractive, well-dressed blonde woman. She was horrific, but I liked it in a way. The only sequence that had any lightheartedness went like this: Me and Joe were tied up and burning inside of a roaring fire, watching our friends get lashed and beaten by the Devil. I turn to Joe and say, "Wow! I didn't realize she was such a babe."

 *Your Heart Breaks - "Harsh Tokes and Bong Jokes": Clyde is one of my favorite musicians. These songs make me feel blue, but I like it.

 *geek denial: My love of video games and sci-fi rubbed off onto my younger brother. After I moved out, he took it to another level that we never went to together. He makes weapons and costumes for these videos where he and his friends kill zombies and shit. When I visited home last summer for the first time in years, I told him I thought it was cool that he's into larping. He barked back at me that he absolutely DOES NOT do larping. Here's a photo of one of his handmade swords:

RUDIMENTARY PENI - "Pope Adrian 37th Psychristiatric" - CD - 1995

   I know, I know...I usually talk about totally random tapes and CD-R's that have been stuffed in boxes for eons, but I couldn't resist posting this after borrowing it from my roommate Matt and listening to the whole thing in my room last night. To be fair, this was also stuffed in a box under some shit in Matt's room. I also know that I constantly refer to bands as "one of my favorite bands of all time". I'm telling the truth. I have about 100 favorite bands of all time, but then there's the top ten favorite bands of all time....and RUDIMENTARY PENI is most definitely in the top ten.
   I first heard of RUDIMENTARY PENI in 1995 (the year this album came out) in the van on one of the first real punk tours I ever went on. My bandmate Joey put on "Cacophony" on a long drive and it completely blew my little teenage punk mind forever. I never realized punk could be so weird, fucked up, inspired, damaged, dark, creepy and catchy all at the same time. When we got home from that tour, I started rounding up all of their vinyl that I could find and began to notice all of the fetus tattoos that adorned many of my friends. I would lay on my floor in my tiny apartment alone listening to their records for endless hours, obsessing over Nick Blinko's insanely detailed, hand-drawn record covers. I would notice something new every time I looked at it. I still do.

   One day, when I was over at my friend Harry's house, he asked if I had ever heard the album "Pope Adrian 37th Psychristiatric". I hadn't and he put it on. The first thing I noticed was the endless loop of a voice saying "Popus Adrianus" that runs throughout the entire album....even while the songs are playing. The songs are way more subdued than their earlier efforts, but perhaps more deranged in many ways. Some songs seem like they just started off with one line and never got any further, so Nick Blinko just repeats them over and over for waaayyy too long. Part of the reason for the album being so incredibly strange is that Blinko wrote the majority of it while being detained in a psychiatric hospital while having delusions that he was "Pope Adrian 37th".  Arguably, it is their weirdest album ever and, to many people, their worst. I actually like it a lot, although "Cacophony" and their first 7" are still my favorites. If you've never heard this band before, I would suggest to start off with almost anything else by them, but if you're feeling adventurous, go for it.

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Fun Facts:

   1. The band started out in the anarcho-punk scene of the early 80's and never really broke up. The last thing they put out was a one song CD single called "The Chances" in 2009, which is only available with Blinko's last book, The Haunted Head. 

  2. My old band with Harry became so enamored by this CD that I recorded a passage from Blinko's book The Primal Screamer while the other two in the band chanted "Popus Adrianus" in the background. We ran the whole thing backwards and put it on the end of our only 7", released in 1997.

ONE SHOE IN THE ROAD - "Struck Cyclists And Their Stories" - CD - 2005

   I ride a bike almost daily in the city of San Francisco and most of the time, it feels like I have to be on my guard as soon as I mount the bike. People zip around the streets here with (seemingly) little to no regard of anyone around them, even though they could kill someone with two tons of steel (or plastic) with one simple thrust of the gas pedal. On the other side of that coin, there are tons of bicyclists who cut off people in crosswalks, yell "I have the right of way" indignantly at cars when they don't and ride full speed down sidewalks crowded with people. Is there a way that we can just all live together and use the same streets without trying to kill each other? That is just a glimpse into what this recording is trying to shed some light on.
   In "One Shoe in the Road", the interviewers and editors (Don Godwin and Erin Yanke) talk with people who have been hit by cars while biking; people who are lucky enough to have made it through. The stories are graphic, difficult and traumatic (there is your trigger warning). They bring up questions and provide some answers about how we can all learn to share space in our growing cities and the things that we can do to minimize injuries (or death) to people who are just trying to get where they are going without supporting the capitalist oil industry. (p.s. I'm not actually trying to politicize every person who rides a bike. I just wanted to slip that in there.)

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And since we are punks, this includes interviews and work by people from IMPRACTICAL COCKPIT, CHASED AND SMASHED, SWORD OF THE ANCIENT, BEASTHEAD, ANCESTRAL DIET, LIGHT BRIGADE and more!

RYMODEE - "Live in Bloomington" - Tape - 2003

    If you just scroll down a couple of entries, you'll see this man's year end top ten list. You'll also see that I'm quite fond of the guy. So, yeah, it's RYMODEE from THIS BIKE IS A PIPEBOMB playing solo in Bloomington, IN at what I believe is a house show. If you can ever track down this man's solo LP, do not hesitate to pick it up, because it is excellent. While you're at it, you should also track down the recent LP by his last band ZIPPERS TO NOWHERE.
    I don't really know what else I can say about this recording.... besides that someone starts doing that annoying thing that folk punk kids do when an acoustic performer plays...which is to clap along loudly and out of time. BUT Rymo quashes it fairly quickly within the first song with his constant time changes. Also, I don't know many of the song titles, so you don't get them in this download. I asked Rymodee his thoughts on this tape and he said "It's kind of embarrassing."

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Re-upped Feb 2013

This tape was released years ago by the still relevant and always-interesting Friends and Relatives Records.

EDIT: The show was at Rhino's, an all ages club in Bloomington and the audio was recorded from a camcorder. Thanks to Justin at Friends and Relatives for the info.

VISITOR - "III" - Tape - 2012

   LOOK, IT'S MUSIC!! I know I have been pummeling you all with top ten lists, but as I stated before, I like lists a lot and there's still a few more to come (if people get them to me in time). For now, let's get back to the music. Longtime readers may remember that I posted an earlier VISITOR tape way back in 2011 that had little-to-no info. Other readers may think "I already knew about that band and didn't need your paltry download, fool." Either way, here is another mysterious tape by this down-tuned Minneapolis doom outfit, which was released by Lighten Up Sounds in late 2012. Two drummers and one guitarist play two 15 minute songs that build up from ambient sounds into massive, swelling riffs. No vocals. Perfect for working on stuff in your room, staring into the abyss from a cliff, getting sucked into a vortex, dying a slow death or, uh, getting stoned, I guess.
   Graham plays the guitar, also plays in BLOODWALL and he will cut a mono lathe of your band (or four LP drone project) over at 2208 Records. Jefferson plays the drums and also does stuff with 3 MOONS and THE SPACECHRISTS. Andie plays the other drums. He also spends time in MOTHER OF FIRE, which is a band that I like a whole lot. I would go so far to say that I am obsessed with them at the moment. Enjoy this one.

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   If you would like to get the actual source recordings rather than my beautiful tape-hissy download, you can head over to Lighten Up's Bandcamp page. The tape quickly went out of print so don't try to order it.

  Also, just to let you know, Mediafire is a slowly sinking ship. I would say that if you ever thought about downloading anything on this site, now is the time to do it before all of the links disappear. I moved over to Zippyshare, which is currently confusing and frustrating. I might change to a different file sharing service again. Or maybe I'll just stop doing this altogether.

RYMODEE - Top Ten of 2012

  I'm pretty sure that Rymodee thinks I'm gonna use this space to say something snarky about his old band once again, but I'm not. Truth be told, there was one day when I listened to the song "Johnny" by THIS BIKE IS A PIPEBOMB upwards of 40 times in a row because I thought it might be one of the saddest songs ever written (then I listened to "I'm So Depressed" by Abner Jay in the rain and that song won). He wrote a solo album (also kind of depressing in tone) that I could not stop listening to one winter. I don't mean to make the man sound like a sad sack, because he's not. I've been stuffed into s small van for weeks with the guy and did not get sick of his company. We've drank whiskey and yelled really loud. We've drank tea and had quiet conversations. We've eaten the dried out weed of a joint on the side of the road in the middle of the desert for no apparent reason. I'm really excited that he moved to my side of the country, but I still never see him. He's also on the search for a new band to play in, so if you're interested, head on up to Mendocino. If you need references, look no further than BRAINBOW, VERY VERY SNEAKY, TRIGGERMORTIS (Actually, the guitarist is some dude named "Old Dead Steve", but he looks eerily like Rymo) and the aforementioned bands. 

RYMODEE'S TOP TEN OF 2012

   i don't really consider myself current in the area of music appreciation, or any other type of appreciation, so forgive me. this is going to be slightly personal. probably the biggest thing to happen to me this year and the hardest to do was reconciling with my family. my family is pretty weird. i don't want to put too much of my life up on the internet, but maybe this is good...my dad died about 15 years ago. my mother immediately decided to move to some small town in indiana, marry some guy 20 years older than her and stops talking to me and my sister, except for me calling her on her birthday, and christmas. after about ten years of her never calling me back, i just gave up. my sister and i have never been very close. neither of us did anything hurtful to each other, but we just aren't close like brother and sister should be. last month i got a wild hair up my ass and called my mom and told her i was sick of it and felt abandoned during a delicate time in my life, and it was probably one of the main reasons why i had become a drunk, emotionless asshole. she said she was surprised to hear from me and surprised to hear that i cared. we're not perfect now, but we call each other once or twice a week, and even sent letters to each other. this might not seem like much, but after fifteen years, it's really uplifting and emotional to have your family call you just to see what's up.

    the next thing i can think of is that i learned to say "sure, why not?". I had been living in chattanooga for three years and i really loved it. i worked with my friends, i could tour without fear of losing my job, and there was a giant crew of punks in town my age and they all played fucking fantastic music. i think at one time there were twenty bands comprised of 35-50 year old punks and i think every damn one of them was mind blowing. i also worked with penguins! i held them, played with them, fed them, painted with them, made sure their babies were safe, and i loved every minute of it. i'm getting off track, so i'll generalize by saying that i was very happy there. well, one day i was just minding my own business with jesse jane in mendocino. she had, for almost a year, tried to get me to talk to a luthier in town that was a friend of her family. i often entertained the idea, a far cry from building a giant bass out of a dozen tin cans and a handrail, but still something i thought i could grasp onto. fuck that though, right? i'm finally happy, and i'm in THREE BANDS! besides, i really hate change. i really do. most of it is really completely pointless, and most of it is completely pointless. well, one thing led to another, and i said "sure, why not?" and i up and met the dude and we hit it off pretty well and even shot the shit for a few hours (and i don't really do that). it's not something i can make happen all the time. (i'm still a grump) but whenever i catch myself about to say "no" for no good reason, i make myself say "sure, why not?".

    the third thing i can think of is that i'm a luthier apprentice living in a barn in the woods.

    #4. i found out way too late in my life that i like ANTISEEN and PENTAGRAM. i had written ANTISEEN off about 50 years ago after deciding (i can't remember why) that they were just racist rednecks and assholes. recently i found an ANTISEEN 7" at a thrift store, and since it was a sub pop single, i thought i would sell it to some dumb shit head. that dumb shit head isn't going to get my ANTISEEN record, he doesn't deserve it. if it weren't for a documentary i accidentally watched on the singer of PENTAGRAM, i wouldn't know, or even care to know, anything about them. i have never seen or heard an album. never heard anyone even talk about them. i vaguely remember seeing their patches on some metal dudes jackets. the documentary was moving (i heard it made mike wilson's mom cry) and i instantly fell in love with the music.

    #5 them DICKS reissues are pretty fucking great.

    #6 sometime this year, without even making a decision about it, i just stopped drinking like a god damn maniac every day. don't get me wrong, if you show up on the porch of the barn with some whiskey, we're going to scare off the local sasquatch population, but i just don't feel like doing it all the time any more.

     #7 that HICKEY record is real nice.

     #8 i actually recorded some solos, and it wasn't nearly as terrible an experience as i thought it might be.
 
     #9 ya'll heard them NIGHTMARE BOYZZZ records yet?

    #10 TBIAPB final tour. i will call it the catalyst of closures. jesus fucking christ!