We Came Out Of The Basement And Took Over The Living Room

2 Ton Bug really killed it the other night; things were fairly chaotic, but not in a raging let's-fuck-shit up kind of way, more like a we-know-how-frigging-goofy-we-look kind of way. The guitar player sings through a telephone receiver set on infinite echo, and the drummer (D.Gookin) has a kit that includes a "snare" made of broken cymbals/sheet metal along with a couple of empty steel garbage cans, Bob Bert circa Pussy Galore style. There's also a saxaphone, which fortunately you couldn't really hear, and keyboards. 2 Ton Bug are kinda like thrash for hipster kids who don't know any better, but it's fun if you've got nothing else to do. They've got an album coming out soon on everybody's favorite Pregnant Records (Genders, Open Star Clusters, White Sun, etc), and until then you can download a 1/15/10 live show from Boston here. The two tracks I've posted below are from that same live recording, though I've cleaned up and leveled them out just a bit.

I seem to remember the set from Florida=Death as being just one long song, which had these monumental crushing waves to it and kept me standing there watching most of the time (and I usually like to roam around a lot). I'll admit, sometimes I'll see a name like Florida=Death with the type of scene that they're from and think that it must be just a couple of guys sitting alone in a room with keyboards and effects boxes, randomly twisting knobs and so forth, but in this case it's not-- there's some genuine musicianship here, plus they've got a great drummer, which really made the heavier parts kick that much harder. Florida=Death have been around a while; they put out a 12" last year on Hot Air Press that I only bought a couple of weeks ago and hadn't listened to yet, so Friday night was my first time actually hearing them and it was definitely an eye-opener.

By the way, right now you can get the Florida=Death one-sided 12" from Hot Air Press in a package deal ($11 ppd) which includes the Cold Snap one-sided 7" and the awesome Mammoth Hunter 7"-- just go to the Hot Air Press web store (hotairpress.org) and click on "one of everything". The Florida=Death 12" is one long track, 25 minutes long; I made a vinyl rip of it as of yesterday, and you'll find a 7-minute long edit posted below.

Another local band, Angry Times, also played Friday night, and they were interesting enough to make me wish they had a demo or something I could buy-- I don't think they've even recorded anything yet. Not to curse them with too many local references, but were sorta like what would happen if you took Werewolf Police and The Inclined Plane and mixed them together, adding two keyboards plus a bass player who sometimes played a little too spacey for his own good. Wait til those soft-hearted folks at CT Indie and the Advocate get ahold of these guys, they're gonna shit.


2 Ton Bug -

"2 Ton Bug Theme"

"Time Trabblin'"

Florida=Death -

"Depression Era Music"
(edit)

(these files are now listen-only)

You Know Your Way Ain't The Way I Do

"I did see them once, in late 1996.... people who saw them on that tour with the replacement drummer said they weren't a patch on what they used to be, but they blew my head off. It's what they mean by Suction: head down, hammer down, no talking between songs, simplistic barrage." --Rick Stanley (Dropkick Records), "Cold Mechanical Ecstasy: A Brief Oral History of feedtime", Z Gun #3

"The sound of feedtime was pretty much the definition of our limitations." --Tom (original feedtime drummer), Z Gun #3

It's probably not even worth talking about which of Feedtime's three original albums from the '80s was better, because all three were amazing, although I'd probably have to give the edge to "Shovel" (LP #2) if I really had to choose. Not that "Suction" (LP #3, not counting "Cooper-S" which was all covers) was anything less than brilliant, especially since it includes "I'll Be Rested" and "Pumping a Line", two of my favorite Feedtime tracks ever.

My copy of "Suction" was already pretty beat up when I first bought it used, and some of the crackling shows through when you listen to the quieter parts through headphones (something that's not even noticeable through speakers out in the open, or in your car when you're driving around). Still, it's always been hard to pass up buying any Feedtime vinyl I've ever stumbled upon no matter what condition it was in, just because this stuff wasn't as easy to find back then, and the chances of finding any shop owners who gave a shit about Feedtime (great as they were) back then were few and far between. Maybe it's not so easy to understand now, but in my post-hardcore, post-Oi!, post-AC/DC world of the mid-to-late '80s, hearing a Feedtime record (whose music contains all three of those elements, just for starters) for the first time was reason enough to jump around like a friggin' mental case.




Feedtime -

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"Motorbike Girl"

"Drag Your Dog"

"Pumping a Line"

"I'll Be Rested"

"Valve Frank"

There's Bad Things Soaked Into The Wood

Last night's show at Cafe Nine was practically as crowded as any show I've ever seen there, at least as far as a mostly-locals bill, plus it started early. I got there at my usual 10 o'clock only to find out that I'd already missed one band, which was no big deal since I really only wanted to see Get Haunted anyway. And, Get Haunted were great; not as holy-friggin-backflips great as when I first saw them three weeks ago (though, generally, expectations tend to wear down my opinion any time I see a band a second time), but something that was still well worth leaving the house for three hours just to see.

It could be that the Cafe Nine stage was a bit small for Joey to do much moving around on, but then the stage at The Oasis is pretty small, too (what do those two things have to do with each other? I'm not sure I really know). Also, Kevin had to use a borrowed amp and as a result ended up being way louder than the rest of the band, but by the time they were done playing I was starting to like it that way. Make no mistake, though, Get Haunted stand apart from almost everything else that I'm listening to right now-- sorta happenstance bluegrass/mountain gospel, but uneven and hard enough where you could take it as rock if you wanted to. I'm going to post a few older tracks here (a new album might be coming out next month), which I hope the band doesn't mind me passing around; there's something captured in these demos that's cool and different, and I think more people should get the chance hear them.


Get Haunted -

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"Bell Witch"

"1000's of Devils"

"Black Lodge"

It Would've Been Better Had I Never Known

Once I got my shit straightened out and was no longer a little nubber first getting into punk rock, my main goal was to own a Pagans single. While a good amount of the straight edge kids I knew in the scene back then got into hardcore by listening to SoCal bands like the Adolescents and Youth Brigade, I was all about the Midwest and East Coast, so alongside the usual Negative Approach and Minor Threat cassettes, the car that I was driving around in had Replacements, Pagans, Zero Boys, and Rocket From The Tombs tapes stuffed in the glovebox. One of the first tape compilations that I ever owned had a live version of the Pagans' "She's a Cadaver" on it, and I used to play that thing constantly. Eventually I found one of the Pagans' original '70s Drome singles ("Dead End America"/"Little Black Egg"), though by then collections like "Buried Alive" and "The Godlike Power of The Pagans" were being pressed and it became much easier to get an overview of what the band was all about.

"Family Fare" gets touted as "the Pagans' final studio release", though from what I can tell it was mostly just a collection of some of the Pagans' late-80's Treehouse singles. And while there's nothing even half as powerful as "Six and Change" or "Give Up", there's still some pretty decent stuff here; "I Stand Alone" would work great as one of the songs Cafe Nine blares over the PA in between bands (I'm trying to figure out if Tommy Perkins sounds like this or not), and "Us and All Our Friends are So Messed Up" is one of my top five favorite Pagans songs ever. If this is your first exposure to the band, then by all means start hunting now-- you're bound to have an easier time of it than I had, scrounging around for scraps 24-some-odd years ago.




Pagans -

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"Her Name Was Jane"

"I Do"

"I Stand Alone"

"(Us And) All Our Friends Are So Messed Up"

I Don't Like You And I Won't Pretend To

Here's a bunch of photos that I took at the big Off With Their Heads show on Thursday night; technically the show was put on by the Whitney House, but it was held at the Charter Oak Cultural Center, which was a good thing since it really would've been too big a show for everybody to fit into the Whitney House basement like the previous two times that OWTH came through this area. And seriously, this show was friggin' huge-- there was still plenty of room to walk around and stuff, but pretty much everybody I've ever seen at CT house show over the past two or three years was there (save for a couple of people I can think of off the top of my head), plus I saw some people whom I'd never thought I'd see at a DIY Hartford punk show, but whatever. Some technical fuckups with the sound equipment had me sorta bummed out about halfway through the night, but OWTH's set was a satisfying near-riot (even OLD PEOPLE were stage diving) so in the end it didn't even matter.

The Slow Death (from Minnesota, a retuned version of Pretty Boy Thorson and The F'n A's, whom I think played The Whitney House basement at least once) started things off early because they had another show in Brooklyn later that same night. Mikey Erg is drumming for them on this tour, and he ran through the Spin Doctors' greatest hits during the soundcheck, which was sorta hilarious. One of the Hartford Advocate's offshore indians labeled The Slow Death "country-punk" or something, but "Another Song About Phones" (their new 7", which isn't even listed on the Kiss of Death web site yet) can be pretty easily matched up with the a-side of that mysterious Ean Eraser single, so fans of that new-type fake '80s wave-o rock could probably dig The Slow Death too, and not just the one or two people who bought Armchair Martian records.

Iron Hand were up next, their first set in 7 or 8 months I guess, and they freakin' killed. I'd remembered them as being really heavy, but I didn't remember them playing with this much quickness; instead of their usually steamrollering sludgy/crusty stuff, they almost sounded like '86 vintage Youth of Today. Of course, I could only hear the guitar and drums, no vocals or bass, which maybe explains why my thinking is so far off. Stefan from Estrogen Highs is playing bass for them now, with a new drummer, Ross (ex-Tombstone Minds), who was awesome. I stood behind the drums for a few songs and watched him, and almost couldn't believe how dead-on fast he was. Then Dead Uncles went on right afterwards, and because of the sound issues I couldn't really hear everything they were doing, only that people were moving around during their set, which was good. Brian from Iron Hand even jumped in like a maniac for the sing-along part to "Village Idiots", which was one of the high points of the night. They might've said they were going to do a cover at one point and then decided not to, I don't really remember.

Whatever problems the P.A. presented were sort of erased once Off With Their Heads started playing. I don't know if it's because they were the only band to set up on the stage, holding the sound in and making them sound better, but OWTH seemed to have the best sound of the night. It didn't seem like their set list has really moved at all since their first Whitney House appearance two years ago, but it didn't really matter. Like I said back then, seeing Off With Their Heads reminds me of how much I still like punk rock, even if I act like an indie rock prick most of the time. I ended up going home with a rectangular bruise on the outside of my leg from being bumped against the stage so many times, just like after seeing shows at the Tune Inn and the Norwalk Anthrax years ago.


Off With Their Heads -

"That Must Be Nigel With The Brie"

"Big Mouth"

Slow Death -

"Another Song About Phones"

Iron Hand -

"Liquid Assets"

Dead Uncles -

"Wholesome Sleep Deprivation"

(all of these files are now listen-only)