Don't Know What It Is But I'll Keep It Anyway

"Flirtatious Negative Headjive" was the second Creature Did 7" but the third one I bought, since I bought them out of order. It ended up being my favorite out of all of them, though not everyone had the same opinion, I guess. When I bought this at a show in Danbury, Kevin told me later that day in an interview that not everyone liked this 7" as much as the other two ("We learned afterwards that you can't put any throwaway songs on the b-side of your record because people will take them seriously no matter what"). There's actually an almost-funny story about that show: Chixdiggit wasn't on the bill-- the show was The Muffs, Uncle Joe's Big Ol' Driver (anyone remember them?) and Creature Did-- but they were touring with UJBOD, so in-between bands they jumped up on stage, played a few songs, and then quickly jumped off. I don't know this firsthand, because I was outside the club at the time, but that's what I was told later at least.

The third Creature Did single might've represented the band's sound the best, but the first two were recorded at Trod Nossel-- where a lot of the tracks on Chilton's "Dusted In Memphis" were recorded, fuck yeah-- which is pretty good all by itself. I think what makes this one my favorite is that every song manages to hit on something wicked in one way or another, plus they're all a bit different from each other. The title track is one of the usual top-level Creature Did power-rock efforts; I think Kevin's vocals would work better here if they sounded a bit more unhinged, but otherwise it's a song that always left blisters when they played it live. "This Is All" features some nifty harmonica playing-- no, really-- from Joe Roberto (of G'Nu Fuz), and "Swimming Through Stucco" (one of the throwaways?) is about as close as Creature Did ever came to a pop song built upon a big hook. "Wrong Idea" goes completely in the opposite direction: recorded live, it starts out like a big thrashy mess, but then the breakdown/mosh part kicks in and drops a neat groove in the middle of everything. Though I normally like to leave one or two songs off when I post an EP, in this case I couldn't make up my mind on which songs to leave out so I figured fuckit, I'll post them all.

Somewhere along the way M.U.D.D. Industries paired together this single plus China Pig's "Aurel" single (MUDD #5 and #6) as a limited-edition double pack on splattered green and blue vinyl. I believe only 50 of these double packs were made, and I own two of them. One of the sets I have came with two copies of "Flirtatious Negative Headjive" by mistake, so all told I actually have four copies of the same EP. Yeah, pot is lame.




Creature Did -

I Wanna Do My Hair In More Of A '90s Fashion

There were a bunch of CT indie compilations that came out in the early to mid '90s, all of them featuring mainly Danbury area bands, and all of them worth hunting down: the "Chop Whip Grate Liquefy" LP/CD on MUDD, the "One" EP that Capsule put out, "Destroy All Mediocrity" on TPOS (Malcolm Tent's label), and the Frozen Monkey CD. Out of all of them, "Destroy All Mediocrity" was the most ambitious-- a three-record set (12", 10", and 7"), all on colored vinyl, plus a cassette and a zine. A CD was also included with each set, but that was only so that Malcolm could take a bunch of dollar-bin CDs (one of mine was the New Jack City soundtrack) and write nasty things on them; "Total scam", "Cheap crap", "Boycott the CD format" and so forth.

Around 500 sets of "Destroy All Mediocrity" were made, with about 4 to 6 different cover variations, depending upon who you talk to. The covers were actual carnival posters, printed at the Triangle Poster Co. in Pittsburgh, and then folded in two or three places to hold all of the records in place before being sealed inside a huge poly bag. All of this assembling was done by hand, I'm sure, and so along with the cassette and the records, a whole stack of leftover goodies from the TPOS back catalog were also tossed inside each bag-- unused 7" picture sleeves, LP center labels, J-cards from cassette demos, zines, and whatever else.




Some of the leftover sleeves, labels, and crap that were in my copies
One result of all of these extra goodies-- most likely unforseen at the time-- was that, after spending years in a crate stacked upright with all of my other records leaning on it, the cassette (along with everything else) would press against the vinyl records and cause all kinds of bending and scuffing, to the point where none of the three "Destroy All Mediocrity" LPs that I own are anywhere near flat, with a good amount of surface noise also involved. But, you know, D.I.Y. and all that, is still a beautiful thing.



Another one of the front cover variations
There's almost an hour and 40 minutes' worth of music included in this whole set, including the "Mop Tape" which is actually its own separate release (TPOS-50, as opposed to TPOS-100), but since the Mop Tape and the vinyl were released together on the same day, I've given all the mp3's the same tags. I ripped every damn song on the compilation except for two (sorry, no Chicken Doody Faget for you), and all of the leftover songs that I'm not posting individually, including every song on the Mop Tape, will be available for a little while as their own "Mop Files" .zip file towards the bottom of this post.

The overview that "Destroy All Mediocrity" gives of the Danbury, CT scene at the time is fairly mind-boggling; by my interpretation, a full 16 of the bands here are all from one town, which is truly impressive. Malcolm, of course, was good enough to see that a whole variety of styles and bands were included on the compilation, not just Danbury bands; for instance, there are a bunch of "Confederacy of Scum" bands on here (Anti-Seen, Cocknoose, Mad Brother Ward, and the like), as well as some crazy electronic stuff (Punch Drunk, from Philadelphia) and even a black metal side project (!!), Havohej. I'm going to focus mainly on the Danbury bands, so this is what you're getting:

Stubb - I think I gave their 7-inch a bad review, but Stubb were actually really good the one time I saw them live, and their song here might be my favorite one on the whole compilation... besides referencing A Tribe Called Quest.
Her Tears - Her Tears are almost definitely the most criminally forgotten of all the '90s Danbury bands; they released a bunch of great singles and compilation tracks, and their shoegaze-y pop sound seemed almost perfect for the SpinArt/Slumberland/Parasol type sound that was pretty big at the time, but they never really took off. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart fans, take note (actually, please go away now).
Freakbaby - Four-and-a-half-minute guitar jams aren't necessarily my idea of fun, but still, it's Freakbaby. You'll get over it, like I did.
Creature Did - I think Kevin always felt burdened by the "Nirvana" tag, not that this song helps matters much. Still, "Come In" is most definitely rocking, and would've deserved a better re-recording, though I don't think that ever happened.
HED - Most HED songs are too over-the-top for me to even keep up with-- this song sounds like what would happen if you took the first Phantom Tollbooth and Dinosaur LPs and melted them together-- but you can tell that they must've been a monster band to see live. Jim Roberto is now in Creepdust, a great '79 S.F. style p-rock outfit (à la Negative Trend), that is if they're still around.
G'nu Fuz - Folk/blues-type rock with some really inventive playing-- most of the time when I listen to their records I go, "There's no other band I like that can pull this off." The entire G'nu Fuz discography is downloadable at their web site-- www.gnufuz.com-- and there's some really awesome stuff there.
Shyster, Shyster, and Flywheel - NOTE: This track skips! This woulda been one of my most-listened-to songs on the comp, except that NOTE (anal retentives and other uptight aitch-moes): This track skips! I've collected three sets of this compilation over the years, and the Shyster Shyster and Flywheel track skips in the same place on all three copies. I'm including it anyway, because the song is great, and the band featured Bruce Wingate and Bill Knapp and is otherwise an adjunct to my coffee table book, "Please Kill Punk Rock Before Bill Knapp Joins Another Band", which I never got to finish back in the '90s. P.S. Maybe if you ask nicely I'll e-mail you an mp3 of "Greek Diner Morning", which totally kills.
Malcolm Tent - It's his comp, so I gotta include his song. It's a pretty little instrumental, actually-- almost like that one Big Star outtake-- and somewhat different from Malcolm's "agressive acoustic punk stylings" that I'm more used to.
Leadfoot - I think they're a Danbury band, since they were also on Malcolm's "Songs To Make You Shiver" Halloween compilation. Grungy hair-wag, way more rhythmically competent than a lot of the stuff on here, I guess.
China Pig - Not their usual atmospheric post-rock output; this one has a really strong Breadwinner/Honor Role-like guitar riff.
Allawiscious Pole -A freak-folk track riddled with shards of noise and feedback, completely predicts the '00s if you know what I mean. One of my favorite tracks on the compilation. Don't bother asking me who this is, though, I really have no friggin' clue.
Bunnybrains - Legendary kitchen-sink-rock outfit, their song here sounds like it could be a Crystalized Movements track left over from "Mind Disaster" (go listen to "Communal Storybook" and see if I'm not right).
Monsterland - A really blown-out version of "Chris' Clone", and nothing like the version that's on "Loser Friendly". I've never seen this listed on the track listing for any of their demos, so I have no idea where this is from... mostly because it's not "Chris' Clone" at all, but a song called "Flesh Machine (Fuddhoney)" (dig the reference). Thanks to Greg Vegas for clearing that up.
Closet Full of Fear - Noise project from the '80s featuring some guys who would go on to be in HED and Monsterland. Pretty fun, when you think of it that way.

The 12":

Stubb -

"El Segundo"

Her Tears -

"Spin"

Shyster, Shyster, and Flywheel -

"Joan, The Monkey Loves You"
(fucker skips, just so you know)

Freakbaby -

"Freak Baby vs. The Dead C"

Creature Did -

"Come In"

Bunnybrains -

"Creepin' Round Yer Winder"

Leadfoot -

"Angel Dust"

Malcolm Tent -

"Gladly, The Cross-Eyed Bear"




The 10":

Monsterland -

"Flesh Machine (Fuddhoney)"

G'nu Fuz -

"Bunkhouse Tales"

Closet Full of Fear -

"4:52"

China Pig -

"Merkel Gortex"





The 7":

HED -

"Magic Monkey"

Allawiscious Pole -

"Crawlin' Blues"







Here's the file with the rest of the tracks, including the Mop Tape:

Destroy All Mediocrity mop files.zip

Also included with the compilation was a 16-page zine listing the entire TPOS discography (of which "Destroy All Mediocrity" was release #100) in pretty good detail, plus accounts of Malcolm's misadventures that came with releasing GG Allin and Anti-Seen records that the pressing plant was constantly rejecting and so forth. It makes for a nice brisk read (and you'll need to read it to find clues as to who Drakarr and The Warr really was), so I've made a .zip file of the scans of all 16 pages, which you can grab here:

TPOS 100 zine images.zip

There's two sample pages from the zine at the very bottom of this post, if you want to check those out first (as always, clicking on the images will give you a larger copy).




M.U.D.D.-issued poetry zine that was in one of my copies




I also got a couple of old The Piece of Shit one-sheets;
here's one side of one of them







Two sample pages from the zine that came with the compilation

I'm Feeling A Little Inexact Now

Here's the first Creature Did single (note the pre-Danbury address), recorded at legendary Trod Nossel no less. Now, Creature Did may have been the undisputed riff masters of 90's Danbury indie rock, but imagine what Monster Magnet could've done with a riff like this. The chicks and blow would've been piled higher than a Wade Boggs road trip. (Apologies to everyone who forgot all about Monster Magnet* until I ruined it just now.)

According to the back sleeve, a cassette was made with two extra songs on it, but I don't have it. That means there's at least two Creature Did tapes floating around that I don't have, I think.

"You are tewing me the twuth? I beweeve yew!"

*apologies to everyone that can't remember who Wade Boggs is, also




Creature Did -

(this file is now listen-only)

"Undress Your Barbie Doll"

Put The Queen Back On The Shelf

A compilation of four great Danbury bands, "One" was released on Her Tears' Matt Chiavelli's Capsule imprint (go ahead and Google it, it's still around). I can't remember the exact year this came out and darn it if there isn't a date on either the label or the sleeve to help me out, but I'm positive it was either '94 or '95. Whatever the year, this gets my vote for best Ct. indie 7" comp ever, especially since almost every band on here was either peaking or just beginning to hit their stride. I'm leaving the Stubb track out because it's nowhere near their best, but Creature Did and Atlas, especially, released nothing but great stuff from this point on, and the Her Tears track remains one my favorite Ct. 7-inch sides ever.

The evidence:

Creature Did - If thunderous riffage and lots of random feedback are your thing, try this on for size. The 90's Danbury scene rocked your ass off, and I'm here to prove it.
Atlas - Atlas is responsible for two of the absolute best Ct. records of the 90's (their "Confusion Comforts Me" 7-inch and a self-titled CD); here, they cover one of Danbury transplant Bruce Wingate's songs off of Adrenalin O.D.'s infamous 1989 turd, "Ishtar", which is a completely brilliant and hilarious idea if you ask me.
Her Tears - Easily the best Her Tears song out of many great ones; the distorted bass riff kills me, and just when you think it couldn't get any better the song downshifts at the very end, like a little shoegazer mosh part. Would that I had a better way to offer it than from this crappy 7" pressing, but it's still killer.

Creature Did -

"I Am Immune"

Atlas -

"Joe From Lodi"

Her Tears -

"Pill Cutter"

(these files are now listen-only)

Sucker State

It took them a few tries for 'em to get there, this being their third or fourth 7", but Creature Did hold down the spot for best piece of hard rock vinyl to come out of Danbury in the 90's, except for maybe that Jeff Leopard record, which wasn't strictly a Danbury record so it probably doesn't count. Unfortunately, this is also the record that got Creature Did linked to grunge, but Nirvana really fucking sucked so let's all admit that and move on, why don't we.

There was a story going around that one or two big shot-types came sniffing around because of this single, and a review in Flipside that predicted Creature Did were gonna be the next big thing or something like that, but nothing ever really came of it. Creature Did did end up demo-ing an album for one label, as far as I know, but then scrapped the recording and started from scratch with local recording wiz Sean Sheridan for a CD that they released on their own (hence the CD's eventual title, "Plan B"). I'll be posting the CD sometime in the future; it happens that I took the photo the band used on the inside of the booklet, so you know I'm really dying to get to it.

Since I'm not willing to admit that this is a grunge record-- a tag that's more the result of the time and place that this record comes from, and Kevin's self-described scratchy vocals-- I'll just say that this is a great big chunk of punkish, straight-up heavy rock. The flip ("Sucker State") is a bit speedier than the a-side, and overall these are probably Creature Did's two best songs, so what could be better than that?

As for the pic on the front, one or two scene locals were goofing around with some face paint while someone else had a camera and some software, and before you know it, instant picture sleeve! Then there's the label name ("Thirstin' For More"), which can be taken as reference to Thurston Moore's announcement that "Danbury is the next Seattle" during a Sonic Youth show in 1993, which ended up becoming a Rolling Stone quote and pretty much the kiss of death for everyone. If only it had been Brian Sinclair saying "Danbury is the next New Britain", then everyone would've ignored him and a bunch of bands would've probably stayed together longer, who knows.




Creature Did -

"Friends Are Hard To Bury"

"Sucker State"

(these files are now listen-only)