Swing Ding Amigos

First demo circa 1999

The Swing Ding Amigos were originally from Nogales, but spent most of their existence in Tucson after brothers, Isaac and Levi Reyes, along with El Jimmy moved up here. This early recording finds them still a little wet behind the ears and still really pumped on Scared of Chaka, their most obvious influence at this point. They would eventually evolve a sound of their own that was faster and tighter than Scared of Chaka and just as catchy. I think the most interesting song here is the last one “About Today” which was a hidden track and doesn’t sound like any of the other songs on here. Some people might know this as the Ramen demo, because other versions have a Top Ramen cover, but I think I got one from a batch of one-of-a kind hand made CD-Rs probably thrown together for some out of town shows. Or I could be wrong and that might be a whole different demo. I got to spend a lot of time on the road with these guys when they would travel with the Blacks. They are extremely fun guys to hang out with. Currently Isaac is kicking ass with Lenguas Largas who Levi was also playing with until about a month ago when he moved to Phoenix. Brandon Ugstad and I are supposed to make a record with El Jimmy, doing a bunch of songs he wrote, and we were hoping to do that this summer, but we’ve been so busy with other projects we haven’t had a chance to even meet up yet. This is the first of many great recordings by this band that I will eventually post.

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La Merma

Ciudad Fronteriza cass. 1997

At this point (15-16 years) La Merma has got to be S. Arizona’s longest continuous running punk band. Maybe even the longest continuous running punk band in the whole state (or would that be Blackfire or some PHX band I don't know about?) . The funny thing about that is that they’re not completely from Arizona or the U.S. They have the rare distinction of existing between the third world poverty of Nogales, Mexico and the scary militarized zone Nogales, Az. has become. Their sound reflects a similar dualism combining American Southern California melodic punk, like early Bad Religion with a heavy Spanish punk influence, especially from Eskorbuto, who they sound a lot alike and they praise here in their song “Eskorbuto.” The riff in La Merma’s “Mi Ciudad” is a pretty blatant rip off of Eskorbuto’s “Cuidado!” but they add their own twist to the song so it comes off as less a rip off and more of a folk-tradition tribute to one of their beloved influences. "A Bailar" is my favorite song here and worthy of many a mix-tape. This is their first release and despite many line up changes over the years they are more active than ever recently touring on the East Coast and in Europe and are currently recording their newest record in Tucson.

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My Gun Named Trina

Class Clown Reformed 7" circa 1997

This is the other band I know of from Tombstone, “the town to tough to die,” where I saw a seven year old kid smoking cigarettes last time I was there. MGNT came along after the first wave of Cochise County bands. I’m sure all these guys grew up seeing those early bands, but they are removed from that scene by time and sonic differences. They drew more from post-Operation Ivy 90s ska-punk bands, but like Hell Day there is a naïve originality that adds some charm to it. It’s an early recording from Scott Becerra’s 4 AM studio in Sierra Vista and you can tell that the band and Scott were still getting their shit together, but the rough recording adds to the charm. The guitar sounds like a banjo and the saxophone sounds like a clarinet. If this was recorded in a proper studio it would be over polished and way less fun sounding. The songs are pretty catchy and that holds the whole thing together. Guitar player Ray Walker would move to Flagstaff and be integral to the Robothouse scene there in the early-mid 2000s, putting on shows and playing in bands like JETOMI and, more recently, joining and quitting Feel Free. Drummer Chris Ziegler would move to S. California to work as a writer and occasionally play music. I used to randomly run into him at shows or parties when my bands were playing out there regularly.

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Hell Day

Raw Flesh Mind cass. circa '94/'95, Ugly Like My Butt cass. 1993

Here’s one by request, but coincidentally was on my short short list of posts. Hell Day was from Tombstone and is the third in the holy trinity of Cochise County Hardcore.There were many other bands, but there was a sonic kinship between Malignus Youth, Head Space and Hell Day. Hell Day would put their own spin on the sound. The vocals are the focal point and where the MY/HS influence is most evident, but they opt out of blast beat speed and drawn out jams for more of a straight punk sound. The vocals and melodic guitar and bass work make it sound like more than just simple punk though. Slight pop and jazz influences show up too. There seems to be a naïve originality to it, like being isolated in Tombstone limited their exposure to music so they took every type of music they heard and mixed it into a pot and came up with something unique. This is only one of two punk bands I ever heard of coming out of Tombstone. You would think that a town that celebrates violence, death and murder would be a punk mecca, but then again less than 2,000 people live there so Hell Day and My Gun Named Trina are actually real rarities. I think Hell Day relocated to Tucson eventually and were actually practicing in the room next to us on Pennington St. They were around a long time but only played sporadically and I never met them. Apparently a third demo exists. If anybody has it I want a copy.  

Raw Flesh Mind download here

Ugly Like My Butt download here

Primates

demo 1993

I was looking at the list of bands that Ryan Butler has been recording at his Arcane Digital studio and a lot of them are from Yuma. Besides the Wongs the only other Yuma band I know of was the Primates. The first time I ever played music in front of people (with a band called Block) was in Yuma at a show in an Elks Lodge. Almost 20 years and hundreds of shows followed but that show was by far the wildest I’ve ever played. One kid broke his arm in the pit, went to the hospital, had it set, and came back to the show! If my memory serves me right those Yuma shows were set up by a guy named John McCloud who played in this band, Primates. It’s too bad this band existed in Yuma in ’93 and not Tucson in ’99 because they would have been kin to the Blacks and the Spites with their love of the rawer early grunge sounds of Mudhoney and American garage punk. Last time I remember talking to McCloud he was going to try out for a Scottish-punk band, the Real Mackenzie’s, in Canada. (insert Rolling Stones/Scottish/Bestiality joke here).

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the Wongs

Reanimate My Baby Lp 1999

Here is an earlier Rousseau project.  This will be the first of a few posts that gets away from Phoenix, Tucson or Flagstaff and into the smaller, weirder towns in Arizona. The Wongs were originally from the god-forsaken town of Yuma but relocated to Phoenix. They might have been in Phoenix by the time they recorded this, but I like to think of them as a Yuma band. They actually sound like they should have been from Tucson in the mid-90s with their super catchy garage punk stomp. It’s as good as, if not better than many of the Tucson garage bands from the 90s. Released on Rip Off Records, but I bet they didn’t have to beg Greg Lowery to put it out like the Spites did for their 7” on Rip Off.

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Earthmen and Strangers

LP 2009

I thought that Ryan Rousseau could do no wrong, but sometime in this last year I saw the current incarnation of Destruction Unit and I did not like them. They dove into a moody, dark, gothic post-punk sound that reminded me of the fist time I saw Digital Leather with just Sean and Arrow playing keyboards and singing, which I thought sucked. Nevertheless Rousseau’s songwriting skills are better than ever, but it’s more evident in Earthmen and Strangers, my favorite project of his so far. Everything is more thought out and controlled compared to his noisier punk bands, but it still has enough punch to keep the head bobbing. There is some mood and reverb, but it’s not dark and overdone. “Bartender” is just about a perfect song. “Photo Lie,” which also shows up on a Digital Leather release is done here. I don’t know if Sean or Ryan wrote it, but both versions are great. There is also a quitter, tamer version “Desert Snow” than the one that appears on Tokyo Electron’s AZ 238 LP. He’s taken his familiar song structures and let them open up and expand into poppy new wave indie rock songs rather than just shoving the music down your throat like some of his past and current work. It’s mature, but in all the right ways.

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My Feral Kin

The Blackened Flat Tax Cd 2008

This band played at my house when I lived in Flagstaff, but I missed the show because I had to work. My roommate, Dirty Steve, who is always looking out for my record collection, picked me up a copy of their CD. When I got home that night the house was trashed, our wood burning stove was demolished, the walls were covered in beer, beer cans everywhere, a few stragglers were passed out or still partying and hard drugs were consumed. After hearing this CD I thought that surly all this chaos couldn’t have been caused by this band, and it wasn’t. Those honors go to Sante Fe’s High Octane Hell Ride, who know how to party. I’m sure seeing the quirky indie-pop of My Feral Kin was a bizarre contrast to High Octane’s hardcore-thrash, but those are often the most fun shows. I’ve listened to this at least once a month since I got it. I lost the actual CD along the way and the above art work (which I found online) is not the same as I remember. Anyway I don’t know anything about these guys, but the music here is great. Wandering, dueling guitars make up most of the foundation while catchy high pitched vocals cover a huge array of instruments with catchy nursery rhyme patterns, except with words that are not nursery rhyme material. The structure is sometimes short and poppy, but some of the songs drift into extensive jams without beating the wandering to death. I can’t believe this band isn’t huge with the people that read Pitchfork and buy current Sub Pop releases. My half-assed internet search makes it seem like they’re not active, which is a shame because I would have loved to see how they’d followed this up.

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G-Whiz

Eat At Eds Cd 1992

I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for pop-punk. Of course I love the first wave of Brit style power-pop like Buzzcocks and I really love the more-punk-than-pop sounds of bands like Sicko and Statues. J Church is one of my all time favorite bands, but that’s not what I’m talking about when I say pop-punk. I’m talking about the super sappy, heart-on-sleeve, every song is about a girl that broke your heart style pop-punk. G-Whiz perpetrated this style as well as their contemporaries in bands like Big Drill Car, Green Day, All, Chemical People, but never got the amount of attention those band did. Unlike most bands I write about from the early 90s they did extend their reach beyond Arizona. I’m pretty sure they were strictly based in Phoenix, but their singer used to live a few houses down from us when we had a punk house in Tucson’s Iron Horse neighborhood circa ’92-’93. I’m sure he and the rest of the neighbors were ready to give us the Feederz treatment (exile) by the time we all moved out of there. Four months later we had another punk house three blocks down in the same neighborhood and that place made the first place look like a children’s day-care center.

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the Feederz

Jesus 7" 1980

Plenty of info can be found out about the legendary Feederz other places on the web so I won’t waste any time talking about their hi-jinks or show antics, but I will say that getting kicked out of town is some pretty wild west shit (and that was in the 1980s) and that if Frank Discussion pulled some of that shit in Phoenix today Arpaio would throw his ass in Tent City. But the music is as interesting as their history. It was firmly planted in early 80s hardcore, but not the orthodox bonehead hardcore like all that Boston shit. More of the thinking man’s hardcore that was lyrically sharp and sonically diverse like the Dead Kennedy’s or the Minutemen, but still low brow enough to write a song like “Jesus.” All their LPs are currently being re-repressed by Broken Rekids. When I got the first repress of their first LP (the one with the sand paper cover) I discovered that it ended up in my collection next to the Fells LP on Estrus, so I pulled the shrink-wrap off both of them.

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