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
OHMYFUCKINGGOD.
ReplyDeletethe third demo was the most polished, and i thought for sure it would be what you'd have. i'm certain someone still has it.
thank you so much for this. you have no idea.
also, who are you that you know My Gun Named Trina? crazy.
maybe i goofed. maybe they only had two...i could have sworn there was another one. Raw Flesh Mind is what i was thinking was the third...
ReplyDeletebut holy crap. so underrated.
Underrated indeed. Is it possible that I got the chronology backwards and that Raw Flesh Mind came out later? My copy has no date and I definitely had it before Ugly Like My Butt, but it's possible that I got them in reverse order. I was born and raised in Cochise County (Douglas to be exact) but my exposure to the music from there came after I had moved to Tucson around '87. My Gun Named Trina came onto my radar through Scott Becerra who ran 4AM Studios out of his house in Sierra Vista in the mid-late 90s. He recorded the S. Az and Tucson punk bands at the time because he was cheap and came from the scene so he understood the sounds. His work would show up on many bands record and demo releases as well as the "Az Dept. of the Underground" cass. comp and the "If the Drugs Don't Kill Us the Boredom Will" LP comp.
ReplyDeleteyeah, Raw Flesh Mind came out after Ugly, I'm 100% certain. the other (3rd) tape is called Weights and Measures and I believe it came out between these two.
ReplyDeleteI met Scott after I left SV, when i came back for the summer and stayed with Chris MGNT and we recorded the Shitty Wikkets at his house/studio.
Do you have the Dept of the Underground comp? i know i HAVE had it, but not sure if i still do. three milk crates full of cassettes does not an easy browse make.
Also, were you in any bands? I'm pretty sure we've been to some of the same shows. i left AZ in 95...
THX for clearing up the Hell Day chronology. I would love to hear Weights and Measures if you come across it.
ReplyDeleteI remember Chris telling me about Shitty Wikkets. Went to your blog and got the recordings and they're great! Reminds me of early FYP. The write-today/record-tomorrow approach sounds like it wouldn't work, but it did. It's as tight as early FYP or anything Charles Bronson did. I'd like to post it here if you don't mind.
I have the AZ Dept. of the Underground comp and plan on posting it before too long.
Prior to '95 I was in bands like Block, Beer Gut, Hand Solo, Failure to Appear and Hobart. Since then I've been in about 20 others, including a short stint in Los Federales for their last tour. I've been to about two or three shows a week somewhere in Arizona for the last 25 years, so I'm sure our paths have crossed at some point.
By all means, post the Wikkets stuff. The first day we recorded was at Scott's. Some of those songs on that CD were recorded years later when all three of us converged in San Jose and recorded some more with the same "draw straws and write lyrics immediately after the songs are on tape" method. There was one other time we recorded onto a 4 track, but i have no idea what happened to that tape, and I know we didn't record vocals for them.
ReplyDeleteBeer Gut! Were you with them when they played with Scared of Chaka in Tucson? And then were supposed to play a show in SV the next night but the show fell through once everyone was in SV?
Man, what a shitty thing.
Oh yeah, that was when Scared of Chaka just hung out in my backyard and they actually seemed really happy not to be playing. I remember liking Beer Gut. I think saw that band like the first month I started going to shows. I think they played with Los Feds.
ReplyDeletewhen Scared of Chaka came into SV, Chris had seen them the night before and convinced them to come down and play in SV. so, they showed up around 3, at which point Chris started scrambling to find a place for them to play, with a "oh yeah, this band is here to play a show..."
ReplyDeleteof course, this before cell phones, so i took the band to my house, and hung out with them and fed them there, while he drove around looking for a space to play. eventually, they started getting restless figuring out what was going on, and decided to leave, at about the same time i got a call that they could play at Stoopid Jonny's house (singer for MGNT,) but it was too late, and they took off, i'm guessing to your house.
but not before i bought some merch from them, including the first 2 7"s and the LP, which apparenlty used to have a different cover, because this: http://images.alibi.com/image/pix_id/21078/Hutch-Brown-Sayngwich-the-way-to-go-for-puro.jpg?image_height=152&image_width=225 is what mine looks like.
i guessing we've been telling the first and second halves of the same story all this time.
here's the version my clouded mind remembers:
ReplyDeleteBeer Gut formed the day after seeing Scared of Chaka play at Pizza City in Tucson and we wanted to form a fast fuck-all punk band like them, but we missed the mark in all the right ways and hit the mark in all the wrong ways. About a year later they came back through town and Beer Gut played with them (at Toxic Ranch?) and I think they stayed with one of us or partied with us. Somewhere in there it got decided that the next night Beer Gut and Scared of Chaka would be playing in Sierra Vista and somebody was setting it up. I doubt there was one legal drivers license between all of Beer Gut, and still we got there, somehow, but ended up hanging around the parking lot of the City Park (where many great shows once happened) waiting to see if a gig would come together, while some weird Christian group hassled us. We drove back to Tucson with Scared of Chaka and went by the DPC where Southern Culture on the Skids were playing. We didn't go in and ended up walking down the alley to our singer, Pin's house where we partied and I ended up stepping on a fork that was used to scrape pot resin. It pierced my foot between my first and second toe. Cell phones would have nipped all that shit in the bud. Fuck the old days. I bought those same records from them at the same time. Fuckin' great. Their early live shows and recordings were raw and vicious. The original drummer was a beast.
Scared of Chaka eventually did play in Sierra Vista with the Weird Lovemakers, My Gun Named Trina, and Inbred Jed, right? I remember having a flyer for the show, but for some reason didn't go.
yeah, i had moved to Germany by then, but that show sounds right. how Chris convinced them to come back after that debacle of a show (seriously, at 3 pm he looked at me like "oh yeah, i gotta do this thing.") but they did and it ruled. someone filmed it and sent me the tape, which i believe i still have.
ReplyDeletea few years later, Scared of Chaka came to Germany and toured with Turbonegro. of course i went to see them, reminded them of Sierra Vista, and they and Stickerguy/702 Pete and their roadie/driver stayed at my parents' house on the army base after the show.
we watched the video i shot of their show, which is pretty sad cos the audience is me and this skinhead girl i convinced to go check them out with. at some point, i requested Horshack or Start Packing, and Yanul said "well then get up here and dance, smartass" so i handed her the camera and she proceeded to film the amps and the floor.
their roadie said "this looks just like monkey porn" when the camera got handed to her. apparently he worked at a porn store, and the owners also made their own line of videos. one of their bright ideas was to put two porn actors in a room going at it, along with a bunch of monkeys with cameras strapped to their backs, to see what would happen. nothing even worth watching, it turns out.
he signed my record something about monkey porn.
i'm so excited to see them in a month.
My grandma went to that Scared of Chaka show in SV. And Jay played sax with the WLM on Little Nemo. Did anyone see Scared of Chaka when they had the lady bass player? They looked cool, but they weren't nearly as good.
ReplyDeletewhoa, lady bass player?!
ReplyDeletei do remember the drummer on their European tour(Ron?) was confused when i took him to the PX to buy batteries, and they didn't take Deustchmarks.
We saw Scared of Chaka with the girl bass player in Tucson when I was in the Blacks. Yanul was the only original member and they were well past their prime at that point. Prior to this that same girl played in Tucson's Okmoniks, but I think she ditched them for Scared of Chaka. Later on that same tour the Blacks and Swing Ding Amigos played with them in San Francisco. Then a week later we played in Portland and after the show Yanul took us to a punk rock strip club called Mary's. This was probably about the same time he joined the Shins. The girl bass player is doing boutique style clothing design and I heard that Scared of Chaka were playing some live shows recently.
ReplyDeleteMonkey porn! really? How shallow is the creative pool in the porn industry that somebody would come up with that idea? Most of that shit is boring when there is a director and editor that know what their doing and they tried to make monkeys into cinematographers!?
yeah, they're playing AwesomeFest 5 in San Diego, which is in one month, and i could not be more
ReplyDeleteexcited.
Weights and Measures: https://www.dropbox.com/s/lcj6bsg5au0uel7/Hellday-Weights%20and%20Measures%20%28~1992%29.zip?dl=0
ReplyDelete