the Fells

Fun Date 7” circa 1994

This is my favorite Fells 7”. The A side is exactly what you’d expect from the Fells—a noisy amped up garage punk party stomp with some weird Melt Banana-esque noise being made by the guitars and too-cool-to-be-bothered-to-actually-sing monotone vocals. However the B side, “Easy Rider”, is like no other Fells song I ever remember hearing. It’s still pretty raw, but there is a kind of psychedelic melodic feel that never entered their mostly 50s influenced sound. They’re actually playing chords rather than just pounding power-chords. Vocals are still monotone, but somehow smoother. The whole song feels smooth and that’s a term I wouldn’t normally associate with this band. This had to be one of Heath’s songs because I don’t think Jeff had enough soul to write a song this good.

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Mike Pearson

untitled solo work, circa mid 2000s

For a long time I only thought of Mike Pearson as a blues/punk player because I had only seen him play with the Blacks and Ultra Maroon, but sometime in the early/mid-2000s he moved to France with his French wife, Cecil, and he started sending me CDs. They were mysterious and cryptic regarding their content. There was no letter that said something like “here is some music I recorded.” Listening to it I could immediately recognize a number of songs as his, but then there were some songs that had completely different sounds and came from such a different place that I thought they had to be performed by some local French musicians that he met. Turns out it was all Mike and his musical knowledge and talents stretch far beyond raw American blues punk (which he does best) and into French Cabaret sounds, Tom Waits style swank and film music. Jazz references (and sounds) show up with song titles like “Better Git Hit In Yer Hed” and an almost unrecognizable cover of Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman.” I doubt more than a dozen people have heard his solo stuff, but this stuff is so good that if the right Hollywood douche bag heard this stuff he could get every wanna-be Quentin Tarantino director lined up to suck Mike’s dick to score his next film.

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Doo Rag

Hussy Bowler 7” 1993

Working in a blues bar has renewed my hatred for the blues*. Really, how many people playing the blues do it in an exciting original manner? That’s not a rhetorical question. The answer is somewhere around four or five and at the top of that list would be Bob Log III. The legendary Doo Rag finds him between Mondo Guano and his solo mayhem and is some of his most fun music. The first time I remember seeing them play was unannounced in the bathroom at the DPC. When they blew up and were reaching bigger audiences I couldn’t help but wonder how they could have a large appeal, but now I can’t help but wonder why they weren’t bigger. A drunken rant by Lou Barlow at a recent Sebedoh show at Club Congress may explain why. He said they toured with Doo Rag back in the 90’s and after a few shows in Doo Rag just started wandering off, blowing off shows and ditching Sebedoh because, according to Barlow, they were “too cool” to tour with Sebedoh. It’s true, Doo Rag were too cool.  

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*have you ever seen middle aged white people dance to the blues!?!? Holy shit it’s the funniest thing I’ve witnessed in a working situation. I’ve had to train myself not to look directly at them because I burst out in loud laughter sometimes.

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

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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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 Pork Torta

 

Sparky Welding cass. circa 1994

I was offended when the Okmoniks were playing around Tucson and calling themselves “Tucson’s best party band” or something like that. Everybody knows that the best party band in Tucson was, is and always shall be the Pork Torta. Sure the Okmoniks might make you wanna shake your head and throw some beer at the band, but the Pork Torta make you feel like you walked onto the set of a David Lynch film set in a dark bar in the middle of the desert with some wild, emotionally dissident yet highly rhythmic band pounding away as people grind on each other while strobe lights almost make you blackout and the rhythm makes you go crazy. There is nothing normal about this release. It’s their first and it finds the madness unrefined with more of an anything goes attitude than they've had on more recent releases. Different versions of some of these songs appear on later CDs, but here they’re laced with bad acid and lo-fi charm. Guest appearances by Bob Log and Johnny Balls, who is now their bass player. Everything they produce should promptly be purchased by you, now, here

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Head Space

Fragments cass. 1993 

I’ve heard Malignus Youth was a big influence on Head Space and I’ve also heard that Head Space was the big influence on Malignus Youth. They were definitely big influences on each other, but I’ve always thought of Head Space as the elder and more mature of the two groups because their sound didn’t always rely on breakneck speeds and they sometimes went into long drawn out jams reminiscent of the Doors or Santana and other hippie music. Maybe because they were from the hippie town of Bisbee and Malignus was from the military town of Sierra Vista. The melodic vocal arrangements both these bands used were way more complex than most bands that got called punk. With Head Space’s mellower songs it sometimes comes off like 60s folk or psych, which is territory Malignus never ventured near. But there are also moments of blast beat fast-core with melodic rapid fire vocals. It’s complex in a way that most people probably won’t like and sometimes a little heart-on-sleeve hokey like Cap’n Jazz, but I like most of it and I think it’s essential listening to anybody that was interested in Malignus Youth and later Pathos.

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Malignus Youth

Ephemeral--Missa Brevis ('89-'94, released on CD '98)--Practice '88

Most people either loved or hated Malignus Youth. I think they had one of the most unique approaches to the hardcore punk genre ever and expanded the elements of speed and melody in ways no band had done before or has done since. So you know which camp I’m in and a lot of their hardcore fans consider this posthumous release their masterpiece because it contains “the Mass,” songs 18-23, a hardcore/punk interpretation of a Catholic Mass sung mostly in Latin. Yes, it’s weird and a lot of the punks had problems with the religious overtones, but love it or hate it you can’t deny the uniqueness of it. The songs that precede it are some of their great signature songs that never made it to vinyl. I also added a file that I found on Soulseek which contains older jam room versions of songs from their earlier vinyl releases, but without song titles.

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Absinthe

7" 1996

This is the same Absinthe 7” that has shown up on a couple other blogs. The cover for my copy was a small run limited edition they threw together to play some out of town shows, but the music is the same. This is their second and last release and I like it better than their 10” but only slightly. It’s just as crushing, but there is more of an urgent angst filled madness to these songs. This is the result of a bunch of good bands breaking up (Slag, Groundwork, Spill Blanket and Teeth) whose members took the best qualities of those bands and formed a great band. They were short lived, but were influential to a lot of bands that could never quite reach this level of greatness. There’s You Tube footage of them here in Goleta with Jeff Ugstad on guitar after he replaced Gabe. There has been long talk of a reissue of this record on King of the Monsters or singer Brendon’s Protagonist Records, but nothing has surfaced yet.

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Hobart

1995 demo cass.

After Slag split up, Marty and Nathan called me up and asked me if I would play in their new project, Hobart, and I jumped at the chance. They were still hyped on the aggressive ugly nature of Slag, but we started to incorporate influences from bands like Unwound, Drive Like Jehu and the Treepeople. At least those were the bands we were listening to the time. This doesn’t really sound like any of them, but I think they’re apt reference points. Playing with Marty and Nathan was a rude awakening to how terrible a musician I was. They were years ahead of me and I had to get good and/or fake it real quick like just to keep up. Not too long after we recorded this Nathan would move to the Bay Area and we would nab Absinthe drummer Brandon Ugstad and continue the project for a total of eight years, the longest running band I’ve been in. Each cassette had a unique cover made of random photos brought home by my then roommate, Dan (photographer, above) who worked in a 24 hr. photo place. We made only about 20 of these and gave them away to friends. I took the name for this blog from a line in the song No Man’s Land.

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FUCT

FUCT "the gob demo" unreleased demo circa 1988

Plenty could be written about FUCT because of their longevity, which saw them out-live many of their early contemporaries (UPS, Blood Spasm, Opinion Zero, Civil Order etc.), but also because they went through a sonic transformation from a hardcore-punk band to a band that took a hardcore-punk influence and mixed it with more progressive influences like Jimi Hendrix and Nomeansno. They also maintained the same line up for over a decade, minus their brief existence with Leo as 2nd guitarist, which is rare. This recording finds them in their early years when they were more juiced on RKL and Raw Power (who they toured with) then the straighter rock sounds they would eventually incorporate. This recording has its own interesting history. It was recorded (I believe) by one of the members of What Went Wrong who died after the session. Seven or eight years later me and my friend Dan (who took the above photo) were hanging out in Toxic Ranch when John (gtr player) worked there. He told us that somebody had recently gone through the sound engineer’s stuff and found this recording and gave him a copy. He then taped it for us and I’ve been listening to it ever since. I think I like this era of FUCT their best, when they were playing fast and young and taking drugs and drinking a lot. The recording and playing is a little rough, but it does a good job of capturing the punk-hardcore sound of Tucson in the late 80s. 

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Scathe

7" 1998

Speaking of awesome bands Ryan Doten was in, here is the Scathe 7”. I don’t think Ryan was their original drummer and the guys in the band probably considered this Jeremy Tally’s (Bury Me Standing, the Bled) project, but Ryan’s the only guy I really knew from this band, so I mostly associate it with him. I consider them one of the first wave of Skrappys bands and the link between the older dudes playing heavy hardcore (Groundwork, Absinthe) and the younger dudes playing heavy hardcore (Bury Me Standing, the Bled) in Tucson. I got this from Ryan and he told me it was his only copy when he gave it to me. At the time Ryan was into drugs, and that might have factored into him giving this to me. Oddly enough they might have identified themselves as a straight edge band at the time. Even odder Ryan’s probably the only one of these guys that is straight today. Again I don’t really know the rest of these guys, so I may be wrong, but I do know that one of their singers “lost his edge” in a big way. This was the second release for Ronnie’s Code of Ethics Records who was always reliable for good hardcore and screamo records with great packaging.

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Jason's Cat Died

7" circa 1994

This is probably my favorite record put out by any Tucson band ever. The sound is hard to describe. It mixes punk, indie, emo, rock and even a little ska, but the amount of feeling they dumped into this is what has made it stick with me over the years. Like Spill Blanket, I had seen a lot of their earlier shows but missed them in their later years when they got real good. I heard this long after they broke up and almost couldn’t believe that this was the same band I had seen so many times at the DPC. The masterminds behind this band, Chris Vlassic and Ryan Doten, would go on to refine their skills together in Yellow Brick Roadkill and separately in too many bands to mention. Actually they both played together in the Zero Tolerance Task Force at one point, but that probably did more to refine their survival skills than their musical skills. These are the two musicians that I have always wanted to play with, but they have somehow eluded me over the years. Chris is currently living in the Bay Area and Ryan is playing in the revamped and totally awesome Vanish Twin.

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Iscariot

Demo cass. circa 1995

Before there was Red Fang, the Juanita Family or the Last of the Juanitas there was Iscariot. Actually before that I believe there was Fat Pig, but I never saw them. This was the collaboration of Lana Rebel and Bryan Giles prior to moving to San Diego and forming the Last of the Juanitas and if I didn’t know the history you could have told me this was a Last of the Juanitias demo or their 1^st album and I wouldn’t have questioned it. The drummer, Mark, had a more metal style, but was equally as dynamic as the Last of the Juanitas drummer. This was one of the earliest bands I saw that played hard, heavy music that threw typical song structure and timing on its head. A term like jazz-metal makes them sound absolutely horrible, but great bands like Don Caballero and Iceburn worked similar territory in the mid-90s, if that helps. This approach to song structure has been applied to just about every genre of music today, but when I first saw them do it, it was jaw dropping. And this demo has aged well. When I tell people one of my bands played with them and Kyuss at the DPC (to about 12 people) they get all excited about Kyuss, but Iscariot was infinitely more interesting and memorable. Lana recently moved back to Tucson and has been playing around town solo-acoustic. I haven’t seen her play yet, but she is always a pleasure to run into. Brian is probably on tour with Red Fang. Not to be confused with about half a dozen other bands that were called Iscariot or Judas Iscariot in the mid-90s.

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Irving

demo cass. 1994

Before there was the Weird Lovemakers there was Irving. It was Petix and Gerard with Bob Fanning (the Fells, Bob Fanning Trio) on bass and another guitarist. A lot of these songs would end up being early Weird Lovemakers songs, but here they’re recorded in a more primitive minimal fashion. Most of the rest of these songs are early Petix gems that I hadn’t heard until I recently found this demo on Jason Willis’s “Demo Ape” blog site. The first time I saw Petix he was playing in a band called the Blink Dogs at a party in a one room house behind the Circle K at Speedway and 6^th. He had a full beard and mustache and a big Jew-fro, but half of his head and face was shaved vertically, including his eyebrow so he looked like some kind of super villain from a comic book, which is probably the highest complement you could give him.

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the Weird Lovemakers

the weird lovemakers are dead-unreleased LP circa 2002(?)

Despite what the artwork on the cover says this was not released as Recess Record # 97. This release has a long history behind who was going to put it out, when it was coming out and what it was going to be called, but nobody has released it to date. It’s their last recording and some of their best stuff. It’s rare that four real music geeks end up in the same band together, but when it happens the result is usually your new favorite band. That lightning would strike twice for Jason (gtr) and Gerard (drms) when they hooked up with Travis Spillers and Matt Rendon in the Knockout Pills after the Weird Lovemakers split up. WLM shows were always fun and they were that one punk band that could play the “cooler” venues regularly and the squares and hipsters liked them. That’s because this shit is catchy as hell.

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