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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Dover Trench

Exhibition of Speed CD 1991--Demo 1990(?)

I found out about Dover Trench because me and my friends used to buy our skateboards from singer Eli’s  shop, Itchy Foot Moes, back when we were in high school. We’d go see them play all ages shows at Mudbugs opening for bands like Atrophy, Sacred Reich and Testament. They were as good as, if not better than any of those bands and they mixed with the Tucson and Cochise County hardcore/punk scene more than any other metal band at the time (drummer Matt Pimple’s brother would help record the Malignus Youth records). Here is their full length CD and what I think is an incomplete version of their demo. My all time favorite song of theirs, the way lowbrow Tight as a Vice, which I remember being on the demo, is not with my files. There is a hilarious video for that song here. It was filmed at the same place where, many years later, we did the photo shoot for the Blacks Hate You Like Gold LP, out by Gates Pass. The video's just as stupid and awesome as that photo shoot was. Drummer Matt is currently playing in Flying Donkey Punch.

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Download demo here

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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Slag

feed 7" 1993

In the Scathe post I mentioned what I consider the first wave of heavy hardcore bands in Tucson in the early 90s, (as compared to the fast hardcore bands like Malignus Youth, American Deathtrip, Ice 9 etc.) but I forgot to mention Slag and they were the heaviest. They were really more metal than hardcore and they couldn’t get their records reviewed in Maximum Rock N’ Roll because they were “too metal.” This record is ugly and hate filled with tortured vocals supplied by the whole band, but there are occasional guitar breaks that are kind of melodic, then the rest of the band comes in and crushes all that. Kind of like slower Buzzoven songs with a second guitar player doing occasional melodic riffs. They even play mid-tempo and grind-core fast at times. Guitar player Jerid had played in Groundwork prior to this band. When Slag split up Jerid and bass player Brian would form Absinthe and drummer Nathan and guitarist Marty would form Hobart. Recorded by Iscariot drummer Mark Wyner and released on Ryan Butler’s (Landmine Marathon, Unruh, Wellington, Arcane Recording Studio) Fetus Records.

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Cancer Brides

like fairy tales of modern times CD 2007

Almost 20 years after the unreleased FUCT demo, John and Obie would release this beast. Cancer Brides had Obie playing drums, rather than just singing, and I was told that he wrote most of the music. John stayed on guitar and other Tucson music vets Psychic Mike (Opinion Zero, Schism), Abel (Cosmic Jackhammer), Joey (ZTTF) and Jeff Ghoul (Backstab Gospel) filled out the line up. The music is progressive like FUCT was in their later years, but in a different way. Instead of bar rock jams they go for a more metal sound. Epic metal like Iron Maiden, but with nods to Feel the Darkness era Poison Idea. And yet a song like The Wrong Kill could be a straight up pop song if it wasn’t for Abel’s manic singing style. Other songs like 5X8 are sludgy, heavy and noisy. The guitars on this are huge and add a lot of melody that is juxtaposed nicely with the crazy vocals. I don’t think any of these guys have current active projects, which is a shame. Great artwork by Obie’s wife Paula.

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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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I Hate You When You're Pregnant

greatest hits from demos 1-6, 2003(?)-2009

When I was living in Flagstaff I had the opportunity to work, study history and party with Phil Buckman. He’s one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met and he’s so nice that other people that had recently met him would ask me “is this guy for real!?” He was sooo nice that he came off as condescending to anybody with a decent amount of skepticism. Phil is genuine, which makes his one-man-band project, I Hate You When You’re Pregnant, even more confusing. I had seen all 6ft 5in of him perform in nothing but a pair of panties before actually meeting him, so it didn’t seem so strange to me, but a lot of the squares we worked with couldn’t fathom how this nice, mellow guy could have created such visual and sonic mayhem. For a guy who was a wee lad in the 80s he has a deep understanding of 80s pop music, which I find disturbing. He could have produced any of the early MTV hits, but IHYWYP is injected with a weird surrealism that makes the whole thing creepy. And he sings like he’s fronting an 80s hardcore band. Still, it’s catchy as hell. I would probably consider the lyrics to be genius if they made any sense, but the imagery each line invokes is enough to make you think “What The Fuck!?” These songs are my personal favorites that I culled from his CD demos 1-6 that he gave away at live shows and can be downloaded in their entirety (minus demo 6) here. “They’ve Got My Picture in an Issue of Thrasher” is my personal favorite because they once had my picture in an issue of Thrasher too. Phil was supposed to join my band, Taser Breath, to sing on a cover of Burt Bacharach’s “My Little Red Book” (done Love-style, of course) but it never panned out. If you heard either of those bands you realize how weird that sounds. Last time I saw him he was doing research for a book on the history of ranch dressing. I’m not even shitting you.

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P.S. One of the funniest things I ever saw was Phil performing at Centro Digna. In the middle of his set he did that rock-star thing where the lead singer does the run-jump-slide-on the-knees that you’d expect to see at an AC/DC concert. Only problem was that Centro Digna had tile floors and Phil had no pants on, so as he slid  the sound of the tiles peeling the skin off his knees created a high pitched screech that was so loud it cut through the music. EVERYBODY in the place doubled over in that surrogate pain reaction that guys do when they see another guy get kicked in the balls, but Phil got up and kept performing like nothing happened, bleeding knees and all.

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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Let The World Die

the end of living and the beginning of survival CD 2010

After being in Flagstaff for about three years I began to be discouraged because I thought that Blackfire was the only representation of Navajo punk rock. Blackfire has a unique sound that blends melodic Bad Religion influenced punk with traditional Navajo chants and sometimes even dance, but I never really got into what they do. Then people started saying good things about Let the World Die. Problem was they would be praised, and then described as a crusty-ska band. Crust and ska are two horrible genres and the idea of blending them sounds as appealing as eating piss covered shit, so I didn’t exactly go out of my way to see them live. Then I did see them and was floored. They don’t really incorporate the ska up-stroke that much and I would describe the “crust” elements as just raging hardcore. They also didn’t strike me as the apathetic wastoid types that I associate with the whole crusty thing and members are involved with the Taala Hooghan infoshop/show space/DIY community space that puts on shows in East Flagstaff. Too bad I let my own prejudices get in the way of discovering this band earlier cause when I left town these guys (and Custody Battle) were the best shit going on up there.

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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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the Cuntifiers

Never Coming Out CD 2006

After the Weird Lovemakers there was the Cuntifiers. Petix was the only consistent member, but this wasn’t really a solo project. When I played with um (gtr or drums at different times) I wrote about 30% of the songs and Rubbles and Roy wrote about 30% of the songs. Petix wrote the rest but he was the only singer, so it all sounds like his stuff. He also wrote all the lyrics, which are brilliant. Songs 14-20 are a mini punk-opera about unsung fictional comic book heroes in the American West. He has the distinction of being the best songwriter and the worst guitar player I’ve ever worked with. The process of recording this album was grueling for all involved and I think the guys that recorded it (Matt Rendon and Jaime Peters) seriously reconsidered whether or not they wanted to be recording engineers after this project. I recorded my guitar tracks and moved to Flagstaff the next day, then he brought in members of the Jons, Swing Ding Amigos and the Okmonics to put all the bells and whistles on it. When I finally heard the finished product I was pretty impressed. Unlike the much loved Weird Lovemakers, nobody liked the Cuntifiers which I can only attribute to the stupidest band name of all time. The songs are as good as the stuff Petix did with the WLM, but we couldn’t even get arrested in Tucson, much less play the cool clubs. Because we were so hated we called the project Never Coming Out which we expected to be the fate of the recording until our friend Larry asked us if he could release it as a freebie with his great, long lived zine Genetic Disorder. Last I heard this band is actually still together in Portland with a new line-up, where I assume they are even more hated than in Tucson. Me and Gustav, who replaced me in this band, are currently playing together in Honey Badger, where we try to channel the spirit of Petix, usually quite poorly.

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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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the Screenz

demo CD circa 2004

The Screenz was the proto-type of what would become Digital Leather. I think the project was called Dickless Torso before this, but they’re all the brainchild of Sean Foree. I’ve had a love-hate relationship with his music over the years. I find some of his new wave tendencies to be annoying, but when he’s channeling the Screamers, like he did with the Screeenz I love his shit. He’s always been progressive and forward moving with his music, but there is enough continuity to it that bares his signature. I believe “random bitch” on bass here is Ryan Rousseau (Earthmen and Strangers, the Reatards) who has worked with Foree in various capacities over the years and is hell of a songwriter himself. I totally missed Foree’s live band when he had greats like Isaac Reyes (Lenguas Largas, Shark Pants) and Sean Ruse (Foolscap Fire, Hobart and over 30 other bands) playing with him and he moved out of Tucson about the time I moved back. Last I heard he was living in France or Germany or one of those places American artists go to create their worse stuff. The hidden track is a horrible cover of Prince’s “Kiss.”

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Limbless Torso

Shut Your Stupid Fucking Mouth-3" CD 2009

Anything anybody might have told you about 13 year old Gabriel Perez being a fucking incredible drummer was probably an understatement. I have heard one or two people add that “yeah good for a 13 year old” but rest assured Gabriel has more talent and a better understanding of the music he plays than most drummers I have played with, and I’ve played with a lot of drummers. I attribute this understanding directly to his father, Alex, whose talent often gets overshadowed by the novelty of such a young drummer playing so good. Before I ever picked up a guitar I had seen Alex play with the American Deathtrip and his extremely fast and precise guitar playing made a huge impression on me. Alex seems to have dumped all his years of knowledge into Gabriel and with Limbless Torso they play a brutal mix of grind-thrash-power–violence-metal-hardcore and punk in a very tight and calculated manner. Nick Genitals on vocals takes the Monster X style low end growl approach, similar to their first singer Rich, but the vocals don’t quite match the dynamics going on between Gabriel and Alex. Nick is genuinely hate-filled so it still works. They recently put out a 12” record which you can buy here.

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Al Perry and the Cattle

Al Perry and the Cattle-good n' bitter 7" 1989

I started a new job in the kitchen of a right proper dive bar last night. As I’m running food out to the half inebriated patrons I look up on stage to see none other than Al Perry himself. At first it seemed a little strange that Al would be jammin in this dank joint, known mostly for the blues, but really Al would seem as comfortable there as he would at the Rialto, Congress or playing in the 4^th Ave. tunnel. The man loves to play music and he’s been doing it longer and better than you and your crappy band. Last night he was getting in touch with his healthy love of George Jones with some blues styling thrown in, but this older 7”, from his extensive back catalog, is a little harder to classify. The first side sounds like later 80s style college rock, but with a heat-fried-tremolo-drenched-drug-fueled strangeness. The second side hints at his love of country but with a rockin’ back beat. The last song is an instrumental cow-punk tune. The cow-punk thing probably started in Austin or something, but I’ve always associated it with Tucson, the late 80s and Al Perry for some reason. Al’s probably spent more time in the Hotel Congress than any other person (plus some of the ghosts) and if he’s not playing somewhere he’s probably behind the front desk, being friendly as hell.

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Quarterhorse

CD 2005

After the break up of Invisible City Adan and Steve didn’t waste any time putting together Quarterhorse. They decided to not replace Bobby on bass and just went with guitar/drums for the base. They did find a singer that was as good, if not better than Hesper. She had a real strong voice like the singers of Sleater-Kinney or The Long Blondes and knew how to use it. Only problem was that she lived in San Francisco, which makes a Tucson/Flagstaff band seem easy. Naturally they didn’t play a lot around Tucson, but they did tour and put out this great, albeit short CD. The sound isn’t too far off of Invisible City’s, but it’s less noisy, more in control and more melody for better or worse.

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