ZEITGEIST - "Tour Tape" - 2013

   The first time I saw ZEITGEIST, I was having a pretty bad time and the last time I saw them was no exception. To be honest, I was having a Really Bad Time, but I knew that seeing them would probably make me feel better, even though they were playing in a shitty bar that I swore I would never step foot back into. When you're on tour though, it's hard to have much control over where your band is gonna play and maybe you're not aware that the venue you're playing at provides a platform for the absolute worst aspects of punk to bloom, unchallenged by outside forces. So, I went because ZEITGEIST still plays a good game even though they were dealt a shitty hand. Did I have to get really drunk to even think about walking in to that place? Well, yeah. Blacked out? Possibly.
   From what I remember, ZEITGEIST played their hearts out to a room half-full of walking shit stains (including myself) on a crappy weekday night. I bought this tape from them because I like their demo tape and I like their 12" record even more. On this tape, the band is progressing further into more of a melodic sound. They've always been melodic, but their singer Tilley is adding even more tunefulness to her screaming. There's a slight Mia Zapata and Kathleen Hanna influence creeping in, but only slightly. To type that out feels wrong, but I'm just gonna say it anyway. The tape is good. It's punk. The "ooooo"s on "Witch Girl really sold me on this tape though. Well, the whole song, but that part in particular. If I had moved to Pittsburgh instead of San Francisco (which almost happened), I would go see this band all the time.

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Photo by Jake Reinhart.

I fucked up and the last song plays first. Don't let that stop you from enjoying. 

CICATRIZ AMALAYA - "Live on WRCT" - Tape - 2009

   If you were to ask me anything about the origins and ideas behind Cumbia music, I would tell you to ask someone else, because I know next to nothing about it. For example, when I moved back to the Bay Area in 2008, I got a job at a screen printing shop in the East Bay and spent most of my shifts listening to KALX, the Berkeley student radio station. Lots of times, they played punk, but there was a show where the DJ often spoke highly of cumbia and bands influenced by that style of music. If I were to base my definition of cumbia solely on the musical choices of that DJ, I would believe that it is a style of music played by hip, white SoCal dudes who's main goal is to be written up on Pitchfork and open up for OZOMATLI at Coachella. I now know that, for the most part, that definition is wrong. If you want to know what it is, you can look it up on the internet for yourself. Like I said, I'm not the cumbia guy.

   This tape was thrown in with my order of records from Trd Wrd and I was pleasantly surprised by it. It helped me to realize that cumbia was not only the playground of the upwardly mobile, adult contemporary, auto-tuned burner-dude with a funny hat, but it could also be sorta raw, organic and wild...kinda like punk...although cumbia predates punk by roughly 100 years. According to the insert of this tape, "CICATRIZ AMALAYA is a seed of a band of novice instrumentalists attempting to play some kind of cumbia music inspired by the Discos Fuentes compilation released by Domino Sound. An obsession with that tape, coupled with a chance meeting of two Mexican traveling kids and six Pittsburghers initiated this friendship and this recording. The songs on this tape were written and interpreted over the course of a month and a half in the summer of 2009 in Pittsburgh, PA. what a great time!" (...and here it is in Spanish).

 It sounds like a great time. Listen for yourself.

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(Link updated June 2023)

WARNING: The first five seconds sound like garbage because the tape's a little messed up, but the rest of it is fine, I swear.

SHEP AND ME - "Cloudy Chowder" - Tape - 2007

   Matt Himes is the man behind SHEP AND ME, which incorporates the sounds of experimental folk, outsider noise, tape loops, and acoustic balladry to create a sound that is wholly his own. He bumped his way onto a show that I set up in Bloomington a few years back. He set up simply with a small guitar and light accompaniment and captivated the room for the next 20-30 minutes. His sound, for me, evokes the images of punks living on homemade boats in the river, simple living, rotting Midwestern porches, and long, cold winter days that feel endless.
   This tape compiles a few years of analog recordings in New Orleans, Pittsburgh, Evanston, IL and Whitesburg, KY and is one of my favorite things that he has put out. It's the perfect thing to listen to on a cold day with nothing ahead of you besides hot tea and unfinished projects.

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This tape is also available as a beautifully packaged LP that was pressed in an edition of 500. If you like this, I highly suggest that you buy the record, because there aren't too many left. You can get it straight from Matt at Lighten Up Sounds
This tape was originally released on Friends and Relatives.

ZEITGEIST - Demo - Tape - 2011

 
    I just got back from tour. Like all tours, there were some low points and there were some high points. One of the low points was our show in Pittsburgh. The show itself was pretty great (for all the other bands), but we played badly and there was so much band tension that you could cut it with a knife. We were giving off bad vibes a mile wide. The drummer of ZEITGEIST traded tapes with me either because he felt sorry for us or actually liked the crappy six-song set that we played to a room quarter-filled with bored hardcore kids. Either way, I'm glad we traded tapes because when his band took the stage, they completely erased my negative mood and made me want to jump up and down (even though I sorta bobbed side to side in the back of the room). ZEITGEIST plays driving, melodic punk that sounds raw and fresh and can fall into the newly coined category of "Knuckle-Draggin Rock" (coined by Cinque). The energy of their live show was invigorating and they were easily the best band of the night for me...which is saying a lot since they were followed by ICON GALLERY and CROSS-STITCHED EYES. I don't know much else about this band besides that they are new and that they are from Pittsburgh. Enjoy this rough-ass recording and order their tape.

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  The third song is cut off a little at the beginning because that's how it was on the tape