FRED COLE MEMORIAL RADIO SHOW

"I'm still nervous,

I ain't been broken,

I'm still churnin' and burnin' inside

and I can't stop smokin'

I'm pissed off, pissed off, pissed off

It's just the way I am"

   I don't believe in heroes or idols, but if I did, Fred Cole would be the closest thing I would have. Of the few times I hung out with the guy, I can tell you that he is the real deal. He cut his own masters for his records at his house on a lathe machine that was used for the KINGSMEN'S "Louie Louie". Also, he built that house out of salvaged material. When the music industry failed him, he just became more independent and did his own thing until they came looking for him. I once drank pints of Jagermeister with him and then he got in a van at 2 am and drove to Ohio. He got a tattoo of his own band on his fucking face. Along with his wife Toody and his friend Andrew, he co-fronted the best band ever and played some of the most magical, cathartic shows I've ever seen in my life. As a rule that has not failed me at any point in my life....

I DO NOT TRUST PEOPLE WHO DON'T LIKE DEAD MOON

   It's simple, it's real and it works. The discography of Fred Cole acts as it's own story that I don't need to tell you. Seeing Fred Cole play live in any setting also told it's own story. As Fred and Toody got older, every show became more special and had so much nuance. At solo shows, Fred would slyly tap the mic stand to act as Andrew's missing snare hits and look up. He would sing a sweet line about Toody and quickly tap his boot against hers. After 50 years of marriage and at least 30 years of hearing these same lines in songs, you could still catch Toody trying to stifle a smile as it leaked out the side of her mouth. I don't know what I can say that you're not gonna read or hear anywhere else, but Fred was real and magic. I try not to be sad about it, because death is part of this deal with life and he lived a good one. He left behind a whole catalog of music that we can all enjoy for the rest of our days here. 

DEAD MOON with Daun, Shannon and me.

   I co-hosted this 2 part radio show on Maximum Rocknroll with my friend Alex, two days after Fred passed away. Part one is a scratching of the surface of his career...everything I could find besides DEAD MOON. If you keep digging deeper, you'll find so much to hang onto. Part 2 is nothing but DEAD MOON for over an hour....a lot of their "hits" and a lot of deep cuts. Please enjoy.

Fred Cole Radio Special Part One

Fred Cole Radio Special Part Two

It's like a broken smile

A step apart that gives you style

It doesn't need explaining 

You know it's fall when it starts raining

It's just the way it is.

PEDRO SAYS HI - "The Creep Over" - Tape - 2011

Once I was terrorized by everything

But now I don't fear anything

   The last time I wrote about PEDRO SAYS HI, this tape had been recorded but didn't exist. I wasn't sure if it ever would exist, but now it's been out for a few years. I basically said everything I could say about the band in that previous post, besides that I feel a weird eternal bond with this band and the people associated with it through trauma and just plain weird-ass living. 

    We still don't talk about the hard parts of this band or the all of the terrible shit that happened (in print anyway) because what we do is actually secret and well, it's still fucking hard. You can never tell the whole story because sometimes, it's not your story to tell. I can say that I will always feel privileged to have spent any amount of time playing music with this stellar group of fine human beings. 

I saw Hell

And it was beautiful

So just breathe in the fumes

And suck on the doom

And learn to enjoy 

This eternal pain

    Leah (our guitarist) recorded this tape in 2011 in Chattanooga, 4 years after the demise of the band and 7 hours away from where we originally lived. Crab Jackson (vocals / guitar) couldn't put vocals on it until much later and it didn't get mixed and released until 2014. Let's Pretend  was bold enough to release a tape by a band who had broken up 7 years prior and had no plans of ever reforming (follow that link to buy a tape). Thanks to the 40-75 people who ever saw us and the 15-20 people who cared about it. We're gonna come back and murder you all. 

Open your mind and let the pain crawl in

Open your mouth and watch the fun dissipate

Open your eyes you'll see your friends walking away

Open your heart and let the pain crawl in

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Members of GIANT BAGS OF WEED, JON BENET SASQUATCH, PUPPY VS DYSLEXIA, GOURMET SCUM, TWAT SAUCE, NEON PISS, SPASM LAKE, SILENT ERA and many more. 

VARIOUS ARTISTS - "2846 Chapman St" - Comp - Tape - 2002

   Today, I went to a yard sale in Oakland and ran into a tiny boatload of cassettes. Of course, I was drawn to them like a moth to a flame.  The pile was full of Burger Records stuff and since I've made a decision to try and keep this blog mostly positive, I'll just leave that statement there. There were a few gems hidden beneath and I mostly left them hidden beneath because I live in a tiny room now and I could already build a small house out of the tapes  that I currently own. I even found my old band's discography. Unlike many people I know, I love seeing my band's stuff in a yard sale or a dollar bin.
   I walked away from the sale with three tapes. One of them was the SEXY demo tape. I have been looking for this tape for fucking YEARS and I was so happy to have it in my hands. When I got it home and found that it had been dubbed over with super fucking shitty metal, I can't even find the words to convey my disappointment to you right now. Another tape was a home dubbed Japanese garage band who mostly covered SF garage bands from the 90's. The third tape was this one right here.
   I only visited the Chapman Street warehouse a couple of times because it was way out in Fruitvale.. Some people called it the S.P.A.M. warehouse. They put on a ton of shows back in the early 00's, had a beer vending machine and was inhabited by at least 30 people at all times. (That beer vending machine lives on in a current Oakland punk house). One of the only things I remember about visiting there was that I saw a great BANANAS show there. It was packed and the band was in that perfect form of being drunk enough to be really fun but not too wasted to play. I remember that a teenager kept jumping on the stage, grabbing the mic and screaming the words louder than anyone in the band. It sounded terrible and everyone kept dragging her off the stage. For their last song they played the (at that point) new and incredible song "Nautical Theme" and -Oh My God - it sounded so good. When the whole band was about to kick in at the end, we looked and the teenage girl was mounting the stage again to scream the last lyrics with the band. I'm a firm believer in a lack of divisions between band and audience, but there has to be a line drawn sometimes. Someone has to take action. That was the moment when my friend Janelle shouted "NOOOOOOO!!", downed the rest of her beer, threw the empty can as hard as she could, hit the girl in the head, knocked her offstage and the girl was gently crowd-surfed back into the throng. The band sounded great and the girl was wasted and unharmed. I've been hit in the head with empty cans many many times and that shit does not hurt.
   I've already written about almost half of these bands here, here, here, here, here AND here. That was TOMMY LASORDA, FLESHIES, LOS RABBIS, POSER POSSE and SEXY. The other bands (CIVIL DYSENTERY, BOZAKS, SCORPION DEATH ROCK, DISMEMBERS and WEAK LEADS) are part of a scene that I know almost nothing about. You can listen for yourself and make up your own stories.

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The sound quality ranges from pretty bad to "holy shit"

Still looking for that SEXY demo. 

PIERCED ARROWS - Live On KBOO - 2007

   When DEAD MOON broke up in 2006, I was so heartbroken. I honestly felt like I had been dumped by a partner or kicked in the stomach or both. I thought that I had a lifetime of DEAD MOON shows to look forward to. Like, as long as Fred, Toody and Andrew were alive, I could rest assured that they would be there for me when I felt like I was at my lowest. If I was heartbroken, I could put on "Nervous Sooner Changes" and feel like someone felt the same as I did. If I woke up "in the bottom of something being loaded in a dumptruck", I could pull out the "Trash and Burn" LP and feel good enough to start the day...and not only start the day, but hold my head up high and take whatever damage flung itself into my life. The records are still there of course, but it was a whole different feeling to see DEAD MOON live with Fred and Toody's toes touching the edge of the stage while they sang each song with the fiercest conviction I've ever seen.
    So, yeah...I was sad. I should've known that they couldn't stay dormant for long. Within a year, I heard that Fred and Toody were already back with a new band. I can make my guesses as to why they weren't playing with Andrew anymore, but that's the kind of talk left for late night drunken conversations or long van rides in the middle of nowhere. PIERCED ARROWS were already playing some shows in the northwest, but I lived in Indiana, so I had no clue when I'd actually see or hear them until this CD-R made it's way into my hands.
    The band played on KBOO in Portland and it was only their 8th show. Most of the songs on here ended up on their first LP, "Straight To The Heart". They also threw in a DEAD MOON song for good measure and it's not the one or two that you might think it is. The recording is a good live recording, but the performance is a little....uh...rough.
   It might go without saying that I've never felt the same for PIERCED ARROWS as I did for DEAD MOON. I don't know anyone who did. I'm not a fan of reunions or even nostalgia really (I know that this entire blog might make you think otherwise, but it's the truth), but when DEAD MOON announced that they were gonna play a reunion show last year, I didn't hesitate to buy a plane ticket to Portland. I even went this year when they did it again. Now, it just seems like they're a band again...and I'm fine with that. I wouldn't even mind if they put out a new LP. With Fred having heart surgery, Andrew quitting drinking (??) and Toody trying to hold it all together, I can imagine what kind of new desperate sounds they might create.

   But this is about PIERCED ARROWS...and about their show on KBOO when they were just starting out...and how incredibly happy I was to know that they hadn't given up just yet.

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VARIOUS ARTISTS - "Audio Annihilation" - Tape - 2004

   There are very little details that I know about this tape. I do know that it showed up in my P.O. box years ago with an accompanying zine, but that informative document has been lost after moving between no less than 8 houses, 6 states and 3 time zones. What I can tell you is that this was produced by some stellar folks from San Pedro, CA and was probably meant to document a certain time in their scene, but I'm really fucking it up now. Most of the songs on here are shoddy, lo-fi, live recordings that sound like a really fun time. I can't tell you who any of these bands are because I don't know. LIPSTICK PICKUPS? KILLER DREAMER? You tell me! No, really! I wanna know who sings track 14 because it's my favorite! Also, interspersed between some of the songs are some pretty funny ads for records that were coming out at the time, which is something I wish that happened more often in punk.

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GOURMET SCUM // LANDLORD - "Scum Lord" - Split Tape - 2008

   LANDLORD starts off this tape with their ragged style of classic rock as viewed through a punk lens. Maybe you'll view it differently, but I really think they sound like a classic rock band and I'm into it. I don't really have any good stories about LANDLORD, but I can tell you that I've watched them play many, many flawless shows (and a few bad, stoned ones) and they once gave me a ride from Tennessee to Indiana wherein we dumpstered a pretty good pizza. All of the songs on their side of the tape are instant classics. You can find more stuff by them on Houseplant Records, Dead Broke and a label I won't mention because they continue to further the careers of irrelevant, misogynist, money-grubbing fuckheads.

   On the flip side, GOURMET SCUM tells your brain to fuck right the fuck off. Seriously, I don't know what they're doing on this recording because it sounds so fucked up. They play their noisy ass sludge, blown out through tape hiss and an impenetrable cloud of weed smoke. They're possibly the only band in the world who plays stoner sludge through the cheapest amps possible while singing almost exclusively about Degrassi Junior High. You can find more about them and more fucked up recordings right here.

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This tape is long out of print and was released on Magnetic South, a fine record label and recording studio out of Bloomington, IN. They specialize in some really great analog music and wild freak out jams by such amazing groups as PUPPY VS DYSLEXIA, APACHE DROPOUT, THEE TSUNAMIS and (my personal favorite) PSYCHIC BAOS.

YOGURT BRAIN - "Vol 2" - Tape - 2014

   Sleep has been an elusive beast lately and out of the last 48 hours, I've only slept for 3 of them. During that time, my much loved (and kind of fancy) bike got stolen through no fault of my own. It's really bumming me out because I use it every single day and it has been a constant help in my everyday life. This is the third time that a bike of mine has been stolen when it's been secured in a place that I live and I'm sick of it. It also pushed me into a random decision to stop being a nice person. So, if you meet me in the future, be prepared for me to be a total asshole to you.
   I'm going to try to sleep and I put on this YOGURT BRAIN tape, which is the brainchild of my friend and practice space-mate, Steve-O. They've been an active band for a few years now and along with his bandmate/drummer, Stephen, they've been slugging it out in backyards, bars, warehouses, living rooms and street corners, playing folky/rocky/somber and energetic music. They play a lot of covers. On this tape, they stick to songs "written, co-written or popularized by GRAM PARSONS", a man who died in the desert from an overdose of morphine and alcohol and then had his dead body stolen by his friends in a borrowed hearse so that they could fulfill his dying wishes of having his body cremated at Joshua Tree. Dude....I'll just go ahead and put this out there...please don't let me have a funeral in a church and have people talk about God around me. You're welcome to steal my dead body and burn it in front of Cancun on Mission Street.
   Anyway, this is a beautiful tape and they do an excellent job of faithfully rendering some classic jams. They also have a Vol 1 tape out there, but I posted this one because the other one, while also great, contains a GRATEFUL DEAD song. I try my hardest in life to shed the internalized racism that I grew up with. I think homophobia and transphobia is about as fucked up as killing someone. I do my best to not be an ableist prick. I try to keep myself open to new ideas and new experiences and I want to accept people for who they really are, even when their ideals and ideas don't align with mine in any conceivable way (except cops)....but goddamn I hate the GRATEFUL DEAD and many of the people who love them. Just let me have that. Let me hold on to that hate and let it fester. That being said, YOGURT BRAIN's "Vol 1" tape is good too.

YOGURT BRAIN'S BANDCAMP

Members of UZI RASH, HUFF STUFF MAGAZINE, YOOTS and so many more that I can't even keep track. 

VALLEY BOYS - Tape - 2012

   I'm not sure if anyone noticed or not, but I took a 2+ week break from the blog to live life. At the same time, I took a break from the internet in general and noticed that I felt a lot happier. As soon as I went back to catching up on my emails and paying attention to the weird world of online life, I felt anxious and upset. Fact: I didn't use the internet until 2001 or so and I still think it's trash, for the most part.
    Moving on, here's VALLEY BOYS. I got this tape back in 2012 and it blew me away. Then, I put it on a shelf and forgot about it because I do things like that sometimes. I pulled it back down this morning and remembered why I like it so much. It's just simple and great punk. There's no pretense or posturing. It instantly reminded me of THE PROBLEMATICS and other classic Rip-Off Records bands, but they're more interested in punk than the garage rock world. Shit's good. Go for it.

Download it from them.

The tape is sold out, but was pressed onto vinyl in Germany by Cut The Cord That...

OUR LADY OF NAPALM - Tape - 1999

   I don't know too much about the history of this SF band because I never saw them and I wasn't around during their short existence. This band teamed the punk upbringing of Ivy (drums....also in LOS CANADIANS, MIAMI and many more) with the stoner rock / metal stylings of Janis (guitar) and Erika (bass)(also in HAMMERS OF MISFORTUNE and LOST GOAT respectively) and they made music that fell somewhere between those styles. They recorded these ten songs, which I think were intended for an LP, but it never saw the light of day...probably because everyone had so many other projects going on. I don't even know the song titles. Song #4 is a great Ivy-fronted song that ALLERGIC TO BULLSHIT (Ivy's later band) tried to work into their repertoire, but it didn't really pan out. There's also some great stoner-style jams, full-on rockers and a DEAD BOYS cover. Get into it.

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This tape is from the shelves of Ivy Jeanne.

   Ivy went on to sing for ALLERGIC TO BULLSHIT, BLACK RAINBOW and MIAMI. Just like every other drummer who has ever lived in the Mission, she once played drums for SHOTWELL. Erica also played in LOST GOAT and AMBER ASYLUM. Janis has played in PAGAN BABIES (with Courtney Love and Kat from BABES IN TOYLAND), HAMMERS OF MISFORTUNE, STONE FOX, L7 and in PINK's (yes, that PINK) backing band. She also has one million hilarious stories that I cannot repeat here. 

HICKEY - "The Ultra Heliocentric Underworld Of The Most Evil Terrifying and Naked Cult Of Hickey. Rare and Unreleased, Unstoppable Rock!!" - 1998 - Tape

   If you're at all familiar with this blog and many of the artists that I've shared on it, I don't need to tell you why HICKEY is important. I discovered punk through THE MINUTEMEN and THE RAMONES. It was because of HICKEY (along with BLACK FORK, BIKINI KILL and 50 MILLION) that I became fiercely attracted to the DIY aspect of punk that keeps me going today and their influence still informs just about every musical decision I make. It's kinda ridiculous.
   I copied this tape off of my friend Ivy way back in the late 90's. Initially, I was not that into it and preferred the band's piles of 7" EP's and their unfuckwithable LP. As time marched on, the songs on here kept creeping into my life and many of them became some of my favorites by the band. HICKEY was known for having a remarkable live show. Sometimes, they played all of the "hits" back to back. One time, I saw them and they just kinda jammed for a long time. It wasn't bad. The 3 members became an intuitive, unstoppable unit that was not afraid of experimentation and going out on a limb...even when it failed. I think some of that comes across on this tape.

  The tape starts off with a couple of unreleased (?) songs and then delves into the band's epic cover of MANOWAR's "Kingdom Come". That song originally appeared on the Probe Records compilation "Death To False Metal", but this is the original six-and-a-half minute version with an extended jam (p.s. it rules). Next up is a weird version of "Last Nite on the Planet" with Shell (I think..it sounds like him. Edit: It's Aesop) making pro-wrestler comments throughout. The next few songs are by HICKEY MILLION, who you can read about if you follow that link (and yes, you can download the file on that page when you get to it). The rest of the side is filled with jams, cover songs (SQUEEZE, DAVID BOWIE, GUNS N ROSES, STOOGES), alternate takes and interviews with teenagers at a live HICKEY show. Side 2 (or for you, song #21) kicks off with a radio promo and goes straight into a live set on KDVS in Davis, CA. There's more jams, a really cool duet with Matty and Allison Wonderslam, more cover songs (AVENGERS and SABBATH) and that damned trumpet they stole from VOODOO GLOW SKULLS all those years ago.
  I'm still constantly impressed by the amount of stuff that this little band recorded in their brief lifetime...and how much of it is really great! I mean, there's still more, although the further you dig, the sadder it gets. Drug addiction is not pretty, folks, so let's just stop here and enjoy this great band and all the years of inspiration they have injected into our lives.

Download HICKEY Oddities

(Just to warn you, this is a large file. 230mb)

Thanks to Ivy Jeanne for the source tape (mine is thrashed).

Thanks to Aesop for giving the green light and drumming on these recordings.
Thanks to MRR for digitization help.

Thanks to Chubby, Rizzler, Wade and Shell for making it out alive.

Thanks to Matty Luv for everything. R.I.P.

...and since Valentine's Day is right around the corner, why not check out this live HICKEY set from V-Day 1997?

JACOB THE TERRIBLE - Demo - CD-R - 2010

   Okay, I admit, it's been a while since I updated this but that's not because I've been burned out or lazy. On the contrary...I worked 14 days in a row at my job while simultaneously practicing with my band, helping to put out a tape, booking a US tour, getting together t-shirt designs, trying half-assedly to find a subletter, buying a bike and celebrating another year of being alive on this weird rock we call Earth. I also spent a week in Worcester, MA, visiting some good friends and getting some much needed time to relax, read and drink coffee.
    While out east, I was lucky enough to roadie for one of my favorite bands, THE TERRIBLES and got to see a punk show in a state where I had never seen such a thing....New Hampshire. It was weird. It was in a martini bar. I also ate the worst taco I've ever eaten in my life. When the band got to their show in Providence, they morphed into one of their few alter egos, JACOB THE TERRIBLE. You see, the band has a long time friend named Jacob Berendes, who has been performing solo for years (You can order one of his CDs here) and also publishes the monthly newspaper, Mother's News. In addition to this, he runs a distro called Chipsylvania and formerly manned the massively missed mission, Fujichia. Anyhow, Jacob wrote many songs that should be (and still could be) classics, but haven't had much of a life to speak of outside of the greater New England area. At some point, he (or perhaps they) decided to turn his formerly quiet songs into full-on rock songs, using THE TERRIBLES as his backing band. Thus, JACOB THE TERRIBLE was born. This shoddy and hastily recorded demo is not quite the representation that the band had in mind when they went down to the basement with the four track, but this is what they got when they emerged a few short hours later. I think the true strength of this band lies in their live performance because Jacob is a front person to end all front people and the TERRIBLES are just a great fucking band.
   Take the Providence show for example...They were slated to play second, just after the smooth indie-garage rock stylings of some hacks with half of JTT's energy or charisma. Instead of discussing the lineup with JTT and talking about how they didn't want to play first, the boring indie rockers just did that thing where they simply disappear and make everyone's lives a little more difficult by not being available (emotionally or otherwise) when it is time for them to play. Berendes and THE TERRIBLES are no strangers to chaos and are well aware that the show must go on. They set up and started the proceedings with no temper tantrums or complaints (the rockers not-so-mysteriously re-appeared just as the band was gearing up for their first song). By the time Jacob yelled "The world can be so fucked!! But there's only so much shit you can shit....ON A FACE!!!", the audience was sold. The next half-hour was filled with wildly flailing, dancing bodies and impassioned sing-a-longs. Simply, they killed it. I briefly peeked in later when the indie rockers were playing their coveted time slot and the crowd was barely managing to stay awake (I know that this isn't a competition but when a band can't manage to do the simple thing they are expected to do on tour [i.e. play the show when asked, interact with the other people involved, not be unavailable], I have little-to-no sympathy for them).

   Since recording this, JACOB THE TERRIBLE has re-recorded some of these songs at Machines With Magnets and the new versions sound a billion times better. They are currently looking for someone to release it (like, say, Corleone Records) and I, for one, would greatly appreciate it's existence in this world.
   When not being in this band, drummer Matt Carroll takes amazing photographs, greatly analyzes seemingly pedestrian endeavors and performs dramatic readings of Victorian-era erotica while dressed in period clothing. Guitarist Jamie Buckmaster enjoys a charmingly bizarre sleep schedule (others might call it insomnia), works on beautiful art and almost effortlessly plays any instrument at an expert level. Mike Leslie, the bass player, skates better than you, works tirelessly on meticulous art and is one of the better people that I am lucky to know in this world. After downloading this, be sure to also listen to THE TERRIBLES and then smack yourself for not having them in your lives for the past 15 years.

Download JACOB THE TERRIBLE
Updated Jan 2013

Taken from a comic by John Isaacson