Used Bin Forever

Trigger Quintet discog

2010-12-10T19:49:00.000-08:00

One of the cooler persons I digi-met during UBF's first life was Mark Twistworthy, owner/operator of Twistworthy Records, which began publishing during the mid '90s in what arguably was a heyday for the surrounding Texas scene. I could go on about all that, but I'll let you Google it on your iPhones if you please.

The Twistworthy label made its first impression in April '95 with a Houston band called Trigger Quintet, dished on 1,000 copies of clear seven-inch vinyl. And the three songs included would represent 60-percent of the band's recorded work, which is such a tease. The band, of which Mark was a part, was great and its music found me right as I was buried under bands like Constatine Sankathi (with which Trigger Quintet shared space on Slave Cut's great Use This Coupon compilation). But they didn't have a long life.

"Everything that happened with Trigger Quintet seemed to happen so fast," Mark recalled. "We were together for about nine or ten months total."

Calling themselves simply "Trigger," the band marked its first show in October 1994 at a community center in The Woodlands, Texas, Mark said. Noting so many other same-name bands, they added "Quintet" by the second show, but "despite the name change, people still referred to us as 'Trigger,' and as a result we were billed that way on every show of our six-week midwest/east coast tour with Carbomb in June 1995."

"The tour was an amazing experience," he continued. "In a stroke of luck, we received our seven-inch just a day or two before leaving for tour. It was the first vinyl release on my own label (the only previous release being a demo by a band I was in prior to Trigger Quintet). We shared equipment with Carbomb the whole tour, following their van in our drummer Tim's Honda Accord (touring in a Honda Accord wasn't so amazing)."

Carbomb perhaps might not've experienced the same amazing feeling: They broke up about a week into the tour, in Chicago. "Their drummer, bassist and roadie ended up taking a bus back to Austin, so in order to continue with the rest of the dates, Jeb (TQ's fill-in guitarist for that tour) and Tim learned all of the bass and drum parts to the Carbomb songs in a few hours. Chris from Carbomb taught them all of their songs while parked in a park along Lake Michigan in Grand Haven, Mich., and they ended up playing all of the rest of the shows the rest of the way, including the show that night."

While on tour, Trigger played shows with the who's-who. "We played multiple shows with Braid who had just released their first LP (who hooked us up with Fred from Divot Records, resulting in our being included on the Ground Rule Double compilation), multiple shows with Impetus Inter from Minn., and single shows along the way with many other bands we liked like Ezra Pound, Rye Coalition, Action Patrol, Spirit Assembly, Boys Life, the Make Up, Cap'n Jazz, Cornelius, Eagle Bravo, Hellbender, Spanakorzo, Boy Sets Fire, and others I'm forgetting.

"One of our last shows of the tour was in Lake Jackson, Texas, with Daredevil, a band comprised of ex-members of Indian Summer and Ordination of Aaron. This meeting would result in our being included on the Use This Coupon compilation on Slave Cut Records, run by one of the members of that band."

Six weeks of touring through major metropolitan areas should've surfaced some action, right? Well:

"The lowest point of the tour," Mark said, "was being a no-show for our show at the Fireside Bowl in Chicago with Braid and Rye Coalition after witnessing a drive-by gang shooting right in front of the Fireside, just a few feet away from us--and then subsequently getting pulled over and surrounded by cops with their guns drawn for fleeing the scene immediately afterwards. This, along with the fact that Carbomb was in the middle of breaking up, forced us to regrettably not go back to the Fireside that night, so both Carbomb and Trigger Quintet cancelled the show."

The band landed back in Houston with a glad-you're-home-safe show that included Fisticuffs Bluff and the great Nuzzle before another home-state show with Crownhate Ruin, in College Station. "This show, in July of 1995, would end up being our last show," Mark said, explaining Mike decided he was moving to San Francisco, where he joined the band Lonely Broken Radio, which may have included some former Ordination of Aaron and Indian Summer folks. They saw a seven-inch released on Chrysanthemum Records.

Mike appeared in Austin a few months later and formed Desert Jet Set with Tim and Jeb before returning to Houston and initiating Curses All You Vampires with TQ guitarist Brian. Mike's in the Windy City now.

Tim was in the each-accomplished Hades Kick and Rhythm of Black Lines and currently plays in the Austin-based Golden Calf.

Mark moved to Austin in 1996 and has lived through numerous bands. Twistworthy Records is still active (pick up the Flesh Lights debut single, out now!). His current band, Come And Take It, should have a seven-inch out this month.

Here's the Trigger Quintet discog (I posted the Use This Coupon cut a long time ago but these tracks came straight from Mark, who said he got them through another blog, so if you're responsible for digitizing them, thank you, and hit me up so I can give proper credit).

TITLE: (tracks from Trigger Quintet's s/t seven inch and the Ground Rule Double and Use This Coupon compilations)
LABEL: Twistworthy, Divot and Slave Cut, respectively
YEAR: 1995
TRACKS: Senseless in Drowning / A Return Home / Kill Me Before I Die / Slept For Seven Days / Crash Course

The AF4 shirt on PBS

2010-12-05T12:57:00.000-08:00

Exciting posts are on the way. But, for the moment, here's a story based on something I rediscovered this morning.

One day in the early '80s my dad lugged a personal computer through the door, which, as early as it sounds, was a long time coming. Our bookshelves were already loaded with code books and program guides, my dad had been part of a local computer club and long before that was involved in amateur radio. Whatever had circuit boards, colored wires and blinking lights had a place in our home (bombs excluded) and although I, at the time our first PC starting glowing, wasn't conscious of all the intricacies, I knew we were a computer nerd family.

Jumping to an evening in the mid '90s, I was, I dunno, working on homework or something while my dad immersed himself in a PBS special called "Triumph of the Nerds," which chronicled the rise of the home computing industry, highlighted its quirks and introduced us to the nerds whose mornings-to-midnights were/are comprised of nothing but producing computer code and the process of steadily eliminating the whites of their eyes. I became immersed after seeing a very familiar t-shirt. Pay attention, it's right off the bat:

The Episode

2010-11-29T18:37:00.000-08:00

Alright, back from vacation. What's up? I've been talking with Dave from Action Patrol about a good post to come, so, for warm up, here's an old UBF post on the excellent, post-AP Episode. As you will read, lukewarm I was on them at first--then bam.

From UBF, October 26, 2006: After disbanding in 1996, Action Patrol singer Dave Grant, bassist-turned-guitarist Tom Baisden and drummer Rich Green formed the Episode, which neighbored AP stylistically but couldn't quite deliver the same greats. To my knowledge, they only released one album.

Posted on UBF some time later: I still hang onto the editorial part of that first sentence, but not like I used to. I picked up their eight-song s/t as soon as it came out in 1998, and, after a few semi-enjoyable spins, I shelved it. Action Patrol, I thought, was so much better. The Episode wasn't bad, no, not remotely. But something was missing from their sound. It didn't have--I dunno, something. The crazy, snotty factor? That was probably it. But I never sold the record, just in case something, at some point, popped and I was able to find new bond with it.

Well, about three months ago, I pulled it off the shelf and HOLY CRAP WHAT WAS I THINKING ALL THESE YEARS? What's wrong with this recording at all? I had no complaints and I replayed it time after time and again. More darkness and (here comes that word) introspection (maybe), but, again, complaints none. It wasn't AP's blast of confetti, yeah, but the Episode was in a different mood, and hey, maybe because they were a different project and AP was dead. So simple.

AP fans lacking this release need it. The old spirit resurfaces in "Ronald Reagan Memorial Wing." The rest is boss either way. I'll close by saying that I really hate it when 'critics' review a band based on what its members' older band(s) sounded like, and boy am I guilty here. Why not go back and rewrite it? Ehe, well...

Really is true: The best releases are the ones with which we don't click at first.

P.S. "Good Fear [Up 1/4%]" is just as catchy as all heck.

Oh, and looks like I, in the earlier posts, failed to mention the band was based in Richmond, Va.

Oh, oh, P.P.S. As for the nowadays, Dave has new band with a forthcoming (or potentially out already?) seven-inch. I'll provide details soon if you haven't already learned them. Or, perhaps, a knowledgeable employee can carry that out in the comments area.

Fer now, here's the Episode.

TITLE: s/t
LABEL: Whirled
YEAR: 1998
TRACKS:
My Cartography Internship / Ronald Reagan Memorial Wing / All The Chickens In Hong Kong / Good Fear [Up 1/4%] / Mercy Trophy / Enameled / Fleering / Palindrome

Small (23)

2010-11-12T16:45:00.000-08:00

My first exposure to Small, when they shared a bill in Wilmington with Archers of Loaf, was good enough to boost them to my fave-band status around 1993-94. Within the year-ish I'd gathered up most of their available music and continued to do so whenever the new-release radar beeped.

Well--wait, no--actually my first exposure to Small was seeing a low-budge video on the local access or university channel while at my grandmother's house in Raleigh, and I'm looking for that video on YouTube sans success. I recall it was a music video show, though I don't remember the name. I do, however, remember the following show was called "Club Mix" and a cheap Waterlilies promo canned my attention from there. Weird I can remember that bit of it. Any help, folks?

Anyway, the show with Archers was my first live exposure to Small, was certainly the chief admiration kicker, and I remember I wanted to race home afterward, rip off their sound and present new, blaringly-Small-influenced songs to my then band (the same band that I mentioned in a previous post had done an hilariously inaccurate version of "I Wanna Be Your Dog," which I'll surely upload under a lapse of judgment). Small became my absolute fave in the state (until I heard Cornelius a short time later) and I continue to render their seven-inches unplayable (the needle's gonna cut right through one of these days).

Trouser Press did an excellent job documenting the band's history (read it here), which began in 1991 with early Superchunk drummer Chuck Garrison, Matt Walter, Mike Kenlan and Eric Bachmann, who not so long later rolled off to start the more gruff Archers of Loaf. The Trouser Press piece also explains the temporary Small 23 nameplate that confused the heck out of my then-14-year-old self.

As Fred Mills wrote, the band "didn't plan on duking it out, record-bin-wise, with several other similarly named combos: Rhode Island's Small Factory, Canada's Smalls and Oregon's Small. The northwesterners' threat of legal action prompted a rechristening to Small 23 for a time during the True Zero Hook period (advance tapes of Chin Music also bore the numerically augmented name), but the group reclaimed its original moniker and released its 1994 album as Small."

One release that seemed to wink at fans was the "Toastmaster" / "Pincushion" seven-inch, with the "Small" sitting an awkward distance from the "23," as if communicating "Yeah, we gotta do the '23' thing on this release, but..." (and I don't know what the case was on this one, I'm just sayin').

These are also two of my favorite Small songs (the CD version of this single held a third track, which I regret I don't have), "Toastmaster" being the blatant hit from the 1994 Chin Music album, while flipside "Pincushion" was probably the best of their 1992 yearbook. And it features Eric Bachmann on guitar.

Here you go.

TITLE: "Toastmaster" b/w "Pincushion"
LABEL: Alias
YEAR: 1994
TRACKS:
Toastmaster / Pincushion

Popdefect

2010-11-06T17:23:00.000-07:00

Hi all,

Good things in the processor presently. Really. Can't wait, but while we do, here's one of my most frequently played-loud seven-inches. 'Thing is wonderful. Below is the language from an old post on the original UBF:

I first posted this in November of '06, and I figured I'd reconvey that this 7" is one of my absolute favorites. It's just so great. Take a look at the cover for the sake of Christ. They've gotta be one of the best trios I know of. Here's stuff from their website:

POPDeFECT has released seven singles, three EP's, a 10", three CDs, six compilation tracks and been the subjects of "Live With This", a full length documentary film chronicling their tours across America. They have recorded songs for two different movies as well and appeared in a television pilot as the "House Band" (!) Bassist Charlie was even on TV's Jones and Jury program to stand trial for spitting beer on a wormy little photographer who dared come to one of their shows!! (He deserved it). Their last CD release, "LIVE IN BIG BEAR" showcases sixteen live tracks including a number of weird cover songs.

As I wrote in my first Popdefect post from November 2006, one of those cover songs is "Can't Escape Myself" by the Sound (not to be confused with the much lesser Sounds, from Sweden), which, other than being an album highlight, is a great bullet to go on their we-know-our-shit resume.

Here 'tis.

TITLE: (Puro Desmadre b/w That Was It)
LABEL: Flipside
YEAR: 1990
TRACKS:
Puro Desmadre / That Was It

Hardware

2010-10-27T17:24:00.000-07:00

1993: I was 13 years old and wringing my brain for potential names for the two-man rock project my buddy Andrew and I valued. I will not yet disclose the name we settled upon, but my candidate list did include “Hardware,” which I imagined would look great on a flyer.

A bit of time later, I happened across a flyer that made me think: “Someone else had the same idea.”

On a good-looking sheet of paper was, yes, “Hardware,” a band billed among others to play some upcoming show. They were local. And I had no way of knowing at the time that some of its members were concurrently writing my favorite ever North Carolina music in a trio called Cornelius.

By 1996 I had a good enough map in my head regarding who was who (I saw the Cornelius guys around town but didn’t know them yet), what labels mattered (Assorted Porkchops, for one), what bands they put out (Cornelius), and so on. In 1997, when I saw the Hardware seven-inch hit the bin at CD Alley in hometown Wilmington, N.C., and when I turned it over to see the Assorted Porkchops name dance across it, I claimed it.

I’d already seen Hardware play at the Exchange in Wilmington, recognized the faces and dug the music, so. Oh, and a note about that: guitarist Dave Hause told me recently that show might have been the band’s final.

I also recently learned by way of drummer Chris Murray that the seven-inch was essentially put out by Dave and thus was not an official Assorted Porkchops release (AP was Chris's label).

And after recently conducted interviews, I further learned all three Hardware members had some colorful—not always cheery—memories of the band.

Regarding the seven-inch, “Dave wanted to use the cover of the Police's album, Regatta de Blanc, as the front of the sleeve--unaltered!--but I talked him out of it,” said Chris, who also played guitar and screamed in Cornelius. “Didn't want to get sued. He went with the three bike gears instead.”

Five-hundred copies hit in 1997. “I really like the songs on the seven-inch. I think they were our best ever, but I hate the sound of the recording,” Dave said. “Part of it is my fault for messing with the mix after recording.”

“I remember thinking that it sounded pretty good,” said Hardware bassist Mike Dail, who also played bass for, yes, Cornelius. “There was one problem with it,” he said of the seven-inch. “I decided to use Dave's high end--higher end than mine anyway--fretless bass because it sounded so nice. That made the recording go a little longer than it should due to me hitting the wrong notes, and I think some bad notes can be heard on the final product.”

For the record, nothing's ever sounded amiss to me and I always thought the songwriting grand.

“I was never too thrilled with any of the recordings,” Chris said.

“The few people who actually bought the record thought we had a girl singer, and seemed into it until I told them it was a dude,” Chris continued. “Then their enthusiasm went flaccid.”

Origins
Said Dave, “I played for a short time in Suburban Propain with Chris. So when I returned to Wilmington from college in 1991 we started jamming together.”

A short piece and a bass player later, they had enough songs for a demo and a few shows. At this point, the lineup included Dave and Chris with Dave Wells on the low end.

“Dave (Wells) was younger; he must’ve been around 17 and still in high school,” Dave Hause said. “It was a pain because playing a show on a weekday out of town was a no-go.”

After a year or so, Dave Wells dropped out and Hardware welcomed Mike Dail.

“I had actually been friends with Dave Wells because we started playing together my freshman year—I played drums and he played guitar—and I would go with him to Hardware shows,” Mike said. “I started playing in Cornelius and getting very into the scene and Dave Wells sort of disappeared. Maybe he was working a lot. Anyway, Dave (Hause) and Chris asked me to play and I was reluctant. I had liked Hardware. I had actually sat through their entire first recording session. I just didn't think it was my kind of music.

“But then," Mike continued, "when I gave playing with them a shot, they had scrapped a lot of the pop-punk I wasn't real excited about for more just garage-y power pop, which I much preferred. I think that the fact that I was obsessed with Unwound at the time made playing in Hardware very fun for me since Hardware's pace was much closer to Unwound's than Cornelius’s--Cornelius's pace is closer to Assuck--and that allowed me to rip off Vern Rumsey more often.”

Showmen
While Dave said Hardware experienced more cancellations than actual performances (three no-gos in one day, he recalled), Mike said he essentially cancelled his consciousness for some of the shows they did play.

He recalled a house show with Eagle Bravo on the corner of 23^rd and Market streets in Wilmington. “I had decided to trip on acid earlier in the day, a couple hours before that show,” he said. “It turned out to be STRONG shit. By the time we had to play I had pretty much lost my mind.”

And?

“The music sounded like a bunch of chainsaws running simultaneously. I am not sure if I was playing what I was supposed to or not. And I have no idea how the show went.”

Mike remembers better a show Hardware played at Pointdexter Records, which in its heyday, before CD Alley opened in 1995, was Wilmington's best record store. Next door, at the famous but bygone Mad Monk, Cornelius and Fugazi shared a bill. It was the only time Hardware and Cornelius played on the same night, Mike said.

Breakup
Hardware broke up in the summer of 1997, evidently right after the aforementioned Exchange show.

Chris does, however, still possess a box of those seven-inches if anyone’s interested.

Hear it here. I still enjoy it!

(EDITOR’S NOTE: The only show my aforementioned 1993-era band played, alas, was to our drummer’s girlfriend, who I suppose had nothing else going on that afternoon, and the cops showed up, but we thought that part was pretty cool and couldn’t wait to tell our fellow 8^th graders. Hey, maybe I’ll post one of our boombox-recorded songs one day. After we’d recruited a bass player, we did an hilariously inaccurate version of “I Wanna Be Your Dog.”)

ABCs of Punk

2010-10-24T09:30:00.000-07:00

All,

Plenty in the works: posts of great ol' records, yeah, but enhanced with contributions from the bands' members. I won't name those bands until I have the material in hand, but for clues, some appear on the ABCs of Punk compilation Richmond, Va.'s Whirled Records released in, I think, 1997.

Per the concept, each of the alphabet's 26 letters are represented. I guess the X-Rays were a shoo-in, as perhaps was Quadiliacha because the Queers didn't really fit the bill, but selections for their respective first initials included Action Patrol, Braid and Cornelius onto Rye Coalition, Sleepytime Trio and The Fresh-O-Matics (yes, that's the 'T' band and that's cheating), et cetera.

Eagle Bravo's cut, I will note, is a supreme cover of Joe Jackson's "Steppin' Out."

I consider Whirled Records one of the time period's better labels, having released, for example, Action Patrol's full-length and other comps including Attaining the Supreme, which bore one of the funniest ever concepts for cover art. I'll get to that one one day, but for the moment:

Enjoy the ABCs of Punk. Here's part one. And here's part two.

TITLE: ABCs of Punk
LABEL: Whirled Records
YEAR: 1997
TRACKS:
Action Patrol - Benign
Braid - Bridge to Canada
Cornelius - Novels of Our Grandfathers
Doc Hopper - Iron Fist
Eagle Bravo - Steppin' Out
Four Hundred Years - Sequence
Gus - Hand to Mouth
Hellnation - Information Barrier
In/Humanity - Super Plan B
J Church - Socialist Newspaper
Kerosene 454 - T-Minus 100
Less Than Jake - Son of Dick
Men's Recovery Project - Fresh Frankness
Norman Mayer Group - Albeit L
Oblivion - Hey Chewbacca
Pezz - Mokunker
Quadiliacha - Ben Burton Park
Rye Coalition - We Have Ridden
Sleepytime Trio - Flake City
The Fresh-O-Matics - Death on I-85
Unsettled - Genocide
Vanderbuilderass - I Think I Can See
Wesley Willis - I Can't Drive
X-Rays - Totalled Baby
(Young) Pioneers - The Marching Blue Ants (Of Strongarm Robbery)
Zoinks! - Pedestal

Pink Collar Jobs / Rustweiler split

2010-10-19T18:03:00.000-07:00

Recently, while in convo with my buddy Gordie, the North Carolina mountains' catchiest raspy punk band surfaced. "Man," he said, "Pink Collar Jobs came on my iPod the other day when I was drivin' around. Holy crap." That's probably not a direct quote, but I think it's a good enough way to start this post.

Production and playing supercollided on PCJ's side of its split with Illinois band Rustweiler, who served hard but--well, damn, there's just something about the PCJ side's noise I've always loved. Maybe it's that crazy wind-tunnel sound that howls up near the end of "Dead On The Floor."

PCJ--Lyn, Landon, Jason and Julie--was one of the nicest groups of folks I'd met when my old band was trying to prove ourselves cool. We shared a bill in 1996 for what began as a house show and--after police intervention--became a storage-shed blast off 23rd Street in Wilmington, N.C. PCJ delivered. We stunk. Still, they told us "good job" and that we should, sometime, hit up their hometown of Boone, N.C. for another show together. They were probably just being courteous, but, hey, they were courteous.

From the original, 2006 UBF post:

The ideology of Boone, N.C.'s Pink Collar Jobs was made pretty clear through their lightly sarcastic moniker. Comprised of two babes and two jocks (take a joke), PCJ were one of the best mid '90s punk bands in North Carolina punching out homophobia, sexism, war, drug abuse and whitey through supremely catchy budget punk. Last I heard from any of them, guitarist/vocalist Jason and guitarist/vocalist Lynn were continuing the fight in Dead Things (this band actually did long tours on nothing but bicycles and borrowed equipment), meanwhile my information on drummer Landon and bassist Julie is years of out date.

If anyone has current info--or old info--about the band, pass it on to me and I'll update the post.

And here's from the Rustweiler portion of the original post:

Rustweiler was pretty much the same brand of political punk, with a just smidgen more of Born Against in the songwriting. They were from Illinois, their music flooded my mix tapes and their logo had some prime real estate on my high school Eastpak.

Have it here.

TITLE: Pink Collar Jobs / Rustweiler split 7"
LABEL: (none listed)
YEAR: 1995 (?)
TRACKS:
Pink Collar Jobs - In The Kitchen / Pink Collar Jobs - Dead On The Floor /
Rustweiler - Soapbox Ministers / Rustweiler - Dead Poets Society

Salvo Rain (from the master tapes)

2010-10-16T12:13:00.000-07:00

Occasionally, requests beep from my inbox. For the Salvo Rain LP, I've heard more beeps than any, especially since reactivating UBF.

Well--okay, three requests, but that's thrice the demand for anyone else. So let's go special with this one.

Recently, Salvo Rain drummer Greg Ellis mentioned he'd re-ripped the LP from the original ADATs in "high quality," meaning I pounced for a copy because my old UBF rip of the LP came straight off vinyl, which sounded a little turbid. (Don't mistake. My vinyl copy sounds fantastic on the turntable, but the rip just sorta transferred sans excitement, which is a shame; it's an exciting record.) So, thank you so much, Greg, I'm able to share Salvo Rain's longplayer straight from the masters, and it sounds fantastic.

The Rock Hill, S.C., based band between 1993-97 slid us two 7"s and some comp tracks before the LP. A few years ago Greg said a Chicago label had planned to release a Salvo Rain discography, "but they realized they were out of their fucking minds and pulled at the last minute." According to some of my old notes, there also exists plenty of lost Salvo Rain material, issued on old cassettes, but from my understanding they've badly deteriorated. "We shat out 60-odd songs in three years and actually recorded 46 of them," Greg told UBF in an old interview.

"The 12" was the last stuff Salvo Rain recorded," perhaps around August 1996, Greg said last week. "I remember we had just gone on a road trip and played a huge hardcore festival. We were all broke and a little burned out, but we wanted to get the last batch of stuff recorded."

The band's eyes landed on a flier for a desirably cheap studio, and Greg said it was good vibes upon arrival.

"The owner turned out to be a super-nice hippy guy who had somehow landed a huge warehouse space up near what is now the south-end part of Charlotte (N.C.)," Greg explained. "There was a recording set-up on one side and a basketball court on the other and there were a couple of dogs running around. It was a blast."

But the band had its work cut out. The engineer was "stoned out of his gourd and it was difficult to communicate with him," Greg said. "He accidentally erased my drum part on one song and I had to go back and re-track it over the other parts.

"I also remember we fed one of his dogs McDonald's and the warehouse was covered in shit 15 minutes later."

For those who asked, and for everyone else, here's the 1996 LP, "remastered" and sounding great.

TITLE: s/t
LABEL: Wishful Thinking
YEAR: 1996
TRACKS:
Drivethrough / Thanks But No Thanks / Fridge Magnet / What Do You Make Of? / Today's Kids / South of Charlotte / Have A Nice Life / Halves / Taking Up Karate / New Black Eye / Keep the Receipt / No Vacancy

P.S. Greg's later bands included Quote Unquote, Safe Return Doubtful and Cannons. More recently, he's recorded on his own and is currently in a band called Motel Glory, which has yet to record.

Eagle Bravo

2010-10-12T16:20:00.000-07:00

Grand jury selection for best one-sided 12" record produced in North Carolina's mid '90s, Eagle Bravo wrote potent, noisy rock as top shelf as Ritz Crackers or Ritz Carlton. The quartet followed Rights Reserved (three members shared) and penned titles as affecting as "Radar Detector Detector Detector."

Here's the original UBF post from 200(6?). Not sure what I was thinking with some of it:

Not to sound geocentric, but here's more to pile on the "can't beat the Carolinas in the 1990s" case. Sad the '90s are through and music ain't the same, but along with Cornelius, Assfactor 4, Salvo Rain, Rights Reserved, the Dart 360 and Resol, Eagle Bravo are among the many more fueling an ever-burning bonfire of erstwhile super rock, and it's warm as it's ever been; arguably moreso since today's standards are pretty much clad in cutesyness and neon legwarmers, which is just darn gross and not a bit funny.

Anyway--Eagle Bravo. Three members overlapped with another band whose name seems to have been thrown around a lot lately: Rights Reserved, who were loud with some of the period's best 2.5 minute tunes in the bin with those mentioned up top, but didn't have the raw or rasp they saved for Eagle Bravo, who I think I've always liked a little bit better. Actually, they could very well be second place to Cornelius as my fave of the day's N.C. bands.

Eagle Bravo's posthumous, one-sided 12" blows much away. It's clangy and blasty and has unclipped guitar strings dashing out its headstock all dripping in Minwax.

Here you are.

TITLE: s/t (8 Three Dimension Full Stereo Songs)
LABEL: Gridsector
YEAR: 1997 or '98, I can't remember
TRACKS:
Radar Detector Detector Detector / Iron Rod Vs. The Chevy / Summa' Jams / 35, 45, Whatever / You Said It, Chairman / Robotman / Today Is Broken / Louse

Buttercup

2010-10-09T10:18:00.000-07:00

For me, the coolest part of UBF's first life was in catching up with or meeting for the first time persons who were directly involved with the records posted -- and learning plenty are still active in one way or another.

Among them was/is Greg Knowles, operator of Pennsylvania label and zine Chumpire, established 1990. I posted a couple records he put out in the early to mid '90s--the Ding LP, a couple OX 7"s, some great compilations--and he helped fill the info-gaps. He also, thank you, Greg, filled out my Chumpire collection with releases I didn't previously own. One of my faves was a 1997 7" by Buttercup, whose AF4-like sound spewed super catchy short shots for which I'm nuts.

The northwest Pennsylvania band got its "garage start" in August '96, according to Greg, who played guitar and yelled in the band. "Drummer Scott MacDonald (later of California's The Achievement) left a month later to begin his journalism career in Florida. He secured a pal to take over. So began the practices." Shows were monthly and always in-state, never farther east than Emporium, never farther west than Pittsburgh. After home-dubbing a seven-song, ten-minute demo, the band etched vinyl.

"April, '97, we went to record the 7" in Brooklyn -- pre-hip Brooklyn," Greg said. "Clearfield, Pa., recording wiz Fred Weaver relocated there and set up his 16-track studio in the loft he shared. We tracked the seven songs for the EP plus 'Take On Me' to add to the Totally Fucking the '80s comp LP/CD done by Florida's Boxcar Records."

The In Hand and Underfoot 7" EP came out in June '97, 500 copies pressed. "Bags were decorated with a rudimentary drawing of a buttercup. (Drummer) Simon quit the band before the EP came out. It was a time suck for him."

With hardly any time lost, Chris Strunk of excellent Chumpire band Ding filled the hole and remained aboard Buttercup until the band's June '98 breakup. Said Greg, "Chris went on to South Korea for a stint as an English teacher. He returned to Pittsburgh, got a graduate degree in Library Science, toured and recorded with Crucial Unit, and relocated to Boston by the turn of the century. He now does the Ride the Snake label and continues to beat the skins Moon-style for various bands and projects when he's not working the children's section of a branch of the Boston Public Library.

"It was early fall, '98, when (Buttercup bassist) Mike played his last show," Greg continued. "We played a Pittsburgh basement on a Friday. Later that night was when he called and left a message saying he was done. Chris and I played a show the next night as a two-piece. We did another one like that before Justin Campbell took up the bass.

"The Chris/Greg/Justin version lasted 'til June, '98. We recorded at +/- in Pittsburgh that month. Andy Wright was at the controls. The songs went on a three-way split LP called Basic Training. Bobbykork and Pseudo Heroes (the NWPA band that was the good PH) shared the vinyl. Ghetto Cat from Philly split the release with Chumpire.

"The last show was in a Pittsburgh basement. The set was hampered by requests to turn down (to appease a neighbor) and was a bit of a bummer. The show relocated to another basement and Dillinger Four got to be as loud as they wanted.

"I missed D4. I headed east on the turnpike because I was heading off for a month in Spain."

NOTE: Buttercup's songs, every last one, are to be released as part of the Screaming, With Noise! comp, Greg revealed. "Buttercup will share bit-space with Ding, Chase Squad, the Sonic Compromise and E.B."

Until then, here's a rip of the vinyl version of the great In Hand and Underfoot EP.

And if you have any questions about other Chumpire releases--plenty remain available with original packaging and all--e-mail Greg at chumpire@gmail.com.

TITLE: In Hand and Underfoot EP
LABEL: Chumpire
YEAR: 1997
TRACKS:
Mom's Angry / Departure / Tutti Frutti / Pennies / Some Rest / North of Harrisburg / Stay Put

Assfactor 4 / Rights Reserved split

2010-10-07T18:04:00.000-07:00

Guess it's time to call up Assfactor 4, all this talk an' all. And since the Rights Reserved post was such a hit...

Here's the original, February 2007 UBF post on the Assfactor 4/Rights Reserved split 7" (which I re-upped at least three times due to the record's popularity):

Refer to my older Assfactor 4 post (Editor's note: I do not have this archived) or their Wikipedia page for the info you need, should you need it at all. In brief, AF4 was from Cola, S.C., and easily one of my top three fave hardcore bands ever. Onto the flipside.

Rights Reserved was from Durham, N.C. and in the same league as Eagle Bravo, Salvo Rain, Resol and Cornelius. They kicked off in the late '80s as a quick-paced hardcore band, but grabbed a sound more their own in the early '90s. In that time they recorded this split with AF4 and released a couple other EPs before the Assorted Porkchops label issued their great full-length LP in 1996. I can see fans of a selected Hot Snakes catalog taking a real shine to it.

While this split doesn't capture the final product of the band's evolution as found on the LP, these two jams from '93 are high up by any measure. Love the bass sound too. Some Rights Reserved personnel shared time in Eagle Bravo (another classic N.C. fave), some went on to form Manamid, and one is currently spitting rhymes in Kerbloki. As for the AF4 songs, the recording predates the unparalleled magic kicked up by "Sometimes I Suck" and everything to follow, but I don't think that band ever had a bad moment. Man, what a band. In concluuuusion, this is just an all-'round fantastic 7".

Chris Murray from Assorted Porkchops also left me this message:

looks like you got the second press, the one that chris mcgee/fallen squirrel reissued with a new sleeve covered with his doodles. it didn't go over well with the bands...

Here 'tis.

TITLE: Rights Reserved / Assfactor 4 split
LABEL: Fallen Squirrel
YEAR: 1993
TRACKS:
Rights Reserved - Hey Day / Rights Reserved - Persimmon / Assfactor 4 - Why I Walk; Dail Dinwiddie Has A Posse

Resol 'Sorry, Out of Ervice' / Sad, sad Cutting Crew

2010-10-05T19:28:00.000-07:00

Back in the comfort of North Carolina and the weather is fantastic. And I remember when I was stuck in a Pennsylvania hotel room (of course I remember, it was two days ago) that I promised a double post. Well, I hope this one delivers.

First, Resol's absolutely blaring full-length, Sorry, Out of Ervice. Second, a rip I made a few years ago of a Cutting Crew 45 played at 33 rpm. It's amazing how drunken one can make an already depressing song by slowing it down. It's particularly great upon the lyric, "Must've been something I said."

Anyway, I recovered the language from the original, 2007 UBF post on this Resol recording. Contains some factoids courtesy of Resol's Tom Corbitt. And, evidently, someone in the past requested I post this album, so hopefully it's still in demand. Should be. Thing rocks. Here's the original post:

How could the folks not request another Resol post? With sonic grains of Born Against, Eddy, Unherd and other peers, they splattered Raleigh, N.C., with one of the day's better catalogues, including but not limited to a great split 7" with Greensboro's Blownapart Bastards (search my archives). (Editor's note: I will repost that split at some point.)

I've gone through this before, but a little while back, Resol's Tom Corbitt got up with me and gave me a dish on the locale's incest: "There's a lot of backstory and cross-pollination on the Raleigh scene back then. Charlie was also in Fragrant Cloud and John was in Stewface. The first incarnation was called Bored Beyond Belief and had a different drummer (we played with Colin Seven, but he hooked up with Tonie [Joy] and started Universal Order of Armageddon). Charlie and John went on to form Dart 360 with Chad from Mold (who was in Gnosis) and on and on."

And I highly advise you read an interview with Tom, in which he recalls Resol's show in Wilmington, N.C., with Silk and some "white funk bands." Really, read it. (Editor's note: the link to the interview is, frustratingly, broken. Any help recovering the interview?)

Here's Resol's Sorry, Out of Ervice with the Cutting Crew spluff at the end. You'll enjoy.

TITLE: Sorry, Out of Ervice
LABEL: ?
YEAR: 199_
TRACKS:
Troff / Stardust Lounge / Turn Off the Fat Guy / Dick Street / Comet / Global Foodie / Fred Lobster / Mapped / Jaundice / Frustration

Back Tuesday

2010-10-03T18:35:00.001-07:00

Hi, folks. Sitting in a Bethlehem, Pa., hotel room and desperately want to post something. But let's shoot for Tuesday. I'll make it a good one. Heck, I'll double-post. Requests?

Been in Pennsylvania since Friday and picked up a stack of good records while here, thanks to a great friend.

Anyway, here's an Unherd vid I found on YouTube. It's holding me over, as are some other links to the right.

Pay you Tuesday,

Ben, UBF

Stupid By The Grace Of God

2010-09-28T19:22:00.000-07:00

Chris, I promise I won't post your whole catalog. In fact, everyone, Chris, CEO of Assorted Porkchops, still has affordable items available, such as the outstanding Cornelius discography. Visit the website, which also notes an Assorted Porkchops 7"s compilation available in CD-R format.

The Wilmington, N.C., label issued some of my favorite 7"s of the 1990s entire, starting with the four-song Stupid By The Grace Of God compilation released in 1991. As described by the label:

one song each by bedlam hour, tonka, toast and unherd. the bedlam hour track is testament to mosh metal and monster cereals. tonka pop it up with a fast low fi tune. toast are poppy as well in that sweet baby/papa smurf sort of way. unherd rockout with their own brand of d.c. influenced post punk.

It's actually one of my favorite Unherd songs, though the highlight, for me, has always been Bedlam Hour's use of the line, "These are a few of my favorite things."

Enjoy.

TITLE: Stupid By The Grace Of God (various artists)
LABEL: Assorted Porkchops
YEAR: 1991
TRACKS:
Tonka - "Butterknife" / Bedlam Hour - "Frankenberry Mosh" / Toast - "Gargamel" / Unherd - "Walkin' Around"

Raymond Brake / Rebar split

2010-09-26T11:46:00.000-07:00

I so want to distribute the Raymond Brake's 1995 full-length, Piles of Dirty Winters, but label Simple Machines claims to have copies available for purchase. It's a predicament--but hang on.

I want to say I e-mailed the label years ago on this topic and never heard back. This means its website's catalog or contact info is simply out of date, or--I dunno, something else.

Until I resolve this, the plan is as follows: You will enjoy this 1994 split 7" between the Raymond Brake and fellow Greensboro-based North Carolinians Rebar.

And soon I will follow up with a Piles post availing a few great songs from it. I hope you like these terms. The Raymond Brake deserves more air.

"Hailing from Greensboro, N.C., the Raymond Brake was in a unique position at a remarkable time," Simple Machines' page on the band states. More:

With access to the 'young rock' that was pouring out of nearby Chapel Hill from Superchunk, Polvo and Archers of Loaf, you might think that they'd just have become another indie rock band. But they didn't fall into such an easy trap. Greensboro is a small town, and the Raymond Brake boys wrote incredibly complicated songs that showed their influences but mimicked none. They didn't have the luxury of being caught up and brought down as the poster children of any useless hypothetical movement. They didn't sound like another local older band that kicked ass...because there wasn't one.

Rebar, too, was stellar. And their side of this 7" sounded great at 45- and 33-rpms. Almost sounded like they slowed the recording before applying the vocals. Anyway, neat effect.

It also seems in line with the band's reason for being. From its (old-looking) website:

In the summer of '93, a love of electronics and a hankering for pawn shops inspired the creation of something weird.

Yep, Jae and Sanders weren't your average couple of folks fulfilling their dreams of being in a rock band. Armed with some crappy hand- me-down instruments, and a good bit of inspiration from NoMeansNo, Led Zeppelin, and Wings™(?), these kids formed Lazer Geek. The result? Several songs that were to become property of Rebar, Inc. - and a few weird cover songs morphed into ska tunes. For some reason or another, Brent Dunn and Greg Sigmon overheard the racket and saw that it was good. Thus, in the blustery Autumn of 1993, Rebar was born. And by December 16th, they were ready to thrill the throngs of attendees at Sander's roommate's birthday party. It was fun, and the kids loved their twisted blend of doped-out art rock and straight-up pop. Now you, the reader, must be thinking "sheesh, are you kidding me? Did anyone REALLY like this crap"?

Listen here.

TITLE: Raymond Brake / Rebar split 7"
LABEL: Crunchy Record Stuff
YEAR: 1994
TRACKS:
The Raymond Brake - "Davliks" / Rebar - "Transparent"

Unherd

2010-09-25T11:49:00.000-07:00

Since reactivating UBF I've heard Assfactor 4 mentioned a dozen times. Indeed, that South Carolina band wrote the absolute best material of their genre's era. And I'll get to them, but first let's do a little warm-up.

Unherd is pre-AF4 and the band's 1993 s/t LP is a favorite. Here's the write up from Assorted Porkchops, the unparalleled Wilmington, N.C., label that issued it:

very melodic and intense hardcore from cola town. tight, excellent, lyrics, musicianship, and production. a soup cover to boot. one of the best albums I own. members went on to form the other half of assfactor 4. 800 pressed in 93, out of print.

Thirteen songs none to skip. Check them out here.

TITLE: s/t
LABEL: Assorted Porkchops
YEAR: 1993
TRACKS:
Blue / Shitter / 20 / Raincore / Dusk / Bulk Rate Male / Take A Day / Dripping / Prayers / Pow / Fluff / Nude / Pemex

Rights Reserved

2010-09-24T20:50:00.000-07:00

Well. Long, long, long hiatus but UBF is back. More accurately, I'm rebuilding what I (foolishly, sure) deleted three years ago when I changed jobs, moved and failed to keep my promise to update UBF when time allowed. Forgive.

Why the return? Dunno. Got to thinkin', I guess.

I was shuffling through my 7"s the other night and found myself slipping out a pile of regional faves like Cornelius, Raymond Brake, Salvo Rain, et al. Spent a couple hours deejaying to myself and recalled the simple pleasure of putting these records out there to the folks nostalgic for them. When I was doing UBF on a regular basis I reconnected with a lot of people I hadn't spoken with since the days these home-job records were hitting bins. I also got in touch with a lot of these bands' members, some of whom didn't have copies of their own material. So it was a pleasure to make the delivery.

UBF focused mostly on the 7", 10" and 12" records as well as the cheap-run compact discs and cassettes born in the 1990s' North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia. But there was no policy, really. I posted plenty of music from other states. Other countries, too.

Best thing about the time period was its lack of care for perfection. Seven-inch records were so relatively cheap and easy to put out that any band with access to a four-track recorder and half an idea for a couple good songs could start a catalog for itself. And, sometimes, the stuff was pretty great.

Anyway, 'nough of that. First post in the UBF re-up offers Rights Reserved, and--hot dog! In the process of writing this I found a site that archived A LOT of my old writing. I have no idea how that happened. I do know that when I deleted UBF three years ago, I killed everything on it.

Well, now that I've found it, here's the language from my years-old post on Rights Reserved:

Long has Rights Reserved been hot talk in the comments section, and long have I been remiss in my "duty" to post their LP and let the uninitiated in for the goods. It's good (stuff), you see. You may have seen my earlier entry on them and their split with Assfactor 4, the region's kings disputed only by Cornelius. And I suppose it's worth mentioning that all those bands shared time on stages and livingroom carpets.

And as you may have read in my last post, Rights Reserved and Eagle Bravo overlapped 75-percent, although the former bore a smoother and dare I get all criticky and say darker sound than what you heard last week with the latter.

To pilfer my own writing from an earlier post, Rights Reserved kicked off in the late '80s as a quick-paced hardcore band, but grabbed a sound more their own in the early '90s. In that time they recorded [a] split with AF4 and released a couple other EPs before the Assorted Porkchops label issued their great full-length LP in 1996. I can see fans of a selected Hot Snakes catalogue taking a real shine to it.

That last sentence I still kinda believe, but it may mislead a bit. Perhaps add some One Last Wish or Rain to the formula and it'll be more accurate.

Or you could just listen. Here's Rights Reserved's 1996 full length. It smokes.

TITLE: s/t
LABEL: Assorted Porkchops
YEAR: 1996
TRACKS:
New Day / Remedy / Groper / People Who I'd Kill ME / Bugs / 2600 / Screw Your Hands / Filler / Pretty Child / Thanksgiving

The return!

2010-09-24T15:25:00.001-07:00

More at 11.