Category: Overlooked in Ohio

Overlooked in Ohio Vol. 6: Belreve

Posted on August 17, 2010 by Nick Schuld

Editor’s note: “Overlooked in Ohio” is a feature in which we ask an Ohio-based artist/music enthusiast to tell us about a band or bands from the state of Ohio (past or present) that deserve some love. Our sixth installment comes courtesy of Nick Schuld — resurrecter of Datapanik, player in Obviouslies and unearther of various Ohio treasures over at Minimum Tillage Farming. Nick has been here too long and is now insane.


Photos by Jay Brown; copyright 2010 jfotoman

MP3: Assorted tracks from Cowtown EP, 45s, etc. (mediafire archive courtesy Minimum Tillage Farming)
MP3: Walk

A little while before I moved to Columbus in the summer of 1988 I discovered the glorious phenomenon that is the used record shop, so one of the first things I did when I got here was to scan the yellow pages for all the locals. At the time, cds still seemed neat and lotsa previously hard-to-find (for me at least, in small-town Virginia) stuff was showing up on that most durable of physical formats (*ahem*), so I took my giant Bekins box of tapes to Used Kids and wandered upstairs soon after with loot in hand to “little Mag’s” – the relatively short-lived cousin of the still-thriving shop now calling the Short North home – since Used Kids was still strictly analog. (Well, maybe they had a few discs in a magazine rack by the door – but they woulda prolly been a little to the current/good/hip/obscure side of the Misfits and Lemonheads ones I was jazzed about.) Little Mag’s was cool, trafficked mostly in t-shirts, and closed pretty soon after.

Fortunately this fate didn’t befall Used Kids (tho’ I did buy a t-shirt there once), and in the following months I started going down to the shop whenever I could find a ride or felt sufficiently over-enthusiastic enough to ride my skateboard from the suburbs and back. One day I bought a My Bloody Valentine tape and the guy behind the counter mentioned how good the upcoming show at the Ohio Union Ballroom was gonna be. I think I averted my eyes and barely mumble-nodded in agreement on my way out the door – for I was not always the obnoxiously assertive lug you all now recognize – but after the show I grabbed the fellow and yelled over the ringing in my ears how indeed it WAS quite the revelation. He grinned and said the last song was on their best record and had I heard it? I said no and he said he’d tape it for me; thus, my introduction to the illustrious Ron House.

Not too long after that I walked into the shop and Ron said he’d held aside a record for me (knowing my affinity for whatever you wanna call the British stuff from those days) that co-employee Bela had put out; he said one of the bands on the record was from Columbus but had locked onto that noisy-yet-sorta-feminine anglo-aesthetic in their own way. The record – the Cowtown E.P. Vol. 1 – was co-released by Anyway Stuff (Bela’s brand-spankin’-new partnership with Jerry Wick, another Used Kids then-employee) and Craig Regala’s scene-defining Datapanik. The other songs on the record are killer (one Jerry wrote for Marcy Mays to sing with Scrawl but then kept for his own band Gaunt, a remixed “Negotiate Nothing” from Jim Shepard’s V-3, and a truncated teaser of “Shell” from the mighty Greenhorn – my fave band to see in town and subjects of this very column not long ago), but the tune to which Ron was referring – “Walk” by Belreve – bowled me straight over! Four chords (total!) that seemed completely made up by the guitar player, a gorgeous vocal melody three-quarters buried by the cacophony, HUGE drums and the growliest bass this side of Motorhead, the most ineptly perfect rock’n'roll party guitar solo, lyrics that’d kick any teenage mind’s ass (“Seems much too long since I saw you last; say your heart is broken – it makes me wanna laugh”), a wonderful inability to make it ten seconds past the two-minute mark…indeed, the tune stands perfectly alongside all that’s good about the post-C86/pre-shoegaze-ubiquity era in England (the first few Lush and Ride singles, Tse Tse Fly, Strawberry Story – basically after the jangle turned to crunch and before everything became overly somnambulic), but goes it a good stretch better with the shrugged shoulders inherent in all midwest underground endeavors (you are not going to make it, so leave the fact that yer bummed about 1) that, and 2) the fact that, therefore, you go to some stupid job all day underneath feigned indifference about the apparent level of professionalism/quality necessary to convince most anyone that you actually even exist), an infectious joie de vivre and a bitter – yet sometimes giddy – sense of humor, and an inherent understanding of unhinged, backroom rock’n'roll (from Don and Dewey right thru to songwriter/guitar player Matt’s other combo, the New Bomb Turks) providing a backbone that’s sorely missed in some of their predecessors and contemporaries…and all this prior to like-minders like the Swirlies and Henry’s Dress getting their vans outta the
garage!

Now I’m oftentimes fine with a buncha dudes sellin’ their fantasies to ya over buckets o’ swill and under lighting that runs the gamut from dim to broken, but in my not-so-humble-opinion it ain’t gonna go that next level unless there’s a lady or two in the room. And in Belreve, two-thirds of the room was ladies: Liz on bass and Jenny on drums. I think Jenny was just learning (from the same book as Jeff R. from Gaunt, as the joke went) and I have no idea whether Liz played with anyone prior, but man these three were made for each other. Live they were a locked groove; no huge Marshall stacks, no Ampeg refrigerators – no need. Liz’s bass was a rumbling wire picking out aspects of those odd chords of Matt’s, accentuating this or that tone, so definite through the shifting fuzz; Jenny’s drumming is still some of the most solid I’ve ever seen. Sometimes she’d slam the kick and snare at the same time, providing something almost dance-influenced and post-punk, while others she’d leave a little space and then pick it back up the next go-round, like a flattened-out Ronettes. Onstage they were unassuming to the point of stealth, but once those couple intro bars of guitar gave over into that armhair-raising shock-moment where the whole band crackled to instantaneous electrical life…well, forget those nights where ya had to get real bored to listen to the band.

I didn’t get to see ‘em too many times, and they weren’t around too long – a year or three in the early ’90s. One freezing Anyway Fest evening in the perfect old Stache’s building sticks way out, tho’. I convinced my friend Yvonne that this was the thing to do – having no car, I had to – but after a few hours of not much happening, including the firing up of the room’s heater (guess it wasn’t worth it to waste $$ on the ten or twelve of us in attendance), she remained unconvinced. “Just stick it out a little bit longer,” I begged. “I promise you’ll thank me.” I think they’ve used looks like she gave me to unhinge the jaws of prospective stoolies in the interrogation room. Anyhow, something like Appalachian Death Ride gave way to Waybald and she started to look at me a different way, and finally – and this is nearing the one o’clock mark – Matt wandered onstage and over to the mic. “We’re just gonna play a coupla songs and you can go, we promise. We’re tired and have to work in the morning too.” Maybe they played for twenty minutes, but Yvonne wasn’t mad anymore.

All the sweet and all the sad, those juxtapositions that move your chemicals around when they’re revealed to you by only the most wonderfully devastating songs that reverberate to your own personal waves – Belreve is inside ‘em. They’re the very stuff those are made of, the barbed and bright innards that shift into muddy untouchability… those moments that knock you to your knees are stretched into whole songs, that vague and nervous feeling that only holds for seconds suspended for the whole time they’re on. Whole lines go by feeling like a single word – tho’ one you don’t quite understand despite the fact that it connects – and vice versa. And – unlike a whole mess of bands in this town – their records aren’t a pale version of their reality or something to be appreciated in a different way somewhere alongside. They’re honest moments, real and right and affecting and necessary, not little sample bubbles or reflections but true microcosms, the clean, pure aspects strident thru the grime of the amps and four-tracks and no matter how beat up your copies are. I miss that band, and I encourage you to glean what you can from what you can find. They were a very special and very rare thing.

Posted in Columbus, MP3, Music, Overlooked in Ohio | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Overlooked in Ohio: Vol 5 (Prisonshake)

Posted on July 2, 2010 by Eric Davidson

Editor’s note: “Overlooked in Ohio” is a feature in which we ask an Ohio-based artist/music enthusiast to tell us about a band or bands from the state of Ohio (past or present) that deserve some love. Our fifth installment comes courtesy of Eric Davidson — New Bomb Turks singer, rock scribe and now real-deal author. His new book We Never Learn: The Gunk Punk Undergut, 1988-2001 is out now. He’ll read from it in Columbus at the Wexner Center on July 9, the night before the Turks take the stage with the Gibson Bros (featured in the book) at the Parking Lot Blowout. (Full Davidson bio at bottom.)

MP3: Prisonshake – It’s A Ron Kinda World (1991, from 7″ on Estrus; original lineup)

MP3: Prisonshake – Irene (1993, from The Roaring Third)

Now I dig that this section of the Donewaiting landscape is meant to extol the virtues of a criminally forgotten Ohio-based band. So to quickly hit that aim, Prisonshake were great, and you should find their records. I just spent two years of my life digging up info on and extolling the virtues of something like 80-90 “forgotten” bands for my just-released first book, We Never Learn: The Gunk Punk Undergut, 1988-2001. Though it’s a hefty tome (350+ pages), there was still TONS of stuff that I had to cut out, and that sadly included a section featuring Prisonshake, but more pointedly Prisonshake and Scat Records leader, Robert Griffin (above).

In the late 1980s, I saw Griffin sling his guitar with Prisonshake a few times before walking into my Parmatown Mall coffee shop job one day and finding him hired as my manager. This ruled, as over the course of a summer, Griffin proceeded to school me on Ethiopian blends and the Easter Monkeys. With two mixtapes (that I still have) and numerous conversations, I got a grad class in Cleveland ugh-rock history. Prisonshake created some of the better records in Clevo underground rock history, which is definitely saying something. But Griffin also went on to release loads of cool records through his label Scat, including introducing the world to Guided By Voices. As such, here’s a portion of my book that got cut (well, a wee little made it into the tome), with Griffin giving a feral dog’s eye view of Cleveland, OH gutter rock, circa late 1970s-90s:

Scat Records, now based in St. Louis, was started in Cleveland in 1989 by Robert Griffin, mainly as a way to release Prisonshake records. Griffin’s amazing musical taste and attention to packaging hovered at a lofty height from the early Prisonshake productions through the early Guided By Voices albums he later released. But should you be lucky enough to scrounge up some Prisonshake records, don’t expect scrunchy, scratchy, minute-long indie rock. Griffins’ slightly varying lineups—anchored by him and singer Doug Enkler—boiled a Faces-styled barroom ribald with Enkler’s teen start in trashcore bands the Offbeats and Squelch and Griffin’s pre-Prisonshake art-core band Spike in Vain, an equal to contemporaries Big Black and Scratch Acid.

Around the time when the ‘80s and ‘90s did the baton hand-off, Griffin produced a literate, S&M-bent fanzine called Scat Seven that included a 7” record. And his band habits stretch back to 1979 when, still in his early teens, Griffin headed Cleveland’s earliest hardcore bands, the Decapitators, and later the Dark.

“A good part of the Decapitators’ sets were Electric Eels, Pagans, and Dead Boys covers,” says Griffin. “Judging by how many bands used to cover ‘Agitated,’ we weren’t the only ones who’d learned to play at the feet of nobodies. Bear in mind that the majority of the Eels’ and Pagans’ recordings had not even been released yet. Age was a problem into getting gigs, not that there were many to be had, even though we were being managed by Mike Hudson of the Pagans and Terminal Records. The message we got was that we’d arrived too late for the party. The Drome (legendary Cleveland new wave record shop that birthed the label of the same name) had closed, many of the movers and shakers had moved away, mostly to NYC, and the Kneecappers were getting reggae-fied on some songs. So we and a lot of other Cle punk/hardcore bands, wound up playing mostly in Kent or Akron in 1982. Many great shows and times were had, but that was all about hardcore, DIY, and a much more political thing. Once the Lakefront in Cleveland started booking punk bands, there was a bit of a split, with the Cle contingent being more about getting wasted in the parking lot and scamming your way into the bar for free. The reality was more complex than that, but this was how a lot of people viewed it then.

“It’s important not to underestimate the atmosphere of Cleveland in those days. So much of it was empty, abandoned, or destroyed. One developed a root understanding of what inertia can do. Lots of us spent many joyful hours exploring abandoned warehouses in the Flats (the sooty industrial wasteland right on the Lake Erie shore) and elsewhere. These places were rarely guarded, only occasionally locked. It was like entering another world. Mike Mellen’s photos on old Pere Ubu jackets capture it perfectly. I think back on it and the whole thing seems like a setting for a Philip K. Dick novel.

“But from 1890 to 1970, Cleveland was among the ten most populous cities in the U.S. Then it emptied out, bigtime. All the tycoons of industry (Carnegie, Rockefeller, others) that had made Cleveland their home left behind museums, libraries, concert halls. In addition to several universities, there was also the late Cooper School of Art, as well as the Cleveland Institute of Art and Cleveland Institute of Music. There was all this infrastructure. It wasn’t hard to find out about interesting things or ideas in Cleveland, but it was hard to get anyone to care about it. Cleveland had all the trappings of a major metropolitan city, but a factory-worker mindset.

“But it’s also the case that there were always freaks going their own way outside of that infrastructure. People in bands also participated in happenings at the Cleveland Public Theatre (vaudeville, performance art), there was Junkstock (bands and poets performing all day in a junkyard) and always a few fly-by-night places where weird shit went down. You could get away with just about anything—just don’t expect anyone to pat you on the back for it.

“I was always reminded of the scene’s insignificance while growing up, just in everyday ways. You went to the ‘import’ section to buy Pere Ubu albums, even if they were domestic pressings, never mind them being a local band! I went to a pretty massive high school, but no one there had even heard of the Dead Boys, even though they were on a major label. Pere Ubu was off to Europe all the time it seemed, but in Cleveland they barely scraped the public’s consciousness. The Electric Eels’ first 45 came out four years after they broke up, and on a British label! It doesn’t give you much hope of making an impact. It’s easier to say it’s hopeless. We traveled a good bit actually, four U.S. tours…. But I suppose the thinking would be along the lines of, hey if you’re going to fail at least you won’t look stupid for it, because it wasn’t like you were trying to be successful….

“[Eventually], there were a lot more bands and wider distribution capability. Everybody who played hardcore in 1984 was playing something else the next year and continued to grow over time. Peoples’ tastes had always been pretty broad (why did so many people have SPK’s Leichenschrei album?), but it didn’t manifest until people really got tired of thrashing… and got a little better at their instruments. By the time Prisonshake started playing regularly in 1987, it wasn’t a punk scene, but more a general underground rock scene, even though it still had a lot of the same people at its core. It was still a party scene too, especially in the summers. There were softball games every Sunday down in [a corner of] the Flats. Dinking away the previous night’s hangover sometimes took precedent over fielding balls or being ready to hit.

“Over time, people were gathering at more and more places and it was less often about music. By the early ‘90s, the scene was bigger, it became more spread out in terms of locales; but it was also more watered-down. That us-against-the-world perspective was withering. And of course more of the bands sucked than ever before. I see Nirvana’s success as the critical strike against rock-based underground music, after which all the strains further calcified into little genre fiefdoms, with a mostly castrated “indie rock” floating on top, with that strain declining in quality to the lame new wave rehash we have today.

“Looking back, it’s more obvious that it had something to do with reconciling the punk rock experience with the older rock that people grew up on or were just discovering or reconsidering, then taking that somewhere of your own…. I think a lot of the people who came up in the hardcore era learned the lesson pretty well—fuck society, be yourself, write your own ticket.

“Originators are usually more interesting and wide-ranging than the genres they subsequently inspire or fortify. The mid-to-late 80s were a good time because these nowhere bands were going off in so many directions at once that it took a while for the genre tags to show up. I don’t think a genre could go unnamed for more than a week in the internet age. So you could consider music more on its own merits for a little longer than today, because as soon as there’s a name for it, assumptions follow.”

10 Great Older Cleveland 45s That Aren’t By The Pagans, Electric Eels, or Pere Ubu – by Robert Griffin

Neptune’s Car – “Baking Bread”/”Lucky Charms” (Koolie)
The Chronics – “Test Tube Baby” / “Calling All Cardinals” (Nuclear)
X-X – “A” / “You’re Full of Shit” (Drome)
Modern Art Studio – “Dear Dad” +3 (Mid-America Sound)
Polystyrene Jazz Band – “Drano in Your Veins” / “Circus Highlights” (Mustard)
Wild Giraffes – “New Era” / “Dreams Don’t Last” (Neck)
Clocks – “Tick Tock Man” / “Confidentially, Renee” (Terminal)
Defnics – “51%” “Hello from Berlin” (Terminal)
Starvation Army – New Way to Burn EP (St. Valentine)
New Salem Witch Hunters – “Falling” / “I Wanna Be Your Lover” (St. Valentine)

—————–

ERIC DAVIDSON first got paid 10 bucks for a Lou Reed record review in 1989. Then made nearly 100 times that as singer for longtime Columbus, OH punk band, New Bomb Turks, releasing van-loads of noise and touring all over the globe; keeping the freelance writing gigs going in between for Alternative Press, Village Voice, Seattle Stranger, Cleveland Scene, Agitreader.com, and many others. And after three years as Associate Editor at CMJ, he’s recently released his first book We Never Learn: The Gunk Punk Undergut, 1988-2001 (Backbeat Books). He currently resides in Brooklyn, NY, but his heart is flopping around the floor of a dive somewhere in Cleveland…

—————

Prisonshake photo courtesy nextbestrecords.com, from a show at the Summit in Columbus in 2008

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Overlooked in Ohio: Vol. 4 (Kevyn and the Kasualties)

Posted on June 8, 2010 by Ron House

Editor’s note: “Overlooked in Ohio” is a feature in which we ask an Ohio-based artist/music enthusiast to tell us about a band or bands from the state of Ohio (past or present) that deserve some love. Our fourth installment comes courtesy of Ron House, a guy you likely already know from Great Plains, Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments and/or his most recent band, Sandwich (currently recording). Or from his days at Used Kids. Read on for his reflections on Kevyn and the Kasualties.

MP3: Kevyn and the Kasualties – Holy Trinity

Kevyn and the Kasualties‘ first LP is ambivalent even before you put it on: one side is labeled “Punk?” and the other is “Pop?” Pathology on vinyl is always better with a crack rhythm section and Kevyn had Nudge Squidfish and Rudy Krash n Burn (not real names heh heh). They went on to form V3 after this release which shows that at least Jim Shepard was listening to this confused, heartrending, and ass-kicking LP. Like more than a few post-punkers in the mid-eighties, Kevyn was torn between Hardcore’s demand for manly toughness and Alternative’s feeble plea for originality. Four songs on the punk side are disquisitions on his aesthetics; as he sings in-the-pocket punk in his nasally midwest Johnny Thunders style all he can sing about is punk. Injustice for Kevyn struck home only where his music was. “Let’s Kill R-N-R.” “Screw FM.” For a man determined to be “Drunk Loud and Obnoxious” there is something almost polite and modest in his ambitions.

He opens up more on the “Pop?” side where Nudge especially helps him forge a powerful pop punk mini opera. (Gary Reeve produced it and avoids the common reverby pitfalls of the era.) All the songs focus on love and feature crackerjack arrangements that are minimally but tastefully abetted by organ and wah-wah. On the “Holy Trinity” he might overextend and leave us Protestants glad we got we rid of that shit but even that song has an assurance lacking in Kevyn’s next, less overlooked album on Okra.

He wouldn’t have been one of my candidates to join Columbus’ crowded Tragic Pantheon, but dying in his thirties falling down stairs after battling alcoholism gets you there.

Posted in Columbus, MP3, Overlooked in Ohio | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

Overlooked in Ohio: Vol. 3 (Greenhorn)

Posted on February 1, 2010 by Bela Koe-Krompecher

Editor’s note: “Overlooked in Ohio” is a feature in which we ask an Ohio-based artist/music enthusiast to tell us about a few bands (past or present) from the state of Ohio that deserve some love. Our third installment comes courtesy of Bela Koe-Krompecher, a staple of the Columbus rock scene and head of the soon-to-be-revived Anyway Records — former home of Gaunt, The New Bomb Turks and countless other “important” Columbus bands, including this volume’s subject, Greenhorn. …This is a long one, but do yourself a big favor and read the whole thing… (All photos by Jay Brown.)

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MP3: Unreleased Greenhorn album (courtesy Minimum Tillage Farming, who also has two others here)

In 1990 there was a force in Columbus that shook the walls and very foundation of such hallowed halls as Stache’s and Bernie’s. While it may be the easiest assumption to think that this force was The New Bomb Turks, Gaunt or the Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments (who were all sharpening their guttural and whiny blasts of intellectual yet primordial rage to be unleashed on an unsuspecting public), none of them could hold a candle to the utter force of Greenhorn. Consisting of two sets of brothers out of the ashes of the first Datapanik band, Two Hour Trip, Greenhorn was Midwestern to the core, but they inflicted an audio assault that ranks with the best of American rock and roll.

The Columbus music community gathered around Greenhorn like ants around a dropped sucker. Everybody loved them — the punks, the junkies, the feminists (riot grrls?), indie-rockers and even the college crowd. There was nothing ironic or tongue-in-cheek about the music nor the lyrics. In fact, primary songwriter Dan Spurgeon was not afraid to let his emotions hang on his sleeve, and many of his songs consisted of paeans of love to his future (and ex-) wife. As any good-minded record geek knows, being this upfront and exposed in music is a dangerous and daunting task, especially for a male songwriter. Chan Marshall may be able to do it, but you’d be hard-pressed to believe Steve Malkmus could ever do it with a straight face, let alone Ron House.

Part of the effect of Greenhorn was the sheer potency of the Greenhorn live show; these fuckers stacked the back of the stage with a wall of Marshall amps. From floor to ceiling, the rhythm section consisted of Pat (drums) and Steve (bass) McGann, two intelligent, good-old boys with handsome boyish charm that flooded the stage with exuberance whenever they played. Steve had an intrinsic “I-dare-you” attitude that he wore on his bass, playing this out by removing two of his bass strings — the musical equivalent of “we don’t need any stinking badges!” Dan sang and played rhythm guitar while his older and shirtless brother Mark played lead, adding snaky leads over Dan’s simple yet vigorous songs.

(Keep reading for more on Greenhorn from Bela. Seriously. Do it.)

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If you grew up in Ohio during the 1970s and ‘80s you were forced to listen and gain an appreciation of classic rock. Every city had the one station that dominated the airwaves. In Cleveland it was WMMS, in Dayton WTUE and in Columbus it was QFM 96, the runt of the big three. I used to hear R.E.M. and Los Lobos on WTUE, sandwiched between ZZ Top, Def Leppard and Billy Squire. The old horses that should have been laid out to pasture weren’t quite as old then, as it was only ten years or so since The Who, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Neil Young burst on the FM scene. At the same time most of us music freaks dug deep and found salvation in punk (Dead Boys, Ramones), UK imports (Elvis Costello, The Jam) and the burgeoning American underground scene based mostly around the SST and Homestead labels (the Minutemen, Black Flag, Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr.). Every college town had a loud band that was an amalgamation of this sound. In the Northwest it was bands like the Screaming Trees (the closest equivalent in sound to Greenhorn), Nirvana and Mudhoney. Boston had Dinosaur and the Throwing Muses. Cincinnati had the Ass Ponys. Gainesville the Silos. And Columbus had Greenhorn, a blistering, wicked sound that rocked harder and better than anything Columbus had seen before.

At the time, it was a no-brainer that Greenhorn would be the band that broke out of Columbus. They had the sound, the authenticity, the look (all the men were devastatingly good looking) and the chops. The songs were fucking killer — I mean like “Freak Scene” or “Barstool Blues” good. There was a tension to the band the was inflicted upon the audience — not a standoffish “fuck-you” tension, but more of a fucked-up-family-Christmas-gathering tension that developed between the brothers. Maybe it was a mixture of two art-minded liberals (Dan and Mark) paired with two country-loving conservatives who could give a fuck about French movies and Chuck Close. Maybe it was a mix of incredible egos, who managed to make magic upon playing music together from the get-go only to be combustible when the music ended. Whatever it was, it combined to make a hearty beefy stew of plaintive yet ragged music that has the best of the boys’ record collection, from the squall of Dinosaur and Neil Young to the simple songwriting of the (sadly) forgotten Silos.

They did not strike the music community outside of Columbus with the same force as the Turks, Gaunt and TJSA, mostly due to the fact that their earliest singles could not capture their live sound and didn’t lend itself to the more punk tendencies of the 7” format. But they made some immediate fans. I remember talking to Dave Shouse of the Grifters and he was talking about playing a warehouse space the previous weekend in New York with “some band from Columbus who kept hauling all these Marshall amps up three flights of stairs and then proceeded to leave everybody in the crowd floored.” He then looked up and saw Dan Spurgeon walking across the Stache’s stage and said, “That’s the fucking singer.” That was part of a series of shows put on by Gerard Cosloy during the summer of 1991. Tim Adams from Ajax put out an early single. They appeared on a highly respected double 10” record put out by the Boston-based label Pop Narcotic that featured the aforementioned Grifters as well as Polvo and Helium.

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At the time of their first break-up they were being heavily courted by Alias Records and had interest from Columbia and Capitol. I have no reason why Columbia backed off from the band as they appeared to be a no-brainer to me and I had extensive discussions with the A&R rep from Columbia (Dawn Debuis) about the band. Anyway, in the midst of contract negotiations with Alias (who at that time sported the following bands on the label: American Music Club, Yo La Tengo and Archers of Loaf), the band inexplicably broke up. Both the McGann brothers went on to the join the similar-sounding Big Back Forty while Dan plunged ahead and formed Bush League (later re-named Bush League All-Stars). Soon thereafter Big Back Forty signed with Polygram and released one record, and Bush League recorded a more Replacements-tinged record for Pop Narcotic consisting of a few Greenhorn songs.

Greenhorn reformed in 1998 and made a stab at another record. They were still good, although they had lost some of the innocent bombast of their earlier incarnation. Soon the brothers McGann left to go to medical and law school. Danny restarted the Bush League All-Stars and joined Jenny Mae’s band, bolstering her sound with his hefty guitar playing. Greenhorn finally released their first full-length in the mid-aughts, a self-titled affair that by no means is a disappointment but lacks the fire of their early, (mostly) unreleased recordings.

Recently Dan Spurgeon supplied me with five CDs of what appears to be the entire studio (with some excellent live) recordings. Listening to them over the past few weeks, I am quite certain that these recordings contain the best Ohio record never released. It is easily on par with the best of the Mice, Guided by Voices and Ass Ponys records. Nick Schuld has complied many of these recordings and some can be found here. If I had the brains and money I would release all of these recordings as a nice box set, but I’ve always been broke and kinda dumb.

Big Back Forty released one record on Polygram, a somewhat quiet affair that sounds like a hangover from the rattle of Greenhorn. It’s somewhat alarming to listen to the McGanns play quietly around songwriter Sean Beal’s appealing yet restrained tales that would not be too out-of-place in the hushed confines of any coffee shop or bookstore. Even when allowed to break out a cowbell the McGanns are kept quiet, almost as if the bell is to be used as a decoration. Big Back 40 never had the indie cred in Columbus, and sadly I was one who dismissed them — more over my disappointment over Greenhorn collapsing. But fans of Souled American, Mark Kozelek and Old 97’s would find comfort in their songs.

Bush League All-Stars have released two records, the hard-to-find Pop Narcotic debut, which is somewhat an item on the Americana collector’s scene, and the new Cedar Knees. The debut was a janglier affair than Greenhorn ever was. In a way the songs were somewhat underplayed, as if the rest of the band was too self-conscious of Dan’s previous stature in Greenhorn. Cedar Knees is a confident stab of music. Pulled around Dan’s excellent sense of melody, it bears the mark of a punk sensibility grounded in the song structures of Randy Newman.

It is truly a shame that Dan Spurgeon has never gotten his due as one of the finest Midwestern songwriters in decades.

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Overlooked in Ohio: Vol. 2 (Gibson Bros.)

Posted on January 11, 2010 by Mark Wyatt

Editor’s note: “Overlooked in Ohio” is a feature in which we ask an Ohio-based artist or music enthusiast to tell us about a few bands (past or present) from the state of Ohio that deserve some love. Our second installment comes courtesy of Mark Wyatt, former member of seminal Columbus band Great Plains and One Riot One Ranger; these days you’ll find him singing behind the keyboard with The Beatdowns and Columbus Power Squadron. Here are Mark’s reflections on and recollections of the Gibson Brothers.

buildaraft

MP3: The Gibson Brothers – Big Pine Boogie off the 1987 cassette The Gibson Bros. Build a Raft (via Minimum Tillage Farming)

Jeez, where do I begin with these guys? At the beginning, I suppose. My brother Matt and I first met the eventual “lead” guitarist of the Gibbies, Don Howland, at a Ramones show in Cincinnati in the late 70′s; he was hawking his fanzine Shake It! to the folks in line (don’t hold me to that title…confirming it would require me to dig into my basement “archives”), we got to talking, realized we were fairly kindred spirits, and started a friendship which continues to this day. A friendship, I might add, that even endured him being a founding member of Great Plains, despite the fact that he didn’t like the band well enough to even use his real name on the first record.

I already knew Dan Dow (the GB’s acoustic rhythm guitarist) from Mole’s Records, although the guy always played it so close to the vest that it’s hard to say I really *knew* him… I can’t recall when I met front man “Country Jeff” Evans or minimalist drummer Ellen Hoover, but I suspect it was when Jeff moved in with my next-door neighbor, the aforementioned Mr. Dow. I used to see Jeff coming back from the South Drive-In flea market on summer Saturday mornings, more often than not carrying some bizarre old amp or guitar, and I’d see Ellen and Jeff coming back from dates in one of Jeff’s two ancient Cadillacs, the choice of which depended on which one was actually running at the time.

So, seeing as how they were all friends and/or neighbors, of course I checked out this Gibson Brothers thing when they first played out.

(Keep reading for more album art and words from Mark)
bigpineboogie

The band name, I was told, was because they really liked Gibson guitars, although I don’t think I ever saw Howland play a guitar that cost more than 75 bucks, and that’s rather under the going price for even used Gibsons… Right from the start, they were unlike any other band in Columbus…or pretty much anywhere else. Sure, there were elements of firmly established genres like rockabilly, country, and blues in their songs, but what ended up coming off the stage was anything but established. It’s all too easy to say that they filtered all that roots stuff through a punk rock sensibility–that’s the M.O. for every other alt-country band of the past two decades, or even of all the 80′s LA roots and cowpunk bands, and the GB’s sounded nothing like any of that.

OK, so I can tell you what they didn’t sound like, but it’s easier to just show you what they DID sound like, and thanks to Cruise Elroy’s Minimum Tillage Farming blog, you can hear their very first release, The Gibson Brothers Build a Raft. Released as part of Mike “Rep” Hummel‘s Old Age cassette-only series, it features a studio side recorded in Harrisburg, OH, and a live side recorded at Avondale Elementary School (source of the awesome front-cover picture of them on the school’s stage). A lot of it is pretty crude-sounding, even by their standards, but all the elements of everything that made them great are there…the twisted versions of obscure country and blues songs, fun stage patter, and an anything-goes notion of playing.

dedicatedfool

Since I mentioned stage patter, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention just how amazing the Gibbies were on stage. At any given Stache’s show, Jeff would spend 20 minutes before a set at least setting up various strobe lights and color wheels…mostly to be pressed into service during their jaw-dropping version of Porter Wagoner’s “The Rubber Room.” And I’ve stolen Jeff’s line “We’re just priming the pump for the big entertainers…” many times as a warmup act myself. I don’t think you’ll ever see a Mel Bay book detailing the Jeff Evans Guitar Method, but as a front man, he was unparalleled. Dan Dow would turn his back to the crowd and bang away resolutely on his almost-inaudible acoustic, only facing front for his lead vocal turn on Neil Young’s “Ohio,” which featured rewritten couplets like “You stink and I smell you coming…you’re dead in O-hi-o.”

Ellen will tell you now that she was a terrible drummer, and that is wrong wrong wrong…she always kept a solid, steady beat as she stood up and played only a cymbal and snare. Finally, even in those days you could tell that Don was going to be something else on lead guitar…even on a piece of shit guitar that might or might not be in what the world would regard as standard tuning, he’d make the coolest sound you ever heard. Honestly, I’d put him up there with Johnny Thunders as a guy who can’t play things “right” but can play things RIGHT…a real original. Of course, he’s still showing the world that skill in the Bassholes.

couchdancing

After this cassette, they would sign to Homestead Records…and I’d highly recommend you try to find Big Pine Boogie, Dedicated Fool, and The Man Who Loved Couch Dancing whatever way you can. Dan and Ellen would leave the band, records would come out on different labels, and others would join before the whole band fell apart, most notably Jon Spencer before he totally copped the GB’s game with Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. While an actual reunion might be too much to hope for (long story…), I hope you agree with me that these guys are long overdue for some serious rediscovery.

(P.S. I should alert the gentle reader that I’ve been thanked on numerous Gibson Bros. releases, drove them to a show in Memphis, and even played melodica with them onstage once at Maxwell’s, so take that for what you will…)

Posted in Overlooked in Ohio | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Overlooked in Ohio

Posted on November 2, 2009 by Jerry Dannemiller

Editor’s note: “Overlooked in Ohio” is a new feature in which we ask an Ohio-based artist, music enthusiast, etc. to tell us about a few bands (past or present) from the state of Ohio that deserve some love. Our first installment comes courtesy of Jerry Dannemiller, guitarist/singer in Moviola and director of marketing and communications at the Wexner Center in Columbus. (Not to mention a past contributor to NPR, Magnet and a host of other publications.)

blank_schatzBlank Schatz; photo by Jay Brown

Blank Schatz (Findlay, Ohio, early 1980s): When punk rock was still something weird and foreign and only happened in big cities, the brothers Butler were kicking out the jams in my hometown of Findlay like it was the Lower East Side. I saw them only a couple times in high school and then in Columbus opening for the likes of Live Skull and (a very early) Flaming Lips. Musically, they fell somewhere in the neighborhood of Die Kruezen or a more earnest Black Flag. It hasn’t aged all that incredibly well, but back then, in the desolate environs of northwest Ohio, it was music to my green ears.

wolverton_brothersWolverton Brothers

Wolverton Brothers (Cincinnati, late 80s, still active): My admiration for the Wolvertons—as people and as artists—knows no bounds, if you haven’t heard them, you would do yourself well to scrounge up any of their six records. Part Anglo-80s skronk-surf, Beefheart-ish mushmouth, and high-speed boom-chicka-boom, Tim, Billy, Todd, and Jay are the rarest of entities: raw, unaffected by trend, and original to a fault.

Keep reading for more.
Bill Fox

Bill Fox (Cleveland, 80s-90s): The legend of reclusive Cleveland folkie Bill Fox luckily hasn’t quite eclipsed that of his music, first with The Mice (who GBV learned a move or two from), and later with his never-get-old solo records. A Believer piece contributed to the legend in 2007, and maybe as a result, he played his first hometown shows earlier this year after a decade of hiding under a rock. A Columbus show (one can dream) would likely be inhabited by a paltry crowd: some New Bomb Turks, Bela, Moviola, and a few other knowing stragglers, but would be great to see him on a stage again.

marion_black

Marion Black (Columbus, 60s, soon-to-be active): A selfish inclusion, as Mr. Black is set to play likely his first Columbus show in decades on November 9 as part of an event my employer is staging. But really, the Numero label, Dante Carfagna, and RJD2 have done more in recent years to make sure that Marion Black is a little less overlooked, especially his classic “Who Knows” (mp3 below). If you’re not familiar, start here, and do some crate digging of your own with one of the finest set of silky soul pipes ever to come out of our town.

MP3: Marion Black – Who Knows

Posted in Columbus, MP3, Overlooked in Ohio | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments