Tag Archives: Great Plains

New band alert: Counter Intuits (Ron House & Times New Viking’s Jared Phillips)

Tuesday night at Cafe Bourbon St., Columbus friends and fans will say goodbye to Times New Viking guitarist Jared Phillips before he departs to Cleveland this weekend. Before leaving, though, Phillips partnered up with Ron House to record some songs for a new project they’re calling Counter Intuits. House said he plans to release an LP of the pair’s lo-fi recordings titled Sheets of Hits on his newly formed local label, Pyramid Scheme. Look for the release in early November.

Connections, Gamma World and Ron House will play tonight’s farewell show (9pm, $5), and House says he’s trying to convince Phillips to let him do karaoke versions of a couple Counter Intuits tunes before Connections take the stage.

Still no news, though, on a new guitarist for Psandwich, House’s other post-Great Plains/TJSA band.

Video: Great Plains on Cablevision (Columbus, 1983) from Old 3C’s forthcoming DVD

Paul Nini’s Old 3C Records is putting out a Great Plains DVD called Directions to the Party, chock full of Great Plains performances from Comfest 1987, Stache’s in ’85, more recent reunions in Columbus and Brooklyn in ’08, and a 1983 Cablevision TV performance, which you can preview above.

Dig Tim Anstaett’s rambling intro, which is basically a two-minute history of his TKA/The Offense zine/newsletter through 1983, along with plea for 50-cent subscriptions. All the while, behind him, an early lineup of Great Plains cracks jokes and eventually just starts playing “Cave-in” over him. It’s a priceless slice of Columbus history, as is the whole DVD.

Artwork below. No firm release date yet.
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Donewaiting 9: Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments

MP3: My Mysterious Death (Turn It Up)

The more your hear about the origin of Old Columbus bands, the more you realize how many of them formed accidentally, the result of spontaneity and serendipity. Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments was one such band. On a night about 20 years ago, soon after the dissolution of Ron House’s previous band, Great Plains, a band playing Stache’s ended early.

The story could have ended right there. Everyone at the bar could have just continued to get drunk and/or gone home. Instead, though, House and Girly Machine guitarist Bob Petric hopped on stage with some friends, borrowed the idle guitars and amps and started jamming on blues riffs. “We just kind of jumped up out of sheer boredom,” Petric said when I interviewed him last year. But something clicked, and they decided to do it again. And again. (Sound familiar?)

“It was kind of a fuck-off band for a couple of years where we just got together and jammed,” House said last summer. “The Columbus scene was really taking off—like the New Bomb Turks, Gaunt. So I didn’t have to do very much, just shout and scream and people would notice us locally. The whole scene was a more brutal, punkier scene. There was enough things going on that all we had to do was just go out and play and things would happen for us.” Continue reading

MP3: Ron House – “Twenty or Thirty People”

MP3: Moses Carryout (Ron House) – 20 or 30 People

They’re always there/They’re everywhere I go
They’re the 20 or 30 people that I know
We go to talk/We go to dance
And when we get real bored we listen to the band
We argue some/We never fight
We wonder if we’re drunk or something’s happening tonight

This song has been implanting itself in my morning bedhead ever since I started listening to Blind Boy in the Backseat, the Ron House LP that was originally a 1986 cassette tape on Mike Rep’s Old Age/No Age label and was recently re-issued by Columbus Discount Records. If you’re even slightly interested in Columbus music history, or a fan of Great Plains or Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments, you’d be wise to pick it up (though you’ll have to go through a local shop or distributor — CDR is sold out). Everything was recorded between ’78 and ’81, mostly with the ever-sardonic House’s former bands The Twisted Shouts (feat. Rep and Tommy Jay) and Moses Carryout, but you’ll also find True Believers backing him up on the B-side version of “Chuck Berry’s Orphan.”

It’s a must-have for House devotees & completists. And if you’re new to the House of Ron, it ain’t a bad place to start, either.

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

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) Continue reading

Pat Radio Plays the Classics

Here’s a great podcast from Pat Radio. It plays some “classic” Columbus bands but also songs from some unforgettable shows that have probably never been heard on the internet. We’re talking Nick Cave, The Pixes, and more from the 80s…

Click here to download the podcast.

Tim Anstaett, publisher of The Offense fanzine, is my guest this week. He talks about The Offense and plays some great local music from back in the day. He also shares some stuff from shows he promoted in Columbus.

1. Great Plains – The Way She Runs A Fever Live at the Pop Shop, 1983 from Slaves to Rock’n’Roll Live
2. The Embarrassment – I Only Want A Date Live At Mr Brown’s, from the Retrospective cassette
3. The Cowboys – Teenage Life 7″
4. Razor Penguins – Indifference 7″
5. The Gibson Brothers – Woo Hoo Build a Raft
6. Pixies – Vamos Live at Staches June 6, 1988
7. The Fall – Slang King Live at the Newport April 1, 1985
8. Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds – I Put A Spell On You Live at Staches June 27, 1984
9. Scrawl – Let It All Hang Out Live at Staches May 25, 1988
10. Throwing Muse – Colder Live at Staches May 25, 1988
11. Cocteau Twins – Pearly-Dewdrops’ Drops Live at the Newport September 19, 1985
12. Great Plains – Letter to a Fanzine Naked at the Buy, Sell and Trade