Music

AM/FM – COME SUCK DOWN A CLOUD AND THE PHILADELPHIA GOOD NEWS SINGERS

| Brian

AM/FM, while being a gang of two, was intently focused on working with friends. Mike and I would always be looking for friends who were available to come into the studio and add their own touches to the songs we were working on. We never told them what to play or how to play it, we simply gave them a recorded version of the song and had them come in and work it out. It just made every experience that much more fun and obviously, communal.

From 1999 thru 2001, AM/FM was pretty much in the studio recording perpetually thanks to our friendship with Terry Yveres. Terry had played in several bands around Philly and started recording music as well and had a great set up at a studio called The Meatlocker. Located at 5th and Elsworth (or, the Nickle as others might call it) the Meatlocker was just that, an old meat storage locker that was turned into a warehouse and then into a studio. For AM/FM, it became a bunker from which we were able to spend hours and hours mucking about with the music we were making. Mike and I, along with Terry our unofficial 3rd member, formed a pretty great bond over those couple of years and I’ve often felt that those days were some of my most rewarding musical experiences. Just sitting in a studio with a couple friends knocking ideas about and seeing what happened.

On our second LP, Getting Into Sinking, we really started attempted more complex arrangements than we were used to. I don’t mean that in a compositional way, but more in a logistics sort of way. More on that in the future.

Probably the keystone track of Getting Into Sinking for us was the song Come Suck Down a Cloud. Written after a 72-mile bike ride with Mike and Atom on Cape Cod, the song was then recorded to 4-track upon my return home. That demo was then whittled about at the Meatlocker and released on a CDEP on the label Cooking Vinyl in the UK.

LISTEN TO THE DEMO: Come Suck Down a Demo
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Once we started working on Getting Into Sinking as a proper LP, Come Suck Down a Cloud song was massaged even more and ultimately, the decision to enlist a chorus for the big ending was made. However, keeping in the tradition of working with our friends, we made numerous phone calls and scheduled a day in February to have everyone come to the studio to sing live on the track.

Mike brilliantly decided to bring a camcorder with him to record the events of that day and that VHS tape has sat pretty much dormant since that cold day in February, 2001. That is, until I bought myself a video capture device.

Presented above is the edited documentary of the AM/FM Philadelphia Good News Singers performing on AM/FM’s song, Come Suck Down a Cloud.

Below, you can hear the final results.

Come Suck Down a Cloud

12 TONE SYSTEM – SOUNDTRACK TO SYNTHETIC MUSIC 7″

| Brian

Today we’re zooming back to the 12 Tone System 7″ released on Keystone Ember. Starring Eric, Mike, Brandon, John and Tim, this 7″ was recorded in May of 1997. Hard to imagine that was 15 years ago but it was and here we are today looking back. Mike did not play on this 7″ but he would quickly join the band after the original drummer moved (I think?) until their eventual break up.

12 Tone System was a short lived band. I have no idea how many actual shows they ever played during their time together, but it felt as though they were there one day and gone the next. Looking back on my own musical history it’s hard for me to relate. The bands I ever played in were long running (maybe too long) and while I always appreciated and perceived that as being lucky enough to find people I truly enjoyed playing music with I also wonder if it wasn’t also habit and a little too comfortable. Maybe the band that is sudden and short lived might also present the opportunity for quick testing, even quicker evolution and ultimately get you to your next developmental stage musically and more effectively than the drawn out, slow death of a “lifer” band. Hard to say.

I first heard 12 Tone System in my car. I think it was one of the numerous Toyota Camry’s I owned that was eventually, destroyed by a drunk driver but I’m not positive. I would go on to have multiple car wrecks in the late 90’s ,all of which weren’t my fault, but I digress. I was given a cassette of what would become this 7″ and thought to myself, “Well this is something different.” The attack of the drums on the first track sounded amazing (you would be surprised how hard it always seemed to get a decent drum set sound), the guitars were fuzzed the effects turned up. As with any community of young kids who start out playing punk/hardcore music, we all started listening to more diverse music and incorporating those influences into the bands we were playing in.

It usually looks something like this:

Punk > Hardcore > Shoegaze > Brit Pop > Beach Boys and so on…


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12 Tone System was yet another example that everyone was growing up and expanding their horizons. This made the community so much more interesting because ultimately, you would never know what one person or group of people might be doing musically from one band to the next. And, if that group of people were tearing through short lived bands, the evolution was at Mach speed making it even more jarring and fascinating.

After bands like I Am Heaven, a unique band in its own right (both Eric and Mike had been members), Goodbye, Blue Monday (Mike was a member) and Serephim (an odd twist on the emo/hardcore genre that then lent John and Brandon to 12 Tone System) you had a group of fellas who already had a rather diverse mixture of influences in them. Needless to say, what they spit forth was yet another document of evolution.

Let me apologize now, the encode of these songs is not the best. In fact, it’s rather fuzzy but think of it as added style than sin.

[s]he’s sensational

inner agnew

soundtrack to synthetics

GOODBYE, BLUE MONDAY – DEMO

| Brian

I’ve been plagued by annoyance as of late. Google Sites, the upload tool I use for hosting the music found on this blog, hasn’t let me upload anything for a couple of weeks. Not sure what the problem might be, but it’s Google, who can I possibly ask about it? Mr. Google?

Thus, I’m switching over to Soundcloud for this next update. I hope it’s not too annoying. You’ll still be able to download the tracks, just click on the little black arrow in the right hand menu of the player to copy the song. But, if this change over does annoy you, know that I sympathize. My own obsessive need for structure makes variation in layout from post to post very, very troubling. I hope we can all get through it together.

So, the Goodbye, Blue Monday demo. What can possibly be said other than that I thought it lost forever. I had a copy of this cassette of course, but along with a few other gems, I seem to have misplaced it. However, a few weeks back Tim sent me a link to a Russian blog that seemed to have nothing but the nicest things to say about the boys and their music. I’m not clear on whether the writer of the blog was aware of Goodbye, Blue Monday prior to coming across them on GoKidGo.org, but nonetheless, they are clearly fans and that rools.

Listening to this demo once again after such a long time away from it, I am amazed that this is the same band that went on to record this 7″ and this one here. While they all share a similar style, the mood is so drastically different in the demo. There’s an urgency that seems lost in the official releases while the demo just attacks from the first note. That’s not to say the split 7″ and 7″ are bad. Not at all. Both have their own voice, but it’s a more relaxed feel. This demo is punk thru and thru.

Goodbye, Blue Monday were close friends whom I hung out with on a daily basis. From day one, they solidified into an incredible live band that sounded and played like a ton of bricks. I think I always envied their cohesion as a band. Sure, you might be able to form a band with some great ideas sonically, but trying to gather a band together that plays with real harmony, meaning, a natural tendency to step in time, and you’re talking a whole ‘nother beast. Goodbye, Blue Monday always blew Franklin out of the water whenever we played live together. They blew almost everyone out of the water when they played live.

I don’t remember why the guys broke up. They weren’t around all that long. But, I would have loved to see what they accomplished on a full length.

Here’s the boys demo in all its glory. Enjoy. Photos by the incomparable Shawn Scallen.

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DIZRYTHMIA/GUTTERSNIPES SPLIT 7″

| Brian

Here we get into the dusty memory bins. Be warned.

While starting a band was always one of the most critical of goals, so was the attempt to create a music community or, if you will, a scene. You see, my friends and I were raised on the legendary towns of Washington, DC, New York, NY and San Francisco, CA. Each boasting their own undeniable stamp on the underground music community. For a city like Philadelphia, our home, to fantasize about creating our own music driven subculture where like minded people could entertain and realize their own creative fantasies was a nebulous yet incredibly important past-time. Sure, having a band was great but what good was it if all you could do was play your friends basements for only your friends?

To succeed, the scene had to grow. It had to absorb and then it had to expand.

For that to happen there were two very important components required outside the primary necessity which of course would be bands. The other two? A venue for those bands to play consistently where the bands could congregate and other individuals (curious about the congregation) could join and a way to then, once the seeds of creativity were sown, document the creations those bands spilled forth. In other words, a record label.

As suburbanite bands such as Random Children, Fracture, Public Descent and others migrated into the city, we were able to befriend urban oriented bands like Dyzrythmia, Invid, Prometheus Trashed, Mad Planets, and many, many more. Bands? We had that covered.

We had a venue. Besides the house shows that would happen, all ages shows were happening regularly at JC Dobbs. Venue for congregation? Check!

And lastly, we had a label. Sure, it wasn’t very impressive but Elbohead had proven that it could document and release recorded material of locally established bands.

As you can see, the pot was well seeded and germinated. While not as impressive as other community driven music scenes, we could have pride in our little sub-set here in Philadelphia. It was something to nurture and grow and more importantly, it was ours.

After the Random Children/Mad Planets split 7″, Elbohead decided to continue on in the realm of split 7″s. The reason? Financing mostly. Because we had no money, we had to rely on the bands themselves to somehow fund portions of the project. Two bands have more money than one and so split 7″s made a lot of sense. But, romantically looking back, one could also say that split 7″s helped cement an even closer notion of “community”. The bands shared the release so its success or failure was shared with a larger group. Everyone could participate.

For the second release, we knew that we wanted Dizrythmia involved. We had met Jamie Mahon through Ralph (I believe they might have gone to school together) and he was one of the first folks to be there at Dobbs during the shows. He was a fella who looked a little metal, a little punk and was all heart. Just a great, kind fella. He played bass for Dizrythmia and a more metal unit called Invid. Both bands quickly became regulars playing shows at Dobbs and so it was a logical decision to say, yep, they should be up next.

Here’s where it gets even more confusing. I don’t remember who was originally supposed to fill out the second side of the split 7″. Logically, I have to assume Invid. Or, perhaps it was supposed to be another band. I simply can’t recall. What I do remember is that ultimately I was told a band from New Jersey called The Guttersnipes would be filling out the second side. I was a bit upset when I was told that one of the bands that would appear on the release was not a band from Philly, nor a band I had ever seen play before, nor a band I had even met. It seemed wrong to me and contrary to the nature of the community goals of our new scene and the label in general. But of course, I was 16 and rather immature.

However, to avoid any sort of hassle, we said sure, let’s just get on with it and this 7″ was born. Once again, the cover was printed at the lovely little offset press shop at the top of my street in Oreland. The inserts were printed via High School lunch breaks with the library xerox machine and we decided to go with red vinyl for the release. Fancy, right?

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Punk was already old music by the time I started playing it. So, we werenā€™t doing anything really cutting edge musically, but we did step up, declared ourselves, and had fun doing it.

This time in my life was about finally getting out of my neighborhood. There were only about 10 punks in my part of town, so a bunch of us skated together and then eventually started playing music together. One of them was Jamie Mahon.

I was a homebody, and he was a man about town. When he went to art school, he seemed instantly plugged in to all these different weirdos who had bands. I got a big ass car, so we were able to start getting around town and playing at these peopleā€™s parties. We played basements, backyards, warehouses, brick playhouse theaters, abandoned houses & VFW halls. Dobbs on South st even put on some Sunday afternoon all ages shows that we stomped each other at. We played a New Years Eve Party at Julian Buchannanā€™s momā€™s house in Southwest Germantown with The Random Children. It was fun until the local thugs crashed through the front windows like SWAT and started kicking our asses.

Jamie said that The Random Children had a record label called ELBO HEAD, and wanted to put out a split 7ā€ with this band The Guttersnipes from Vineland. I said hell yeah! The label was even gonna spring for colored vinyl!

We had never recorded with anything other than a boom box and I wasnā€™t good with a 4 track yet, so we had to go to a ā€œreal studioā€ to record. We ended up at a place called The Sponge Factory. Now of course, itā€™s artist condos, but then, it was a shitty old warehouse in a scary neighborhood. We were multi tracked onto a Ā½ inch tape machine by Steely Dan/Deadheads who were inhaling ā€œsmart drugsā€ whatever they are.

The songs are ā€˜Togetherā€™ and ā€˜Lines of Greedā€™. Both tunes were ska/punk hybrids Influenced by some of the East Bay bands of the time, like Operation IVY and Crimpshrine & Plaid Retina, as well as more mainstream stuff like The Police, The Clash, and The Go-Gos. I wrote the music for Together and our drummer and singer Erik Gasiewski, and Lauren Perez, who were dating at the time, wrote the words. Itā€™s a sappy, needy teenage love song. Itā€™s cute! Jamie wrote the music for the other track, Lines Of Greed. I wrote the words. A band called Lines Of Oppression had allegedly ā€œstolenā€ a gig from us, so being petty like I was, I wrote this victim piece about it being all about money. So jive! I later became friends with all these dudes and they were really cool and nice. Live and Learn, I guess! I sang the number like New Values era Iggy, so I was well impressed with myself.

Well the record came out and The Guttersnipes side was about on par with ours in terms of quality, but the style was more in the Ramones, Misfits, Johnny Thunders neighborhood. I liked it quite a bit.

We played a bunch of shows together to promote it. This was fun time period. Very eye opening, and filled with new experiences and ideas about what was possible. And punk as fuck.

So there you have it. I don’t believe I ever did see The Guttersnipes play.

Enjoy!

DIZRYTHMIA
Together

Lines of Greed

GUTTERSNIPES
To Russia With Love

Brain Control Rock n’ Roll

FRANKLIN LIVE AT THE 508 HOUSE

| Brian

Man, I had to jump all over this one.

Today, a nice fella named Ian sent me a message linking me to his YouTube page where he was posting a whole slew of videos. Turns out he was friends with the 508 House folks, played in a band with Deme who lived there and captured some great footage of Franklin playing a complete set in the 508 basement.

This footage is actually the same show that the image on the top of this blog is from and while there are some visual glitches, the sound is pretty solid. Ian has a bunch of other great videos on his page so get on over there!
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This show was from the summer of 1995 and, I believe, was the final show of our tour that summer. Fracture and True High Fidelity played and it sounds as if we played our entire Go Kid Go LP which had just come out that summer. Sick find!