A Personal Message from Zardoz, Plus Video Roundup #2

We got 99 posts and, uh, this is one. I'm going to let Mr. Rambo have the centennial post, but before the videos, I just want to say a little something in the holiday spirit.

I'm not sure when exactly I found Arthur Rambo's blog. Back then it was called He/Sheattle. I think it was around the time of the Doomsday 1999 post. I'd loved that band, and was trying to find out what became of them. (I did find, eventually, that the charismatic frontman Zack Carlson moved to Texas, worked with the amazing film fans at the Alamo Drafthouse, and, oh yeah, WROTE THE BOOK ON PUNKS IN FILM.)

I poked around the previous posts, and added it to my Google reader. It didn't take long for me to notice that Arthur was posting about a lot of bands that I knew at some level personally around high school and college. Raft of Dead Monkeys, The Prom, Drowning in Lethe, The Vogue, Soiled Doves, Suffering and the Hideous Thieves. The list goes on. Once he posted about March 15th and Portal, I knew something was up. Either I knew Arthur or I WAS Arthur. I contacted him, and as it turns out, I wasn't him, but I did indeed know him. Let's just say we had once shared a fleeting affinity for lawn bowling. Longish story. So anyway, before long I was in the proverbial Wonkavator, posting about my favorite things, from the lone album by Display (who, unbeknownst to me when I wrote the post, were actually back together after nearly 10 years and a few months away from playing shows) to the Christmas EP by Fishboy and Carleen Jean Death Machine.

Of my 19 posts, the most popular one is clearly the unreleased Jough Dawn Baker LP. As far as I know, this had only been in the hands of friends of the band, and we were fortunate enough to be the first blog to post it online. This is the kind of thing that gets me excited about posting here. It's our hope that those of you who like this blog will check out and like our Facebook page (we post extra stuff there), tell your friends, and mostly importantly, SHARE YOUR STUFF WITH US. Demos, unreleased/unfinished albums, self-released records, scans of flyers, stickers, photos of shows, VHS tapes, whatever you have. If you can't get it into a digital format, we can help. We just want to be a conduit for all the amazing post-grunge music. This is for everyone who spent their nights at the Old Firehouse, The Grange, Ground Zero, The Velvet Elvis, RKCNDY, and The Paradox.

So, I guess this has turned into my Thanksgiving post. I'm thankful for Arthur for inviting me to write here, for all the people who've made the great music we get to share, and for you, for sharing our love of this stuff.

Now, as inferred by the title of this post, for those who don't haven't liked us on Facebook or may have missed some posts, here's the second batch of videos I've posted from my own VHS tapes.

Raft of Dead Monkeys - Reunion show 1-03-04 at Studio 7

Suffering and the Hideous Thieves - Las Vegas 9-23-03

Roadside Monument - Vancouver 11-13-97 (plus the set that night from the band they opened for, The Promise Ring.)

Pedro the Lion - Vancouver, B.C. 1/31/98 

Pedro the Lion - Vancouver, B.C. 10/11/98

Pedro the Lion - Seattle 6/25/99

The Rapture 10-01-2001 at The Paradox. A bit of a cheat, but they were a Seattle band a couple years before this show.

Male/Female - First show since 2007

When Jim Paschall moved back to Seattle recently, he didn't just get Display back together, he also un-dormanted (I swear that's a word. Go ahead and challenge, man, you're just gonna lose a turn.) his other band from the same era, Male/Female. Initially a side project where he could play mainly guitar (he played bass in Display), Male/Female continued after the breakup of Display, and released one (to my knowledge) CD-R EP in 2006, Slow it Down in the Mineral Bath. 

Along with Paschall, the art noise kraut groove punk foursome comprised Eric Yates, formerly of Portal and recently of Tit Pig, on synths, bass, and sometimes guitar, Emily Lohuis on drums (now Emily Moore, as she is married to Display's drummer Danny, thus obligating them to regular marital drum-offs), and John from the New Avenues, whose guitar duties have been handed over to Colby Ford for M/F V2.

Download the 2006 EP here. Go to their Bandcamp site to hear a few more, including the one embedded below, a personal favorite.

Male/Female play The Black Lodge this Saturday, August 17th, with Grave Matters and Sweet Weapons. 9pm.

Display - Album, Demos, Rarities, and Live

The way I see it, everything I've posted here has been leading up to this moment. This is my second favorite album of all time (first is Pet Sounds), and over the 9 years since its release, I've come to accept that one of the main reasons I've been put on this earth is to be a Display evangelist. Now, I realize that hyping something makes it more difficult for a new listener to enjoy it, so if all my fawning is sounding like a too good to be true situation, then stop reading and just download the album.

Display were an arty dance-punk (or is it dancey art-punk?) trio out of Everett, formed by bassist Jim Paschall and guitarist Jeremy Cooper of The Past, and Danny Moore on drums. They wrote short, taut songs in Sonic Youth-inspired alternate tunings, anchored by Danny's fast and crisp beats. In contrast to the largely instrumental, slow moodiness of The Past, Display was more poppy and accessible, with Jim and Jeremy trading lead vocal duties, but no less artful and forward-thinking. Display was unlike anything else in town at the time.

Despite frequent positive write-ups in the local music press, a commanding set at the Capitol Hill Block Party, and many shows with other forward thinking bands like Shoplifting and The Gossip, Display never reached the heights they should have. The sad story of why you may not already know this band is that they refused label offers to release their music, opting to self-record and self-release, but doing it all themselves delayed the process, and by the time they finally got it out (packaged beautifully in a thick hinged mirror case they designed and assembled), sudden health problems forced the band to break up within about a week of the album's release. It was only available on consignment in a few shops, at one show, or direct from the band. Only a few dozen copies were made, as far as I know.

Download their sole album, 2003's Display, here.

Download their demo, a couple full shows, and recordings of some songs in their early stages, including a couple that were never released, here.

I've also just uploaded 11 old videos to Youtube, in this playlist:
Be advised that the video resolution isn't great, but I originally got them in this resolution and don't have the originals.

For more videos, check out scumstachewizard's Youtube channel.

The Past - Cassette EP [2000]

I wanted to include this with my previous post for The Past's full-length, but several sets of equipment refused to comply. Not to be deterred, I eventually got this 5-song cassette transferred to my computer. I've been listening to it a lot, and remembering the first time I heard it. I'm not from Everett, but had recently befriended an Everett dude who'd moved down to Bothell, where I went to school. He'd just gotten a copy of this tape, and during theater class he put it on the stage's sound system and turned it up loud. We heard about 20 seconds before the teacher yelled something like, "WHAT is THAT?!". Confused, and seeking to prevent whatever illness could be caused by the relentless repetition of oddly tuned guitar riffs and noise, he literally ran over to the console and turned it off, hastily pulling the tape out of the machine, so that it could not infect any further. Now, I'd known this teacher my entire life. My parents were best friends with he and his wife. I knew him better than any non-family adult in my life. To a high school kid, seeing music cause such a negative gut reaction from a parent-like figure can only mean that you're on to something great. And we were. 

All the copies of this tape were recorded over existing tapes. Mine was taped over a lecture from a motivational speaker. I've included a minute of so of his speech, as I feel it contributes to the experience of listening to this tape. 

Worth noting is that I feel this tape has the definitive version of "Psychosis" (called "Seen and Not Seen" here, though), especially in how it ends with an  Echoplex loop. 

Download the 5-song tape with artwork here.

The Past - Imperfect (2000)

The Past were a mostly instrumental and entirely arty trio from Everett, two-thirds of which went on to form Display. With their giant Sunn amp cabinets and arsenal of vintage effects pedals, Jim Paschall and Jeremy Cooper unleashed waves of moody Sonic Youth and Krautrock-inspired riffs over Matt McLemore's spare but highly specific (and a bit funky, in a DJ Shadow sort of way) motorik drumming. One of my favorite memories of any show I've ever been to was at a house where The Past opened for FCS North. When their final song ("Agneta") ended, Jeremy tapped on his Echoplex, which then replayed his entire guitar part from the beginning. He and Jim peeled back the grillcloth of their amps, shoved their instruments completely inside, and as effects filtered feedback accompanied the ghost guitar, the band joined the crowd in watching the end of their set. Fantastic.
After a couple years and one short tape, they released this full-length self-released CD-R.  It was limited to 100, but I think only a few dozen were actually made, as they broke up just they put this out (my copy is number 1, by the way). I also have their cassette ep and a live video, both of which I intend to transfer soon, but keep encountering uncooperative equipment.

Download the full album with scans here.