This coming Saturday, March 30th, Behead The Prophet and The Need are playing at the Vera Project in Seattle. In my excitement for and in celebration of this upcoming show, I'm planning on doing a few posts this week that are specific to those bands.
First up, we have a live set by The Need that was recorded at RKCNDY on 9/21/98, which was just about a year before that club sadly closed it's doors. The lineup that night also included Built to Spill and Modest Mouse but this is the only audio from that show I've ever come across. If you know The Need, you know what to expect but in case you don't here's a brief description: artsy, no-wave, post punk.
My buddy Benson found this tape at Everyday Music up on Capitol Hill a while back and was gracious enough to let me borrow it for inclusion here. White Jazz weren't around for too long and almost every bit of information I found was from an online show write up from The Stranger in August of '09, which is where I've taken this descriptive paragraph from:
"White Jazz are a new (dare I say super-)group featuring Brandon Nakamura of Teen Cthulhu/Doomsday 1999, Jon Weisnewski of Akimbo, Jeff McNulty of BlöödHag, and Jared Burke Eglington of Patrol. You might expect a band with such a pedigree to combine competently terrorizing metal riffs with a tongue-in-cheek humor meant to deflate not only the metal tough-guy aesthetic, but also themselves. And you'd be right: The band formed to open a show for Pig Destroyer, and they played the show "in silk kimonos and underwear just to bum people out," according to Nakamura. He continues: "We're doing this as a tribute to bands like Excruciating Terror, Crom, and other bands that just destroy basements, ruin lives, and never say sorry." No apologies necessary, guys."
The 4th Practice was released by Wall of Dogs and serves as, I believe, the only available recordings of this all-too-brief unholy musical alliance. I've failed to be able to separate the tracks on this release as many of them run together and I don't believe the tracklisting on the label to be correct, but the whole thing weighs in at just under 10 minutes so you should be able to enjoy it in it's entirety.
All About Friends was a zine from Washington State, USA. Issue 5 was printed the same size as the CD, and contains 50 pages of photographs, as well as the tracking info.
1. C.R. - Moss
2. Botch - Rock Lobster (B-52's cover)
3. Impel - Call It What You Will
4. nineironspitfire - Dead (Napalm Death cover)
5. Screwjack - Artifact
6. Threadbare - Vitality (Beyond cover)
7. Coalesce - Cutting Away (Undertow cover)
8. Indecision - Slave
9. Trial - Crucified (Iron Cross cover)
10. State Route 522 - Jumpin' Someone Else's Train (The Cure cover)
11. Jough Dawn Baker - Five Twenty Four (Rage Against the Machine cover)
I don't know if The Backstabbers were considered a sort of 'little brother' band to The Catheters by anyone else but that's how I always thought of them. That's not to belittle their musical contributions, they were definitely good at what they did, it's just that the two bands had a bit of an age difference, played a similar style of music and always seemed be sharing a bill. I don't know what these guys went on to do afterwards but this EP, which came out in 2000, and a full length LP ("To Eleven") that followed a year later seem to be the Backstabbers only recorded output.
If you enjoyed The Catheters 7" that was posted in January or are a fan of hard, snotty rock 'n roll in general, this may be right up your alley.
Big news: Display, whose lone LP and other miscellany we recently shared with you, dear readers, have reunited and are playing their first show in over nine years. It's next Saturday, March 9th, at Chop Suey, with Kinski. Also, my birthday is tomorrow. Pretty rad. So, here's that post, so you can get up to speed on why you must be there.
Dalmatians were a synth party rap 3-piece. I saw them one time, at Drone Hill, a house in Beacon Hill where Craig of Black Japan lived. It was right after my buddies Display suddenly broke up, and I was pretty bummed out about the way things went down. I found myself talking to a few folks, one of whom introduced herself as "Chicken", which I thought was odd but chalked it up to presumed hippie parents. Turns out she was in the opening band, the lead squawker, as it were, and all three members had made-up names. Chicken yelled simple raps and jumped around while "Pongo" pounded a small drum kit, and "Balsa" yelled/rapped along with Chicken, triggered sequences, and played simple synth parts akin to 8-bit game soundtracks. Much dancing ensued, a fun time was had by all, and the band's songs were mostly enthusiastic uptempo encouragements to party and have a fun time. It was fitting, and it was exactly what I needed in that moment.
If my memory is correct, it was one of the band's earliest shows, and they only had the four songs on this CD-R they were handing out. People loved it so much that when they finished those four, they played at least one of them again to appease the crowd.
I don't think Dalmatians lasted very long, but they were a lot of fun. Balsa's next band put his real name in the title, as the Brian half of Casy & Brian. Pongo, aka D.W. Burnam, was later in a band called Katherine Hepburn's Voice with Shannon Perry, Dalmations' very own Chicken, who would later form the punk duo Butts, and is now apparently more focused on painting. You can see her work here.
Vermilion, spelled with one "L" for some unknown reason, were a two-headed beast from Everett. The first head was the Texas is the Reason/Roadside Monument - influenced emo period of 1998-99 or so, wherein the lineup consisted of high schoolers Eric Yates on guitar and vocals, Eric Junge on drums, Danny Oleson on bass, and Colin McBride on guitar. This lineup produced a couple demo tapes, one of which is included here.
The second head of the beast emerged after Yates left to focus on Portal, the remaining members listened to tons of Slint and Don Caballero, and Bryce Shoemaker was brought in handle the increasingly math-y guitar duties. Danny took over the vocals, which became less and less frequent, and shifting complex time signatures and complicated, dynamic instrumentation became their calling card. They put out a CD-R and lone 7-inch (both also included here) before driving out to Chicago to record with Steve Albini what would be their only LP, "Flattening Mountains and Creating Empires", featuring artwork by Roger Dean, aka the guy who painted all the Yes album covers.
After going their seperate ways, Colin and Danny opted to get away from all the complexity and started the pop band Speaker Speaker. Eric Junge started Patrol with Doug Lorig of Roadside Monument (a major early influence), Bryce formed Bronze Fawn, and Eric Yates kept bouncing around between bands, most recently as a member of Tit Pig.
Update: I finally got around to the other demo tape of theirs that I have. I'm guessing this is from 1999. 5 songs, plus a 3 song set that I recorded, probably at the Grange. Download that here.
