I’ve mentioned The Showgirls in earlier posts about Heroic Nonsense, The Halfway Situation, and No Consensus, and not the same The Showgirls that played the show with Page 5 Girl documented on House Of Fat Ladies, The Showgirls were the pop-punk duo of Jon Grim and Derek DeVries. Here’s the tape they put out:
The_Showgirls-The_Showgirls.zip (37.5 Mb)
Not long before this came out, The Showgirls were responsible for organizing a very important event in the early Ragman scene history, the National Crapper Day party show held January 27, 1996 in the basement of the DeVries house in a room adjacent to Derek’s bedroom in commemoration of Sir Thomas Crapper. Invitation/flyers were distributed which featured a computer paint program drawing of a stick figure standing next to a toilet and saying “Poop.” The show featured The Showgirls, Symphon-E, myself doing a 2-song solo set, Booker & Slappy’s Skateboard Band, Neils’s Junkyard Band Featuring The Smooth Operators, an early incarnation of Switchstance called Plastic Spectrum, and an early incarnation of Angry Cops called Anti-, in which Derek DeVries played drums but only knew half the songs; Ben and Mike planned to play the remaining songs without drums but I jumped in and improvised, which led to my being asked to join the band later. And I recorded a lot of it on my handy-dandy handheld cassette recorder. Here’s a recording of The Showgirls’ set at Crapper Day:
The_Showgirls-Live_At_Crapper_Day.zip (53.6 Mb)
In the latter Ragman days, Jeff Moravec and Matt McGuire put together a very interesting group that most people referred to as simply “The Circus.” They wrote circus-music-style instrumentals influenced by some kind of Turkish folk music, built around Jeff’s keyboards and Matt’s accordion, performed with a shifting cast of other instrumentalists and performers, many pulling double-duty between an instrument and playing a role in dramatic vignettes, with costumes and things. Among the regular contributors was Julie Lamendola (now of Ching Chong Song) on singing saw. The whole thing was based on a concept of the history of a fictional traveling circus. The shows were pretty impressive affairs. This is a recording of the only live performance I ever did with them, playing trumpet and melodica, at the Vibe Cafe. I recall also being involved in some recording sessions being laid down on ADAT but so far I’ve heard of nothing coming of them, though it was said that they were planning to release a combination album/storybook and there were even talks of buying an old school bus and doing a tour. I also have what appear to be some early 4-track demos I could post. If there are song titles, I don’t know them; I remember each piece being referred to simply by a number.
The_Spectacle_of_Klumpffnhauser_and_Louisons_Amusements_and_Oddities-The_Death_Of_Louison.zip (111.5 Mb)
Tyler Crew and Bret “Poopy Pants Jenkins” Philp were looking to form a new band and needed a bassist. Not sure how I found out about that, but I’d known these guys for years. I came down to Tyler’s mom’s place, they showed me a couple of songs, and I was in. From there I sort of ended up taking over the band, as I also became the lead singer and wrote a lot of stuff. I started using a very guitar-like style of bass playing. We played shows, mostly at the usual Reverb, but also at this place in Oelwein called The Dancing Lion a couple times, through the good graces of the folks in Grave Corps and Dylan Shiv and the Shanks. We had a really cool sci-fi goth-punk thing going that I used to describe, elevator-pitch-style, as “Philip K. Dick talks Sebadoh into raiding Joy Division’s medicine cabinet,” and I think we were well received, but Tyler’s tendency to get excessively drunk and play sloppily, then cheeze out on helping us load-out, started to grate on Poopy and me, so after probably not even a whole year Radio Dramamine kind of petered out. Poopy and I started working on doing my songs as a two-piece, and ended up recording stuff together that became most of The Small Slate-Colored Thing, then I ended up having to move to Des Moines. Here’s our self-produced/self-released EP and a couple shows.
Radio_Dramamine-The_Mind_Is_A_Terrible_Waste.zip (18.4 Mb)
Radio_Dramamine-Live_1-19-08.zip (52.3 Mb)
Radio_Dramamine-Live_5-10-08.zip (65.8 Mb)
Here’s the first E.D.I.T.H. show, which I mentioned on an earlier post of E.D.I.T.H. and Exit Drills stuff. You’ll note there is material here that was mercifully killed off later.
E.D.I.T.H.-05-26-99.zip (65.8 Mb)
Much of Ragman’s history occurs during an era when teenagers all over the world were starting up their own versions of Nirvana. The Ragman scene had our share of these in the forms of Spork and Sinister Plot. With no offense intended, Spork were by far the better of the two. Sinister Plot was originally named Anavrin, a name they got from their friends because of their very obvious attempt to sound like, and frequently cover, Nirvana (Anavrin is Nirvana spelled backwards, get it?) These guys found their way to the Ragman scene and got Joe to help out recording their stuff on 4-track. Those recordings are in this file, along with a live recording from one of Tony Seyffer’s Alternative Barn Parties. I don’t know what vocalist/guitarist Logan gets up to these days, but bassist Dan Combs is still doing some music (including a cover band called something like Brown Sugar Cracker) and drummer Will Quegg (subject of the No Consensus song “Tuff Quegg”) went on to get way better at the drums and play in some metal bands, most recently Age Of Discord.
Sinister Plot.zip (69.3 Mb)
It was news of the breakup of Heroic Nonsense that prompted me to suggest, inebriated and half-serious at a party at Steve Potter’s house, that No Consensus ask Jon Grim to join. It ended up being one of No Consensus’s best ideas.
Heroic Nonsense grew out of the comical pop-punk duo The Showgirls, which consisted of Jon Grim and drummer Derek DeVries, after taking on Jason Nelson on bass and a more adventurous, emo-flavored sound. These files are their first, rough 4-track demo, and a live recordings from the F.O.E. Hall in Waterloo, and the Malek Theater show in Independence. Heroic Nonsense went on to release the cassette EP The Rape Utic on a label started by prominent punk/ska all-ages show promoter, former Angry Cops bassist Rob Jenson. No one knows if Rob’s label ever put out anything else. While it’s not a Ragman release, I am considering digitizing The Rape Utic and posting it anyway; however I’d want to include the cover art if I did, and right now my scanner is performing well below ideally. After the breakup of Heroic Nonsense, Derek and Jason continued as the duo The Halfway Situation, who were also quite excellent.
Heroic_Nonsense-Demo.zip (46.7 Mb)
Heroic_Nonsense-Live.zip (81.7 Mb)
One of the last, if not the last, real No Consensus shows, captured live. Includes songs heard nowhere else, including one written by Jon whose title I no longer remember. Yes, this is the infamous show with the mid-set guest appearance by The Creek Brothers, and yes, The Creek Brothers are on here. Make of that what you will.
No_Consensus-Live_at_Reverb.zip (72.9 Mb)
In response to this comment from Jason, here is a collection of live recordings of three Suave Frog shows. Suave Frog was a “poetry band” led by Arsh Sangha. The style was dramatic poetry/monologue with minimalist accompaniment and punctuation from bass and drums. The core lineup was Arsh, Noah Johnson, and Brian Rodgers, but sometimes Peter Vanderwall filled in on drums, and there may have been one or two other temporary members.
Suave_Frog-Live.zip (52.5 Mb)
Page_5_Girl-The_Night_of_Psycho_E.zip (23.2 Mb)
Page_5_Girl-House_of_Fat_Ladies.zip (38.3 Mb)
Two early Page 5 Girl cassettes each consisting mainly of a live recording. The Night of Psycho E chronicles the first Page 5 Girl live show, in the basement of Tyler Crew’s mom’s house, with Switchstance. Steve plays some bass along with vocals here, and is backed up by Tyler Crew and Caruso, who were also in Switchstance. This makes for interesting, stripped-down, two-bass/no-guitar arrangements, but was also the first that Switchstance frontman Eric Sterrett had heard of Tyler and Caruso’s little side project, flying into a jealous rage over Steve’s usurping of his rhythm section, giving this tape its title. Having only four songs worked up, they played them twice. The original cassette also ended with What If The Man? performing “Stone Cold Loaded” (their only live performance ever), but that is omitted here by some silly arbitrary decision of mine years ago. It should be found with Avocado as a bonus track.
The majority of House Of Fat Ladies is a rather raw early performance by the well-known Potter/Caruso/Peck/Hoffman lineup at a house party in the basement of the house where my friend Jon Simmons had previously lived with his mom. Who lived there when this party was put on I don’t know. An early Rob Jenson band, Showgirls, also performed at this party, and the show was promoted largely through phone calls, causing some parents to become upset over answering messages which they thought were inviting their kids to come watch dirty movies.
So I’m playing in Why Make Clocks these days, and come to find out that the drummer, Will Tarbox, was one of Exit Drills’ few “fans” in Des Moines, where we played two, maybe three times — both times at a little DIY venue called The Fallout Shelter, and once of which was set up by the band he was in at the time, Mondo Cane. I remember that show having something like 14 bands crammed onto it and Mondo Kani was the only one I really liked.
So anyway, here is most of my stash of Exit Drills live recordings. Missing from this is E.D.I.T.H.’s first show, which was at Stebs with Luxt, but I do have that — just need to transfer some of it from cassette yet.
By the way, I’m in search of anyone who still has a copy of the “Broke-Ass Demo 2002″ CD-R — the one that has the same picture on the cover as Flight Attendants “Nightmares.” If you have even just mp3s of this, get in touch with me, because there are tracks on it that I simply don’t have anymore.
E.D.I.T.H.-Stacy_Is_Legal.zip (19 Mb)
Exit_Drills-Live_at_Question_Mark_12-29-2000.zip (27 Mb)
Exit_Drills-Live_at_the_Reverb_11-30-01.zip (50 Mb)
Exit_Drills-Live_at_the_Reverb_6-21-2002.zip (22 Mb)
Exit_Drills-Live_at_The_Reverb_3-21-03.zip (20 Mb)
Exit_Drills-Live_at_the_Reverb_5-3-03.zip (20 Mb)
