Ragman Records Archives

Here’s the early Casio-tinged demos I referred to in the previous post about Spectacle.

The_Spectacle_Of_Klumpffnhauser_and_Louisons_Amusements_and_Oddities-The_Birth_of_the_Spectacle.zip (33.2 Mb)

During much of the time Leah and I lived on Kingsley, I was kind of floundering around for a coherent band or music project. This would have been between The Cactus Rats and Radio Dramamine I suppose. Anyway one thing I tried was putting something together with Shawn and Jason Nelson. I had Tyler Vincent’s drums and he didn’t seem interested in playing them so I thought it might be fun to have a go at being a drummer again. The three of us got together a few times at the Dental Studios basement (the Nelsons’ practice space for many years, in the basement of where they work) and started jamming and seeing if we could turn these drowsy post-rock jams into loose compositions with a lot of room for on-the-spot reinterpretation. We came up with the name Sindu, had a few songs, I made these rough recordings on a portable recorder, but we never quite made it to the point of playing shows. Don’t really know why. It was fun, though.

Sindu.zip (85.4 Mb)

Fornicide-Shitstupidnoisecoredethpunx.zip (42.4 Mb)

Tyler Crew, Poopy Pants Jenkins, and I were listening to Captain 3 Leg‘s “Unreleased Crap” cassette when we got the idea for Fornicide. Over the next couple days we got together in Tyler’s room in his Mom’s basement, de-tuned a couple guitars completely at random, and started rattling off noisecore songs that, while inspired by Captain 3 Leg, probably more closely resemble Rectal Pus.

Panasonic_Youth-Ampersand.zip (58.9 Mb)

More collected noisy weirdness that suits the Panasonic Youth moniker.

Jump_Up_And_Jam_Featuring_Bert_Casey_Vol_1.zip (107 Mb)

Jump_Up_And_Jam_Featuring_Bert_Casey_Vol_2.zip (108 Mb)

Originally a mix put together by Joe for Jen T, with no intent to be released otherwise, the original Jump Up And Jam Featuring Bert Casey was a mix of Joe Riehle-written tunes, some of which might also be found on other projects such as The Dailies, interspersed with clips of Joe playing along with and talking to a guitar instruction video. Somehow I ended up with it, and I liked the concept so much that I created a Volume 2 of it out of other unreleased songs and clips from the same video-lesson tape.

Stephen_Oulmans_Tot_Lot_Band-Ghosty_Is_Alive.zip (86.0 Mb)

The recording sessions for Polyester/Stephen Oulman: Man-Child were prolific. Early on there were unofficial versions of the album with different selections of tracks, and later there were different collections of the supposed outtakes. Found here is everything that didn’t end up on Man-Child.

Switchstance.zip (18.5 Mb)

This teenage punk-rock band made up of guitarist vocalist Eric “Psycho E” Sterrett, future Page 5 Girl bassist David “Caruso” wise, and Tyler Crew on drums was mostly famous for their song “Shopping Cart,” a Ragman staple, a favorite of Joe Riehle in particular. This footage is from a boombox rehearsal tape.

My_Mentor_Al-Carpet_and_Other_Ways_to_Die.zip (77.9 Mb)

Somewhere between Page 5 Girl and E.D.I.T.H., Stacy, Matt McGuire, and I decided to start a band called My Mentor Al. There wasn’t a clear direction we wanted to go with it, exactly. Eventually Steve Wilson and Joe ended up joining in, and we started recording stuff. Stylistically, it was a intriguing compromise between the more experimental 4-track recording projects and the more rock guitar-based live performing bands, but we only ended up doing one gig, and it was an annual local band tribute to John Lennon that Stebs used to do. We practiced our three songs for it like crazy: a hip-hop/funk mutation of “Instant Karma,” a sneery punk version of “Paperback Writer,” and a relatively straightforward, somewhat revved-up version of “Ticket to Ride” in which I ended up accidentally ad-libbing “I think that living with me is bringing me down/’Cause I can never be free when I am around.” Somehow the high standards demanded by the original core group drove Joe and Steve away from the project, I guess they never figured it was actually a serious band; we ended up discovering Josh Schneiderman and forming E.D.I.T.H. Matt McGuire now resides in Olympia, WA and plays accordion in the folk-punk (or is it punk-folk?) band The Pasties (not to be confused with the NYC power-pop band of the same name).

TBag-The_Blues_Album.zip (87.3 Mb)

There were a lot of really good T-Bag tracks left that didn’t find their way onto Wow Babies!. I’ve collected some of my favorites among them into this oddities album.

Bwang-The_Church_of_Holy_Crap_of_Latter-Day_Bwang.zip (87.8 Mb)

A compilation of previously uncollected/unreleased Bwang! tracks. And with that, I announce that I’m all out of Bwang! stuff for a while — to the relief of many, no doubt.