Jason Nelson contacted me inquiring whether I’d post this, and now here it is. It’s in WMA files rather than the usual mp3s I post, but it’s a little-heard treasure: the never-released album by The Halfway Situation, the duo of Jason Nelson and Derek DeVries that came about from their parting ways with Jon Grim thus ending Heroic Nonsense. These are some really intense tracks, and to have them finally surface is pretty awesome. Here are the notes Jason sent along:
Derek and I had been doing recordings on our practice space, (tooth basement) but we weren’t really happy with the sound we were getting. Finally we broke down and decided to go into a studio. I remember Derek asking me who I would want to work with if we could work with anyone out there, and Don Zientara quickly came to mind. He had been recording albums that i loved and meant a lot to me for years, including minor threat, fugazi, lungfish…the list goes on and on. One day on a whim I decided to send Don the recordings we had been working on, and asked him if he would be interested in working with us. Surprisingly he got back to me right away and said he’d love to. The next thing I know we’re out in Arlington, VA at Inner Ear Studios working with Don. This recording is the result of our time there. We never actually released this album. There were many factors…I wasn’t doing very well, and Derek had moved out to California….among others. Derek and I are still close, and we have talked about finally having a proper release for this record. It’s my hope that we can put it out in the near future.
Recorded at Inner Ear Studios by Don Zientara
Derek Devries – Drums, Vocals, Bass on track 11
Jason R. Nelson – Bass, Vocals , Drums on track 11
Thanks to everyone who’s supported us over the years in all forms. And Thanks to Don. I also want to give special thanks to Cody Brown for his work on the mastering.
The_Halfway_Situation-The_Story.zip (46.9 Mb)
Someone recently asked me if I was still “running” Ragman records or just doing this archive site, because if Ragman still existed, they wanted to put something out on it. I told them Ragman wasn’t running any more really. But I got to thinking about it just now, and really, no one ever really ran Ragman Records. You were on Ragman if you said you were. So I think, if you want to put something out on your own, and you feel it has the Ragman spirit to it so you want to put the Ragman Records name on it, I say go right ahead.
I still haven’t find my cassette of Heroic Nonsense The Rape Utic. Hopefully it will turn up one of these days. It will get posted here when it does.
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-I_Try_Hard.zip (43.0 Mb)
My other “unauthorized” extra Page 5 Girl release, I decided to put together this little EP because the version of “I Try Hard” recorded for Chick Capsule originally extended into a rather interesting noisy jam that was then edited out, and I thought the full version was kinda cool and I wanted to put it out. A couple other interesting oddities are thrown in as B-sides.
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.
Page_5_Girl-Shot.zip (26.1 Mb)
Page_5_Girl-Vacations_in_Space.zip (29.6 Mb)
Steve Potter’s first Page 5 Girl releases, recorded mainly by himself on karaoke machine with Caruso occasionally handling the bass parts. The Shot EP was the “main” release, whereas Vacations In Space was intended as a companion collection of oddities and stuff that wasn’t good enough (the cover art even declares, “this tape is a waste of money”). There’s a suave cool about Steve’s solo stuff that never fully came through in the full band lineup that came together later, but that phase of Page 5 Girl was awesome in other ways.
No_Consensus-What_Stupid_Does.zip (90.7 Mb)
In a way, it’s kind of a shame that this Ragman classic didn’t get posted here earlier, but then again it would have been equally a shame to have used up all the good material early on and be coasting on oddities and goof-offs now. This is where things really started to get pseudo-serious. An extensive full-color insert, printed front and back, custom-made stick-on labels on the cassettes, lots of copies home-dubbed up front.
Some No Consensus fans still consider this our best album; it’s hard to say for sure since it’s hard to even compare one No Consensus album with another, and here in particular, the songs are all over the map — genre goofs are still a big part of the mix, whether it’s punk rock (“Society Sux, “Bunk”), power ballads (“Johnny”), or goth (“Ben’s Touch”), but there are a number of interesting, more sincerely undertaken stylistic diversions of our own — simple folky tales (“Eric”) to Sonic Youth-esque noise freakouts (“Pretty, She Said”) and so many interesting points in between that you almost have to hear it to believe it. This was a young band going through a sudden creative explosion, and less than fully concerned with whether anyone was taking notice because we seriously felt like it would never end. Arguably, it never did, right up to the band’s demise, but after the uncertain first steps of Telepathic Etiquette, this was the initial burst. And in this case, two previously unreleased extra tracks.
By the way, the sooner someone loans me a copy of the (amazing) cover-insert from Sun Shines Like Tomorrow, the sooner that excellent follow-up (and a ton of sweet bonus tracks besides) gets posted here. So if you have one, comment here and give me you email address.
