Tampa Calling

GHOST HOSPITAL
Imagine a world where dinosaurs roam through unfiltered imaginations like so many forgotten dreams of revealed bias and reality. With Daniel Johnston sensibilities juxtaposed with garage punk and a little Butthole Surfers, Pittsburgh transplant Ghost Hospital creeps around Tampa Bay singing songs and playing guitar. Electric, acoustic, with a band, solo, short songs, feedback freakouts and always with a sense of humor, Ghost Hospital surfs the underground and pops up where ever the twin evils of regret and shame need to be battled back into their crusty caves and neurotic hosts.

Since moving to Florida, Ghost Hospital has played as far south as Miami and Orlando, while normally sticking around St Pete Tampa area. “Don’t do what your mom says/ You’ll end up just like your dad/ Don’t do what your dad says/ You’ll end up with regret/Oh yeah…” he croons from behind guitar playing born of some Greg Ginn-punk John Fogerty-Americana love child not recognized by the United Nations or Pitchfork Media.

Constantly raising issues of bias, heritage, regret, drugs and dinosaurs, Ghost Hospital poigniantly comments on the American youth experience of the late 90s and early 00s. Ripped away from imagination by surrogate television families, the youth find out too late how they have been hoodwinked by oppressive seriousness and overbearing job markets. Just like D. Boon said, ” Hey mister don’t look down on me/(for what I believe in-/I got my bills and the rent)/I should go pitch a tent/but our land is not free/so I’ll work my youth away/in the place of a machine.” If we relate our biases item by item and reveal cultural biases too ingrained to ignore (like the GH song Religious Bias in Nursery Rhymes), society’s tendency to use language against us completely breaks down at the source!

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