Tampa Calling

Restless again. My band stops playing and a smattering of applause fills the void of sound as the barkeep kicks on the punk jukebox. Love Comes in Spurts pipes through the shitty speakers as Richard Hell’s whiney voice affirms the nihilistic undertones of modern living. I look down at my sweat-stained shirt and a tiny button of Hell’s vacant stare pinned above my left breast pocket catches my eye. For a second, its blank straight-mouthed expression curls into a shit eating grin and he whispers up at me, “I know punk sounds better through the filter of a canned, thought-out and planned recording” as I rub my eyes, pick up my amplifier and carry it hastily out the back door.

Fresh air stings my lungs, billowing smoke escaping through the closing door behind me. I drop my keys, set the amp down on the pavement and pick them up. After throwing the amp in the back seat of my car, I reluctantly re-enter the bar from the back to finish cleaning up.

Unexpectedly, the door leads directly into my parents’ house three towns over. The sun burns through the large windows as my hands begin to shake uncontrollably. I must have really shaken something up in my head last night with that show, I tell myself in a panic. I can hear my parents arguing in the next room:

“Why can’t you use your gift of music to serve the Lord?”

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Screeching guitars over a rapid backbeat pierce 50 ears trying to hear 25 stilted conversations. A foot-long needle shoots directly through the beckoning orifices, winds around the ear canals and connects directly with the center of each half of the brain. A throbbing begins at the base of the skull as imaginary brain fluid leaks out of each ear. Each face contorts into wrinkled disgust and the faces move closer together.

“Music is my life!” screams one bearded-with-glasses 20-something into the ear of a young girl with hair framing her face, brown tank top, cut-off jean shorts and several colored tattoos spattered across each arm. Clouds of cigarette smoke linger between them and slowly rise to the tar-stained ceiling. From the other end of the bar, the shapes and cartoons on her arms aren’t distinguishable, but I’m convinced they’re more than just blobs of ink. ”Have you ever heard the first Bad Brains album?” he continues to yell, ”It’s so raw, I can’t get enough of it!”

The band falls into a repetitive pattern of chunky chords, fast, pounding, tribal drums and hollering vocals. A few words sneak out of the mix, “MAKE…APPOINTMENT…TIME…MIND…EXCUSE!” Fuzzed mumbling fills the spaces between the recognizable words.

“I’m so glad you like them, too! Did you go see them at State a few months ago? They were great. I was there for Propaghandi, though!” the girl hollers back.

“What!? I can’t hear a fucking thing with this shit music!” Read the rest of this entry »

To begin by beating a dead horse: Modern Radio sucks! We’re lucky in the Tampa Bay area with WMNF, but even this leftist station leans toward mainstream boomer culture rather than underground or avant garde sounds. And who can blame them? Fiscal feasability dictates the output of modern media (d’uh).

In a pinch, I tend to listen to right wing radio for a good, healthy gut laugh, because it’s better than being depressed by cheesy mediocrity! Bottom line: Radio is for the masses. Lowest common denominator pandering pervades every aspect of post-modern living. From the huge conglomerates to the indies, companies and not-for-profits don’t have faith in our ability to think, contemplate and make our own decisions. This is not special knowledge that I’ve tapped into / I do not have any extra intelligence not available to the rest of you. You are all well aware of the hoodwink that modern media attempts to pull over on us every day. It/s like that “Everybody Knows” song by Leonard Cohen (he supercedes boomer culture, right?). Read the rest of this entry »

New from No Clear Records: a schizophrenic compilation colliding different genres of the underground and crapping them together in one easy to swallow CD-R. No Clear, No Eyes Volume 2 spirals around themes of frustration, loneliness and salvation through the lenses of punk, no wave, garage, folk, experimental, noise, comedy, avant garde, rock ‘n’ roll and more without batting an eye. All thought up, recorded and executed right here in Florida (mostly Tampa Bay, though other acts hail from Gainesville and Melbourne), this compilation accurately depicts the underbelly of Florida culture that more and more people are seeking out as mainstream alternatives to their cultural intake.

Tonight, Friday, May 22, 2009, Cafe Bohemia hosts a compilation release show for this seminal Florida mix featuring live music from some of Tampa Bay’s most exciting weirdos. 937 Central Ave., St. Petersburg, 6 or 7 p.m. start time (it’ll go all night). (Follow the jump for track listing.)

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Sunday night rock ‘n’ roll shows: difficult to book, annoying to promote and hard to get people to leave their comfortable homes and come out for bands they may not have heard about. My band Blast and the Detergents last played a Sunday night show a couple months ago at Crowbar opening for amazing touring band, Pontiak, and “gets more Tampa shows than I do” Orlando band Kingsbury.

(Another band played and I can’t remember their name — kind of Hootie and the Blowfish-sounding singer songwritery stuff… not my bag).  Anyway, the show turned out great because the DJ played some really great classic punk and rock ‘n’ roll junk, Pontiak owned and I got to play, which I always enjoy regardless of crowd size or reception.

However, I always feel bad when I fail to deliver the promise of beer drinkers for these dive bars that put up with my crazy sound. Sundays, this memorable Crowbar night included, challenge the notion of profit for these beer holes.

On the other hand, touring band always need a place to play on Sundays, and with the notorious Atlanta tour cutoff we usually cry about down here, I am satisfied when a band I like plays any night of the week down this way in our chatty little twin cities.

Chapel Hill underground rockers Americans in France destroyed the Emerald last year (I think it was a Thursday) with one-man garage-rock  band Pinche Gringo (he covered The Gories, for Christ’s sake) and now they are returning to our fair sprawl. I am bringing them into bombed-out downtown Tampa’s little bar/venue Kelly’s Pub this Sunday, May 17 around 8 or 9 p.m.  (you know how these things go).

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After eight years, I’m still trying to find my identity in the Tampa Bay area. I’ve got the “you’ve got to drive everywhere all the time if you want to have any fun and be a part of anything” vibe down, but there’s something missing in my overall music-making and living experiences in St. Petersburg. The latest rash of confused feelings came to me Saturday night, when I found a review of my band Blast & the Detergents CD in the April issue of MAXIMUMROCKNROLL.

A great, short and earnest review, I was as giddy as a little 12-year-old whose parents finally let him get a cotton candy. This nationally distributed, punk-as-fuck, San Francisco-based ‘zine spent the time listening to and reviewing my CD. They even chose my hand-drawn album art to be displayed for eternity in the review section of their April 2009.

But wait, there’s more!

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The Cramps crapped the punk of The Sonics/Ramones continuum and Hasil Adkins/Link Wray rockabilly together in the late ’70s, extolling the virtues of simple, high-velocity distorted music and inescapable, in-your-face attitude, and naming their new subgenre “psychobilly.” Best described as a psychotic crooner, Lux Interior sang and contorted for The Cramps for the last 30-something years. Poetry about death, alienation, revenge and caustic self-affirmation littered their first EP, Gravest Hits, and LP, Songs the Lord Taught Us, (my two favorites), and rang true for me and countless others across the world over the years. “The way I walk is just the way I walk” and other such declarations paired with science fiction/horror references defined their early records. Early live shows were characterized by Lux literally going crazy and falling apart onstage, including vomiting all over himself and other antics. Here’s some footage of The Cramps playing a mental hospital in 1978:

Delayed, choking/massively stuttering vocals filled spaces between two or three chords heavily drenched in reverb and distortion punk. Mesmerizing, inspiring simplicity speaks toward the minimalism of the amateur (doing something for the love of it).

Rest in peace, Lux, and thanks for the music/inspiration/thoughts and references to an underground culture of rollicking rock ‘n’ roll fun.

Danny McGuire
Polk City is damn far from Tampa and it’s further from St Petersburg. Somehow, the only person I know who lives in Polk City, Danny McGuire, makes it to more shows in the Tampa/Orlando metropolitan area than anyone who lives in either town. Whether playing shows in any of his many bands, hawking genres for beer, or just attending and documenting with a little digital camera, Danny gets around. His main vehicle, the weirdo rock Pixies meets Ween juxtaposed by some Nirvana/Butthole Surfers action, Waterdigger, hasn’t played a show in a while because of drunk drama between the members. Volatile and out-of-control (rumor has it they’re banned from the New World Brewery), Waterdigger remains the only band that covered “Sweet Home Alabama” and turned it into a song I liked.

It’s not like McGuire sits around and waits for his mates to stop hating each other and get together — he just plays his songs in one of his five or 10 other bands. Improv crap guitar noisemakers turned repetative songsters (and usually still both), Thee Heidlecrumbs shock as much as they entertain.

Reworked Waterdigger songs, cosmic freak outs and other sounds comprise their latest sets. This band’s main other contributing member, Kat(hleen) Magyar, embodies an inspiring punk aesthetic — the confidence to play in front of people without any formal training and very little (but growing amounts of) experience. Their music should make school-learned musicians hang up their flutes and take up accounting. Insulting, hilarious songs about your granny and mother mixed with heartfelt introspection and anger explode out of McGuire’s unusual brain.

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Little Fyodor returns to Tampa Bay Friday night to downtown St. Petersburg’s Cafe Bohemia. After blowing the roof off of Transitions Art Gallery and then the whole town of Gainesville one year ago with his cohort Babushka, Fyodor returned to his home in Colorado, kept in touch with some Floridians, and played some Florida music on his radio show, “Under the Floorboards.”

Locals in attendance at Transitions for Fyodor’s performance have been waiting with bated breath and salty skin for the return of an underground legend. A combination of weird, angular and hilarious, the music of Little Fyodor represents an underground barely covered in any medium.  His 80s band Walls of Genius got one line of text in the Richie Unterberger classic book, Unknown Legends of Rock n Roll.

Extremely entertaining, spastic and poignant in combating our current boredom/mediocrity based culture, Little Fyodor promises to put on a great show this Friday, January 16.

Pictured: Little Fyodor strangles a guitar (courtesy www.littlefyodor.com).

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How did my mom go from owning such a wide range of rock n’ roll records, from the Beatles to Black Sabbath, to devoting her ears solely to Celine Dion? Living in the land of oldsters and hipsters (some people are both), this question ultimately pervades every aspect of existence in Tampa Bay. Issues of marketed generation norms, like older people being more mild mannered and set in their ways and younger people experimenting with sex and drugs, maintain arbitrary divisions between age groups and sonic preferences. Generalizations of the 1960’s “Summer of Love” are quickly ripped to shreds in records by bored mutants like The Stooges. Their self-titled record in 1969 and Fun House in 1970 destroyed notions of the singular cultural experience by being nasty and unlearned instead of nice-sounding and well-trained. History has never been as cut-and-dry/black-and-white as we are led to believe. Likewise, our present continues to be very complicated.

All my life I’ve heard things like, “now that John Lennon could sing” or “Eric Clapton knows how to play real guitar music” or other such flapdoodle. People who make statements like those assume there’s a correct way to sing or play guitar, and other musicians who are inferior or get it wrong should do something else. Iggy Pop’s snarling vocals and Ron Asheton’s unsophisticated, immediate and exceedingly raw approach to the guitar challenged the notion of perfect technical skill as the ultimate goal in music. (Pictured: the late Ron Asheton, photo by Dena Flows.)

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1. Catatonic Youth – Piss Scene 7″ (HoZac Records): A scaberous three-track debut with fuzzed-out vocals, chunky basslines, garage guitar and weird noises to boot! This underground band pressed 500 copies of their single and sold out already; pressure them to make more! I am always attracted to boredom lyrics like “Nothing in this town nothing in this town nothing in this town.” The best rock n’ roll lyrics are 100% indispensable and 100% throwaway garbage at the same time.

2. Pierced Arrows – In My Brain/Caroline 7″ (Tombstone): The latest from ex-Dead Moon husband-and-wife duo with a different drummer still unrelentlessly encourages everyone and their sister to start a band with lo-fi rock n’ roll voodoo magic. Fred Cole has been putting out records since 1964 or so, making him the only figure from the ’60s garage rock scene to hear punk rock, understand it and do his own thing with it.

3. The Hospitals – Hairdryer Peace (self-released): The Hospitals’ second record combines sheer noise and cacophony with echoey vocals that are run through more processors than I’d like to think about. Not immediately accessible (but not snobby either), The Hospitals bash out their version of rock n’ roll like a post-apocalyptic mutant stepchild of the future throwing a shitfit, but somehow taking the time to ask some questions at the same time. Not looking back, Hairdryer Peace formally picks up the unenviable task of destroying music left over from their last record. A little more cohesively this time, I might add. Read the rest of this entry »

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.

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I have always been a terrible skateboarder. Lord knows I’ve tried: the aesthetics of physical activity, reckless abandon and risk of personal injury appeal to me on an ideological level, but my lack of skill and commitment caused many bad and embarrassing falls. I even listen to semi obscure hardcore punk bands like Big Boys, who’s fast rhythms and anarchy driven lyrics characterized skateboarding (in the 80s at the very least). Regardless of my personal abilities, celebrating 16 years of the Skatepark of Tampa seems very worthwhile, especially since SPOT along with Transitions Art Gallery remains one of the safest and best places for the kids of Tampa to hang out and spend their time instead of raiding their parents’ liquor cabinets or just being bored to death with TV brainwash.

Walking into the Czar on Saturday night with a friend, we navigated ourselves through three rooms of schizophrenic, non sequitur rooms filled wall to wall with scenesters and club personalities of all ages. In the third and decidedly more “rock n roll” room, I walked into a band playing generic sounding punkish music with those whiny vocals that I don’t really associate with very easily. The voyeur in me snuck back into the second room and watched all the people at and around the bar acting silly and trying to get to know each other. Amazing how many senses these places tickle in such a short period of time.  Flashing lights, red walls, perfume, sweat, hairspray, flesh, pounding beats and the buzz of constant chatter flourished all around the room while my friend and I yelled at each other about art and crap.  Not wanting to miss the bands No Age or Les Savy Fav, we meandered back into the third room, got some free Pabst and settled into the much more boring people watching of scensters and hipsters who looked more or less the same as one another…

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Repetition pounds rhythms and patterns into the human brain while pulsating through the body.  The rejection of complexity by bands like the Intelligence, which relies heavily on simple, grinding beats, guitars, keyboard, bass and exploding drums, represents a reaction against intricate learned music.  Rather than meandering schlock, the Intelligence favor lean, angular songs straight to the point and combine raw music with catchy tunes.  Intensity and conviction sloshed with simplicity fosters inspiration for new musicians: just look at the Ramones.  Still skoffed at in high brow music circles as unintelligent comic book schlock, they empowered more people to pick up guitars or drums or yowling than anyone of the top off my head.  Without specific or indoctrinated technical ability, these bands create more engaging rhythms than Eric Clapton could ever hope to pencil out after 10 years studying in a conservatory.

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Insecticide Lobotomy

Tampa Bay musician Insecticide Lobotomy (IL) performs and creates noise by manipulating and combining a series of effect pedals and processors.  Turning knobs on and off while adjusting oscillation, frequency, pitch and rhythm of the different effects, musicians like IL create a soundscape of squeals, clicks, drones and caustic noise.  Certainly not unique in technique or attitude, IL serves as a great example of the growing noise community.  Also, he crafts noise very eloquently compared to some of his contemporaries, while not being too sophisticated to bash it out with the best of ’em.

Basically performances like the Youtube video up above pose intrinsic questions about the very natures of music and expression themselves.  Is this music?  What is music?  Who cares?…

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The Sprawl: In the effort to create an American wet dream of spacious property and segregated neighborhoods out of the Tampa Bay area, developers deconstructed centralized arteries of urban life and supported massive sprawl. The end result, a limitless landscape of suburban paradise, stifles awareness of community and cultural events. When even the independent media outlets have been focusing on baby boomer sanctioned and approved activities, the mutants and youth have nowhere to turn. Regardless, cutting edge bands, musical acts, djs, etc. continue to perform to a handful of their friends.

OK, so USF St. Pete is a commuter college. No art school. Everybody drives everywhere. USF Tampa is out in the boondocks. Downtown Tampa remains bombed out and closes up at 3 p.m. Downtown St. Petersburg consists of two or maybe three worthwhile blocks. The majority of random people in this area seem to be completely closed-minded to sounds different than familiar mainstream and top-40 pop. Somehow, in the face of all these generalizations, underground, challenging, exciting music keeps festering into bars and venues across Hillsborough and Pinellas… Read the rest of this entry »

New World Brewery on a Saturday night boasts a healthy built in-crowd of conversationalists and music lovers.  Even with the threatening cold snap on the horizon and very little local media coverage, quite a few people made it out to support the local post-punk rock band Dumbwaiters and show promoter New Granada Presents.

With the audience drinking cold beer while huddling, humping or gyrating near conveniently located space heaters on the New World patio, I wondered how many people got drawn away from this local show to see the moldy blues rock of Johnny “I played at Woodstock” Winter at Jannus Landing or Guns N’ Roses’ heroes Nazareth crust rocking at the Largo Cultural Center.  Probably none, but our continued cultural emphasis on these old bohemoths roaming the lands and garnering top dollar for performances of contrived, dated music marketed for the sake of nostalgia gets under my skin…

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