Hey there! From our vector of the Interwebs to yours, it’s the latest TNB/TTW! This time we’re spinning some yarns about artists we enjoy who are at the centre of multiple projects! We’ve got them preserved in digital silk for you to dig into! For my Interwebs crypto-dollar, this may be my favourite episode thus far… but I am, naturally, biased AF! We’re looking forward to spending this time with you…

Until they come up with a better price than “free”… that’s the price we’re going with! #bogmonstermusic

And of course, we’ve spun the crawlingest YouTube playlist that we’re capable of…

Dan’s Notes

El-P (Company Flow, RTJ, solo)

My introduction to the music of El P came via a mix CD made by a hip hop DJ from Florida who had moved to Portland on the run from The KKK after he had made some burning confederate flag buttons that they were not too fond of (whose couch I happened to be living on at the time), and who had convinced me to join him in driving around the back alleys of Portland’s industrial district for the afternoon, crawling through dumpsters looking for old fluorescent light fixtures and other weird stuff he could sell for scrap and smoking crappy 90’s weed in his jeep between stops. The wild scratches and fried vocal samples of Company Flow’s “Patriotism” blared out as we hopped into baking metal container filled with industrial detritus and old lunch wrappers and it just seemed like the perfect bleak soundtrack for such filthy late-capitalist scavenger business. Co Flow’s mission statement of being “Independent As Fuck” mixed with their stripped-down and abrasive take on classic NY hip hop really appealed to me on so many levels, even if the group itself was soon to go their separate ways. He spent the 00’s and early 10’s  working on his three solo albums (Fantastic Damage, I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead, and Cancer4Cure)  as well as a ton of production and guest appearances for other artists, not to mention running his label Definitive Jux and even putting out an instrumental jazz album (High Water). It was his next big project that most people would probably recognize as he teamed up with Atlanta rapper Killer Mike to form Run The Jewels about a decade ago, releasing four critically acclaimed (and pretty damn great) records together since then, plus a couple of remix albums and all released for free online. It’s been cool to see El get respect from a larger audience over the past decade after being a fan for more than twice that amount of time, and on his own terms.

Sarah Kirsch (Fuel, Sawhorse, Torches To Rome, etc.)

Sarah Kirsch was someone whose music played into a huge part of certain formative years, even if the only one to have more than  or two releases to their collective name was one that she left after the first couple years after helping found them (Pinhead Gunpowder). 

She was a massive part of the Bay Area scene that I don’t know if I could do justice in describing on my own but If you take a  look at the MRR news memorial  page I have linked here https://www.maximumrocknroll.com/for-sarah-kirsch/ you will get a much better summary of her life and work. 

I was a big fan of Ebullition Records back in the 90’s and 00’s and it felt like for a good part of that label’s lifespan every third or fourth release was some band that Sarah was playing on that that would pretty much always end up being absolutely killer. I was only able to catch her playing live once, in 1999 while she was with Bread And Circuits and that show stands as one of my favourite all time live music experiences and in my mind represented some of the best artists of that era, and even though none of her bands ever seemed to last longer than a couple of years at a time but each one was an evolution on the last, eventually starting detours into electronic music, samples, and onstage theatrics in later projects like Baader Brains and her final band Mothercountry Motherfuckers while still keeping their fiery emotive hardcore edge. Sarah passed away in 2012 from a rare blood disorder but her work lives on in the many great records she made with over a dozen bands during her lifetime, and when I think of artists whom I’ve been a fan of over the course of manybprojects she is one of they very first to come to mind.

Yannick Lorrain (Uranus, His Hero Is Gone, Tragedy)

Yannick was a late addition to my list but after Matt mentioned Shotmaker I figured I would I’d add someone related to that band whose work left a major impression on me through multiple projects. Yannick Lorrain was a huge part of the Ottawa area scene in the early-mid 90’s through running his record label Great American Steak Religion (that released Shotmaker’s first LP amongst other great bands from the are) as well as running the basement show venue 5 Arlington and playing guitar in one of Canada’s greatest hardcore bands of all time, URANUS. After the end of URANUS he was invited to join another iconic band (and one of my all time favourites in the hardcore punk genre) Memphis TN’s His Hero Is Gone, who had parted ways with one of their guitarists not long after their debut album Fifteen Counts Of Arson was released. Their next album, and first with Yannick on board, 1997’s Monuments To Thieves is seriously a classic of the genre, with his trademark “spooky” riffs being a welcome addition to their already crushing sound. When HHIG parted ways with bassist Carl Auge in 1999, Yannick and the other remaining two members of the band (brothers Todd and Paul Burdette) relocated to Portland OR and reformed as Tragedy, releasing multiple albums and touring a bunch through the 2000s and 2010s, while Yannick has also continued releasing music for other likeminded bands through his rechristened Feral Ward record label. While he may have only played in a handful of bands over his career, Yannick has been a man contributor one some of my absolute favourite albums in the punk/hardcore genre and deserves major recognition for it.

MF Doom

Doom is an artist’s artist, which is cliche but seeing the amount of tributes from his peers when he passed in late 2021 is undeniable. He’s a legend and an icon in the genre of hip hop who transformed into a variety of incarnations whether solo or working with likeminded collaborators such as Madlib and Danger Mouse. His original stage name was Zev Love X as part of the group KMD with his brother DJ Subroc, and after two albums and a bit of fuckery on behalf on their record label KMD ended when Subroc was fatally injured in a car accident and Zev took a break from music while mourning his sibling’s passing. Eventually a few years after KMD’s end he started showing up at various open mic events in his trademark Doctor Doom mask, and over the course of the next couple of decades also made appearances in other guises like the Toho Films-inspired multi-headed kaiju King Geedorah, and the more human street level hustler Viktor Vaughn. While he was never the sort of artist to top the charts during his decades-long career, doom was a stalwart of the underground independent rap scene and revered for his off kilter creativity and intricate dense rhyme schemes over stripped down dusty beats, and at one point even started crossing over into television, occasionally hosting segments on the Adult Swim network (a gig that led to his Dangerdoom collaboration with producer Dangermouse and various voice actors from Adult Swim series like Brak Show and Aqua Teen Hunger force). Unfortunately, Doom’s family life and music career were interrupted brutally when he was barred from re-entering the US after some European shows in  as it was discovered that he had never officially become a US citizen after being born in the UK while his mother was visiting family there and being stranded away from his wife and children from 2010 until his passing a couple of years ago. He kept making music from his new home in the UK the entire time, working with everyone from Thom Yorke to Westside Gunn. When it was announced that he had passed in 2020 it hit me hard, as he was a truly unique artist in a genre where a lot of performers seem more concerned with trying to sound like 5he next most popular thing instead of truly forging their own path.

Steve McBean

I’ve talked about my love of Steve McBean’s music on the show before, and I’ll do so here again (right now, even). While he was active in bands starting in the early 80’s like Red Tide and Mission Of Christ but I first became familiar familiar with his music through his band GUS through their EP on Slow To Burn Records in the early 90’s, and then was fortunate enough to see his next and also excelle y band Ex Dead Teenager a few times before half of that band morphed into the mighty Jerk With A Bomb, whom I’ve expressed my love for on the show previously. That seed then grew into the psychedelic force of nature that is Black Mountain, and the more stripped down Pink Mountaintops alongside his more high profile big band project. McBean has been one my favorite musicians in the punk/indie/rock milieu for decades, and truly deserves a spot in the pantheon of greatest Canadian singer/songwriters of all time in my opinion. Seeing him literally go from basements and community halls to big time tours and movie soundtracks and stuff while bringing the same fire and heart to it all has been really great to see, so there’s no way I couldn’t include him on my list for this show.

Runner ups and miscellany

Open Mike Eagle – For Doom

Refused– Rather Be Dead

Fake Names– Delete Myself

Arachnids just wanna have fun… #bogmonstermusic

Matt’s Notes

This here is a most multi-faceted episode of TNB! For those who multi-task… for those restless souls who keep on keeping on in all circumstances… we salute the hell out of you! I’ve jumped around variously in my career… and point of fact, I’m currently hanging in the air, waiting to land… in the meantime, I get to call myself “consultant, writer, podcaster, and teacher”. It sounds great! And if there were any dollars landing in my hands from any of this, that would be gravy! To all you all hustlers, unpaid workaholics, and other folks out there living your version of The Dream… cause that’s all you have… eight hands up to receive eight VERY high fives! Thanks, Dan for this topic… and I am sure we could revisit this one again… and again….

Tommy Stinson: The Replacements, Bash & Pop, Perfect, Guns n’ Roses, Soul Asylum, Cowboys in the Campfire

Far be it from me to spend even MORE time on the Replacements… they’re so much a part of my musical fandom DNA that I didn’t think of adding Tommy S. to the list until after all the others… and given the scale of his career… clearly he belongs at the top…

Far be it from me to belabour the why’s and wherefores… I’ll put aside my KISS Army-level obsession with the Mats… I’ll bracket my Grateful Deadly cultdom…

Here’s a 56 year-old man who has been touring and recording as a professional musician since the age of ELEVEN… he’s been on indie labels, majors, and every shade in between… after the Replacements folded, he moved to LA, formed two amazing bands— Bash & Pop, and Perfect, respectively— got no support or traction with record labels… gigged around that city with Brian Baker (Minor Threat, Bad Religion, a million others)… and was working at a call centre to make ends meet when he got the call to play bass as Duff McKagen’s… replacement… in the Chinese Democracy-era Guns n’ Roses… which he played in for SIXTEEN YEARS… longer than the time he played with the Replacements, even with the three-year reunion from 2012-15 thrown in…

He’s put out solo records… he helped out Soul Asylum with recording and touring following the death of original bassist Karl Mueller… now he travels Europe and North America as a solo artist and leading the first-a-duo-now-a-trio Cowboys in the Campfire… who have a new album out this summer… and are playing dive bars, back yards, and bespoke venues across the US… a musician’s musician… and from all media and social media appearances… a cool, well-adjusted middle-aged dad… no mean feat considering his decades playing with the likes of Paul Westerberg and Axel Rose…

Matt Deline: Shotmaker, 30 Second Motion Picture, Three Penny Opera, Slow Parker, the Gray, Dark Plains

There’s probably a really good essay… or even a whole PODCAST EPISODE (nudges Dan across the Internet while winking knowingly) about how much of the current “90’s punk / hardcore / emo” nostalgia is based on the fact that… as far as rock formats go… this was the last surge of pre-Internet guitar-based music… you can say “we had the email” and “we had the message boards” as much as you like… but in 1994 or 1995… in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada… and, I have to assume, many other smaller cities and towns across North America… you were still in a situation of finding out about bands word-of-mouth… bands from your town cobbled together enough coins to tour their small area… and interacted with others doing the same… and then came back with zines, records, tapes, burned CD’s…

Such was the case with Shotmaker! And I will lay my knowledge of these Ottawa titans at the feet of Phil Clarke of Catch-23 along with many other projects… and his 2% Records distro… which puts me in the mind that we could probably do an entire LOCAL and/or Atlantic Canadian version of this episode… (winks at Dan in Halifax while typing these words in Kamloops, BC).

How influential were Shotmaker? Influential enough that when I recently posted the Crayon Club YT clip (above) on the popular 90s Hardcore/punk/emo Records, CDs, Tapes and Zines FB group…. with nearly 36,000 members… it got 95 likes… which is pretty high, as far as it goes! I’ve also gone down a Discogs rabbithole and been in touch with Shawn Scallen in Ottawa who took a bunch of iconic photos of the band and he’s hooking me up with Matt Deline post-Shotmaker projects 30 Second Motion Picture and 3 Penny Opera on vinyl… along with some other awesome albums & artists from that era… including Okara (Orleans, ON) and North of America (Halifax)… there’s a Shotmaker Official IG account… and I’ve been chasing down The Gray… and anything else on Matt D’s Discogs page that I can find… some of which was only released on CD… like the phenomenal Slow Parker album…

His current project is Dark Plains… and only available on Bandcamp… last updated six years ago…

So… all this has reinforced for me that to love a band of that era… is to really love an entire scene… and as they / we / all of us get older… I’m turning 45 in a couple of weeks!… it’s cool to see that despite day jobs, kids, relationships, (cough) divorces and unemployment… deaths of family and friends… that these “networks”… formed largely before “networked social media” was even on the horizon… are still capable of sharing awesome music… and other cultural artifacts… not to sound too much like a post-academic nerd! But that’s exactly what I am!

Click here for a really cool and fairly in-depth history of Shotmaker… including interviews with Matt and other band members…

Chris Wollard: Hot Water Music, Rumbleseat, the Draft, Blacktop Cadence, Ship Thieves

Lots has been said and written about Hot Water Music… my personal knowledge and lived experience goes back to 1999 or thereabouts… living in Halifax, working as a line cook, dropped out of university for the first time… and getting the excellent Leatherface and Hot Water Music split when Ben AKA “Gumby’s Brother” MacFarlane organized a mail order through some distro or another… and got a bunch of us in on it to reduce the shipping costs… again, early Internet era… pre-Internet era for many (most?) of us…

Chuck and Chris are both amazing songwriters and performers… but what really causes Chris to stand out such as to be included on this episode… is his excellent band Ship Thieves… originally presented as Chris Wollard and the Ship Thieves… by the third record, he’d dropped his name out of deference to the fact that this was no solo project at all…

As mentioned in the recording… and in previous episodes!… I just find his songs relatable. The fact that he’s been upfront about his struggles with mental illness… namely, anxiety and depression… and that he’s around my age… he’s 48, as per Wikipedia… I’ve been stopped in my tracks three times in my adult life because of mental health issues so far… and for me, being open and public about it has been one way of taking care of my own well-being and mental health… but also, as much as possible, hopefully helping to remove the stigma around mental health issues… and providing some kind of reassurances to anyone out there dealing with the same…

This may seem a long way to go from simply saying that Chris W. and all of his projects that I’ve heard jump out at me… as punk music and “90’s hardcore” and folk music…

My most popular post on the 90s Hardcore/punk/emo Records, CDs, Tapes and Zines FB group was, in fact, a post sharing a photo of my Leatherface / HWM split beside my copies of HWM’s first album “Fuel For the Hate Game” and Leatherface’s “Minx”… with 122 likes so far!

I think that speaks in some small way to the fact that there are many out there who feel similarly about HWM… and Chris W’s contribution over the decades…

Derek Grant: Alkaline Trio, Suicide Machines, Walls of Jericho, Thoughts of Ionesco

&

Neil Hennessy: The Lawrence Arms, Baxter, The Falcon, Sundowner, Smoking Popes, Joyce Manor, Sparta

Derek Grant and Neil Hennessy were the first two artists I thought of for this episode… because I’ve discovered their respective long-running Chicago bands Alkaline Trio and the Lawrence Arms within the past year plus… and because they both, respectively, fit my long-running hypothesis that “drummers make the scene”.

This is a case where the “relative to obscure” factor comes into play… or the “rising tides lift all the boats” hypothesis…

If you look at 90’s punk and hardcore, it’s hard to find bands from that era more revered than Baxter… who, incidentally, featured Tim McIllrath who would go on to form Rise Against…

If you don’t know these bands at all, that would place you squarely as a mainstream music listener. You might also be a fan of punk music… but have, like I did, missed them for many years…

As per Wikipedia, the Lawrence Arms have made music industry charts… the “heatseekers” chart, no less… just once in their careers… Alkaline Trio have sold in the many hundreds of thousands of albums… and Rise Against… featuring neither Derek nor Neil… have earned gold and platinum records in multiple markets…

Same scene, same era, overlapping musicians, and wildly different levels of commercial success…

Drummers are, as near as I can tell, the glue that hold music scenes together… regardless of geographic region… Neil and Grant are both guitarists and singers… but rock guitarists are a dime-a-dozen… I’ve never been in a band, but I’ve been around enough shows and musicians to know that this is true… the same for singers, albeit perhaps a bit less.

A drummer is the unicorn in any town… if you’re good at it, you’re fighting off offers… incidentally, Matt from Shotmaker is that rarest thing of all… a SINGING drummer….

This is all to say that until this episode… and having a close look at their respective Wikipedia and Discogs pages… I had no idea how many projects each of these guys were involved in… apparently Neil is a touring member of Sparta… and, more recently, of Joyce Manor… both of whom are of relatively high popularity on the “relative to obscure” scale…

These guys (probably) don’t have day jobs… because drumming IS their day job… and if you can hit your midlife doing something you love then you are, truly, Living The Dream…

Duane Denison: The Jesus Lizard, Cargo Cult, Tomahawk, Denison-Kimball Trio

I’m really just shoehorning the guitarist for the Jesus Lizard into the episode… he’s phenomenal, of course… and the Jesus Lizard are one of the biggest Touch and Go artists of the “grunge” era… I used this episode as an excuse to get the Cargo Cult record into my Discogs shopping cart… and my limited exposure to Tomahawk so far basically ensures that I’ll be shelling out for those records as well…

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… there’s something about Chicago, man…

Do yourself a favor and watch these Jesus Lizard sets… shot decades apart… what you see here are men fighting themselves, the audience, each other, and time… “raging against the dying of the light”, to paraphrase Dylan Thomas…

I am so far from being a musician. But in the scenes… and in the aging… I feel more than a bit of relatability here… and so that makes me your basic stereotypical midlife music fanatic… and, at least most days, I wouldn’t want it any other way…

We appreciate your jumping down from your WebSpace tm to join us! We are looking forward to seeing you again quite soon! In as long as it takes for us to finish digesting what we’ve already captured…

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Filed under: Uncategorized - @ May 20, 2023 9:08 pm