HARMONY IN MY HEAD

BROADCAST #33
AIR DATE: 08-15-06

Hello Fanatics! I am playing in Washington DC tonight and Engineer X and I thought this would be the perfect Tuesday to drop our DC Area band show. As many of you Fanatics know, this was supposed to be our July 4th show but the Indie Rok Mosk was closed on that day. So, tonight we do it!
     I thought it would be a cool idea to do a whole show featuring DC-area bands at some point and I was waiting for the right time. There’s no way I can cover the entire scene and there’s no doubt I have left off some of your favorites. It’s not that I don’t love them too, I just picked what I picked and am hoping you dig it.
     You get three pretty rare tracks tonight. One, the Experience Unlimited track, is from the Future Funk album that’s long out of print. Tonight we listened to an entire side of the record, the “live” side. It has some really great percussion and horn parts that I think you Fanatics will like. Also, you get a true never-been-played outtake from an S.O.A session from late 1979 I believe. It’s a song by The Snakes. I bet this is the first time this has ever been heard on the radio. You also get some Teen Idles working out in the basement. The rest of the show features DC-area acts from different periods. Not in any way comprehensive, hopefully just two good hours of jams for you.
     As many of you know, I will am on tour this August. Engineer X and I burned lean tissue weeks ago, making sure we had some great shows in my absence. Next week’s Misfits show is going to be a great one, don’t miss it! I have been working on some good broadcast ideas while out on the road and actually have put a couple together. I went to Ian MacKaye and Martin Atkins of PIL fame to get some exclusive tracks and they both came through so get ready for that. In the mean time, check out all this great local DC Area music!
     It’s too late, once a Fanatic, always a Fanatic!
          --Henry, Fanatic from NWDC

     For you Europeans, Australians and New Zealand Fanatics, there is a re-broadcast time of Friday mornings, 0200 – 0400 hrs. West coast time so you all can check out the show and not have to set your alarms to too rude an hour. If you want to download this show, http://www.rollins-archive.com/ is the place to go for that.

Trouble Funk – Pump Me Up: This song was definitely the start of something. One of my favorite music Fanatic memories is tied to this song. Many years ago in DC, Ian and I were in Ian’s car and I think we were listening to WOL AM radio. We heard this song and actually pulled over to listen more closely. It was a revelation. It was incredible. A good thing for us, the DJ back announced the song and said the band was called Trouble Funk. That was it, we were on the hunt for the records. I don’t know about Ian, but it was my introduction to Go-Go Funk. I do remember hearing music played on boom boxes in the backs of public busses now and then that was mostly from tapes made at Go-Go shows but this was the first time I had heard it up close and it was a revelation. Tracking down these 12” singles took us to some intense locations as these records were not to be found at your regular record stores. We had to go downtown for these and we got some long looks when we went into these places but the guys behind the counter were cool to us. I think they admired our guts. This is a song I have been listening to for over 26 years now and it’s lost nothing with time.

The Obsessed - Forever Midnight: This is from their self titled album on Tolotta. I don’t know if this one is all that easy to find at the moment. The Obsessed main man, one of the heaviest men of rock, one of the undisputed kings of absolute crushing guitar rock is DC area boy Scott “Wino” Weinrich. You Fanatics probably are most likely familiar with one or more of Wino’s efforts over the years with The Obsessed, Saint Vitus, Spirit Caravan, The Hidden Hand and Shine. Great songwriter, singer and guitar player, not to mention, one of the most righteous, full-on and intense motherfuckers I’ve ever met. That he comes from the DC area is no surprise.

The Teen Idles – At The Hop: The Teen Idles are the first band to record on Dischord Records. They were Ian MacKaye on bass, Geordie Grindle on guitar, Jeff Nelson on drums and Nathan Strejcek on vocals. They were my friends and so I hung out with them all the time and carried the gear and helped out however I could but mostly, I just hung out and watched the band play as much as I could. I went to almost every show and only missed a couple to my knowledge. I know that feeling nostalgic is lame and will often give you diminishing returns but I remember the Teen Idles era of DC and my life with great fondness. Some of my favorite Teen Idles moments were at Nathan’s mom’s basement. They would practice all the time. They treated band practice pretty much like a show where they really let it rip. They became quite accomplished through all that work. I tried to get to every practice I could. One day at practice, radio signal leaked through one of the cabinets and the band played right through it. The tape became known as the Radio Practice Tape on my shelf. Upon playing it back, I heard that one of the left channel was heavily distorted to I ran the right channel into another deck with a splitter and then the tape became known as the Radio Practice Tape – Right Channel Patch tape. And a track from that is what you heard tonight.

Bad Brains – Pay To Cum / Stay Close To Me: This is the first Bad Brains single. I don’t think I ever heard them do Stay Close To Me. Perhaps it was their old school idea of having the rockin’ a-side and the ballad b-side. I remember when we heard it we all kind of laughed about it but we took the a-side very seriously. It’s easily one of the important songs. My DC music memories are my favorite ones. I don’t want to be twenty-something. I don’t wish I was born many years ago so I could have seen Coltrane and Monk at the Five Spot. I was at early Bad Brains shows and I was at the first ever Teen Idles and Minor Threat shows and wouldn’t trade those memories for anything. Salad days indeed.

JJ Starr - Roll Call (late night edition): I taped this off the radio in Washington DC in 1986 I think. It was WOL AM. JJ Starr would read off the names of the people who would call in their names. If you listen to the names, some of these guys seem like some bad motherfuckers. I have played a JJ Starr Roll Call before but not this one. At the end of the roll call, you can hear JJ say that he wishes he had this one on tape. I have a lot of live radio that I have taped over the years. It sounds like JJ didn’t tape his own shows, that’s too bad. I could listen to Roll Call for an hour, no problem.

The Penetrators – The Break: I don’t know much about this band. I never saw them. Ian was able to source out some live and demo material, I think from one of the band members. He sent me some CDRs of the songs and they were all good, too. This song is from the :30 Over DC compilation CD that features many pre-Dischord DC area bands. That one came out on my label District Line. You know what? You should buy one.

The Snakes – Fixin’ A Chair / Fixin’ A Chair: This is perfect for our show, Fanatics! I will pretend that you don’t know who The Snakes are. The Snakes core members were Michael Hampton and Simon Jacobsen. On their recordings, people like Guy Picciotto, Ian MacKaye and others have guested but mainly it’s Michael and Simon. The Snakes are one of my favorite bands of all time. Many of you know Michael’s name from the many bands he’s been in over the years. A few that spring readily to mind: S.O.A, Faith, Embrace, One Last Wish, The Brief Weeds, Manifesto, Clear. The Snakes made some great bedroom recordings by bouncing cassette decks at each other as they added tracks. They would lay down a rhythm track into a tape deck and play that deck at another and sing next to it or whatever they wanted to add and go from there. They got really good at it. At one point, we were at Inner Ear making the S.O.A EP or the demo for it, I forget which but one night we came to the end of the work and Michael and Simon, who by the way, was the drummer in S.O.A asked if they could record a Snakes song. Of course! So, they went into the booth and quickly cut a version of Fixin’ A Chair, which is as I remember, a song Simon wrote about a girl who was pursuing him and he couldn’t respond to her amorous advances because he was fixing a chair that night. At the beginning of the track, you hear Don Zientra announce the song, which makes it even cooler. So, as far as I know, is the first time The Snakes ever went into a real multi-track studio and this is a true unreleased outtake that as far as I know, has never been played on the radio. The next version is from their album I Won’t Love You (‘Til You’re More Like Me). The Snakes ended up making two really cool albums, the aforementioned and another, called Happy. Ian MacKaye produced the albums at Inner Ear. Both albums are on one CD on the Adult Swim label. You can find the CD on the Dischord site http://www.dischord.com/main.shtml. The band recorded the album version of Fixin’ A Chair in November 1982. For the session, the band recorded an interesting version of the song, nothing like the first Inner Ear version and nothing like all the bedroom tape versions I have of this song. As far as the band, they made really funny pop songs with great hooks. They didn’t take themselves too seriously although the music doesn’t suffer for it at all. It is very likely I am their biggest fan and listen to their music all the time and I hope you check them out some time.

White Boy – Electronic Suicide: From the Spastic EP. The band was a father and son team. Jake Whipp, the son on guitar and vocal and dad, Mr. Ott on vocals. They released three singles and an album. After that, Mr. Ott was busted as a pedophile and has been sitting in a cage for many years. It’s too bad that a band that was so damn cool had such a rotten element in it. In the past I have been hesitant to play any tracks from this band because of Mr. Ott’s crime but I didn’t want to be done with this show and never have played White Boy. I think the bad thing would have been not to include that information here. On this particular song, you have Jake on vocal.

Minor Threat – Salad Days: This has always been one of my favorite Minor Threat songs. Until this song, I had never heard the term “salad days” before. This is from the Salad Days EP, Dischord #10. One of the best Minor Threat shows I ever saw was in Los Angeles of all places, at a place called the Cathay de Grande. It was 1982 I think. It was the short lived two guitar line-up which featured Steve Hansgen on bass, allowing Brian Baker to move to guitar. Brian is one serious guitar player. The combination of both Brian and Lyle on guitar made the band’s sound completely blistering. I never saw Minor Threat not be great but with two guitars filling out the sound and what it added to the later songs it was really something. One of the things that set Minor threat apart from a lot of the other bands at this time, besides the great songs, was the fact that these guys could really play. On a multi band bill, there was just no competition. There was a frustrating air of conformity in those days that was really annoying. It was “Do your own thing but do it this way,” or else you had some punk cop reading to you from the imaginary book of how it was supposed to be. Just the fact that there are bells at the beginning of this song got the band at least some attitude from people who thought they had “sold out.” At this point, everyone knows Minor Threat was one of the great bands. Minor Threat and The Bad Brains put DC on the indie music map as far as I can tell.

Experience Unlimited – Live At The Capitol Center: I don’t know if it’s live at the Cap Center or really live at all but it sure is good and it’s not all that easy to find. This is from EU’s Future Funk album. It’s one whole side. I have never seen this track on CD so I made a CDR of it and brought it in for us to listen to. EU has some great records out there. Not all of them are in print though. The first 12” I ever got of theirs was Someone's Ringing the Doorbell. It’s good but not as good as the stuff they did after like The EU Freeze and Da Butt. I wonder when the last time the track we heard tonight was played? That’s what this show is all about!

The Enzymes - Hyattsville: If you have been tuned into this show enough times, you may have heard me play Enzymes tracks Speedwash and White Boys. The Enzymes, a great DC band. One of the members is one Chris Haskett who plays guitar in the Rollins Band. I was lucky enough to see the band play a few times. They seemed to be a few bands in one. By turns, they were punk rock, free jazz and some kind of concept alt. rock—all during a single set. The Enzymes sat perfectly in the eclectic and one-of-a-kind late 70’s – early 80’s DC music scene. Sadly, we lost Enzyme David Byers 02-09-03. I miss Dave. One of the great DC bands who never get a record out. We have to change that.

Duke Ellington - Afrique: As you know, Washington DC has given the world more than its fair share of great music and musicians. I could attempt to list a fraction of them here but I’d be typing for hours, wouldn’t I? One of Washington’s greats is the one and only Duke Ellington. In the mid 90’s, I started my long journey into the world of Mr. Ellington. It’s one hell of a musical universe he created. After many years of listening, reading and listening again, I can safely say that I have approached the door of Ellingtonia and in a decade from now, perhaps I could have my foot in that door. The man had a working band for fifty years. He toured all over the world, wrote and recorded relentlessly and survived Rock and Roll and Be Bop while somehow keeping that mighty band together. His work with the amazing Billy Strayhorn, only a drop in the Ellington compositional ocean, is a gift to the world. For me, one of Mr. Ellington’s most interesting albums is The Afro-Eurasian Eclipse which I think he recorded in 1971 when he was about 71 or 72. It’s not like the guy was resting on his laurels or cooling out. This late period Ellington suite shows he’s still listening, still pushing himself. For a great read on the man, I suggest Beyond Category by John Edward Hasse. I read this one about ten years ago and it was inspiring as hell.

Macattack - Art Of Drums: I don’t know anything about these guys at all. I have this one track on the Washington Go Go Sound Attack CD comp. Sure sounds cool though. I always thought the Go-Go and punk rock halves of DC were really interesting. So many Punk Rock fans were Go-go fans as well. It wasn’t all that safe to go see the Go-Go shows. It’s too bad I couldn’t have seen some of these shows go down but at the time, I don’t think a safe night could be guaranteed.

Lungfish - Love Will Ruin Your Mind: From the Artificial Horizon album on Dischord. One of the label’s most prolific bands. Singer and mainmain Daniel Higgs is one heavy mofo. I saw him sing acapella at a wedding once and it was amazing. I’ve never seen the band play live I don’t think and I don’t know how much they hit the road.

Black Light Panthers - Hey! Hey! Hey!: Guy Picciotto and Brendan Canty from Rites of Spring, The Brief Weeds, Fugazi, One Last Wish, Happy Go Licky let it rip low-fi on this 12” on Peterbilt. Not very easy to find but worth it when you do, anything on Peterbilt is great and never made in any great amount.