It’s been a long while since I’ve been as fixated with one, but I used to be pretty hung up about tracking down the locations of photographs of favorite bands of mine. I have a whole category on the blog devoted to it (and comparable mysteries), but I’m thinking my exhaustive (and exhausting) search for a specific shot of the Lunachicks some years back may have broken the back of that preoccupation … or maybe it’s just because I haven’t encountered another photo that captured my imagination the same way. Who can say?
In any event, along the way, I was aided and abetted by a few folks whose sleuthing skills were considerably sharper than mine, notably my comrade Bob Egan of Popspots NYC and a friend on Facebook named Chung Wong, among a few others. On several occasions, both Bob and Chung gamely dove in and helped divine the true provenance and practically the precise longitude and latitude of the locations in question.
As it happens, there is apparently another prominent and versatile cat on this beat. Slated for an upcoming session on my friend Drew Stone’s “New York Hardcore Chronicles” live, one Steve Birnbaum is an artist, photographer, filmmaker and fellow music head who takes comparable pains to seek out and artfully replicate shots of famous music luminaries. Where I was inclined to mimic the shots with the then-willing aid of my little kids (now that they’re in their teens, they are less enthused about such shenanigans), Mr. Birnbaum adds his own signature by framing the original photograph within the larger environment of the location. In a weird way, it’s a little reminiscent of the Instagram account of Murad Osmann. If that name doesn’t ring a bell he’s that self-styled “travel influencer” that continually photographs his smokin’ hot spouse from behind in the “follow me” series as they jetset around the globe. In Birnbaum’s case, instead of holding his lovely lady’s hand, he’s brandishing the original source material.
You can see the fruit of Birnbaum’s labors on his Instagram page called TheBandWasHere. On it, he covers a lot of the bases I, too, sought out, like the Misfts in the West Village, the Beasties in Charles Street, Joe Strummer on East 14th, The Cramps on Charles Lane and several, several others. He and I have clearly been bitten by the same bug.
For slavish fanboys of grisly noise bands like Cop Shoot Cop and Pussy Galore (i.e. me), one of the most coveted artifacts is the Live Crush 84-85 tape by the imaginatively titled beat combo, Shithäus. Simply put, this was future C$C founder Tod [A] and future Pussy Galore founder Jon Spencer’s short-lived “art school” band whose name was a derisively scatological dig at the uber-pretentious posturing of then-already-mythic Gothic overlords, Bauhaus. Somewhat ironically, while justifiably targeted with myriad accusations of arty pompousness, Bauhaus themselves were only named after an art school (not an actual institution, but a school of thought). In reality, they were actually childhood friends from the glum middle-class midlands of England. Shithäus, for all their sneery renouncement of highfalutin’ pomposity, were actually bona fide art-school students from the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design. Have fun parsing that one.
In any case, prior to Tod forming Dig Dat Hole and later Cop Shoot Cop (and, for the matter, Firewater) and Spencer assembling Pussy Galore, Boss Hog, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and, more recently, Heavy Trash (I’m probably forgetting someone), these two young noiseniks briefly served in the ranks of the same band. This is that band.
This, of course, is all ancient history here in 2021, but as has been so often the case over the past year, some generous music fan (operating under the mysterious moniker blackoperations) seized the opportunity to share this archival find on YouTube, uploading both side A and side B of Live Crush 84-84 in all its chaotic cacophony.
Here’s the very lengthy description from blackoperations, filled with some compelling bits of trivia, notably that Jon didn’t even play guitar in the band.
A-1 Intro A-2 Crush Jam A-3 Rubber Doll A-4 Walking Insane A-5 Fire Ritual A-6 Eye Gouge A-7 Warm Leather A-8 Weenie Up Neville’s Butt A-9 Constant Decay
B-1 Fag Hag B-2 Film Song B-3 Texas B-4 When It Comes Time B-5 May Day B-6 Brain Dogs B-7 Swan Song (White Ice) B-8 I Like It Like That
Self-released/hand-made cassette by Shithaus (exact number in circulation is unknown).
Tom Fry (Vocals) Tod Ashley (Guitar) Stephan Harshman (Bass) Jon Spencer (Drums) James Joaquin (Drums)
Part of the tape was recorded during a live broadcast on a show called ‘Noise with Neville’ on 90.1 WRIU, Kingston, RI.
For this broadcast the band are going by the name ‘Knocked-Up Teens’ as the name ‘Shithaus‘ was not deemed “broadcast worthy by FCC regulations”.
“Neville was a demagogue of the Providence noise-rock and proto-industrial scenes of the mid 1980s. The program ran from at least the Spring of 1985 into the Summer of 1987. Today the whereabouts of Mr. Neville are unknown.”
Also as stated on the broadcast the band management was ‘Method of Control’ whose ‘MOC’ logo can be seen on the bottom-right of the cover image.
The DJ gives a run-down of the bands equipment which includes; “Olds Mobile Gas Tank, Chevy Gas Tank, A Grinder, a drum board, A couple of cassette decks, fully fledged rhythm section, a guitar and some vocals”.
Most of the above information is courtesy of Jose Fritz. Visit his blog to read the complete entry and to hear a short audio sample of this release which includes a Jon Spencer introduction (“Hey stick around you might enjoy it.”).
When It Comes A Time was also released on the cassette compilation UHF/Channel 14. Shithaus released one cassette in 1985 and the music was used in two experimental films directed by Jon Spencer called ‘Pus: The Movie’ and ‘Ponzo’s Masterwork’. There was also a 16mm Black and White film titled ‘Shithaus’ which was released on V/A feat. Jon Spencer – Cinema Of Transgression Vol. 1.
OTHER NOTES: There is not a great deal of information known about Shithaus and pretty much everything available on the internet comes from a very limited number of sources which are as follows:
*Shithaus played a gig at AS220, Saturday September 7, 1985, gallery in Rhode Island – as220.org
*“sluggo: I remember seeing Shithaus, which was an early incarnation of Pussy Galore, play in a chicken wire-cage in this damp basement where everyone was covered in fluorescent paint”. – dragking.org
*Jim Thirlwell mentions Shithaus in an interview: “FOETUS: I totally respect Cop and I think Tod is a great songwriter. He acknowledges the fact that certain songs have a heavy Foetus influence. We’re close buddies and we collaborate. SECONDS: Did he play with you as a band-member? FOETUS: He played on a few songs on Gash, but he wasn’t in the band. No, him and Jon Spencer hooked up at Rhode Island School Of Design. Him and Jon had this band called Shithaus and then he had a band called Dig That Hole.” – foetus.org
*A message which refers to the Shithaus cassette: “ok, someone mentioned that in the early 80s in Providence some band that played in the apt. next to them was pussy galore. Most likely that was Jon’s first band Shithaus which he was in with, I believe, one of the principles in the noise rock band Cop Shoot Cop. I have the Shithaus cassette which was the soundtrack to a student film or something circa 84-85. I am not positive but I thought Pussy Galore was an idea in Providence but became a band when Julie and Jon moved to DC in like summer 1985. Where Neil lived I don’t remember. Christina, Jon’s wife, from Boss Hog lived in DC then and worked at Hagen Dasz 83/84-ish with Ian Mackaye and Henry Rollins, but I was too young to know all this at the time. They were resoundingly hated here because their lyrics were so harsh and their attitude so unlike DC. for me the thing is that people thought they were arty because they had no other frame of reference. If you were a critic who never heard the Keggs or the Green Fuzz, but you liked no wave bands, ehh… It’s like the people who talk about VU as new wave but never seem to notice the rock roots which form a lot of their songs. I don’t hear the sun ra references in people’s stuff because I don’t have that in my repetoire. – Don” – xnet2.com/bomp/searchable/0001/msg00564.html
Review : Maximum Rock And Roll / MRR #28 Sept 1985 Billing themselves as an “industrial hardcore half-breed,” I’d say they’re more on the industrial side of life. While there are some post-punk influences, the noise/mechanical factor is predominant. This is a “live” tape, and well-done if you’re into modern pain. TIM YOHANNAN
As mentioned in this recent post, I worked, for a spell, at the website of “The TODAY Show.” In a nutshell, sensibility-wise, it was really not a great fit for me. Essentially, the program and its accompanying website (for which I was a homepage editor) cater to a very specific demographic with fairly mainstream tastes. To put it very mildly, I did not and do not share a great deal of affinity for the stories, subjects and guests we regularly featured. By the same token, it was a good, steady job, paid well and I worked with some genuinely amazing people, many of whom I am still great friends with today.
That said, there was a pronounced sea change within the overall organization during my tenure there and the office culture changed somewhat radically after I’d been there a couple of years. There came a great cleaning of house and a re-org, and I started answering to other managers. In short order, the scrutiny was turned way up. I was out of my depth and a bit overwhelmed, and was basically “managed out” of the organization with a ruthless efficiency. That’s about all I’ll say about that.
As a result, 30 Rockefeller Plaza is very much not a place you’re likely to find me voluntarily hanging around, not just because I don’t work in that building anymore, but because the circumstances of my carefully orchestrated departure were fairly fraught (well, for me, anyway). In the grand scheme of things, leaving the place was the best thing that could have happened, but one generally prefers to leave on one’s own terms, which was not at all the way it went down.
So, when news broke today that Rough Trade NYC – recently unmoored from its airplane-hangar-sized original perch in Williamsburg, Brooklyn --- was relocating to … WAIT FOR IT… 30 Rockefeller Plaza (literally four flights directly beneath the roiling, orange-walled, windowless chamber of trauma that was my former office), my enthusiasm was somewhat muted. It seems like a strenuously unlikely place for a shop that caters rather specifically to indie, alternative and underground music, but hey …. what the Hell do I know?
May they have a thousand times more success than I experienced at that address.
I already expressed as much in this comparatively ancient post, but today is evidently Bono’s birthday, so here we go again.
If I’m being honest, I was a sizable U2 fan for many years and have seen them perform more times than I can count. Despite being hoary and earnest and about as subtle as a ball-peen hammer to the face, U2 – if you are of a certain age – were nigh on inescapable. While they were essentially the anti-Killing Joke, they were verily the soundtrack to my school years. Up until, say, Pop, I pretty much know all those albums back to front, bought all the singles to get the b-sides and sought out bootlegs and rare tracks from them from the far corners of the globe. I’ve seen them play at Madison Square Garden, Yankee Stadium and Giants Stadium, among other places, including Philadelphia, Las Goddamn Vegas and in the ground floor of my local Astor Place K-Mart for a botched promotional stunt.
Then, at some point, I just … stopped. I came to a point wherein I felt I had all the U2 I needed. Circa How to Dismantle All That You Can't Achtung (or whatever it was called), I just stopped following them. I still love a lot of those early records, but I’m just not a member of the U2 army anymore.
This was the first I’d ever heard from them, and despite being somewhat uncomfortably churchy, it’s still pretty damn great.
Hey all. Pardon the relatively prolonged silence, but it’s been one of those weeks wherein I feel like I’m being swallowed whole by a work project. I have some cooler, longer stuff in the works to post here, but that’ll have to wait for a bit. In the short term, though, I wanted to pass on a few things.
I did a number of posts about the Plasmatics here over the course of the last few months, which – in the grand scheme of things – is a bit odd, considering they’ve been dormant since the dawn of the 90s, much less since Wendy O. Williams passed away in 1998. In any case, the estimable Please Kill Me website just posted a lengthy and meaty piece on the band, featuring interviews with guitarists Wes Beech and Richie Stotts (above) and they touch on many great anecdotes from the band’s heyday. Should you care, it’s worth checking out.
Next up, you may remember a couple of posts I put up about singer/songwriter Amy Rigby, whose book “Girl to City” was a real favorite of mine last year. I got to interview Amy during the height of the pandemic, last year, and she and I have since become pals on social media, which is fun. Recently, someone posted a recording of her No Wave band, The Stare Kits, recorded live in 1979 at Tier 3 over on West Broadway. You can hear Amy bashing away on the drums. It’s very cool. Go check it out here.
Lastly, some of you might remember a few posts I devoted to John Lurie, some years back. In a nuthsell, on a couple of occaisions, I posted about the man, his music and his story, and then he, in turn, weighed in. We had a bit of a dialogue going, for a while. Since those days, he released more music under his alter-ego, Marvin Pontiac, and debuted a new series on HBO called “Painting with John.” The latest news is that he has a long-promised memoir about to come out called "The History of Bones." If, like myself, you’re eager to read that, click here for more info.
I’ve said it here several times before, but I always preferred Sonic Youth when they were artier and weirder than the cuddly alt.rock darlings they sort of became. In any case, here’s a clip from that era, circa the release of Bad Moon Rising, as captured at Stache's on High Street in Columbus, Ohio (above) in August of 1985. A month after this was shot, I would start attending college at nearby Denison University.
I first posted this footage, along with a rumination about the venue in question, back in 2011, but that video — like so many others in the wilderness of YouTube — vanished into the ether. It resurfaced here as recently as this past January. Here’s what I had to say about it back in 2011.
I haven't been back to Columbus, Ohio since about 1990, but as I understand it, Stache's was torn down some years ago. A quick search on YouTube, however, brought up a few clips that brought back some memories of the place. Below is a video of, ironically enough, New York's own Sonic Youth rocking the wood panelling off the walls at Stache's (playing my favorite-ever song of theirs, "Death Valley `69"). This was recorded in August of 1985, a good month or so before I'd ever set foot in the place. Like Stache's itself, the clip is low on frills (and it's amusing to watch the scant few paying patrons blithely walk in front the "stage" whilst the `Youth are in throes of strumming their fingers bloody). Still, it gives you a quick taste of what it was like. Plus, it rocks. Enjoy.
As it happens, I may be headed back to Columbus some time later this year to take my daughter to look at some prospective colleges. If so, I might swing by the former site of Stache’s and see what’s there today. But here’s a taste of how it was….
Strangely untouched by the cruel passage of time, Record Runner on Jones Street just keeps on running. I spoke about it here, but to walk inside (knock, please) is to step back into a world where Madonna and Duran Duran are still gods among mortals. Names like the Senseless Things, Flesh For Lulu and Pop Will Eat Itself may all be the answers to Anglophilic trivia questions in 2021, but at Record Runner, they still sit comfortably upon shelves, waiting for reappraisal.
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