For whatever reasononly one of two tunes in the last entry come through in the RSS feed. This should fix that problem.
Here are two more tunes from The Autobody Experience written by Seamus . Again I am on guitar, Jon Martinez on drums, and Seamus on bass and organ. These are from the same set of sessions as tune #4 -also recorded in the basement of Trade-A-Tape. I seem to remember being drunk through the entirety of the lifetime of this band.
This is another Nerves Like Eels tune recorded in the same session as tune #5. The combination of the 2 implies that all of our tunes were slow and moody, but I don't really remember things that way. In fact my wife insists that this recording is much slower than she remembers. Also some of the moodiness is injected by the forced-ness of the vocals. I must have recorded them much later when my voice was not in shape. As with tune #5 I wrote words and music here and the players remain Bill on guitar, Steve on drums and Kurt on the bass. I think the bass line makes this song.
This Minus Bill tune was recorded in the summer of 1987 (I have good notes on the cassette tape- what a surprise) in Mark's basement on his 4 track. In my mind this is classic Minus Bill- the drum machine sounds like a hammer and you can't tell the difference between the guitar and the keyboards. This tune was never released, but fits in with tunes like Effort, Logan (still to be posted), and Tiles. Mark on keys and vocals, myself on guitar.
Here is a PW3 tune that we have been playing for a couple of years. This is a live recording done when we appeared on a KGNU show call The Western Front on January 11th, 2006. PW3 AKA Perry Weissman 3 is currently made up of Rick Benjamin (most famously known for the sublime trombone work on In The Aeroplane Over The Sea), Merisa Bissinger and Dane Terry (core members of the Denver Gamelan orchestra Gamelan Tunas Mekar), and Dan Sjogren. Eric Allen appears on this recording, but his work with The Apples keeps him on semi permanent sabbatical. Craig Gilbert is also a frequent visitor and performs here (while I am thinking about it, this is a review from a recent-ish Dressy Bessy record from Fresh Air. The drummer the reviewer talks about is Craig). Anyway, regarding the tune-- I put the chords togehter, Rick put the melody together, and the arrangment was organically grown by the whole band. It is odd, but we have played versions of this tune in many settings (wakes, weddings) and it always seems appropriate.
Rick-Trombone
Brian-Guitar
Eric-Guitar
Merisa-Drums
Dane-Bass
Craig-Vibes
P.S. Rick put together a video using this tune. It's on the sidebar to the right.
This is a tune from the band Hop'd, pronounced hopped, if there were any question. This must have been recorded in 1993- It seems to me that we recorded it around the same time that we recorded our only 7" single (split with Mohair, a band out of Philadelphia). As is typical, the most ambitious recording is done early in a band's lifetime. If something happens with the recording it can provide momentum to do something bigger, or so I assume.
At any rate, Hop'd was made up of myself, Bill, and Kurt from NervesLikeEels + a friend of Kurt's named Patrick Linehan and Craig gilbert. Kurt and Patrick had played in a band in the mid 80's called Hindu Circus with a couple of other guys including Corey Harris (featured on the Billy Bragg + Wilco disc Mermaid Avenue as well as his own stuff on Rounder Records). Craig was a friend of ours through Jim Nasi (40th Day) and Kyle Jones (Street Choir, Judge Roughneck, et cetera). I think I wrote this tune- I submit that it only has 4 chords, so I must have written it. It was, if I have the time fram right, recorded at Kyle's house direct to hard disk. If I don't have it right, then it was recorded at Kyle's house to an early ADAT recorder. I am playing an original Danelectro convertible (the one made out of masonite). I think Bill is playing a Tele, Patrick is playing a Gibson thing I can't remember, and Kurt is playing a Fender Jazz bass. I do the vocals.
Back to Minus Bill. This was released on a cassette titled Leonard. I am not sure exactly when- I don't feel like digging the tape out again, but I believe it was around 1989-1990. Most of the Minus Bill tunes were written in a collaborative way, though the gist was usually from Mark. I think this particular tune tilted more toward me, but that could just be revisionist history. At any rate, the thing I really remember from this song was that throughout Minus Bill I played on a Supro guitar (a subsidiary of National?). I can't seem to find any pictures on the magical internets, so you will just have to trust me when I say it was very cool. At any rate I was able to get some harmonics out of that guitar that I haven't been able to replicate with anything else. Those harmonics are the basis of the guitar part on this tune.
Now that I have a place to put this stuff besides the upstairs closet/my hard drive I have begun to dig around to find more. This is probably the best recording from the ill fated final session with Nerves Like Eels. Some of the details are a bit sketchy here... The recording was done in Steve Evans' parents' basement in Littleton, CO in the summer of 1989. We used a Yamaha 4-track borrowed from Kyle Jones. I stupidly believed that I could operate a new recorder at the same time as I could play. It was extremely hot and my fuck-ups with the equipment did not help the situation. I am not sure when or how I put the vocals on, but I managed to further screw up some of the better tracks when I mixed the instruments onto less than 4 tracks while I squeezed my vocals onto the other tracks. Oh well. We broke up soon thereafter, but that was probably inevtible given our frustration with having excellent tunes and no real idea what to do with them. I believe I wrote this both the words and the music. (That means I put the chords together in the proper order. Everything else is Bill, Kurt, and Steve). I provide some guitar and the vocals while Bill Anthes plays lead, including the nice solo, Kurt Ohlen plays bass, and Steve Evans is on the drums.
This is The Gift by The Autobody Experience. Jon Martinez, Seamus McInearny and I put together this little group in 1992, when I lived in Boulder. We practiced in the basement of the no long defunct Trade A Tape on the hill. There was a giant boiler in the basement to provide heat, and hot water, to the entire building, so it was pretty sweaty. This was recorded to Jon's 2nd or 3rd generation Fostex cassette 4-track with myself on guitar, Seamus on bass and vocals, and Jon on drums. This tune was written by Seamus.
Here is a thumbnail time-line for the bands under consideration here:
1985: The Decembrists -no not those Decembrists.
1986: minus bill
1987: minus bill, The Warlock Pinchers -yes those Warlock Pinchers
1988: Warlock Pinchers, Nerves Like Eels
1989: Nerves Like Eels
1990: Nothing I can remember
1991: Ditto for 91
1992: Autobody Experience
1993: Hop'd
1994: Hop'd
1995: Fletcher -there was another band of this name around at the same time in Boston maybe?
1996: Fletcher, Perry Weissman Three (PW3)
1997: PW3 -> and so on
