6 posts tagged “minus bill”
This is very similar to the Supro guitar I played in Minus Bill. Hiweverm the pickup cover was silver and ther was no tremeolo bar. My guitar was also customized with a metallic bat sticekr I got in the lobby of a grocery store for 50 cents.
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.
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.
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
OK, this is a tune called Tiles from a band I was in named minus bill. We operated from 1986 to 1988 (I think). The tune itself was recoded in 87 with Mark Brooks on the keyboards and vocals, and myself on guitar. The drum patterns were programmed by Mark on a Roland TR-606. This was probably recorded by Mark and I to his 4-track in his parent's basement in Littleton, CO. Minus bill had 3 cassette only releases: Live, Not Alive in 1986, Kingdom Come in 1987, and Leonard, the source of this tune, in 1988. Leonard was released on Mark's label My Tongue Cassettes (AKA My Tongue Records).
Listing the relase dates by year makes the releases sound pretty regular, but Live... and Kingdom Come were released pretty close together while Leonard was released nearly two years later after we had stopped performing live.
