13.50 tractor pull

Sparkmarker
Atomos 7"

you know, i don;t really know a whole lot about sparkmarker. i know they were from canada, but thats really about it. my main point with sparkmarker is that i thought they were pretty fucking amazingly fantastic. or maybe i should focus in a little more, i thought their first singer was fucking fantastic. i'll be honest here. it was watching him perform live that made me really want to start a band. i was seriously mesmerized. i dont't really know how else to explain it. they were on tour with fellow canadians, undertow, who were much more "hardcore" and much more "sxe." i was always kinda wishy washy on them. but at the time we didnt get many of these kinda bands way down south, so i had to go. there was maybe 5 or 6 people there. it was pathetic, but thts how shows used to be. i had never really heard sparkmarker before this show and they opened up. i was literally floored. i think i just stood there with my mouth open staring the whole time. the music was really rocking and all, i mean its good shit. like a more chugga styled quicksand or something maybe. but man that singer. not you typical hardcore singer. it seeme dmore like one of theose deals where the "hardcore kids" start a band and they get like the wierdo poet artist kid in their art class in high school to front it, like the kid that has nothing to do with hardcore, but fucking rips shit so hard its amazing. anyway, after watching them play i was just like "man...i need to fucking front a band." this coming from the tall skinny shy awkward lonely depressed dumbshit that i was at that time. yeah "i need to start a fucking band." what the hell was i thinking?! for some reason this dude made it tangible. like somethign i could do. like "man, you dont have to put fucking x's on your hand and shave your head and do high kicks to fucking be a singer, you just have to move people." well that's what he did. he moved me. i wanted to be a singer in a fucking band and thats what i did. i didnt really talk to any of them. had no communication with any of them after the fact, which was kinda wierd. but yeah, at the time, this band was really fucking important to me. this 7" came out in a series of 3 7"s, all on different labels, and all featuring different artists doing the covers. this was by far the worst of the artist covers, but the most rockin of the 7"s i thought. all the 7"s were later compiled onto a cd called products and accessories which is an essential MUST HAVE. i say that but everyone i have tried to get into this cd has told me it kinda blows...haha. FUCK THEM. do not listen to them...i love this album! sometime after the release of the cd, the singer quit. my favorite part of the band was no more. unfortunately, they kept going with the guitarist singing, but they became a pisspoor version. it was obviously that the now defunct singer was the magix of sparkmarker. oh well. i have often wondered what happened to that dude. and the funny thing is, i was randomly searching for bands the other night, and the mother fucker has a new band called deadsure. i have no idea if they are still together, but i downloaded the ep from itunes (yes i payed for it) and it is really cool. i mean to be honest, with another singer it would just be "another band," but thy are cool with him. i think i may have a nonsexual man crush on him. and hey, if anyone has any info on deadsure, please let me know!

git em gat em

descend with me

Overcast
Bleed Into One 7"

yeah yeah i know..."update your blog!" i'm sorry. i've always been the one to complain about other people not updating. now i know what it's like. this shit takes time out of my busy day. anyway...i wasn;t really going to put this record up, but i decided, what the hey. overcast. we all know who overcast is/was. if not, they were a pretty fucking ferocious metal/slash/hardcore band from massachusetts. some of these dudes (at least the singer) went on to shadows fall, who you can see on mtv or wherever else. i never liked shadows fall. ive tried to get into them, but i always like overcast better. i remember where i bought this record. i was in south carolina. some friends and i went to go see some bands. assfactor 4 (possibly their last show?) and i think rights reserved. as with every typical show of that time there was your friendly neighborhood "distro guy." well after thumbing through his records i found this. the cover was dumb...barbed wire?...come on. but on the back it said eXchange records 001. and it was hand numbered #444 of 500. so i figured "well, it's got a huge X on the back, and its numbered, what the hell, it looks "hard." so i bought it. looking back on it now, it has a totally silly picture of the singer on the back...pre-dreadlocks, baseball cap, huge shants...hell, the motherfucker looked like me at that time. brought this thing home and i was pretty blown away. i mean i wasnt really into "metal" at the time, and this thing sounded really "metal" to me. i really liked it. something about it sounded "evil" or something. and i really likd the dudes voice. i honestly havent listened to this in years. they became such a great band after this 7". i still listen to their other albums all the time. this thing just seems kinda silly now...haha. but yeah, there was a definite time back in the day when i started to lose interest in the normal thing and started really getting into overcast and starkweather....god i fucking thought starkweather was the best thing in the world. anyway, i figured some of you might like this...so here ya go. not much of a story.

git em gat em

my losing is my winning here

Scrog
Catalyst 7"

its time to flip some gears and get off this whole "dc groove" sound shit for awhile. there are many sides to my coin. i know my "reviews" of these records are hardly that at all and usually consist of me saying "this band ruled" or "they fucking rocked." well you guessed it, scrog ruled and rocked. hailing for tampa florida, home of some of the shittiest (and some of the best) death metal you've ever layed your ears on. also tampa is one of the shittiest places in the world (no offense). it's no wonder such ugly music came from down there. anyway...yeah...scrog. man. what can you say? these dudes are fucking heavy. and i hate to be one of those guys that says things like this, but "it was back before everyone started doing the heavy thing." haha...there...i said it anyway. i mean at the time this shit was extreme. the slow chug of kinda "we listen to too much melvins" or maybe even sleep's volume1. but that fucking whining and moaning singer! holy crap! i have to say my favorite part about scrog was their singer. i mean not only was his singing fucking wierd, but he turned breathing into a vocal effect. like him sucking in air was actually part of the vocals. i thought it was fucking great and i loved it. it sounded like he was just hunched over in pain. and if you saw them live, you would realize he was just that. like many shows of the time, i saw them in a tiny little living room (godless red plug) with only a handful of people. i played in that very living room almost every other weekend for what seemed like an entire year. that shit was cramped. anway, scrog could barely fit their equipment in. the had amps and speakers literally stacked to the ceiling. there was barely even any room for people to be in there to watch. it was honestly one of the loudest things i have ever heard in my life. it was like fucking thunder and an earthquake crushing your ribs. it was crazy. i don't really have too much history or backstory about scrog. the only real "story" i have is only slightly related. for awhile i was working the door at a very trendy club/bar downtown. there was this female/male duo that used to perform there all the time. they were kinda like portishead or everything but the girl or some hybrid in between. electronics with a girl singing. they werent too bad. anyway, i think the girl drove alittle red geo or something. anyway, i was sitting outside waiting to setup and they drive up in this little tiny car and there you go, on the bumper of this little red car is a fucking scrog sticker! what?! nobody has heard of scrog!! especially nobody that comes here!! so i sit down with them at the bar and am like "you guys have a scrog sticker on your car." the dude points at the girl and says "it's hers." and she is like yeah, youve heard of them? and i am like fuck yeah! scrog rules!! geezus is that all i say about bands?! turns out she was from tampa and was friend of the guys in scrog. that's all i got. not much of a story, eh? oh well, at least this 7" rocks. this is my favorite recording of theirs. they put out a couple more 7"s, random comp songs, and at the show i mentioned above they were giving out what seemed to be demo cassette tapes of a full length which was quite good. a year or 2 ago i randomly came across a label called "new grenada" that released a scrog discography cd. i instantly bought it and yes, it both "rules" and "rocks." but now that i look back at the label site, there is no mention of it. perhaps if i can find out if its out of print, i will post it up if people are actually into this.

git em gat em

empty echo fossils

Fine Day
s/t 7"

in continuing with the very large dc styled family tree, i offer you the fine day 7". this band featured chris farral on drums. chris was also in hoover, sevens, the sorts, and also the boom maybe? anyway, he's been in a lot of killer bands is my point. but this one is alot different from the others. its alot more punchy. it was a total surprise when i got it. it came out on sunspot records, which didnt seem to last very long. i ordered everything they had out at the time for the simple reason that they put out a shadesapart 12". man i loved shadesapart (another post maybe?). anyway, in typical maximumrocknroll fashion, i instantly ordered the new shadesapart album. i thought to myself "if they are releasing shadesapart, their other releases must be good too. well they were. also on sunspot were the avail 7", 1.6 band 7", and the groove 7". all stellar releases. (there was some band called "fly" too but they were kinda lame...no offense). anyway, this post is about fine day. i thought this 7" rocked and was very "emotional." i found it to be a very powerful couple of songs. after some time i noticed another ad in MMR, this time promoting a fine day full length cd. i said "fuck yeah, that 7" was awesome!" and sent away my hard earned cash. it seems silly today to think that we all just sent cash off to random strangers who released records out of their parents garage. anyway...the cd never came. the ad never showed again, and a good amount of people were out of their money they mailed in for this cd. i'm sure that kinda shit happened all the time, but i was more bummed that i wouldnt be able to hear the fine day full length!! well many many years pass. some friends and i go to see abilene and the boom and it was an amazing show. i think there easily could have been a hoover reunion right there. it was like a who's who of all the bands i loved in attendance. well we stick around and have random conversations with dudes we know or dudes we met. josh larue seems embarrassed about his work in sevens and rain like the sound of trains. one of us mentions to chris farral about fine day. from what i remember he lets out a big "ugh." i said "man i loved that 7inch...and i sent away for the cd and never got anything back." he tells the story of label troubles and mixups and pretty much a whole fucking up of the cd and he apologizes that i lost my money those many years ago. then he is like "but we actually just released it, i have a box of them in my car." what?! fucking random?! awesome!! i'm stoked. so we follow him out to the car and he gives me a fine day full length discography cd. and that was an awesome show indeed. anyway, to wrap it up, the full length isnt anywhere near as good as this 7". these 2 songs are on it and they are the best 2 songs on the cd. i was pretty disappointed. i mean it was good, but not great. the cd was also good because the liner notes tell the whole history of the band and all the details about the cd, most of which i am unable to remember for this posting. anyway, i hope you enjoy this 7". i find it to be great. also, is this rapidshare thing working out for everyone? or is it a pain in the ass? let me know! thanks!

git em gat em

Sullivan Super Post

Soulside
18 Any Use of the Ropes
live double 7"









Kingface
Motherfucker, Read My Back
live double 7"









Sevens
777 7"


so enough chitchat, let's get down to some serious fucking shit for a second. the motherfuckin sullivan brothers. bobby and mark. as previously stated, soulside was/is my absolute all time favorite band. i can't really say how, but they have always fucking punched me in the nuts (but in a good way). maybe its becasue i came into punk/hardcore in the mid 80s through the whole new wave thing. you see i grew up on heavy doses of the cure, the smith, joy division, siouxsie, all that shit. somewhere in the late 80s a switch turned in my brain and i went "punk." maybe not a hard leap, i was a "full time skateboarder" and everyone else listened to punk. so therefore, when i was 14, i listened to punk. i would go to the record barn in the mall and buy any cassette with a dischord logo on it (yes, even fire party). but when i got to soulside, i was just blown away. this shit rocked, and it was dark. i just loved it to death and still do. while most people were into the kickass music i always loved the voice. i just though bobby sullivan kicked ass. you;d see pgotos of him in maximum rocknroll or banned in dc whipping those fucking dreads around. i ate it up. i loved soulside. my first official "record purchase" was ordering their LP trigger direct from dishord. but hot bodi gram was the best album ever. it rocked, it was depressing. it was just moody as fuck. i guess it appealled to my older "new wave" ways. so yeah, i can talk about how much i love soulside forever. but this love of soulside transformed into another love...kingface. somewhere i saw a photo of bobby's brother, mark, fronting this band (with equally impressive dreadlocks). obviously, i had to search out everythign by kingface. that effort proved very hard. kingface were waaaay lesser known and very hard to find records from. a random chance led me to their self title LP (with the little sticker on it). man that LP is rad! way less punky-core-ish and way more fucking rock and roll! but mark had equally impressive vocals as his brother. they were just awesome rock and roll vocals. loved it. therefore i loved kingface. easy enough. kingface went on to release anouther 12" on some german label. this live double 7" i am offering up. a "discography cd" which is still pretty hard to track down, and a recent 7" when they "got back together." but i'll tell more about that in a sec. for now, lets travel back to somewhere around 94 maybe? fugazi and shudder to think were on tour. we somehow managed to convince someone we were important and got to hang with all them for the week they were around. while watching one of the roadies load up i was thinking "that dude looks real familiar." i went up to him and was like "hey, wierd question, but were you in kingface?" his eyes just got huge. he must have thought i was crazy, all decked out in scummy fucking hardcore gear circa '94. but he got real excited. "you've heard of kingface?!" and i'm all "DOOOOOOD!! I FUCKING LOOOOOOVE KINGFACE!!!" and he was like "AWWWEEESOME! THANKS!" well, it was mark sullivan as fugazi's roadie if that didnt make sense. i was fucking stoked. it's like a pushed past all the ian's and guy's and whoever else was playing the real show and went straight for the lonely roadie and worshipped him like a god. we we chat kingface. i tell him my love of soulside and he says "well dude, check this out, if you love soulside and you love kingface, i'm in this new band with my brother." WHAT?!?!?! A BAND WITH BOTH SULLIVAN BROTHERS?!?! i thought i was going to faint. he said they were called sevens, and it was more of a raeggae rock kinda hybrid thing. i thought i was going to faint. it was some o the best news i had ever heard. from soulside, bobby joined rain like the sound of trains. they were an odd band. i cant really go into them right now, maybe another post, but from them, bobby and mark started sevens. the first 7" of theirs which i offer up is almost a super-group of dc standards. bobby sullivan, mark sullivan, josh larue, and joe lally. to me this was their best output. just a stripped won groovy rock record. after this they released another 7" and then an album. while the album was pretty decent, some of the lyrics were just a little too goofy for me. after sevens, bobby went on to sing for 7 league boots, who got alot more rock and alot more raggae. mark got kingface back together for a spell and then moved to nyc and i think does book publishing now or has a book store, or something. super sweet dude. a friend and i drove from atlanta to dc to see one of the kingface reunion shows some years ago. everyone in dc thought we were nuts. that same day we saw the sorts play in the middle of the cd bins at borders books. it was a crazy weekend. this post could go on and on, but i must stop and sleep. enjoy.

git em gat em - soulside

git em gat em - kingface

git em gat em - sevens

Swallow It Down

Elements of Need
Jasmine
Split 7"

to be honest, i wouldn't say this is any kind of important record or anything, but it is 2 bands that i really dug "at the time." i wasn't necessarily too keen on the young man who put this thing out, but i'm sure like all young men, he turned into a fine older fellow. anyway...elements of need were a pretty cool band. or more so i should say that they were some pretty cool dudes. my story with them starts in the early 90s. my band at the time was out on our first ever "tour", which consisted of the 4 of us +1 renting a huge cargo van for a week and going up the east coast. it was quite ridiculous. we really had no idea what we were doing, but i guess it was at a time when nobody had any idea what they were doing, so it all seemed to work out. we felt ridiculous in this huge van. to be honest we could have fit all of us in a large sedan. anyway, the so-so first "tour" ended in virginia beach. i can't remember where we were driving from the night previous, but it was most likely someplace entirely too far away from the previous show, like most of the tour i booked. anyway, it was cool, but a little lackluster. basements, living rooms, vfw halls, the usual for that era. so we were on our way to va beach for the last show and then home. on the way, many idiotic stories are made and discussions are discussed, one "brainiac" comment was how we are at a time when there seem to be literally thousands of bands of all style and genres touring and travelling at the same time, "why is it that we never see any on the road? like at a rest stop, or at stuckeys trying to find anything vegan." and i really wondered that. why? we never pulled up alongside some other shitty van with shitty stickers all over it, them going to some other basement in some other city. maybe it was the lack of sleep or food, but i really had a brain drain on it. well for lunch we decided to stop at taco bell, what would any other touring vegan punk rock band stop for? "2 tostadas, no cheese." that was it, thats all you're allowe to get. man we fucking lived off that garbage. anyway, in the middle of bumfuck nowhere taco bell, we are in line in back of our fucking clones. a handful of other scummy dirty tired hungry smelly punk rock dudes. i think we all ordered the same thing. we just stood there and looked eachother up and down, nobody said anything, we were all in bewilderment of what we've run into. we sit and eat. "who are those dudes? where are the from? you think its another band?" we totally didnt even say anything, and neither did they. we eat and leave and there in the parking lot is a shitty van with stickers. has to be a band. how wierd! the thing ive been stirring about all week has finally happened! we make it to va beach, there are a ton of kids there. and there setting up a merch table, the same fucking dudes we saw at taco bell about 6 hours earlier. it was elements of need. as soon as we walked in they confronted us with stuff like "dude! we were totally wondering who you guys were! thats soooo crazy!" it was a funny story. and turns out they were some of the nicest and coolest dudes we met all tour. the show turned out to be fantastic. it was us, elements of need, channel, and some other band i cant remember. people bought all out stuff. it was good. we exchanged records and numbers and went our seperate ways. by the ay channel was amazing as well and its where i met nate who now plays in converge. the whole my band / converge story is yet another to be told. anyway, the only person i really kept in touch with was eric wareheim, who went on to various mediocre philly bands and now does a whole comedy thing, i think he even had a show on the comedy channel or adult swim or something. anyway, totally sweet dude. kindof a long story, but to me, its a good one, and elements of need were a great band in "our" genre. as for jasmine, i dont really know shit about them. they were french. they sounded like fingerprint, may have even had the same members. no idea. but they fucking were fast and they rocked and i loved the high pitch vocals. thats my story. enjoy.

git em gat em

whole G

Phleg Camp
Bully My Pushy 2x7"

damn...phleg camp. i dont really know what to say. these guys were awesome. canadians. take a heaping spoonful of soulside from dc (my absolute favorite band of all time, by the way) and make that shit funky as fuck! phleg camp are that wierd kinda band that everyone has heard about but nobody ever really heard. and thats surprising too, becasue they put out a good amount of stuff. to me, this double 7" was the best thing they ever did. from what i've been led to believe, they made a demo, and that demo became this and a coupel other 7"s, but i'm not entirely positive on that. this came out on allied recordings. i dont know what eventually became of allied, but i do know that they released quality upon quality. the packaging and design was always wonderful. this came in a delicious gatefold black and white 7" sleeve with great photos of the band and lyrics. honestly, i bought it for the package. the cover image did not strike me at all. i picked it out of the bin and it was thick, and it felt great...heavy. you know like when you pick up a record and it seems like it weighs a ton? well this did. it felt like it was made to fucking take home and burn into a turntable. and i bought it on that strength alone. it wasnt until i actually played it that i was immediately struck by its fucking groove. i was waaaaay into hot bodi gram at the time (soulside) so immediately dug this. it ruled. somewhere around 1991 or 92 i moved to atlanta with my family. it wa smy senior year of high school. obviously i knew no one at the new school. i felt like the only person there that was "into it." somehow i found out phleg camp was playing that first week i was there. i found out where it was and broke out the old atlas (way before the internets and mapquest) and plotted my directions. i showed up that night to what apearred to be an abandoned warehouse (in what i now know is in the atlanta suburbs). an old lady in a white lab coat was taking money at the door. i thought i was totally in some kind of movie where they are showing what "punk rockers" were like. it was completely bizarre. i kept expecting some kind of sid vicious parody to come walking out. anyway, to my surpise my old floridian locals, the headless marines, were on tour with them and opening. although by this tome they have thankfully changed their name to woodenhorse. anyway, phleg camp. imagine those fucking dudes you see come to your town during a phish show that arent ever wearing shoes and making vegan burritos in a parking lot. thats what these guys looked like. they ere on a makeshift stage probably filled wih broken glass and nails, in their barefeet, dirty gross dreadsdangling from their heads, and they just fucking smoked us all. they were amazing. somehow i remember their drummer sproting some kind of drum cage apparatus. anyway, they really were quite good and at that moment i thought to myself "this atlanta move might be a good thing." so yeah, aside from this double 7", they had a couple other 7"s...blind...beaker...twilight pink. they also had a split 7" with fuel, mike kirsch's band (who may possibly have a post coming up if i feel like "getting into it"). the record most everyone has that have ever heard of phleg camp, is the full length, ya'red fair scratch. this record was pretty different. it was more jesus lizard than soulside, but still worth your while. highly recommended. you can probably still find most of these records quite easily through ebay, as it seemed nobody really payed them much mind. but those that did, all loved them.

git em gat em