REAL LULU, photo & graphics set

Andy Valeri's been sending me some photos and other graphics over the last few weeks. Here's a set related to REAL LULU along with Andy's comments (click on the photos for larger versions):

The original REAL LULU flyer for the first round of the Canal Street Tavern 1994 band playoffs, which REAL LULU went on to win.

NEXT // A photo circa early 1996 of REAL LULU at CST backstage after show with friends IODINE from Nashville. IODINE was one of the best bands around at the time, and REAL LULU and CAGE played many a gig together with them during that run of it. Almost invariably when they would come through the area we would hook up with them, here or in Cincy, Columbus, Indy, etc... Drummer Brad Pemberton is holding up a copy of what was the newly available debut release by THE MULCHMEN "All The News That's Fit To Surf" (Gregg still playing regularly with REAL LULU at this time). Jay Joyce, IODINE guitarist, has made quite a name for himself in the production and studio session realm there. I know he did much of the guitar work on many of those Wallflower records back then, and a host of other things.

Jones adds... IODINE played melodic, emo-ish, post rock in the vein of JAWBOX or SEVERIN (but not like a carbon copy of those bands at all). I played with IODINE once in Cincinnati at SOURBELLY's worst show ever. It wasn't the worst because of IODINE though. A Cincinnati band called HOGSCRAPER closed the show. They were like a banjo and washtub bass duo with an absurdist redneck type bent. The singer/washtub player wore blackface and sort of mimicked a backwoods country preacher. It was fun for the first thirty minutes, but having already been through IODINE's set, I was pretty much all rawked out. So it wasn't long until I just wanted to get out of there, but HOGSCRAPER just kept going. They seemed to have an incredibly devout following in the bar that night and ended up playing until something like three in the morning. That may have been the longest two hours of my life. As I said, though, IODINE was great. And now back to Andy...

NEXT // Show flyer of quite a show, the KOMANDOZ OGC (with Brett Owsley, TC Carll, both whom played with John Shough. Brett now in Chicago with the ORGANIC GROOVE CONTINUUM, and also performed and recorded with THE LAWN JOCKEYS. TC played on most of Shough's stuff, and is now with the LAB PARTNERS). Of course, REAL LULU here and you are pretty familiar with the opener :)

It was the kind of show that Dayton was cool for, with the diversity of types of performances on one stage in one night. I believe this dates from 1998 if I remember correctly.

NEXT // REAL LULU press kit promo photo, featuring Jay Madewell (who performed with the band on a number of occassions, but never recorded with them).

The band body cartoons are all actual size, painted on a huge wood board by Dennis Williamson of HAUNTING SOULS. He also drew the back cover for the REAL LULU "We Love Nick" CD.

NEXT // Since the REAL LULU "Chief" video seems to be of recent interest, here are some photos of the band performing live on WYSO in Feb. 1997, on Jason Brazina's show (he had a program that followed the Rev Cool's Around The Fringe program for awhile. I think he had the very last student run program before they were all canned by the station admin, but don't quote me on that).

NEXT // Of particular note here is Steve Bognar, who was on site with us, shooting some film for footage later incorporated into the "Chief" video. If you watch the video, you'll clearly recognize live action shots from these scenes here.

NEXT // This radio show was the night before a big gig at Kelly Hall, featuring REAL LULU, MINK, THE TASTIES and THE INDICATORS, Nate Farley's and Mitch Mitchell's band, which eventually morphed into ROBTHEBANK.

Jones adds... that's it. Andy sent me a bunch of other stuff too -- will post at some point.

take care

---Jones()

AGNES MOOREHEAD PLATTER, s-t (cassette, 1990)

Although this band usually went by the acronym A-M-P, I always refused to refer to them that way. Why go to the trouble of coming up with a name with an obscure pop culture reference only to bury it in the initial letters of each word?

AGNES MOOREHEAD PLATTER was:

Richard Caesar Leonardi - vocals
Michael Dombroski - percussion
Dave Roberts - guitar
Scott Dvorak - guitar
Eric Humpert - bass

I saw these guys play at Canal Street Tavern a few times. I believe at least one of those times was in a band playoff round, and I'm sure I voted for them (somebody remind me to do an entry on band playoffs and what an utterly surreal experience that could be sometimes). For some reason, I think of AGNES MOOREHEAD PLATTER as a UD band, but I don't know for sure.

Actress Agnes Moorehead appeared in over a hundred films over the course of her career, most notably as Charles Foster Kane's mother in Citizen Kane. But you are most likely to remember her as Endora, the mortal-hating mother of witch Samantha Stevens on the '60s sitcom Bewitched.

But for this town, there's a little more to it than that (isn't there always with Dayton?). She was (still is) buried here in Memorial Park (after succumbing to uterine cancer in 1974 -- which itself is the subject of some controversy, many of her friends and Moorehead herself blaming the cancer on possible radiation exposure at a former nuclear testing site where she spent a few weeks on the set of The Conqueror 18 years earlier -- quoth Agnes on her deathbed, "I wish I'd never done that damn movie!"). But for the life of me (uhhh...) I can't figure out why she's here. She was born and raised in Massachusetts but lived and worked in Wisconsin, California, and any number of other places. Although she attended Muskingum College in New Concord and held property in Rix Mills (which had been in her family for five generations before being willed to Bob Jones University at her death), I haven't found any reason why she would be buried here in this town instead of those places. Not that her corpse shouldn't rest wherever it bloody well likes, mind you -- it's just odd to me. Ah well, another Dayton mystery to which, perhaps, the comments will provide the answer?

The music on the cassette is pretty solid alternative rock, comparable to similar stuff of the time: a little dancey, a little prog, a little rawkin' -- generally like a less self-absorbed and a little more loud version of THE CURE. Nothing earth-shattering (very little on this blog is), but good stuff, worth hearing again (or for the first time).

Track List:

1. Rudyard Kipling
2. Premium Paid
3. Agnes Moorehead Platter
4. Old Again
5. 1846

Download It! (28 MB) (link re-upped on 2-2-2013)

Produced by Phil Mehaffy at Cyberteknics in Dayton. Phil owned Cyberteknics and has done a lot of recording with Dayton bands over the years.

That's all I can say about AGNES MOOREHEAD PLATTER. Once again, feel free to fill in the blanks in the comments section.

take care

---Jones

ps. As usual, I got the stuff on Agnes Moorehead from her Wikipedia entry. Great source for pop culture entertainment information -- shit for most else.

pps. At the beginning of this post, I said that AGNES MOOREHEAD PLATTER went by the "acronym" A-M-P. Thinking about it now, I realize that was slightly misleading. An acronym is a pronounced word formed from the initial letters of a phrase, but AGNES MOOREHEAD PLATTER wasn't called "amp." To be accurate, I should've said "abbreviation" (which is merely a shortened form of a word or phrase, but one that is not actually pronounced) since they were referred to as "A-M-P."

Off-Site: BIG BROWN HOUSE in The Antioch Adventure, Part 2 (video clip)

Mite posted this over at his YouTube site. It's a clip from the 1988 Antioch film The Antioch Adventure, Part 2, filmed on location in Yellow Springs, home of BIG BROWN HOUSE and THE GITS at the time. The music of BIG BROWN HOUSE is featured in this clip (and maybe some of the band members too, but I don't know what they look like, so I can't be sure -- Gail?).

When I posted BIG BROWN HOUSE's Scrappy James a couple of days ago, I wrongly reported that the Antioch Adventure movies were documentaries. But as I said in the comments, I looked into it a little further, and it appears that these are actually scripted stories with plot and characters and such.

If you go to Mite's YouTube site, you will also find the clip from Antioch Adventure, Part 2 that features THE GITS. Although that clip features less music than the BIG BROWN HOUSE clip, you will get to see Mia Zapata in what I assume is her first (perhaps only?) film acting gig (CORRECTION: after contacting the director of this film, Mite has determined that the girl in the clip is NOT Mia Zapata as he, I, and several other viewers first thought). A couple things about that clip:

• The woman in the glasses on the left side of the third newspaper shown in the newspaper montage appears to be Daytonian academy award nominee Julia Reichert, who has taught in the film school at Wright State University since 1986. In 2003 she and Steve Bognar were nominated for an emmy for their documentary A Lion in the House. Her many film credits include, among others, Emma & Elvis (1992) (in which Scott Childress apparently had a brief speaking part) and the highly regarded documentary Seeing Red: Stories of American Communists (1983).
• This doesn't have anything to do with the clip, but I thought I'd point out that although fucking Wikipedia contains entries under "Seeing Red" as the title of the debut album by a generic girlie pop-punk band and another as the title of an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, there's no mention at all on Wikipedia of Julia Reichert's documentary -- which received a fucking academy award nomination for Christ's sake. And my students wonder why I tell them NOT to cite Wikipedia in a research paper. Fuck... Anyway, back to the clip...
• On the very last shot of the newspaper montage (right before the clip ends), you might notice the name
  "Derwood Raintree." If you read the clipping (which isn't easy -- you have to pause it at just the right place to get a clear enough image), the article says Derwood Raintree was an actor in the first Antioch Adventure (1967), but IMDB lists Derwood Raintree as a character in that film played by actor John Draper.
• People might disagree with me, but in my opinion, the Antioch campus hasn't changed one damn bit since 1988.

By the way, who's with me in pestering The Neon until they get The Gits Movie?

take care

---Jones()

Off-Site: THE GITS Movie, trailer

Here's a trailer for The Gits Movie, which appears to be complete and currently making visits to various film and music festivals around North America. The same YouTube site has other trailers and GITS live footage too.

As I mentioned in a comment to the BIG BROWN HOUSE post, it appears there may at least be some footage from Canal Street Tavern in the film somewhere. I would imagine there's other footage from THE GITS' time in Yellow Springs and Dayton as well.

I called both The Neon Movies and The Little Art to see if either of them had plans to get the movie at some point. Neither one answered the phone, and I don't leave messages with businesses who can't answer their own damn phones. I'll try again some other time. But the movie isn't mentioned on either web site, so they at least won't be getting it in the immediate future. This area has a pretty solid history of overlooking its own culture, so I guess we shouldn't be surprised.

take care

---Jones()

BIG BROWN HOUSE, Scrappy James (cassette, 1987)

Before we begin, I just wanted to mention that Hillary Clinton is having a rally over at Kim Deal's old high school today. Doors open at 10 a.m. Bring your bass. (Bill already called sax.)

BIG BROWN HOUSE was an Antioch College band in the late '80s. I think OXYMORONS did a show with them once, but I don't remember.

And that's the full extent of my first hand BIG BROWN HOUSE knowledge.

However, Gail always liked these guys and was friends with at least one. She tells me that they often traded members back and forth with THE GITS, another Antioch band at the time that you might have heard of. Apparently, just about every member of BIG BROWN HOUSE played in THE GITS and vice-versa at one time or another -- except for Mia Zapata.

For the uninitiated, Antioch College is located in Yellow Springs, about ten miles outside of Dayton. In THE HIGHWAYMEN post, I'll be writing more about Yellow Springs and why Yellow Springs is considered part of the Dayton music scene (at least by everyone who does not live in Yellow Springs). But today I'll just talk about BIG BROWN HOUSE.

At the time Scrappy James was recorded (1987), BIG BROWN HOUSE was:

Benjamin London - guitars, vocals
Steve Moriarty - drums, vocals
Adrian Garver - bass
Roger Garufi - vocals

The music here is great just as music, but it's also interesting in sort of a historical sense. It's definitely post-punk, and with a hint of goth in the vocals -- very much late-'80s Miami Valley. But there's also the definite flavor of something we'd all start calling "emo" a few years later. This is music in transition. Considering that and THE GITS connection, this stuff deserves some kind of limited run CD rerelease (then again, I think you could say the same thing about TOOBA BLOOZE, THE HIGHWAYMEN, and a number of others on this blog).

This tape was recorded at Studio 716 in Ann Arbor, Michigan but subsequently remastered at SoundSpace in Yellow Springs. Chris Hertzler, who engineered the remastering, also engineered THE GITS cassette Private Lubs in 1988 (re-released in 1996 as Kings & Queens) and has since worked with DRY BRANCH FIRE SQUAD, THE CHRISTMAS JUG BAND, CRAZY JOE & THE MAD RIVER OUTLAWS, and THE CINCINNATI WOMEN'S CHORUS.

Years after this was recorded (1996, I think) when I was living in Yellow Springs and Larry Kampf was working at SoundSpace (which I'm pretty sure still exists today), my band HEIKE recorded a couple of songs out there. I must say that Larry somehow got the most powerful guitar sound I've ever heard out of that studio. Unfortunately, I've no idea what became of those tapes. Maybe Larry's still got 'em somewhere.

I know a lot of other local bands recorded things at SoundSpace but for the life of me I can't name a single one right now (except THE GITS, of course). It's a nice studio: a nice big room with separate booths attached -- good separation. SoundSpace used to do cassette duplication too, and they had a massive set-up for that. Before I saw it, I had never really thought about how cassettes were mass produced. You can't stamp them out like vinyl records or CDs. You have to basically record them all individually. At SoundSpace there was a big room with something like fifty individual cassette decks all linked to one master deck. You put in the master, and then I guess you loaded all the other machines with blanks and then you hit "play." I don't know why, but there was something eerie about that room. Grog liked it though. He saw all those decks lined up and couldn't help comparing it to the process he normally used to make all those OXYMORONS cassettes, which was exactly the process you'd think it was: he did them all one-by-one on his home stereo. I don't know about you, but that would've driven me batshit right around tape number thirty-four (and Grog made hundreds -- no wonder he's super-batshit).

I wonder what happened to all those cassette decks at SoundSpace. Probably sitting in a storage room somewhere -- or perhaps unloaded for cheap and written off their taxes as a business loss at some point (doubtful, though, since the tax code would've already allowed them to deduct the basis at a standard rate over the statutory life of the asset which was probably used up long before final disposition of the equipment -- then again, maybe section 2433 would have allowed them to... fuck! see what tax class does to you? don't ever go to law school...).

In 1989 BIG BROWN HOUSE and THE GITS moved to Seattle. I'll let BIG BROWN HOUSE guitar player/vocalist Ben London take it from here:

Ben: That's when I was in college . I went to Antioch College and I was in that band with a couple of guys who are in the Gits . We all went to school together and moved out to Seattle together in '89, when we graduated.

SY: Why Seattle?

Ben: We moved out with a large group of people and it was before the big music thing had really exploded. The only band I had ever heard of from Seattle was Soundgarden, and that was just because I was a college DJ at the time and got "Ultramega OK ." We'd done a lot of traveling and we were talking about wanting to be in a big city, after having gone to college in a tiny little town . New York was too expensive, San Francisco's so expensive, Chicago's so cold . Seattle, it seemed like it was really cheap to live out there and it had a nice climate and we had a couple of friends out there . It just happened that we got out there just about the time this whole thing was gearing up . When we first got out there, Mudhoney and a lot of the early Sub Pop bands were just starting . I missed out on the U-Men and Green River.

SY. : How long did Big Brown House stay together when you moved to Seattle?

Ben : About a year. We'd been playing the whole time when I was in college and when you're in college I guess you experiment with a lot of different styles. Once I got out there, I wasn't enjoying what we were doing . I was just playing guitar in that band and Steve and Matt were concentrating more on the Gits and I decided to get my own thing going, so I quit. I was working with Tommy, our bass player, at the time and kind of put the thing together from there.

---Suburban Voice #35 (1993)

You can read the rest of the interview here if you'd like. It's in PDF form, so you'll have to have Adobe Acrobat installed.

If he was a college DJ at Antioch, he was most likely on WYSO, Yellow Springs' public radio station. That station still exists, but I understand they stopped letting Antioch students be DJs some time in the mid-'90s.

After leaving BIG BROWN HOUSE, London formed ALCOHOL FUNNYCAR with then-BIG BROWN HOUSE bass player, Tommy Bonehead.

BIG BROWN HOUSE and THE GITS appeared in the 1987 documentary film, The Antioch Adventure, Part 2. The first Antioch Adventure followed certain Antioch students in 1967. The second did the same thing with then-current Antioch students twenty years later. You can read a little more about these films here. I read somewhere that one could once order both films through The Antioch Bookstore, but I checked their site and that no longer seems to be the case. However, if you go looking for the movies, it's probably a good place to start.

Track list:

1. Morning's Light
2. Face Down
3. Eight Dead Grandmothers
4. Snacked on by the Bugs from Hell
5. 76 on 70
6. No Ball Games
7. Sawblades
8. Menudo on the Edge (of Town)
9. Wet Metro Stop
10. Vertical Hold
11. Immaterial

Download it! (60 MB) (re-upped on 2-2-2013)

The cassette insert contains the lyrics for "Vertical Hold" but none of the other tracks.

The copy I ripped has the labels on the wrong sides. I don't know why I consider that significant enough to mention.

This recording comes to us from the deepest recesses of the Gail Dafler Collection.

UPDATE (2-2-2013): The downloadable file contains only the MP3s.  There are no scans of the cover, cassette, or insert.  Unfortunately, I can't find those files right now.  But so many people have been asking for this one, I thought re-upping without the scans would be okay for now.  When I find those scans, I'll add them to the zip-file and re-up this again.  But until then, you'll have to be content with just the recordings.

Other than this cassette, BIG BROWN HOUSE had one other release that I know of: a sort of compilation cassette of outtakes, live stuff, and oddities released in 1989, shortly before the band left for Seattle. I will, of course, be sharing that one.

The only other extant recordings by this band are a pair of songs on Bobbing for Pavement, The Rathouse Compilation CD released in 1994 (long after BIG BROWN HOUSE broke up). The two songs are "The Raft" and "Another Drunken Winter," which is also on the other BIG BROWN HOUSE cassette. I haven't heard Bobbing for Pavement, so I don't know if the version on the comp is the same as the one on the cassette. The compilation also features two songs from THE GITS, two songs from HAMMERBOX, and various others. It's out of print, but you can get it dirt cheap ($3.33!) from some Amazon Sellers.

And that's it for now. Enjoy!

take care

---Jones()

ps. If you're unfamiliar with the tragic tale of Mia Zapata, check her Wikipedia entry. Check the links at the bottom too. Apparently, there's a GITS movie in the works.

pps. In case anyone's wondering, I have nothing to share from THE GITS, and unless someone has a taped live show or practice or something to that effect, I won't be sharing anything by them here. I haven't checked thoroughly, but it wouldn't surprise me to learn that everything they recorded is still in print and easily available via the web. In fact, the 1996 GITS demos collection Kings & Queens is a re-release of a 1988 cassette Private Lubs, most of which was recorded at SoundSpace, with one track ("Graveyard Blues") recorded at Canal Street Tavern. You can get the CD from CD Universe. You can download the MP3s from e-music.

ppps. Believe it or not, this post really is about BIG BROWN HOUSE.

Off-Site: GUIDED BY VOICES MP3s

Let me say this: the phrase "Guided by Voices" may very well be one of the best band names of all time -- near genius use of language to title a music group. It's got rhythm. It's got depth. But not too much of either. I love it.

But otherwise, I honestly never thought much of GUIDED BY VOICES. I never got the whole craze surrounding them. I mean, it's good rock and roll, but if I have to hear one more GBV fan tell me what a genius Bob Pollard is, I'm gonna plotz. Maybe what I need to do is download all their stuff from some file-sharing service and just listen to it over and over until I love it so much that I would drink their dirty bathwater. Maybe that's the way to go.

Anyway, I ran across this page over at the old GBV site full of MP3s just sitting there waiting for download by some uninformed fan. If you fit that description, no need to thank me.

take care

---Jones()

ps. In case you're wondering, the absolute worst band name of all time is (drum roll...) FILTER.

Off-Site: Dayton Punkhouse Documentary (1987)

One great thing about doing this blog is that through it I've discovered that I'm not the only person infected with the obsession to catalog the history of this town's bizarre musical subcultures. Witness:



Found this through Buckwheat's blog over at MySpace. For those who don't know (and I didn't until a couple of weeks ago), Mister Wheat (and 10,000 potato points to anyone who gets the "Mister Wheat" allusion) was a regular Dayton music hanger-outer type in the late '80s. In that time he took a lot of photos and has been posting many on his MySpace and Flickr sites -- great stuff if you're at all interested in what was going on in Dayton twenty years ago.

I'm pretty sure the house featured in this footage is the old punkhouse next door to the building lounge on third street. The guy mainly featured is Scott Childress (apologies if I spelled his name wrong). I'm sure I met him a few times, but I can't say I knew him well -- same goes for most of the other people in the video. This is just slightly before my time. I recognize faces, but for most, I don't remember names. The only one I was closely associated with was Jason Himes. If you recognize any of these people, please add your observations to the comments section.

Anyway, the video has degraded quite a bit, but it nonetheless remains a great document of what the hardcore crusties were up to back in '87. I find it especially interesting because, although I would sometimes go hang out among this little subculture (I have a vivid recollection of watching the first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation in this very house on the same night I also went next door and saw THE MEMBRANES), I was never close to being a part of it. It's kind of fun to see now what I missed then (even if it's on 20 year old, degraded VHS). All in all, this sort of has a Decline of Western Civilization flavor -- but it's decidedly Dayton.

take care

---Jones()