Off-Site: COLAVISION at YouTube

I took my last exam yesterday, and I did not realize until it was done just how much this one was weighing on my mind. It was Business Associations 2, the second half of a two-semester class. This section covered close and public corporations, proxy fraud, shareholder voting agreements, fiduciary duties of corporate directors, various sections of the Securities & Exchange Act of 1934, accompanying administrative regulations, shareholder derivative suits, Special Litigation Committees...

At which item in that list did you nod off? For me it was proxy fraud (must've typed the rest in my sleep).

Anyway it's done now, which means I can finally get back to the important things in life: obscure Dayton indie rock bands that no one remembers! Even better: obscure indie rock bands that I played in!

So once again, from Mite's YouTube site, I Remember Dayton is proud to serve up some never before seen video. Here's a pair from my band COLAVISION.

Both of these were shot at the now infamous punk rock wedding reception celebrating the unholy union of Greg "Grog" Simerlink (OXYMORONS bass player and mastermind behind Mutant-Renegade Records & Zine, as well as The Chickenfish Speaks) and Jen Cook (COLAVISION bass player).

The marriage didn't last (no offense, Grog or Jen -- mine didn't either), but the wedding was awesome. They had the ceremony at the Page Manor Twin Cinemas, where Jen was working at the time. That theater itself was quite the indie rock hangout in 1994 (probably because so many indie rockers worked there) and no doubt deserves a blog entry of its own. But I was living in Columbus at this time, so I'm not really the one to write that entry (Jen, I'm looking in your direction). Still, I do remember that one of the employees actually owned an original print of the first Star Wars movie that they would sometimes screen privately after midnight. Because it was a private screening, they'd let you smoke in the theater, so I may be one of the very few people on this earth who can say he saw Star Wars in a theater while smoking -- a dubious distinction, to be sure, but a rare one at least.

The Page closed its doors some time in the mid-'90s. Someone reopened it in 2004, and at Christmas that year I dragged Val out to see Surviving Christmas (with that delightful Ben Affleck). But by 2006 it was closed again. As far as I know, there are no plans to reopen it.

The reception was held at Canal Street Tavern. I remember that OXYMORONS, CANDYASS, HEIKE, and COLAVISION all played -- and perhaps one or two others (did THE WILL play? Grog?). In between the bands they did all the usual wedding stuff: garter, cake, bouquet (didn't Gail catch the bouquet? or was it Andrea?) Most of the wedding party played in their formal wear. You'll see Jen in her wedding dress. If memory serves (and does it ever?), this is also the night that Jen cut Grog's long hair on stage.

I would assume that Mite has more video from this night. In addition to these two COLAVISION videos, he has at least one video of THE OXYMORONS performing "Little Man Hate" (check the site). HEIKE's first cassette, Precious Underground, features a number of songs from our live set at the reception -- will post soon enough.

Okay, I've been typing for about half an hour now, and this post just isn't rolling like I want it to. Maybe I'm too distracted. Exams are over, but I've about a million things to do today (mow the grass, apply for a job, re-apply for student loans -- the list goes on), so I'm just going to do all that and maybe try to write a more fluid entry on all this some other time.

In the meantime, enjoy the videos. And don't forget to download the COLAVISION record if you like the songs presented here.

take care

---Jones()

ps. "Spasm" is the only COLAVISION song that Jen sang lead on. It's one of those songs we wrote toward the end that I'm sorry I never got a really good recording of. I have a rough mix on cassette of that (and a few others) that we did at Cro-Magnon. I will post it at some point, but the vocals are way, way down in the mix. Sadly, the masters seem to have disappeared from the face of the Earth.

OXYMORONS video, fixed

Mite fixed the sound on THE OXYMORONS video:

take care

---Jones()

FYI: No promises this week...

Okay, I realize it's been quite a while since I posted some actual music for download on this blog. I also realize that quite a few people have written me with information on Dayton music-related offerings that I have yet to feature here.

Let me say to those who hunger for more music and to those who have supplied me with information that I have seemingly ignored, I am aware. It's just that over the past couple of weeks, things have been kind of nuts for me. I won't bore you with the details (although regular readers of this blog will doubtless note that I have not been reticent to bore you with such details in the past), but here are the highlights:

• I've been named Executive Publishing Editor of Capital University's Law Review for next year. This was both an extreme high (because a position on the Law Review's executive board is kind of a big deal for a law student) and a total anxiety producer (because of some internal politics and because of the fact that it's a lot of responsibility and if I fuck this up, I'll be paying for it).
• I was named Staff Member of the Year for my work on Volume 36 (this year's edition) of the Law Review (another nice feather in the cap).
• My ever-spiralling personal life has gone through so many highs and lows recently that I honestly feel like I'm trapped in a REPLACEMENTS song.
• I only just realized that I am both ahead and behind on studying for exams (it's complicated because my exam schedule is bizarre this semester).

There's more, but the bottom line (ugh! "bottom line" is such a Republican phrase) is that I have two exams between now and next Tuesday. So after next Tuesday, I'll be posting lots more music regularly, but until then I have no idea what I'll be posting. Please bear with me.

take care

---Jones

A flyer with a big cock on it...

Here we go then: the infamous penis flyer!

I haven't seen this damn thing in at least seventeen years, and it looks just as stupid now as it did when Gail and I put it together.

I had known Gail for just a couple of months at the time. I don't remember exactly how or where I first met her, but it was most likely at WWSU's Alternative Tuesday some time in the summer of 1989 -- perhaps through our friend in common*, Laura Albrecht, whom I knew because she was a student in the English Department at Wright State and whom Gail had known since elementary school.

At some point, I'm going to compose a nice, long blog entry on Gail and her relationship to Dayton music in general and THE OXYMORONS in particular, but for now I'll just say that she was the co-mastermind behind this flyer, which proved to be one of the most memorable and boneheaded manuvers I would ever make in my life -- but one of the few boneheaded manuvers I would ever make for which I would suffer no consequences.

Gail and I made this flyer in the library at WSU. I found the picture in a book of woodcuts by 19th century illustrator Aubrey Beardsley -- who may be best known for his ornately rendered version of Le Morte D'Arthur (I have a facsimile -- it's quite beautiful), but who also produced illustrations for any number of other works under the William Morris imprint, including absurdist, semi-pornographic romances, of which the illustration here is typical.

What twenty-year-old mind could resist slapping this stupid illustration on a flyer and adding the equally stupid dialogue balloon over it? Certainly not mine, nor Gail's. This one writes itself, no?

I swear to god, none of us ever questioned it. We just put 'em up. In fact, I remember this particular flyering adventure as one of the very few times that we all went flyering together: with a hundred of these things, plus a brush, a big can of glue, and a lot of Wild Irish Rose. We put 'em up in a number of places, but we hit the Oregon District the hardest. We put these big green pieces of paper with a big cock on them all over bulletin boards, the sides of buildings, benches, and one or two NO PARKING signs.

And we really thought nothing of it. I was actually surprised when Ben called me a few days later and told me how a City of Dayton police officer had come knocking at his parents' front door on a Sunday afternoon. Seems this same officer had also come storming into Canal Street Tavern earlier that day bellowing that he was going to arrest someone if they didn't give him the location of someone in THE OXYMORONS. Mick gave Ben up, but we couldn't really blame him -- now or then.

It seems initial complaints had come from business owners throughout the Oregon District and officials at Sinclair Community College (where we had also put quite a few of these up). The cops got involved from there. This particular cop must've either gotten his ass chewed off by Chief Inspector Todd or he was bucking for promotion because he put Ben in the back of that car, drove him all over Dayton, and made him take down every flyer that we had glued to NO PARKING signs.

Okay, now that I'm typing this, I'm getting the impression that I might be confusing this flyering incident with a different one, but in any case, all of this stuff happened. It's just that some of the events might've happened on a different occasion.

In any case, Ben took the hit for all of us, and I'll thank him once again for that. He took down every one of these things the cop told him to, and he never gave him my name or Nick's or Grog's. By the time I even heard of police involvement, it was all done.

Yeah, I'm thinking more about it now, and I'm pretty sure that this flyer just got Canal Street Tavern a bunch of angry phone calls. It was another flyer that got Ben shanghaied into Dayton urban renewal.

Thanks to Grog for digging this up, scanning, and sending it along.

take care

---Jones()

* I use the phrase "friend in common" rather than "mutual friend" because even though the latter was good enough for Charles Dickens (the finest man of English letters after Shakespeare and William Blake) it contains an improper use of the word "mutual."

Smokey the Bear, Jeffrey Dahmer, GREEN DAY, THE OXYMORONS, and me...

Grog dug up some flyers the other day -- among them, this one for a punkfest that THE OXYMORONS played with GREEN DAY in 1992 (or thereabouts).

GREEN DAY and THE OXYMORONS were supposed to be the big draws, so GREEN DAY was slated to play last and we were to play right before them. We sat there in some park outside of Milwaukee pretty much all day drinking, listening to one band after another, and talking to people as they came by the van. It was fun for the first few hours, but by 10:00 p.m. or so, I was ready to play and get the hell out of there. We had a six-hour drive to St. Louis in the morning.

This park had a gigantic hot air balloon figure of Smokey the Bear sitting maybe thirty feet from the covered area where the bands were playing. At some point after sundown, somebody slashed it. The police showed up, saw that big expensive bear sagging, and kicked everybody out. So the show got moved to an apartment in Milwaukee occupied by a friend of the kid who had put the festival together.

The apartment was pretty huge and situated on the third floor of a three-story building. The lower two floors, strangely enough, were occupied by an abortion clinic. The building itself was located just a couple of blocks from Jeffrey Dahmer's old apartment building, which was still standing at the time. Dahmer had been arrested just the previous summer, so we all drove by the building and marvelled.

There were a lot of people on hand at the apartment. We decided to go say "hey" to GREEN DAY and offer a handshake to old Billie Joe. No response. Same from the other two members. Then GREEN DAY decided that they MUST go on first so that they could go to bed, even though they were staying in Milwaukee and we and the other band had to be in St. Louis the next day. We explained this and the fact that the crowd would greatly diminish after they played. Their only response was that if they didn't play right then, they were leaving. So we let them go on and, as we expected, when they were done, half the room was gone.

We recognized most of the people who had stayed, so we knew that if we played next, no one would see the last band. So we let them go (they were very cool but I can't remember their name) and ended up starting a six-hour drive to St. Louis at 4 a.m.

GREEN DAY begged and pleaded the owner of the apartment to let them stay there. She said "okay." Somebody put a GRATEFUL DEAD tape in the stereo. GREEN DAY's drummer threw it out the window, and they got kicked out. So they were outside singing "Trucking" and acting like it was no big deal. Then the bass player started sidling over, looking at us like he wanted to give us the privilege of allowing GREEN DAY to sleep in our van. We waved "bye-bye" and high tailed it on to St. Louis.

I heard later that the guy who had organized the show let them stay at his house. This guy lived with his parents. GREEN DAY showed up at 6 a.m. and promptly set about dying their hair in the guy's bathroom, getting hair dye everywhere (including the ceiling) and leaving a big turd behind the toilet. Wow. Punk rock, I guess. Anyway, that's the story.

So basically, they were assholes. But, what the hell? Kerplunk, Dookie, and American Idiot are really good records. I guess I just wish I'd never met them.

take care

---Jones()

ps. Grog also sent me the infamous penis flyer. I'll post that in a few days.

Off-Site: ¡THE OXYMORONS! on YouTube...

Another great upload over at Mite Mutant's YouTube site: it's a video of THE OXYMORONS playing "Unearthing Your Grave" at Canal Street Tavern. I'm not entirely sure of the year, but the song plus the length and color of my hair lead me to place this in 1992.

This one actually brought a tear to my eye. I've seen very little OXYMORONS video over the past fifteen years and almost none since Ben died -- strange to see him on stage again playing this song.

My only problem with this video is that the sound is very, very low, but Mite tells me he's working on fixing that and will upload more when he does so.

I don't know why I'm doing the hippie dance in this one. Pretty goofy.

take care

---Jones()

Jealousy...

An anonymous reader submitted the following comment for approval on the previous post (the one about the audio files over at the WWSU Reunion Page):

you're just jealous that kim deal made it and you DIDN'T.

There are several things I love about this comment.

First, I love that the commenter obviously knows where the CAPS LOCK key is but defies convention by refusing to capitalize either the first letter of the sentence or Kim Deal's name. Tre chic...

Second, I love that it's so apropos of nothing. I am stymied to find any connection between my being jealous of Kim Deal and the WWSU Reunion -- or, for that matter, anything else on this blog. I don't remember saying anything nasty about Kim Deal here. Now if the commenter had said "Bob Pollard," that I could see. I had one or two posts a couple of months ago in which I expressed my lack of interest in GUIDED BY VOICES. But this commenter chose Kim Deal for some reason. Gee, I wonder why? Hmmm... The comment just sort of bursts with unwarranted phlegm and accusation. It's like absurdist performance art. Kudos.

Third, I love that it states the blatantly obvious. Of course I'm jealous of Kim Deal! Who wouldn't be? -- at least on some level. She's made a lot of great music that's better than just about any music I've ever done. For the record, I'm also specifically jealous of GREEN DAY and SMASHING PUMPKINS. And generally, I'm jealous of anyone who ever eked out a better living making music than I did. To go further, I'm jealous of the people who get better scores on law school exams than I do. I'm jealous of people who make more money than I do. I'm jealous of people whose son or daughter isn't as obsessed with video games as mine is. I'm jealous of people whose blogs get more hits than mine. I'm jealous of people who have steady jobs with health insurance and retirement benefits. I'm jealous of people who can maintain stable interpersonal relationships over a life time. Shit, count up all the people I'm jealous of and Kim Deal is but one of millions -- and she's not even at the top of the list.

But I try to remember that the list of people I'm not jealous of is just as long. I'm certainly not jealous of people who refuse to even try to have interpersonal relationships out of fear of getting hurt or some misguided sense of self loathing masquerading as individuality. I'm not jealous of people who blame others for their inability to hold a steady job. I'm not jealous of even the most popular bloggers who spew stupid ideas. I'm not jealous of people who are constantly at war with their own children because their children didn't turn out to be little copies of themselves (I think of that line that Willie Loman's neighbor delivers in Death of a Salesman: "My salvation is that I never took any interest in anything."). I'm not jealous of people who blame the instructor (and everyone else) when they don't do as well on a law school exam as I do. I'm not jealous of people who waste their lives on alcohol and drugs and end up entering middle age with no human connections, no self worth to speak of, and no hope for the future because they've never been able to get their act together and probably never will.

I'm also not jealous of anyone who posts chickenshit comments anonymously on blogs. But I guess that's another thing you could say of anyone -- except, of course, anyone who posts a chickenshit comment anonymously on a blog.

But to bring this back to the subject of I Remember Dayton, I'll say yes, there are times when I wish I had done as well making music as Kim Deal has. But to go further, I suspect that there are times when Kim wishes she had done as well making music as, say, Bono or Alanis Morissette.

Thousands, if not millions, of people in shitty towns like Dayton all across this shitty country have music inside them struggling to get out. Of those, I bet 90% of them never write a song, or sing, or learn how to play an instrument. Of the ones that do, I bet 90% of them never put a band together. Of the ones that do, I bet 90% of them never make it out of the basement. Of the ones that make it out of the basement, I bet 90% of them never make it out of their home town. Of the ones that make it out of their home town, I bet 90% of them fold within five years. Of the ones that end up with a sustainable music career, 90% of them never make a living that is much more comfortable than the average public school teacher.

So I figure anyone who made it out of the basement and left enough trace behind to merit attention on a shitty blog did pretty well -- considering. At least, we could've done a lot worse. I think of that pivotal scene in Rocky where Mickey shows up in Rocky's apartment with clippings from Mickey's long past heyday as a fighter. As Rocky points out, at least Mick has the clippings, at least he had a prime. It's pathetic, but it's less pathetic than a lousy ground floor apartment with only two turtles for company and a job breaking peoples' thumbs because we hate ourselves for never taking our shot.

take care

---Jones()