The Rotting Slugs (1982-83)  Greyson Stevens: guitar  me: shrieking, bass on one song Simon & Garfunkel if they had been Flipper. An untuned dimestore electric guitar blasting through Greyson's mom's stereo, while I drunken shrieked hits like "Reagan is a Pisshead", "I'm Freaking Out", and "Butt Rape". Having never heard any real punk rock (it was illegal in Indiana in 1982), we abreacted our own cthonic version of it based solely on tabloid headlines. Think of it as channelling the ghost of Sid. Prophesy or naive self-parody? We recorded a comeback cassette album in 1985 which featured the now-classic "Anxiety Attack".  Aesthetic Enhancement: whiskey, scotch and vodka stolen from Greyson's mom's bedroom, which she kept padlocked (the whole bedroom -- I swear). we'd take the door off the hinges. The Wounded Reagans (10 minutes during 1983)  Greyson Stevens: guitar  Joe Shirk: Synsonics(TM) electric drums  me: caterwalling Basically a post-Hinkley version of the Rotting Slugs with Joe beating on those crappy Mattel electronic drums. We cleared the room at our own New Year's Eve party with our 15 min. rendition of "Race Riot", and that was just the start of the evening.  Aesthetic Enhancement: whiskey, pot, amyl nitrate (why?) The Jazz Faggots (1983-84)  David Shea  me  Greyson, sometimes Me and high school buddy Dave Shea undertaking daring but ultimately embarrassing audio experiments at his dad's house. Fortunately we were redeemed by an infusion of that peculiarly-Hoosier brand of sarcastic surreal humor. At 17, David was composing 12-tone serial music and turning me on to people like John Cage, Pierre Boulez, Fluxus, and The Once Group. (Thanks, Dave!) We'd stay up all night doing primitive audio collages using a bunch of stereos and radios, recording with an old Panasonic portable. We'd "mix" by moving the tape recorder around the speakers and turning stuff up and down. One of my favorite pieces from this period consisted of David playing a Gang of Four album backwards while I periodically intoned "Satan is Loooooord!" Now David's all famous in NYC and hanging with the John Zorn crowd. He sends me regular checks to sit on the tapes I have from this period.  Aesthetic Enhancement: huge jugs of cheap red wine and nitrous oxide The Barking Toasters (1984)  Tom Knapp: drums  Joe Shirk: bass  me: guitar & vox After learning to tune a git and even play a couple chords, I graduated from the basement to the garage. The neighbors in my dad's quiet Indianapolis neighborhood hated us. We did a handful of originals I'd written, figured out some covers by The Ramones and Devo and (I'm so embarrassed) Rocky Horror. We played one lame party and never got paid our 30 bux. And there was no beer!  Aesthetic Enhancement: no booze or drugs, cuz we were afraid the neighbors might see us and tell my dad Tha Paranoidz (1984-85)  Claude Hopper: drums  Greyson Stevens: lead guitar  me: rythmn guitar  Julie and then later Darren: bass "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you." Earnest lefty/anarcho politi-punk that stylistically was a hash of Dead Kennedys, Ramones, and Oi. By this time I'd run away from home, gotten a mohawk, and was living in Indy's only vintage clothing store, which was run by some older punks (we're talking in their 20s -- wow, they're cool!). In Indiana's punk rock fish bowl, Tha Paranoidz were famous for a couple summers, and even opened for a young Naked Raygun on one of the coldest nights in Indiana history. But our Big Moment was opening for the Zero Boys' big reunion concert at Cosmo's Pizza on New Year's '85/'86. It was either that or the basement party in Kokomo, where a pair of very Disney parents smilingly presided over a gaggle of very drunk teenagers. It was here that I first experienced the amazing exhilaration of seeing someone in the audience actually singing along with one of my songs -- I was stunned the guy could ever hear the lyrics well enough to even learn 'em. Then again, maybe he was really singing "Ring Around the Rosie" out of boredom. One night after some gig, Claude started calling me Shecky and the name stuck for years.  Aesthetic Enhancement: Snorted ephedrine (yuk), microwave burritos, and of course lots of beer and pot. Pontius Pilate & the Naildrivers (1985)  Scott Free: drums  Greyson: guitar  me: guitar & vox  Joe Shirk: bass  Joe Rodenburg & Darrell Knapp: The Ricky's Wild Irish Choir Waiting until David Shea left town, I shamelessly stole his brilliant band name. It had to be done. Sort of a less serious retread of Tha Paranoidz, only now we were basically all homeless drunks playing on borrowed equipment. Once we played a show at the Lion's Club in Foxville, IN and the poobahs there banned all future rock "concerts" because of our "Satanic" name. My last band before escaping Indiana.  Aesthetic Enhancement: Robitussin DM, LSD, Chicken McNuggets and lots and lots and lots of Wild Irish Rose The Mealwormz (1986)  Gym Stoffer  Phoenix  me I move to Chicago, discover college radio (and Sun Ra), and me and my roommates made very weird improv tapes with plastic plates, zithers, pagers, audio tape, and voice. One evening saw the birth of the mighty Bong-o-Phone, truly a force to be reckoned with.  Aesthetic Enhancement: Augsberger beer, LSD, and heaps of culture shock for this farm boy Trash Monkeys (1987) me and Greyson One of those sensitive-guys-with-leather-jackets acoustic guitar duos. Embarrassingly earnest.  Aesthetic Enhancement: No drugs (and it showed) Stool (1987-88)  Perry Blakley: bass & sometimes drums  Greyson: electric guit  me: acoustic guitar Somehow I convinced the guys it would be cool to do separate sets of punk, folk rock, and bad noise improv for drunks in divey bars. And then I somehow managed to convince several clubowners to actually book us. For one gig, we had a gamelan ensemble sit in with us -- the drunks at the bar got scared and left. As time went on, we leaned increasingly toward the folk-rock thing. One of my favorite band names.  Aesthetic Enhancement: Cases of Bush beer. Pot when we scraped it out of the carpet after parties. Deep dark depression, excessive misery. trondant shaman (1988-91)  Douglas Walker  me An experimental/industrial duo which should have hit the big time (except I managed to piss off the guys at Staalplaat). Rule 1: analog only -- no synths or sampling (except for the battered primitive delay pedal I, um, inherited from a friend). Rule 2: create textures by coaxing sounds from things that may or may not normally produce sound. Rule 3: sonics in the service of dynamics. Rule 4: allow the accidents to unfold. Initially inspired by an Arto Lindsay/Peter Sherer video on the Two Moon July PBS one-off and a couple Z'ev albums I had laying around, we first combined experimental guitar work with junk percussion. Eventually, we evolved a more sophisticated sound palette (and some actual chops), avant gardey compositional techniques, and a mild case of telepathy. When Douglas actually studied a while with the Chief Master Drummer of Ghana, it took us to a whole new level. We performed with folks like Illusion of Safety, Jim O'Rourke, The Tape Beatles, and others. Check out this page for more details.  Aesthetic Enhancement: Lots and lots of beer (we both worked at a club), lots of pot, random transmissions from alien entities. Solid State (1991-92)  Dan Burke  Jim O'Rourke  Douglas Walker  me A Chicago industrial "super group" comprised of trondant shaman and members of Illusion of Safety, which was an outgrowth of a live radio performance t.s. did on WZRD. Sadly, except for one (excellent) live tape, we never recorded. We also never rehearsed, but would come up with a loose "structure" for the sets just before going on. We opened for Crash Worship on their first national tour (yes, demons came up through the floor), and for Nocturnal Emissions.  Aesthetic Enhancement: Peracetam (a "smart drug" that enhances your ability to hear and process sound -- and it worked!), pot. translocation (1991) Actually a solo performance/composition for prepared guitar, audio tape collage, computer samples, and amplified found duct in quad stereo in absolute darkness. I learned that by using specific frequencies one can induce a theta brainwave state in the listener, making them prone to having intensely visual experiences that could border on the hallucinatory. Using a sound program to create the needed tones, I played that underneath an audio smear using the above doodads. Afterwards, people literally lined up to describe their "visions". It was pretty wild.  Aesthetic Enhancement: Nothing but sound, baby. Eboka Bänzie (1992)  lots of people A one-shot ensemble music/performance piece I concocted that blended free-form guitar, audio tapes (including a genuine alien-channelling session!), double-reeded horns, and percussion ensemble -- all over 6-way stereo in near-total darkness. We even made use of the basement in the tiny theater, with the percussionists starting out down there and slowly processing up the stairs and on stage. It ended with a slow fade to silent darkness, after which the entire audience sat quietly listening to the Halloween street sounds that leaked in through the walls. Pretty cool.  Aesthetic Enhancement: Coffee, coffee, a little pot, coffee. Form Free (1992-94) Actually, this was a steady DJing gig I had on Monday nights at a legendary Chicago punk rock dive called Club Dreamerz. (They used to find dead rats in the pool table's pockets. No lie.) I did sort of a mutant ambient/beat smear mix combining tons of ethno music, industrial/experimental, classical, aggro-post-punk, and whatever else I could get my hands on.  Aesthetic Enhancement: Open tab at the bar, "tips" from my fans, poverty-induced diet Trondant Rome (1993) A one-shot hybrid of Rome and trondant shaman which performed at Hot House's experimental music festival. It was pretty terrible. I wandered off stage after about 25 minutes thinking we had played an hour. Realizing my mistake, I went back on stage and tried to play it off legit by playing my guitar with a newspaper I'd grabbed off the floor. (A technique I do not recommend.) The Betsy Years (1994-95)  Liz Payne: bass and vox  Mark Comiskey: elec. guitar and sax  Colm O'Reilly: keyboards and vox  Ben Raynor: drums  me: guitar and vox Somewhere between the Beastie Boys, Charles Mingus, and Abba. A moment of genius far too unstable to last in its initial incarnation. In addition to Liz's great, weird songs, we'd do stuff like lift a fragment of a Mingus riff and turn it into a garage-rock screamer. I wrote a song about a possessed ice cream man who used a psychotronic music box to suck the souls out of children, feeding them to a fishman from Sirius holed up in his basement. After our inevitable implosion the Betsies went on to reform with slightly different membership, but in my humble opinion played too quietly. (Oh. The name was a "tribute" to Liz's evil step mother during the '70s. We copped her head from a passport photo Liz somehow wound up with, and mercilessly pasted it into our fliers, stickers, and bad dreams.)  Aesthetic Enhancement: Pot, Ween's first two albums, Budweiser, Umbrage. Wormwood (1993-96)  Eric Leonardson  Dylan Posa  me An electro-acoustic experimental trio using prepared guitars, invented instruments, audio tape and found sounds, sampling, and feedback. Brilliant music, minimal exposure. sigh. One highpoint (among many) involved a pair of exposed speakers swinging by cable just barely over the heads of the audience as shrill, just-barely-out-of-phase-stereo analog synth pulses richocheted off bare brick walls.  Aesthetic Enhancement: Beck's beer, lots of sarcasm. Funeral Car (1995-96) My solo extreme noise project at the time. The sole premise was to use an old cheap stereo and contact pickup to overamplify a single object (bird cage, broken tape player, broken guitar, electric motor), run it through an effects chain, and then abuse the whole mess for waaaaaaaaaaay too long. Then go longer. Induced sheer panic in neighbors and roomates alike. After one set involving a refrigerater rack and a metal file run through a 250 watt amp, Weasel Walter told me it sounded like Abba.  Aesthetic Enhancement: Too much coffee, a total hatred of my life. Climax Golden Twins (1997ish)  Robert Millis  Jeffrey Taylor  sometimes others The Climax Golden Twins are a duo (sometimes trio) that mostly does electro-acoustic compositions consisting largely of locational recordings and other mangled sound sources. I met them soon after moving to Seattle, WA through my friend Scott Colburn. Now, I was never really a member of CGT. Actually, all I did was bum bong hits, sit in on a few sessions and lurk in the background, nodding sagaciously, while CGT and Scott mixed the epic "locations" CD and a few other projects. One session I performed in was a group improv which was transmitted over the phone and broadcast live by a college radio station in NYC. I thought the station would do something like Negativland's teletour thing, with a special box to maximize the tinny phone audio. Turned out all we were supposed to do was set the phone receiver in the room where we were playing. Anyhow, the DJ in New York had been sent a specially-prepared CGT recording, which he occasionally mixed in with the live set -- a nice Cagean touch. All of this was later released as part of CGT's live series -- strangely enough, the first time I've ever appeared on actual vinyl.  Aesthetic Enhancement: Pot, Pilsner Urquel, chicken planks. Static Luxury Object (1998)  Scott Colburn  Robert Millis  Jeffrey Taylor  me This strange bastard child grew out of an idle idea I mentioned during a CGT session to do some jungle cuts using bluegrass and scat-singing samples. Somehow, the idea caught on with the guys, though it naturally mutated into something different -- basically just a fucked up take on beat music in general, though Jeff christened our personal micro-genre as "drum and basement." One night, Scott cut me loose on a simple drum machine program, which I proceeded to try to break. He just rolled DAT for an hour or two, capturing my progressively more fucked up beats (see also "Aesthetic Enhancement," below). Parts of this served as the basis for a few tracks. Then we all got together at Jeff's one night and recorded snippets of crap from our record collections for later sampling. Each of us shepherded a cut, with everyone else kibbitzing drunkenly, shouting incomprehensible instructions while the poor bastard in the engineer's chair struggled woozily with the unfamiliar editing program. Miraculously, some good stuff came out of all this, but my attempt at yet another alien epic seemed to baffle everyone. In the end, the project collapsed under the weight of inertia and impatience before we could hone the pieces into a finished state. Oh well. For some reason, I threw together a one-page web site for the thing.  Aesthetic Enhancement: Pot, beer, and excessive radiation from staring at the computer screen for hours trying to make loops by hand. Oh, and chicken planks of course. Jabon (1998)  Scott Colburn - guitar & vox  Robert Millis - guitar & keyboards  Jeffrey Taylor - guitar & electronics  John Vallier - drums  me - bass Jabon is an on-again-off-again project of Dr. Scott Colburn, which has been going since 1984 -- much to the chagrin of music lovers everywhere. Scott's also an escaped Hoosier, so Jabon's stuff is an odd mix of art-punk, refabricated rock, and usually a liberal dose of surreal humor and "performance art." This time around, Jabon rose from the grave for a performance at The Speakeasy Cafe for their (then-)ongoing series of weird music concerts. We had a series of scorching practices, blasting at maximum volume -- great stuff, really. Naturally, we arrived at the venue to discover that not only were we to play quietly, but that drums were usually forbidden because they were too loud. There was a old-school pool hall above the space, and they were total freaks about noise. So, the set wound up lacking much spirit as we desperately tried to reel in the bombast and retardational spew. Still, it was a real pleasure to play with a drummer as good as John. Sadly for Seattle, he has since bailed to Los Angeles. Even more sadly for Seattle, the Speakeasy cafe was later destroyed in a massive fire that erupted in a different part of the building during a show. (No one was hurt but, most fittingly, but someone was actually rolling tape at the time. Miraculously, the recording survived and was later played at a phonography concert at a different venue in Seattle.)  Aesthetic Enhancement: Pot and Miller Ice beer (Scott's choice). But at least I was cutting back on the chicken planks. i 8 M (1999) A brief solo project loosely inspired by the rubble of Static Luxury Object. I decided to try my hand at beat music and see what happened. Really it started as a couple stray ideas that turned into three solid days of digital editing on my brand new computer. In the end, I squeezed out three cuts -- only two of which I feel were any good. One used a sample of Kurt Schwitters reciting his legendary Ursonata as the vocal. Along with the slow, lopey rhythm and the Residents samples (and an entire synthesizer solo by Faust), it sounded so fucked up I called it "Robitussin Stomp" in honor of my old DM-guzzling days. Another was inspired by a found vocal sample from Strange Days and used a voudoun chant to Legba as the vocal hook. Came out pretty good, if I do say so myself. You can hear these at the i8M web site. A third piece -- sort of a lame fake-jungle cut with some Jajouka flutes thrown in -- wound up being independently released by my pal Chuck Swaim's group, Those Darn Kidz. Chuck had sent me a WAV of him saying his trademark phrase -- "You're lookin' good, buddy!" -- and I'd used it.  Aesthetic Enhancement: Coffee, Pilsner Urquel, and social isolation. (I'd gone freelance and stopped leaving the house. Ever.) The Wretched Bastards (2000) Mike Whybark - mandolin, a little banjo me - guitar & vocals As I officially enter geezerhood at the ripe old age of 35, and having long since devolved into a true hermit, this is a kind of return to my more folkie roots. In more ways than one, really -- I've known Mike since the long-ago daze of Tha Paranoidz in '85 (he even ran sound at the surreal New Year's party in Kokomo). The idea is simple: to do old country, bluegrass and really olde folk songs ONLY about misery, betrayal, murder and general wretchedness. All misery all the time -- no love, no hope, no mercy! Being geeks in Seattle, we already have a web site even though we've yet to play out anywhere -- after months of sporadic practice. Honestly though, I half suspect this is really just a ploy by Mike to get me out of the house once in a while. We recorded demos of a few songs, but they were...well, wretched. Still, we manage to have fun. Someday we'll inflict ourselves on the outside world. It deserves it.