Fields of Industry & Hospital Garden tracks on free comp download

Thanks to Ian Howell for putting this together. AvE bands Fields of Industry and Hospital Garden all cozied up on the same free download. It's about time. Tons of other great bands. Listen to / download it here or check out the Obvious Records bandcamp (where there's another free comp available, too).

Fist City Ramblers (Live)

There's no classier way to do a send up of a girl on her 30th birthday than to trainwreck your way through a dozen-plus classic country songs. Our own Mary Jane Walbridge got the star treatment last fall courtesy of the one-off podunk troupe, the Fist City Ramblers. Named in honor of Loretta Lynn's ode to woman-on-woman violence, "Fist City," the rambling foursome assembled a selection of old down-home tunes sure to make the birthday girl smile and laugh. Whether she was laughing with us or at us is another question, but there are some good ones in there. Many thanks to Ed Gildner for surprising us with this bootleg.


Fist City Ramblers are:
Joshua Barton - vocals, guitar, bass
Cathy Illman - vocals, guitar
Corey Kellicut - vocals, lap steel
Greg Lamb - bass, guitar

Track / Original Artist / FCR vocals
1. There Stands the Glass (Webb Pierce) (Joshua)
2. Fist City (Loretta Lynn) (Cathy)
3. Loose Talk (Buck Owens/Rose Maddox) (Cathy & Joshua)
4. Good Hearted Woman (Waylon Jennings) (Joshua)
5. Pistol Packin' Mama (Al Dexter) (Joshua)
6. You Done Me Wrong (George Jones) (Corey)
7. Weary Blues From Waitin' (Hank Williams) (Cathy)
8. I Don't Care (Just As Long As You Love Me) (Buck Owens) (Joshua)
9. If I Don't Love You (Grits Ain't Groceries) (George Jones) (Corey)
10. Don't Stay Away ('Til Love Grows Cold) (Lefty Frizzel) (Joshua)
11. No Place For Me (Laura Cantrell) (Joshua)
12. Please Darlin' Please (Charlene Arthur) (Cathy)
13. Detroit City (Bobby Bare) (Corey)
14. Happy Birthday, Mary Jane

Download it here.

TEMPLETONS / TEMPLETONS

Cusp of the 21st century. Behold, E.B. White meets Dee Dee Ramone. TEMPLETONS were four Michigan dudes with no scruples about copping their favorite band's style. Ramones jackets, Ramones shoes, Ramones-style songs. Named in honor of the gluttonous rat from Charlotte's Web, these homeboys ate up basement party fun like a veritable smorgasbord. The boys kept it up from 1999 to 2003, reforming briefly for an anti-Black Friday party in November 2010 - just to prove that they still don't care how much they sound like their favorite band. Hence these resurrected tunes, scraped from the fetid bowels of a late 90s C-45 and vomited onto the internet tubes. Enjoy it. Or don't.

Fields of Industry Mittenfest V bootleg

Behold the as of yet sole photodocumentary evidence that Fields of Industry did indeed play at Mittenfest V upon the cusp of 2010/2011. Thanks to Liz Skene. I got the sound dizziness at this one; the first time in many years. That perfect nexus of vibrations that damages your equilibrium just long enough to make you feel funny-not-bad. Try it. Put your head between two bass stacks turned to 10 and have a buddy play immediately adjacent notes in stereo. Thanks to EG's work pal for clutching the fancy new recorder that has yielded this bootleg:

DOWNLOAD THE SET

Mittenfest V Day One / Woodruff's / Ypsilanti, MI / 12-28-2010
1. Fiction Writer
2. Dreams
3. So Sad
4. I've Never Been to New York
5. Reverberation (13th Floor Elevators)
6. I'm Not Afraid of a Fight

Less than 24 hours after this set, Eric's daughter was born. Not to mention the baby was present for this, under veil of womb.

AvE Zine no.1

2010 brings a flashback to 1980, a printed zine. AvE cohort of Fields of Industry, Long Whisker, Hospital Garden and buds assess their year in music listenership. Joshua sliced to bits by paper cuts. How many hours of folding and stapling? Download it, or pick up a copy at Mittenfest V, starting tonight.

Womb diving with Save Me From The Gallup Poll

Save Me From The Gallup Poll / SMFTGP / Smiffedgip is a one man plunge into the guts of sound. Mixers and effects pedals are bastardized into amateur tinkerings of biotechnological abomination; bleeding, bowel-sputtering androids barely able to murmur "Pleeasseee killl meeeeee." Sound like fun? Check out this house show this Friday, 11/12/10, in world famous Ypsilanti, Michigan.

 

Just days ahead of this rare out-of-home excursion from SMFTGP, his imprint was able to extract some limited answers on the what and wherefore behind the project. This Ypsi house show on 11/12 will melt you and SMFTGP sightings are fleeting like the sasquatch. Be there, or read about it Saturday in the Daily Mirror or whathaveyou.

 

AvE: Why do you want to be saved from the Gallup Poll?

SMFTGP: Noise is the blues of the information age.

AvE: You're into recording direct to tape. And making tapes. What's with the tape thing? Is this just ironic experimentation in marginality or is there something aesthetic about cassettes?

SMFTGP: There’s some object fetish at work there, I’m sure, as well as market forces.

The recordings are basically bootlegs of improvisations I played for no one. Recording to tape was just easy to do for the first couple of recordings -- straight from mixer to two track. Then it made sense to dub and release them that way in a really small quantity. If I ever get to a point where I’ve done something worth putting on record or a proper CD, maybe I will.

Malcolm McLaren liked cassettes for their disposability back when they were first getting popular. I think he thought it was a good metaphor for the pop culture they delivered.

AvE: Favorite pedal and why. Go.

SMFTGP: It’s mostly delay and EQ. I use what I have for playing guitar, which I do in a couple of other bands.

AvE: Any thoughts on a link between feedback loops and Oedipal motifs?

SMFTGP: Sounds diving back into the “womb” just to be purged again uglier?

AvE: For the uninitiated, what makes a track of yours good or bad? Noisers can be totally impressed by sounds someone does ("That was killer!"), or totally underwhelmed ("He's so predictable."), but it's hard to decipher what exactly elicits the various reactions. What sound values are at play? Or what beyond sound is at stake?

SMFTGP: My wife says there is no difference; you like noise or you don’t. She might be right. My friend Chris Oposnow says the difference between good and bad noise is the album art. He’s probably right.

More info, including some free releases from SMFTGP here.

Long Whisker - Huge Power

Jim & Reagan continue to truck along. I've seen them transition through three significant lineup changes, and one faux band-breakup. What's changed in the meantime is, well, drums, mostly. Now they have them; they didn't before. When Reagan first sent me some Long Whisker tunes back in 2008, I was totally floored: clearly early-development songs that worked amazingly well as first iterations, don't think too hard about it, just be what you are, sing what you know and that is frill-less 90's balls and poetry.

That sound continues to prevail on Huge Power but with a thicker production, a better executed recording - thanks to Worm Farm Recordings in Ypsilanti. J&R can be found yelping tag team style or in unison on this record and bashing the guitars noticeably harder along to the splishsplash of hence-departed drummer Elliot Daimler. There is a suggestion of bass, presumably overdubbed by Reagan, to fill in the low end now that keys are no longer present.

At first glance, songs must come easy for these guys. I don't know if that's true or not (I will ask). But I assume that it's true 'cause Jim & Reagan have wits that basically dominate whatever room they happen to be in, however large. We shared a show in Jackson at the historic Michigan Theater back in March. Now, the Michigan Theater is a sad and amazing place. It, like so many other early 20th century theaters, is a crumbling symbol of pre-depression Midwest stability. People were in these states and cities making stuff, getting by, living in industry and, naturally, going to movies and talkies on the weekends. Hence the Michigan Theater came into being as well as it's cohort of doomed architectural specimens in other, similar towns. And now it sits in downtown Jackson, Michigan, foreboding. Its restoration is the pet project of a handful of classic theater enthusiasts, nostalgists. And it's been largely restored, it shows some films, live broadcasts of sporting events, Rocky Horror Picture Show screenings for local degenerates that seem to happen every night (seriously, I don't get this, how often can you dress up and mime the same film?). Anyway, the place is also haunted. And here we are, a couple of quasi-local bands in the belly of this theater beast, with a dressing room reserved for us, at once charming and bizarre. Around the corner is a hallway blocked off by a row of chairs. "What's back there?" "Don't go back there, that's where the ghosts are." The ghosts! So I'm hanging around alone by the ghost hallway and I close my eyes. I hear no ghosts but I do hear Reagan & Jim. They're in the dressing room with some other dudes and the bubble of jokes and laughter echoing off the concrete walls is constant, reverberated to sound decades old, and it's easy to imagine the ghosts of grips, projectionists and dancers guffawing in the style of the roaring 20s, enveloped in cigar smoke.

Jim, Reagan, & former drummer Elliot in the Michigan Theater dressing room. -photo by Ed.

Reagan & Jim. So many quips and turns of phrase at their disposal, the huge power of the language centers of their brains are the unifying force of this band, and therefore Huge Power is the name of the new album. Actually, that's not the source of the album name, probably something more tongue-in-cheek socio-political. My two guesses are: 1.) anti-government (naturally, who isn't?) and 2.) anti-fraternal/greek societies. However, I must grant that Long Whisker, if anti-anything, if opposed to anything - if they are any of that, their resistance must be complicated by some kind of ambivalence, because not only do they provoke nostalgia for small, precious, eccentric things, they also write testament to the grit and real-world stench of towns like Ypsilanti, Michigan. They have a love-hate relationship with the post-industrial. They, I think more than any other Ypsi band, totally take ownership of their town. To them, (I project) Ypsi is about nasty, forsaken places inhabited by fantastic people, past and present. Friends of today and the workers of yesterday. In Ypsi and in the rest of the Midwest. Long Whisker shows a sensitivity to the Midwest situation that honestly warms my heart. They're somewhere amidst the various stages of loss: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. But I think Jim & Reagan are on the verge, in many of their tunes, of taking things a step beyond acceptance. They're finding out what's next, for themselves, for their town and for what it means to be a pair of Midwestern wordsmiths with a band.

Huge Power is available for free download here.

Reverend Doomhammer's Crib!!!!

AvE's own Reverend Doomhammer shares the intimate secrets of his abode.

Fields of Industry - Trouble House

Trouble House is a rock 'n' roll record. It merges the competing halves of Fields of Industry that have been festering under the surface for a few years now: that of reverberated bliss and rock 'n' roll darkness. Fields goes all out, with a fuller sound, a more fervent dedication to something-or-other, and a recklessness that is at once tears and teeth-gnashing.

Watch for tour dates from Fields, briefly in late July, and then more shows in the fall. Arts vs Entertainment is proud to issue a short run of the disc, available on Fields' site. The album is also available at digital outlets including iTunes, and emusic

Have a listen!

Joshua Barton Brooklyn, NY 9/5/2009

In observation of the ongoing tradition to release something (anything) musical on my birthday, I offer here the audio & video of some backyard tunes recorded in Brooklyn in September of 2009. Though the video makes it look like I was pretty lonely out there in the dark, I was in fact joined by dozens of good friends, and hosted by the generous Gina Pensiero at her 50/50 Space (aka her basement and/or backyard). Gina gives of herself to music in many cool ways, including her band and her blog. Getting to participate in her ongoing monthly series of shows was a fantastic experience, and it was only the beginning of what turned out to be a fantastic night.

Special thanks for this release go out to Dax Monta & Graham Mason for recording it, and doubly to Dax for bringing the final recordings together as a package. I was joined on mandolin for a few tunes by Tristan Dreisbach. Matt Richman helped out with editing.

Download the audio here.

Watch the video here.

Tracks:

1. Introduction

2. I've Got Something To Say To You

3. We'll Always Have The Oasis

4. Going Home

5. Don't Stay Away (Till Love Grows Cold) [Lefty Frizzell]

6. I'll Fly Away [Albert E. Brumley]

7. Eugenia

8. Ypsilanti Is Seething

9. Sick Of America

10. Unknown Legend [Neil Young]

11. Point Of Contention

12. Pillaged Land

13. Roll Another Number (For The Road) [Neil Young]

14. I've Seen A Light

Hospital Garden - Hospital Garden

AvE has been dormant too long. Leave it to this loud Chicago-by-way-of-Dayton trio to wake us up. Remember Hospital Garden? The post-Bear Mountain Picnic solo demo project of Lucas Hollow? Well those sketches are now a full fledged reality and Hospital Garden are three rather than one.

Hospital Garden is a team. An angry, righteous squad of rock n' roll with roots of influence extending down deep into the 1980s when their ears were very young, but not unreceptive. They are blistering guitar, bass and drums led by Lucas Hollow's feverish lyrical mumble, always seeming on the verge of exploding -  the tried and true power trio, in lock-step, on a mission to blow up power chords in such effective time-tested methods that it all sounds new again.

They are a streak of pop core wrapped in the unassuming dirty frustration of an era when Reagan anguish had yielded to resigned Reagan fatigue, and something we all should have seen coming around again having just said goodbye to Bush II. Lucas, Sarah & Ian are re-exemplifying the rebellious good that was at the heart of what became labelled "alternative" before all of that rose to the braindead, cashcow top of college radio and Teen Spirit.

But Hospital Garden are not a historical reenactment of the alternative scene. They are diligent students of what has come before, but with a new vision for resistance - resisting the temptation to disintegrate into weirdness, incoherence and fake frame glasses like all your favorite Pitchforkers. Resisting the temptation to be boring and lame. These kids wear real glasses. Use real guitars. A true alternative to that which presently dominates our attention strapped ears and eyeballs.

If Guided By Voices and the Lemonheads were pop music prophets, then Hospital Garden is the new voice in the wilderness and their self titled work is the call to repentance from all your hip nonchalance in 2010. Purchase it at CD Baby or wait for it to show up on iTunes, Amazon, etc. in the coming weeks.

http://www.myspace.com/hospitalgarden

Save Me From the Gallup Poll – Kawgooshkanick & Brain Eraser

After a long pause, SMFTGP returns with two decidedly different approaches, both documented nearly a year ago.

First up is Kawgooshkanick, an electric swamp of half-rotted, eel-infested compost muck. Lurk in the bogs of a post-civilized river valley, home to mysterious tribes of telepathic warrior kings whose vengeance broods stealth beneath slime-covered waters. Get it here. 

Next comes Brain Eraser, an audio testament to the power-mantra of matter over mind. Like an awful, cheap beer buzz – no high, no motor skills. Just dull thuds followed by high frequency flares, swirling in the cavernous hole that once housed your consciousness. Download this one and move it directly to your PC’s trash bin. Get it here. 

Physical releases planned by year’s end. Pre-order yours tomorrow!

Long Tones - Christ In The New World

Long Tones is the amateur-clarinet and drone project of Joshua Barton that provided the screech and squawk in the soul-grinding Instant Headache collaboration with Save Me From The Gallup Poll. LT's solo short player establishes an entirely different sound of ambient delirium. Christ In The New World is based on a half-realized concept of Jesus Christ visiting the State of Michigan in a mashup of The Grand Inquisitor and Mad Max. But of course you wouldn't know that unless we told you. LT drops two blurry, live-tracked pieces of shifting headspace; the first centered on clarinet and voice, the second consisting of manipulated vinyl.
Download it.
Art by Graham.

Joshua Barton - Thanks, I Missed You, Too

One year ago yesterday, Fields of Industry dropped Two Dogs, A Television and held a release show in Ann Arbor the following evening in conjunction with FoI singer/songwriter Joshua Barton's birthday. Joshua turns another year older today and thanks the world for another successful year of staying alive with a solo record, Thanks, I Missed You, Too. Operating under his own name, Joshua allows himself to endulge in playful combinations of ambient sample assemblage, country gospel, new folk and the buzzy shoegaze sound that FoI has occasionally employed. In other words, Joshua gets to do all the stuff he's done before, but this time he does it all at once. Thanks... is an effort to reach an empathetic hand to Michigan with the hard-times resignation often employed by FoI, but here it's with a strangely up-key touch. Drawing upon recordings from 2005 to 2009, this was edited and compiled in 48 hours under the intense urge to get something done, an urge that Joshua hopes is contagious.
Get it here. Or over at the JB Bandcamp site.

Tracks 8 & 9 excluded from CC License.