Rah Bras

Making music isn't unlike making model airplanes.  You can't really expect to sell it/them, you do it because you love it.  The only problem is when there are some people that make really crappy model airplanes and get insanely rich so they can flood the world with model airplanes, and others make fantastic model airplanes that don't sell, so they don't make any more model airplanes.  What was I talking about again?

The Rah Bras were 1/3 Maximillian Colby, 1/3 Hose Got Cable, and 1/3 Damn Near Red.  They didn't have a guitar player!  They were fantastic live, and even did a cover of "Pony" by Ginuwine.

Their first two EP's came out in 1998 or so.

Concentrate to Listen to the Rondo That We Christen King Speed
Buy it here.

The second album has a movie on it.  Technology!

They put out a couple of other albums that pitchforkmedia.com should have devoured but didn't, and the best music video ever made.

John Skaritza went on to not play drums with Pen Rollings in what would have been the best band of all time.
Dave Nesmith may or may not be a Monkee's nephew, and has gone on to be in Bats and Mice (I think) and Regents.
Marie Bethel went on to be in the extremely photogenic band Daemon Lover.  I got her to sing on a couple of cover songs over the years, but this is not my story.

Sliang Laos

In the fall of 1992, my friend Ben was in a band called Whirly*bird.  The guitarist was named Pat Snavely, and the drummer's name was (at the time) Greg Poppakostas (but spelled correctly).  Whirly*bird was supposed to play a show, but ended up not playing because Greg wanted to go see a band I'd never heard of called Sliang Laos.  To me, this was blasphemy of the highest order.  But then, I had never heard Sliang Laos.

Later the next summer, I moved in with my band to a house on Floyd Avenue.  We thought we were pretty good.  But then, I had never heard Sliang Laos.  This was soon to change.  In that dingy, Rhaphidophoridae-infested basement, my friends and I would hang out and listen to records.  Invariably, this masterpiece would come up.

01 Shining Path
02 Alabama Ego


A year or so later, I saw Sliang Laos play a show in someone's basement (is there a theme here?).  Their bassist lived in Maryland, so they just played as a 4-piece.  I remember at least 3 of them were on the tallish side.  Short hair.  Relatively clean-cut.  Stage right guitarist chain-smoked through the entire set.  He had kind of thick glasses and looked as though he hadn't shaved or slept ever in his life.  Stage left guitarist had a more youthful demeanor.  He almost had kind of a surfer hairstyle, but also seemed very dour.  The singer would crouch down sometimes, and his voice sounded like if Ben Kenobi was forced to live in Richmond instead of Tattooine (sorry, but this might not be the last Star Wars analogy in this entry).  The drummer had perfect posture, and had this interesting lurching wrist motion.
Their sound was very unique.  It definitely borrowed from the unconventional conventions of Richmond math-rock, but it took the genre to a new place.  The riffs were catchy, and had a certain kind of... pull to them.  The odd meters never sounded forced, or as if they would cut beats just for the hell of it.  Everything was very deliberate, almost fascistic in a way.  It was not at all "THANK YEW GOOD NIGHT" music.  None of their songs had big rock and roll endings, the riffs would just grind to a halt with mechanical precision.

In 1995, their demo started making the rounds, and eventually I got a copy from my friend Eve.  To this day I have it, and the actual tape is probably thinner than the master reels to "Bohemian Rhapsody."  Apologies for the tape hiss.  Here it is:

Sliang Laos demo

Later, they recorded a full-length album, and it was set to be released on CD.  Legend has it that something went wrong at the pressing plant and the discs were mis-labeled.  Instead of Sliang Laos's info, they were printed with Mao Tse Helen's (another Richmond band).  Maybe they took it as a sign, or maybe something else was going on, but the band broke up.
Andrew (vocals) went on to be in a band called Malacoda that I never have heard.
Ron Dimmick (stage right) also played guitar in the band Ladyfinger, so this is his second appearance in this blog.  Rumor has it that before one of their shows, he drank 37 beers and still played flawlessly.  I don't doubt this one bit.  I've met him a few times - the first time he looked at me like he wanted to kill me, and the second time he seemed to forget who I was.  The third time he told me that he wrote all of the Sliang Laos riffs, and the fourth time he also seemed to forget who I was.
Scott Hudgens (stage left) did an electronic music project after Sliang Laos whose name I forget.  He worked at Plan 9 Records in Richmond.  Once I mustered up the courage to talk to him and ask if he had any copies of the Sliang Laos album.  He looked at me, kind of looked away, looked back at me, and said, "No."  He went on to be in the band Hex Machine, who stays at my house every March.
Mark Smoot (bass) recorded countless bands (at least 2 of mine) and may still live in Maryland.  He was also in a band called Farquhar and makes the best non-vegan pancakes in the entire mid-Atlantic region.  I've heard a rumor that he set up microphones for Presidential addresses, but who knows.  People like to talk.
If you've gotten this far in this entry, we can have some "real talk" about the drummer, Scott Minor.  Here, watch this video.  If you listen closely, you can hear occasional orchestra hits and various bleeping noises.  I don't want to promote any myths here (that is mostly a lie), but it would appear that Minor is playing along to a sequencer.  Without headphones.  How is he able to play along to a metronome without hearing the click?  The closest that a real person has ever come to accomplishing this feat was when Luke Skywalker deflected laser blasts from a training remote with the blast shield down on his helmet.  Try it yourself - go to the bottom right hand corner of your screen, open up the clock, and try to count to 30 and have it match up exactly.  You can't, and you have been familiar with seconds as an increment of time for your entire life.  But then, you're not Scott Minor.  Later, he went on to play drums in Sparklehorse, which - no offense to Sparklehorse at all - was the biggest waste of a an amazing drummer in history.

Randy Blythe from Lamb of God said that Sliang Laos were "probably the greatest band to ever come from Richmond".  I'm not going to disagree with him, because he killed some guy.  KIDDING.  Too soon?

Last of the Juanitas

Last of the Juanitas were a band from Arizona that sounded like they were from San Diego.  Either that, or they were a band from New Mexico that sounded like they were from Arizona.  I forget!
Maybe it was a Tuesday night, maybe it was at Hole in the Wall in Richmond VA, maybe it was 1999.  My band had a show with a touring band called Last of the Juanitas.  I brought my 4-track to the show so I could record my own band, and fortunately had an extra 90 minute Maxell XLII cassette tape.  Looking back, it's kind of amusing how there was a kind of hierarchy amongst cassette tapes.  Certrons were the lowest.  Thin-cased Fuji normal bias.  Then the clear normal bias Maxells.  TDK D-90's.  TDK SA-60.  And so on.  Recording at a higher speed makes for a better recording.  All this stuff was kind of important, because there wasn't much fidelity to cling to.  Anyway.  Two Shure SM 57 microphones pointed to the heavens and plugged into a Fostex.
I guess the verbosity above is there to make up for how little I remember or know about the actual band.  The guitarist was a scruffy looking nerf herder that apparently went on to be in Red Fang, one of the biggest rock bands around (I say this because I have heard of them).  The bassist was a girl with an Ozzy/Randy Rhoads Tribute shirt, which instantly made her the coolest girl I had ever seen.  The drummer might have had short hair and seemed to be the creative driving force behind the songs.  They spent the night at my apartment, I fed them breakfast and coffee, and wished them well on their future adventures.

Last of the Juanitas Playlist

Those Peabodys

To someone (that someone being me) living in Richmond at the turn of the millennium, Austin TX seemed like a kind of Fantasy Dream World.  Shows every night, t-shirts in the winter, cheap Mexican food, a healthy economy, a progressive political climate, affordable rent, and women!  It didn't seem like a real place, but it was.  My friends JT, JD, and Ben made the move; and it didn't take much convincing for me to follow suit.
The popular Austin rock and roll band that I was aware of were Those Peabodys.  They formed when they were in High School in Temple, TX and were formerly known as something like Professor Peabody and His Wayback Machine.  I had given their album a good review in the now-defunct Punchline magazine.  What I found (and still find) remarkable about their first record is that the band was a 2-piece.
Adam Hatley played drums and guitar.  Some facts about him:
1. Easily one of the top 5 rock drummers I've ever had the honor to share a stage with.
2. Once he dressed up as He-Man from Masters of the Universe for Halloween, and he barely had to do anything to get make the costume.
Clarke Wilson played bass and vocals.  Some facts about him:
1. Best afro I've ever seen on a white person.
2. He prefers parties when they're at someone else's house.
By the time I moved to Austin, they had recruited Aaron Franklin to play drums.  They'd play house parties, Emo's, wherever.  Often places you could walk to, and you'd know everyone there. 
The lineup expanded further when JD Cronise was added on second guitar.  Around this time, they recorded their second album (in the spirit of not googling, I admit that I forgot what it's called).  The label that was supposed to put it out folded, so the album died.  Aaron Franklin was replaced by Mike Fonseca... wait, maybe Mike played drums on the album?  JD quit to form another band whose name I forget.  Look, I was living with my wife and two baby daughters, I had a hard time keeping up (see above about why I wanted to move to Austin).  Anyway, Mike quit or something and Erik Conn came in on drums.  They recorded again, and I don't think it was released.  Then they broke up.
Where are they now?
Adam and Clarke are now in a band called Bangaar.  Go see them.
Aaron Franklin started a monstrously successful barbecue company.  I think it's called Franklin's Barbecue.
JD went on to worldwide fame, fortune, and hot sauce (which I'm currently out of) in The Sword.
Mike Fonseca is in the band Modok, the best band in Austin currently.
Erik Conn is still in Tia Carrera and Thee Vitamins and at least three other bands.
So, here is the Those Peabodys album.  Listen to it while thinking back to days when Lone Star cans were partially blue.

Those Peabodys Youtube Playlist

Human Thurma

This installment of my blog is being written from the road, so forgive me if I'm not as poetic as usual.

I don't remember whether or not the band HRM changed their name to Human Thurma before or after Eve replaced Erik Josephson on drums.  The guitarist's name was Sean Sheen, and he was in a bunch of other old math rock bands.  I believe he played bass in Butterglove, and was the vocalist in Ladyfinger.  Trevor Thomas (bass, vocals) had previously been in the band Adelle's Silk Stalkings.  I'm not sure that Human Thurma ever received the accolades given to some of their other bands, but to me they were just as good.  They did get it together enough to tour at least a few times; and made some fantastic recordings with Mark Smoot in  Maryland, and Tim Green somewhere in California.

Human Thurma playlist

I think Human Thurma might have broken up in the late 90's when Trevor moved to California?  He ended up moving back and is now carrying on the tradition in his band Hex Machine.  Sean lives in Seattle and might work at or near the Jimi Hendrix museum.  Eve is the one that was nice enough to send me those mp3's and might not want me to tell  you where he lives or what he is up to.

Action Patrol - Work Ethic

When I was 10 or so, I enrolled in a karate class.  I don't remember much from it, but one lesson stuck with me.  The instructor told us that no matter how good we ever got at martial arts - or anything for that matter - there would ALWAYS be someone out there that was going to be better.  I can forgive his mistake in saying this, because it was a good decade before the band Action Patrol formed.
Fast forward to 1993, maybe late summer?  My friend Eve played me a practice tape of his new band, tentatively titled "Sleestack".  Now, Eve was a bassist first and a guitarist second.  I'd never heard him play drums, but they might as well have been his first instrument.  The guitarist's name was Chris Taggart, and I think the bassist was Josh Brown (later to be replaced by some girl named either Kelly or Kathy or Tommi) Tom Baisden)?  The singer's name was Nappy for some reason that was not known to me at the time.  The practice tape couldn't have been higher quality than boombox, but they definitely seemed ready to play shows.  They were practicing at least twice a week and Eve said that they had enough songs for a set, but "weren't ready."  This was baffling to me.
Legend has it that Action Patrol existed for a full year before ever playing out.  This - like most things about the band - was very... thought out.  That may have a negative connotation, but I'm not saying that it was contrived.  It's just that they seemed to like to plan.  Most bands would (and I'm sure still do) get together, write some songs, play some shows, record some demos, put out some records, maybe tour, etc. etc.  I remember when they recorded for their album, they didn't let anyone hear the recordings before the official release.  Again, baffling (though I get it now).
The music was propelled by Chris Taggart's lightning-fast staccato riffs (which were in MAJOR keys, keeping the sound from veering into heavy metal territory), Eve's almost jazzy drumming, and Nappy's frantic-sounding vocals.  Tom held the whole thing together with his melodic basslines - often playing counterpoint to the guitar parts.  Their sound was described as "a deep fusion of east coast hardcore and west coast punk rock" in an interview by someone that didn't know what he was talking about (me).  Their first show was (I think?) New Years 1994 at a house party, and they played in their screenprinted orange shirts (later to become full jumpsuits).  The atmosphere was absolutely electric.  I don't know if Nappy had ever been in a band before, but he was easily one of the most energetic frontmen I've ever seen.  Totally insane, but also charismatic and non-threatening.  Chris Taggart, on the other hand, stayed completely still; somehow giving off the impression that despite his calm demeanor, he was orchestrating the entire event.  Overnight, they became one of the most popular punk bands in Richmond.

By June, they had become established enough to put out their first 7" record.  EVERYONE had a copy.  In fact, somebody stole mine (if you're reading this and it was you, send it back.  No questions asked).  By winter, they released a full-length album on Whirled Records.  Have I ever mentioned that I play it pretty loose regarding dates and other trivia?  This stuff was a long time ago.  Eventually they toured, and I think Eve either quit or got kicked out soon after that.  He was replaced by Rich Green (previously of hardcore band Grip).  Rich was a solid drummer, but for me it just wasn't the same, and I only saw them a couple of times after the personnel change.  Their popularity only grew though, and they ended up putting out a total of three records.  Some time in 1997, they broke up.  I don't know why.
One of their shows with Rich on drums was videotaped.
This show was at a house party on Dick Street in Greensboro, NC.  Shows there used to be nuts, and this was probably one of the best examples.  50 or so kids crammed into a living room to sing along to one of their favorite bands.
Their discography also can be found here.
In a private conversation with Nappy, he said the following.  I am reposting it without permission:
the years we were playing and the experiences we had pretty much made up some of the best moments of my life so far. it was a really special thing to be a part of punk back then. i'm sure all young people feel the same way about their particular scene in each subcultural micro-generation...but i just really had a great time.

Thee Squids

Quick - what's the best rock and roll band to ever come out of Williamsburg, Virginia?
Depends on who you ask, of course.  Bruce Hornsby might say otherwise, but my vote goes to Thee Squids.
I think Thee Squids started in 1992 or so.  You might notice a trend here - I like to play fast and loose with the facts when it comes to these band bios.  There may have been a guy named Kyle in the band at some point, and Thomas might have played the organ on a track or two; but the key members to Thee Squids were always Brian Campas on bass and vocals, Neale Shaeffer on guitar and vocals, and Dave Garrett on drums.  I heard a boombox recording of them from around this time, and didn't think it was very good.  Besides, they were all in other bands: Brian was in the band Bear, Neale was in the band Placebo, and Dave was in the band Bad Guy Reaction.  Thee Squids seemed to go by the wayside.
Fast forward to 1997 (1998?  See the "fast and loose" passage above).  I heard that Thee Squids had gotten back together and were playing at the Henry Street Gallery, so I figured what the hey.  I was not expecting to be completely blown away.  I knew something was different when I saw their equipment.  In the old days, it always seemed like the aesthetic was to use whatever kind of gear was the cheapest or the easiest to get your hands on.  This time around, Neale had a brand new Gibson SG and some new-looking half-stack.  I forget exactly what Brian and Dave had gotten, but their stuff looked more pro also.  More importantly, you could tell immediately that they had all been PRACTICING.  Both as a group, in other groups, and independently.  They even recorded a full length album:

Thee Squids album on youtube
So what is the moral of this story?
It's this.  No matter what you do - whether it's playing an instrument, or shooting free-throws, or balancing debits against credits, or baking, or trolling internet blogs, or painting bowls of fruit - you have to practice.  Maybe I've said this before and I'm sure I'll say it again.  Unless you're Mark Morton playing guitar or a spider weaving a web, you need to practice whatever it is you think you're good at until your arm falls off.

Hose Got Cable

"This is Bob Dylan to me."
I never really cared about the Minutemen, but I grok what they were talking about in the song "History Lesson - Part II".  The entire point behind punk rock was that we didn't feel like mainstream culture connected with us, so we had to create our own entertainment.  Seeing Hose was like watching Nirvana in some kid's basement, or at a 200 capacity club.  But better, because they were peers.  We all lived in the same city, knew the same people, shopped at the same grocery stores, went to the same bars.  There was a special kind of connection.
Hose Got Cable consisted of Chris Wade on guitars/vocals, John Partin (same), John Skaritza on drums, and John Peters on bass.  Each member brought something to the band - Chris brought the punk rock ethos, Partin seemed like a classic rock kind of guy, Skaritza had a jazzy/Fugazi kind of style, and Peters was previously in the metal band Killing Cycle (also featuring Mark Morton, who was in an earlier incarnation of Hose also, and later went on to be in Lamb of God).  They were able to fuse these styles into something unique.

Hose Got Cable cassette


In the summer of 1994 (I think), Chris Wade gave me a cassette of recent Hose recordings, some boombox classics, and a tape of his band from High School.  One of the songs on side B is maybe 5 seconds long, and is called "I Don't Give a Shit" - to me, it says more than anything the Sex Pistols ever did.

Nudibranch

Richmond didn't have a lot of heavy bands in 1993.  There were a lots of bands that tuned their guitars plenty low.  Lots of bands played the ol' chugga chugga riffs.  Some even played that kind of Southern swampy stoner rock.  But few were actually HEAVY.
When they started out, Nudibranch's members were Flossy Branch on vocals, Dangerous Branch on guitar, Nasty Branch on bass, and Commander Deveroe on drums.  Flossy often wore a mask and sounded a little like a heavy metal David Yow.  Dangerous had an alternative rock hairstyle; and was somehow able to come up with crushing riffs, inventive noises, scratches/scribbles - all while seemingly teetering on the edge of not being able to play.  Nasty was into a wide variety of music, looked like that one guy in that one movie, and might be reading this right now.  The Commander was a huge Kiss fan (legend has it that he owned their pinball game) and played his two bass drums as if he were playing three.  They recorded this demo:

Nudibranch - Logic Studios Demo

The song "Robot Girl" has some of my favorite lyrics ever:
Don't want an Earth girl
Don't want a normal girl
A normal girl will often go
A fact of life that we all know
That's why we go with Robot Girls
Robot Girls are always faithful
Unless someone steals the controls
But that won't happen - we've got code control

A year or so later, Dangerous left to join some branch of the armed forces (did I mention his name was "Dangerous"?) and was replaced by Perry Branch.  Nasty left and was replaced by Pete (RIP).  Tony Brown also played bass at some point, as did Ian from Damn Near Red.  Flossy either moved away or quit, and there was Gingwin then Orlock then Hot New Dance Hits.  Are you still reading this?  My friend Blade wrote a more detailed account of the band here.

Assacre

I forgot most of what I once knew about the one-man band Assacre.
1. His mask to shirt ratio was usually 1:0.
2. His amplifier was relatively small.
3. Did I mention that I forgot most of what I once knew about him?
4. His real name was Ben Aqua.
5. He played guitar along to pre-recorded bass, drum machine, vocal and rhythm guitar tracks.
One man bands are a difficult thing to pull off.  For one thing, there's a lack of a visual element for an audience.  Generally, when you're watching a band, your eyes will maybe go back and forth from one band member to the next (unless you're at a White Stripes show and you're a heterosexual male {shut up, admit it}).  You can't really do that with a one-man band.  Also, there's an irreplaceable synergy between band members when they are connecting on that level.  The entire process in that regard is similar to sexual intercourse.  You can do it by yourself, but it's better if there's more than one person in the room.  Going further, you have to be really good at it to make people want to watch you.  Assacre was really good at it (I'm talking about playing music, pervert).
Ben Aqua was active in this band for either a few months in 2004 or several years between 2002 and 2008 (see #3 above).  He once posted a sendspace link to one of his albums on myspace, if that gives you an idea of a time frame.  This is not that album:

 Also, he used to cover "Muscles" by Diana Ross.

Triskaidekaphilia

Triskaidekaphilia formed in the late summer of 1994.  Sean Sutphin played drums, John Swart played bass, Martin Deal played guitar, Ben White sang.  Sean, John, and Martin all lived together on the 1500 block of Floyd Avenue; and being young men with a lot of time on their hands (and not a lot of responsibilities) they spent a lot of time practicing. 
A few months after they formed, the band went up to Neptune Studios in Occuquan and recorded their first couple of songs.
Neptune Sessions
For some reason, they never released those recordings.  Instead, they re-recorded the same songs and added a few new ones.

Side A
Side B


I'm not really sure what ended up happening to Triskaidekaphilia.  Ben was also in the pop-punk band Whirlybird, which was more his thing at the time, so Triska (the shortened form that the cool kids used for their name) was relegated to side-band status.  Eventually, Ben quit.  I forgot what happened to them after that.

Martin Deal was a friend of mine, but I wouldn't say we were close.  He seemed to kind of keep to himself, and he had this kind of childlike quality to him.  He had short dreadlocks, but didn't seem as gruff, tattooed or... crusty as a lot of the people he hung out with.  I don't remember when, but I started hearing that he had a heroin habit.  I recall seeing him at a bar called the Hole in The Wall in the late 90's, looking - please excuse the language - pretty fucked up.  I didn't see much of him after that.
The last time I saw Martin, he looked like he had totally turned it around.  He was in a serious relationship with a girl, and was actually buying musical equipment.  He also had a kind of clarity in  his eyes that I hadn't seen in years.  In fact, he was one of the last people I saw before moving from Richmond to Austin.  I was loading everything I owned into a 1983 Honda Civic, preparing to make the 26-hour drive.  Martin lightened my load a little by giving me $50 for my wah wah pedal.  A few months later, I found out that he had died from a heroin overdose.

Octis

I recently watched a documentary about New York's No Wave scene in the late 1970's.  Apparently, the mission was to create music that didn't reference anything.  To create something completely new.  Unfortunately, most of these "artists" had no idea how to play their instruments, so 35 years later it just sounds like a bunch of noise.  Worse, it sounds really old and dated.
20 years later, Mick Barr cashed the check that the Rock and Roll Literati wrote.  Mr. Barr has spent the past decade or two making music that is so advanced that it barely even sounds like music.  His new band Krallice sounds like Justin Bieber compared to what he usually does.
At a club in Washington DC ca. 2000, I ran into Mick, and he gave me this cassette.

Now, here is what I love about this tape.  It exemplifies the kind of DIY mentality that made me want to make this blog in the first place.
Ingredients:
1 4-track cassette recorder
1 Boss Metal Zone distortion pedal
1 Gibson SG standard
1 cheap drum machine, either a Boss DR-550 or some sort of low end Alesis
2 guitar cables
That's it.  Barr didn't even use an amplifier or any microphones for this.  Guitar into Metal Zone into 4-track.  Drum machine into 4-track.  He then probably dubbed the cassettes from the master mix on to major label promotional cassettes and handed them out to people.  It meant something.  Nowadays, we can all record into Pro-Tools and post our wonderful creations on bandcamp.com or soundcloud.com or whatever, and it doesn't matter.  I acknowledge the fact that my posting of this cassette online kind of contributes to this.  Living in denial of this is not unlike refusing to build a boat when the Big Rain starts coming.  So here you go.
Octis Side A
Octis Side B

Zentraedi

In August of 1997, I quit my band Secret Girlfriends (this is not their story).  Dave Choi (the drummer) and Nora Robinson (the singer) went on to join forces with the drummer of Lycosa (Ross Horwitz, who switched to guitar) and Adam Juresko on bass.  I think that soon after, Liz Connolly played keyboards.
It's hard to compare both bands objectively, but now that it's been long enough, I must concede that Zentraedi was the superior of the two.  There was something almost stifling or heavy-handed about Secret Gilfriends, while Zentraedi gave the listener a little more room to breathe.  Zentraedi was the kind of band that knew that the way to a young girl's heart was complimenting her shoes and asking her to talk about herself.  I seem to remember being turned off at the time by the lack of repetition in the songs, but now it kind of makes sense.  It gives them a more linear quality, opens up more room for a vocal melody, and shifts focus to things like tonal texture.  These 6 songs were recorded some time in 1998, which was when the band was at its peak.

For some reason, Nora quit and was replaced by Maud(e?), and Adam quit and was replaced by Nathan from Ipecac.  There may have been more personnel changes, but I don't remember them.  This guy from Venezuela named Tomás may have served as an interim bassist at one point.
Anyway, I'll shut up now so you can listen to these tracks!
Zentraedi youtube playlist

More Fire for Burning People

More Fire for Burning People was a band from Richmond in the early/mid 90's.  I think they rose from the ashes of the band Cate Allen.  Alan Siegler (I think) played bass, and this guy named Thomas might have played drums.  The guitarists/singers were Brian Landis and Curtis Brown.  For whatever reason, they replaced the rhythm section with the lovely and talented Becky Sanchez on bass and the also lovely (in a guy way) and talented Bret Payne on drums.  Which is not to say that Curtis and Brian weren't lovely and talented.  They were.  Anyway.
In the mythical land of Silver Spring, Maryland, there lived a man by the name of Mark Smoot.  He was old (mid 30's or maybe even older) and made a strong case for... getting old.  He lived in a 3-story home/recording studio.  You'd load in on Friday night, go to bed in one of his guest bedrooms, wake up Saturday morning to pancakes and bacon (if that was your thing), record until late at night, do the same thing the next day, and go home Sunday night.  This luxury rock and roll vacation would set you back $300.  So if you were in a band of 4 people, that was like not a lot of money.
More Fire For Burning People recorded a tape with Mark in November of 1995. 

Side A
Side B
Their tape included a lyric sheet, but their computer didn't seem to have a spacebar, so it reads as follows:
surillophemeitssohotbutshestillwantsacigaretteitssohotbuticanthelphersurillophemeyoumakemesurillophememovesurillophemeyoureallymovemetieyouintomywardrobecoveryourskinwithasatingagcoatsmymouthandicantbreatsurillophemeisaslowheatplacidicantstandonmyheadanylongerandletthebloodstartrushinginsleepingisalmostimpossiblewhenithinkillfliptheswitchicantplaythisgameanylongerbecauseitmakesmebrokeasijuststandpushingquaterafterquatericantsingthissonganylongerwhenitsdroppingoverslowlyoverandoveragainandalltheboysgoandrushmebybutthesedrugsarentrealandineverfollowedyoufallingoffthefacemakingallthesefacesdisappearsowhenwecomebackilldothedeed4point5liftmeimfeatherweightivegotlizardinkinmylegsheworecrushedgreenvelvetsayingillfuckanythingthatmoveshershoesfittedwitha4point5liftandredigaveherthisbigbirdwrappedincellophaneshesaidchokemecauseilikethepainallihavenowismytruthitmaybebadbutatleastimtryingwhenplansaredeniedwithayesthatreallysetsmeoffpushesmybuttongetsmygoatyourealizethissystemfailssogetonwithitbrotherliftmeimfeatherweightchinesetelephonewordsstatic

Also, I was going to start a MFFBP cover band and call it More Oil For Boiling People, but cooler heads prevailed.

Rebar

Maybe I'm wrong about this, but I feel like everyone wants to belong to a club that they're just barely cool enough to get into.  We want to be loved and accepted, but we also want to stand out and be unique. 
Is part of the appeal to Rebar the fact that nobody likes them?  This video kind of says it all.  To know about Rebar in the mid 90's was to belong to a small and exclusive club.  My friend Eve dubbed me their demo on a normal-bias Maxell 90 minute cassette tape.  He'd gotten it from his bassist Pete, who got it from someone else.  The poor audio quality did nothing to detract from the tunes. 
I don't know very much about the band.  I think they were from Greensboro.  Their bassist was named Brent, though rumor has it this guy named Tommy was in the band before him.  Jae was the drummer.  Masa played one of the guitars - though he replaced someone that I don't know (maybe Greg Sigmon?).  The guitarist and singer was named Sanders Trippe. 
Have you ever heard of the band Pentagram?  They were a proto-doom metal band from Northern Virginia that started in the late 70's.  Traditional success eluded them because their singer/guitarist was (is?  I haven't seen the movie) a drug addict and a not-so-great decision maker.  That seems sadly typical for proto-doom metal.  This is not their story.  Rebar was kind of like the indie rock* version of Pentagram.  Instead of being torn apart by drugs, they were torn apart by... apathy?  I don't know.
When Napster became a thing, my first search (after the Alf theme, of course) was for the long-lost Rebar album.  To my amazement, I found someone that had a few Rebar tracks, so I greedily double-clicked.  An hour or so later, the uploader (?) instant-messaged me, thanking me for liking "his" band.  Right.  I'm actually having a conversation with a guy IN Rebar?  Turns out, it was the drummer.  He turned out to be a really nice guy, and ended up sending me a burn of their album, and two of their 7" records.  A few years later, when the CD became hopelessly scratched, he even sent me a replacement.

The Rebar Album Youtube Playlist

So, where are they now?  Sanders went on to be in a band called All Night.  They were a great rock and roll band, but they didn't hit home for me like Rebar did.  I almost saw them once, but that story is for another time.  Then rumor has it he collaborated with Devendra Bernhardt (spelled wrong, don't care).  Now (?) he is in the band Vetiver, and they are (were?) fairly popular.  I think that Jae, the drummer, was in the band the Alternative Champs.

* I am loath to use the term "indie rock" to describe Rebar, due to the fact that in the mid 1990's, the parasite that was emo engulfed the term indie rock.  Instead of emo bands and their fans calling themselves what they were, they stole the tag "indie rock" from actual indie rock bands.  For whatever reason, actual indie rock died a horrible death, never to return.  Nowadays there's some kids from Australia or something called Yuck are trying to revitalize the style in a weird retro fashion, which I'm sure caused everyone over 35 to count gray hairs in the mirror.

Summer with the Sums

The Sums were a surf-rock band from Harrisonburg, VA.  Actually, I'll go on record saying that they were the BEST surf-rock band ever to come out of Harrisonburg, VA.  Mickey Walker played bass, Marshall Costan played lead guitar, Thomas Dean played rhythm guitar, Josh Lawson played drums, and... Travis Hunter on organ?  I forget.
See, here's the thing about bands in smaller towns - they're usually better.  If you're in a major metropolitan area like New York or Los Angeles or Austin, there are tons and tons of distractions.  In towns like Fargo or Harrisonburg, you practice.  You get better.  It's easy to tell from this CD that the Sums practiced a lot.

Sums Album Youtube Playlist
For some reason that I don't remember, Marshall was no longer in the band, so Thomas asked me to fill in.  I wasn't the only replacement - Mickey (who played on all of the recordings except for one or two of the songs) replaced Tommy Rogers (who also played Wurlitizer, organ, guitar, and bass on most of the recordings); and Travis replaced someone named Laney Devening. Thomas's dedication to the rock was such that he was willing to drive from Harrisonburg to Richmond to get me (a 3 hour drive), drive back to Harrisonburg to practice with the Sums (3 hour drive), dropped me off back in Richmond (3 hour drive), then drove back to Harrisonburg (3 hour drive).  Would you drive for 12 hours so that your band could play a show in someone's basement?  We played several shows, house parties, and I think even Mac Rock.  We never recorded, which is fine by me because I couldn't touch Marshall as a surf guitarist.  In fact, let me tell you a little story.  The Sums covered a song by Freshomatics - my old surf band.  Marshall was in the crowd as we did a rare reunion show.  I handed the guitar off to Marshall during a break in said song, and to my bandmates' amazement, this person they'd never seen before played lines I wrote better than I ever played them.
I don't really know what most of the Sums are up to nowadays.  Thomas and Josh are in a band called the Order .  Last I heard, Marshall was doing this kind of  Americana folk thing. Mickey moved to Philadelphia (?), Travis... I have no idea!

Pirates of Darkwater

My internet at home is down, so this entry won't be that great!  Pirates of Darkwater were a 2-guitar 1 drummer band from Austin ca. 2004.  To me, they sounded like if the Champs retained a tad more of their independent rock stylings of their second cassette and kept evolving in that direction.  Bryan Richie played guitar, the other guitarist was named Ryan Figg, and the drummer was named Charlie Ciernia.  I'm not sure what other bands Charlie was in, but Bryan went on to be in the Sword and Ryan went on to be in Octopus Project.  They recently had a reunion show, so maybe they'll play more often.

A link to one of their demos that may or may not work
Notice how in this picture I'm holding nothing because this doesn't exist in a physical format!

Damn Near Red

Moving from Williamsburg VA to Richmond VA in the late summer of 1992 was a real culture shock.  Homeless people!  Gunshots!  Left-wing politics!  For me, the biggest difference was in the bands.  In Williamsburg, you'd get a couple of your friends together and play in your parents' garage.  In Richmond, you had to actually be GOOD.  Like, for example, Damn Near Red.
One of the first big shows at the Metro that fall was (I think) Shudder to Think, First 5 Thru, and Damn Near Red.  For some reason I feel like Askance was going to play, but they refused to play a show that cost more than $5.  Maybe it was First 5 Thru that refused.  This completely boggled my young mind.  Why would a band refuse to play a show because it was over $5?  Phrases like "veganism" and "privilege" and "feminism" were completely alien to me then.  Anyway, this guy Brian Moeller (sp) was a blonde art student that wore trenchcoats and went on about the band Damn Near Red.  They typified something called "the Richmond sound" - whatever that was.  I made sure to catch them the next time they played, and was blown away.
I was unaware that bands could have dynamics and contrast and... melodies.  The singer looked like she was born on stage and was singing Latin opera over shoegazery feedback swirls. They had a ridiculously tight yet jarring rhythm section that was just as important as the rest of the band - again, a new concept for me.  I saw them whenever I could and was amazed when I eventually became friends with the bassist and the singer, as I always figured they would be way too cool to consort with the likes of me.  One of my favorite live music experiences was watching them cover Pat Benetar's "Heartbreaker" in someone's basement in front of maybe 30 other people.  Great band.
Some time in the mid 1990's, they recorded with the legendary Mark Smoot:

01 Crusted with Angels
02 Bread of Heav'n or Cutting
03 The Ardent One
04 Full-Throttle Chelsea
05 River Blindness
06 Hey Fabulous
07 The New Onion Persona
08 Regilding the Dome is Brilliant
They also recorded a few songs with David Lowery, but for legal purposes I can not post them.

Placebo

It'd be hard to tell people with a straight face that in the 1990's, there was a music scene in Williamsburg.  Williamsburg, Virginia.  It consisted of maybe 20 people, passionate about writing, practicing, playing, performing, and recording music.  A strong argument for bands in small towns is that there is no agenda other than having a genuine love for what they're doing.  Consider: the Strokes are from New York City.
In 1993, four lads decided to start a band called Placebo.  This was a year or two before... another band happened upon the same name.  Unfortunately for the former Placebo, this was close to a decade before myspace.com existed, so they couldn't legally lay claim to the name. Neale Shaeffer played guitar and sang, Erik Sugg played guitar and sometimes sang, some guy I don't know played bass, and Ian Kruske played drums.
In a way, I'm kind of glad that Placebo didn't get a lot of exposure.  I'm sure that critics would have ripped them apart for sounding too much like Soundgarden or the Smashing Pumpkins.  Keep in mind though, this was before albums like Siamese Dream or Superunknown came out.  Unless you lived in Richmond, VA or (worse) Washington, DC, there was actually a time when it was actually okay to like these bands.  I always thought that their best material was that which strayed from their influences.  You could tell that there was potential there, and sometimes potential in its raw state can be just as rewarding as its kinetic counterpart.

400 Blows

Not long after moving to Austin, I became friends with the band Those Peabodys.  In their travels, they played with a band from Los Angeles called 400 Blows.  They were (are?) a power trio consisting of guitar, vocals, and drums.  That was kind of a 90's thing to not have a bassist in your band (Champs, Sleater Kinney, White Stripes, etc.).  400 Blows differed from the aforementioned bands (and most groups in general) in their complete and utter lack of anything resembling subtlety.  Have you ever seen what a wave form looks like?  The peaks and valleys.  Dynamics.  400 Blows has nothing to do with any of that.  While rendering these tracks, they looked exactly like what they sounded like - solid bricks of sound.
The first time I saw 400 Blows, it was right around when their first full-length came out.  The guitarist looked like he should have been in some kind of army.  The singer was some kind of weird bondagey cop with a half-mic stand and sunglasses.  The drummer was an Asian drum machine in human form.  Their demo remains my favorite output by them, I don't think they've yet to match the power in subsequent releases.  They very easily could though if they'd just turn everything back up to 10.

01 The Bards Must Drink and Junket
02 And the City Never Slept
03 The Bull that Killed the Matador
04 Premature Burial
05 Everything is Easy Now
06 Electric Wilderness
07 The World's Largest Miniature
08 The Flies

Black Squid

I don't really know a lot about Black Squid.  I'm not sure if anyone does.  Their myspace page doesn't seem to reveal much.  Supposedly they're from somewhere called Slobovia or something, but I don't even know if that country exists.  What's even more confusing is that in one of the songs, MC Griest says he's from Germany.  I was once fortunate enough to see them, and that certainly didn't clear things up - both members wore masks and sang along to pre-recorded music, but I got the impression that even the vocals had been recorded earlier.  After the show I tried to talk to them and they kind of shrugged and pretended that they didn't speak English.  What was weird was that later that night I saw them talking to some extremely hot girls, and there didn't appear to be a language barrier.  Maybe the girls spoke whatever language people speak in Slobovia.  They also were drinking out of these strange cans that I'd never seen before - later I found out it was called Gow, and apparently it's only available in rural parts of Lower Slobovia.
Some time around the turn of the century, I was able to get Black Squid a show at the Hole in the Wall in Richmond.  They charged me $15.99 for a burned CD with no cover, but I had a good job then so it was no big deal.  I assumed that the cost was so high because of foreign taxes or whatever, but I couldn't help but feeling like behind their masks, they were kind of laughing at me...

You're Gonna Die (When Black Squid Arrives)
The Death of Billy Sancho
10 Pack o' Gow
MC Griest in the Haus
It's So EZ to Pleez Me
Billy Sancho
Shortlongs and Dirtlips
Mock Yourself

The Sword

In the late 90's, there was a Richmond band that went by the name the Ultimate Dragons.  Initially the band consisted of JD Cronise on guitar/vocals, Ben White on bass, and Trivett Wingo on drums.  After a couple of shows, I was added as lead guitarist, and all was well.  A couple of East Coast tours, a high quality recording, big local shows, and the most important thing - momentum.
After Trivett missed a show that we were scheduled to play with Engine Down, I was given the fun task of kicking him out of the band.  We got our friend Brad to replace him, but it wasn't the same.  Ben moved to California, I moved to Chicago, and JD moved to Austin.  End of story.
Wait, there's more!  We all ended up moving back to Richmond (this happens {knock on wood [I'd really rather not get shot while getting my bike stolen]}) and reformed the band.  I forget whether Ben or JD moved to Austin next, but I ended up following suit.  While there, we started up the band again with Adam from Those Peabodys (now of Bangaar) and Alan from... ummm... I don't know, but he moved away.  This must have been around 2003, when JD gave me this disc of new songs to learn:

01 A Druid's Curse
02 Barael's Blade
03 The Horned Goddess
04 Hammer of Heaven
05 Toadstool Ring/World Below

Not long after this, JD played a solo set along to pre-recorded tracks not unlike what I was doing at the time in my own one-man band.  The first Sword show was just him at Beerland with my one-man band and maybe 15 crowd attendees.
I convinced Trivett to move to Austin to be in my band Funeralizer.  Not long after he did, I found out JD recruited Trivett and Ben to be in the Sword, but with Kyle Shutt instead of me.  This was all fine by me; as I had recently gotten married, had a daughter, was supporting this family by working 40 hours a week, was going to school, was in the band J-Church, and was recovering emotionally from the recent death of my only sister.  If Sammy Hagar himself came up to me, grabbed me by the shoulders and asked if I was ready to rock, I'd have had to say, "Well, in what capacity, the Red Rocker?  I mean, I can rock in a way..."  He'd then have focused his beady, tequila-soaked eyes on me before declaring that there is indeed only one way to rock.  It'd have been cool to have been asked to have been in the band in the same way that it'd have been cool to have been invited to a wedding that everyone knew you couldn't go to.  But I would have had to have said no.

Anyway, Ben was kicked out after their first show and replaced by Bryan Ritchie, and the rest is history.  I'm glad to say that my friendships with everyone have remained intact (except for Alan - what happened to that guy?), and isn't that what's important?  Wait, maybe playing in Eastern European castles opening up for Metallica and making out with Australian supermodels is more important.  No, friendship.  Friendship!

Teenage Dog

I was at a house party somewhere in Austin ca. 2003.  Or was it 2005?  No, 2004.  Some band called Teenage Dog was playing.  They were a pretty decent indie rock band.  It wasn't any kind of religious experience, but I felt compelled enough to watch them and got their CD (though I may have gotten it years later).

For legal reasons, I'm not posting every song.
01 AJ Hidell  This is probably the best song about Lee Harvey Oswald from the last decade.
04 Black President  Oddly prophetic as this song came out in 2004.
07 Hong Kong Chinese
After the show, the bassist came up to me and asked when my band - the Ultimate Dragons - were playing again.  I don't remember if I knew.

A few years later, said bassist started temping at my work.  We became friends out of mutual respect for each others' bands.  She said she had started a new band called Yellow Fever, so I went to see them at Carousel Lounge.  They were a little more minimalist than Teenage Dog and (in my opinion) a bit better.  The trio consisted of the bassist of Teenage Dog (Isabel) on guitar/vocals, a girl from that band I didn't like the Carrots (Jennifer) on other guitar/vocals, and I think the guitarist of Teenage Dog on drums.  Or drum rather, as I think he only really played the snare drum.  They had a great chemistry - especially in the vocal department.  Jennifer had the smooth mid-range, and Isabel had the sparkling highs.  It worked. 
All was well for the next couple of months.  Yellow Fever started getting more and better shows to bigger crowds.  Maybe 6 months into their public career, Isabel moved from Austin to New York.  The remaining members were faced with 3 choices: break up; replace Isabel; or re-form the band with a new member, a new name, and new songs.  They went behind door number 2, which was the trickiest choice.  Their entire sound was based around the vocal harmonies.  The first replacement was a guy named Cole, but he didn't pan out, so they went on as a two-piece.  Which is fine and all, but the songwriting slowed way down and fans (which were increasing with the distribution of their EP) were given a watered-down version when they saw them live.  They continued playing under the name Yellow Fever and writing songs at a fraction of the pace and (in my opinion) a fraction of the quality.  This didn't stop the bigger and bigger shows, and the better and better reviews.  This review came out over 2 years after Isabel left the band.  Pitchfork Media even gave it a surprisingly high 7.2 review.  Again, that review came out over 2 years after the fact.  These are two of many articles and reviews that came out years after Isabel left Yellow Fever and they soldiered on as if nothing had changed.  The band kept playing shows and selling their album for at least 3 years in their diluted form, and for all I know they still are.  Did anyone buy John Oates' solo album? 
That said, the remaining members of Yellow Fever aren't entirely to blame.  Isabel moved away by choice - she wasn't kicked out.  The ethical thing to do would have been to have started over, but early in my career I'd probably have made the same mistake.  And yes, it was a mistake.  Judge for yourself:
Before
After
So here's the thing.  There are people that create music because they HAVE to.  They hear songs in their heads that don't exist, and they can't rest until their angels are exorcised.  Sometimes, the chemistry between two artists creates a work that is more than the sum of their parts - and I'd give the benefit of the doubt to Yellow Fever that that's the case.  That may be unfairly generous to them, as Isabel has since started the band Moonmen on the Moon, Man and toured Europe as a solo artist since moving to New York.  Other people play music for less pure reasons, and history tends to judge them accordingly.

Zulu as Kono

In the summer of 1997, my independent rock band Secret Girlfriends hit the road for a month-long tour of the USA.  A very unwise move, as (a) we had no following - even locally (b) we had nothing released except for a couple of screen-printed t-shirts and some self-made cassettes.  However, like most moves that are considered "unwise", I wouldn't have traded that experience for the world. 
I don't know what it's like any more, but there used to be a time where you could scour the classifieds in the newspaper for a $1000 Ford Econoline, and take your band on tour.  It was hard to spend more than $3 on a full meal at Taco Bell, and gas used to be $1 an hour.  You'd play at a club, or at a house party if you were lucky.  You'd stay at a hotel, or on someone's floor if you were lucky. 
On this particular voyage, one band that really stood out for me was the one we played with in Austin, Texas.  They were called Zulu as Kono.  Our route up to that point took us from Richmond, VA up north, then to the Pacific Northwest, all the way down the coast, and through the desert.  My dad and his wife lived in Austin, so we had a place to stay.  Maybe that had something to do with it, but I felt very at home in Austin.  Lots of like-minded people.  I don't remember where the show was, but I do remember it was at a house party.  I also barely remember Zulu as Kono except for the fact that they either had 2 bassists or 2 drummers or 2 guitarists and played this crazy/controlled kind of mathy Fugazi/Shellac rock.  I talked to someone in the band afterward, and traded information with him and learned that their name (if memory serves) was taken from the credits of an old episode of Hawaii Five O. 
2 years later, Zulu as Kono toured the USA, probably the same way my band had 2 years previously.  I got to return the favor and got them a show at Hole in the Wall at Richmond.  As with our show in Austin, there were maybe 20 people there.  It's crazy to think of doing something like that now... mortgages, car payments, wives, kids, jobs.  Where was I?  Oh yeah, I got their album.

01 Bombastic Bimbo
02 Fig. 98 (Terror)
03 Young Geezer
04 Crackdown on the Cuteness
05 Roosevelt Square
06 Waltzons
07 Damaged Liver
08 Wiseblood
09 Emotional Emotions
10 Hogwobbler
11 La Leche del Diablo
12 Gotta Smoke? (Show the Beer)
13 45 Sec. Wreck
When I moved to Austin in 2001, I saw them I think one more time, then they  broke up.

Lovestain

In the mid 1990's, I had a side project band called 15 on the 15.  We were an unconventional trio - my friend JT played accordion, Patrick played banjo through a distortion pedal, and I "sang" through a delay pedal and played ukelele.  We butchered Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath tunes in front of anyone unfortunate enough to be around.  In order to assuage the stagefright and embarrassment, I was usually on LSD while we performed (something I do NOT recommend).  This is not our story.
One night, we played at this seedy rock club called Twister's on Grace Street in Richmond.  It was next door to a depressing strip club called the Red Light Inn.  The owner was this sleazy guy named Jerry who often wore track suits and always looked as if he'd just gotten out of a bathroom filled with cocaine and underage girls.  In my psilocybin haze I had forgotten to ask Jerry for 15 on the 15's meager earnings, so I went back the next night to collect.  After waiting for him by the door for what felt like an hour and a half, he finally came back with our cut - $18.50.  "Cut" is right.   There were at least 200 people there, at $5 a head.  Oh well, that's show biz.
The headlining band that night was called Claude Zircle.  They were an old glam metal band in the mid 90's.  The door was only $3, and I had recently come into some money, so I figured what the hey.  I ventured inside.
An air of despair hung thick inside the club.  It was completely empty.  There was Sarah, the bartender with the crooked teeth and the cleavage, and the soundguy.  Even Jerry disappeared - no doubt returning to whatever he was probably doing in the employee's bathroom.  The club was so empty that you could smell a faint waft of rancid urine wafting from the bathroom stalls, mingling with the odor of stale cigarette smoke from the night before.  I guess the guys from Claude Zircle hadn't showed up yet, or maybe they cancelled.
The band onstage at the time was called Lovestain, and they may have been one of the worst bands I've ever seen.  They all looked to have been in their mid to late 30's, with their mullets either balding or slightly grey.  The singer wore either leather or vinyl pants that looked like they didn't fit.  They tied a couple of bandanas around their mic stand for some reason, and their backdrop consisted of a worn-out looking bedsheet with the word "LOVESTAIN" hastily spray-painted on it.  Their instruments looked very pawn shop - and not in a cool vintage-y way.  The guitarist had a whammy bar that he overused and one of those awful Crate full-stacks that was almost taller than him.  The drummer wore a pair of headphones over his baseball cap for some reason.  It didn't seem to help, as he was barely able to hold a beat together.  I'm sure they had a bassist, but I have no memory of him.  The singer had kind of a beer gut and one of the songs consisted mostly of him making a bunch of sexual-sounding grunts.  It was gross, especially since I was the only person in the audience.
As odious as they were, my disdain for them was outweighed by my pity.  It just seemed so overwhelmingly sad.  Soldiers battling for a lost cause, that have been at it for so long that they didn't even know what they were fighting for any more.  Were they ever in better bands when they were in younger?  Bands that anyone cared about?  Were they once talented, but their creative spark had been eroded by years of rejection and/or substance abuse - or just years in general?  Would they later go home and have to lie to their wives or girlfriends about the "big gig"?  Worse yet, would they go home alone?  What kind of jobs did they have?
After their set, I felt so bad for them that I asked the guitarist if they had any merch for sale.  For $3, he sold me their demo.  3 songs on an unlabeled, normal bias 90 minute cassette tape, maybe 6 minutes of music.  I used the remaining 84 minutes of the tape to make a Blue Cheer mix.  I still listen to it sometimes when I want to feel better about myself.

01
02
03

Miso

Some time early in the last decade, my friend Nora gave me a CDR with the word "Miso" on it.  She told me it was just one guy up in New York.  After one listen, I knew this guy was going to be a monster.  The next Beck.  No, bigger.
Well...
I don't really have my finger on the pulse of what kids these days are listening to.  It's been like that for a long time.  I can really only speculate why this guy didn't become an international superstar.  It might be because being able to seamlessly go from Britpop to dance to country to folk to punk to metal - while being amazing and impressive to me - is just too much for most people to stomach.  Maybe it happened in the late 1990's, but it seems to me that versatility became more of a liability than an asset.  This makes a lot more sense now in the digital age.  I like garlic.  I like chocolate.  I like sweet potato fries.  I like blueberries.  But I don't necessarily want them all on one plate.
The market value for songs in the past decade has completely bottomed out.  If you have the ability to go to youtube.com, you can hear almost every song that was ever recorded in a studio (and hundreds of thousands that unfortunately have not).  While this is all well and good in the short run, I'm fairly convinced that the world is running out of decent rock songs.  They're like paper clips.  They're everywhere.  You can use the ones that already exist, there's no real reason to make any more (unless you really happen to like bending thin bands of metal {like I do}).  Every album that comes out now is up there against Led Zeppelin IV, and they both cost the same amount (free).  Having all this choice is overwhelming, and in the long run will make us listeners more conservative and less adventurous.  Hell, this week I've listened almost exclusively to Def Leppard. 
Yes, Def Leppard (pre-Pyromania, but still.).
My point is that if this Miso album had come out 10 years earlier, my prediction would have come true.  I guess it doesn't matter.  Maybe if this album had gotten the attention it deserved, it would have compelled the artist to make more like it (or unlike it even).  Artists nowadays aren't given the chance to develop in the same way they did in the 70's and 80's.  This guy was a genius and no one will ever know.  Well, except for you and I.

There's a lot to sort through.  I'd recommend starting with maybe track 10 or 26?   28 cracks me up too.  Oh hell, just listen to them all.
01
05
07

09
10
11
13
14
17
25
26
28
30

Stinking Lizaveta

One night maybe in 1996, I went to the Biograph in Richmond to see this band called Stinking Lizaveta from Philadelphia or somewhere that I've never heard of.  The Biograph was an enormous venue on Grace Street that nobody ever went to.  I don't remember who else played the show, but I remember Stinking Lizaveta.
The guitarist was a crazy-looking Greek leprechaun with a Les Paul that looked twice as large as it should have.  The bassist (his brother) played an upright electric fretless bass - something I didn't even know existed.  The woman playing drums might as well have been John Bonham's twin sister.  They played a style of music called "doom jazz" - very heavy, very complicated, and with a strong improvisational streak.  Sort of like a tighter late-Black Flag instrumental style.  Naturally, I was hooked.  I saw them whenever I could, and once they let me record one of their shows at Hole in the Wall.  Two overhead mics into a 4-track.  It doesn't sound great, but what the hey.

01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
10
11

Another thing about this band is that when I saw them for the first time it was 15+ years ago, and as far as I know they are STILL always touring.  They were old then!

Migas

Migas are easily in my Top Five All-Time Bands in Austin.  They play out about once a year because one of their guitarist lives in the Pacific Northwest.  Once I saw them at Room 710 and the Metal Zone to shirt ratio was two to zero.  I've been drinking and I have people over, so that's as far as this is gonna go.

01 Fred Jackson
02 Space Docking
03 Let's Make Out
04 Sweet Lady
05 The Quad
06 Fangs Vs. Wings
07 Trout

Koro

We all remember our first time.  The hearts pounding in anticipation.  The bodies moving together in unison, faster and faster until... Of course, I'm talking about our first High School Talent Show.  Or in this case, the audition for the High School Talent Show.

February 1992, Bruton High School.  Saturday early afternoon was not a usual time to be at school, but there I was.  My band was auditioning for the Stockwood (get it?) talent show, and I wanted to see the competition.  I was a fan of the band Killing Cycle, and they were trying out, so I wanted to see them.  Also, my friend Erik's band Koro was playing. 
Koro (if memory serves) is the name of a mental disorder where the sufferer has a fear that his genitals are retracting into his body.  Erik Sugg played guitar, Billy Memmoli sang, Dave Flanagan (?) played bass, and Scott Joyner played drums.  They were one of two of the fifteen or so bands that played that had the "home team advantage" - kids that actually went to Bruton High School.  Some of the other bands had members that looked well into their twenties, which in hindsight is very sad.
Now, to put this into historical context, Nirvana's Nevermind album had only come out maybe 4-5 months before this.  Bands like Poison and Warrant were just beginning their final descent.  Williamsburg, VA wasn't exactly Washington, DC - in other words, people weren't really all that hung up on originality.  My band only had about half original material (I justified this in my mind by harkening back to early Jimi Hendrix shows, in which he had about a 50% rate also), and that was considered a fair mix.  Some bands played only covers.  Koro was the only band that played all original songs.  They never had a chance.
It's hard to describe exactly what Koro sounded like.  Fortunately, I don't have to because their recording is here:
Koro Stockwood Audition
One of my favorite memories happened at their performance.  Their drummer, Scott, was just starting out on drums and hadn't yet mastered the art of playing the kick drum.  I kept looking back at the soundman (the late, great Bob Gurske), who seemed completely vexed about something.  During the set, he actually ran up to the drum set to see if the kick drum mic was plugged in.  He must have had the level all the way up, because for part of one of the songs, the kick drum came in and it sounded like a Jovian thunderstorm.  It was awesome.
Anyway, the moral of this story is that while some bands felt it was enough to warble through Eric Clapton's "Wonderful Tonight", Koro took the high road.  Their reward is that you're listening to them right now (hopefully), and virtually everyone else that tried out for - and eventually played - that talent show are wallowing in obscurity.  Except of course for the guy in Killing Cycle.