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.

Ladyfinger

Forgive me if I get a little repetitious here.  I know there's often a story arc on this blog that consists of the following: (1) Boy hears band for the first time and doesn't like it. (2) Years go by and/or circumstances change. (3) Man discovers in hindsight that said band just might have been on to something.  So, you can save yourself some time and skip to the link below to listen, or just go read a better music blog like  Awesome Tapes From Africa.
In the late winter/early spring of either 1994 or 1995, I was at a party on either Main or Cary Street in Richmond.  Some band called Ladyfinger was playing.  Their guitarist looked like a white Urkel and bore the countenance of someone that would rather slowly watch you drown at sea rather than throw you a life raft.  The bassist looked like the kind of girl in High School that was both out of your league and had a better record collection than you.  The drummer supposedly had a childhood accident that made it impossible for him to ever wear a shirt, ever.  They played math rock, but a lot of people did back then.
A year or so later, I got a job at Christie's Cafe and Bakery in Carytown.  It was basically an excuse to hang out with friends and see what we could get away with without getting fired (Once I got my boss to eat a concoction consisting of blended bacon, mayonnaise, and Triple Sec).  I worked in the kitchen sometimes with my friend Chris Wade, and we'd listen to Samhain and such.  He would also put on a Ladyfinger tape sometimes, and I didn't really get into it.

Years and years later, Chunklet magazine posted a long article about Pen Rollings which included the Ladyfinger demo that I heard at Christie's and several songs that I hadn't heard yet that were way better.  Part of it might have been that the ones I hadn't heard had better vocals on them and were catchier.  Unfortunately, they weren't as well recorded as the later material.  Regardless, I still prefer it.  The earlier songs sounded like a punk rock band/metal band whose ideas grew beyond standard 4/4 riffs and had a singer that had an intuitive feel for the music; while the later stuff sounded more complicated for the sake of being complicated with a guy choking into a delay pedal over top.  Not that it was bad at all, just not as... charming.
Oh, I forgot to mention the names of the people in the band.  Ron Dimmick (I've seen his name spelled 4 different ways) played guitar in this band and also was in Sliang Laos - possibly one of the greatest bands of all time (see June's entry on them).  Elisa played bass and is my facebook friend but will probably never read this.  Pen Rollings (drums) was the guitarist in Breadwinner and is in a band called Loincloth.  I bet you $5 he isn't wearing a shirt right now.  Sean Harris (vocals) was in Butterglove and Human Thurma and The Rams.  He is alive and well and tortures various Telecasters in Seattle.
Complete Discography
Lyrics!
And a couple videos:
One Trick Pony
Juan Dominico
Chet

False Sacrament

Hard to believe I'm almost halfway done with this blog!  There are still some issues to be sorted out with file hosting... I like the fact that with fileden, you can click on the songs and they play immediately.  I suppose I could eventually move the songs to a site like bandcamp or even youtube.  I'll worry about that later.
I'm on vacation right now, so this week's band is going to be one I know pretty much nothing about: False Sacrament!  I know that they were around in either the late 80's or the early 90's and they were from out east - Virginia Beach or Norfolk or somewhere.  They also played some incredibly sick jams that sound just as fresh over 20 years later.

Side A
Side B

Nine Years Gone - Ian Kruske (Part Two)

started getting strange.  Ian started keeping odd ours - it wouldn't be uncommon for him to just casually drop by at 3 in the morning.  I guess he was doing a fair amount of LSD - a drug I wouldn't really recommend for everyone.  He'd go through Amusement-Park-Pirate-Ship sized mood swings, and often nobody would know where he was for days at a time.  He seemed to exist on a plane of existence that was oblique to normal people, with their "jobs" and "sleep schedules".  His vocabulary also started expanding in the same mercurial fashion as his consciousness was.  To this day, I have a framed piece of paper he gave me, calling me "the prestidigitational proficient."
Ian was briefly the drummer for the band Sistersound (more on them earlier), but his erratic behavior ended up cutting his stint in that band short.  Eve (their guitarist) said that at band practice, he would sometimes just sit behind his drumset and not even play.  This must have been some time in 1995.  He wrote this essay about his time in that band here.
Later that year, the unthinkable happened: Ian joined the Army.  How someone who would record themselves reciting passages from Buddhist texts and walk the streets of Richmond at night in a psilocybin dream-state could suddenly join the armed forces was way beyond my understanding.  Oddly enough, I thought it might be good for him - maybe he needed a little structure in his life.
Ian's military career did not last very long, but it did seem to have something of a positive impact on him.  He seemed a little more serious.  We didn't talk too much about what happened there, but he did say something about how it was his job to type latitudes and longitudes into computers for bombing targets.  I'm still not sure if he went AWOL.
In the late 90's, Ian lived at the Henry Street Gallery - a converted warehouse with 2 or 3 "bedrooms", a makeshift kitchen and something in the corner that functioned as a bathroom.  It was also a venue for bands to play at.  I had many happy memories watching bands like The Plumbers and Sparky and El Presidente with Ian there.  For some reason, I feel like he didn't live there for too long before moving back to his mom's house in Newport News.  We kind of lost touch, and I moved to Austin. 
My contact with Ian was scarce in the earlier part of the 2000's.  I had heard that he was going to school again and doing really well.  What I didn't hear was that he was feeling more and more suicidal.  If I had known, I would have gotten in my barely-working 1983 Honda Civic and driven up to get him.  Or would I have?  I had just gotten married and had a baby daughter.
I don't remember who told me that Ian had died in February of 2003.  Matt Gross maybe?  John Swart?  It was only a few weeks after my sister died of brain cancer.  I felt like I lost 2 siblings that month.  If you've ever seen that Jimi Hendrix documentary from the early 70's, one of the Ghetto Fighters described Hendrix as a "short fuse" - a description that unfortunately fit Ian also.  Prank calling people with his brother and beat-boxing/rapping "My Adidas" by Run DMC.  Driving from Virginia to Minnesota to meet a girl he only knew online, stealing gas the whole way up.  Writing amazing amazon.com reviews about Qabalism. Working at Busch Gardens and getting caught stealing from the cash register, but somehow getting asked to return the next summer.  And of course, my favorite memory of Ian.  At Burger King, a 15-16 year old Ian asked for "an order of fucking onion rings".  The cashier became enraged, and told him he had to leave.  On the way out, Ian asked for a job application.  Now, apparently by law, Burger King had to give a job application to anyone that asked, so they gave him a job application.  What kind of person knows about laws like that?
5 months before Ian died, he got together with Neale Shaffer and recorded some informal jams.

Ian Plays Piano #1

The next two tracks also feature Jason Strickland on bass.
Rainy Delay Pedal Jam
Yea... is that recording?

Ian Plays Piano #2
Your Angel
Ian Rocks the House