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