The Unband - Chung Wayne Lo Mein

I had always intended for this to be a vinyl-only enterprise. But something very unexpected made me change my mind. While I was away, it seems that Anthony Bourdain did a "No Reservations" show about the grittier, working class side of Boston, which we DVR'd while we were away and just got around to watching last night. Tony ate and drank his way through Southie with Mike Ruffino. "Who is Mike Ruffino?" you're probably asking. In fact my wife asked me. And I knew I that I knew that name from somewhere...

He played bass in The Unband, and wrote a book about their wild, excessive, yet low-rent not-quite-rock-star life. These guys were huge in Northampton when I was there in the early 90's, famous for playing (and trashing) the Bay State regularly. I caught them playing at a party in some apartment above Main St. once. Great show. Of course, the cops came and ended it. I think that's how a lot of their shows ended.

Anyway, I picked this up when it appeared in local shops in 1994. The internet will tell you it came out in 1996, but the internet is wrong. It came out on some tiny NoHo label in 1994 before a moderately larger indie label from W. Mass picked it up later. It's incredibly obscure, long out of print and hard to find, and it's one hell of a fun CD. Full of mindless loud fun like "Drop Out!" and "ABCDEFUCK" and of course, their mantra,  "We Like to Drink and We Like to Play Rock n' Roll". So, inspired by that show, and remembering what a little gem this CD is, I figured I'd break my vinyl only rule, and make sure a few more people know who Mike Ruffino is and who the Unband were.

Enjoy!

Steve Westfield & The Slow Band/Scud Mountain Boys Split 7"

A Northampton split single full of slightly twangy slow stuff. Steve Westfield seemed to play the Baystate Hotel regularly. He recruited an all-star band for this single, with Murph from Dinosaur Jr, Lou Barlow, and some guy named Jim Joe Greedy. It's OK, but my hopes were set a bit higher than this.

The B-side features The Scud Mountain Boys, a band that went on to much bigger and better things. Signed by Sub Pop a year or so after this, they released Massachusetts, a brilliant alt-country album that was at least near the forefront of that whole movement. Joe Pernice is still recording with the Pernice Brothers.

There's a personal connection as well. I got to know Scud Mountain Boy Stephen Desaulniers a little bit during my time out there, as he was a housemate of a co-worker of mine, and he lived right down the road. He's the guy in the pine box on the album of that name. I have fond memories of drinking whiskey, playing cribbage and listening to Bill Monroe with him. A lot of what I know about early country music came from him and his housemate, whose name suddenly escapes me.

A: Steve Westfield & the Slow Band, "Sittin' On The Bottom Of The World"
B: Scud Mountain Boys, "Television"
Enjoy!

Zeke Fiddler - Half Baked/Half Inflated

Sick as a dog today.Went home form work at noon and slept all day. Now I'm all messed up.

More local stuff from Northampton. Seems like Zeke Fiddler played at the Baystate Hotel a lot, but for some reason, I never did see him. (Favorite Hotel regulars: Rock Gods From Chicopee. How could they not be great?) This is the other 7" that my old housemate Steve played drums on.

Fairly standard sounding early 90's alt rock. Half Baked is a decent song, though it sounds like someone put Buffalo Tom, Dinosaur Jr and a few other bands from the era into a blender and poured this out, actually you could say that about the other songs here too. Half Inflated's mid-tempo mellowness starts to drag after a while. The whole thing ends with a short, fuzz-drenched instrumental.

A: Half Baked
B: Half Inflated, Brave Doorman
Enjoy!

Hair Volume

Another Northampton band with housemate connections. One of the guys from this band, Joel, would come over and hang out with housemate Bernie quite a bit. Joel was a nice guy, but man, was he strange. The guy just exuded weirdness in just about every possible way. So when I heard that his band had cut a 7" EP, I ran out and got it, because I just had to know what this was going to sound like. It could be great, could be crap, or somewhere in between, but I knew that underneath it all, it would be weird.

And it did not disappoint. That's Joel doing the ranting on "Clock Song" and the spoken word/shouting bit on "Grandma", a song that features a repeating chorus of

Hey Grandma,
We're underground
In the sewer...

And as soon as this song is done, they go into a very jazzy sounding jam-band-like instrumental. It's kind of a scattershot mess, but they aren't exactly bad. Just weird.

A: Clock Song, He Likes Me
B: Grandma, Hadley #
Enjoy!

Frances Gumm - Subtraction

The old housemate's band. Saw them as part of that weird triple bill with Mecca Normal and Lungfish. Steve was in a grad school program at UMass for poetry/creative writing. He was also a really good drummer. Anyway, Steve and Bernie kicked me out after 7 or 8 months or so, leaving me a month to find a new place. I found one, but it sucked, and I wound up with some less than desirable new housemates out of desperation. I got a lot out of living with Steve, he turned me on to a whole lot of new music, including Slint, which was cool. Despite the shittiness of his throwing me out of the house, I still bought a couple of 7" that he appeared on at Main St. Records. This is one of them.

The music? Fairly standard, slightly arty indie rock from the early 90's. 
 
A: Out On The Prairie, Subtraction
B: I Know What I Know
Enjoy!