RUSTY METAL PRIMER - "Do Your Own Dishes" 1995

Wow, it's been a long time since I've posted something. I should say that I started this blog while I wasn't working during the summer and had nothing but time on my hands. Time isn't so plentiful now, but I'll do my best to put new content up when I can.

While not technically from Ottumwa, RUSTY METAL PRIMER played Ottumwa often enough to warrant inclusion on this site. R.M.P. were from What Cheer, a small town about 45 minutes north of Ottumwa. I didn't talk to any of these guys then outside of saying "hello" to each other at shows, so I don't know anything about them. Somehow they became aware of what was happening musically here in Ottumwa, befriended Mike and played in his basement on more than one occasion. I remember them being listed on a flyer once as "The Band Formerly Known as the All-American Boys", but maybe that was just something Mike came up with as I doubt they were ever called the "The All-American Boys". Outside of doing a couple of shows with them, I didn't know them, so I really can't add much to their history. Maybe someone from the band will see this and fill in the blanks in the comments section?

This demo (their only release?) was recorded by Mike Hoff in a garage in August 0f 1995. If you listen carefully between the songs and on the quiet parts, you can hear the sound of summer crickets chirping along to the music. The music is planted firmy in the sound of the 90's alternative and grunge and these 9 songs sound really good! It's obvious a lot of work went into rehearsing these songs before recording them.

It was around this time I focused my musical attention outside of Ottumwa and lost touch with what was going on here. Somehow, R.M.P. broke up. I wish I had a juicy story to tell about it, but I don't know what happened. Did Nate or Goose do anything musically after R.M.P.? Beats me... Jason continued on with music and today plays drums for SHE SWINGS, SHE SWAYS, a folksy acoustic band that plays often here in Ottumwa, and elsewhere.

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NORTH OF DEAN - s/t 1995

NORTH OF DEAN was a short lived band from Ottumwa that, to my knowledge, only released this one cassette. Released on the Mighty Feeble Lo-Fi label, Mike and Greg work give us 23 tracks hovering around the genres of punk rock, alternative, indie rock and folk, all done with plently of conviction and charm. Re-listening to this recently, I picked up on a strong fIREHOSE vibe.

I'm not familiar with this project's history, so I'm unable to share any amuising anecdotes about their past. Before North OF DEAN, Mike and Greg played together in GHOOM. Both band shared a similar style, but NORTH OF DEAN is more focused over-all and a better release.

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V/A - "Jack Mackerel Casserole" - C-30 compilation 1995

If you've been downloading the stuff I've upped so far, this post will be a bit redundant. With the exception of some audience noise and a BEEF STEW song, all of this material has been posted already.

"Jack Mackerel Casserole" was assembled as a sampler tape to send out free with orders. I don't remember ever getting one order by mail, so none were sent out as intended. This was a botched attempt at marketing. I don't remember, but I suspect these were probably given away at shows. I don't think too many were made, maybe 25-30. We ordered the shittiest quality tapes we could buy from the Full Compass catalog we ordered our nice tapes from, threw together a crappy cover and made no attempt to make the overall volume level through out the tape even. While ripping this to mp3 just now, I made a small attempt at fixing the volume problem, but it still leaves some to be desired.

Despite what the cover says, this tape features 17 songs from 5 bands:

GRISTLE

GHOOM

UNISEX

THREESKIN

BEEF STEW

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BEEF STEW - "Chung-Ky" 1992

My musical offerings from the 90's were all done with a core group of friends under different band names. At the very beginning there were two bands that made up the majority of these friends, all of whom I would eventually play with, some I still play with today: SPEIL BOX and BEEF STEW. SPEIL BOX recorded some stuff, but never got around to releasing anything. BEEF STEW recorded and released "Chung-Ky" in the winter of 1992, making them the first "real band" from Ottumwa to release something. BLACK MAGIC technicaly were first, but as stated earlier, it wasn't clear A.J. intended for those recordings to leak out. He was an import anyway, so BLACK MAGIC only half counts. BILL BASSETT BAND released their first tape before BEEF STEW, but I'll be the first to admit that B.B.B. wasn't a "real band".

BEEF STEW evolved from DARKFACE & PALEBOY, a short-lived project Spence and Chris did, their only proof of existence being the song "You Know What's Best for You" added as a bonus track on the "Beef Stew Anthology" reissue done in 1994. I wasn't there, so I don't know how it happened, but somehow Brian got involved and BEEF STEW was formed.

BEEF STEW's music was a mixture of metal and punk rock, played by a guitarist with adequate talent, a drummer who was just learning how to play and a singer who wrote songs about the stupidest shit you could think of and screamed it as loudly as possible until it sounded as if his throat would start to bleed. I'm reasonably sure they recorded songs as they wrote them and didn't play them again once they were comitted to tape. "Chung-Ky" was released, sporting an awesome spoken introduction by Chris' mom and creepy keyboard transitions Chris did that he would later flesh out into a full project of it's own, TRIGGABONE.

I remember someone coming up to me in gym class telling me "There's a new band in town called BEEF STEW, and they're going to kick you guys' ass. They're way better than you are", referring to SPEIL BOX. I responded by telling the guy that we weren't in competition with any other bands in town and I didn't care if they were better than us. The story goes that Mike went to one of the members of BEEF STEW and told him that "There can only be one band in this town", insinuating that BEEF STEW should call it quits. To this day Mike denies ever saying anything like this to them, and anyone who'd met Mike would have a hard time believing he would do anything like that, but BEEF STEW retaliated later by recording the song "Only One Band" calling Mike a "fucking baby", complete with simulated crying. Mike and I had a good laugh talking about this on the phone a few months ago.

Shortly after releasing "Chung-Ky", they recorded another 20 songs that were released post-humously on the "Beef Stew Anthology" reissue, then called it quits. SPEIL BOX broke up around the same time. Brian and Spence joined Mike and I and formed a new band - UNISEX, then a year later Brian and I formed THREESKIN with Chris.

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JEFF KOETTEL - "Bar-Nun" 1994

I’ll admit that when this was released I thought it was retarded and I was annoyed by it. Listening to it now, it’s still terrible – but in a charming sort of way. I can only assume this was released because other bands were releasing tapes at the time and Jeff wanted to share his contribution to the scene. Some stones are better left unturned, but I’m flipping this stone over anyway.

Jeff received a karaoke machine for Christmas one year and used it to make fake “radio show” tapes and three tapes of original “music”. Jeff had no training in music at all, couldn’t play any instrument. Jeff could, however, press the “demo” button on a keyboard and sing stupid songs over it, songs about Diet Pepsi, Rex (“where you always pay less”) and whatever else popped into his head. Make no mistake, this stuff is terrible, but it’s a great snapshot of a time that has passed. You can really hear how much fun he was having recording this nonsense.

In 1994, Jeff had a big birthday party at our house and invited a bunch of bands to play there. GHOOM, CITRUS BOY, GRISTLE and THREESKIN all played, but it was Jeff’s party and he was to do a set of his music that evening too. By the time all of the other bands finished playing, most of the audience went home and he ended up playing to an empty garage. I always felt bad about how that went down, like we completely took the wind from his sails that night, but being his older brother – I probably did shit like this all the time and didn’t think much of it.

This is total bedroom / bored-core stuff. Today it would probably be labeled “tardcore”, but when Jeff recorded this stuff he wasn’t listening to anything like this (I don’t remember him listening to anything but Dead Milkmen and Pantera at the time) and came up with all of this crap on his own. Jeff managed to completely rip-off Wesley Willis without ever hearing him.

This is the second of Jeff’s three tapes, I think, and of the three – this is the one where his “musicianship” was at it’s peak. Jeff later went on to play keyboards in SCAT, a doom band that eventually morphed into a thrash metal band, and currently plays drums in BILLY CRYSTAL METH, an instrumental sludge/doom band.

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FORCED EXPRESSION - s/t 7" 1995

FORCED EXPRESSION were a powerviolence/grind band that released three 7”s during their short existence in 1995. Brian and Spence, who had both played together in UNISEX two years earlier, formed this band with Daryl, a transplant from NJ. Nothing this musically extreme had ever existed in Ottumwa before this. They only played one live show, April 28th, 1995.

This 7”, their first, was recorded at Studio 16 Productions here in Ottumwa. It was probably the first and only time the owner/engineer had a request to record a Skilsaw, or a microphone being thrust into a coffee can of broken glass (you can hear both at the end of track #7).

Released on Reek Havoc records in 1995, either 1000 or 2000 copies were made, I don’t know for sure, maybe 30 copies or so were sold in Ottumwa. FORCED EXPRESSION was the first Ottumwa band to go global.

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BILL BASSET BAND - "Juvenile and Boring" 1992-1994

“Drakesville Reunion” was an all day event of bluegrass bands, vendors and loads of Amish people gathered together in Drakesville, IA once a year. In the summer of 1992, Mike and I went with his father and watched probably a dozen or more bluegrass groups play, each sounding more or less the same, blending in with the next and not very interesting for someone like me who grew up listening to heavy metal. Each group consisted of clean-cut, well dressed middle aged people playing on what looked like brand new equipment. This isn’t what I expected bluegrass musicians to look like, so I couldn’t help but to feel a little cheated. Just as I had totally lost interest in what was happening on the stage, this old, grizzled guy with a huge gray beard took the stage wearing bib-overalls and a railroad conductor’s hat, dragging a beat-up upright bass with duct tape on it to fix cracks it sustained from years of abuse. From the strings of his bass were small stuffed animals hanging, swinging back and forth as he played. This was Bill Bassett, an exciting moment in an otherwise boring day.
BILL BASSETT BAND formed that evening after returning home. Mike and I were inspired to start our own band, in hopes of being able to play next year’s “Drakesville Reunion”. Needless to say, this wasn’t something we pursued, but it was enough to get us started.
Starting out in Mike’s music room on the ground level of his house we recorded a few songs, then after waking up his mother, we moved it down to the far corner of his basement. For the most part Mike played guitar and sang. I played percussion on tin cans, pieces of metal, electric fan and whatever else I could find, sang and played guitar on a few songs. We recorded the songs immediately after coming up with a guitar part, the vocals mostly improvised, everything done in one or two takes. We stayed up all night playing and recording songs.
The tape we used for the recording was really shitty, like the worst quality tape you could imagine. Regardless, we thought the songs were pretty funny, so we decided to dub copies of it and give them out to unsuspecting people. “The Gospel According to Bill” was released, each with a unique hand drawn cover at first, later with a photocopied cover. Around 30 copies of this tape were given away, a good portion of which probably ended up in the trash.
We were smarter the next time we recorded and used a new tape instead of one that had been recorded over a dozen times. The “Bill Bassett’s Railroad Hat” and “Bill Bassett’s Cute Little Fuzzy Stuffed Animals Hanging From His String Bass Band” EPs were recorded, but went unreleased. A second release finally came about in the form of the “I Wanna Play at the Drakesville Bluegrass Festival” tape, featuring re-recorded versions of some of the fan favorites and new songs, Mike’s brother Mark joining in on banjo on a few songs. Around 40 copies of this second tape were made.
This “Juvenile and Boring” CDR was compiled by Mike and released on his Mighty Feeble Lo-Fi label. Mike did a good job of selecting the more listenable songs, eliminating the garbage that nobody really needs to hear today. Below is a review of the second tape from Spank Zine (I think it was Spank?) Mike included in the CDR layout.
“Super lo-fi the way it’s meant to be done: a bunch of kids, some boom boxes and a complete disregard for self-censorship. This is total kitchen sink music, including two songs about plankton, two about cigarettes, samples of a Korean acupuncturist, tin can drums, a woodpecker, an electric fan, and shoddy editing. Ahhh, there’s nothing like the mellow sound of a three dollar built-in condenser microphone. It’s obvious that members Andy, Mike and Mark have the time of their lives recording themselves goofing around. Songs like “At Bobby’s House” and “Jumping Rope” are both silly and poignant in a way that reminds me of some of John Prine’s older stuff. Others like “Uncle Bob” and “Jimmy Brown” are utterly inane and devoid of substance, yet pull this listener through because of their sheer ridiculousness. Listening to this album, I feel like I’m hearing a time capsule of these guys as they sail through uncharted musical territory. Their unabashed experimentation and their omnipresent sense of humor paint a vivid picture of these weird individuals as they put together songs about subjects that no one else would want to, using instruments that nobody else would want to use, making music that anyone else might simply dismiss as juvenile and boring. There is simple charm found in this collection of 29 songs that is quite uncommon in today’s self-conscious indie rock world. Kudos!"
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