5 posts tagged “baltimore”
I have previously written about my dear friend, the late Mark Harp. Mark's band Null Set brought postpunk to Baltimore; when another band called Null Set, from another city, put out a record, Mark's Null Set changed their name to Cabal. The singer for Null Set and Cabal was Bill Dawson; after Cabal broke up, he teamed up with George Hagegeorge to form Black Pete and play guitar-charged industrial music in the vein of Ministry and Skinny Puppy. They put out one twelve-inch in 1989, recruited an apparently substance-addled young glam-metal dude as their "bassist" (though it was speculated that his real role was to get into fights and thereby gain "cred" for the band), and folded shortly thereafter. I missed my window for getting a copy of the record back then, but thanks to the Internet and GEMM, the window is open again. I found a copy and ordered it (from a dealer with multiple copies), and it arrived yesterday. The A-side is a cover of Mountain's "Mississippi Queen"--
Coincidentally, on the same day, Ministry released their supposedly final album, Cover Up, a collection of covers of classic rock tunes, one of which is... can you guess? That's right, "Mississippi Queen"--
That last part of this version (one of eight they recorded) has the best bass-drum workout since Steam's 1969 hit and perennial stadium favorite "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye"--
I would have loved Cover Up in 1990, perhaps as late as 1995. Maybe if I pretend it's a reissue, or long-suppressed recordings just released from the vault!!!, I'll like it better.
Finally, wouldn't it be funny to refer to Laibach as Audioslav?
My old chum Platters That Matter Records just had a great batch of records on ebay; it was unsold stock from legendary Rockville record store Yesterday and Today, much of which was in turn unsold stock from Baltimore's legendary Music Machine (which closed up first). Y&T was owned by Skip Groff, who was also the man behind Limp Records, and who still runs a web-based record store under the Y&T name. (Y&T also employed Platters That Matter Records for a while in the 90s; circle of life, etc.) I never shopped at Y&T much, because I lived in Baltimore during my college years. I did shop at Howie Horowitz's Music Machine religiously: every Monday I would pick up my weekly grocery check from my mom, cash it, and drive out to Howie's to spend it on British imports. Howie was great, he took special orders and got just about anything I wanted, if not through his normal suppliers then on one of his regular trips to England. Even so I couldn't buy everything I wanted, so I just picked up five records that I missed back then. The first is A+B=C, a five-song EP from Baltimore-area "new wave" band Growing Up Different circa 1983. I put "new wave" in quotes because they sound like AOR musicians playing AOR songs on synths and calling it "new wave," and that's exactly what they were. After the demise of regional AOR giants Face Dancer, the rhythm section of Billy Trainor and Scott McGinn hooked up with keyboardist D.J. Long to form Growing Up Different. It's not bad, it's probably typical of a lot of older (i.e. 30-ish) musicians in a lot of cities trying to adapt to a new musical style in those days. "Stare Back In Silence" is certainly competent synthpop, cheesy electronic toms and all:
The Glory Daze AOR website has an exclusive three-part interview with Billy Trainor about the history of Face Dancer and its incarnations over the years, the most recent being in 2003. Here's what he has to say about Growing Up Different:
After we put FD to rest, Scott and I started experimenting around with electronic music and had a pretty cool very 80's kind of band for a while. It actually became quite popular, and we got a singles offer from a record company in England. Like the dumb asses we are, we held out for an album deal in the US which never came about.
A+B=C was released by CES Records, "A Division of CES Talent, Inc." Locally only, I presume. I did see Growing Up Different once, at DC's fabulous, now-defunct Wax Museum. They were the opening act; I can't remember exactly who the headliner was, but I think it was either Men Without Hats or the Eurythmics. (That's right, I went to a Men Without Hats concert.) They were all right; they had some pretty cool equipment and played a tight set. I'm glad to finally have this audio souvenir.
Speaking of Baltimore accents (as I was in my last post), the best exaggerated Baltimore accent ever recorded is in 98 Rock's Twisted Tune, "Walkin' in an Essex Wonderland." (Though Mrs. Veneer claims she's heard more extreme Baltimore accents in real life.) Two hallmarks of the Baltimore accent are the i's and o's: pronounce a long "i" as "ah" and a long "o" as "ayo" and you're halfway there. Sprinkle your sentences with "hun" and you're even closer. Thus you get "bingayo" and "Arn Maiden":
Essex sits on the southeast side of Baltimore, its landscape dominated by the twin golden domes of the Back River Wastewater Treatment Plant.
While Essex is singled out in the song, it could also apply to several
other blue-collar, predominantly white neighborhoods of long standing
in and around Baltimore. Dundalk, Highlandtown (that's "Hollandtown" to natives), Hampden, and Glen Burnie come to mind. If you happen to live in one of those places and you're reading this, I'm not laughing at you, I'm laughing with you, at your neighbors.
I read today that Alberto Fujimori, former President of Peru, was just convicted of abuse of power, the first in what should be a string of convictions. But that just reminded me of my dear friend Mark Harp, who in his final years was the self-styled King of Peru. In fact, nearly every day something reminds me of Mark; just a few days ago he figured in my post on Vigil. I met Mark when I was 17, a freshman in college. The campus radio station, WJHU, had a marvelously liberal policy regarding on-air staff: you didn't have to be a student, or even affiliated with the university at all! Mark was a so-called "community member" of the radio station. I got to know him when I graduated from the 3-6 AM timeslot into 1-3 AM; he came on after me. He scared me a bit at first, because he was a big, ugly guy. But he was incredibly friendly and his enthusiasm for music was unbounded. Every week he brought a mind-blowing case of records into the studio with him, and I would often stick around for an hour or two just to hear them, and what he did with them. Mark's ecumenical taste in music opened my eyes to so much that I had ignored until then, so he is probably more responsible than anyone else for broadening my own musical world. Mark was also a musician, and was the driving force behind Baltimore's first (?) post-punk band, Null Set. That was slightly before my time, but for a first-hand account of the Null Set years, see Pam Purdy's remembrance in the Baltimore City Paper. For this post I'm going to skip ahead to 1988, when Mark and his musical partner Mike DeJong wrote a song about a guy they met in Frederick, Maryland. They took a trip from Baltimore to the central Maryland town one day and were surprised to find "weird" records in the record store (Mother's) at the Francis Scott Key Mall (a.k.a. The New Mall). They met the guy responsible for stocking the weird records, Jason, and they became friends instantly. Mark and Mike wrote a song about Jason in classic call-and-response format: Mike makes statements about Jason, and then Mark qualifies them (and for you linguists and cultural anthropologists, Mark has the finest Baltimore accent ever recorded):
What makes this song significant to me is that, coincidentally, I already knew Jason through a completely different route: he was the housemate of my girlfriend's brother (yet another record-selling dude). In 1991 there was a big multi-band show at the Lithuanian Hall, featuring several of Mark's bands and his friends' bands, a remarkable gathering of Weird Baltimorea. Jason was there as a member of Mark's "Timmy" project, and it was there that I met Jason's wife for the first time. A little over eleven years later, she became my wife! (And with no hard feelings.) Mark died in December 2004; Jason still sells records as a co-owner of The True Vine; GF's brother still sells records and now blogs here on Vox as Platters That Matter Records; I no longer sell records and am thankful for that every day; and Mrs. Veneer takes wonderful care of me and our assortment of children, for which I am also thankful every day, and which in some sense I owe to Mark, whom I will never forget.
One Baltimore-area band to almost hit it big in the 80s was Vigil; I think they were actually based in Glen Burnie. The quartet of Jo Connor, Andy Reynolds, "X Factor" and Gregg Maizel had gained a local following under the moniker "Here Today," releasing a 12-inch single of "Whistle in the Yard," an enigmatic, gothic-tinged song that never quite resolves. I saw Here Today at the Wax Museum in Southeast D.C.; that was a cool venue, with what is now called "stadium seating" but back then was just called "seating." In its brief existence I got to see several great shows there: Eurythmics, Thompson Twins, Root Boy Slim, New Models, and Men Without Hats (eh...) to name a few. Actually, I think that's all I saw there. Here Today was the opening act the night I saw them, and I don't remember who the headliner was, but it was one of the bands I just listed. As for Here Today, their Wikipedia entry says they
signed to CBS records, changed their name to Vigil and were promptly dropped. Vigil was quickly signed by Chrysalis Records and recorded their debut lp in glorious digital. It came out and sold enough copies to allow them to record another lp but only one track was officially released "Therapist" on the Nightmare on Elm Street 4 soundtrack. They recorded their eponymous debut album on Chrysalis Records in 1987. As of 2007 it is out of print.
Before the debut album came out there was a 12-inch single of "I Am Waiting." That song is pretty good, but it was the first song on the B-side, "I Love You Equinox," that got played on WHFS and created a buzz. When Jo Connor sings, "You can set your watch by her cycles 'cause she bleeds like clockwork," don't get grossed out, because it turns out he is singing about the moon, so it's OK, see?
That song always reminds me of Rush for some reason. The Vigil CD was a big deal because it was one of the first rock albums to have been recorded and mixed digitally, so it got the elusive DDD label on the back. I never got the CD, though, just the vinyl LP and the 12-inch; this is a rip from the 12-inch.
As for the second album, the Vigil MySpace page (on which you can hear "Whistle in the Yard") notes: "Eventually the second album was released on cassette only as Onto Beggar and Bitter Things." The band released it themselves when the record company wouldn't. I saw a copy once, my friend Mark Harp had it, but I never heard it! I sure hope that turns up on a sharity blog someday. Jo Connor is still making music, and has his own MySpace page as well.
Vigil must be in the zeitgeist right now, a 1986 live performance of "I Love You Equinox" has just shown up on YouTube, recently enough that I was viewer number 7:
Hey, there's "Whistle in the Yard," too!
I was viewer number 3 for that one.
And there's more! Its a veritable Vigil bonanza!
