August 25, 2011

L.Sid.......... from Mercury to Jupitah


Dedicated to Markus's family and friends.















From the first time I met Markus, I was affected. "Wuuauoah," I wish there were a way to put that voice onto paper. -Therese Joy Madden

When Markus moved into our flat on Valencia Street he livened it up with his kaleidoscopic spirit.  He wore a furry vest and knickers and whatever pattern or color happened out of the laundry.  He said he didn't believe in colors not matching, and he mixed three or four different types of cereal in his bowl every morning. We had fun times that year. We didn't know he was coming apart at the seams, except that he occasionally woke up in the middle of the night screaming bloody murder because one of his arms had come out of its socket, or he'd be vomiting so loudly that he rivaled the Fog Horns in San Francisco Bay.

Markus Cook was more than a fixture on the San Francisco bike messenger and music scene.  He was an organizer and a mobilizer with resounding vocal chords that needed no help from a bullhorn.  He had an infectious personality and an irrepressible drive to build community among the people he touched, from shared meals at our little Mission flat, to mass bike rides in SF, to global messenger solidarity.  He published a zine of bike messenger writing called Mercury Rising and was a major force in the creation of the SF Bicycle Messenger Association, which, short of a union, was able to create some unity and advocate for the thousand or so couriers pedaling the streets for a living.
How about hosting the next Bike Messenger World Championships here in SF in the summer of '95? Wouldn't it be cool to get to know messengers from everywhere?  It's going to take a couple of dozen people who are ready to take on a major project for the next year-and-a-half, and a lot more people to help out later.  Though I'm still reeling from CMC '93 and L.Sid's Berlin to Berlin Tour, I'll gladly join the effort if it comes together.  I think this town needs to be overrun by a thousand bike-freaks as much as our world-wide tribe needs to be solidified by another gathering. -Spokes, by Fur (Markus), Mercury Rising, December 1993
As I lay drugged and listless in my bed at General the day after my shoulder surgery, my roommate came in and told me he had just seen a group of Western Messengers on their way to visit a fallen sister who had her pelvis broken by a car.  Damn, we keep those hospitals busy.  This got me thinking about what the SFBMA is and what it could be.  We spend thousands every week at the same few bars. If a couple hundred people siphoned off a mere 5 bucks a month and dumped it into some kind of emergency fund thing, that would be $12,000 a year, to help people and invest to keep our fund going.... Might work, I dunno... could strengthen the messenger community in a variety of ways.  - Spokes, by Fur, Mercury Rising August 1994
San Francisco Bike Messenger Association: Broken Bones Fund

L.Sid was another outlet for Markus's philosophy and unstoppable energy, with its mashed up confusion of musical styles, instruments, and pseudo-political, absurdist, sci-fi subject matter.  Just like all of his activism, Markus was a key organizer, but never dominated the action.  He pulled everyone together and created a vehicle for each person to shine at what they did best, to the benefit of everyone involved.  He'd go boinging around the stage while the band diverged into stratospheric jazzy solos, occasionally barking lyrics and props to his bandmates.  He surely vied with James Brown for "hardest working." At one show he was flailing around the stage and suddenly fell screaming after dislocating his arm (again).  After a rush to the emergency room to get it popped back into place, he was back on stage to finish the set within the hour.

L.Sid released Alive 1995 on cassette, complete with intergalactic radio interference; from a show at the Covered Wagon Saloon. Sunflowerz is from a studio session at Mindfield, included on Pothole, an SF bike messenger band compilation.
Photo by Bluoz






Sadly, Markus died of a heroin overdose on January 3, 1996 after struggling for several months to to get clean.
Markus Cook was a politician, a poet, a great orator, and a loyal friend. As far as 'front men' go, I would put him right up there in the same category as David Byrne, Iggy Pop, and Joe Strummer. I recall one day, we climbed up on a giant billboard near Bernal Heights, and shared some 'medicine' and philosophical talk. At one point, he looked down on the panorama and said, "Someday...I'm gonna miss all this."
Moral: Live every day as if it were your last. 

Rest in Peace, brother.  -Jack Chandler
With The Germ at KUSF

L.Sid 1994-96
Markus Cook - Vocals and Guitar
Jack Chandler - Sax
Chad - Sax
Timmy Hesla - Baritone Sax
Carl Prescott - Guitar and Trumpet
Lou "Luigi" Decolator - Drums
Billy Wig - Bass

Earlier members:
Adam Kahan - Bass
Matt Broiler - Guitar

Jack played in The Wellsprings of Hope and Tim Hesla's Big Band and currently plays in Ice Age Jazztet. Tim played in Necropolis of Love and The Wellsprings of Hope, and his Big Band of course. Chad was a founding member of Polkacide and currently plays in The Gallimaufry Orchestra. Billy was previously in Boston's Hell Toupée. Carl is playing with Smokestaxx and Montalban Quintet. Adam later formed Orson County Line.  Luigi played in Derailleur and The Converse All Stars. I just learned that he died in a house fire in 2009.

More info from Sector L:
Here's the full Alive 1995 cassette posted on It Crawled From the Vault (Thanks Bluoz!)
An extended article about Markus in SF Weekly: Mercury Falling
Moving Target Magazine: Messenger Hero #4
Moving Target Magazine: The Markus Cook Memorial Award
Video interviews with Markus
Messenger Memorial: Markus "Fur" Cook
Messenger Memorial" Lou Decolator "Luigi"
To My Little Brother,
This wasn't supposed to happen. Your life was not meant to end this way, this soon. This was not your destiny. There are too many things you still have to do.... And I'll never understand why....       
- Kim Camille Cook


August 22, 2011

Noise Fest with Helsinki 5 and RAW .........................(Lancaster 1982)

Dear Mr. Tapewrecks:

For years,  I made the case (albeit only in rambling discussions with myself) that The Real Gone were the first 1980's underground punk/garage band in Lancaster to write and perform primarily original material, and therefore should be credited with starting the true underground Lancaster music scene of the 1980's. The Bodies didn't really count because they were largely a cover band, but let's give them an honorable mention.  The Sharks and other Village New Wavers (besides being a bad joke as far as I was concerned) were just part of the Pennsylvania Musician cover band scene, except they did U2 covers rather than Molly Hatchet covers. 

So all along, I figured the history went something like this:
Couriers/Shaynes (1966/67) --> The Great Void of the 1970s ---> The Bodies (1981) ---> nothing ---> The Real Gone (1985) ---> Nobodys Fools/Kirk and the Jerks/Jack Lord's Hair/Substitute (1986) ---> You know the rest, for better and worse.

However, when you asked about the Bodies a few weeks ago, I got curious, searched around and found out about a band called the Helsinki 5 and some F&M-based bands from 82-83 that involved a fellow named Ted Adams, some other F&M and Lancaster people, including a future Pavement member[Mark Ibold], and ...our pal Paul Barros! [proprietor of Alexia Books]        -Rustle Noonetwisting

......................................................

May 2, 1982 was a relatively strange Sunday in Lancaster, PA. 


Bob Yokum, a DJ on Franklin and Marshall College's radio station, organized "Noise Fest" with featuring several college bands a local group of teenagers called Helsinki 5.
Al Boyd: The Noise Fest, I recall, was held at F & M in Spring of 1982. I'm not sure how we got invited to play there, but I think it had something to do with knowing Pancho and Ted, who were F & M guys that happened across us and liked our "music." It was a bizarre evening and I remember that this may have been our first show in front of an actual audience. We brought a significant amount of jelly beans and ended up eating them as well as tossing them at the audience. That was a smart thing to do (not), but I guess part of our shitty teenage attitude at the time, from having listened to the Pistols, the Clash, Black Flag, and the Dead Kennedy's with a bit too much frequency. 
I think our set lasted no more than thirty minutes...at that time we may have only had six or eight "songs", which consisted of 1. turn on the drum machine, 2. pick a beat, 3. act like you're playing guitar and bass, 4. sing/talk the vocals. I recall being applauded...I guess the audience didn't know any better. 



Helsinki 5:
Bill Allison - Vocals
Al Boyd - Guitar and homemade synthesizer
Joe Wood - Guitar
Joe Wood: There was one problem, none of the three had any musical background, save the odd piano lesson when we may have been eight years old. What Bill, Al and Joe were able to put together was a clashing cacophony of noise, which prompted Joe's mother to comment that "it sounded like music coming from the frozen tundra."
...the name "Helsinki Minus Five Below Zero" was suggested by Bob Yocum. He had thought of the name while reading world weather reports from a teletype machine. Helsinki -5° was born.
The May 2nd show features H5 at their rawest moment...as the three band members present the music in a disjointed cacophony of clashing music. This tends to happen with you have three musicians all trying to lead, not listening to each other, and playing what is best described as three different songs at the same time. 
Do the Todd
About F.A.C.E. (Lies)
Vinyl Graveyard
Al Boyd:  I think we kind of came in to our own when we played a show at Tom Paine's Back Room some time later.... Our Gang of Four influence was really on display, and that's the musical direction that I had always envisioned, since we were all pretty versed in the injustices of the world at that point and had a healthy disrespect for our government.  I think that was my last show and Bill and Joe carried on the group in some form or another when Joe moved to Philly and attended Penn University.
Joe Wood: Helsinki 5's third and final live performance took place on October 30, 1982 at Tom Paine's as the opening act for Philadelphia's The Impossible Years.  Bill came down with a severe cold and was unable to appear on stage. This led to the temporary addition of Bob Yocum on bass and Pancho on guitar, with Joe filling in on lead vocals. Bob and Pancho's musical abilities proved to show that Helsinki Five's melodies actually had potential. Especially since Bob and Pancho musically played with each other as opposed to H5's normal practice of playing against each other. 

 ...................................................



RAW:
Ted Adams
Pancho Artecona
Pete King
Paul Barros
Paul Barros: We began, if I remember right, by spray-painting three t-shirts, each with an individual letter to spell out RAW, which we'd wear when we played (if we changed positions, we could also spell WAR - but of course, that name had already been taken).

I know that for Noise Fest we prepared some backing tapes that we were going to play along with for some of the songs. Some technical problems kept the tapes from being audible to the audience or us. Ted played drums and guitar, Pancho played guitar, I did what I could with some individual drums, clarinet and assorted percussion things (maybe even harmonica). At some point, Pete King and Bob Yocum joined us for a couple of songs. The event itself was great. Helsinki 5 were especially good. Pete King, Bob Yocum (who'd both played together in 1.3) were involved in Aerlingam, R. Mutt and Dr. Benway. Dave McKinney (who had played bass in 1.3) was also involved in one or the other of these two bands. One of them played behind a canvas on which was projected a film....
Advertisement
Andy Griffith Theme
Larry Knowlton Lives at 122 Lampeter Road

After RAW, Ted and I were in a band called OSS (also included Josh Roberts, Bob Yocum, Tim Finefrock)...  
Ted Adams: These "bands" were in large part an excuse to do some underage drinking and make noise. Some of the musicianship is rather poor because we took turns on instruments we didn't know how to play.
More info and music by Helsinki 5 from Joe Wood
More info and music by RAW from Ted (E.C. Adams Photography & Art)
Thanks to Nathan Pease for posting the flyers.

If you were around Lancaster in those days and remember the bands, clubs, music stores, record labels, or any other part of the scene, please help us salvage that history!

August 10, 2011

Street Music of Java

I borrowed Street Music of Java on cassette from the San Francisco Public Library in the early 90s and I was so taken with it, that when I went traveling in Mexico and Central America a few years later I took a tape recorder with me instead of a camera and collected La Música Callejera.  Those voices and guitar melodies just socked me and helped confirm that the power and beauty in the music that I most love doesn't require an expensive recording studio to bring out.  And the noise of the street pushes these tracks over the edge into the sublime.

Hai Cium Dong (kroncong batawi)
Jasli Jali (kroncong)
Asoi (kroncong)
Kuda Lumping (dangdut)
Ing Ing (langgam jawa)


This tape is way out of print, and my cruddy dubbed copy is just about worn out, but I found the whole thing up at End(-)Of(-)World Music and Maemaipleng writes it up with a lot more knowledge than I could: 
Released in 1990 by the label Original Music, Street Music of Java is an joyous romp through various infectious forms of music played by small street ensembles in Java. Not all the styles are strictly Javanese but the music consistently fun and beautifully performed, full of hoarse female voices, scratchy violin, buoyant drumming. There's also plenty of that very Indonesian-sounding guitar playing.... often sort of a blend of old Portuguese colonial influences with kacapi playing.

Featuring various ramshackle forms of familiar Indonesian popular and folk styles, each song on this compilation feels like a hit single albeit minus any studio frills. You'll hear the Bollywood-informed dance music known as dangdut whittled down to an acoustic ensemble with near-shouted vocals, replete with gleeful outburst of laughter. There's also some languid keroncong (very Portuguese-sounding) numbers with enough of grit to them to differentiate them from the myriad adult-contemporary recordings of keroncong out there. Dry throated crooning voices sing sweetly weaving themselves "pitchy" yet quite ornate violin lines, atop the trademark interlock plucked parts.

The highlight for me is the folksy dangdut track "Kuda Lumping". With a lilting bounce in the drums, the loosely-strung twang of a cheap guitar and tambourines offer some rapid rhythmic propulsion. Meanwhile the shrill squawking vocals dance along the line of the song's ridiculously catchy and playful melody. Strangely I'm left with the thought that you could almost hear an Indonesian version of the Slits covering this song plugged-in!

August 4, 2011

James T. Rao's Tape Recorder Microcosmos

Microcosmic Rule #1 - Many things sound better played backwards.

Electric Fish Life 1
For Evergreen House

If you search "James T. Rao" on the Internet you'll find a chemistry professor in Hyderabad, India, and a few cassettes on a Wiltshire, UK tape label by some inexplicable citizen of Connecticut, USA. We are concerned with the latter James T. Rao.  He's been recording songs in his bedroom since at least the mid-80s and, despite remaining almost completely unknown, somehow got hooked up with Acid Tapes in the UK and put out a half dozen albums on cassette.  More recently he's shown up as Jim Rao and Orange Cake Mix, but he's remained reclusive despite releasing a steady stream of music.

Microcosmic Rule #2 - Sing about your vegetable garden a lot (but stop short of gnomes).

 
Tao Window

This is where I just deleted several lines referencing other well-known artists of the past, but the list started getting long and pompous, so let's just say you might find some obvious comparisons here. Enjoy them! Rao's songs might sound somewhat derivative at times, but in such an unassuming way, that you can hardly gripe about it. Each cassette has common threads that run through the tracks that transform them into cohesive albums; not just collections of songs.

Microcosmic Rule #3 - Wear out the knobs on your tape recorder by interstellar overdriving the tracks back and forth.

 

Fragments of a Soundtrack Mind
Indian Smoke Ring
Be There Then
What Will Happen Now
Treehouse




She Always Dreams Without Me
Taking Pictures of Broccoli
Just a Feeling
Dreams for Sail


Okay, so that was a reference. I couldn't help myself.  Wearing headphones while listening to a James T. Rao tape makes you dizzy.  There are nice trancey numbers with collaged song fragments, overdubbed random spoken words, and sound effects. Those pre-digital sloppy tape cuts between songs and sounds may have been accidental at the time, but have become an elemental effect of the 80s home recording underground. The last tape is two albums in one, put out by Root Beer Floats as their first (and possibly last for all I can tell) release. It came on a recycled cassette with a few super pop songs that that jump right up into your face out of all the reverby, psychological veggie soup.

Microcosmic Rule #4 - There are no rules in the Microcosmos of James T. Rao.

Jim Rao is still recording and releasing music as Orange Cake Mix.

Thanks to Rustle Noonetwisting for lending me these tapes.