Not the Bees! are from Jersey City, New Jersey. They are Joe, Jon, Steve, and Mike. Their unassuming self-description is “Rough around the edges melodic DIY punk from North Jersey. For fans of Jawbreaker, Hot Water Music, Crimpshrine, etc.” and they are exactly spot on. Unassuming, but self-assured, and this is evident all over their new EP Another Hour to Burn (GTG057). They’re doing a release party on August 17th at River Grille in Chatham, NJ, and the disc will be up in the GTG store shortly thereafter. Until then… listen to it on bandcamp! We’re really excited about this one!
Mostly local shows – cos we’re all in the studio and working on new songs and all of that awesome stuff! So.. stay tuned!
July 12th – Narc Out the Reds, Hat Madder, Calliope, Cost For Living @ The Garage (Lansing, MI) July 13th – The Plurals @ Augustine’s (Lansing, MI – House Show) w/ MindGuards, Leper Colony, and Racket Ghost! (Michigan Rock N Brew Fundraiser) July 13th – (also, slightly later!) The Hat Madder acoustic set @ Mac’s Bar (Lansing, MI / Wallflowers after party) July 14th – Stargazer @ (SCENE) Metrospace (East Lansing, MI) w/ Cold Mountain Child, Nate Z July 20th – Frank and Earnest (Bruce Springsteen Cover Set) @ The Loft (Lansing, MI) July 21st – Honah Lee @ Champ’s (Trenton, NJ) w/ Local Demise and Idiot Boy (so many GTG friends on this bill!) July 29th – Honah Lee @ Mill Hill Basement (Trenton, NJ) w/ Decades (ex-Jason Alarm, more GTG friends!) August 3rd – The Plurals/ Frank and Earnest @ GTG House (Lansing, MI) (GTG Records fundraiser! We’ve got a lot of great releases coming up and if you want them to come out sooner rather than later come out to this show and partake in the fun!)
Slight sidenote, check out this link to listen to a Long Beach, California based radio show called Demo Schmemo. The link in question features the July 3rd episode the featured, among other bands, The Plurals, Honah Lee, Drinking Mercury, and Calliope. The show is every week on Tuesday from 6-7 Eastern Time AKA 3-4 Pacific Time, etc etc, streaming live at kbeach.org.
Well we’ve all started to have that undeniable feeling of peeling our putrid bodies from our bedsheets in the morning, meaning that summertime is rapidly upon us. Here’s a few things going on this month:
June 2nd – Hat Madder tour homecoming show at GTG House (Lansing, MI) w/ Frank and Earnest
June 8th – Honah Lee w/ Not the Bees, Mad Anthony at Legion Hall (Warren, NJ)
June 16th – Honah Lee at Art All Night w/ Cryptkeeper Five, more (Trenton, NJ)
June 22nd – The Plurals w/ Oh My God (“classic” trio lineup) at Mac’s Bar (Lansing, MI) June 23rd – The Plurals – somewhere in Ohio or PA?!?!?!? Get at me if you have leads on somewhere we can play.
June 24th – The Plurals w/ Honah Lee and City Mouse at The Carpenter Workshop (Morrisville, PA)
June 25th – The Plurals w/ Honah Lee, City Mouse, and Scarier Area at Kung Fu Necktie (Philadelphia, PA)
June 28th – The Hat Madder w/ City Mouse, Lazy Genius, Invisible Mansion at Mulligan’s (Grand Rapids, MI)
June 29th – The Plurals w/ City Mouse, Lipstick, The Fur Coats at Township (Chicago, IL)
June 30th – Hunky Newcomers w/ City Mouse at Firehouse Pizza (Normal, IL)
There are several shows on this list with City Mouse, as you may or may not have noticed. These recent and future Plurals tour mates are on a full national tour with dates listed here. They are highly recommended.
Frank and Earnest and Hunky Newcomers will be in the studio this summer to churn out some full-lengths. The Hat Madder record is done, hopefully out around late summer. Honah Lee is working on a 7-inch. Drinking Mercury has plans for an EP. Stargrazer has two full-lengths in progress. The Plurals will be doing another west coast tour in August (with a full east coast/ south tour hopefully to follow in the fall). Oh my. What are we going to do to contain our excitement?
I spent six weeks from the middle of March to the other day living out of a van with Hattie and Nich, playing shows all over the western United States. It all goes by in a blur; while I’m on the road I forget what the everydayjob life is like – when I get back home I wonder if I imagined the whole thing. Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nebraska, Colorado, South Dakota, Montana, Washington, Oregon, Nevada, California, Arizona, Arkansas, Kansas, Illinois… this is where I’ve been? It went back and forth from summer to winter, mountain to desert to near tropic, depending on where we were, and today I struggled with brutal wind on a Michigan April day. We played in a damp warehouse, an immaculate cafe, the semi-abandoned gift shop to a cave tour, legendary all ages punk venues, living rooms of houses, and a wide array of “watering holes” both ritzy and well dived to everything in between.
I woke up from a half-sleep state in the passenger seat to the sound of “To Hear Knows When” by My Bloody Valentine at the exact moment the sun crested over the horizon on an early Arkansas morning. I stood on the shores of Lake Tahoe with friends that I had just met days earlier and people that I’ve known and shared my greatest experiences with since we were teenagers. Every day we made new friends that were hard to leave but brought exhilarating thoughts at the idea of meeting again. I saw trees that had no discernible heights and plains with a horizon hundreds of miles away. I had a bouncer try to fight me and then apologize to me three times when he realized that I wasn’t trying to fight him, it was just the way the crowd pushed me.
I got to see City Mouse play every night for two weeks, and was dismayed when I remembered that this wouldn’t just be every day for the rest of my life. I’m a staunch midwesterner and feeling curmudgeonly that I think I left part of my heart in southern California – I mean, come on! The state that consistently produces musicians who love to sing about how great the state is! Stereotypes of paradise! This is betrayal, eh!? – but then I realize that, fuck it, it was awesome and I can’t wait to get drenched in sweat at a warehouse show in the Inland Empire again.
Too many people to thank, too much to process. I kept notes, they’ll be up on this page before too long. We’ll do it again.
Just a brief blurb of bodacious brevity here. The Plurals have been on tour for a few weeks, playing some great shows in the midwest, northwest, and west coast. I write from Riverside, CA in the home of the wonderful band City Mouse with whom The Plurals have shared the stage these last 8 or 9 or so days. Tour gets hazy and time gets relative in a manner that’s hard to describe; it’s hard for me to imagine what life was like before we were traveling the country with City Mouse, rocking cities from Seattle to Reno to Oakland to everywhere in between, Klamauth AKA ” Bud Light,” Oregon included. I had no real goal for this post, merely just an update to say that The Plurals are doing great, City Mouse rules, and we love our friends very much. We had the pleasure to hang out with old friends like Johnny Unicorn, Naomi Smith, Dave and Katie Thompson (and Dave and Mark and Jen and Nick and… Denver!), Brett McDowell, “Destroy” Nate Allen, Marty Hill, and Danielle Bailey and make a crazy amount of new friends like the Salamanders, TCW, Bird’s Mile Home, Smokejumper, the Lolligaggers, Josh and the Reno crew and… so many people. No slights intended, this tour has been amazing. I’ll have an over the top comprehensive thing ready at the end of all this for people to spend way too long reading. A warm California dusk is approaching, food is cooking, beers are being drank… I depart for now.
Hey! So The Plurals are going on tour for the next month-ish. We’re really excited to hit up all the fine people out west once again and make some new friends, see new bands, etc. I’m posting the tour dates here on the front page. This also means that I probably won’t be updating other things on this site too much until we return home in late April (I know, I can hear the gasps of disappointment even from here) but hopefully some entertaining words of tour happenings are in the very near future. Come on out to a show!
3/15/12 – Dekalb, IL @ House Cafe
3/16/12 – Milwaukee, WI @ Riverwest Public House
3/17/12 – Minneapolis, MN @ Medusa
3/18/12 – Omaha, NE @ Farnam House
3/19/12 – Kansas City, MO @ TBA (we’ve had two different shows fall through here, e-mail mcflybooking at gmail dot com if you have any ideas)
3/22/12 – Denver, CO @ Three Kings
3/23/12 – Colorado Springs, CO @ Triple Nickel Tavern
3/24/12 – Fort Collins, CO @ GNU Art Gallery
3/25/12 – Denver, CO @ House Show
3/27/12 – Rapid City, SD @ Nameless Cave
3/28/12 – Bozeman, MT @ The Filling Station w/ the Salamanders
3/29/12 – Missoula, MT @ TBA
3/30/12 – Yakima, WA @ Northtown Coffee
3/31/12 – Seattle, WA @ Kraken w/ City Mouse
4/1/12 – Longview, WA @ Minutes World w/ City Mouse
4/2/12 – Portland, OR @ The Know (Plurals only)
4/4/12 – Tahoe, CA @ Roho’s Cavern w/ City Mouse
4/5/12 – Reno, NV @ Holland Project w/ City Mouse
4/6/12 – San Francisco, CA @ TBA w/ City Mouse
4/7/12 – Oakland, CA @ 924 Gilman w/ City Mouse
4/9/12 – San Pedro, CA @ Badfish Clothing Company w/ City Mouse
4/10/12 – Pamona, CA @ Vince Lombardi High School w/ City Mouse
4/11/12 – San Diego, CA @ Bar Pink w/ City Mouse
4/12/12 – Phoenix, AZ @ Rogue Bar w/ Margate
4/13/12 – Tucson, AZ @ Way Out West Fest
4/14/12 – Tucson, AZ @ Way Out West Fest
4/15/12 – Tucson, AZ @ Way Out West Fest
4/17/12 – Fayetteville, AR @ Lightbulb Club
4/18/12 – Lawrence, KS @ Replay Lounge
4/19/12 – Normal, IL @ Firehouse Pizza
A couple more dates may be added, but this is darn near the whole thing. Stoked!
I take a lot of pride in my hometown music scene. At this point, in early 2012, I’ve been active in bands around Michigan for over a decade, and since 2005 I’ve been touring around the United States with some regularity. I sincerely think, with an, at least somewhat informed opinion, that Lansing, Michigan has one of the most interesting and artistically rich music scenes in the country. Sure, there’s your good handful of radio schlock rock jerks and popularity-driven, ego stroking buffoon bands (and these things are not mutually exclusive!), but there’s a higher concentration of musicians with integrity and true artistic visions in our unassuming capital city than many other supposed cultural hubs. I know there will always be a segment of the community that disagrees with me on this, but I’d still feel the same even if no one agreed with me.
Here, Josh proved at the first JDDJ show that many of us look to Cale for advice.
But I’m not alone. The fact that Lansing is home to not just GTG but also Bermuda Mohawk Productions, It Takes A Village to Make Records, Great Lakes Collective, Madlantis Records, Silver Maple Kill Records, and Lower Peninsula Records, all of whom boast artistically credible music with a wide array of genres and musical focus, is perhaps the simplest antithesis of this. If I’m forgetting or ignorant of another label or group of people that are doing great things in this town, please let me know. Some people in this town, both within and outside of GTG, essentially embody this Lansing pride and one of those people is Josh David. I don’t think anyone else in this town besides Mr. David can lay claim to the title of authoring the greatest Lansing music anthem.
That’s “Capital City 2-Step,” a recording of which appears on the 2011 full-length album Can You Believe We Landed on the Moon? by Josh David and the Dream Jeans. It will probably go down as the song that JDDJ are remembered for by the faithful that were there to see the band. It’s not my favorite song of theirs, but it has all of the elements of what made them a great band, and the sentiment of the lyrics totally rules. Sure, their music wasn’t for everyone, but no one could convince me that their music isn’t well played and written/ performed with more heart than anything on the radio these days. This group of guys got together in July 2009 and this last Friday, March 2nd 2012, they played their last show. I’m very glad to say that I was in close proximity – living in the house that they rehearsed in, recording their studio efforts, being at the shows, lots of hanging out – to almost everything that happened with this band.
Dreamy.
I’m sure I came into this band with some sort of bias, being that the two guys who wrote the bulk of the music are Nich Richard and Michael Boyes i.e. two of the people that I’ve written an incomprehnsible amount of music with in The Plurals and Drinking Mercury respectively, but they had never played together (in a serious capacity at least) before JDDJ and the musical chemistry they established was certainly real and not just appealing to me because it was two of my best friends. Nich’s Greg Ginn-informed guitar playing contrasted with Michael’s unhinged bass work to create a disorienting wall of music that seemed like it should have been coming from more than two instruments. Josh David couldn’t have had a better bed of music to unleash his aching, wailing voice on the world.
Oddly enough, this band started with Johnny Unicorn. My thoughts on Johnny’s brilliance are an essay unto themselves, so just follow this link for now. To sum it up quick, Johnny lived at GTG House for a year from summer 2008 to summer 2009 and went from being a total stranger to a beloved figure and musical inspiration for many in Lansing. He moved to Seattle in July of that year and we had a low key gathering on his last night in town. (A document of these events, in a sense, can be found in the Josh David and the Dream Jeans song “Aware of the Riverman). Josh David, who up to this point had been a vocal supporter of many Lansing and GTG bands, but only from the audience (well, and with the Cartridge Family, which wasn’t exactly the proper platform), brought up at this little party the idea of starting a band with Nich. Apparently shortly before this night Josh had asked a guy named Matt Norton if he would be interested in trying to start a band, to which Norton (who was also a member of the Cartridge Family along with Josh, Nich, myself, and many others) replied “get Nich Plural and I’m in.” Nich, to Josh’s suprise, took this as an opportunity to play guitar with some people (as he mostly plays bass in The Plurals) and Michael, who was going to be moving into Johnny’s old room, essentially overheard the conversation and offered his services on bass. I’ll interject here and say that on any given night at GTG House, particularly when drinks are flowing, there’s a high likelihood that whatever combination of people are in the room will decide to start a new band, very few of which leave this initial discussion, so it’s anyone’s guess as to how far any of these guys thought this band idea would go.
The original lineup in all of their glory.
Defying the odds, they actually got together and started writing songs. Initially practicing at Norton’s house, they played their first show in October 2009 at GTG House. These four seemingly unlikely musical collaborators were billed as “Josh David and the Dream Jeans” after many discussions involving many bad band names (although I still have a soft spot for “The Josh David Group”). The decision and justification for this band name choice were one of the moments that I was not present for in any capacity, so I’ll let them field any questions on that one: joshdavidandthedreamjeans@gmail.com . More importantly, they played their first show and it kind of kicked ass. Their music was initially described as being reminiscent of later-era Black Flag, which was true to a point, but they definitely put their own spin on classic hardcore ideas. Josh David’s lyrics, at times uncomfortably personal and often injected with a dark sense of humor, certainly set them apart from other so-called punk bands, and when he sang them (or screamed them in your face) it was apparent that he meant every word. From the very beginning they were one of the best live bands in town.
Their first recorded appearance was a song called “Christmas Envy” which had the honor (?) of being the opening cut on the 2009 edition of the annual BMP/ GTG holiday compilation Bermuda Snowhawk. They continued to play lots of local shows and also made a trip down to to Toledo for 2010 St. Patrick’s Day shenanigans with the Cartridge Family. We started recording an album in spring 2010 at the GTG House studio, finishing, I believe, seven songs. By summer 2010, however, Norton was on his way out of the band. Essentially, after the music became more defined and the band got more comfortable with each other it became apparent that Norton’s personality didn’t quite gel with the others, and their musical tastes were fairly disparate. Norton’s primal drumming was essential to the early development of JDDJ (the songs “Fox in the Hen House” and “Pointless Dismemberment” are great examples of what his drum approach did for the band, with his replacement largely sticking to his arrangements) but as the band progressed their limitations as a unit became apparent. Norton’s tenure in the band was key, but he also is the only person I know to quit onstage mid-set, and to have that moment captured on film. Sorry (?) Matt, I have to post it.
Always ready to join a new band at a moment’s notice, Christian Urrabazo (then of the Guest Stars, soon to be of the Hat Madder, currently of both as well as live drummer for Cavalcade, formerly tour drummer of Failures’ Union, etc) stepped in, quickly learned the old songs and started writing with the guys for new songs, and JDDJ went on a midwest tour with The Plurals in August 2010.
With Christian sitting at the drums the band was recharged, with their new material quickly outshining their old material. We had been planning on releasing the sessions with Norton for their debut album, but it was clear that if we waited a little longer and recorded all of the songs with Christian we would get a superior document of the band. Four songs were culled from the spring sessions with Norton as a demo called Knight Riding a Motorcycle that were distributed at shows on the August tour, with plans to record the proper album pushed to the winter.The band went on another midwest tour in Fall 2010, finishing the year with their second seasonal song “Oh Santa” on Bermuda Snowhawk 2010.
We knocked out the sessions for the album fairly quickly in January and February 2011. Ashley Anderson was enlisted to make the cover art, Sylas Semen for mastering, and Peter Richards for layout and design. Keepin’ it local. I recorded the album at GTG House but had to push the mixing back until May as The Plurals went on a 6 week tour for our then-forthcoming Futurospective album, a dynamic that was ultimately representative of the demise of the band. This was a band formed by a group of friends that played with other musical projects, and the instrumentalists (Nich, Michael, and Christian) all had their own bands that pre-dated JDDJ, often leaving Josh as the odd man out, depending on the schedules of others. Bands can definitely work to great effect within these restrictions, but only when it is enjoyable for all parties. No one person was to blame, at least not from my outside-the-band-but-within-the-circle perspective, but by the time we were ready to release the album Can You Believe We Landed on the Moon? everyone’s priorities had changed and it was fairly clear that this band was becoming more of an obligation and less of an enjoyable form of expression. The album came out on June 24, 2011, with a kick ass show at Mac’s Bar also featuring Frank and Earnest (who snuck in The Plurals for two songs), The Hat Madder, Destroy Nate Allen, and Infernal Names.
Reception for the album was positive overall. Razorcake put it succinctly, declaring JDDJ a band “who could make being abrasive and obnoxious sound like the greatest thing in the world. Mr. David sounds here like he’s trying desperately to shred his larynx into tiny bits of confetti, while his cohorts sneak in some tasty, creative bits as they smash and bash at their instruments like they were piñatas stuffed with money. Loud, crude, chaotic and all kinds of fucked up, and you get fourteen glorious tracks of it, punk.” Idle and the Bear declared the album a “shock” and a “true flashback to the day of 80s hardcore.” Readjunk, however, totally missed the point saying “I would assume that they are either A) trying to emulate the awful recording techniques and noise punk sounds of the 70’s and if so why? or B) are really not good…AT ALL” and concluding that the album was “utterly unlistenable.” This same reviewer positively rated the recent post-Oasis projects, the newest Mighty Mighty Bosstones album, and the Decemberists, so he probably wasn’t the right guy for that one. Revue Mid-Michigan drove this point home by saying “Josh has managed to take something that might be a detriment to someone else (he can’t sing a lick) and totally make it work for him. He just goes for it and doesn’t worry about the results, which lends him confidence and sounds great. If you’re into mellow indie rock you won’t be able to stomach this.”
The album contained every song that the band had written to that point, and after the release the band took the rest of the summer off. Around this same time Todd from Silver Maple Kill Records and Peter from It Takes A Village to Make Records were soliciting Lansing bands for contributions to their respective compilations, both of which featured many contributions from GTG bands. JDDJ ended up contributing their last two songs to these respective compilations, two songs that were, I firmly believe, their two best songs. “Michael and the Wrecking Ball,” a cathartic, raging slab of hardcore appeared on Vol. 7 of the ITAV 3-Way Split singles series while the groovy, hooky “Peanut Butter,” featuring Josh’s most melodic vocals to date, was just released (in March 2012) on the Silver Maple Kill compilation No F#*@ing Egos 2: Electric Boogaloo. Both of these tracks are well worth seeking out.
After recording these last two songs the band returned to inactive duty. With another Plurals tour looming and more active outside projects (Nich and Michael had started The Hunky Newcomers, Christian had started drumming for Cavalcade in addition to the Hat Madder, and Josh was and is working on plans for an upcoming solo project featuring collaborations with different musicians) the guys made the call to do a farewell show in March. When Honah Lee needed a tour date for March 2 (also Nich’s birthday) it was decided that this would be the last show for JDDJ. In addition to the two new songs and choice cuts from the album, JDDJ also shook things up with two oddball cover choices in Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy” and “Roxanne” by The Police. It was a wild night and a heck of a way for the band to go out, in the same room as their first show.
While they’re saying that this was the last show, these are four people with a lot of creativity who remain friends, so they’re certainly not going anywhere. I for one hope they leave the door open to write some music together or play live again sometime down the line. Josh David and the Dream Jeans are definitely something that makes me proud to say that Lansing, Michigan is where I call home.
(I grabbed a lot of these photos from Facebook and I am not sure who took all of them. Some were by Bethanne Harms, some by the band members, some by Kim Nastal, no slights intended. The sweet flyer is by Ashley Anderson. Tim Hill took the videos, with the exception of the video from the first show by Rich Tupica.)
New CrookedSound song, the surprisingly groovy “You Know I,” available from ITAV Records. Click the picture or this link to listen to it. Rounding out this split is a previously unreleased demo from Seth Bernard, the Dennis Wilson-esque “Down in the UP,” and Steve Leaf’s trippy instrumental “A Familiar Place.” Fire up the blacklight, or something. Are you being sarcastic dude? I don’t even know anymore. But seriously, this is a good listen.
Honah Lee are revving up the touring engine after taking the last couple months off (for the most part) due to, uh, medical reasons. They’re playing a couple local dates at John and Peter’s in New Hope, PA on February 11th (that’s tonight!) and the Mill Hill Basement in Trenton, NJ on February 18th, before hitting the road on February 23rd on a jaunt that will take them to Wilmington, Richmond, Cleveland, Hamilton (OH), Chicago, Grand Rapids (MI), and Lansing.
Back in the midwest, Drinking Mercury will be returning to the stage of Mulligan’s Pub in Grand Rapids, MI on February 11th (hey, that’s tonight!) along with Lucky Shoreline and Trinket (1O PM, 21+ and free! Tonight!).
The Hat Madder is playing at Mac’s Bar (Lansing, MI) on February 17th as part of the release party for the new Cheap Girls album “Giant Orange.” In addition to The Hat Madder and Cheap Girls, the dashing and heartfelt local band Little American Champ will be opening up the show. It’s all ages, starting at 7 PM on a Friday, so darn near everyone in the area should be able to check it out. The Hat Madder is prepping their next album for a late spring release. Yes!
A week later our very own Frank and Earnest will be hitting the stage of Mac’s Bar, supporting the February 24th stop of the infectious-as-all-get-out tour by The Queers and The Ataris. Again, it’s all ages, doors at 6:30, on a Friday, and will be boasting high energy shout-alongs for the whole night, so check it out. This same evening of the 24th of February, over the treacherous 1-27 city line into the badlands of East Lansing, Drinking Mercury will be taking the stage at (SCENE) Metrospace for those looking for a, perhaps more reserved, but maybe not, all ages show starting around 9 PM. Also playing will be Sabertooth Fiancee and Basement Shark Attack, a pair of newer locals with an affinity for intimidating animal names crossed with seeming non-sequitors. Drinking Mercury will be debuting a few new tunes at this show before disappearing from the live show stage for the spring, so everyone should do their best to randomly jump back and forth from (SCENE) to Mac’s in hopes of catching everything awesome.
The Plurals are doing some sort of house show in Ann Arbor, MI on February25th. We’re kicking it into high gear in March with a March 1st show with Honah Lee (see above) at Mulligan’s in Grand Rapids, followed by a six week midwest, northwest, and west coast tour starting on March 15th (announced dates listed here). I’ll ramble about that a lot soon, get ready. Since I don’t always get these things out on the 1st of the month, I should also mention that Josh David and the Dream Jeans will be playing their farewell show before going on indefinite hiatus, also with Honah Lee, at GTG House in Lansing on March 2nd. Needless to say, the show will be awesome, and will probably also need a rambling blog post to accompany it.
Last night Narc Out the Reds headlined a great show at Mac’s Bar that also featured Calliope, Infernal Names, the Guest Stars, and Little American Champ. Aside from the fact that it was a diverse bill stacked with talented bands, it was a special night because it was the last show featuring Narc Out the Reds bassist Terry Pearson and the first show to feature new bassist Josh Siwek. Narc Out the Reds played an hour long set hitting most of their Are On the Run EP, both sides of their Pawnmower/ Leak in the Disease 7-inch, as well as new material for a forthcoming release and their revamped version of The Ones’ “You Haven’t Seen My Love” from the recent Secret Identities compilation. It was a great performance, bittersweet as Terry is a cool guy and it’s too bad that he can’t play with the band anymore (he recently moved back to Escanaba, MI) but also very promising as Josh, longtime bassist for Lansing band The Playback, immediately fit right in with the band, showing that they’re not going to lose any momentum.
I’ve seen Narc Out the Reds dozens of times and seen them go through many changes over the years. I’m not any sort of authority on the earlier days of the band, but I know the band has been through many variations, with some songs dating, in some form, to the great Lansing band The Caustic Pop (Chris’ band from the mid-90s to the early 00s) and the short-lived Things Without Wings (circa 2005/6 or so), a band that essentially split into The Hat Madder and Narc Out the Reds.
(The Caustic Pop! Download their seriously fucking great record From Turmoil’s Soil at the Big Gig Productions store.)
This is a bit of guesswork on my part as I didn’t really know any of these guys until mid-2008 or so (in fact I think we should have Chris – randomly joined by Isaac – do a podcast or something and have him ramble about vague band histories and whatever else he feels like ranting about; I think it would be some solid gold reporting), but I do know that Hattie and I were at the first Narc Out the Reds show at (SCENE) Metrospace in spring 2008 and were immediately fans of the band. I recall reading an article in either City Pulse or Noise that Chris Baratono, formerly of The Caustic Pop, had a new band that would be making their debut. Eric Merckling (see the article entitled “CrookedSound“) had mentioned at various points that The Caustic Pop were one of his favorite bands from Lansing, so we made it a point to check out this dude’s band and were glad that we did. I’m not quite sure when Ben Southwell entered the picture in the whole scheme of things, but he was firmly in the band at that first show, Chris’ onstage foil, conjuring up crazy guitar sounds and adding surprisingly sweet vocal harmonies. Like I said before, I didn’t know these guys at all at the time, so I’m not even quite sure who the bassist and drummer were, but I think the bassist was Dave Brunger who would go on to be a member of The Hat Madder. There is a lot of cross-pollination between The Hat Madder and Narc Out the Reds, and Hat Madder honcho Isaac was at this first show as well – and this video that I found online proves that we were both there, and apparently both in furious head nodding moods (around the 2:25 mark).
I don’t think Isaac and I really knew each other then either, but, hey, there we are. Narc Out the Reds immediately reminded me of Shudder to Think and I was definitely excited to have this band playing in my town.
We ended up becoming friends with Chris during 2008 when Todd Karenin was promoting “New Music Mondays” at the Rendezvous on the Grand in Old Town Lansing, a weekly showcase of independent bands that became a bit of a hangout for local musicians. Chris lived around the corner from the bar so he was usually at the shows, and at some point after seeing each other every week Hattie and I became friends with Chris, often joined by Isaac, which began the process of Narc Out the Reds and The Hat Madder entering the GTG fold. By this point the drummer of Narc Out the Reds was Ben Godoshian, who added falsetto harmonies and a wild abandon to the live performances, which often culminated, fittingly, in the form of The Who song “Pictures of Lily” as the set closer.
(This is where I would insert a video of this song, if such a thing existed. Instead I’m going to post my favorite picture of Pete Townshend).
(honestly, that’s probably how enthusiastic he would be at the thought of me posting a video of Narc Out the Reds playing “Pictures of Lily”)
By early 2009 The Plurals and Narc Out the Reds had played together several times, and Narc out the Reds was also searching for a new rhythm section with Dave and Ben G both parting with the band. Drummer John Miller and bassist Terry Pearson, then of Lansing metal band Intrusion, entered the picture at this point, which stabilized the band at long last, allowing the years-in-the-works …Are on the Run EP to be finished and released the following spring. John and Terry brought a lot of energy to the show, and I recall being at the first show with the new lineup and thinking that “this” was the band, at last. This lineup recorded and released the slew of compilation songs that appeared in 2009-2011 as well as the stellar Pawnmower/ Leak in the Disease 7-inch, in addition to dozens of memorable shows.
The whole GTG Records experience has brought me in contact with a lot of great bands and musicians, and I’m definitely pleased that Narc Out the Reds is one of them. I wish Terry good luck and hope he knows that he always has friends and a home with the GTG crew.
GTG RECORDS 