It’s been a rough year. James killed himself, leaving a void that cannot be replaced by anyone else. We had planned a huge vision of musical work together, from the late ’90s  tone of rockin’ Sum of Wizdum stuff  in the old days…to recent ideas (conjured by me, mostly for his sake) known as the Tegan and Sara tribute Hegan and Fella. The entire experience of having a best friend exit the world is something I never expected to deal with; and I simply cannot understand why his path of existence said “No” to all the amazing things that seem to pop with every day that we live.

I keep every audio bit of history that I can, and the web is a peculiar arena what with sharing and comments and etcetera…..I just think folks need to hear the stuff that James (Chaos Kid, Snafu) and Marshall Mathers (Eminem) and Manix (Michael Ruby) and Matthew Ruby (Butterfingaz) put together in 1988 or 1989 or 1990 or whenever it was…anyway….here it goes:

Bassmint Production freestyle stuff

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Nemesis ’self-titled’ cassette (1989)

November 28, 2011

I never really liked this stuff, honestly.
In fact, I’d revisited the music on a few occasions and still shrugged at the revered presence which Nemesis enjoyed in the late ’80s music scene in Detroit.  There was always the novelty factor of vocalist/frontman John Cross being the elder son of my high school drama teacher – [...]

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Huang Chung – self titled (Wang Chung)

February 22, 2011

This is another of those legacy CD titles that somehow went “out of print” – although it’s difficult to argue for a historical preservation of the band later known as Wang Chung.   Released on One Way Records in 1995 (see concise label background), this early ’80s debut is represented in the file sharing community [...]

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Michal Urbaniak Group ‘The Beginning’ (1976)

August 9, 2010

As I’d mentioned here before, in the mid ’90s there were scores of 8 Track tapes to be got for a quarter apiece, and this gem was one of my earliest purchases. I’m not sure if at that point I was already familiar with Michael Urbaniak’s jazz fusion violin work, but the sonic experience here [...]

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The Career of a “Rock Star”

August 5, 2010

I found this interesting fragment in the Culture Of None archives:  It’s an elementary school assignment – clearly a “choose a career and research it” theme paper – bearing the date April 4, 1984.   I was a 5th grader.

I’m guessing I wrote this one mostly from intuitive observation and with minimal research, so it [...]

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Satchel ‘Mr. Pink EP’ (1994)

August 4, 2010

Satchel was an enigmatic post-grunge entry into the roster of Epic’s more adventurous (i.e. less profitable) signings.
They were quietly promoted as a side project of a side project (Brad) that coupled Shawn Smith’s soulful croon and keyboards with a rock ensemble given star-power by Pearl Jam’s Stone Gossard.
I’ll admit that my initial curiosity about Brad [...]

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Stressball (1993)

May 20, 2010

It seemed as if Stressball had been long forgotten in the sludge metal canon, but some late night Googling has revealed otherwise.

The band has one of those names that can easily be buried in non-relevant search results.  However, I was able to find a bit of coverage at the VonFrostBlog, and (of course) there are [...]

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Indigenous Tribe ‘As Of Light Into Darkness’

March 28, 2010

This EP was released in Detroit around 1997.  I don’t even have the original disc anymore – just this CD-R burn from many years ago.  The cover art was basically a photo of a turntable platter with a bunch of scattered spraypaint caps and other B-Boy paraphenelia – very old school.   It was a decidedly [...]

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Veldt ‘Universe Boat’ (1996)

March 12, 2010

I couldn’t help being a Veldt fan from the very start – early press described  the Chavis brothers driving a jeep under rural North Carolina skies, their in-dash mixtape jubilantly positioning Cocteau Twins next to Public Enemy.  It was the delirious  “pre-grunge” era, and hip hop beats & shoegaze seemed a brilliant fusion of audio [...]

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Bloomsday ‘Bloomsday’ ep (1997)

March 10, 2010

I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of positive response to my recent post praising the Bloomsday full-length CD ‘The Day The Colors Died‘.  The band apparently not only has a lasting legacy of enthusiastic fans – but they’ve managed the feat with only two releases.
Their second and final recording is this self-titled five song [...]

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