1994: The Year of Car Vs. Driver - Live At WREK Shows 1/4/94 and 9/13/94

From L to R: James Joyce, Ashley Moore, Steve Wishart, Matt Mauldin, Jon Rothman at the Somber Reptile after our final show on July 21, 1995 with Braid and Inkwell.

I have transferred our two Live at WREK shows - here are the links:

9/13/94: Car Vs. Driver - Live at WREK September 13, 1994

1/4/94: Car Vs. Driver - Live at WREK January 4, 1994

Here is a summary I wrote for the Car Vs. Driver Discography, put out by Gavin at Stickfigure Records:

Car vs. Driver began when I was 17 years old. By the time we played our final show, I was 19. This band was the music of my life during a period when people usually experience the greatest amount of freedom, which is what I think of whenever I listen to this music now. There were so many new experiences: living on our own, meeting new people, getting a new perspective on life. Our lifestyle in turn gave us a new perspective on expressing music, and we poured all of our energy and emotion into it. Music that now seems a world away – music from a different life. It’s hard to remember that everything about being in a band at that time was simply making a 7”, buying the cheapest van you could find, and touring the country for the summer. There was no infrastructure to build your music around, which also removed its barriers. Instead of running our band like a corporation, we played peoples living rooms and basements, engaged in kickball tournaments, made record covers out of manila envelopes, slept on top of our van, cooked pasta, and played with some of the most amazing bands in the process. Bands that epitomized the time – like Spirit Assembly, Policy of 3, Friction, Current, The Yah Mos, Assfactor 4, Frail, Hoover, Freemasonry, Scout, and Inkwell. The experience we had is something that could never be recreated, and I consider myself incredibly lucky to have been a part of that moment in time. Thank you Matt, Steve, and Jonathan for bringing this to me.

James Joyce
August 2004

This compilation is dedicated to our faithful roadies Ashley Lawrence Moore and William Anthony Nation.

We froze, sweat, bled, argued, and laughed.

WREK is the college radio station for Georgia Tech, and by far my favorite station in Atlanta. One great thing they have done for so many years is the Live At WREK show, which plays at 10PM on Tuesday nights. Everyone has played it from Minutemen and Sun Ra to any local Atlanta band you can imagine. It has become somewhat like the Peel Sessions for Atlanta bands, and an easy way to get a decent recording of your music (especially back before the days of quality home recording). When Car Vs. Driver played Live At WREK, we tried to play as many songs as possible so we would have demo versions of our new stuff, as well as some old songs we never properly recorded. People tell us that these recordings better represent Car Vs. Driver as a band than the records we put out. You can decide for yourself. Also, WREK has a great website where you can listen to all the content from the past week online, as well as the Live at WREK comilation CD they put out a few years ago and other gems.

I do not plan to post the Car Vs. Driver discography here, as you can still get the great 2XCD package that Stickfigure released in 2005, here is the link: http://stickfiguredistro.com/stickfigurerecords/#stickdisc001cd .
Gavin was cool enough to keep our recordings in print by putting out this compilation, and he deserves all the business he can get. I will post our reunion show in 1997 soon, as well as flyers and pictures, but you should have enough to get started for now.

Keep in touch, and leave a comment so I don't feel like this stuff is going into a void.

King Tunes - More Go-Steadys Live on Album 88 and Unreleased Songs

So Ex-Teenage Rockstar (aka Steven Cummings) came through and gave me a tape of “Reflections”, which was a song we recorded at a studio in Atlanta by some railroad tracks, as well as a sassy live in the studio recording from March 1995 of the Go Steadys on Album 88, in preparation for our 7” release show at the Somber Reptile later that month. Now we have everything that I ever played on with the Go Steadys, however I am not sure if they recorded anything further after I left the group. One interesting note is that Kyle Richards plays the Album 88 show, which I completely do not remember him even playing with us after high school. Anyhow, it was fun hearing everyone talk again, especially Eric telling the announcer that he was from Compton, and Jesse working at the California Pizza Kitchen. The most infamous line, however, was Mike telling the DJ that he played the skinflute, which I completely missed me when I was in the studio, but afterwards was unbelievable that he actually got that over the air. I now have more practice in transferring tapes to computer, so I re-recorded all the Go Steadys songs and uploaded them to MediaFire, so you can download the best discography yet here:

Go-Steadys Complete Discography

Rob Fitzgerald - Our second drummer and youngest member of the band.

Here are some classic Go Steadys flyers:


October 21, 1992 - This was our first big show, and we were pretty wet behind the ears. But we got through it, and played many other great shows afterwards, so I guess we did something right.



May 31, 1994 at the Atomic Music Hall in Athens. Flyer designed by Robert McAdams when he was living in Athens and wearing suits every Friday.


March 19, 1993 at the Hoyt Street Station in Athens. This was our first show in Athens (while we were still in High School). I believe we played with the Woggles at that show.


June 14, 1993 - This was a show at the Somber Reptile that was back when they served smart drinks and had disco night after 11:00 or so. It was so early in the Somber Reptile's existence that we didn't even know the right name and called it the Summer Reptile. Plenty of beer.



April 24, 1993 - Back at the Hoyt Street Station in Athens. Crystal was in a band called 7/10 split, which was made up of Roswell High School students. Check out Jason Griset endorsing Philly Titans.


February 26, 1994 - At the Somber Reptile with The Skats, Brumski and Skaffle House. By this time there were enough ska bands in Atlanta to actually fill up the bill. These were some fun shows. As far as the live recording, I never got a copy. Scooter parking available - hilarious.


May 29, 1993 at the Somber Reptile - This was our last show as the original high school lineup of 7. At the beginning of National Front (our first song), Jesse does a backflip off the stage and takes out the whole front of the audience. He had never successfully done a backflip before, but why not right there and then!

Set list from the May 29 show above - as you can see, we played about 50% covers (about right for a ska band). Check out the footprints.



Finally, November 13, 1993 at Hoyt Street North in Athens (again). I loved the image from "Man Bites Dog" to use in the flyer. We also started figuring out how to use computers at that time. No members of the Go Steadys became graphic designers (that I know of), but we were creative in other ways.

Brighter Days: The Go-Steadys (1991-1996)

From L to R: Laura Richards, Jesse Lauricella, Eric Fickes, Mike, Robbie Fitzgerald, Dan Gminksi, Brian Lysne, James Joyce, circa 1995.

Here is the download:
Go-Steadys Complete Discography


So I learned about ska music through my friend Miles Peterken, who also introduced me to punk and jazz, so you can say he was a pretty influential person in my early musical development. This was maybe 1989 or so, and in his bedroom he would pin record covers on the walls instead of posters. He is really the only person I have ever known to do this in this exact way. He liked to hang up all sorts of LP covers, and I distinctly remember seeing the first albums of both the Specials and Madness on the wall of his room, and possibly the first Selecter album as well.







If you remember what these covers look like, it completely blew my mind as a 15 year-old just getting into decent music. Both of these covers featured photos of the bands, which had a mixture of black and white members (for the Specials), and the trademark Madness group leaning-stance, or whatever it’s called, for their album. Both pictures showed members who were definitely not American in any way, and looking insanely cool. The Specials looked like some crazy gang, and Suggs from Madness probably looked to be about the coolest person I had ever seen. I didn’t hear these bands until at least a year or two later, when Brian Lysne bought the Specials Singles Collection on tape, I believe from Camelot Music, and we both listened to “A Message to You Rudy” for the first time on his boom box after returning from the mall. I can honestly say that I was initially totally bewildered by this song. It sounded like a bastardized reggae (definitely not Jamaican), with some kind of doo-wop vocals and really different recording sound. It sounded like some kind of working-class skinhead music, which I guess it was, and maybe not something we were going to understand, much less love to death. However, once “Do the Dog”, “Concrete Jungle”, and some others from the first album came on, we knew this music was awesome and totally unique in comparison with the music that was around at the time. Immediately we started looking for ska music in various tape and record stores, but the local Turtles and Camelot Music only had the ska bands that really had crossover success with mainstream music. We got English Beat (although Special Beat Service was the most common release you could find at that time), Specials and Madness. All three of these bands had amazing first albums, but highly questionable and confusing later albums. Finally I got a tape of Bim Skala Bim’s “Hows’ it Goin”, and started to break into the true ska music scene. When we started heading down to Little 5 Points and buying records at Wax N’ Facts, I got more records such as The Toaster’s “Pool Shark”, the Deltones’ “Nana Choc Choc in Paris”, as well as a few other great records of the genre.

Coincidentally around this time, two major events occurred to solidify our involvement with ska music. The first was WREK starting the “Afriskamatic” radio show, which was amazing, but also interesting in that at first they didn’t even have enough ska music and had to play African music to fill out the entire 2 hour show. We would record it on tape and listen to it all week in the car. It was funny to find the albums that they were playing on the show years later when ska distribution became better and recognize the songs that I heard first on that radio show, like Symaryp for example. Another great example is a song by the Terrorists, which was an NYC ska-punk band who did a song with Lee Perry called “Guerilla Priest“. When I bought their discography many years later, I completely forgot about the song, and then when it came on I had this immense wave of nostalgia and insane laughter when I heard it. The song is truly a Lee Perry classic. The second big event in our ska development was Jesse Lauricella moving to Atlanta around 1991. Since my last name is Joyce, he was naturally put into my homeroom class as it was organized in alphabetical order. I believe he was behind me, and Brian Lysne was behind him. He came from New Jersey, and was very knowledgeable about the NYC ska scene, mainly revolving around the Moon SKA record label. He had seen many of these bands live, including the Toasters, Scofflaws, Let’s Go Bowling, and many others from that era. He also brought a selection of tapes for us to dub and enjoy. One of these was the “Skankin’ Around The World” Volume 1 tape, which I believe is the best ska compilation ever created, and I still listen to it on a regular basis. After hanging out with him for a few weeks, we decided that we needed to form a ska band and show everyone what was up. Jesse would naturally be the singer, and Brian would be the bassman. We got Eric Fickes to play guitar, as he was always game for musical projects back then, and I would play drums. We were pretty rough at the beginning, and had a few members come in and out for about 6 months or so. Michelle Ward played keyboards for a practice, Jesse’s friends Paul and Dave played sax and trombone, but they were not technically horn players and did not last. It was too bad because Paul was possibly the scariest guy I had ever seen in person. He was about 10 years older than us, and had full sleeves of tattoos, had the physique of a marine out of Paris Island and always wore a wife-beater. When Jason Griset joined the band on sax, he was actually too scared to tell Paul how to play any of the parts because the dude was so menacing. We also had this African-American skinhead singer named Françoise for a show, who looked really cool, but not very talented in the singer/frontman department. Eventually, we ditched all of these secondary members and acquired the three real talents for the band and completed our first full group of seven members. This was comprised of the four of us (Jesse, Brian, Eric and myself), along with Jason Griset on Tenor Sax, Kyle Richards on Trumpet, and Shawn Simpson on Drums. I met these guys in my band class (the main place to find horn players for your ska band in those days), and in the case of Jason and Shawn, happened to be some of the most talented musicians I have ever played with (then or since). Sometimes when we would be playing a show at the Hoyt Street Station in Athens, for example, they would set up in the parking lot before the show and have a sax-drums duo playing jazz music, and it was amazing. Since they were so unbelievable on their instruments, I naturally switched to rhythm guitar while Shawn took over full drumming responsibilities. We started doing ska versions of “Freddie the Freeloader” and “Miles Mode”, and these guys truly legitimized the Go Steadys for us.

As for the actual band name, we kind of ripped it from “The Steadys” out of NYC, but nobody in Atlanta had ever heard of The Steadys, so we became The Go Steadys. In the spring of 1993, I recorded a 4-song demo of us as the original seven piece band in my basement, and I have included it in the attached file:

1. What You Are
2. Anthem
3. Brighter Days
4. By My Side

“What You Are” is lyrically probably the most misogynistic song I have ever played. Jesse was particularly angry about a break-up with a girl in our class, and really wanted to get his vengeance. High School can be a difficult time for all of us. We used to play this song first at all of our shows, and it always got the crowd moving. “Anthem” was written after we played with the Special Beat, and Jesse had the urge to write a nice xenophobic ska song about Americans playing ska, including the chorus “bust out that American ska and a piece of apple pie, if those tea-sipping jerks got something to say we’ll put a fist right in their eye” – classic Jesse Lauricella. “Brighter Days” was one of my favorite songs by the band, especially played with this lineup. “By My Side” was so new that Jason hadn’t learned the horn part, so Kyle played trumpet on it alone, and I actually like this version better anyhow than the one with the full horn section recorded later. Also, I have to say about the original lineup that I really liked Shawn Simpson’s drumming on this demo, which was much different compared to other ska drummers. He added a real swing to the group, but also kept the intensity of the music high. He would play my crappy drumset with only one rack tom (no floor tom), one cymbal, a snare, high-hat and bass drum, and still completely kill it every time.


From L to R: Jesse Lauricella, Brian Lysne, Jason Griset, Eric Fickes (on floor), Kyle Richards, Shawn Simpson, James Joyce - Spring 1993.


We played some of our best shows at this time, even playing in Athens for college crowds while we were still in high school, which is pretty rare. We played with the Woggles and the Earthworms in Athens, as well as the Special Beat, Toasters, etc. that came through Atlanta at that time. We also started playing with a new breed of Atlanta ska bands, including the Skats (which featured Brian and Rob Kincheloe as well as a very young Mike Griffith on drums), and Brumski (featuring the soon to be legendary Tom Cheshire). Unfortunately, we lost Shawn, Jason and Kyle at the end of our Senior year as Shawn and Jason went to music school in Denton, TX and Kyle went to Boston to study medicine. Kyle started playing bass in Boston bands, and I would get demos from them occasionally. Jason returned to the Go Steadys later on when he transferred to Valdosta, but I never saw Shawn Simpson again. At the end of this time, I switched from guitar to trombone, and we went about finding new members for the group. Kyle recruited his sister, Laura Richards, to join the band on trombone (now we had two trombone players). She was super nice, but a little young, so she became kind of the little sister of the group. I was dating a girl named Crystal Bradley at the time, and she was in another ska band called 7/10 split, and I believe she was the one who found our next drummer, Robbie Fitzgerald, and our trumpet player, Chad Paulin. Jesse’s friend Mike moved down from New Jersey and took over secondary vocals, and we got a friend of Jesse’s named Dan Gminski (I'm not sure of the spelling) to play bass clarinet. Crystal also joined us on keyboards and Jason Griset returned to start helping us on sax duties, so that brought the total band membership up to 11 (Jesse, James, Brian, Eric, Crystal, Robbie, Laura, Chad, Dan, Mike, and Jason). This was insanity from a band logistics perspective. It was hard to even get everyone to the show on time. I remember once playing with Skankin’ Pickle at the Chameleon Club in Buckhead, and the band went on without me on trombone because I was over at Tower Records wandering around being oblivious. Also, keep in mind that this was before the advent of cell phones, so there was a lot of legwork involved with these shows and practices. We recorded a few more songs under this lineup at Dwarf studios in Ellijay, the place where Car Vs. Driver recorded their first 7”.

5. Goin’ Away
6. Fallen
7. Brighter Days
8. By My Side
9. King Tone Corporate Anthem
10. No. 5

“Goin’ Away” was not really our best song, and extremely difficult for Mike and Jesse to harmonize on, but it had an end-of-show kind of feeling to it, so it was always part of our set. “Fallen” was probably my least favorite song we did, but had a great rockabilly-style riff from Eric that he could really belt out, and the crowd always loved it. “Brighter Days” was played with more horns this time. “King Tone Corporate Anthem” was an instrumental with a name borrowed from the “Devo Corporate Anthem”, and had the big “S-K-A” intro that was fun to play. I think we did a few mambo lines through the audience with that one. “No. 5” was also another almost-instrumental, and had some pretty good trombone playing on my part if I do say so myself. Crystal adds some good keyboards as well. As you can see, Robbie Fitzgerald couldn’t really keep up with the virtuoso drumming of Shawn Simpson, but he transformed the band into a more modern, driving ska band of the new third wave era. Two of these songs (Goin’ Away and Fallen) were pressed as a 7”, but not for sale at shows. We only used them for sending to clubs and promotion. Also something strange about the 7” was that it had an 8” cover, so it didn’t fit in any 7” boxes. Mine is currently filed in the 10” section of my collection.


The Go Steadys 7" in an 8" sleeve.

Only 100 Pressed. I got #31.

Unauthorized Reproduction Punishable by DEATH.


Live at the Somber Reptile in 1994/5: Dan, James and Brian.

We were playing several times per month and having a great time, and also playing in Huntsville, Athens and Auburn, but I was also in Car Vs. Driver and The Midget Farmers as well as pursuing a degree in Physics and Astronomy full time. By about spring of 1995, I was getting seriously burnt out on the strain of being in a band of 10+ members, and wanted to get out. As what usually happens in the Go Steadys, if you leave the band, it is almost expected of you to recruit a new person to join, and I got Steven Cummings brought in on tenor sax. He was in my Astronomy class, and once I found out he could play sax, I ensnared him as soon as possible for practice. They continued on for a few years without me, and recorded a few more songs (if anyone has these, please send them and I will post them to this blog entry), but after another year or so Steven left, along with Robbie, Brian and Eric to form other bands. The first three started The Del Rays in Athens, while Eric moved to North Carolina and joined the Stingy Brims, another ska band from the region. Jesse kept adding and replacing members, until he fell in love with a girl down in Mexico and moved down there to be with her, and the band officially dissolved. When he returned a year or two later, he started a Latin-influenced ska band called Mandorico, and they have been working very hard as a band for years and years, although I have yet to see them. Chad joined the Robustos in Atlanta, and had much more success as a third wave ska band than the Go Steadys ever had. Crystal Bradley moved about 10 more times before settling in DC for a few years and starting a band with the singer from Bratmobile called Partyline. They were hugely popular and came to Europe several times while I was in Amsterdam, but I was always out of town and never got to see them play. I do not know what happened to Dan, Laura or Mike, but that’s the way it goes sometimes in these situations at that time in your life. Supposedly Dan works as a tatoo artist in Germany, but I have not confirmed this. Brian moved to Japan for several years, and then became an accountant and moved to Minnesota (I believe). Eric became a computer programmer and moved recently to Denver where he and his wife are raising their first child – Fletcher Fickes. Steven Cummings draws comic books for a living and is almost impossible to hang out with due to his hectic work schedule. I haven’t seen Jesse in almost ten years, but maybe I’ll catch Mandorico one of these years and say hello. I see they moved to LA and seem to be doing fine.

Overall, I can honestly say that this was the most fun that I ever had on stage with a band, and that is truly saying a lot. It really gave me so much joy during my late high school years to play in this band and experience everything we experienced – jumping around, wearing crazy clothes, Jesse doing back flips off the stage, mambo trains through the crowd, bringing everyone up on stage for our version of “Monkey Man”, playing “Don’t Worry Be Happy” with the Skats, crashing the front porch of a house in Athens from dancing so hard, playing a party at a loft on Memorial Drive where the crowd literally knocked down the wall to the adjoining loft and started looting the place while we played – dancing around with all the neighbor’s stuff in their arms (!!!), Shawn Simpson driving 100+ mph up to Athens for shows, looking everywhere for a good pork-pie hat, smoking cigars, acting like complete assholes, and generally having the time of our lives.

An Experiment in January - The Retconned Cover Band Live at the Drunken Unicorn - January 25, 2008

So this picture is 4 years old, but I don't have any live photos of the actual show on this post. This was something that started out as a kind of experiment - taking Retconned songs and transpose them to a Bass/Guitar/Drums rock format, with Josh Fauver on Guitar, Benjamin Lukens on Bass, and myself on the Drumset. So we practiced about 5 times and learned 6 songs, one being "Savior" by Inkwell, which was one of our favorite songs of theirs and had to be covered sooner or later. Everything came out really well, and we had a great time on this project. It makes me think that this might be an interesting way to write music (i.e. create the songs electronically using keyboards/sequencers/etc. and transfer them to rock band format for interesting results). The songs would never have been written or blocked out as the four of us starting on our live instruments, so it was great to have this experience. I hope we can do it again sometime.

Here is the set as a WinRAR file and as separate MP3 files for download: Retconned Cover Band - Live at the Drunken Unicorn January 25, 2008

It would also be interesting for you to listen to the original Retconned songs (available for download free at Retconned "Unhappenings" Album) and then listen to our live versions to see how we freely interpreted them.

As always, enjoy.

31 January 2008 Update - Thanks for Fuckyouninja for taking some photos of the gig and posting them on Flickr.

Righteous.


Josh Fauver on the recently working Strat - and my head.


Benjamin keeping his cool while trying to remember the next part.
(just kidding - he actually held it down like a pro).


Jon in brown sweater glory.


Jon caught in full croon - the Bryan Ferry of Atlanta rock.

Sonn Av Krusher - Live at the E.A.R.L. December 26, 2007

The Krusher played its 3rd show the other night at the EARL in Atlanta, and luckily for us (unlucky for you), the show was captured by soundman Kurt. This guy Tim in the audience told me that the set made him forget about the Civil War. Here is our set, broken into 2 tracks:

Sonn Av Krusher - Live at the EARL December 26, 2007

The first track is "Krusher Medley", which is actually a string of Snake Mountain Death Ride/High Holy Days/Long Arm of the Lamb/Angel Dust 500/The Widower, all together in one salvo. The second track is our cover of Evil by almost any artist out there, but we lean toward the version performed by Cactus in the early 70's. Enjoy.

Matt Mauldin on the Vokills.

Gray Kiser on the electic fiddle.

Matt Mauldin on the vampire.

Start the Atlanta Band Genome

Here is the Atlanta band genome in all its third draft glory, fully exploded in every direction to illustrate how all these bands are interconnected through their members, as we are well aware that no musician can be in just one band. The bands highlighted in yellow were ones that yours truly played in.

Please let me know what additions and corrections you might have, and I'll do my best to update the document. The only requirement for inclusion is that the band in question must have played at least one live show.

January 20 Update - Dr. Kinje has officially linked Noot d' Noot to John Coltrane in 5 steps, so I'm not sure how more absurd it can get. Of course I had to update the document to add that bit. The list keeps growing, so keep adding comments.

Cheers.

Bastards Wasting Their Lives - The Midget Farmers Complete Studio Recordings 1992-1994

You wanted the best - you got the best. Here are the entire studio recordings of the Midget Farmers. 33 songs in total!

Here are all the songs for download, in both MP3 and M4A format:

Midget Farmers Complete Recordings


1992 - The first 7" - Happy As A Bastard On Father's Day




1. Rabies
2. Song 33
3. Wet Dreams
4. Mr. Alternative

Man, I should have quit when I was ahead. Could any first recorded output have been better? Ok maybe, but it really seemed to hit the mark when we were in 11th grade. It got a good review in Maximum Rock n Roll, even had a picture! It was a big-hole 33, so when we put it in Michelle Ward's jukebox, it played super fast. Cover art by Ian Maisel, who became kind of the Raymond Pettibon of the Midget Farmers. I got the title from a comic book called Marshall Law, which was similar to Judge Dredd. I have named actually quite a bit of the records that I have played on, I guess it was a talent. This was Mental Fist #2, right after the Bloodspoon 7". More on Bloodspoon later.


Here is a better image of the photo on the back cover of the 7":


Jason Albert (our first bassman) is on the bike above my head. We played a skatepark in Greenville, SC where Jason moved sometime in high school. Eric really enjoyed playing on the deck of the mini ramp. Only Miles Peterken watched us (and took the picture). Everyone else listened in the parking lot, because they didn't want to pay to see us.


1993 - The full length TAPE - America's Place to Waste Your Life

(click on any image to check out the gory details)

1. Itchy Little Finger
2. My Les Paul
3. Soylent Green
4. Black Girl
5. A-Team Theme
6. Light Up
7. James #1
8. Fall of the Memphis
9. My Friend Bob
10. Sonic Youth Song
11. Big Circles
12. My Life in 20 Seconds

The executives at Mental Fist Records (i.e. Matt Mauldin and Jeff J. Jawk) wanted us to do an LP, but we decided on a tape instead. It was hard enough getting people to buy the 7", even back in 1992 people didn't really understand it. Tapes were what high school kids listened to. The title comes from Waffle House's motto: America's Place to Eat, America's Place to Work. At the time, all of the high school kids were really into spending huge amount of time at the Waffle House, mainly drinking coffee. I'm sure this has transitioned to the Strarbucks by now. We had a general disgust for these people, and pretty much anyone in general, so the America's Place to Waste Your Life was an ode to this practice. Anyhow, My Les Paul is actually written by Danny Bloodspoon, who used to play shows with us without ever practicing or learning the songs. He was actually not too bad at it either, since he could just watch Chad and follow along without missing a beat. This is the debut of the A-Team Theme, which I believe came out pretty well (especially the samples). On My Life in 20 Seconds, you can hear Jeff J. Jawk screaming for Money and Pussy, which was another early song of ours, but never made it onto a proper release. We actually recorded it in the garage of a guy named Ross Mann, and sent it to Creative Loafing to be on their music menu. You could call up a hotline and hear the song over the telephone to hear what MF sounded like. I think we were the first band to submit a song, so our number was something like 1111 on the hotline. Light Up is about Ross Mann, but also a homage to Stand Up by Minor Threat from the Flex Your Head compilation. The Fall of the Memphis was about this Memphis guitar that we stole from Jim Huffman's brother, and Chad played it for a song at the Wreck Room on the outside stage that was a beach, and threw the guitar into the crowd and into the beach sand. The guitar was completely destroyed, but it was a fun show. Of course we still had the 2-bass lineup at that point, if you look at the band drawings by Ian Maisel, and it was recorded at the same studio as the first 7" by Jim Ebersole somewhere in the Dunwoody area off Peachtree Industrial.


1994 - Weblo 7" and Bonus Tracks






I don't know how I got #164 of this 7", as I was the drummer. Anyhow, these last songs were recorded at Sleepless Nights studio on Candler Road across the street from Full Moon Records. Issa Diao was the engineer, and I remember having a good time on these recordings. I played them pretty well, and they didn't sound as bad as some other stuff coming out of that studio at the time. I still have a few boxes of these 7"s if someone wants a copy. Ian Maisel was the cover model for the 7", and he does all of the drawings on the inside and back panels. By this time we were a 3-piece, and Eric did most of the singing (Chad sings Get Off My Jock, of course). We were officially a college band at that point, and I think it was a difficult adjustment to make. There is a distinct difference between a high school band and a college band, and I think we were a great high school band, but a really bizarre college band. By the end of my sophomore year, I needed a change and we decided to end the band after a short tour of the east coast. I will tell more about that later.

Here are the songs from the 7"

1. Think About
2. What It's Like to be Me
3. Lame World

Also, here are some extra songs we recorded at the same time, but were never released:

1. Coffeine
2. Get Off My Jock
3. El Camino Real
4. Dull

Car Vs. Driver - 2007

Steve Wishart was in Atlanta last weeked so the local members of Car Vs. Driver (and Gavin) had some tacos and reminisced over old times. Jon Rothman was not in attendance, as he is either killed in action in the Middle East, or lurking around Seattle. You decide.

"What is the most beautiful five words in the English language? This Is Our Last Song" Saucemaster 1994.

My God Has Called Me Here: Midget Farmers 1989 - 1995 (Years of Da Funk)

And So It Begins...
Back in 1989 or 1990, Jason Albert, Miles Peterken and Chad Wiener were building some dirt jumps for their BMX bikes in an empty lot at the back entrance of the Horseshoe Bend (a neighborhood in the Roswell suburb of Atlanta). The shovel, hoes, etc. they were using to build the jumps were broken in half along the shaft, so they had to bend over and squat on the ground to shovel the dirt and make the jumps and whatnot. After some time, Landon Holt walked up on Miles, Chad, and Jason digging with the crappy tools and said,"Hey guys! Did you steal those from some midget farmers?" You have to picture it at Landon volume and with spit flying out of his mouth and foam forming at the corners. Anyhow, Jason Albert had just started playing bass, and he was playing with his friend Chad Wiener, who had just started playing guitar (no drummer yet). At their next “practice”, Jason had an idea for the name of their new band, which was “Midget Farmers”. This fit in perfectly with one of their favorite bands at the time and certainly an inspiration - The Dead Milkmen.

The Midget Farmers started out with just Chad Wiener (guitar) and Jason Albert (bass).

Our fearless leader, Chad Wiener (with Jason Griset of the Go Steadys).

Jason Albert, our first bass player and primary MC.

Then they got Mike (Matt) Eckert to play drums, although he didn't have a drumset, so he just played a snare drum and hit his drum case to make the bass drum sound. Eventually he got a full drumset, and made a Midget Farmer logo on the front head in a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles design with markers. A little after that time, I joined the band as a lead vocalist. I have a practice tape from that time which is completely hilarious, but I can't seem to find it at the moment. In around 1991, Jason Albert moved to Greenville, SC so we got Brian Lysne to replace him on bass. We played a high school talent show around that time and Eric Fickes really wanted to play, so he joined as a second bass player and I also switched to drums as Mike was becoming unreliable and not into the general craziness we were throwing down.

Eric Fickes on Bass - Check out the FAG sticker on the fretboard.

This is when we recorded the "Happy As A Bastard On Father's Day" 7" (we were in 11th grade) and "America's Place To Waste Your Life" tape (we were in 12th grade), as well as taking the band photo seen above. By the way, this picture was taken at the old Roswell High School after it had closed down and become abandoned. We snuck in there one night with candles and flashlights and found the "My God Has Called Me Here" graffiti in one of the inner rooms. Later that night we went to Krispy Kreme, as was our weekend ritual. These would be considered the "Salad Days" of the Midget Farmers, but soon Brian left to play primarily in the Go Steadys as well as his rockabilly band The Swingtips with Jeff Arnold, and Eric started taking over lead vocal duties for most of the songs. That was the final phase of the band, as a power trio with Chad Wiener on Guitar, Eric Fickes on Bass and myself on Drums. We recorded the "Weblo" 7" soon after starting college and floundered for a while before eventually breaking up. At the time, I was playing in the Go Steadys as well as Car Vs. Driver, and I was driving from Athens to Atlanta every weekend (and sometimes during the week) to practice in three bands as well as play whatever shows that were booked. Burnout was inevitable, and as Car Vs. Driver broke up with Jon Rothman moving to Montana, I left all the other bands and joined up with the hal al Shedad exclusively.

People would always ask us if Midget Farmers was in reference to farmers who were midgets, or people who farmed midgets. I guess based on the story above the intention was to be farmers who were midgets. At least it was an interesting name, and not the worst name for a band that started in high school that I’ve ever heard.

Now here’s the story of our first show. It might actually have not been our first show, but it was definitely one of the first. We played a party at Maya Geebis’ house (I can’t really remember how to spell her name), which was basically her and her girlfriends – who incidentally later became our girlfriends. Chad Wiener was the only one who was sixteen, and he drove his family van at the time, but it still took 2 or 3 trips to get all the equipment over to Maya’s house. These girls had first discovered the first Fugazi EP, so they played it constantly at the party. Actually, they just played the song “Waiting Room” over and over. They loved the hell out of that song. Once the song would end, they would immediately rewind the tape and listen to it again (and again, and again). I remember them sitting in a circle singing the song all together while we set up "I don't want the news!!! etc.". It was hard to turn off the damn tape so we could play some of our own songs. After we would play for a little while, they would start the tape up again, right on that bass line – da da dum da da di da dum … repeat. When you think about it, all it took was a tape of a Fugazi song to upstage us at that time. This went down in history as the "never-ending Waiting Room" show.

Here’s another early show story. We played at Jen Erts’ basement down the street in my neighborhood. I think Chad was dating Jen at the time, and her older brother was friends with a band who would also play basement shows. At that time it was the guys in their band watching us play, and us watching their band play, as most shows were back then. The were basically a funk metal band, which was like so many bands of that time, but they played a great cover of one of the Waffle House songs you can find on their jukeboxes. They might have played a few Waffle House songs. Of course it happened to be their best song. For most of the bands at that level, the cover song was their best song. Coincidentally, Midget Farmers did a mean version of the A-Team theme, which might have been our best song and what people remember us for.

I will have plenty of more stories and pictures/flyers to post, but until then here are some recordings to tide you over:

Here is our Live at WREK session on December 20, 1994 - our last recorded output. There are some of our last songs on here that were never properly recorded in a studio, so it's a nice document of the late-era MF sound. As you can tell, it also coincided with late-era Car Vs. Driver sound, or at least the drums. Jason Albert (our first bass player) does the introduction to the band. Also dig Eric's random shout outs to everyone and anyone listening at any time.

Here is the recording in MP3 format as well as M4A format for you ITunes losers:
Midget Farmers Live at WREK December 20, 1994

Here is a classic recording of the Midget Farmers practicing in my basement around 1992. This is the 2-bass player lineup with myself on drums. It is interesting how different practice was back then, especially our in-between song noise. Extra bonus is a Chad Wiener solo demo of "What It's Like to Be Me" later appearing on the Weblo 7". Chad was the primary music and lyric writer for the Midget Farmers. He would record the song playing guitar and signing in his bedroom on a little tape recorder, and then give me the song to write a drum part and Eric to learn the lyrics/write bass parts. I'm glad I still have an example of these demos from Chad. The practice has some choice cuts, such as Grey (with one of my favorite ending lyrics of all time "everybody carries a knife"), Shortcut to George's (the first song Midget Farmers ever wrote), and I Wanna Rock n' Roll (an early MF favorite).

Here is the recording in MP3 format and in M4A format for you Itunes nerds:

Midget Farmers Practice 1992

Stay tuned for the Midget Farmer complete studio sessions!!!

Sonn Av Krusher - Fall 2007

Sonn Av Krusher is one of the bands I play in at the moment - it is definitely the one that practices the most, but that isn't saying much. I play drums, Gray Kiser (Regicide/Hands of an Angry God/Pink Panties/XLinedriveX) plays guitar, and Matt Mauldin (Car Vs. Driver, Chocolate Kiss, Veinocity, Bloodspoon, Joyce) sings and plays some theremin. We started about a year ago and have played a grand total of two shows thus far. To be fair, we have 5.5 children between the three of us, so this band is not going to be the most prolific endeavor.

I was excited to play with Gray Kiser again because he brought such good ideas to the table when I played with him in Regicide (Lift the Ban, Regicide - The Hammer of Hate, Battle of the Hair Capes, etc.), and I like his lyric writing process. Basically we start each song with a theme, usually inspired by the sound and feel of the song, and then develop lyrics from there. Normally both Gray and Matt collaborate on the lyrics and themes, and the song titles are developed as a group.

The band originally did not have a singer - we had this idea to switch vocalists between every song, so then the idea was that at least these people would be suckered into coming out to the show, and it would also give each song its own flavor. It also can make the band schizophrenic. Once the idea had some time to settle in, it was a little unfeasible to have 6+ singers just hanging around, so when Matt Mauldin came to sing On The Backs of the Blitzkrieg (our first song), he just kept showing up for practice. At this point in our musical lives, if a person can show up for practice, they can pretty much be in the band.


Here are some photos from our first show at Lenny's (flyer above):

We recorded five songs at the Living Room with Ed Rawls and Justin McNeight back in July 2007. Here is the link to download the MP3's:

Sonn Av Krusher 2007 Demo Tape

The Track Listing of the Sonn Av Krusher 2007 Demo LP:

1. High Holy Days
2. Snake Mountain Death Ride
3. On the Backs of the Blitzkrieg
4. I Left My Heart in San Francisco Bay
5. The Widower