Category Archives: Musical Musings

The Guns are no longer firing, but there’s no ban on their Smog Veil retrospective album

Back in the ’80s, The Guns fired off several rounds of angsty punk rock that, at the time, was an influential part of the Cleveland music scene. Founded by suburban teenagers Scott Eakin and Dave Araca, The Guns were drawn from a conceptual punk band known as The Dark to embrace a more aggressive hardcore sound. The duo was eventually joined by bassist Sean Saley and became a fixture on the Cleveland scene opening for the likes of Hüsker Dü, Agnostic Front and Black Flag. After Saley’s family moved to Florida in 1984, The Guns played under a few different incarnations before its members moved on to other projects, with the band’s final performance being in 1986. After becoming an award-winning tattoo artist, Araca died of a brain aneurism in 1994. In 2005, Eakin and Saley reconvened for a Guns reunion at the Cleveland’s Screaming festival, with Saley moving to drums and Eakin’s fiancé Karen Gortner on bass. This version of The Guns played once more the following year at Cleveland’s Screaming, just months before Eakin had a fatal heart attack.

Both original Guns are now in the big holster in the sky, but that certainly doesn’t mean there is a ban on these Guns. Having recorded some tracks in ’84, as well as some new songs in ’05, The Guns had a stockpile of ammunition just waiting to be discharged. And in true ’80s punk rock fashion, Smog Veil Records has done just that with limited edition double vinyl LP retrospective simply called The Guns. And Saley, who currently plays drums for doom metal band Pentagram and D.C. hardcore band Teamster, is still happy to talk to Wrestling with Pop Culture about his days as an integral part of this underground icon.

First off, tell me a little bit more about this double vinyl release.

It’s a retrospective of the band’s entire existence, so there’s stuff that’s on there from about ’82 until around ’86 or so. It spans four or five years, the entire history of the band. The centerpiece is a 1984 recording that was intended at the time to be released as a full album, but never was. There’s a couple of sessions on there that were professionally recorded, aside from the live cuts from a boombox and all that stuff. But all of this happened between 25 and 30 years ago.

Is there any significance to the timing of the release? Is this some sort of anniversary for the band or anything like that?

No, not really. This has been happening for a really long time now. When we recorded the album that is the centerpiece to this whole thing in ’84, the reason it was never released was simply that we ran out of money. The guy who was going to put it out had a budget to record everything and press it onto vinyl. But we pretty much spent all his money just recording it. So it just never happened. But this has been on somebody’s back burner for a good six or seven years. It was supposed to come out on a California label called Grand Theft Audio. Tom Dark was talking with the guy who ran that label for a really long time, but the whole thing just eventually fizzled out. So Tom caught up with Frank Mauceri from Smog Veil Records and Frank was used to releasing older material from various Cleveland bands. The two of them have been talking about it for a few years, but I don’t really know how the seed germinated and someone said, “Let’s do this now.” So it’s not a particular anniversary or anything like that.

You were part of the band for a large part of its existence…

Maybe about half of it. It originally started as two people, Scott and David. They were in another band together called The Dark with Scott’s older brother Tom and Robert Griffin. Then they decided they wanted to play their own faster stuff with a more hardcore sound. So they did maybe four or five shows as a two piece for about a year or so. I ended up meeting those guys at a show in Cleveland and kind of wormed my way in, for lack of a better term. We were friends, we were hanging out and they had this band while I was playing drums in a couple of other bands and was OK on bass. So one day I just said, “You guys don’t have a bass player. We hang out all the time anyway, so why don’t we try to do this together?” That lasted for for close to two years, but during that time we played tons of shows between the middle of ’83 and the beginning of ’85. After I left, Bob Ries came in playing bass and singing some of the songs, basically taking the role I had had. Before I left, we got Scott Silverman in the band as another guitar player. But we only had a few rehearsals with him before I moved to Florida with my mother as a teenager.

That version of the band went on for about another year and a half or so before they broke up. So I was kind of in the middle of it, and it was sort of the heyday as far as shows and all that stuff. Later on, when you get into the sort of final lineup of the band, I think they probably became a better band at that point. They were super tight, everybody was learning to play their instruments better and there was definitely more of a metal influence towards the end. That was there when I was in the band, but by the end of it David had gotten an extra bass drum and suddenly every song had thundering double bass on it. So I think the final incarnation was probably really the best band. It’s too bad there’s not a proper representation of that lineup as far as a studio recording or anything like that. There’s some live stuff on this album that’s pretty lo-fi, but if you listen to it they’re just so tight it’s ridiculous.

There were pretty much three completely different lineups. You had the sloppy ’77 teenage punk stuff, then when I came into it we started writing more traditional really fast hardcore songs that started morphing into metal. But by the end they were probably more of a metal band. But all three lineups were almost equal in length, so I was right in the middle.

There were some reunion shows a few years ago, but with the two founding members no longer with us do you think there’s any possibility of seeing the surviving members getting together to perform in some capacity?

One incarnation of The Guns: (left to right) Dave Araca, Bob Ries, Scott Silverman, Scott Eakin. Photo by Mike Psenicka.

Unfortunately the original guys, Scott and Dave, have passed away. I stayed in touch with Dave when he was still around. During my last visit with him, I was supposed to get a tattoo from him, but it didn’t end up happening. Then he was gone, so that’s very unfortunate. One thing that’s obviously bittersweet about all this is that those two guys started the band, they were the heart of it all the way through, and it’s a terrible feeling to know they’re not physically here to see this album’s release. But I’m glad it’s out and I’m certain they would be happy about it.

I didn’t stay in touch with Scott as well. We had a reunion show, which was just me on drums and him playing guitars and singing, then we got his fiancee to play bass and it worked out really well. So he and I were in touch a little bit during his last couple of years and I’m really glad that happened because he was definitely one of my best friends growing up. I stay in touch with Bob through Facebook and stuff and I’m Facebook friends with Scott [Silverman], but I don’t think I’ve ever seen him post anything. I probably talk to Tom Dark, Scott’s older brother, more than anybody. After living in Florida briefly with my mom, I’ve lived in D.C. since I was 18 and played drums with Government Issue for a while. And I’ve lived here ever since.

Scott Silverman is still out there and he’s been in a couple of well-known bands since those days. He’s jammed with Brant Bjork from Fu Manchu with a band called Brant Bjork and The Bros. Bob also still plays, but he lives out in Seattle. So there aren’t really any plans and I couldn’t even imagine ever trying to get together in any capacity because David and Scott were The Guns. They started the band, they were the two constant members all the way through, they did the heart of the writing. So without those guys, I don’t think there’d ever be any attempt at trying to play or anything.

It’s good to see you’re still actively performing with Pentagram these days. How does that compare to your time in The Guns?

On an underground level, Pentagram is a pretty well-known band that has been together in one incarnation or another since the early ’70s. We toured Europe in June, did some one-off dates on the East Coast after that, then went back overseas last month to do some shows in the U.K., Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Germany.

I also play drums for a local D.C. hardcore band called Teamster, which is kind of along the same lines as The Guns, but maybe even a little faster, harder and more brutal. So I am still active in music, love it and get out there as much as I can. I’m definitely a lifer as far that goes, so I’ll be doing it until I drop dead or can’t do it anymore.

Bigfoot rocks Monstrosity Championship Wrestling with a wooly stomp

Despite new music and tour, nothing is too solid with Concrete Blonde

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Just prior to Concrete Blonde‘s tour to celebrate the 20th anniversary of its landmark Bloodletting album two years ago, I spoke to Johnette Napolitano for accessAtlanta (which you can read right here). That was actually my second time interviewing Napolitano and both experiences have lead me to the conclusion that it’s hard to keep up with her creative energy. For Concrete Blonde fans, that’s a good thing considering that the band recently released a white vinyl single for two new songs: “Rosalie” and “I Know the Ghost.” And after touring the world over the past couple of years, the band (rounded out by guitarist James Mankey and drummer Gabriel Ramirez) is currently on an East Coast tour. In the midst of that tour, Napolitano takes a moment to talk to Wrestling with Pop Culture about the possibility of a new Concrete Blonde album and her various other music projects.

I talked to you a couple of years ago just before your first rehearsal for the Bloodletting anniversary tour. Now you’re on tour again and have a new vinyl single, which is something you may not have anticipated last time we spoke. How did the new music and tour come about?

It just seems to be the right thing to do. We did that seven-inch single on white vinyl, which was fun to do. I don’t know how that idea really came about. It just seemed like the right thing to do. At my day job, that’s what I used to do is get masters to the plant to get them made into stampers and all that. That was my job, so I know a lot about vinyl and I just thought it would be fun to make a single. Obviously you can download anything digitally, but it was really fun. We took it out of the box and just went, “Oh, this is really cool.” It’s like it used to feel, that excitement when we made our first record. I think for Gabriel it was really cool because that’s how this band started was on vinyl. We’re excited about it and people apparently want us to play. That’s nothing that I take for granted. There are waves, especially in this fabulous entertainment industry we’re in, where trends come and go and things ebb and flow. The last thing you want to do is get out there and think everything’s cool and have six people show up.

Since that Bloodletting tour, we headlined a festival in China last year, which was a really amazing experience for all of us. We’ve been to South America a couple of times. As a matter of fact, we have to go back there in March or April because two days before a Brazilian festival I fell off one of my horses and broke four ribs and four vertebrae, so we’re going to make that up. Most of our touring in the last few years has been foreign. The States are a difficult place to work, as anybody in this business will tell you, because it’s like five different countries in one. You may do well New York, but nobody in Mississippi gives a shit, or vice versa. It’s really painstaking to make sure you’re connected in the right places and doing the right things to make sure people come because all you’ve got to do is one bad tour and nobody will come again.

The two songs on this seven-inch are stylistically very different from each other. One is very punk rock while the other is almost country…

Much like our first record.

Exactly. Are those the only two new songs you’ve been working on or do you have other new stuff that might be released soon?

I do. I always have a million half-finished things laying around. I’m my hardest critic and a song really has to earn its place before being immortalized. I love both of those songs. “Rosalie” just came to me in one piece while I was sitting on the porch of my cabin in Joshua Tree. It just blew in with the wind. It was just perfect. When that happens, all you’ve got to do is catch it. And with “I Know the Ghost,” “The Ghost” was a poem I wrote for a book called Rough Mix, which we have on sale, and I really liked it and loved the idea of setting it to music somehow. I also wanted to do something that we didn’t have to take that seriously; just a good old-fashioned West Coast punk feel because our roots are in West Coast punk. That’s when everybody started making their own records. That was a big deal and everybody was doing the DIY thing big time back then. That’s when Black Flag’s first record came out and Agent Orange and all that. Brett [Gurewitz] started Epitaph with a seven-inch single from Bad Religion, which both Jim and I worked on. But everybody was doing that then, so it makes sense. And on a very basic level, the sound of vinyl sounds good with certain stuff. Country music on vinyl just sounds so pure and right; and punk on vinyl sounds pure a right because there was a lot of that going on on vinyl. Now they have plug-ins to simulate the sound of vinyl if you record digitally.

The book is another thing you mentioned last time we talked. I’m glad to see that it’s out now.

Oh, yeah. It’s steadily selling on Amazon, which is really all I wanted to do. I want it to be a series and I’ve started another one on this tour. There are so many songs that it’s basically explaining what some of the songs are about. Then it has miscellaneous drawings, poems and things that don’t seem to fit anywhere else. I also did a CD series called Sketchbook and I only do 1,000 of each, then they’re gone. It gives me incentive to do another one because I have a loyal base of people who want every one I do. That’s really cool. I like that sort of approach. It’s not just throwing stuff out there for mass consumption; it’s custom little things for people who want them. People do appreciate that they have something special that is not going to be there once it’s gone.

You always seem to be working on musical projects with various other musicians. What else do you have in the works right now?

I’m still working with David J and David is all over the map. We’re working on a project called Tres Vampires with a DJ named Shok out of L.A. We’ve got three tracks down, only one mixed, and a video that really needs some re-editing. It’s hard to keep up with David J. He’s one of the most driven artists I’ve ever known. He really is off the planet and I’m a big fan.

You were also working with a flamenco group in New Orleans called Ven Pa’Ca and talking about opening your own flamenco club there. Did that ever happen?

I spent a lot of time down in New Orleans after my dad died and opening a place down there was definitely not as simple as I thought it was going to be. New Orleans is a scary place if they don’t want you there. I was at the airport and two big white men came to the bar where I was sitting and said, “Can we join you?” I said, “No,” but they sat down anyway. I was pretty much told that it wasn’t a good idea for me to be opening anything down there. It was pretty scary. I’d heard that New Orleans is no place to fuck with, but I don’t know who they think I am or whether they didn’t dig what I was doing. I had rented Preservation Hall for one day and shot flamenco with Leticia from Ven Pa’Ca. We did a version of “Mexican Moon” and it was really cool because it made sense for me to have flamenco there. But that’s not what the place really is about. New Orleans really doesn’t appreciate you deviating from what they want to go down, basically. That really did freak me out because they were just like, “We’ll bury you down here.” It was very creepy. I don’t know if they thought I was related to Janet Napolitano or what. It was really strange, so I kind of put that idea to the side because I think playing down there with the big boys is not the easiest thing in the world to do.

You mentioned that you’ve been working on other new songs. Does that mean we might see a new Concrete Blonde album in the near future?

Everybody keeps asking me that, but I’m afraid to make that commitment with the band, to tell you the truth. We have a relationship that is difficult sometimes, like anyone else who’s been together for so many years. It’s really important that nobody get too comfortable. That’s why I got pissed off at the band in the first place because everybody got really comfortable and everybody started taking things for granted. I like that we’re doing this, I like that there’s a single and there is new music, but I know I’ll never again in my life go out and tour for seven months at a time like we used to do in the old days. As a matter of fact, what has been the main factor in the last couple of years for me is I don’t like to leave home for more than a week out of the month. It throws me off balance and I really need to be home because I’ve got goats and horses and all that. But it’s not practical to do that. On the East Coast we’ve got to do it for two weeks to make it work, but it’s hard for me to be gone for that long. It’s hard on personal relationships and your life and it’s not worth it. To keep that balance is the most important thing for me and if it takes doing things in little spurts so everybody keeps it together and stays nice to each other, that’s great. The minute it’s not fun, there are a million other jobs to do that pay more.

As we just talked about, you also do various other musical projects with other people. So you seem to stay busy even when you’re not working with Concrete Blonde. Are you working on any other new musical projects?

I am pleased to be working with Billy Howerdel on the new Ashes Divide record. I just spent a couple of days not too long ago doing some heavy duty writing with Billy, which is always intense, but a total pleasure. It’s a beautiful record; I’m really pleased. I just love Billy Howerdel. He’s a great guy and I love his family. I’m just envious of him because he has a beautiful wife, beautiful kids, he makes beautiful music and he makes amazing food. That motherfucker cooks like an angel, so anytime you work with Billy you know you’re going to get fed really well.

Green Day concludes trilogy earlier than scheduled with “¡Tré!”

“Void Vanishing” is a Qurious departure for ambient duo

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On its third album Void Vanishing, the duo of Mike Netland and Catherine Quesenberry continues to create uniquely Qurious atmospheric sounds. The dreamlike electronic soundscapes Netland conjures are the perfect backdrop for Quesenberry’s sleepy vocal delivery, which sounds as if it’s being emitted from some distant place only to float in at the perfect moment.

The allure begins with “Gaida,” an enchanting cacophony of organ and ethereal singing that melds right into “Wunderkammer,” with its more distinct beats and lyricism. “Rubies” pulsates out of an atmospheric abyss to gradually become one of the album’s most pop-structured songs before dissipating into an airy breakdown that flows right back into the song’s framework.

Much of Void Vanishing (namely songs like “Gears” and “Rima”) are reminisent of nursery rhymes sung by a fairy while “Gold” and “Termina” have a Devo-meets-Kraftwerk urgency that provides something more upbeat than the rest of the album. But whether it’s the ambient instrumentalism of “Pactolian” or the abstract arrangement of “Rima,” Qurious is adept at aural experimentation always on the verge of evaporating but never completely fluttering away. Much like those lucid moments between sleeping and waking, Void Vanishing‘s electronic pulse is always pumping just enough to keep Quesenberry’s feather-like afloat.

www.qurious.bandcamp.com

The Casket Creatures bring horror rock to Monstrosity Championship Wrestling

Green Day’s “¡Dos!” is the second step in a punk rock trilogy

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Not quite two months ago, Green Day began what could be its most ambitious musical project to date with the release of ¡Uno!, the first in a trilogy of back-to-basics albums (read my review here). The second installment, aptly titled ¡Dos!, continues down the chronological path towards January’s ¡Tré! with another set of bouncy, sugary-sweet punk rock blasts that sound like a band gladly reliving its youth rather than becoming jaded and uninspired as it grows older.

The solo acoustic stylings of lead-off track “See You Tonight” might indicate this album is going to explore Green Day’s folkier side (which the band has previously done well on 2000’s Warning and Nimrod‘s “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)”). But ¡Dos! quickly reveals itself to be just as energetic as anything the band has previously released. “Wild One” sounds like a mature sequel to “She,” with its calm refrains about a seemingly doomed obsession with a potentially crazy girl. “Makeout Party” is a fast-paced, rollicking rock ‘n’ roll good time while “Stray Heart” has an almost rockabilly feel.

“Ashley” picks things back up with another exciting ode to the virtues of bad girls and “Lady Cobra” takes a few garage rock cues from the White Stripes‘ “Fell in Love with a Girl.” “Nightlife” is the biggest surprise on ¡Dos!, with it’s electro beats and lurid lyricism from Mystic Knights of the Cobra‘s Lady Cobra juxtaposed with bits of dark twang. And “Amy” (a tribute to Amy Winehouse) bookends ¡Dos! with another Elvis Costello-like acoustic pop solo from Billie Joe Armstrong.

www.greenday.com