Ely Parker and the CIAs

(right dudes, wrong band)

In the Year of Our Lord Nineteen Hundred Ninety-Three, Ely Parker and the CIAs practiced thrice and played out once. Chris Concannon on bass guitar, Ted Leo on guitar and vocals, Chris Norborg on drums. Two or three originals, otherwise pretty much straight up Medway Scene and its cousins and forbears.

--Chris Norborg

Below we have the live recording from the one-and-only show. And just for grins, we've got demos from one of the practice sessions as well. Enjoy!

   

Stomatopod - Air By the Ton

It's another edition of Where Are They Now...

Chicago's Stomatopod, fronted by John Huston (The Transoms, The HickUps, The Cole Estate), has recently released their debut album, Air By the Ton. Check it out below!

Regular Sized Monsters

Regular Sized Monsters was Chris Concannon (guitar + vocals), Faye (bass), and Bear (drums). A very short-lived band, they played exactly one show, opening for Hace Frio and, yeah... Chisel. Cuz that's how we rolled in the Bend.

I wish there was a recording of that show, if only to hear the cover of the Stevie Wonder classic "Uptight (Everything's Alright)" that Regular Sized Monsters played. But instead, the only existing audio I'm aware of for this band is from a taped practice session, recorded in the basement of the Green House. There are three songs here, the first being a nice cover of Wire's "Reuters," followed by two instrumental numbers.

listen/download:

Channel 99 - Swingin' In The Rough

After Obstruction dissolved when Ted left South Bend, Andy and I were 2/3rds of a band looking for a way forward. Andy was already friends with Andrew Sarnecki (now of HippyTree fame), and his roommate Dominic was a budding guitarist with a keen appreciation of sentimental California punk music. Combine that with my love of hardcore and metal, and Andy's mix of the two, and voilà!

--Ron

listen/download:

The Pawners' Society - Pull The String

It's another edition of Where Are They Now, our attempt to chronicle the post-90s musical endeavors of SBP90s musicians. This entry comes from John Huston (The Transoms, The HickUps, The Cole Estate), sharing an EP from The Pawners' Society.

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The Pawners' Society was my friend Stephanie Morris and me. We started performing together in 2007. We were both songwriters and wanted to explore softer music that highlighted our vocal harmonizing. We recorded this EP of songs that was mastered and awaiting cover art when she died on June 1, 2009.

This is the five-year anniversary since she's been gone and our songs have never been released. I still think about her every day and miss hearing her sing, but it’s become increasingly sad that our music has gone largely unheard. I decided to at least put the EP on Bandcamp for people to download, with an option to donate money. Any proceeds will go toward suicide prevention.

-- John Huston

Skalcoholiks - "look at all this junkfood..."

(lifted from last.fm)

Skalcoholiks were a ska/rock band comprised of 7 students from the University of Notre Dame which formed in 1996 and continued together until 1998.

The band concept originated when Noah Gray (drums), formerly of Tweak, approached Joe Cruz (bass), formerly of the Roadapples, with an idea to form a new band grounded in uptempo ska. The band added Notre Dame Marching Band members Tony Eltink (trombone), Dave Griffith (Trombone) and Paula Conolly (Sax). Tim Bowers (vocals) was also originally slotted as a trombonist. The final member to join was Mike Bechtel (guitar).

Over the course of their 2 years together, Skalcoholiks developed a very tight, percussive musical style. Lyrically, Bowers and Bechtel shared songwriting duty, both hewing primarily towards a humorous style (although the band occasionally switched tones with songs such as 1888 and Life.

Skalcoholiks recorded "look at all this junkfood..." in February 1998 at Gene Michael Productions in Niles, Michigan. They pressed 2000 CD’s which were bought by a receptive audience in Spring of 1998.


listen/download:


Listen to/download the Skalcoholiks on last.fm

WORK - The Long Con

This seemed like a good a time as any to kick off the "Where Are They Now" feature for the SBP90s blog, which will highlight former Power 90s musicians that are still rocking it today.

Photo credit: Joe Kirschling

Just released, the debut album from Milwaukee's WORK, entitled The Long Con. WORK is fronted by none other than one Joe Cannon (emiLy, Spoonfed, VOMWTW, The Intelligibles, etc.), and if you've enjoyed Joe's music over the years, then you will certainly enjoy this. Great stuff, give it a spin:



follow WORK on facebook

The Florida Evans Showband and Revue - "Good Times" Music Video

At some point during early 1999, some film major friends approached us about making a music video for "Good Times" as their final project for a film production class. Being the agreeable young men we are, we naturally said yes.

The concept is pretty straightforward -- still photographs edited together to make a comic book style story of a team of super(?)heroes taking down an evil mastermind and her henchpersons. Pretty sure my bits were shot in some production room in the upper levels of O'Shaughnessy Hall, while Matt and Dan shot most of their outdoor bits out on Lincolnway West. The party and live band shots were filmed in the basement of The Hive, also known as the house on Bulla Road where Ron and Matt lived.

Matt remembers being upset that he had to use a weird bass in the live shots and that the party was really fun. He also pointed out that we used stills from the video in the album artwork for our album Made Simple.

If I remember correctly, the "Good Times" video closed out the ND Student Film Festival that year. A number of people recognized me at Lula's the next day, which was fun. Florida Evans was in two student films that year -- the other one featured us playing at a house party during the crawfish boil, though the only thing I remember actually appearing in the final version was Matt biting the head off a crawfish.

Enjoy the video. It's fun, as befits the song. And keep an eye out for Ron throttling a stuffed rabbit.

--Doug

Streganona - Applications For Aluminum Siding

Did you know that towards the end of their existence, Streganona recorded a full-length studio album? When the band broke up prior to it's release, though, it was filed away and mostly forgotten about. Fortunately, we have it here for you to enjoy, and it's pretty great. A maturation of their earlier recorded material, this is a post-hardcore gem that gets more rewarding with each listen, and could easily stand up pound-for-pound with some of the great releases of their contemporaries. I can't recommend this one enough.

A few notes on the album from former bassist Mark Miyake:

Our only album not recorded on my old Tascam 4-track. We got some nice open-ended funding to record it, and it was slated for some pretty wide distribution (we were touring fairly far and wide and frequently at that point), but we broke up between the mastering and package design phases of the project, so it was never released. We recorded it in an all analog format over about a week at the Amphetamine Reptile Studios in Minneapolis, and mastered it at Acme Studios in Chicago. It sounds great and does a good job of capturing what we were doing over the last year or so after we recorded "Plastic." 

The title was intended as an audio medium joke-- the previous album title was about plastic and was released on cassette and this one was going to be on CD, so we were going to go with an aluminum reference.

listen/download:

Club 23, R.I.P.

Last week, Club 23 was demolished. If you are a regular reader of this blog, then there's a good chance you spent a lot of time at Club back in the day, and it's also pretty likely that your band played there at some point, too. Lots of great memories from hanging out at this joint, and it's kind of a sad feeling knowing that it's not around anymore.

Rather than trying to eulogize, I'm instead offering a chance to walk around inside Club 23 one last time, and relive for a moment what it was like to hang out there on a typical night almost 20 years ago. The video below was at the front end of a VHS tape of a Cripe Street set at Club 23 (which I'll get to eventually, I suppose) that was sent to me, and it's a pretty great time warp. Witness the flannel shirts, the mom jeans, the white baseball caps... it's amazing. Throw in a couple songs by Brian Muller (of Cripe Street and Brian, Colin, and Vince) and some fella I don't recognize (help?), peppered with requests to play "Spacey Floater," and... well, just see for yourself.

Take me home, Club 23. Take me home.