New SCENE OF THE CRIME flyer!!

Here's our new radio show flier. Check us out at:

http://www.kdhx.org/index.php?option=com_kdhxradio&task=playlist&dothis=latest&show=Scene+of+the+Crime&Itemid=268

M Street Band - St. Louis 1979

Here's the M Street Band 45 from St. Louis 1979. This was Charlie Langrehr's band. He wrote both songs, and it has the same feel as the Brown and Langrehr 45..but a bit more dirgey. Like the way the Dinosaurs 45 is proto punk come lately, this sounds like it shoulda been from '76 instead of '79. I'm not sure if this was issued in a pic sleeve. I only learned of its existence fairly recently. Thanks to Steve Pick for mentioning it and to Bob Reuter for passing on his copy to China Reactor's St. Louis archive. Stay tuned for plenty more.

M Street Band
She's A Machine
b/w
Wine an Roses

1979-Blue Blade Records

Hear It on your computer machine

New Scene of the Crime theme!!

Ann and I have a radio show here in St. Louis. It's called Scene of the Crime. I haven't mentioned it before but had planned on doing a post or two about it in the future. I think I'll start sorta backwards here. We'll save the story of the show/introduction for a post in the near future.

We just celebrated the ten year anniversary of Scene of the Crime a couple weeks back. We've had a couple theme songs over the years and figured the anniversary show was a good time to have a new one. Ann and I wrote and recorded this in a couple hours in the basement. If you want to download an MP3 of the new theme, click this:

THEME

Don't worry, I'll fill in the story very soon...

The Incisions...let's cut right to the chase

After the break up of The Adult Toys; Ann and I layed low for a little while. Being bandless never lasts very long before I get the urge to give it another try. Granted, I had it easier than most people starting from scratch. If you’re one person, you start looking for 2 or 3 band mates. I was set on playing guitar and giving another crack at singing, and I knew I had an in-house bass player with Ann. Now all we had to do was find a drummer. We started asking around and before long we learned of a drummer looking for a band. For some reason, the Incisions dates are a bit hazy for me, but I think it would have been in the fall of 2002. OK, anyway….

The drummer we were put in contact with was a transplant from Detroit by way of San Francisco named Scott Lasser. We went to Scott’s house and set up in his basement for a trial run. I think we just ran through a couple original songs for the try out. We were still going after that Angry Samoans crossed with The Zeros crossed with whatever we were nuts over that week…kinda sound. Pretty much, just plain old, inept Punk…the only thing we sorta knew how to do. Scott cut the mustard, so we discussed a weekly practice schedule. We agreed to get together again the following week. With Saturday morning practices and a handful of original songs already worked out; it wasn’t long before we were ready to play out. In retrospect, I would have kept better records of things like bands we played with and dates and other things….but even though my intentions were good, I just never did. Where was I? Oh yeah…so we booked our debut show, which I think was at the Way Out Club. More shows followed (yeah, I know…real exciting and unique, huh?) at the High Pointe and the Way Out Club again, on at least a couple occasions. We opened for the FM Knives from Sacramento, but most shows were played with other local bands.

Where The Adult Toys lyrics/songs I wrote were more about sex and silly stuff, The Incisions songs I sang were more serious or hate fueled. I only shouted about things that pissed me off…sales people, mass stupidity, bible thumpers, etc. Typical punk fodder, but looking back, it was a little out of balance with the songs Ann sang in the band: Cherry Pop Tarts, Dance Dance Dance and a cover of a Nikki and the Corvettes song. Bit of an odd mix, but nobody noticed…I don’t think.

In an attempt to spice up the band, we figured some stage duds were in order. Ann “borrowed” some white lab coats from her employer so we could dress like doctors on stage. Ann also made homemade Incisions T-shirts for us; complete with a large slice on the front to expose red felt sewn on the inside for that bloody surgery look. Since Ann was coming through on the stage wear, I figured I’d better do something, too. I was trying to come up with a way to get rid of the uncomfortable aspect of the between song moments on stage. Stage banter is hard to pull off without seeming like you’re a pompous dink or pandering to the audience. Very few people are actually good at it without sounding like a douche bag. I knew I wasn’t good at it, so I decided that constant background noise was the best. I took a bunch of sound samples and other audio clips and made longer loops of sound out of them. I made a goofy intro with production/library music that I added a voice over to, welcoming people to the Incisions live show. That lead into a space shuttle count down, which would have us launch into a song when it hit ‘zero’. The background noise was drowned out by our instruments, but could be heard between songs. I tried to time it so a different noise would be heard between each song. Not an exact science or fit, but it worked for the most part. We had babies crying and phones ringing, amongst other annoying sounds. I just simply played this off a CD that I had run into a spare guitar amp we’d bring with us. This high brow technique was slightly improved upon in our next band.

Geez, this picture hardly looks anything like The Adult Toys live shot below...

We played a handful of shows, but for some reason the idea of a keyboard or synth kept entering our brains. Well at least mine and Ann’s….or at least mine. There was even some light discussion of using a synth in the Incisions. It wasn’t too long before I decided that I wanted to try something other than a sloppy punk band. We decided to tell Scott that was the end, and we shut it down to begin from scratch again. That would lead to SYNTAX ERROR that you’ll read about in the near future.

The Incisions never recorded in a studio. I don’t even think we even got to the point of discussing it. For the sake of working on songs and hearing ourselves as a whole band; I recorded a mid-period practice or two on one of our four track machines in 2002, I think. So, if you want to hear what the Incisions sounded like in all of our lo-fi, practice tape glory; click below. These songs were all recorded in Scott’s basement…live and in person!

Basement demos
Track List:
1. intro
2. count down (just like a real, live show!)
3. Sector 7G
4. Dance Dance Dance
5. Shut Your Mouth
6. Sales People
7. Cherry Pop Tarts
8. You're Nothing
9. You Make Me Crazy

Tracks 1 & 2 aren't songs, 3-8 are original songs that Jason and Ann wrote and 9 is a cover of the Nikki & The Corvettes song

Get Yer Fine Cuts o’ Punk here!


Check out the two posts below for more Incisions stupidness

The Incisions - Non-record cover #2

Here is the second fake 7" cover I made for The Incisions. We didn't really even get close to releasing a 7", but it's nice to dream...

The Incisions - Non-record cover #1

Here is one of two fake 7" covers I made during the Incisions days...see the post above for the other one...and two posts above for the Incisions story and music!

THE ADULT TOYS - Dumb Punk from the Reruns!

The Adult Toys was the first band Ann and I were in together. We formed The Adult Toys shortly after she moved to St. Louis. Ann moved here in October of 1999, and I think we actually started The Adult Toys in the first 3 or 4 months of 2000. Ann and I came up with the name…and to this day, I’m still surprised it hasn’t been used by another band….at least to my knowledge.

As with most cities in the world, St. Louis seems to have a serious lack of drummers. You can ask someone from pretty much any city and they’ll probably tell you the same. We didn’t know of an available drummer, but we had a friend who we had met through our radio show. We knew he didn’t play drums, but he did have similar taste in music. That meant he was more than half way there. So, we let our friend Xian (Christian) borrow a drum set and showed him some steps to get started. He quickly ramped up with some furious practice. (btw Xian would later become the singer of Prefecture, for those kids keeping score at home!) We began practicing in his bedroom as a three piece. Me (Jason) on guitar and vocals, Ann on bass and Xian on drums. Before we knew it, we had a handful of originals. I had barely played guitar in a band before, and I had definitely never tried my hand at singing. I figured if we could have a drummer that had been playing a few weeks, why not give it a go. I never realized what a tin ear I had until attempting to sing in key. Yeesh.

The details are all in my head; just not the exact order of events…. After a couple months of practice, we felt confident enough to make our live debut. One of those attempts at finding a show was when Xian brought a practice demo to a shitty bar in Belleville, IL called 311. The response from the flunky in charge of booking was that it “sounded like the Sex Pistols”. He meant it as a put down, but I’d take that as a compliment any day of the week. Ha ha We ended up getting an opening slot at the High Pointe (RIP) for The Wontons…some garage band from Texas, I believe. About a week before the show, Ann fractured her elbow, so we didn’t end up playing. It was only a minor set back and Ann was back playing in less time than we initially thought it would take to heal. We quickly got back in practice and landed an opening slot for a show at the dive, punk/metal bar The Creepy Crawl. We and a few other local bands were opening for The Vultures from Seattle. Like all bands first live show; we were brimming with nervous energy. We spit out our 20 minutes set to a rather rousing response. Well, rousing compared to the polite clapping I’d expected.

We continued to practice and book shows…ho hum, right? We opened for the Zodiac Killers and a few other touring bands, as well as playing with several locals. A couple shows stand out as my favorites. One was at The Way Out Club with local band The Spiders where all three of us wore matching Porky’s T-shirts. (See picture above) These were promotional t-shirts my folks had stashed with others similar shirts in a box since the early 80’s. (My dad’s in radio and was always bringing home goofy promotional items.) I remember playing a good set that night, as well. Another one was a KDHX radio benefit at Fredrick’s Music Lounge (RIP) where Xian took off his shirt and drew a giant penis with a magic marker on his stomach and chest. It was silly and surreal at the same time.

The Adult Toys were asked to play a show at a DIY venue called The Tin Ceiling (RIP). We were to scheduled to play with a handful of local hardcore bands. At the time, we had not been exposed to the St. Louis punk houses or illegal basement spaces. We arrived not knowing what to expect. We were told that we’d play last, so we watched the other bands and hung out by the car drinking beer. When it was our time to play, we hit the stage and in my continuing stance of stage fashion over function; I pulled on a thin, stretchy executioner’s hood that I found in the Halloween section at Big Lots. I yelled out something about Reagan being in the White House with his finger on the button or some such confusing nonsense. We jumped into a song and I found out very quickly that it was near impossible to see my hands (I’m hack guitarist who still stares at his hands! And I’m proud of it!) or where I was stepping. I struggled through another song and then the hood had to go. I’d say it was my favorite Adult Toys show, since the crowd was by far the most energetic and didn’t seem to mind the sloppy guitar work or stumbling. That Tin Ceiling show was the last The Adult Toys played.

I recorded The Adult Toys in Xian’s bedroom a couple times. The songs on the download below are from a couple different practices. I just simply set up a couple cheapie room mics and plugged them into a 4-track. Nothing fancy, but you can hear what’s going on. Without further ado….click the link to download a zip file with a few images and a handful of Adult Toys originals….if you so desire.

Click to have The Adult Toys fuck your eardrums!