This Is My Life and You Can Have It

Yes, I will have a few more posts left for Here On This Island so please sit tight. Thanks for the support and interest in the blog everyone. So I have yet another new blog and it is called This Is My Life and You Can Have It. With this blog I am essentially sharing vinyl. tapes and cds from my personal collection that I have been building since my teenage years. With this blog I am generally focusing on sharing indie rock, indie pop, lo fi, shoegaze and post punk. Dig in!

Bunsen Honeydew "Transistor" 7 inch (Bumble Bear/2000) + "Modern Gal"

I'd hate to start out a post about a band whom I loved a great deal negatively but for the life of me I can not understand why the drums are barely audible on this 7 inch. I thought it was the rip I did as it had been sometime since I actually spun the vinyl but holy shit on my stereo spinning the the 7 inch again I was asking myself what happened to the drums. It seems as if on the the 7 inch all that was captured was the treble happy, noise overdose guitar sounds that were the band's trademarks. And for anyone who saw Huntington based Bunsen Honeydew back then can certainly attest that the band was blisteringly loud. Still to this day I have very seldom come across a band as loud as Bunsen Honeydew were. But in addition to the wall of shoegaze, Kevin Shields worship that the guitars spewed from Brain Rayman and Danny Tieman, drummer Theo Cateforis propelled the songs to even greater volumes with his awesome, heavy handed drumming. All while bassist Lisa Cuomo anchored the madness with a rich and fluid sense of low end melody. Anyhow I am getting ahead of myself...

I first became aware of Bunsen Honeydew when I struck up a online friendship with Bunsen Honeydew guitarist Danny Tieman back on AOL chat when I was trying to find musical kindred spirits on Long Island back in the late 90s so that I could start a band. Back then trying to find folks who like bands like Pavement, Sebadoh and Sonic Youth was a tough sell when trying to start a band so naturally I gravitated towards Danny when he told his band "made a bunch of noise with their guitars". I liked the sound of that. And when Bunsen Honeydew played Cedar Beach I was finally able to see them and confirm that yes, I like the sound of that. In fact I REALLY liked the sound of it. Coincidentally, that show was also featured On the Might of Princes and it was the first time I saw them play. Man what a great night that was.

Bunsen Honeydew played noisy guitar shoegaze/mod indie pop that was influenced by bands like Television Personalities, Ride, My Bloody Valentine, and The Pastels. Even an element of The Buzzcocks can be detected at times. They generally traveled outside of the Long Island DIY community but they certainly played shows on Long Island, and played places where there were DIY shows happening. I booked them a few times at the spots like The Mod Center, Roadhouse Pub, etc. And each time they were louder, louder and louder. Anytime they played myself and Tommy Orza (from OTMOP) would buddy up and make the trek. Tommy even would constantly play in his car this tape of recordings of theirs that he wasn't even supposed to have. I think the band didn't like it or something but Tommy coerced Lisa to make him a copy or something like. Regardless, he'd never make me a copy no matter how much I pleaded so I was just content to hearing the band's music in his car. And I think in nut shell I think that was my biggest issue with Bunsen Honeydew, getting their music in a tangible form was next to impossible. I fucking loved the band's music so much but I would even know that records came out. Generally speaking most of their music was released over seas on small boutique indie labels. Even Graham Coxon of Blur released the Didn't You Used to Be Invisible? on his Transcopic Records label. In fact just recently I discovered that the band released Modern Gal as a 7 inch on the Little Teddy Records label out of Germany. Frustrating that I have to hunt down records from a band that I followed as they were active years after the fact. In a way though it is kind of funny and probably very telling of why most people on Long Island never heard of the band.

Back to the issue at hand the Transistor 7 inch which was released on Bumble Bear Records in 2000 features the title track which is a noisy, hypnotic shoegaze romp that mimics Ride at their best while the b-side "Tiny for Louis" is a ambient, shoegaze drone piece that recalls moments from My Bloody Valentine's Loveless. Beck even had a copy of the 7 inch as it appeared in a stack of his records in a photo that went along with a interview he did for Vanity Fair. The bonus track that I have included "Modern Gal" was included on The Hope Machine compilation that I put out and honestly I do not know if this is the version that appears on the Modern Gal 7 inch on Little Teddy. Something tells me that it is not. The band was eventually issued a cease and desist by Jim Henson's people and the re-named themselves Four Volts shortly before drummer Theo Cateforis left the fold. They issued a album called Triple Your Workforce on Kanine Records. Lisa Cuomo moved on shortly thereafter and the band continued on for awhile before folding and moving onto other projects. You can check out Four Volts here.

This is definitely one of my favorite bands from Long Island but I just wish I had better audio documentation to share. In any event check out this out and who knows maybe someday I'll have the time to find some Euro distros where I can import their other releases and eventually rip those. For those interested I do have a couple of copies of this 7 inch remaining in my distro.

Bunsen Honeydew Transistor track listing
1. Transistor
2. Tiny For Louis

from The Hope Machine
1. Modern Gal

Download Here

No. 12 Looks Just Like You "Synth Pop Radio" cassette (self released/2000)

A real quick post today because I am off to see the Mountain Goats in a bit...

I know what you what you are thinking, no, this is a completely different band. In fact they came first. THIS No. 12 Looks Just Like You was a all female indie pop/rock band that formed in 1995. Both were clever enough however to name themselves after one of the best Twilight Zone episodes. The No. 12 Looks Like Just You is band I heard of for awhile but never actually saw play live until 1998 and it was certainly a welcomed stray from the norm. Back then sadly I could barely count on one hand how many bands had females involved. Not only was taking a bite out of the gender ratio welcomed from my point of view but No. 12's carefree, loose basement pop was a breath of fresh air from the myriad of white suburban angst that bands in the local scene seemed to embrace oh so much. I was able to book No. 12 on a few shows and even include their song "Kisslisp" on The Hope Machine.  I am not certain if the band released anything outside of this cassette Synth Pop Radio  which is 13 tracks of lo fi, loose and quirky basement pop that to my ears is a mixture of Bis, Dressy Bessy, early Bratmobile and The Beat Happening.

No. 12 Looks Just Like You Synth Pop Radio track listing
1. Play It On Your Stereo
2. Kisslisp
3. This is Howe
4. Let's Rap! With Rockin' Rikki Rachtman
5. Sunset Drive
6. Hungry Hungry Hippos
7. Symphony #12
8. All About Your Love
9. Keyboard of Doom
10. How to Eat Humans: 101
11. #12 U.S
12. It's Musty Down Here
13. Icabod Crane

Download Here

Carly & Donna "Believe In Yourself" cd-r (self released/2002)

Even though 2002 wasn't that long ago, this cd certainly takes me back a bit. It takes me to a time in Long Island DIY history that I look fondly upon. From my vantage point, I have felt for the most part that punk or DIY culture's cry for diversity has always been largely for window dressing at best as very seldom do you see artists or bands really go against the grain and when they do make an appearance it is safe to say they aren't met with the most open of arms. Plain and simple most people, despite the grand standing and soapbox discussions want nothing more than Peter Pan-esque party time pop punk reassuring them they can stay young forever. However, with that being said I do have to say in a brief period in the late 90s early 2000s I do believe I experienced a genuine sense of diversity not only from musical stand point but also from an ideological as well from a gender stand point. And mind you the latter was far from perfect but from my perception as someone who had already been involved in independent/ music for a considerable amount of time, I found the involvement of women in the Long Island scene at that point in time in every aspect to be prevalent as well as inspiring. Whether it was music, arts, zines or organizing it was clear that women were an enormous part of the community and as someone who has always been serious about practice what you preach and as someone who put a lot of stock in DIY culture it truly meant the world to me that at least locally the creative community I involved myself with was growing past merely being a forum for white suburban male adolescents (and 20 somethings) to express themselves.There was a lot of excitement over getting Freespace off the ground so perhaps there was a sense that EVERYONE was working towards something bigger.

Personally, it is hard for me to excited about shows if each band is a rehash of one another sonically, lyrically, etc. etc. And in that period of shows for me it certainly was exciting for me because it seemed like every show each had bands that sounded nothing like one another but what tied everything was a sense of respect and genuine camaraderie. And that was the common bond. One of the projects that started turning up at shows and "turning things down" so to speak, were a female indie pop/folk duo, Carly & Donna; which was Carly Comando from Slingshot Dakota and friend Donna Baxter. In some ways this powerful duo epitomized how awesome shows were in this time period. A hardcore band like Solidarity Pact or Scent of Human History or post punk band like my own Yes Sensei or Empty Silos Echo War or even Latterman could be on a show with Carly & Donna and it wouldn't feel out of place or forced or anything like that. People would be just as attentive for their set as any of the other bands; sometimes even more. Who knows perhaps I remember things differently than others but I have to say it always stuck me rather vividly how natural everything was.

As far as the music, it is crisp and clean indie pop/folk much like The Softies or Holiday Flyer. Both Comando and Baxter possess such wonderful voices and the way they harmonize is nothing short of heavenly. The harmonizing vocals is what really reminds me of The Softies. And to hear the vocals intertwined with the the clean strummed acoustic guitars and Comando's fantastic keyboard playing, Carly & Donna were able to create a perfect brand of indie pop/folk that while subtle in the sense that it wasn't a rock band set up in the DIY show scene but in many ways was more powerful than most bands. Punk culture generally doesn't reward musicianship so it was a pleasant surprise to not only hear something different from the norm but music that was not haphazardly put together but instead beautifully woven together.

The cd-r demo Believe in Yourself features 3 songs though one is only a 35 second short melody and vocal over a metronome which seemed like more of quick idea but still there is a charm about it. As far as I know I don't believe they ever recorded any other songs though I certainly recall more being played live. Comando went on to form Slingshot Dakota who have released two full length albums Keener Sighs and Their Dreams Are Dead, But Ours is the Golden Ghost.

Carly & Donna Believe In Yourself track listing:
1. "Through It All"
2. "For Lauren"
3. "You"

Download Here