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

Stars Are Insane "Live Reading" (unreleased live recording/2000)

For those unaware Stars Are Insane is a home recording "solo" project that  I have been doing since 1998. The bulk of the material has been recorded by myself via four track but I have had accompaniment and collaboration at times on the recordings and for live performances. Through the six albums (as well as whole slew of unreleased stuff) I have done under the name I have channeled the influences of shoegaze, lo fi, Shrimper Records, tape labels, Sebadoh/Sentridoh, My Bloody Valentine and Dump amongst others. From 1999 to 2001 is when I was most active with the project mainly because of the laid back and secluded living situation I had at the time. In those years I released four full length cassette tapes as well recorded a unreleased album. At this point Stars Are Insane only existed in a live forum on a limited basis doing a few acoustic shows. But for the most part the Stars Are Insane project was mainly just a home recording project  to do the things that I felt I couldn't do with a band.

For the third Stars Are Insane album Justin Age 8 I collaborated with my friend Jason Cassara. After we finished recording the album we decided to test the material out live and the album I present to you here today is a recording of the first show that he and I did. Live Reading, is a name I devised to formally document our inaugural non solo performance at North Shore Public Library on July 7th 2000. Personally, I couldn't think of another venue back then that would have be as inviting for a project like this to exist in a live forum. A few of the songs "Big Circles, Moons and Stars" as well as "Gravity" were included on the So. I Dreamed of Noise four cd-r set that collected the first four albums as well as unreleased and live material. Additionally, the version of "Fuck Lando and His Gambling Problem" that appears here is the same that appears on Justin Age 8. Cassara and I  did a few more shows together and later on even did a couple with Dave Armone involved in the fray when the fourth cassette, Gay came out.

I don't want to rant on to much about my project but just the same I would like people to check out the music. Most of the releases are out of print, though I have a brand new cd-r called A Plan...A Perfect Disaster out now, though half the pressing is already gone. A "selected works" cd-r called Partial History  will be coming out soon. I shall post the complete discography below with links to the Bandcamp so you can at least stream everything. All the albums are on Last FM as well. I'll be working on music for new releases for later this year. If anyone out there is doing a compilation please let me know as I'd love to contribute something.

One last thing before I go...I didn't have any photos of Stars Are Insane shows so I posted a photo that I believe Jon Kaplan took at a show at The North Shore Library that Book Store and Bo Coach played. I was playing Velvet Underground's "Heroin" with Bo Coach and at the end I believe I ran into the audience and tackled Joey from Book Store to close it out in chaotic fashion.

Stars Are Insane Discography:

• Gracias cassette (Rok Lok Records)(September 1999) (out of print) Listen on Bandcamp
• Anonymously Yours cassette (Rok Lok Records) (February 2000) (out of print) Listen on Bandcamp
• Justin Age 8 cassette (Rok Lok Records) (July 2000) (out of print) Listen on Bandcamp
• Gay cassette (Rok Lok Records) (October 2000) (out of print) Listen on Last FM
• 9 Untitled Songs cd-r (Rok Lok Records) (August 2005) (out of print) Listen on Bandcamp
• So. I Dreamed of Noise four cd-r set (Rok Lok Records)(January 2006) (out of print) Listen on Bandcamp
• "I Said It" on I Know Why They Call It Pop cassette compilation (Rok Lok Records) (December 2010)
• A Plan...A Perfect Disaster cd-r (Rok Lok Records) (February 2011) Listen on Bandcamp

Stars Are Insane Live Reading 7/7/2000  track listing

1.The Admiral

2. Big Circles, Moons and Stars

3. Gravity

4. Those Are the Most Deadliest Scorpions I Have Ever Seen

5. I Stayed Up All Night Thinking of You (New Wave Reprise)

6. I Hereby Make An Anatomical Gift

7. Fuck Lando and His Gambling Problem

Download Here