Category: Jawbox

March 24, 1993

Slamdek Singles

March 24, 1993

Slamdek Singles
compiled seven inches and cassette EP’s plus unreleased material, 1989-1992
various artists two-cassette set
[SDK-32] transparent color copied covers, books-on-tape long box with inserted 8-page booklet

The Slamdek Singles box set was a great idea with beautiful packaging, but also a victim of bad circumstances. Its length of 35 songs in 101 minutes, took an average of nearly a half hour of machine time to record each set. Its expensive, transparent, full color packaging increased its price even more than its two tapes did. It became a specialty item as it had to be kept on the store counter. Its small size and high price tag of around $16 made it too easy to steal.

The diversity of the material it included took several months to compile and assemble for release as a single unit. Slamdek Singles had been in the works since late 1992. Its liner notes include the lyrics to all 35 songs, as well as complete discography, personnel, and production listings for each group. And other than the convenience and novelty of putting all the songs together, the set had a purpose.

“The Slamdek Singles two tape set is the result of several years of dedication, emotion, and hard work by many people. The short 101 minutes that it plays are miniscule in comparison to the time and effort needed to reach this milestone. The songs compiled here are provided as either previously unavailable, currently out of print, or never before issued on cassette. They have all been transferred directly from the original digital masters.”

Slamdek Singles compiled all of Slamdek’s essential EP’s released between 1989 and 1992. This consisted of: the Crain/Deathwatch 7″, the first Endpoint/Sunspring 7″, the Your Face cassette, Sunspring’s Slinky 7″, Ennui’s Olive 7″, and the Jawbox cassette. Its previously unavailable material consisted of two tracks by Sister Shannon, plus one from Christmas 1990; two tracks by LG&E, plus one from Slamdek Merry Christmas Is For Rockers; and two tracks from Ennui, combined with their track from Rockers and their Olive 7″, thus presenting all seven songs they recorded. And the Ennui tracks are incidentally presented in the order in which they were recorded, rather than in the sequence of their seven inch. Are you getting all this?

A production snag occurred when the Sister Shannon DAT could not be located. The unreleased Sister Shannon tracks were one of my main interests in putting the collection together. After several days of phone calls, it turned up at DSL. Another snag came up when one of my two DAT machines was not working properly. I asked John Kampschaefer for his assistance at the last minute, and he graciously obliged. A majority of the digital sequence editing was done in John Kampschaefer’s parents’ basement.

There are some Slamdek EP’s released between ’89 and ’92 which are missing from the collection. They are, the Cerebellum cassette, which was still in print when Slamdek Singles was created, and three EP’s which were left off of the compilation because they had been released to cater to the special interests of selective audiences, Crawdad’s Loaded, the 7 More Seconds cassette, and Sunspring’s $1.50 Demo. The back outside panel of the package has a brief historical introduction, “The Slamdek Record Company began in November 1986 with the release of a cassette by Pink Aftershock. Since then, a combination of thirty-one more cassettes, seven inches, digital audio tapes, videocassettes, and compact discs have been released encompassing a wide range of sounds and ideas. This two tape set compiles most of the cassette EP’s and all the seven inches from the past four years. Also included is a valuable amount of previously unissued material, as well as photographs and the lyrics to all thirty-five songs. Slamdek Singles is the small result of the huge amount of dedication the bands in Louisville (and beyond) share. The time, effort, emotion, and memories that are part of this milestone are things on which no one could ever put a price.”

The lengthy liner notes are synopsized here. And naturally, the discographies are no longer current. Any clarifications and lyrical excerpts are [in brackets]:

The very expensive, full color, transparent books-on-tape long box packaging of Slamdek Singles helped the two tape set meet an early demise. Back cover photo is of Robin Wallace, Todd Smith, and Scott Ritcher at Juniper Hill during the Your Face session in 1988.

SIDE ONE:

Deathwatch: Ignorance Downfall, Wool, Dignity.
Rob Pennington vocals, Duncan Barlow guitar, Greg Carmichael guitar, Rusty Sohm drums, Jason Graff bass.

These songs: Recorded at ARS, Barret Avenue, February 1988. Released as one side of the Crain/Deathwatch split 7″. The record was a limited edition of 300 copies which were given away at a Crain, Endpoint, and Sister Shannon show at the Zodiac Club, September 7, 1990. Deathwatch became Endpoint later in 1988.

Deathwatch Discography:
•Deathwatch cassette, self-released, February 1988, out of print
•Crain/Deathwatch split 7″, Slamdek No. 9790, September 1990, limited edition

[“Punk rock is now a fashion show. You’ve got your boots, so black they glow. Hair stuck up with a can of spray. Punk rock, hardcore, it’s all the same. You’ve got your boots, but what’s to show?”]

Endpoint: Promise, Priorities.
Rob Pennington vocals, Duncan Barlow guitar, Chad Castetter guitar, Lee Fetzer drums, Jason Hayden bass.

These songs: Recorded at Sound On Sound, Frankfort Avenue, November 1990. Produced by Howie Gano and the EPA. Released on the Endpoint/Sunspring split 7″

Endpoint Discography:
•If The Spirits Are Willing cassette/DAT, Slamdek No. 9 (prev. 1797), June 1989
•Endpoint/Sunspring split 7″, Slamdek No. 21, March 1991
•In A Time Of Hate LP/cassette, Conversion No. 10, June 1991
•Catharsis LP/CD, Doghouse No. 10, August 1992
•EP2 live 7″, Break Even Point No. 7, November 1992
•Idiots 7″ of cover songs, Doghouse No. 15, December 1992, limited edition

[“Love is gone, locked from your heart. Lust is strong, it’s all you feel. Close your mind to all commitment, you broke her will. Relationship, a mountain we climbed, fell to an immoral world.”]

Your Face: Magenta Bent, Old Hat New Hat.
Robin Wallace vocals, Greta Ritcher guitar, Tishy Quesenberry drums, Dawn Hill bass.

These songs: Recorded at Juniper Hill Creative Audio, December 1988. Released as a cassette single, this was their only release.

Your Face Discography:
•Magenta Bent cassette single, Slamdek No. 1550, January 1989, out of print.

[“Would it make you feel good to see tears running down his face? Howling with a mad delight, you put him in his place. Revenge is something you can touch, the water in his eyes. Throw it back into his lap, all those little lies.”]

Sister Shannon: Carolina, Haint, Goreman.
Robin Wallace vocals, Greta Ritcher guitar, Kevin Coultas drums, David Ernst bass.

These songs: Recorded in Kevin’s parents’ basement live to digital two track [DAT], December 1990. Produced by K. Scott Ritcher and Dave Ernst. “Goreman” appeared on the 1990 Slamdek Christmas tape, and the band broke up in early 1991. [Sister
Shannon was named after Sacred Heart Academy’s Dean of Students, Sister Shannon Maguire.]

Sister Shannon Discography:
•none released

[“Tied on her back, down on a quilt, where fear becomes a sweat stain. That’s all I know about tacks and thumbs. It’s the same as sex or being raped. The hot metal of his weapon says go girl go girl go girl. Dig the pelvic ditch. Carolina… The fetid swamp sits there on the fact that should be fiction. This cracked man dips into his gun powder, dipping in the handfuls of sweet sweet misery, to eat like rock candy and rot her teeth. Carolina… Too close now to examine the heat from his fingers. He pouts into the metal of his misogynist weapon, no one sees his mercy. This cracked man, oh this cracked man. Gonna take me down. Carolina…”]

SIDE TWO:

Sunspring: Don’t Just Stand There, Silver Spring, Kendall, Faceless, Magnet, Christmas Morning, Street.
K. Scott Ritcher guitar/vocals, John Weiss drums, Chad Castetter bass on 1-3, Jason Hayden bass on 4-7.

These songs: Recorded at Sound On Sound. “Don’t Just Stand There,” “Silver Spring,” and “Kendall” produced by Howie Gano and K. Scott Ritcher, March 1991. Released on the Endpoint/Sunspring split 7″. The other four songs produced by Howie Gano, November 1991. Released as the Slinky 7″.

Sunspring Discography:
•$1.50 Demo cassette, Slamdek No. 3950, April 1990, out of print
•Endpoint/Sunspring split 7″, Slamdek No. 21, March 1991
•Sun cassette, Slamdek No. 24, August 1991
•Slinky 7″, Slamdek No. 26, March 1992
•Action Eleven cassette, Slamdek No. 29, October 1992, limited edition
•Poppy CD/cassette, Slamdek No. 31, April 1993 [actual release in June]
•Poppy LP, Break Even Point No. 931213, April 1993 [actual release in September]

[“I want so much to own nothing. Give me just a piece of just what I want. I’ve had it easy but I’ve made it hard. I’ve thwarted my very own efforts. You are no one, you are nothing. I always knew you hated me. You were easy but I made you hard. I made you a street that I avoided. We are everything we want to be. We never stop to think. I was sure you were the mine I thought you were, but now I’m caught with my foot on the trigger.”]

LG&E: First, Second, Third.
Duncan Barlow instruments/vocals, K. Scott Ritcher instruments/vocals.

These songs: Recorded at Slamdek, Eastern Parkway, October 1992. Produced by LG&E, except “Third” recorded March 1993 on 4 track. “First” appears on Slamdek Merry Christmas is for Rockers cassette, 1992.

LG&E Discography:
•none released

[“In the open fields, kissed by fall’s cool winds, a boy shatters the horizon. Short and somewhat stalky, his red hair blazes like fire against the charcoal gray skies that hang over the field. The rain promised a better harvest for the townsfolk, but the harvest of the boy’s soul is dry and weary. A raindrop falls on his nose, breaking his world of tranquility,
but never his realm of fascination.”]

SIDE THREE:
Ennui: Slugs, Two Headed Cow, Ennui, Gun?, Alkaline, 34 Page Book, Translucent.
Matt Ronay vocals, Lane Sparber guitar, Tim Houchin bass, Forrest Kuhn drums.

These songs: Recorded at WGNS, 13th Street (Arlington, VA), May 1992. Produced by Geoff Turner and K. Scott Ritcher. “Alkaline,” “34 Page Book,” “Ennui,” and “Translucent” comprise the Olive 7″. “Gun?” appears on Slamdek Merry Christmas is for Rockers cassette, 1992. “Two Headed Cow” and “Slugs” are previously unavailable. Ennui disbanded during summer 1992.

Ennui Discography:
•Olive 7″, Slamdek No. 27, September 1992

[“Sometimes when I wanna go, I stop and stare and reflect back to the times when I was switching body parts on G.I. Joe’s and killing birds with guns. Leah’s birthday’s brownies we rolled them up, put them on a chair. Lunch ladies’ eyes always bearing down on us. Disobedient, carefree, irresponsible, and burning slugs with Tim.”]

SIDE FOUR:
Jawbox: Twister, Ballast, Bullet Park, Tools & Chrome, Secret History.
Jay Robbins guitar/vocals, Kim Coletta bass, Adam Wade drums.

These songs: Recorded at Upland Studio (Arlington, VA), January 1990. Recorded by Barret Jones, produced by Alferd Packer. All songs except “Bullet Park” comprised the first Jawbox 7″ on DeSoto Records which was released simultaneously with the Slamdek cassette. Slamdek’s extra cut is a tambourine-less mix of its recording for a Maximumrocknroll compilation. Jawbox is, so far, the only non-Louisville band to be released on Slamdek.

Jawbox Discography:
•Jawbox cassette, Slamdek No. 1782, April 1990, out of print
•Jawbox 7″, DeSoto No. 2, May 1990, out of print
•Grippe LP/cassette/CD, Dischord No. 52, June 1991
•Ones + Zeros 7″, Dischord No. 61, March 1992
•Novelty LP/cassette/CD, Dischord No. 69, August 1992
•Tar/Jawbox Static split 7″, Touch and Go/Dischord, February 1993
•Jackpot Plus! 7″, Dischord No. 77, February 1993

[“Blood marks the road where the animal left its life behind, in a red stain that the rain will wash away. Fall of night foretold, sky colors like a bruise, and I think of ones I used to know and the paths they had to choose. For we are born and we remain forever trapped inside our heads, alone. No human chords are struck without a resonance in other lives, but the echoes we hold onto seem as arbitrary as the times.”]

Crain: The Fuse, Proposed Production.
Joey Mudd vocals on “Proposed Production,” Tim Furnish guitar, Jon Cook bass, Will Chatham drums, Drew Daniel vocals on “The Fuse”

These songs: Recorded at Sound On Sound, January 1990. Recorded by Howie Gano. Released on the Crain/Deathwatch split 7″. Three other songs from this same 17-song session were part of the Rocket 7″ released later.

Crain Discography:
•Crain/Deathwatch split 7″, Slamdek No. 9790, September 1990, limited edition
•Rocket 7″, Automatic (Liability) No. 1, April 1991, out of print
•Speed LP/cassette, Automatic (Liability) No. 3, May 1992

[“They said the newspaper, it could never lie, but they hid the truth about the way she died. Asked mother how it happened, she said she wasn’t sure. It’s a strange disease that finds its own cure. I can project my own reasons, I can speculate, how grandmother fell into such a state. Mother made me swear I wouldn’t go that way. A promise is a promise is a promise that I shouldn’t have made.”]

After the four months it took to assemble, Slamdek Singles met an early fate after about two months of release. Fewer than fifty units of it had been manufactured when Sunspring’s upcoming Poppy CD helped to do it in, in more ways than one. The first way was financially, as virtually all the money coming in from sales of all Slamdek releases was being allocated to help pay for manufacturing the very costly Poppy discs, the first CD fully funded by the label. Another way the Poppy CD cut the life of Slamdek Singles was by duplicating all seven of its Sunspring songs. Additionally, the Grippe CD on Dischord was inclusive of four of the five Jawbox songs.

Slamdek Singles was then essentially desired only for its twelve exclusive cuts. This was hardly enough to warrant its elaborate transparent, full color packaging with twenty-three other songs. Each unit cost about $6.50 each to manufacture, the wholesale price was $10.75, and the few dozen units that were made sold for about $15.00. I stole the idea for the colorful, transparent packaging from the British CD single of “True Love Will Find You In The End” and the limited CD version of Soul Kiss, both by Spectrum. The same two CD’s were later sampled on Sunspring’s Poppy and Metroschifter’s New Mexico Drum Machine Demos.

The Endpoint and Deathwatch songs eventually ended up on the CD version of If The Spirits Are Willing the following year. LG&E’s tracks resurfaced on the LG&E cassette in December 1993. The exclusive songs by Ennui, Jawbox, and Sister Shannon disappeared from print, as did the reissued tracks by Your Face and Crain.

ADDITIONAL LINER NOTES:

Back cover photo: Greg Lynch. • Special assistance: Robin Wallace, Carrie Osborne, Matthew M. Ronay, Duncan Barlow, Jon Cook, David A. Stewart, Mark Ritcher, Mike Baker, and Chad Castetter. • Compilation and packaging: K. Scott Ritcher. • Additional digital sequencing: John F. Kampschaefer. • Thanks also to DeSoto Records, Automatic Wreckords, DSL, and Cosmic Software, for their much appreciated cooperation in this release.

May 15, 1990

Jawbox

May 15, 1990
Jawbox
cassette
[SDK-1782] color copied inserts, dot matrix labels

As As Slamdek’s fourteenth release, the debut cassette from Washington, DC’s Jawbox added a whole new slant to the label. Since the beginning, Slamdek had inadvertently been growing to become a label of bands from Louisville, most of whom were all friends. That continued as such following this release. By later in the following year, Slamdek catalogs and flyers advertised the label as one solely of Louisville bands. However, Jawbox’s non-Louisvillian stature served to add a bigger sense of credibility to the other work that Slamdek was doing at the time.

The late ’80’s were a heyday of classic releases from DC’s Dischord Records, and Louisville kids ate this stuff up. The connections that people in Louisville and DC shared, brought touring bands to town. Groups like Dag Nasty, Soul Side, King Face, and Fugazi, who played their first out of town show in Louisville, were always well received. The DC influence on the music of Louisville bands like Cerebellum is easy to recognize. Likewise, Louisville’s Solution Unknown recorded their album in DC at Inner Ear Studios, where nearly all Dischord records had been recorded. Dischord’s packaging and recordings were thought of as among the best, and the label was respected for always issuing quality goods. Mike Bucayu of Self Destruct Records, said at the time, that he thought of Slamdek as Louisville’s Dischord. As complementary as this was, I had always been terribly intimidated by Mike, and didn’t really know to take it. And in this era, it probably wouldn’t have been too hard to find a room full of kids who were intimidated by Mike Bucayu. I had the added burden of running a “competing” local label. The unspoken, imaginary walls that existed between Self Destruct people and Slamdek people had been in place for several years. Mike, who worked at ear X-tacy, listed the Endpoint cassette in his Top Five of the year in the store’s Christmas newsletter. This softened things up a bit. As did the release of the Jawbox cassette on Slamdek. It offered a middle ground by coming from a source everyone could relate to: Washington, DC. But it would still be another year and a half before people from either “side” would collaborate on a release.

Kim Coletta played bass for Jawbox and worked filling individual mail orders at Dischord. I was, of course, a big fan of DC bands and admired what Dischord had been able to accomplish independently. I often ordered stuff from Dischord and wrote my orders on scrap color copies or cassette inserts. In November 1989, the colorful graphics
caught Kim’s eye and she wrote a note on the back of a Dischord record list, “What is SLAMDEK/Scramdown? What do you do?” In my next order, I answered that it was a small record label, and that I also ran a cassette duplication service. Kim responded that she still didn’t quite understand the whole idea, but she thought the images looked great. She offered to trade some records of DC bands for some Slamdek stuff so she could get an idea of what it was all about. She also offered to throw in a demo cassette of her band, Jawbox, who had just formed in July 1989 with J. Robbins (ex-Government Issue) on guitar. The proposition that someone who worked at Dischord wanted to hear some Slamdek stuff blew me away. It was like being summoned.

We exchanged tapes through the mail. I sent her Cerebellum, Endpoint, and Slambang Vanilla (per usual, as a joke). She sent the Jawbox demo of eight songs they had recorded in their basement on a 4 track, along with some current Dischord stuff. We both enjoyed what the other had sent, and we began writing and talking on the phone. Within a month or so we had become good friends, and exchanged the stock token of punk rock friendship: mix tapes.

March 31, 1990, Jawbox at CDGraffitti’s:
Jay Robbins, Adam Wade, and Kim Coletta.

My former neighbor, Ben Godbey, who had previously moved to Western Kentucky University, had moved again to Frederick, Maryland, just outside of DC. Ben invited me to come visit him over New Year’s weekend. When Kim heard about this, she invited me to stop by the Jawbox house in Silver Spring, Maryland during the trip. The trip rolled around and I, accompanied by Joey Mudd, took off for the nation’s capitol very excited. We even brought a small cheese sampler to offer as a gift to Ian MacKaye of Dischord and Fugazi, should we meet him. Not only was he not in DC at the time, but we learned that Ian was a vegan, and vegans don’t eat cheese. Nonetheless, Ian’s code name became “The Cheese Sampler” whenever he or his bands were discussed among us. Though Ian didn’t know either one of us, many people had other names in our conversations.

When Joey and I arrived in DC, we found Ben very, uh, drunk, or something. After driving around in circles in the freezing rain for several hours, Ben split and went to a party. Back at Ben’s apartment, Joey and I called Kim. We decided to meet the following day at Smash, a record store, because Ben knew where it was. After meeting, the rest of the weekend included a visit to the legendary Dischord house (where we spied Joe Lally of Fugazi quietly filling mail orders), lots of eating, watching Jawbox practice, record shopping, and ringing in the new year. We met the other members of Jawbox; guitarist and singer Jay Robbins, drummer Adam Wade, their friend Roseanne Divito, and their house mate Sohrab Habibion, who played in the band Edsel. While at the house, it occurred to Kim that they had been paying a lot of money for duplicates of their demo. I was doing cassette duplication work, so they decided to have me make some copies of the demo. They sent their DAT home with me. About ten minutes into the new year, I backed my car into a telephone pole at Erter’s Market across the street from the Jawbox house. A great way to start the year. Other than this incident, or accident, the trip turned out to be a good time for everyone.

Back in Louisville, after running off a couple orders of demos, in February 1990, I called Kim to see if the band would be interested in having the tape released on Slamdek. This way they could get as many of the tapes as they needed at no cost. The young band was already growing, though, and the demo was quickly becoming less representative of them. They didn’t really want to keep the demo around much longer. However, right after Joey and I had left DC, Jawbox had recorded five songs at Upland Studio. Four of these were intended for a self released 7″, and the other was to appear on a Maximumrocknroll compilation LP, They Don’t Get Laid, They Don’t Get Paid, But They Sure Do Work Hard. A few days later, Kim called back to see if I would be interested in doing a five song cassette version of their upcoming 7″ plus a different mix of the song from the compilation. Of course, I thought it was a great idea. Jay prepared a DAT with the five songs, in a different sequence than the 7″ would have, and sent it to me. The package also included some copies of the 7″ artwork and lyrics so they could be adapted for the cassette version.

The following month, Jawbox did their first set of road dates. One of these nine shows was in Louisville at CDGraffitti’s on March 23, 1990. The previous night, they opened for Rollins Band in Chicago, and Joey and I drove up to see them. Joey had just joined Crain, who would be opening for Jawbox in Louisville. A great deal of the trip to and from Chicago was spent learning and working out lyrics to Crain songs. By this point, Drew Daniel had left Crain and gone away to school in Berkeley, California. And the band had developed enough material that all the songs held over from Cerebellum had been disposed of. But Joey’s addition to the group still left the chemistry at 4/6 of Cerebellum.

When Jawbox arrived in Louisville they went straight to Jon Cook’s house where his mother had prepared a traditional spaghetti dinner. A David Grubbs project band, Sholonda, started the show. They were followed by Crain who played an hour long set that ended with a frenzied “cover” of Cerebellum’s “Calm.” Jawbox then played a heavy set, from which two pictures snapped by Russ Honican ended up inside their Grippe album (pronounced “grip” once and for all).

First edition Jawbox cassette cover, before the Dischord logo and handwritten spine were replaced.

The Jawbox 7″ was co-released by Dischord and DeSoto Records. DeSoto was a label name that Edsel made up for their self released debut 7″. As house mates, Jawbox continued the name DeSoto when self co-releasing their own 7″. Kim and Jay eventually issued records by other bands, transforming DeSoto into their own independent label. Bill Barbot got in on this, too, when he joined Jawbox in early 1991 as a second guitarist. The cassette version of the Jawbox 7″ was essentially an all-on-Slamdek release. But rather than have the cassette and 7″ have no common labeling, Kim and I decided to go ahead and tag the Dischord and DeSoto logos on the cassette packaging. While this initially seemed like a good idea because it would make the cassette and 7″ more identical (I loved the idea of having the Dischord and Slamdek logos side by side), it backfired. More often than not, people who hadn’t heard of Slamdek or Jawbox thought the cassette was a bootleg or unauthorized product, because it didn’t look characteristically like a Dischord tape. Luckily, the first batch of Jawbox tapes containing all three logos was only about 150 copies. The second printing included only the Slamdek snowflake logo. Additionally, the spine of the J-card was changed to large, bold graphics. This replaced the original version which had “Jawbox” written fairly small in Kim’s handwriting. A color photo of the band playing at CDGraffitti’s was also added to the inside.

The Jawbox 7″ on DeSoto/Dischord contained all the songs on the cassette except “Bullet Park,” and was released about two weeks later. The difference between “Bullet Park” on the Slamdek tape and the Maximumrocknroll LP, is that the version on the compilation album has a tambourine track. The Jawbox cassette on Slamdek was around for a little over a year, and sold 302 copies. It came with a 2 1/2″ x 4″ Slamdek “SDK” vinyl sticker, and a miniature, illustrated Slamdek catalog of ten cassettes. Ultimately, it went out of print when the Grippe album came out on Dischord, the CD version of which included four of the five songs. The 7″ was also out of print by the end of 1991.

LINER NOTES:

Recorded by Barrett Jones at Upland Studio, Arlington, Va., Jan. 3 & 4, 1990. Produced by Alferd Packer. Photographs by Matt Welch and Bert Queiroz. Art by Jay and K Scott.

Thanks: Dischord, Edsel, Bullet Lavolta, Tom Johnston, Positive Force, Clay & Kelly at Freehand Press, Rob “Lethal Weapon” Tennant, SLAMDEK/Scramdown, all our friends & all who have taken an interest.

Dedicated, with maximum possible devotion, to Roseanne Divito.

Side one:
Twister
Ballast
Bullet Park

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