Author: slamdek

September 19, 1989

Cerebellum

September 19, 1989
Cerebellum
cassette & DAT
[SDK-1] color copied inserts, clear acetate labels with gold embossed printing

Slamdek’s eleventh release was the debut cassette by Cerebellum. The band set forth to tear down cliques and barriers that were beginning to form in the Louisville punk scene by presenting themselves as nothing more than a band. A flyer handed out at one of their first shows read, “Cerebellum is a band. Let’s not try and figure out what kind of band Cerebellum is, and just accept us for what we are – musicians with a cause. No labels tonight, or any night, please. We want you to accept the bands for what they are – bands. Enjoy them for what they are without ignoring their cause. Do not ignore.”

“The sheet of paper in front of you is for you to read, and to give you an idea of what the cause of the band is. It contains not lyrics, but meanings of each song. We have done this in order for you to get a better understanding of Cerebellum. Read, listen, dance, enjoy…”

Cerebellum formed during the summer of 1988 after the breakups of Spot, Able To Act, and Lead Pennies. Spot brought Joey Mudd (vocals and metal) and Breck Pipes (guitar) to the group. Lead Pennies brought Will Chatham (drums) and Jon Cook (bass and vocals). Tim Furnish (guitar) joined after leaving Able To Act. Drew Daniel (metal and vocals) was added later, after Cerebellum had already begun performing. As a six piece, Cerebellum did a lot of instrument swapping and was famous for the ridiculous amounts of time they spent on stage between songs.

They tried to shift emphasis in the Louisville punk scene from being tough and textbook punk, to expressing emotions and speaking the truth. Music seemed to hold a
deeper place in the hearts of this band. It seemed to be much more important that the message in the music was genuine and sincere, rather than just a good message. It showed in everything from their common enthusiasm, to the unconventional instruments they used. It wasn’t unusual to see refrigerator coils, steel jugs of bleach, or traffic light covers on stage alongside the amplifiers. Joey Mudd wrote a short biography of the band in February 1989. It ended with the line, “We’re playing music we feel.” There were more words continuing that line, but he scratched them out to leave it at just, “We’re playing music we feel.” This one simple sentence summarizes what Cerebellum was about perhaps as well as any could.

The Cerebellum cassette also seemed to summarize what Slamdek aspired to be about: a total group effort put forth by people who all wanted to achieve a common goal. Three members of the band, and members of their families, were directly involved putting together the cover artwork. The typesetting was done on an early Macintosh at the Furnishes’ Everett Avenue home, then printed on a laser printer at (Tim’s younger brother) Simon Furnish’s school. Their mother, Denise Furnish, made a photostat of the type to reverse it to white on black. Drew and Joey put together the colored cover design. And Tim selected the photos for the inside.

When it was all nearly ready, Tim, Joey, and I made the pilgrimage to Kinko’s on Hurstbourne Lane to have the color copies run. The page was laid out with the front and back of the cassette insert laying side by side. In doing this, after say, a hundred copies had been run through the color copier, those prints could be turned over and fed through again. An identical copy could be made on the back of each, which could then be cut into two hundred (first-generation copy) cassette J-cards.

As it turned out, printing a design which was almost solid black on two sides of the sheet tended to make the finished product fairly heavy. Because of all the black ink on both sides of the sheet, the Cerebellum tape covers had a weighty, glossy feel. Almost like thick, glossy paper would feel. And this flabbergasted those in the Endpoint camp who had campaigned so heartily for heavier, glossy paper.

March 2, 1989, Cerebellum at Juniper Hill:
Will Chatham, Breck Pipes, and Joey Mudd.

For the cassette labeling, I stole an idea from one of my SSDigital customers. Mark Miceli, a local new age keyboard artist, self released a cassette called Je Suis, and had me do the duplication. Mark’s cassette labeling was amazing. Instead of having paper labels or on-shell printing, he had clear acetate die-cut labels printed. The lettering was then stamped into them with gold foil. The embossed impression it gave was a reflective, metallic look. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that the looks of these totally blew away that of the Endpoint tapes. However, that was not the intention. Oh, well. Over the years, through the abuse that punk rock cassettes take, they didn’t hold up too well. After hours of baking on hot dashboards, Cerebellum labels would wrinkle, and eventually make the cassettes difficult to fit into car tape decks.

Endpoint and Cerebellum recorded at Juniper Hill for their Slamdek releases during the same set of days. Cerebellum first entered the studio on a cool Saturday morning, March 2, 1989. Endpoint came in the following Saturday afternoon, March 11, as Cerebellum was mixing and finishing up. The two projects were studies in contrast. Endpoint’s was seventeen songs, while Cerebellum’s was five. Endpoint’s had a focused sound, while Cerebellum’s deviated by the song. A party at Karen Sheets’ parents’ house on Friday, March 17 capped the excitement of the time. Both bands played steamy sets in the basement, as Bush League, playing out for the first time, opened. Two live Cerebellum tracks, “Guard” and “Hurt,” taken from Karen’s jam box recording of the
show, later appeared on the 1989 Christmas tape.

One interesting note is that the second song, “House,” contains a tribal/rock drum beat, which, alone for four measures, was intended to begin the song. A problem with the tape reel, however, caused the drum intro to be distorted. This happened during mixing when it was too late to fix. The band decided to omit the drum intro and just have the song start. When Sunspring covered “House” for the 1991 Christmas tape, drummer John Weiss learned the song from a tape of the Karen Sheets show, which included the drum intro. So the original, intended beginning of the song could finally be heard. As fate would have it, though, a recording error on Sunspring’s master DAT clipped the first two beats. This went unnoticed until days after the band had left the studio, after which it was too costly to remix the entire song for the sake of the intro.
Sunspring’s recorded version of “House,” therefore begins just as Cerebellum’s does: straight in.

March 2, 1989, Cerebellum at Juniper Hill:
Jon Cook and Drew Daniel.

For the fourth song, “Marble,” Drew takes a break from rhythmically banging on metal objects, to take the vocal duties. It begins with acoustic guitars, and Drew’s soft, smooth, wide open voice. This makes it a deadringer for the Smiths, and was, oddly enough, written the night before they went into the studio.

The final track is the I don’t feel quite so right and I want to feel better but I don’t know how anthem, “Calm.” Sung by Joey, he always contended that “Calm” was a live experience and should have never been recorded. In any event, the six minute, fifteen second epic which closes the Cerebellum cassette is a testament to the band’s abilities, and versatility.

By the time anyone’s life was changed by hearing the Cerebellum tape, the feeling was ancient history. Cerebellum broke up in June 1989, three months before the release of the cassette. Jon, Tim, Will, and Drew had been working on a new set of songs under the name Crain. During a series of disputes, Breck and Joey ultimately left the group thinking it was over. To their surprise, the remaining members performed the following weekend at the tiny Cafe Dog on First Street at Broadway. A crowd packed the room which crammed about thirty people, and the sidewalk which held another fifty or so. Crain began their performance playing their new songs. Soon enough they broke out some Cerebellum numbers to the audience’s delight, and Joey and Breck’s dismay.

Within weeks, Cerebellum was buried with the formations of Crain and Crawdad. The latter was a straight ahead hard rock band, with Joey singing, Breck on guitar, Kevin Coultas on drums, and David Ernst on bass.

March 2, 1989: Tim Furnish of Cerebellum at Juniper Hill.

In other related business, the Cerebellum catalog number and cancelled Self Destruct 7″ deserve a sentence or two. First, why is Slamdek’s eleventh release marked SDK-1? (Especially considering the releases before and after it are HAHX-1256 and HAHX-1799). Well, before Cerebellum even entered the studio, Jon Cook and I had a conversation. In so many words, Jon wondered why Slamdek tapes had such ridiculous catalog numbers. They weren’t in sequence, they gave no hint of the label name, and there were obviously not 1,256 Slamdek releases. I explained that they meant nothing, they were just there to make it look like something a little bigger than it really as. Jon pretty much said he didn’t want some big, huge number on the Cerebellum cassette. I gave him his choice of the catalog number, and he chose “1.” SLAMDEK/Scramdown had just been picked up by Phonolog Reports, that big yellow index that’s in every record store in America, who had issued the label the “SDK” abbreviation. Cerebellum became SDK-1. This made Jon happy, and was fine with me, too. As it was my favorite release, and remains so today, SDK-1 seemed an appropriate number.

A seven inch single of these same recordings of “Fire,” “Marble,” and “Calm” was also planned before the band recorded. The Cerebellum 7″, titled Sarah Who?, was going to be on Self Destruct Records. However, time delays and disagreements between the band and label owner Mike Bucayu eventually drained his patience, and the record was scrapped. The Cerebellum cassette sold 225 copies.

Plays on both sides:
Fire
House
Winter
Marble
Calm

August 22, 1989

Hopscotch Army – Blurry

August 22, 1989
Hopscotch Army
Blurry compact disc & cassette
[HAHX-1256] four color process printed inserts, on-shell cassette labeling

Hopscotch Army’s first release presented a whole new side to Slamdek and took many people by surprise. The college/rock/alternative group found their way onto Slamdek by nature of the fact that Mark Ritcher played keyboards and sang. The remainder of the four piece line up consisted of Danny Flanigan, also singing and playing guitar, David Hoback on drums, and Tom Kaczorowski on bass (whose place in the band was preceded and succeeded by Scott Darrow).

Blurry was Hopscotch Army’s first journey into the world of recorded sound. This release also proved to be one more battle for respect in a war the group would be constantly forced to fight. Evolving from the Top 40 cover band, Nouvo, Hopscotch Army was initially a cover band as well. The transition they attempted from a cover band to an original act took years and, at the time of their breakup in 1993, was still not complete. For everyone in the band, playing cover songs in bars, frat parties, and the like, was their job. The band owned a huge PA and lighting system and employed both a sound man, Ted Subotky, and visual technician, Chuck Probus. Together, the six of them, booked by manager Gary Deusner, put on a staggering minimum of 150 shows a year and made a good living for themselves. They battled for a safe medium in which they could maintain the steady income of playing as a cover band, yet, at the same time, use their audience’s attention to pursue their own music, and play to other audiences as an all original band. Over the course of years, the prospect of making this work proved itself impossible and, in more ways than not, ultimately self defeating. A good part of the cover crowd wasn’t interested in the original material, and the general public, for whom the originals were intended, thought of them as a cover band.

Hopscotch Army, 1989:
Danny Flanigan, Scott Darrow, David Hoback, and Mark Ritcher.

Just as the life they were trying to lead appeared perhaps as two different bands, Blurry also leaves the listener with the impression that Hopscotch Army indeed could have split this album into releases by two different bands. Fronted by two singer/songwriters whose styles were recognizably different, Hopscotch Army seemed to be maybe even be fighting internal, unspoken battles in their quest for a unified sound.

Danny’s writing style on Blurry, and for the most part in his later solo work and with the Rain Chorus, is characterized by clean channel guitars led by vocal melodies. Songs that are so simple and true to form that they could stand wholly on their own with just an acoustic guitar and a voice. In contrast, Mark’s material stands out as darker, moodier, and saturated with distorted guitars and sweeping, heavy, synthesized sounds.

Hopscotch Army, however, did defy some expectations, break some barriers and enjoy success on levels Slamdek was not equipped to deal with. Radio play, CMJ charts, bulk mailings, major label interest, directly servicing regional record store chains, and things of this sort were totally foreign territory and caught both the band and myself virtually unprepared. I did a lot of traveling in front of the band making sure radio stations and record stores had ample
knowledge and stock of the band on hand. Gary Deusner did the same sort of thing over the telephone with radio stations, clubs, and local newspapers in each area. Slamdek had never experienced supporting a group that traveled, nor one of a genre that could feasibly receive airplay or possibly enter the mainstream. Gary’s Advantage 1 Management company, run from the Triangle Talent offices in Jeffersontown, had little experience dealing with bands that played original music. Everyone involved in the fight to get people to listen to Hopscotch Army, was essentially learning the ropes of their purpose as it happened. Weekly late night meetings at Danny’s Crescent Hill apartment sought to deal with these challenges in the best ways possible.

The Blurry experience grew respectably in the year following its release. The expansion of the band warranted an expansion of the label. By late 1989, I was self employed in the cassette duplication business (under the name SSDigital), while still living at home with my parents. Advertising SSDigital in the Billboard International Buyers Guide, and adding a toll free 800 number were two steps in entering Slamdek into the professional world. For nearly two years, “1-800-729-6616” was plastered on everything, until the line eventually became too costly. The tax year of 1989 was the first in which the IRS received a return from a new Louisville, Kentucky, sole proprietorship called SLAMDEK/Scramdown.

The money that officially made its way to Slamdek from the Hopscotch Army release, however, did so in an unconventional way. As well, the band’s official affiliation with the label was different than that of Spot, Endpoint, or Your Face. For Blurry, I acted as an employee of the band. Slamdek initially became involved as the band was recording an album which they anticipated shopping to labels for a record deal. Bigger labels tend to look more closely at successful small scale releases from independent labels, rather than those released by the bands themselves. It adds another element of credibility. This problem was easily solved as Mark Ritcher and I are brothers, and the SLAMDEK/Scramdown logos and addresses could simply be put on the packages as if it were an ordinary Slamdek release. The only snag in this arrangement was that Slamdek did not have the kind of money it would take to create Hopscotch Army cassettes and compact discs. That is, Slamdek had virtually no money at all. Hopscotch Army, on the other hand, did have that kind of money. As it was worked out, the band hired me to create the album cover artwork, duplicate the cassettes as SSDigital, promote, distribute, and handle a lot of the footwork involved. Since I needed money to get the Cerebellum cassette out (among other things) this turned out to be a perfect arrangement. Had the band signed to a major label, this would draw attention to the other material on Slamdek, earn points, etc. This arrange
ment also facilitated Slamdek with the ability to not only have its first compact disc release, but also its first title to be issued in more than one format. This helped it become available to more people, made it Slamdek’s best seller, and exposed the label’s name to hundreds of people who ordinarily would not have seen it. Interestingly enough, as the band’s cover and original fans were confused by the two sides of Hopscotch Army, the label’s regular fans were confused by the Hopscotch Army release, and Hopscotch Army fans were confused by the other material on Slamdek. Few seemed to make the connection that Mark’s brother ran the label. Perhaps family projects are unusual outside of country music.

Blurry was recorded at Juniper Hill, though not by Todd Smith, and not during regular business hours. David Stewart (not the guy from the Eurythmics), was the other partner in Juniper Hill, and actually owned nearly all of the equipment. Naturally, this gave him free access to the studio in which he recorded and produced Hopscotch Army during dozens of late night sessions. Since the band was constantly performing, and the studio was only available to David on certain evenings, the Blurry recording process took several months to complete.

Danny Flanigan wanted to make sure that David received full credit for the recording. Danny’s concern was to insure that it wouldn’t be confused as a Juniper Hill project, because essentially, it wasn’t. One night, Danny began calling the late night studio “Dave Stewart Land” as a joke. The term stuck, and the studio listed in Blurry’s liner notes is the fictitious “DSL.” Years later, when Juniper Hill closed its doors (as Todd to moved to New York to play with Domani) David took all the recording gear to his Jeffersontown home. He set up virtually an identical recording studio in the house, which began operating under the name DSL. An engineer named Mike Baker began sharing time at the cozy home studio and eventually took over the operation in 1993 when David moved to Fort Wayne, Indiana to pursue a career opportunity in audio selling high end professional audio equipment. Under Mike Baker’s careful hands, DSL has gone on to produce singles and full length albums for Endpoint, Falling Forward, Crain, the Rain Chorus (in which Mike played bass and Danny played guitar), Sunspring, Eleven-11, the Metroschifter, and Guilt, among others. While David still owns the house and studio, he also still lives in Fort Wayne, and Mike Baker still runs the studio. Recent overhauls of the studio have upgraded it to include automated mixing, and digital multitrack capabilities, as well as on site CD-ready mastering.

After it was all over, Blurry sold about 1,400 cassettes, and 500 compact discs.

LINER NOTES:
Produced by David A. Stewart and Hopscotch Army
Engineered by David Stewart, Recorded and mixed by David Stewart and Hopscotch Army at DSL in Louisville, Digitally mastered by Glenn Meadows at Masterfonics in Nashville

Hopscotch Army has 2 singers
Mark Ritcher sings All I Want, Pray For Tomorrow, When Colours Fade, Dead, Jealousy, and Away From You. Mark also plays keyboards.
Danny Flanigan sings Whisper, The Beach Song, Real Religion, Save Me, and Anna. Danny also plays the guitar.
Scott Darrow is the bass player.
David Amel Hoback is the drummer.

Tom Kaczorowski played bass on this recording.
David K. Hoback, Sr. played tambourine on Save Me and When Colours Fade.
Krystal Veith, Kim Veith, Melissa Coates, Rochelle Stumler, Steven Gladdish, Ashley Carter, Larry Barnett, Lee Shipper, Jennifer Shipper, and Jimmy Winn are very special guest singers on Real Religion.

Jesus Loves the Little Children written by Rev. C.G. Woolston and George F. Root. Used by permission (we asked God).

K Scott Ritcher inlay card.
The Rueben Twins:
Ted Subotky live sound.
Chuck Probus lighting direction.

Special Thanks List: David and George Ann Stewart, Gary Deusner (Management/Booking/Spiritual Leadership), K Scott, Advantage One. Those who have invited especially Maria, Halle, Bryson. Far Out Music, Music Warehouse, Mom’s Music, Proline Tire, Allan and Mary, Mike Baker, Rob Brown, and last but not least, Dawn, Jo, Andrea, Gina, Denise, and Julie; those who inspired.

Music by Hopscotch Army, lyrics by the singer.

Side one:
All I Want 3:17
Whisper 4:37
Pray For Tomorrow 4:50
The Beach Song 3:36
When Colours Fade 4:30
Dead (A Night In June) 4:22

Side two:
Save Me 4:44
Anna 4:15
Real Religion 4:28
Jealousy 3:01
Silence 1:34
Away From You 4:23

June 20, 1989

Endpoint – If the Spirits Are Willing

June 20, 1989
Endpoint
If the Spirits Are Willing cassette
[HAHX-1797] color copied inserts, on-shell cassette labeling

Perhaps the one release that more people know Slamdek for than any other, is Endpoint’s ambitious 1989 debut If The Spirits Are Willing. Seventeen songs recorded and mixed in three days, and then played and replayed thousands of times to become what is sometimes regarded as their best recording. The four piece, fledgling Endpoint that walked into Juniper Hill in early March of 1989, amazed at how nice it looked, was light years away from the Endpoint that played its final show December 30, 1994, for over 2,000 people. In fact, after recording these songs, the band would only perform twice for the remainder of the year and remained virtually nonexistent in support of the release. For whatever reason, in the fall of ’89, Duncan Barlow, Jason Graff, Rob Pennington, and Rusty Sohm decided to give it one more “Go!” and took to the stage at Tewligans. Something clicked at that show with Kinghorse, and gave Endpoint enough spark to fuel the fire another four years.

What cannot escape this story is a seeming unspoken rivalry among friends that had
developed between Spot and Deathwatch. This unusual rivalry continued as the two bands evolved into Cerebellum and Endpoint. Both Cerebellum and Endpoint recorded for Slamdek releases during the same weeks in March 1989. And played a steamy, legendary show together at Karen Sheets’ parents’ Douglass Boulevard house following these sessions. The race was on to see whose cassette would come out first, whose would have the nicer packaging, and better still, whose would sell the most copies. While Slamdek had been gaining a reputation for handsome, color packaging, and good sounding cassettes, Endpoint drummer Rusty Sohm demanded that it wasn’t good enough. Slamdek inserts were still color copies and were not on the heavier glossy stock that major label cassettes were packaged with. Slamdek cassettes had printed paper labels, rather than titles printed on the cassette shell itself. The members of Endpoint also seemed overly preoccupied with how much money they would be receiving from the sale of the tape and how many copies they would get free. Several disputes of this nature took place between band members, but more frequently and especially between Rusty and myself. One of these conversations entailed the fact that they wanted color packaging, but had selected a black and white photo for the cover. Another involved removing the song “Wool,” located in the middle of side one, at the last minute. This would be a hassle because digital production masters cannot be spliced. To edit it, you’d have to make a copy of it leaving out the portions you want to omit; or you could record over portions of the original. The first of these procedures is costly, provided you do not own two DAT recorders. The other is very time consuming, nerve racking, and dangerous, as a slight error could ruin your master tape.

March 1989 afternoon at Juniper Hill: Todd Smith and Tom Mabe (background) listen to Endpoint tracks recorded the previous night.

When the cassette was eventually released three months later (and two months before Cerebellum’s) it came packaged as a compromise. The insert was indeed a color copy, yet when unfolded, contained two pieces and folded out eleven times including the lyrics to fifteen songs and a collage of photos of the band members going off. The cassettes were white shelled and had the Endpoint logo, titles, and all that, printed directly on the cassette in black. Additionally, Endpoint received the equivalent of $1.97 (either in cash or in the form of merchandise) from the sale of every cassette sold until Slamdek went out of business in 1995.

QCA in Cincinnati had done a rather shoddy printing job on these, and an even poorer job recording the music onto them. To fix the sound problem, the cassettes were rerecorded in pairs SSDigital-style. This was also a monumental undertaking as If The Spirits Are Willing is about 55 minutes in length, and there were 200 tapes in the initial order (about 90 hours of machine time).
As for “Wool,” Duncan and Rusty performed another song (of the exact same length) in Rusty’s bedroom and called it “Wool” which Scott recorded direct to DAT. Scott took the new song and recorded it to the master in the same location, erasing the other. This tricky maneuver, described earlier, actually worked. The inside of the cassette insert was emblazoned with several paragraphs entitled, “Wool Notes,” an explanation of some of the disputes and irregularities of the release. While trying to shed some light on the little bits of friction between Endpoint and Slamdek, its tongue-in-cheek wording read as follows…

“Wool Notes.
The sixth song on side one is called ‘Wool’ and sounds remarkably different than the rest of the album for a number of reasons. The main one is that the other 16 songs were recorded at Juniper Hill Creative Audio, while ‘Wool’ was recorded in Rusty’s bedroom
(Rusty on bass, Duncan on guitar, listen for the aquarium). There were 17 songs from Juniper Hill and one of them was called ‘Wool,’ but at the last minute the band had the song pulled for artistic reasons (they hated it). So it was replaced with this little ditty which for all practical purposes is now called ‘Wool.’ Not because it sounds like it should be, but because it’s much more enjoyable than a two minute hole in the middle of side one.

“Also, while we’re covering artistic disputes, it’s probably fair to mention that the band would have preferred a 2 panel cardboard insert with edited lyrics and smaller pictures rather than this extended paper one with all the words except ‘Axis Crew.’ But
that was more of a label decision, and for all you fans of cardboard inserts, don’t hold it against the band and please accept our sincere apologies on behalf of the entire SLAMDEK/Scramdown family. If you don’t have a fast forward button, we also apologize for the six minute gap that ends the first side.

“Finally, if you’d like more information about Endpoint, their T-shirts, their upcoming projects, their show dates, their neighbors, or the helpful people that work for their label and love them more than all the other bands, please write to Endpoint, Box 43551, Louisville, Ky 40243. Include a self addressed stamped envelope and somebody relatively important will quickly answer your quest for whatever it is you need to know. Thanks.”

March 12, 1988, Endpoint backing vocals at Juniper Hill: Rusty Sohm, Russ Honican, Rob Pennington, Jason Graff, Duncan Barlow.

If The Spirits Are Willing unleashes the speed and fury of Endpoint’s early hardcore/punk rock/heavy metal blend. Later bands like Falling Forward and Enkindel would owe it all to Endpoint before defining their own sounds. It became ridiculous to imply that a certain group of Louisville bands were of a certain genre. They simply sounded like Endpoint and there was no getting around it.

“Mirrored Image” is the second track and, in a unique move for a hardcore band, the vocalist sits out until about halfway through the tune as the music paints the melodic picture. By the time Rob joins in to sing, it has transformed into a completely different song. Endpoint did this several times on this cassette. That is, composed lengthy songs of epic proportions that could have easily been split into several songs. “Rungless Ladder” is a classic example. Rusty penned both the music and lyrics of “Way Back,” which Endpoint kept in their repertoire for years after his departure from the group. And to clear up any rumors, “Wopner,” is indeed named after Judge Wapner from television’s The People’s Court. And obviously, is spelled incorrectly.

The beginning of “Shattered Justice” a chug-chug build up that eventually bursts into the song. All the while Rob is growling, “Shattered… shattered justice,” which through the emotion comes off sounding as if he’s saying, “Shattunda.” Shattunda became an inside joke with the band for years. On the 1994 compact disc issue of If The Spirits Are Willing, the word shattunda is printed on the disc label with no explanation. Now you know why.
Joey (who was now essentially succeeding Jeff Hinton as a main Slamdek idea man) and I had several conversations at the Bardstown Road parking lot about Endpoint’s apparent lack of gratitude. As a result, If The Spirits Are Willing was almost ditched altogether no less than five times. Just as Endpoint as a band inexplicably stuck it out a little longer, so did I, and the results were eventually for the best. By 1990 they had already used their Slamdek cassettes as a stepping stone to an LP for California’s Conversion Records. As Conversion’s lack of efficiency and interest in the band’s ideas became more evident, Endpoint’s overall attitude toward Slamdek seemed to shift gears and alleviated a lot of the uneasy, unspoken friction between both. While I was never on bad terms with Endpoint, there was a considerable amount of misunderstanding and undiscussed ideas that fueled uncomfortable situations throughout the duration of our working relationship. Apart from all of it, Duncan and I went on to become good friends, share an apartment, and even play together as the 1992-93 duo Layered Guitars and Electronics (LG&E).

Within a year of its release, If The Spirits Are Willing replaced Spot’s Proud as the cornerstone of Slamdek mail orders and eventually sold more than any other Slamdek hardcore cassette. Like so many Slamdek cassette releases though, it went in and out of print constantly. Sometimes being unavailable for six or seven months at a time, it would return with completely new packaging. If The Spirits Are Willing on cassette was never carried by any national distributors like the Spot tape was. As a result, it was essentially available only in Louisville stores, by mail order, at Endpoint shows, or in out-of-town stores that bought direct from Slamdek. Its definitive and most common version is its 1994 reissue on compact disc. However, before 1994, it went through many configurations as cassette versions.

LINER NOTES:

Duncan Barlow, guitars
Jason Graff, bass
Rob Pennington, vocals
Rusty Sohm, drums

Produced by Cubby Cleaver and Endpoint. Recorded at Juniper Hill in Louisville. Digitally mixed and mastered. Engineered by Todd Smith. Digital mixdown direction by K Scott Ritcher. In studio assistance: Pizza Tom Mabe.

Side one:
Thought You Were
Mirrored Image
Dignity
Ignorance Downfall
Label Me
Wool
Final Stand
Way Back
Axis Crew

Side two:
Face
Wrong
Stick Around
Wopner
Shattered Justice
Rungless Ladder
Religion Crisis
Exit

Thanks to:
Andy and Alf (god of bums), Scott, Cubby, Tom man, Josh, Russ da rodie, Pat Alguire, Lee F., John T., Jon C., Shawn F., Kipp and Greg of Deathwatch, Tina and her parents, Mike Jarboe, Whitney, Joey, Breck, Tim, Kent Jackson, Drew R., Drew D., Dave Phillips, Stronghold, Cerebellum, Kinghorse, Necropsy, Bush League; Thanks to the Louisville crew for your endless support; Special thanks to our parents and George Frazier for financial support. Later.

January 10, 1989

Your Face – Magenta Bent

January 10, 1989
Your Face
Magenta Bent cassette single
[HAHX-1550] color copied inserts, laser printed labels, soft shell cases

In December of 1988, Your Face became one of the first of dozens of Louisville bands to record at Juniper Hill Creative Audio. This brand new 16-track studio facility on Story Avenue, sharing a parking lot with Butchertown Pub, was the result of many people pooling their talents together. Combining the recording know-how of Todd Smith (“Cubby”) with the equipment and technical expertise of Dave Stewart, Juniper Hill attempted to turn the tables on studio recording in Louisville. The traditional places to record in Louisville (Howie Gano’s Sound on Sound, Jeff Carpenter’s Reel to Reel, and the upscale AudioVisions and Allen-Martin) seemed to be growing too traditional, typical, or simply too expensive. Juniper Hill offered a new, cleaner, bigger, more aggressive sound at a considerably more affordable price. Todd had been writing commercial jingles for a couple years and recording bands on 8-track reels at his parents’ house. The capabilities of the new studio allowed him to expand in both areas and bring in Tom Mabe. “Pizza Tom,” was a wild card. A crazy commercial writer, Pizza Tom worked with Todd on jingles, co-engineered sessions to free up Todd for other business, and generally made sure no one stopped laughing while in the Juniper Hill hallways. Whether the laughing was with or at his antics, was of no consequence. I had also gotten in on the new action at Juniper Hill as a source of income. Now owning my own DAT deck and a set of JVC cassette decks, I was individually duplicating all Slamdek products direct from the digital masters. I began offering this cassette duplication service, with the name of SSDigital, to clients of Juniper Hill and Studio 2002 in New Albany, Indiana. Eventually, high school marching bands, gospel groups, rap artists, dance bands, and top 40 cover bands called on SSDigital for their cassette production needs. Duplicating cassettes for non-Slamdek bands helped keep me self employed and provided an income base that helped finance Slamdek releases. This lasted until 1992 when I sold most of the equipment and rejoined the work force with a job at ear X-tacy.

Your Face was an all female group comprised of Greta “Wiffie” Ritcher (my younger sister) on guitar, Robin “Hobie” Wallace (editor/publisher of the Gene Loves Jezebel-laden fanzine The Poison Pen), Dawn “Ptawnn” Hill on the Fender bass, and Letitia “Tishy” Quesenberry (Greta and Robin’s classmate at Sacred Heart Academy) on drums. The group had a fairly unique sound which grew as a result of several elements. The most obvious of these was that Tishy’s drumming unusually included no cymbals whatsoever.

Your Face at Juniper Hill, December 1988:
Greta Ritcher, Robin Wallace.

Greta’s early, practiced skill on guitar (taught by Danny Flanigan) would seem to have to carried the group, if not for being overshadowed by Robin’s amazingly inspired/inspiring vocals. Your Face practiced regularly and dedicatedly, evolving from an earlier incarnation as Joanie Loves Chauchie (intentionally spelled wrong). Your Face ultimately amassed at least a dozen or so songs, just out of the love of creating them. The group never performed live, although they had received plenty of offers. Joey Mudd asked them repeatedly to play with Spot during 1988. Sean “Rat” Garrison of the recently formed Kinghorse was also a fan after Greta and Robin (then hyperactive 17-year-olds) had given him a Magenta Bent single at a TARC bus stop.

Fall 1988, Tishy Quesenberry of Your Face: photo taken the same day as the Magenta Bent cover photo.

Your Face led a rambunctious brat pack. The crew that surrounded them and hung around Ken’s Records, Queen of Tarts, the Vogue Theatre, and the original Bardstown Road parking lot, included Meg Speicher, Betsy Porter, Danielle Dostal, and the like. From around 1986 to 1990, the parking lot of Bardstown Road Presbyterian Church at Deerwood Avenue was a major meeting place and hangout for skaters, Spot, Substance, Your Face, Able to Act, Deathwatch, Endpoint, Crawdad, McBand, and dozens of other groups and factions over the years. It was generally based around the time clock at Pro Quality Skates (and its partner store Shred Threads) where scenesters such as Brent Spooner, Breck Pipes, Duncan Barlow, Christi Canfield, J.P. Ellenberger, Pickle, and Jeff Mekolites were all employed at one time or another. These were the days before Sundancer, the Skate Station, and Skateboards Unlimited existed. For decks, trucks, the latest videos, and clothes, Bob Kerfoot’s Pro Quality was the place. (As in “Going out to ollie old Bob Kerfoot” from Spot’s “Skate For Fun”). The Bardstown Road parking lot and the steps of the Mennonite Fellowship (“Come on in, there’s a great band playing. It’s free… for a donation.”) were the scene of hundreds of lazy nights and crazy afternoons. Someone from Your Face or their crew was always there to get goobed.

The Magenta Bent single opens with a clean Telecaster strumming the opening of the title track. Drums and bass soon join the slowish melody and Robin’s vocals then steal the show, “Your flesh is laced with flailing quills, thrills and spills, your love kills my fire, no desire anymore… You promised me no strings attached, you broke the catch, my heart unlatched, now it’s different than before.” The remarkably clean sound capabilities of Juniper Hill were showcased nicely with this recording. The second track, “Old Hat New Hat,” named for a Dr. Seuss book, is a faster, more abrasive, distorted number. The lyrics aren’t nearly as softly spoken as on the first song, and are highlighted with the repeated chorus, “For once you pushed the knife in. One mood two expressions,” then, “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” over and over that gets stuck in your head too quickly, and for the rest of the day. As soon as you’re hooked, it’s over, as the two songs together clock in at exactly five minutes.

Your Face mixing session at Juniper Hill, December 1988: Scott Ritcher, Greta Ritcher, Todd Smith, Robin Wallace.

The original issue of this cassette was in a soft shell case without printed lyrics. A later printing in spring 1990 eventually did include printed lyrics and was packaged in the standard Norelco size cassette case. By then, the band members had been scattered by the call of higher education. I called Robin, who was at the University of Cincinnati, and transcribed them over the telephone. The Magenta Bent single sold roughly 100 copies. And these two songs popped up in 1992 in the Slamdek Singles box set.

LINER NOTES:

Hobie (Robin Wallace), vocals
Ptawnn (Dawn Hill), bass
Tishy (Letitia Quesenberry), drums
Wiffie (Greta Ritcher), guitar

Same program on both sides:
Magenta Bent
Old Hat New Hat

K Scott, J Tora Hinton, Cubby Cleaver, THE OWL, all our families esp: Truman, Monkey, Ethel, Gami, Danga, Liz, Mark, Laura & J.T., Danny Flanigan, Dave Taylor, Greg Lynch, Poison Pen, Mother’s Record & Tape Co., Ken’s Records, Billboard Magazine, Joanie Loves Chauchie, Mira S., Chris G., Maggie F., Diana S., Mrs. Moo, Annie, Miss Martha, Wayne, Denny’s, Pomar, Moonshine Gang, Goddess of Sin, Doom Queen.

Produced by K Scott Aravis R, J Tora Hinton, and Your Face. Fully engineered by Cubby Cleaver and Todd Smith. Mixed by Todd Smith, K Scott, Mark Ritcher, Hobie, Wiffie, Ptawnn, and Greg Lynch. Recorded at Juniper Hill Creative Audio. Cover photo by Betsy Porter.

November 17, 1988

Pink Aftershock – The Last Prom

November 17, 1988
Pink Aftershock
The Last Prom cassette & DAT
[HAHX-1315] color copied inserts, laser printed labels

The third and final Pink Aftershock cassette was this eight-song collection of cassette recordings. While it offers an interesting batch of sounds, ideas, and a huge color insert that folds out eleven times, the vocals are embarrassingly straining and all around bad. Almost a step down from the Cold cassette released twelve months earlier. You can kind of tell where the words are supposed to be going but they just don’t get there. Also, like Cold, a lot of different styles and instruments are explored. The music in “Over You” is merely pulses and subsonic tones. “Shower Q” is a fast acoustic guitar song with finger snaps and the like as percussion. “The Last Prom,” “Three Days In September,” and “The Final Step” are all pushing or exceeding five minutes as drawn-out build-ups on generally the same theme; “The hardest thing I could ever do is speak a single word to you and if you came back to me now where would I start. Everyday, in every way, the world reminds me of you.” The tape closes with “A Few Minutes” which takes that same idea to a new level by putting it to a rocking beat. Certainly stealing the show, the song is completely sequenced samples of instruments with an overlaid vocal.

The liner notes list not only the titles but also track times, recording dates, printed lyrics, a lengthy explanation of recording methods, and corporate allegiances. The eight songs that make up The Last Prom were taken from a pool of 14, many of which were written while Pink Aftershock was still a functioning band. “K,” for example, predates the band. “Land Escape,” “Paint It Yellow,” and “217” are among the six spare songs not included. Essentially, “Shower Q” was the only new song on this release. Everything else was at least a year old. As anticipated, nobody really bought this one, either. Ouch.

LINER NOTES:

K Scott Ritcher, instruments and vocal

For Sabian and the world and in memory of Evelyn Cecil (1913-1988). Peace and love Dez.

Side one:
The Last Prom (5:10, July 1987)
K. (3:09, Dec. 1985)
Three Days in September (3:41, Oct. 1987)
Over You (5:17, May 1987)

Side two:
The Final Step (4:48, June 1987)
Shower Q (2:07, Sept. 1988)
Freedom Duck (4:36, June 1987)
A Few Minutes (5:50, Sept. 1987)

September 6, 1988

Pink Aftershock – Three Days In September

September 6, 1988
Pink Aftershock
Three Days In September cassette single
[HAHX-1314] color copied inserts, laser printed labels

Five months passed after the Spot cassette came out before another Slamdek release. It was embodied in this prelude to the next full length Pink Aftershock cassette. This was by no means the same Pink Aftershock. At this point the “band” was just me. I had been teaching myself to play guitar over the past year.

“Three Days In September” is a ridiculously noisy, catchy tune with whispered vocals, a pulsating keyboard bass line, and a robotic drum machine track. The seven and a half minutes of playing time on this cassette single are much more like Dorian Grey than Pink Aftershock. This single sold miserably. Maybe a half dozen? Maybe not even that many. What can you say about something like this? I mean, look at that cover picture. You can’t live with regrets, but if you could, this one would be a place to nice start.

LINER NOTES:

K Scott Ritcher, instruments and vocals

Side one:
Three Days In September
Three Days In September (alternate)

April 22, 1988

Spot – Proud

April 22, 1988
Spot
Proud cassette
[HAHX-1724] color copied inserts, dot matrix labels

With such a mixed reaction to a lot of the subpar quality of material on the Christmas cassette, Jeff, who was becoming an increasingly bigger fuel for Slamdek ideas, and I, made a decision. Dorian Grey material, while there was plenty of it, would be a poor choice to release. As fun as things were, there’s only so long you can put out music that nobody is particularly interested in. Conversations went on and on, and eventually it was decided that Slamdek would not release anything else that wasn’t recorded in a studio. Furthermore, we decided it was time to act like it was a real label and actually try to sell some tapes. Our first choice for a band to really “start” Slamdek off was Spot.

Spot was a young straight edge skatecore band that had its fans but wasn’t necessarily respected by the old scene. To the old scenesters they were a bunch of little kids, but to Jeff and I they were awesome. To our surprise Spot was interested and went into Todd Smith’s 8-track home studio within the month.

Four months later, April 22, 1988, Slamdek had its second beginning with the release of its first full-length, studio produced, real-life punk rock tape with full color inserts and printed lyrics. I took a copy of the tape to Middletown’s new super Kroger where Spot singer Joey Mudd worked. He could not believe how good it looked. The old scene was shocked, too. Those little kids did this? The Proud cassette simultaneously established Slamdek and Spot as a new group of people who were serious about bettering the Louisville punk rock scene and taking it beyond the city’s limits.

Summer 1987, Spot performing at a skateboard contest at Gardiner Lane Shopping Center: Breck Pipes, Mark Ernst, Joey Mudd.

Spot had recorded ten of these same fifteen songs before. During 1987, they had visited Howie Gano’s Sound on Sound Studio under the guidance of Mike Bucayu who ran Self Destruct Records. Their song, “Proud,” was to be included on an upcoming
compilation 7″ called Louisville Sluggers, which eventually was released in May of ’88. The four-band 7″ also featured Fading Out, AYCD, and Mike’s band Solution Unknown.

Improving the quality of the scene was nothing new to them. Joey and Jon Cook had been doing shows in Jon’s mother’s basement for a while, and their organization Positive Youth For Unity (PYFU) set up shows elsewhere, too, and tried to get new people involved.

In April 1988, at age 18, I got a $3,000 small business loan to import a digital audio tape (DAT) recorder. DAT was a very new technology at the time, and as a result of its ability to make better-than-CD quality recordings, DAT was a very gray market. That is, it wasn’t quite illegal as no laws had been passed against it in the United States. But it also wasn’t accepted as a viable recording format yet since a debate was raging in Congress over it. In the pre-DAT years of Slamdek, cassettes had been copied one by one from another cassette master tape, or high-speed duplicated by Kentucky Sound. With the arrival of DAT, each cassette could be made directly from a DAT master, the equivalent of the original studio reels. The improvement in sound quality this makes is amazing. You can tell the difference even in your car with the wind blowing. And just as a little side item: the main company fighting DAT’s sale in this country was CBS Records. CBS had proposed putting a CopyCode chip in every DAT recorder to be sold in the US.

June 4, 1988: from “Pioneering Indies Have Plenty to Celebrate” in Billboard.

This chip would prevent the DAT machine from making direct digital copies. You see, if your friend bought a Miami Sound Machine CD for $17 and a blank DAT cassette is $8, why buy the CD when you can have a perfect copy of it for $8? However, in many tests it was found that the CopyCode chip actually degraded the sound quality by fractions of degrees. This made DAT recorders with the chip less than perfect and therefore not nearly as desirable. Before the chip could be redesigned, Sony, the world’s largest manufacturer of DAT recorders, bought CBS Records. During this acquisition, CBS magically forgot all about the CopyCode chip and DAT recorders are now in every recording studio in America.

Capitalizing on some of the hype about DAT, a handful of Spot Proud DAT’s were put together. This little stunt found SLAMDEK/Scramdown its way into a June 4, 1988 Billboard article about independent labels. A total of nine copies of Proud on DAT were sold. Later releases by Cerebellum, Endpoint, and Pink Aftershock were also simultaneously issued on DAT. One copy of Endpoint’s If The Spirits Are Willing was sold to a mail order customer in New Jersey. Other than that, the DAT versions were ultimately good only for their novelty. An 8-track tape version of Proud was made in 1989 just for fun. It may have been the world’s only digitally mastered 8-track tape.

In the production credits to Proud, someone named Cubby Cleaver is listed. One night Joey decided that Todd Smith should be called Cubby Cleaver. The joke went on for months with Joey constantly referring to Todd as Cubby until it eventually found its way into the credits of this and several later releases. The Spot tape also marked the first cassette to include partial artwork done on a Macintosh computer. The Kinko’s on Fourth Street near U of L was where it happened. They didn’t even have a color copier then. The Macintosh work was done on very slow, very

black and white, very small Mac II’s. The pieces of type were then cut with scissors and taped on to a paper original. The color copies were done at the Market Street Kinko’s, which was then at the corner of Seventh Street. The cutting and folding of those copies took place at my parents’ house while I was running cassettes one by one off the DAT master. The tapes were sold at shows and at Ken’s, Mother’s, and the old ear X-tacy next to Great Escape. Over the years, going in and out of print, it sold over 300 copies. Different later versions of Proud in 1989 and 1990 included extra tracks: “Proud” (Louisville Sluggers version), “Skate For Fun” (acoustic), “Falling” (live), and radio style interview cuts. The last printing of the Spot tape was a late 1994 reissue that commemorated eight years of Slamdek and benefited the second season of the Slamdek Field Hockey Rockers.

LINER NOTES:

Back up vocals by Spot, Tim, and Todd. Produced by Dave Taylor and K Scott with Spot. Recorded and engineered by Cubby Cleaver and Todd Smith at Cleaver Productions, January 1988.

Thanks to: P.Y.F.U. (RIP), Crisis, Deathwatch, Substance, Able to Act, Solution Unknown, S.F.F., Charlie’s Pizzeria (RIP), Soulside, Jon Cook, Tim Furnish, Duncan Barlow, Brett Hosclaw, Ric Hopkins, John Furse, Mike Bucayu, Dave (Ind.), Todd Lambert, Mark Denny, Tiffany Tronzo, Pat McShane, K Scott and all the fine folks at SLAMDEK/Scramdown, Louisville Brotherhood (Yo bros!), wool, the Bums!, 2 Guys + 1, Jami Lewder, Dave Ernst, Tammy, Christi Canfield, Wendy Hawkins, Doo Wop, our parents, all the Louisville bands past and present that we didn’t mention, everybody who has helped and supported us over the years. Thanks!

Todd Cook, guitar
Mark Ernst, drums
Joey Mudd, vocals
Breck Pipes, guitar
Chris Scott, bass

Plays on both sides:
Think Ahead
Take Off Your mask
Open Your Eyes
Enough
Dressed In Black
Frisian
Wake Up
I Hate Cars
Paving Your Way
P.Y.F.U.
Skate For Fun
Proud
The Past
Live and Let Live
Wally

The Slamdek Record Companyslamdek.com
K Composite Media,

December 1, 1987

Christmas

December 1, 1987

Christmas
various artists cassette
[HAHX-2674] thermal transfer color copied inserts, dot matrix labels, red cassettes

With the third cassette release and others in the works, the idea of SLAMDEK/Scramdown becoming a record label was fully materializing. This compilation cassette, while still selling very few copies, at least got Slamdek recognized by Louisville’s then-much-smaller punk rock community via the Substance songs. The typewritten liner notes list a slew of “coming soon” Slamdek releases from which these songs are taken. However, only two of the eight releases noted actually ever existed, Rockhouse and Pink Aftershock’s first cassettes.

The cassette begins with a Pink Aftershock track called “Amy G.” which sounds like their first tape put into a blender. It is split-second samples from other Pink Aftershock songs interspersed with Amy Givan’s voice identification, “You’re listening to Pink Aftershock.” This was originally an untitled, hidden track on the first Pink Aftershock tape. That’s followed with the same version of “I Didn’t Want to Hurt You” from the first cassette.

Dez Kimberlin was to be a project with Betsy Porter singing and me playing the instruments. “The Night Before Christmas,” however, is the only Dez Kimberlin song ever released. It’s a noisy bunch of sampled noise set to a vague beat overlaid with samples from Louis Armstrong’s narration of “Twas The Night Before Christmas.” Not only does Betsy Porter not sing on this song, but Erin Currens is listed as a co-producer, and she, too, had nothing to do with it. This song was recorded in stereo cassette overdubs. Jeff Hinton, Sabian, and I make our debut next as Dorian Grey. This song, “Lost: A Wall of Noise,” with Jeff’s distinctively clear, yet slightly off tempo vocals, could have aspired to have been found on the Psychocandy cutting room floor. The music was recorded in stereo overdubs, and the vocals direct to DAT. Near the end, Sabian lets out a scream that could cut through the ice at any party. The two Substance songs, by most accounts, save the SLAMDEK/Scramdown Christmas tape. Substance was a pre-Deathwatch/pre-Cerebellum grouping of Duncan Barlow, Jon Cook, Will Chatham, and Sean McGuirk. Their first cut, “Undertow,” marks the historic first occasion that real drums appear on a Slamdek release. The song is a classic instrumental highlighted by a crazy phaser effect on Duncan’s guitar. “Image”

Fall 1987, skating after Substance practice on Alta Avenue in the Highlands: Duncan Barlow, Will Chatham, and Jon Cook. Will’s parents’ house is in the background on the alley. Over the years, the room inside the top right window was a practice space for Substance, Lead Pennies, Cerebellum, Sunspring, Crain, and others.

has words and is a classic punk tune about egos. The last line is, “Do you have enough authority for your image?” These two songs are part of nearly a dozen that I recorded of Substance on November 7, 1987 at Will’s parents’ house on Alta Avenue in the Highlands. Within a few months of meeting Jon and Duncan, I was invited to record the band at practice. These were recorded direct to cassette through a 12 channel mixing board and arrived with remarkable clarity. Crain would coincidentally record “Nervous Woman Nervous Man” (from the Rocket 7″) direct to DAT in the same room with the same set up three years later. The Substance material turned out so well that Jon and I talked of releasing it as recently as 1993.

The second side of SLAMDEK/Scramdown Christmas begins with “Isolation” a two year old Rockhouse track pulled from the Youth Sunday cassette. Youth Sunday was available briefly in 1987 and 1988 as a reissue with a color insert on Slamdek (as was Pink Aftershock). Live material from the November 17, 1985 Youth Sunday show was added on side two, but, for some reason, this reissue was not considered an actual Slamdek release in 1991 when the catalog numbers began running consecutively (this comment will make sense much later in the book). “Isolation” is a noisy keyboard, drum, and vocal pop song recorded at my parents’ house in the summer of 1985. It’s followed by “A Problem,” a Pink Aftershock song completely by Dave Taylor and recorded on 4 track at his parents’ house near the Toy Tiger. Very similar to “Don’t Give In,” Dave created the entire song using guitar, drum, and bass samples loaded into an Emulator drum machine, then added his Thomas Dolby-esque vocals. “Sitting in front of this paper trying to write the words that say what I want to say to you. I don’t know what I want to say to you. I think and I stare but I’m not getting anywhere.” It was going to be on a compilation cassette called Aftershock Anomalies, a collection of songs put together after the first cassette came out, but before the band broke up. That release never materialized, either. The first Slamdek Christmas tape ends with “Three God Pages” from Dorian Grey. This cut, recorded the same way as our other, clocks in at five minutes plus, while the drum machine plays the same relatively slow pattern over and over. The super distorted, quite fuzzy guitar is drenched in feedback and covered with Jeff’s more subdued vocals, “Three days for a goodbye, relocated and suffocating and then on to Canada. I fear from what I write and read. Pages that fly into a blur, I’m out on the edge of nothing.”

Dorian Grey, 1987

SLAMDEK/Scramdown Christmas did not include printed lyrics or band rosters. The official lineups of the bands at that time, regardless of their participation on these tracks, are provided here:

Pink Aftershock: Mark Damron, keyboards & vocals; Larry Ray, guitar; Scott Ritcher, keyboards & vocals; Dave Taylor, electronic drums.

Dez Kimberlin: Betsy Porter, vocals; Scott Ritcher, instruments.

Substance: Duncan Barlow, guitar; Will Chatham, drums; Jon Cook, bass; Sean McGuirk, vocals.

Rockhouse (1985): Mark Damron, drums, vocals & keyboards; Larry Ray, guitar; Scott Ritcher, keyboards & vocals.

Dorian Grey: Sabian Aravis (Susanne Butler), guitar; K Scott Aravis (Scott Ritcher), guitar & drum machine; J Tora Hinton (Jeff Hinton), vocals & bass.

LINER NOTES:

Liner notes as they appeared in the original release (including notes about other releases, those which were never created are flagged by a *. “LP” inferred long playing cassette, and “EP” as extra playing cassette, not necessarily vinyl):

Side one:
01 Pink Aftershock Amy G.
02 Pink Aftershock I Didn’t Want to Hurt You
03 Dez Kimberlin The Night Before Christmas
04 Dorian Grey Lost: A Wall of Noise
05 Substance Undertow
06 Substance Image

Side two:
07 Rockhouse Isolation
08 Pink Aftershock A Problem
09 Dorian Grey Three God Pages

01-02 from the LP, Pink Aftershock, HAHX-1313.
03 from the EP, Hate Day 16, HAHX-1182*, and on a single at HAHX-1180*.
04&09 from the LP, Fall, HAHX-1605*, and on a single at HAHX-1603*.
05-06 from the LP, Substance, HAHX-1797*.
07 from the double EP, Youth Sunday, HAHX-1562.
08 from the LP, Aftershock Anomalies, HAHX-1315*.
The SLAMDEK Winterize Now Sampler Cassette [HAHX-2674].
Special thanks to Erin Currens. Merry Christmas to all.

The Slamdek Record Companyslamdek.com
K Composite Media,

November 17, 1987

Cold – Cold Cincinnati

November 17, 1987
Cold
Cold Cincinnati cassette
[HAHX-1181] color copied inserts (6 different designs), dot matrix labels, soft shell boxes

After Pink Aftershock broke up at the end of summer 1987, I bought a guitar at Service Merchandise for $47 and began teaching myself to play it. I tried several things as musical outlets over the next years before finally putting another functioning band together, Sunspring, in 1990. The first of these efforts were these 11 minutes and two seconds of music, little of which could be considered release quality material. The four songs are a very loose keyboard and guitar mix with neat sounds, awful production and poor playing. The first two are mellow instrumentals, while the third and fourth have loud up-tempo drum machine, super fuzzy guitar which is an early allusion to Sunspring, and very uncertain vocals that seem to not know whether to try to sound like Robert Smith or just be normal.

Cold Cincinnati sold a handful of copies, like, less than fifty, for 88¢ each at Mother’s Record & Tape Co. at the Mall in St. Matthews (where I worked at the time) and Ken’s on Frankfort Avenue. To save money, there were six different cover designs. They were all color copied on one sheet and then cut into sixths. This was recorded while I was also practicing with Dorian Grey which was a distorted drum machine group with Susanne “Sabian” Butler also on guitar, and Jeff “Lippie” Hinton on bass and vocals. Jeff and Sabian were from Shelbyville, but hung out in Louisville and moved to Poplar Level Road in 1988. Dorian Grey recorded an album’s worth of material through stereo cassette overdubbing and some direct to DAT during the summer of ’88. Though an ad for it ran in Maximumrocknroll, Dorian Grey’s Fall album was never actually released. Dorian Grey continued in several incarnations until 1989, one with John Kampschaefer on drums, one called Cold Mourning, and recorded nearly twenty songs. None of it ever escaped our basements.

The Cold cassette began an annual tradition of releasing something every November 17th. 1985’s being the Rockhouse cassette, and the first Pink Aftershock cassette in 1986.

LINER NOTES:

Scott Ritcher, instruments and vocals

Side one:
Louisville
Seven Weeks On In
Too Cool To Clap
Take Another Face

Side two was blank.

November 17, 1986

Pink Aftershock

November 17, 1986
Pink Aftershock
cassette
[HAHX-1313] photocopied inserts, dot matrix labels

The self titled cassette by Pink Aftershock was the first release carrying the Slamdek name and the address of PO Box 43551. SLAMDEK is actually an acronym, formed by taking the first letter from each of the band members’ names [Mark Damron, Larry Ray, Scott Ritcher, and Dave Taylor] combined with the first initials of three friends who helped assemble the cassettes [Amy Givan, Erin Currens, and Kim Calebs]. While the name of the label retained “Slamdek” for nearly nine more years, twelve of these fourteen hands worked essentially only on this release. Your author, me (Scott Ritcher), being the one who continued, and my affection for Kim Calebs earned me the nickname “K,” which still follows me around.

The liner notes list the label name as “SLAMDEK/Scramdown & Happy American Humans Productions.” H.A.H. and Scramdown were not names of any significance, they were just extra names. In fact, all of these were simply extra names used in an attempt to make the cassette look more professional, and were not ever necessarily intended to be used again. The idea was basically seven friends worked for this single goal, the Pink Aftershock tape. SLAMDEK/Scramdown was never intended to become a record label, or to even create anything other than this cassette, that is, unless Pink Aftershock was to put out another.

Pink Aftershock was a reformation of the group Rockhouse who had released a cassette, Youth Sunday, exactly one year earlier. Rockhouse, named after one of Rick Springfield’s early bands, consisted of Mark Damron (keyboards, electronic drums and vocals), Scott Ritcher (keyboards and vocals), Scott Thomas (keyboards), Larry Ray (guitar), and Steve Ridge (drums). In becoming Pink Aftershock, Scott Thomas and Steve Ridge left the band, and Dave Taylor was recruited after leaving Mark Ritcher’s band (my brother), Cry For Shadows. The label name on the Rockhouse tapes was CTV (Cosmicpolitain Television), named for the fanzine I did during high school, Cosmicpolitain. One of Rockhouse’s only performances was November 17, 1985 at the Commonwealth Convention Center for a church youth group conference, also called Youth Sunday. The 200 Rockhouse cassettes on hand all sold very quickly during the 20 minute show to the crowd of 800 or so, and another 100 or so were sold in the following months.

Pink Aftershock performed live only once, yet we managed to sell over 300 of those cassettes as well. During the summer of 1987, months after Damron, Ray, and myself had all graduated from Trinity High School, Pink Aftershock played the Hardcore Hoedown at the Cottrell Family Farm (Nina Cottrell was the connection) near Simpsonville, Kentucky. A generous estimate would put maybe 60 people at this show. Misguided Youth and Spot were also electrocuted in this muggy, damp field. Brain Dead and Peacemonger were scheduled but did not play. Pink Aftershock was by all means a sore thumb in this collection of punk bands, but was on the bill as I was becoming friends with this crowd.

Pink Aftershock, 1987:
Larry Ray, Scott Ritcher, Mark Damron, Dave Taylor.

Pink Aftershock recorded once more at Todd Smith’s Cleaver Productions (8 tracks at his parents’ house near Seneca Park) later in 1987. This session produced re-recordings of “I Didn’t Want to Hurt You” and “Don’t Give In” which were intended for a cassette single. The single was never released. As ideas and college began to pull the members in different directions, within a few months Pink Aftershock disbanded. A reworking of the “I Didn’t Want to Hurt You” recording ended up on a tape by Mark and Larry’s next band, Bad Boy Winter. The other two Pink Aftershock cassettes that followed were my solo handiwork and went essentially unnoticed. In our final months as a band, we were working on a 30 minute video compilation which included two concept videos and interview clips. Most of the video had been shot at Long Run Park, the Pope Lick train tressel, and Trinity High School Auditorium, but was never edited. Mark’s sister, Denise Damron, worked in the video production business and would have handled that, had the project continued.

Later in 1988 the band reformed briefly to record a cover of Elvis Presley’s “Suspicious Minds” for a single. After a few practices that deteriorated as well and never arrived in the studio.

LINER NOTES:

Mark Damron, keyboards and vocals
Larry Ray, guitar
Scott Ritcher, keyboards and vocals
Dave Taylor, drums

Amy Givan, voice identification
Scott Thomas, keyboards on “Desires”
Produced by Pink Aftershock.

Recorded summer 1986 at a house Mark’s parents were renting off Goose Creek Road, and at Scott’s parents’ house in Middletown, all on cassette 4-track and through stereo cassette overdubbing. Mixed October 1986 at the Mansion (Mark’s parents’ house) near Prospect. Cover art by Scott Ritcher based on work by Charles Dana Gibson. Photography by Dave Taylor.

Special thanks to: Steve Ridge, Bill Wrightson, Mark Ritcher, David Mawn, Sister Peggy Lynch and the 1985 Youth Sunday Committee, parents, friends, relatives, Rockhouse supporters and buyers of the Youth Sunday e.p., Kentucky Sound, and of course no doubt Erin Currens and Amy Givan and Kim Calebs.

Side one:
Impact
Serious
Mental Image
Law Heh
What’s the Matter

Second side:
Don’t Give In
I Didn’t Want to Hurt You
Dreams
Ruckriegel
Desires

Newer Posts