Category: 1989

November 17, 1989

Slambang Vanilla – The Memphis Sessions & A Smokin’ Word LP

November 17, 1989
Slambang Vanilla
The Memphis Sessions & A Smokin’ Word LP cassette
[HAHX-1799] color copied inserts, dot matrix labels

This could be a perfect example of the humorous side of Slamdek, but is more likely an inaugural entry for the “joke-turned-obsession” department. Slambang Vanilla’s debut cassette was merely Step One in a really bad joke. A joke that proved, time and time again, to be perceived by many and understood by few. From the very beginning, Slambang Vanilla went way too far.

It began in September 1989, when I was home recording Cold Mourning songs on an Akai Betamax ten track machine I borrowed from Todd Johnson. An old friend of my brother, Todd was then playing guitar in Domani, an easy going, classy Louisville pop band signed to MCA. Late one night Joey Mudd and I, who were virtually inseparable, began goofing off. After recording “Ground,” a serious song Joey had been working on for guitar, we began recording stupid music that couldn’t belong to a genre if it wanted to. The next couple weeks passed quickly as we worked diligently together, and occasionally with Breck Pipes, multitracking a vast collection of inane nonsense. Some songs were carefully planned with an Emulator drum machine, sequenced bass lines, samples, and layered instrumentation. Others were sporadic using cardboard boxes, pocket change, and desks as percussion, overlaid with the sixties sounds of a massive PolyMoog synthesizer. Most of the songs were about a minute and a half in length. Nearly all of them featured the Jesus Rosebud Axe. This cheap acoustic guitar with cheesy nylon strings had been rescued from a dumpster and repaired by my resourceful grandfather, Truman Cecil, years earlier.

With an in house DAT machine, mixing was a breeze. The eight songs that comprise side one were finished, were hilarious, and were a secret. Joey and I took a weekend trip to Nashville, and to visit friends Kelly Kemper and Marcy Berns in Bowling Green, Kentucky. I had met Kelly and Marcy through Ben Godbey, my neighbor, when he went away to school at Western Kentucky University. The two girls had taken an interest in Slamdek, and did their best to spread the word about it among their friends. Even after Ben left WKU and moved to Maryland, weekend excursions (“spy missions”) to Bowling Green were still frequent. Over the course of this particular trip, Joey and I were discussing what to do with the “songs” we had recorded. On the way home from Nashville, we decided that when we arrived home we would tell everyone we had been to Memphis. Furthermore, that we had visited historic Sun Studios on Union Avenue, and recorded some songs. I had some pictures of the studio from a recent vacation. With the story, the trip, the photos, and the songs, we had the making of a serious joke. All we needed was something to call it. The graphically suggestive name of an innocent flavor of Batman & Robin ice cream, “Slam! Bang! Vanilla,” filled that bill. Over four years later, friends as close as Tim Furnish and Duncan Barlow both threw fits when they found out Slambang Vanilla didn’t actually record at Sun Studios.

The eight songs on side one cover the huge, full spectrum of stupidity. The first track, “Vanilla Anthem,” is so subtly played that its sparseness and fragility provide the kind of ticklish laugh you’d get if a miniature animal walked in the palm of your hand. The vocals were telephoned in from the other end of the house and recorded from a speaker phone. The second song, “Ground,” is a serious, touching acoustic guitar song, and has no business being included on this cassette. Perhaps it thickens the joke by planting the suggestion that this tape isn’t a joke at all. Maybe the thought grows that it’s not talented people being stupid on purpose; it’s genuinely bad music with this one song being an exception. The remainder of the songs, with memorable moments such as:

“Well there’s a baby, looks like a girl, runnin’ down the street, runnin’ in the rain. Look like heaven, honeychild, sing it one more time.” [from “Pixagogo Baby”].

“Honeychild, you know what you wear, white galoshes running in the rain, baby.” [from “Have a Slice of My Sugarloaf”].

“I’m thirsty, lookin’ for somethin’ to drink… I found somethin’ called an Orange Cow, a’mooo, Orange Cow, a’moooo.” [from “Milk Me (whydon’tcha)”].

And who could forget the touching, “Slap my bottom mama, I’m a real bad boy. Microwave muffin, I’m a helltrain rollin’, yeah. Frozen lips speakin’, present the gargoyle token, honeychild. Honeychild. Honeychild. Honeychild. Present the gargoyle token.” [from “Rock n’Roll Metal Epilogue”].

Or the beautiful, “I’ve got a lot of lovin’ to do, I’m a lonesome cowboy lookin’ at you. Treat me nice, cream my ice, baby pluck my buck.” [from “Baby Pluck My Buck”].
All are instant “classics.”

The Slambang Vanilla (SBV) mystique is enhanced by the fact that the musicians listed are Slambang Rosebud (aka Joey) and Colonel Vanilla “Truckstop” McEnos (aka your “author”). The thank you list includes at least two hundred entries, dozens of which are jokes as well (Hugh Flungpoo, Phil McKrevis, Mona Lott, Rusty Bedsprings, etc.). And along with the lyrics, a complete song-by-song detailing of every piece of equipment used in the recording process is listed. The equipment liner notes are exact all the way down to the name brand and model number of the microphones, effects pedals, guitar picks (including color and thickness), specific instruments (“National Audio Company cardboard box”), and the amount of pocket change used as percussion (“sixty cents: two quarters and a dime”).

A portion of the Slambang Vanilla Memphis Sessions thanks list (left), and inside fold out “artwork” (right). Actual length 16 1/2 inches.

Side two, A Smokin’ Word LP, is an equally silly story all its own. This “inspired” nine minute piece of work was recorded in several hours direct to DAT very late one night when my parents were out of town. It consists of a collection of about ten selections of spoken, shouted, whispered, and otherwise delivered “poetry.”

The words of Slambang Vanilla’s Smokin’ Word LP perhaps speak best for themselves. While the brilliance of the inflection and delivery is not here, here is a transcript of a majority of this timeless work of art (rhymes with fart).

“I’m a raging flame. Extinguish my fury. Hot hydrant Sterno feast. Throw me on the
grille. Yeaaaahh! Slide your marshmallows onto my stick. Torch your skin baby, baby, baby, I’ll light your wick. Smokin’ fondue marshmallow ride. Hot sassafras tricklin’ down my thigh. Hot sassafras not a stick in the eye. Hot sassafras peeling the skin. Hot sassafras against my lily white ass.”

“Fishin’ for love baby, bite my bait. Wishin’ to catch your catfish, I’m your schooner mate. Castin’ my reel for ya, mama. Mercy, what a fine catch. Oh honey, hit the deck. I’ll hush your puppy. What the heck. Well, I’m diggin’ in your boat of crunchies, with a Dr. Nehi in my hand. If you wanna order up some shrimp, darlin’, you’ve come to the wrong man. Well, shake it up, catchin’ catfish, cashin’ in. Butter it up, I’m your tartar sauce lover. Break it up, hit the deck under my covers. Eat it up, child, from your pleasure smorgasbord. You think I’m a chicken plank, you don’t know what you’re seein’. Surprise in my private cabin, I’m the chicken of the semen… (but maybe I’m a Leo).”

“Navajo fantasy pow wow. Passion warrior, Geronimo showed me how. Mama. Sitting Bull, fixing do charge. Sending out smoke signals, my message is at large. Wigwam lover, Winnebago shock absorber. Iroquois mutton chop, Chickasaw cream crop. Wigwam lover, Winnebago shock absorber. Iroquois mutton chop! Chickasaw cream crop! Navajo fantasy pow wow! Passion warrior, Geronimo showed me how! Sitting Bull, fixing do charge! I’m sending out smoke signals! My message is at large! Winnebago! Iroquois mutton chop! Chickasaw cream crop! Iroquois mutton chop! Chickasaw cream crop! Iroquois mutton chop! Chickasaw cream crop! Iroquois mutton chop! Chickasaw cream crop! Iroquois mutton chop! Chickasaw cream crop! Sending out smoke signals, my message is at large. Yes, it’s going down. Teepee. Shoe. Leatherback. Pow. Reservation.”

“Hot dog constrictor at the Pleasure Chow Wagon. Your stomach is grumblin’, my pelvis is naggin. You’re the damsel in distress. Come and slay my pelvic dragon. Come and slay my pelvic dragon.”

“My heart’s flying like an aeroplane. My brain’s pouring like the rain. Oooh wee mama, your fancy tongue’s driving me insane. I would like to fluff your pillow, your pillow, your pillow, and hold you real tight, ’cuz I am a bright eyed bombing love Commanche who loves your sweet lips. Come on, you howlin’ banshee, shake them turbine hips. You make me shimmy to my knees, and make me whine, oooh weee, aauggh, yeah, yeah. Because you can lace me up, and double tie me, and fray me, knot me. Mother. Keeper. I’m trash.”

“There’s an itch that lurks in um, a body. Far, far away. But…”

…and that’s how it ends! The listener is left with the obvious question, “But what?”

While The Memphis Sessions & A Smokin’ Word LP cassette only sold a pathetic 34 copies, possibly twice that number were given away. Everyone who knew Joey and I during that era could not have escaped hearing it way too many times. And we made shirts, too. Had all of this time and energy been poured into our regular bands, it could’ve worked wonders. But that would’ve been too logical. Joey was singing in Crawdad, and I was playing guitar in McBand. Both Crawdad and McBand formed during the same week in June 1989. The other members of McBand were Richard Epley on drums, Chris Scott (Spot) on bass, and Mark Denny singing. McBand (also called the Mystery Creme Band) never recorded or played out, though three songs that ended up on the Sunspring $1.50 Demo were originally McBand tunes.

When Slambang Vanilla eventually began recording again, it became painfully clear that SBV may never die. At least friends could look forward to hearing different SBV material, instead of The Memphis Sessions & A Smokin’ Word LP again.

Another useful function of the SBV cassette was that it continued the growing tradition (for the fifth year) of releasing something on November 17th each year. It may not have been an earth shattering release, but it was something.

Memphis side:
Vanilla Anthem
Ground
Pixagogo Baby
Have a Slice of My Sugarloaf
Milk Me (whydon’tcha)
Pixagogo House Remix Baby
Baby Pluck My Buck
Rock n’Roll Metal Epilogue

Jesus side:
Smokin’ Word LP

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.