ugEX Blast From The Past #3: Miss High Heel - Hanson Cassette 1996

Here is ZIP file featuring a rip of the incredibly rare 1996 Miss High Heel cassette released on Hanson Records. Pressing unknown. Featuring similar personnel to "The Family's Hot Daughter" CD (Blossoming Noise, 2008). Enjoy!

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ugEX Blast From The Past #2
ugEX Blast From The Past #1

The Rise and Self-Euthanasia of Miss High Heel

From the liner notes to the 2008 Blossoming Noise CD "The Family's Hot Daughter" by Miss High Heel:

"Miss High Heel was an irrational response to extraordinary stimuli. She was conceived in late 1995 by Windy City visitor Tom Smith, Lake Of Dracula singer James "Marlon" Magas, and me. I don't recall the exact circumstances of the band's genesis, but Tom had recently arrived from Miami and was crashing in a loft with Marlon, sound engineer Elliot Dicks, and future piano-jazz homunculus Azita Youseffi. (I'd been so inspired by The Galen, Duotron, Couch, The Many Moods of Marlon Magas, The Scissor Girls, and The Flying Luttenbachers, all of whom either supported or collided with To Live and Shave in L.A. during our "Helen Butte" tour of the American Midwest, that I endeavored to fuse with them, or at least create ungovernable music with them.) The group's name was borrowed by Tom from a tawdry 50s pulp novel "Miss High Heels" - that he'd purchased for 45 cents at N. Milwaukee Avenue's Myopic Books. (Consult Wigmaker's "The 'Rose' the Vehicle of Miss High Heels" for further analysis.) We used that pluralized moniker before deciding that our lovely heroine might be even more alluring with just the one leg . . . I do remember some discussion with Tom about wanting the band to have a harmolodic, organic undercurrent, so we cadged the double bass guitar team of Chuck Falzone and William Pisarri from the ten-current Luttenbachers line-up and added Azita and Jim O'Rourke on dual synthesizers to flank my blast-beat drum torrents. Les the animal enter the ark à l'écart, the sonic conterparts for my percussion onslaughts were Tom's violently fragmented tape edit backing tracks made from random brutal death metal CDs. These barking, stuttering collages created a meta-structure for the group to improvise upon and we would start and stop religiously in conjunction with them. At the front line, Tom and Marlon issued lyrical assaults with a very intuitive sense of partnership, oscillating rapidly between unison, call-and-response and pure collision. (We thought of ourselves as a thoroughly ersatz Sam and Dave, nonpareil gulag crooners with chlorpromazine to spare.) Truth told, Miss High Heel only performed live twice - once on New Years' Eve 1995/96 at the Magnatroid (with the entire ensemble, save for compere and Boat Of veteran Mike Green, in their skivvies) and less than a week later at Northeastern University's WZRD radio (sans O'Rourke, "immortalized" on the "Split Wax Cylinder Inscribed: Beast 661" CD of yore). Tom was on a roll in early '96, cranking out a slew of albums and sundry recordings from Elliot's Arschloft studio (The Scissor Girls' "S-T-A-T-I-C-L-A-N-D", Duotron's dub-inflected cri de coeur, "Duotron vs. Tom Smith", the solo debut from Die Electric Eels' Brian McMahon, "17 Volts", and the initial demos from drug-grind duo Aborted Christ Childe). By the time we embarked on the MHH studio sessions, most of the work was done in strictly overdub form, with people coming in one-by-on (or by -twos) to lay down frothing improvised mania over the macabre prerecorded blast tracks. (The bloody control room was too small to accommodate more than four mutants per sitting; ensemble tracking was impossible.) Nandor Nevai and Jodie Mecanic were soon drawn into the fold, and their acidic wit and remarkable brio were crucial to undergirding the demonic narrative. Tom was becoming totally obsessed with his own pre dub style of mixing, and this explains the odd sparseness and drunken attack of the production, contrasting with the frantic density of the live unit.

As Miss High Heel said what she needed to say, we never convened again."

- Weasel Walter (and Tom Smith), September 24, 2007.

==============================================================

Tom and I both agreed upon the above notes more than a decade after the fact, so either that's the gosh-durn truth, or, at least, what we want to remember about it. Ha ha ha.

I do remember the New Years' Eve gig at Jeff Day and Emily O'Hara's long-defunct venue/home The Magnatroid. The venue consisted of this huge, decrepit stone building with a gigantic boiler in it and lots of nooks, cubbyholes and caverns. It was extremely raw, dirty and borderline hazardous, but it was a great place to have a show. Jeff and Emily (the erstwhile rhythm section of Monitor Radio as well as frequent period cohorts of the Bobby Conn band) were riding the wave of energy still surging through our scene at that time in Chicago and they were very gracious to run the space and help everybody out. Jeff was an active taper at the time, so many of the shows are probably well-documented on cassette someplace. We definitely played in our underwears. As noted in the liners, our tacit modus operandi was to make as much dense noise as we could, starting and stopping with the backing tape. Tom and Jim had serious text they preached over the din and they basically had to scream their living guts out to be heard. The other main band on the gig was Xerobot, the quirky math-punk unit hailing from Madison, Wisconsin which later fragmented into Numbers, Trin-Tran and My Name Is Rar-Rar.

The WZRD session was amusing. I remember that we were all in different rooms, so it seemed like most of us had no eye contact with more than one other person at a time. I believe I remember having my drums set up in some secluded corner, and I was listening to the backing track on the headphones at excruciating volume while frantically cueing Bill or Chuck to start or stop. He would cue somebody else and the telephone game would continue as such on down the line resulting in a hilarious, continual train wreck. The spontaneity and energy of the event is definitely evident on the 1998 "Split Wax Cylinder" CD. There are no cuts: the performance unveils in real time, warts and all. There's plenty of snappy repartee between numbers (this group was full of smart-asses, myself included certainly) and a level of cocksure bombast that could only be generated by people who are young and completely full of their own shit. The "producer" of the album (who shall remain nameless) insisted on the completely retarded, flatulent mastering style heard on the disc. He seemed to think that it was HIS release(?) and was adamant about trying to put his funny little stamp all over the CD any way he could. The pocketbook was nestled in his stinky pants and we wanted this thing to come out, so we all just shrugged our shoulders and let him have his fun. That said, I'm not unhappy with this release at all!

At some point in 1996, Aaron Dilloway released a cassette of rough mixes from the studio sessions on his prolific Hanson imprint. I would doubt many know this item exists. I haven't listened to this tape since the mid-to-late '90s but I have to say that I'm enjoying it very much right now. Unlike the stark, porous, dub-influenced mixes on "The Family's Hot Daughter", the versions on this rare tape veer towards a relentlessly full-bore approach. Not every musician or instrument is evident on every track, and there aren't many vocals at all, but the sound is face-rippingly dense and dominated by the saturated distortion of Tom's outré "in the red" mixing style. This is an artificial sound of maximum compression and overdrive - strata upon strata of white noise rising and falling with violent rapidity, blurring the concept of recording fidelity itself. The whole thing is extremely random and out of control, volume levels and stereo panning lurching from side to side, forward and back. I'm glad it exists.

As far as those studio sessions laid down at the loft, I recall being locked in the small drum room (where the early Lake Of Dracula practices took place), and just trying to beat the fuck out of the drums as fast as I could while trying keep the headphones on and anticipating the abrupt starts and stops of the tape. I did a bass clarinet overdub at one point and it involved every single "extended" technique I could muster: rubbing the body of the horn with the bell, playing it with no mouthpiece, blowing through it with no neck, squealing on the mouthpiece alone, yelling into the bell, battering the keys for percussive sounds, ad nauseam. Jodie Mecanic and Nondor Nevai both executed completely unhinged vocal takes, with Jodie affecting some kind of mongoloid/demon/sex-kitten glossolalia and Nondor screaming and grunting his guts out. I don't recall much more than that. As Tom noted, it was absolutely impossible for all of us to be in the studio at the same time.


I recall that Tom mixed those tapes for a long, long time. I can only imagine how many different takes are in his archives. Part of me wishes I could seize the multitrack masters and do a big, clean, evenly-balanced mix, just to see what the hell is actually hidden on those reels. The other part of me realizes that would be completely against the ethos of the entire short-lived project.

Finally, we come to the hoary gates of the imposing 77-minute sonic gargoyle known as "The Family's Hot Daughter" - the ultimate net result of all those hours of Tom's endless, possessed audio engineering. I will admit I have never sat through the whole thing, but I will attempt to do so right now and comment upon the experience.

What is so unctious to me about FHD is the near-constant, overmodulated stucco coating of ugly digital distortion permeating it. This brutish aliasing has a certain hideous, burlap-like abrasion which is extremely unpleasant on a visceral level. It's not like some forgiving analog square-wave fuzz; its nature is much more amorphous and unsettling, like an aural cancer which is difficult to catagorize. It is the sound of true chaos, not the well-worn tubesock of nice "noise" most people have come to love and accept in extreme music. It doesn't color the music as much as it vandalizes it. Despite being sonically oppressive, this quality becomes a significant leitmotif for the psychodrama which is Miss High Heel.

Almost 13 minutes pass before any coherent vocals appear, and when they do, it's a bit of a relief. The opening salvo is so harsh and alienating, I find myself begging for a sign of humanity, and it finally appears in the form of "Bad By Proust 'A'". Suddenly individual elements become more obvious: the drums, the basses, the bass clarinet. For a few moments one is lulled into complacency, believing this may have become just another avant-skronk record. The most fascinating aspect of this music is the vocal approach. Tom, Jim, Nondor and Jodie are really stretching here. Sometimes Tom and Jim meld into each other, slipping into a languid, tortured unison drawl. It's very unguarded and cathartic in a way that might be impossible to achieve within more rigidly codified and structured formats. Essentially, Miss High Heel was performing high-energy free music with a set of rich metatextual information, vis a vis the backing tracks and the very specific syntactical canvas of words.

The triptych of "The Fucked 'Aunt' Moment", "'Ahhhhhh-Her' Series The The Arched" and "Shoving It Travelling" are Jodie Mecanic's showcase pieces. On "Fucked", she evokes the confusion of an abduction victim lapsing erotically into a bout of the Stockholm Syndrome. It is frightening and comedic simultaneously. Bill's clarinet emerges from the mix to taunt her before a morbidly spacious conclusion. "Series" is a continuation of the theme, with vocals and clarinet almost completely unobstructed and a peppering of Tom's voice towards the end. By the middle of the CD, it seems as if the arc of the program has pushed beyond mere frenzy and has reached a different state of being. Perhaps this distinctly feminine geist has a calming effect on the fracas?

"Rose Aw Suck" might be the climax of the album. It is the longest and most complex track, glancing 10 full minutes. It seems to deliberately introduce most of the cast one by one, as if they are each taking a final curtain call before diving mindlessly into the burning chasm of Hades. This piece is obviously the swan-song of Miss High Heel. It is a chilling portrait of group mental disturbance and randomness. There is a long segment of abstract solo bass clarinet by myself near the end of the piece. It is lonely, bordering on destitute. Just as it winds down, a screeching vignette of Jodie and Nondor keeps the mania intact.

Two live tracks from the New Year's show act as a sort of coda. The fidelity is shockingly detailed for a lo-fi recording and all of the ensemble members are audible. In particular, O'Rourke and Azita's fleet synthesizer wrangling is the main event on these cuts. There is some actual rhythm section interplay between myself and the two bass players evident here. We seemed to silently understand that starting and stopping together during the pieces would aid the overall momentum. As a subset of MHH, Chuck, Bill and I were used to throwing each other tons of cues in The Flying Luttenbachers, so we were able to enact this strategy successfully.

"It Reports I Practiced Ignorance" wraps up in a lovingly fastidious, succinct manner at 1:28 duration. The opening segment is a hilarous feedback and reverb-drenched snippet of Nondor and Jodie improvising together. They are understanding each other completely despite the fact that they are using total nonsense as raw material. The final third arrives with a soft surge of digital feedback which reveals a short loop of electronic synth detritus with Mike Green talking on top. It morphs into a frament of backing tape music before dissipating into a wisp of echo.

There's something oddly poignant about actually finishing this cd for once. It seems to begin as a blatant aesthetic affront, and then gradually transforms itself into a scorched-earth requiem mass. I hadn't noticed this long line before. I recommend giving "The Family's Hot Daughter" serious attention if you bother to check it out because it is a complex work and there is much more to it than immediately appears.

ugEXPLODE Influences #2: Top 10 Roxy Music Songs and why

I've been into early Roxy Music since i was a teenager (pre-1st lp through "Viva!"). Their bizarre mix of glam, noise and good old rock 'n' roll has continually perplexed me in a positive way. In 1988 I went to Chicago on an art class field trip and bought a sealed copy of their first album at Wax Trax records. Back home, I soon found a used copy of the second album and the rest fell in line not long after. Through the years, I've acquired tons of bootleg audio and video of the group and I've spent way too much time scrutinizing miniscule details. While screening a video collection of the group, a co-worker of mine was befuddled about the appeal of Roxy. He essentially thought they sounded like elevator music. I had to explain that Roxy Music is a nut which has to be cracked - for my tastes, none of their albums cut it all the way through, and they certainly went on to make some atrocious music in the second half of their career, but their rewards are many if the entire body of work is gradually taken into account.

In no particular order:

1) "Re-Make/Re-Model" - A tour de force of weirdness. rocking very hard but noticeably devoid of machismo, the monolithic opening track on their debut pits crushingly repetitive guitar riffing and drum pounding against noodly bass leads, irritating yakkety sax and burbling synth noises while la Ferry croons (I think) some sort of desperate nonsense about a car as sex object.



2) "Out of the Blue" - Total, sweeping grandeur ended with an epic Eddie Jobson violin solo that might have been a bit difficult to pull off live (considering the foul clinkers on several live versions).



3) "Editions of You" - Sort of a remade/remake/remodel, a four-on-the-floor power chord monster with the killer Eno solo in the middle.



4) "Prarie Rose" - Roxy's fourth album "Country Life" seems highly underrated. It's certainly more consistent than the first three in terms of delivering the goods and it has some of their hardest rocking numbers, including this one. I laugh every single time i hear Ferry whisper "Texas!"



5) "The Bob (Medley)" - I'm not crazy about the debut album version of the song, but the pre-first album BBC sessions feature a stunning middle section that balances the composition in a perfect way and would have made King Crimson proud. I'm sure Tom Smith would agree. (Below is the album version - I was being a bit harsh when I wrote that . . . I like it.)



6) "Whirlwind" - Singer Bryan Ferry is such a pathos-ridden schlub, it's oddly amusing. He has always obsessed about broken romance to an unhealthy extent and this is another further stinging, metaphorical look into his inability to have successful relationships with women.



7) "Both Ends Burning" - "Viva! Roxy Music" version: those shrieking, shrill backup vocalists make it. Trust me. I wish those chicks had made a solo album, because it would have been something else.



8) "Sea Breezes" - The first album version is okay, but once again, the 1971 BBC versions are so much more weird, tweaked out and strange.



9) "Street Life" - Conversely, "Stranded" is the band's most overrated album from the early period. I can't say I've ever made it through the whole thing. It's all so downtempo and monotonous. However, "Street Life" is another great, quirky hard rock song that stands up to the best of them.



10) "For Your Pleasure" - The final cut of the eponymous second album features a chilling ending where the thrust of the tune is stripped down and finally melts into an LSD-drenched bad trip. I fell asleep on the couch listening to this about 10 years ago and it actually freaked me out. If music can accomplish that, I want to hear it.



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11) "Manifesto" - Not early, bonus pick. The obtuse, evocative lyrics meld with the continually rising musical ziggurat creating a haunting milieu.



-Weasel Walter - Saturday, July 25, 2009

ugEXPLODE Influences #1: The Electric Eels

The Electric Eels (or is that "the electric eels", or is is "die electric eels", or . . .) sprung from the filth and boredom of the early '70s Midwest and directly anticipated the artastic nihilism of both punk and no wave in one fell swoop. Between 1972 and 1975, this volatile, Cleveland-based combo only played about five shows total, most or all of which ended in confrontation and/or arrests. The core of the group consisted of guitarist John Morton and vocalist Dave "Dave E." McManus with assistance at variable intervals from guitarists Brian McMahon and Paul Marotta (co-leader of The Styrenes), plus help from musicians like Anton Fier (Golden Palominos), Jim Jones (Pere Ubu), Jamie Klimek (also Styrenes) and Nick Knox (later of The Cramps). Their sound was abrasive, loud as fuck, obnoxious, aggressive and primitive. Their lyrical matter, spat out with nothing less than utter contempt by Dave E., covered a range of trashy impulses ranging from extreme irritation to surreal gibberish to dadaistic beat-poetry parody.

I first heard the Eels in 1989. I was on a visit to Madison, Wisconsin with a few pals and wound up, inevitably, at a record store. As I browsed the racks, I would instinctually scrutinize every single record I saw which I didn't recognize and quickly determine whether or not it was of any interest. Maybe it was the raw, scratchy artwork (rendered by Morton), the picture of four ornery punks or perhaps the naughty swastika, but it became obvious, this disc was worth further investigation. I stood and began to absorb the liner notes on the back cover.

-They formed after a Captain Beefheart show. CHECK.
-They used to pick fights with jocks and win. CHECK.
-At their first gig two of them were arrested for being drunk and disorderly while wearing stupid clothes. CHECK.
-At the next gig they augmented their sound with sheet metal played with a sledgehammer. CHECK.
-Another gig featured the singer trying to start a lawnmower and "singing emotional versions of TV theme songs and commercials." CHECK.
-None of their recordings were made in a studio, but instead made through some kind of ass-backwards, jerry-rigged set up while the band played "just like always, deafeningly loud." CHECK.
-They had guys from The Cramps and Pere Ubu, and mentioned Albert Ayler on the back cover. CHECK.

So, I quickly concluded that this record, entitled "Having a Philosophical Investigation With The Electric Eels", was more than just "interesting": in fact I was going to buy it with my hard earned cash. I couldn't see how this could possibly go wrong. All the signs said "YES".

I didn't go wrong. When I got it home, I put it on the turntable and ragged, scabrous guitar noise sprayed from the speakers like ammonia as the asshole singer reared towards the mic blurting, "OooooohhhhHHHHHHHHH . . . I'M SO AGITATED!"  I was hooked in 5 seconds.

Back then, some records were just like that: you anticipated them so heavily on their reputation and then, sometimes, they would actually sound exactly the way you wanted them to . . . (Teenage Jesus and the Jerks was another example of this effect).

Despite rarely having a bass player, this band was a ROCK band - their crude songwriting definitely had a foot in basic pop structures and owed much to Stooges/MC5/Hawkwind brand of pre-punk savagery. John Morton's rabid, atonal guitar mangling dwarfed the band, brutally bullying the rest of the members who fought desperately for room in the soundscape. His chaotic choice of intervals predated the kind of free-jazz danger Black Flag's Greg Ginn would later become more famous for. The drums were hilariously undermixed and moronically bludgeoning. Dave E.'s vocals were extremely snotty, but had no problem cutting through the wall of fuzz . . . obviously the Eels' message was intended to be heard loud and clear, with zero ambiguity. "God must be . . . IN MY REFRIGERATOR!" "GIGANTO HAS HAD IT WITH YOU FUUUUCKKKKS!" These were cretinous manifestos which my disenfranchised teenage brain could take very literally. I really didn't care for my hometown, school, scene or anybody in it and the level of empowered alienation the Eels were expressing made a direct connection to my own situation.

Needless to say, tracks from this fine LP wound up on a favorite mix tape which I blasted at insane volumes from the beater I drove around town, to and from work, record stores and my few remaining friends' houses. The Electric Eels music fit in well with the harrowing "Soon" by Sonny Sharrock, shrill electro-acoustic music by Iannis Xenakis, Pussy Galore, early Last Poets, second album Pop Group and other aurally offensive skree.

During the early '90s, after moving from shitty Rockford, Illinois to less shitty Chicago, I saw a flier on the wall at my school which said "Brian McMahon from The Electric Eels looking for musicians". I couldn't believe my eyes. I called Brian immediately and we hung out at his office, which was only a few blocks away from my apartment. At first Brian seemed a bit incredulous that I was such a huge Eels fan. I got the idea that he didn't yet realize the massive influence the band had. He didn't even remember anything about the handful of shows he played during his service with the group. I had been listening to them for years at that point and I had a million questions which he politely fielded. We never played any music together, but we stayed friends and talked every now and then.

1996 eventually rolled around and The Flying Luttenbachers were in full gear. The year before, Nondor Nevai and I had crashed some To Live and Shave in L.A. gigs in Detroit and Chicago and we were drawn into the wide aesthetic orbit of The Shave's culturally omnivorous singer Tom Smith. Around the summer of that year, Tom began planning a big festival to be held in Atlanta, Georgia called "Tora! Tora! Tora!" and not only did he invite the Luttenbachers, but, it turned out, there was going to be a reunion set by none other than THE ELECTRIC EELS. I was psyched to hear this news. I tried desperately to position myself as their session drummer, but ultimately the line-up included Morton, McMahon, and Marotta with singer Christian Brown and Marotta's son Paul Lawrence on drums.

When the fest rolled around in December, it turned out to be quite a collection of freaks. We were there, sharing a van with Bobby Conn and Zeek Sheck. Harry Pussy, Eugene Chadbourne, Simeon Coxe from the Silver Apples, Davey Williams and LaDonna Smith, Loren Mazzacane Connors, Quintron and a ton of others also played. Excerpts from the shows eventually appeared on the 2003 compilation "Tarot or Aorta: Memories of a PRE Festival" released on Smith's defunct imprint Smack Shire. The Luttenbachers set was a disaster - essentially we couldn't hear what we were doing, so, after unsuccessfully trying to make it through the song "Death Ray" a dozen or so times, I abandoned ship and just decided to make a free-form energy freak out. Chuck Falzone quickly followed me into this artistic oblivion on guitar, but I remember Bill Pisarri being less than excited about not playing the planned set, so I think he just stood around and pouted for most of it. Afterwards we all felt insecure about what happened, but I think the general consensus was that everybody enjoyed watching us melt down on stage. I wound up jamming with Harry Pussy at the end of their set, Bill performed with Zeek Sheck and Chuck did double-duty with Bobby Conn and Zeek.

At the festival, I remember standing outside and shooting the shit with John Morton for a long time in the parking lot of the venue. He was extremely sharp and witty, but constantly prodded me with pointed barbs as if he was assessing my meddle and worth. I was game and we seemed to hit it off. Earlier this year, we met again when we both performed as members of Scarcity of Tanks at a two-day recording session in Brooklyn. Morton still has that devilish intellectual edge and his guitar playing sounded great. He contributed interesting musical concepts and refused to accept any musical complacency in the group - a man after my own heart. Of course, he also insisted on showing me his tattooed penis. He remains a bold character, true to his roots as a smart malcontent and boundary-defying artist. I look forward to hearing the final mixes from that wild, multifaceted session . . .

The Electric Eels' set at the '96 Tora fest was highly anticipated. I felt a wave of relief when they didn't suck. Ha ha ha. Let's face it: most "reunions" in rock music blow. Why is this? Well, many rock bands are the sum total of certain personalities, times and places. If you remove one or more of these elements, most often, you're not left with much of the impetus which might have made it so good in its original form. I wasn't crazy about the singer - he was irritating in a geeky, somewhat clueless way that seemed to banish him straight into the shadow of Dave E.'s massive reputation - but the guitars were loud and the drumming was supportive. During the song "Anxiety", the room seemed to levitate slightly. There was a distinct sense - and I could even feel this from the band - that SOMETHING WAS HAPPENING. It was a fleeting moment, but I could tell everybody sensed that the Eels could be back for good. Unfortunately, it wasn't meant to be. Morton and McMahon fell out afterwards and that was the end of the Eels, part deux.

Luckily, their recorded oeuvre survives, thanks to the meticulous archiving of Paul Marotta. Without his efforts to protect the funky cassettes all the Eels' music was laid down on, there might be no documentation of their nebulous existence. To date, 50 separate Electric Eels takes have been released on a myriad of CD and LP anthologies. The earliest evidence appeared on two posthumous singles on the Rough Trade and Mustard labels, in 1978 and 1981, respectively. The 1989 "Having A Philosophical Investigation . . ." LP followed those. Homestead Records released an expanded version, poignantly titled "God Says Fuck You" (possibly a jab at the born-again Christian Dave E., who eventually disassociated himself with the band) in 1991. In 1998, UK label Overground issued yet another variant on the now-familiar material under the hilariously unwieldy moniker "The Beast 999 Presents The Electric Eels In Their Organic Majesty's Request". Scat Records dealt a double whammy by vomiting forth both the collections "The Eyeball of Hell" (2001) and the three-band split "Those Were Different Times" (1997), also featuring tracks by CLE-punk comrades The Mirrors and The Styrenes.