Cosmic Jackhammer

so after the last OZ post I decided (well actually a friend decided for me) that we should continue in that vein and put up a demo of the band Mike gray would join after Opinion Zero.....COSMIC JACKHAMMER

this was recorded in 1990 or 1991 and they started as a band in 1988 I believe. Besides Mike you also had
Ethan Houser, also on guitar, who previously had been in FUCT
Bob Martin on bass, who previously had been in HC (from west PHX - litchfield park)
Sonny Lamotte on drums, who's sister Roni also played drums in local yokels Haus
and Jerry Disaster aka Abel Ferraira the man responsible for Driller Killer and Bad Lieutenant....just kidding he had been in a band with Sam Preston of OZ called Butchers for Peace, and was a beautiful mess.

Later on after this tape had been recorded Jason Musfelt of Civil Order/Ice Nine would replace Bob Martin when Bob joined up with Greg Sage to tour Europe as the Greg Sage Experience, and John Scharf of math wizardry, bong rips, and pizza eating (later to be in the Lovers and CRUD as well) would replace Sonny on the drums.
Also there was a long line of guitarists that took over Ethan's place such as Detroit Johnny (or John John) and others my feeble old brain can't recall.

One particular show he was eating Cheetos (the puffy kind) while singing and near the end of the set decided to cut his head open with a Swiss Army knife. He made a pass once and nothing. Tried it again and again NOTHING! Someone from the audience notices he has been attempting this with the dull edge so they smartly tell him to turn the blade around. He does so and tries it again only with the same force that hes been attemnpting with the dull edge. ALA GRAND CANYON FULL OF RASPBERRY SYRUP TO GO WITH YOUR PEANUT BUTTER SANDWICHES! He got a little white in the face but finished out the set. The singer in the next band, however, had a mic that looked like a bloodstained basketball to contend with.

the name Cosmic Jackhammer alluded to GOD's male appendage. BFP had a song called Buttfucked By God and so Abels next band;s name was kind of a nod towards that

this demo is an amalgamation of one recording that just was finally released on cd this year and some songs that were on another tape i found in the junkpiles in my house


COSMIC JACKHAMMER demo

BRAVE NEW WORLD

Back with a Bang now...so I'm going to start this bitch back up and use it to get all the lost Tucson recordings out there into the vast reaches of space. Most punk/hc bands from Tucson never really put stuff out. UPS, one of the bigger bands, didnt put there 7" out till 6 years after they started. Hell, most bands never even got beyond a crappy boom box practice tape and if they did put out a demo it was in an edition of maybe 50 tops. Whether this was due to something in the water, being from TOO STONED, or just realizing the audience was slim and let's concentrate on getting thru this life and having fun (which means more live shows and less sitting around your house folding j-cards and labeling tapes) might never be answered. This is the reason though that more people know about bands from Phoenix, and less people know about the superior Tucson bands.

You scoff now, but I'm a show you

so first band on deck
OPINION ZERO

OZ was born from the ashes of WSB, which will definitely be talked about later, as John Henkel played guitar in WSB and would take over the bass duties in OZ. Mike Gray would be slinging the axe, freshly moved from El Paso where he had played in Friday the 13th, and another band I am brainfarting on. Sam Preston would be the singer, and he did guest vocals on two other bands recordings as well...Blood Spasm and Civil Order, as well as having some of the only 3-D tattoos I can recall. A guy named Rambo started on the drums and would later be replaced by Dean who would later move to Portland and join Alcoholics Unanimous. When Dean split Dugga Doug (from Civil Order) took over on the throne, and then much later Dirty Birt would man the drums when they had a reunion of sorts and local record store/label Toxic Shock would release a song, "Words" from this recording, on their Noise from Nowhere series.

OZ was of the crossover scene I guess, but they really sounded like their own beast. They were more a hardcore band that wasn't afraid to show people they liked Thin Lizzy, and less a metal band that was just discovering GBH and Black Flag. Some of the members were also in Five Prong Stud Assault, the premiere Tucson house party band at the time. Oh those Robo nights!

This tape was recorded at a place called the Sound Factory, I believe, in 1987. It was the studio for all the metal bands and tv and radio jingles at the time ie PRO studio.

They went on a tour up the west coast around the same time that they recorded this and played in the Bay area at the Farm. UPS might have been touring with them as well, Coming back after playing San Diego the van threw a rod that narrowly missed the occupants of the vehicle.

Sadly, Sam Preston would die in the latter part of 1996, at his mother's house.



John Henkel would later play in the Blink Dogs and Prosthetic Head.
Mike Gray would later be in Cosmic Jackhammer and Cancer Brides.

The cover of this tape (which I no longer have) was a drawing of an alien (much like kali) playing the guitar, the bass, the drums, and singing. A pattern that would be repeated by the band the Weird Lovemakers sort of with their t shirt that showed the amalgamation of the band members as superheroes. I wish I had that shirt as well.

One last thing...in the movie Frankenhooker there's a scene in a bathroom with a couple prostitutes and one of them looks like she has the OZ logo (a sort of chaos symbol with a 0 in the middle) on her arm...just another case for Robert Anton Wilson I guess.

Opinion Zero - Storm and Stress

YOU SAY YOU LIKE ROCK AND ROLL

then come on down

STATIC STATIC

are to Los Angeles what a snow shovel is to Florida: out of place, but still sharp and heavy enough to fracture your skull if provoked, and full of enough angular and bent noise to cave in your prettiest features before you know what's happened. Once a two piece living room-punk glue wave machine, now a three-piece live unit with a real drummer (Leslie from the Red Aunts), Static Static cull all the most wretched scraps of electronic noise and set them up to a hypnotic beat that is somehow completely great and shirks any annoying predispositions. The combination of real drums and drum machines working together is quite a sound to behold and really works wonders when aligned with their gnashing and convulsing songs engineered to lay your mind to waste. Taking equal parts of VOLT and Spider and molding it into a whole new spectrum of sonance, Static Static have remained in the shadows long enough, and it's time Los Angeles realized what a great resource they have lurking around in it's dark corners.

THE BLIND SHAKE




from Aversion.com "The best thing about having a full menu of vices before you is that, once you get over your puritanical squeamishness and decide to become a libertine, you can open up a world of mix'n'match distractions that can keep you busy for years to come. Tired of getting drunk? Try throwing in a bowl and hooking up with your latest fling. Straight sex can get a little dull, and when it does, any combination of drugs, violence and perversion can spice it up. Heck, even when your beloved music collection isn't doing it for you like it used to, a trip to the pharmacy can change that up in a hurry.

Music's a lot like that, too. With so many styles, sub-genres and movements floating around in its history, it shouldn't take more than a little ingenuity to keep things fresh for us. And, we'll admit, that genre-blurring thing can lead to some abominations (see: rap-metal and jazz fusion), but it's still got some surprises in store for us. The Blind Shake make good on the potential of mix'n'match rock'n'roll vices, as its sophomore effort, Carmel, forces a little bit of psychedelia onto its punk. Or maybe it's the other way around. Either way, it doesn't matter: Carmel is a double-dose of amphetamine jitters and lysergic freakouts. Better yet, it's a good combination of its various vices.

The Blind Shake makes Carmel look so easy, you'll wonder why more punks hadn't hit on the notion to spin off into worlds of psychedelia. If the Jimi Hendrix experience found punk rock and began jamming after Hendrix drowned in his own puke instead of throwing in the towel, it might have sounded a lot like Carmel. "Midnight Scream" and "Peach Lines" borrow the sludgy guitar tones of The Jefferson Airplane or Iron Butterfly, but run them through the paces with the fury of Black Flag. "Been Young" merges the band's acid-eating guitar tones with clockwork-like arrangements and wiry lead guitars that show more than a passing resemblance to a young Fugazi, while "Wool Jacket" musters the noisome fury of a basement-punk outfit on full destructor mode. "St. Paul Creamery" and "Broken Down Stairs" sound more like a psychedelic rock revival outfit going off the deep end than a punk band meddling with LSD in the practice space.

As much of a novelty as genre-mixing acts can be, Carmel shows The Blind Shake is the real deal. With enough firepower and vision to cram its unlikely punk-adelic crossover to the brim with fire, Caramel isn't just a workable fusion of styles, but a glimpse at a lot of untapped potential. Let's hope The Blind Shake's able to make good with it.

..> ..> - Matt Schild"

with local support from
AWESTRICH
and
THE COMPLAINIACS
from Phoenix

all ages/ 9pm

JUNE SHOWS

here's all the flyers we have for the next group of shows...the only one missing is the one for Sun June 15th cause I'm not sure there is one yet...anyways that is gonna be
Standard Deviance
Bad Blood (from Brooklyn, NY)
and F.U.K. starts at 7pm








plus on the 19th SKARP
is playing the anarchist mickey mouse club Dry River with I think Limbless Torso
and some other bands and then Yuma Territorial Prison Guards and Becky Lee and Drunk Foot are playing Vaudeville later that night with Ultramaroon and Uncle Fister.

and yeah that last flyer is for a show July 1st...it's the Potential Johns
who are 1/2 The Marked Men plus one of the Riverboat Gamblers. There'll be a shitload of people at Vaudeville July 5th for the Riverboat Gamblers but I'm telling you the Marked Men and Potential Johns are just as good if not better; but for some reason the greaser rockabilly dorks in this town have no clue.

also

Friday June 27th Tour kickoff at the Bay Horse Tavern!
Grant & Treat, Tucson, Arizona 85716
Cost : $5

Sabertooth Snatch, Ultramaroon,and Vanish Twin, plus R.I.F.F are coming down from Flagstaff.

Introduce Ourselves

HERE IS THE ILLUSTRIOUS GRUMPUS ROOM(and other good stuff happening around this desert hellhole we call Tucson) NEWSLETTER.

Where you'll learn all about the who's, why's, where's, when's, and whatfor's of whatever the hell we (hopefully this will be a we and not just a me...as I get bored easily and prefer groups of people causing action instead of the ennui that sets in from one man going it alone) feel like hepping you to. Maybe it'll be a show, maybe it'll be a taco truck, or maybe it'll be a wash where a dead vagrant lies. It'll always be something good however. My name's Mark Beef, the others who hopefully will join me are Donn and Betty. It's easy to get caught up in "there's nothing to do in this dumb town"itis and even easier to find ten years have come and gone and you don't have anything to show for it, except whatever fun (and I do mean fun) memories you can actually still squeeze from your addled brain. We are your guides in this self exiled purgatory. Come with us. Oh the sights we have to show you