[PHOTO: Kam Fong, return of the original line-up, 1997] What becomes clear upon listening to this air-check tape is that the mobile sound guys contracted to transmit WESU-FM's "The Living Edge" radio program over the air from the student center were ill-prepared for the onslaught of The Fong that night. In the post mortem with station staffers there was apparently discussion of the bass signal coming in through the DI box so hot that the engineers couldn't bump the fader on the mixer much above zero for fear of frying the entire board (unfortunately, this resulted in almost no bass making it over the airwaves and into this recording). Given what we know now, this is little surprise. Some time after the show we learned that while friend Clark Wallace was the producer of the radio program in 1995, he was not manning the on-air studio that night. Instead, he was striding up Home Avenue in Middletown, CT toward Wesleyan University's student center to take in the show in-person. Home Avenue, if you look at Google Maps, easily terminates 300 feet from the four- or five-story stone and brick edifice that housed the room being used for the show. Mr. Wallace was still striding up Home Avenue when he heard the mayhem unfolding in the student center.
When the snow piles up, and The Man keeps us down, we do the following: break glass and deploy The Fong. We often solemnly reference erstwhile, Wayne, PA-based post-hardcore trio Kam Fong here at the blog (even once here at that blog), but only rarely do we offer exposition. Let's quote ourselves: "What the record will show is that Kam Fong created punishing music with insane chops and often remarkably powerful lyrics. The full package boasted equal parts Black Flag, Frank Zappa and Kiss and had near-analogs in contemporary work by Don Caballero and June of 44." Usually we'll reach for the band's unreleased 1997 album, which has more blue-collar bile and driving rhythms than the artier noise here.
But after a few Fong-related emails in recent weeks we're posting something we've never posted in its entirety -- Kam Fong's The Ardmore Sessions. What makes this recording -- captured to tape at Chill Factor in the eponymous Philadelphia suburb -- special is that it is the only session the band did with alternate bassist and singer The Postman, a/k/a noted photographer Ryan Widger. While the recordings -- at least as represented by these files ripped from an overplayed cassette -- are generally muddier, there are specific moments here that were never bested by successive efforts, chief among them the terrifying final 12 seconds of "AFC." Other notable elements of these recordings which differentiate them from future efforts: 1) in the 10-beat rest following the anthemic pummeling at the tail end of "Vulcan Death Grip" one can hear Jones murmuring into his guitar pick-ups "I'm gonna get you -- I'm gonna get you!" 2) the slap-suck sequencing between "AFC" and "Harry Dean Stanton" -- it's perfection; 3) guitarist and singer Casey Jones's hollered direction at the close of "Eleven," "one more for John Lee!" 4) Widger's Bon Scott- and David Yow- channeling vocals parlay seriously demented lyrics, different enough from those of tenured bassist Chuck Madden to give The Ardmore Sessions their own considerable charms.
The quality of the tape these MP3s were sourced from several years ago was bad, so you will need to turn up the volume. You may also want to situate yourself away from anything smashable before you press play, as listening to Fong is known to incite smashing of stuff. And with that, here is the rock music. Enjoy.
Kam Fong -- "AFC" -- Ardmore 1996 Kam Fong -- "Harry Dean Stanton" -- Ardmore 1996 Kam Fong -- "Vulcan Death Grip" -- Ardmore 1996 Kam Fong -- "Eleven" -- Ardmore 1996 [right click and save as]
And so here we have the August Muxtape. We pondered a couple days ago doing a blog post called "Where We're From" or something to that effect, and discussing therein some of the bands that really fired our imaginations and relationship with music when we were a high schooler, and even young college student. As you'll see below we name a number of acts from Philadelphia and its suburbs that inspired us to play and generally cultivate a fathomless interest in indie rock as a younger man. Some of these bands were our peers, some friends of friends... of friends. You'll even hear some of our inebriated hollering in the first track. Of course, there are a couple tunes we've thrown in from later years and even contemporary releases just because they are great. Happy August.
1. Kam Fong -- "Get Behind Me (Satan)" -- Unreleased (Is there anything more satisfying than an open E major chord that just hangs there and sustains? Well, yeah, there's the rest of this song, the first verse of which describes salvaging major appliances from the trash. We can say from firsthand experience that the vocals were tracked on a very hot day around an open mic in a small stuffy living room while pulling off a milk jug of moonshine; hence the last verse. We're always happy to have an excuse to proselytize The Fong, so here's a download of the track above || Kam Fong -- "Get Behind Me (Satan)"; right click and save as || and here is an early, raw and extremely red-lined mixdown of the basic tracks in case you want to, we dunno, cut your own vocal || Kam Fong -- "Satan (Instrumental)"; right click and save as||.)
2. Lost -- "After The War" -- Do You Have A Problem? (Opening track from a cassette release from the first iteration of this band. This tape and Haywood's first 7" affected us a great deal, not only because each is great, but because prior to their release it didn't seem within the realm of possibility that people like us could write their own material and release it. We recall being shocked to see the cassette on the shelf with the rest of the merchandise at our beloved and much-missed first location of Repo Records in North Wayne, and we purchased it immediately (much to the amusement of the guys, some of whom we later befriended). We love the lo-fi production on the Lost cassette, because it packs each track with the sense that they are under some volatile pressure and could burst at any second.)
3. Latimer -- "Start With Me" -- Live From Sour City (Another heart-felt tip of the hat to the late Geoff Doring. We thought this song stuck out a little bit from the rest of the tracks on this set because of the acoustic guitars. And we swear there's whistling in there around the three-minute mark. So it took us a long time to come to terms with "Start With Me." But it is easily among the best tracks on this ridiculously under-rated record, released on Dave Allen's World Domination label in 1997 or so. It's near impossible to follow what Doring is singing, but the song is an incredibly affecting strand of hooks. What the hell, how about an MP3? || Latimer -- "Start With Me"; right click and save as.)
4. Halogen -- "Graph" -- This Is Harrisburg, Not Topeka (Had the pleasure of seeing these guys live, and they were really impressive. "Graph" has a little bit of everything and channels Slint in a very effective manner. We love the little hi-hat fill in the first section. But the most gripping thing is the coda, where the singer repeats "summers brown, winters green" like a protective spell.)
5. The Differences -- "The Door To Your Heart" -- Cassette (So another track like the Lost cut above that made an impression on us because it was another local -- that is, suburban Philadelphia -- band writing and recording their own material during a time when we equated the ability to write music with the ability to saw women in half and pull rabbits from hats. This is not the band's best cut, but it is the only one that remains in our cassette collection. Our memories are almost always of questionable veracity at this point, but compared to the other Differences tracks we recall ("11th Grade English," "Stay") this track is particularly dark. We seem to recall it came from a later set of recordings that would seem to indicate the band had dug back into The Cure's back catalog.)
6. Barnabys -- "Nunas" -- Augustus Loop (A nice mid-tempo track from a pretty overblown record released on Spin-Art. Superfluous hockey rink organ. Certainly not the first track we think of when we consider the band, but for some reason the opening line was in our head this morning as we ground coffee beans.)
7. Johnny Foreigner -- "I Heard, He Ties Up Cats" -- Eyes Wide Terrified single (We like this band so much it is embarrassing. We even told them as much when we met them in New York last fall. Right now they are flying to Japan for a string of dates. When we were scouring Ebay recently we found that some of the band's singles had been issued to radio as CDs, so of course we had to have those. The result of which is we can offer you this b-side. We're very hopeful that the physical release of the band's debut Waited Up Til It Was Light, which will occur on an unspecified Tuesday in October, will contain all the various b-sides and maybe even some radio sessions as bonus tracks. But since we can't bank on that, we continue to fuel the British economy by buying all the imports we can get our hands on.)
8. Haywood -- "You Talk Twice" -- Men Called Him Mister (Wonderful album opener from defunct band's second CD. Would have made much more sense to post a Garden Party track, as that is this band's precursor and it fits better within the theme of the mix. But we love this one, and it's the one we're feeling this morning. We think this would make an awesome cover for Frightened Rabbit to do (get on that boys). Men Called Him Mister has more than its share of amazing lines, but one of the best may be when Mr. Pauly here confides "so sure that we lost it, while I've got my hands in your pockets.")
9. The Grifters -- "Just Passing Out" -- One Sock Missing (As an adult we're conflicted now about songs that deal with drug abuse and addiction with any sort of favorable stance. Sorry (at least we didn't complain that music is too loud, right?). But even so this track is a beautiful tangle of bass and guitar melodies. And we're very fond of its linear composition, which we blatantly stole for a song many, many years ago. The final seconds where the mix goes kaleidoscopic is so awesome.)
10. The War On Drugs -- "Show Me The Coast" -- Wagonwheel Blues (Our recent writing doesn't come close to reflecting just how much we like this new record from Philly's The War On Drugs. There's some magical alchemy that occurs when the atmospheric production of the music is paired with singer Adam Granduciel's mix-slicing Petty-doing-Dylan vocals. This track is particularly dense and droning. If we knew more about music theory we might be able to make some assertion about how drone in particular keys works for us. Layered guitar leads create most of the action here, and the overall effect is dreamy. Mr. Granduciel was recently featured in Stereogum's Quit Your Day Job right here, and we recommend reading it.)
11. Ric Dube -- "The Cavanaugh Tree" -- MySpace track (Friend and mentor Ric Dube is the kind of guy who is into a lot of things, including parenting and Yo La Tengo, but during the last few years he has found time to lay down some tracks, and we are constantly surprised when this comes up in the shuffle to see that the song that just made us think "damn!" is by our pal. We particularly like the cello at the end, it's very George Martin-ish. This fits very nicely alongside the track above, no?)
12. Christopher O'Riley -- "Motion Picture Soundtrack" -- True Love Waits: O'Riley Plays Radiohead (This song is so sad we often can't bear to listen to it, and O'Riley's version is somehow even sadder.)
>> El Ted unearthed the video clip above from Philadelphia glam-rockers The Get Quick, which has heretofore eluded our attention for some six months. Perhaps the most amazing thing about the clip (given the likely early hour of the performance) is it evidences band fronter Erik Evol playing the same guitar that he has been playing for at least fifteen years; while it is hard to tell from the clip, the ax used to be cherry red. Anyway, the clip finds the quartet -- including former Kam Fong drummer Colonel Mike Boran on rhythm guitar -- running through "When I First Saw You" last August on the Philadelphia NBC affiliate's "10!" morning show, of all places. The Get Quick issued its sophomore set See You In The Crossfire last May, as we noted here. While checking out "When I First Saw You" we noticed there is another clip we hadn't seen: here is the band performing The Beatles' "She Said, She Said" at Johnny Brenda's in Philadelphia last year. All of this Get Quick rock and roll has us listening through the cuts in our personal larder of GQ material, so here's a juicy outtake from the sessions that produced the band's very nice 2005 debut How The Story Goes.
The Get Quick -- "Out Of Time" -- How The Story Goes (Outtake) [right click and save as] [buy Get Quick records from Newbury Comics right here]
>> As we noted here previously, today God Is In The TV 'zine issues Superman Revenge Squad's "Idiot Food" as a free digital single. The track is backed with "The Angriest Dog In The World" and "When Everyone's Dead" and you can snatch all three songs right here. In the event you didn't heed our assessments previously, Superman Revenge Squad principal Ben Parker's prior acts Tempertwig and Nosferatu D2 were also very good and there is a lot of material from those bands freely available around the Internetses that is more than worth the time to track down.
>> Manchester, England indie rockers The Answering Machine report they are demoing material with an eye toward a summer full-length debut. Production on the planned record will begin in April or May, which suggests to us that a fall offering is much more likely. In the meantime notable Internet radio operation WOXY has apparently played fairy godmother to the quartet and is supporting in some fashion -- we'd guess financially -- the band's appearance next month at the annual South By Southwest music industry confab in Austin, Texas. Readers may recall a similar bit of help from Urban Outfitters getting Scottish indie trio Frightened Rabbit to the conference last year. Expect a WOXY session from The Answering Machine to be recorded during its week-long sojourn to SxSW.
Ten years ago this month, three guys completed an incredible rock record that they recorded themselves in a small suburban living room, a reel-to-reel and Mackie mixing deck crammed on a salvaged school desk in a corner by a closet. The record was never released. We had always wanted them to call it From The Bottom Of The Sea, because if there was ever a rock band-equivalent of Godzilla, this band is it. But the truth is their record was never titled. We've posted a couple songs from the set in the past. On this dark and stormy October night we think it is time to release it into the wilds of the Internet in its entirety. Every song is an anthem, every lyric quotable as a threat or epitaph. Recommended if you like Black Flag, KISS, Don Caballero, June Of 44, et cetera. Recommended if you do NOT like The Man. This is Kam Fong's unreleased 1997 record.
1. King Of Prussia 2. Vulcan Death Grip 3. Strapmatch 4. AFC 5. Smoke N Dust 6. Eleven 7. On Top, Rockin' It 8. Get Behind Me (Satan) 9. Tied To The Mast Or Hung By The Balls 10. Harry Dean Stanton [right click and save as] Visit Kam Fong on MySpace.
