Tag: We Are Heaven

Cornershop / The Dealers – The Trans-Atlantic Super-Sonic Suss-Machine Jr. EP

i was down in 3rd st jazz one day in i think 1992 after work and i looked thru a million recs but didn’t see anything interesting – until i saw the the first 2 Cornershop recs in the new bin. “in the days of ford cortina” 7” and the “england’s dreaming” 10”! they both totally caught my eye with the mod targets, the Indian-English faces and the WIIIJA record label name on the back covers. that label’s name rung out with the chime of UK riot grrl – i dont recall now however, how and why i knew that, plus the name Hanif Kureeshi in one of the song titles. are you thick? after sussing all those signifiers, how could i have said no?!?! so i bought them both and rode my bike home, listened to the song “england’s deaming” and then the ford cortina 7”, with the “when i leave like mahatma gandhi i want my ashes strewn all over the Ganges” lyrics, literally 5 times in a row. and then out at 48th & Walton in west philly for dEALERS rehearsal (aka ‘stoned out jam session’). by the time i got out there those songs were already deep in my brain. they were totally empowering and inspiring songs to a filipino-american freak like me. i was instantly obsessed with cornershop. flash forward a few months and a few letters later- letters sent back and forth from Philly to Preston, England and already we were hammering out what was originally going to be a split LP of dEALERS and Cornershop songs. David Chambers, their original drummer came over to the USA to visit his lady Emma who was teaching or something at a summercamp for Brits in upstate NY or somewhere. They came to philly and we hung out tremendously (took them to a WESTON show at the unitarian church on 21st and chestnut, took them up to Kutztown, PA and Hawk Mountain, took them to Bethlehem to see the Original Sins cover “makin time” at the Funhouse – and we even took them to 411 to see a basement practice by the Mark Jackson Jetset (or actually the 411 Blue Ribbon Band, i just made up that Jetset name back then lol). everything was trans atlantic and peachy, but then David soon left or had to leave Cornershop and all plans for a split LP were torn assunder. I even got phone calls from Gary the WIIIJA head honcho who was miffed that Cornershop decided to put out songs in the USA without his permission (i was like ‘what?!’ i never even considered that anybody but the actual people in a band could have any say in how, when, where a band’s songs could appear.) (that sort of pro rock business action was so weird to a punkrock like me). eventually it was mutually agreed upon that we could put a couple of Cornershop’s old 7” songs on a split single with the dEALERS on the other side – the split LP became a split 7” (thus the ‘Jr in the title), released in a threeway tie between W111JA, Easy Subcult and Charles from the dEALERS new label called The Administration. Whats really cool was that it was hand pressed by the punks at Prole Art Threat in Texas. We recorded the dEALERS song “the movie of my life” at the Friz (art di furia’s awesome cavernous 2 floor studio / hang out spot on 12th and walnut, on the night before Charles moved to Vermont. it was one long meandering jammer and if it sounds a little melancholic and wet with tears its because of that context. and it was raining pretty hard. Later i took a recording of Dave from Weston wandering around the unitarian church when David and Emna were there with us at that show, and mixed his monolouge in. ; it seemed fitting since David was there while it was being recorded (on a hand held Walkman with a condensor mic.) and that was that….. ? until Cornershop came to the USA a year or so later and we all hung out a lot in Philly and NYC. and the NYC hangouts got intensely crazed and funny, involving David Byrne (by that point he was Cornershop’s label head honcho), a fucked up hotel in the east village and smoking out way too much all over Central Park during their Summer Stage appearance. i can’t believe that no one died that weekend, or that Tjinder didn’t get mugged or something. (all the debauchery and good times are recounted in an issue of Raw Pogo On The Scaffold, but i can’t recall which one). ? At that point i thought ‘well, that was that!’ ? but fast forward one year and me and Beth are living in Tokyo and very, very removed both physically as well as spiritually from the Philly of the 90s (I mean everything is bright and clean and well-paid and fun), I get an email from some rock management company saying that Cornershop are about to come play in Tokyo for the first time and would I like to get guest listed. So i say yes and then run out the door to sell the 10 remaining Cornershop / dEALERs 7″s I’d brought to japan to Rough Trade Tokyo – to further capitalize on their recent ‘Big Beat’ Brimful of Asha mega success (and you know in Tokyo, the remix of that song of theirs was totally mega). Yanome at Rough Trade (whom i think ran the label 100 Guitar Mania which put out a Photon Band 7” back then, ie. 1997 or 8) immediately bought all of them. But a week later he called me up explaining that the Rough Trade squares wouldnt in good conscience sell them because of how Gary W111JA still felt stiffed by the release (or jealous) and how i should come and retrieve remaining 5 that hadn’t yet sold for ¥75,000. But in return and as an apology he would give Beth & I passes to an all nighter event he ran at a cool little club in Shimokitazawa. And thank god he did because otherwise we never would have seen & heard and met and hung out with The UK SUBWAYS, who at that moment were Tokyo’s rawest, coolest, youngest, smartest and loudest teenage band. And that was that.
-Eric de Jesus EASY / Raw Pogo On The Scaffold

A1 – Cornershop – Waterlogged
A2 – Cornershop – Kawasaki (More Heat Than Chapati)
B – The Dealer – The Movie Of My Life

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The Dealers / 0x – The Eastern Pennsylvania Secession Movement

the way the dealers worked

was this: we would meet in the basement of whichever west philly punk house Charles O’Connor happened to be living in, 2 of us would smoke out & 1 of us would partake in his insanely advanced sugar addition, and then we’d start making noise. charles could already play guitar a bit but Simon & I had theretofore never played our instruments – simon on drums & me on guitar (but a guitar strung with the middle 4 strings only, and thise strings spaced very wide from eachother). our motto was, by neccesity and by happenstance, “songs that are never played more than once” and “everything we do is music”.
the west philly basements in which we would jam, completely separated from ‘the (then) philly scene, completely in our own world, allowed and inspired total 100% freedom and space, especially as we never thought anybody would give us a show at some lame rock bar or offer to put out a record or even ever really hear what we were doing. we recorded every second of every ‘session’. we played only for us. we tried to crack each other up a lot.

the songs on Eastern PA Seccession Movement were all recorded on a tascam 4 track or simply on a Sony Walkman with a condenser mic. they were never played more than once. vocals would just arise out of whomever felt like singing, or whomever was inspired to spaz out in the moment (thus Charles belting “freedom for young o’connor” & Simon spazzing out in “silence not so bad”).
the spoken stuff (in “youth soccer part 1” and “the pot king of bethlehem”) was recorded by andy clees of Uptown Bones fame on his 4 track and later mixed in by art difuria and clees. they are short stories that i wrote in the very early 90s while part of that old Rittenhouse Writers Group millieu. (and there are a few more stories that were mixed into dEALERS jammers too, which never saw the light of day.) Youth Soccer Part 1 was inspired by diner breakfasts on hungover sunday mornings after hanging out at Kutztown PA parties the night before. the Pot King Of Bethlehem is essentially a true story about a weird dude in Bethlehem PA in the 70s & 80s.
that song “the red wine emo” was a product of discovering the awesome tremelo switch on my old Sears Silvertone amp, when we tried to figure out how to cover “how does it feel” by Spacemen 3. but red wine (for me & charles) and emo (for me) were 2 things that still had total control of my 20 something brain (i mean the orig. emo triumverate of the Rites of Spring LP, the Grey Matter ‘take it back’ EP and Hüskers ‘zen arcade’ dbl LP.)
i’m serious when i say: that song still makes me blush …
Freedom For Young O’Connor wound up being adopted, in the past few years, as the title of a fresh cool fanzine by a BARD College undergrad also named O’Connor – look it up. it’s a good ‘zine!
bit when i hear these songs nowadays (in my fuckin 50s! in the 21st century!), and how shambolic and noisey and unfettered they are, i can almost smell the leaf litter and the weed smoke and the scent of sleeveless west philly scenesters wafting outta the bowl in Clark Park, or the smell of concrete on midnight bike rides around Rittenhouse Square after a thunderstorm, or the scent of Simon’s Tahitian Treat and TastyKakes dinner littered around the drums on the floor. and its true – we never ever did play a ‘song’ more than once – because we couldnt have remembered how to replicate one and didn’t have the desire or the time either…

-Eric de Jesus EASY / Raw Pogo On The Scaffold

Dealers Side

01 – The Dealers – Easy Commercial
02 – The Dealers – Youth Soccer Pt. 1
03 – The Dealers – Kid Charlie Horse
04 – The Dealers – The Red Wine Emo
05 – The Dealers – Commercials
06 – The Dealers – Whimsey Scene
07 – The Dealers – Freedom for Young Oconnor (I Cant Hang)
08 – The Dealers – The Pot King of Bethlehem- Pa.
09 – The Dealers – Silence Not So Bad
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The Eastern Pennsylvania Secession Movement and how it came to be.

Easy ads were part of the South Bethlehem landscape in the summer of 1989. Wally’s took on any hardcore, punk and weirdo show.

The Easy ads were never not on a table.

Dinosaur Jr. was the only band I recognized.

The art stood out. Tower Records on South Street Philadelphia had the “locust” single by Uptown Bones. The art was a dead giveaway that it was Easy-related. Good art. Good music.

It’s possible that Kev, the one Who Drives was my next purchase. That was at the Philadelphia Record Exchange. Russian Meat Squats is what caught my eye. Easy again. Eric knew the power of a highlighter.

Later in 1991, I began pounding drums so Turnbul AC could be a band. Ajax, the guitar man and one resident of 324 E 4th St., was part of Grime Spikes and Mugface. He was in bands with Eric.

January, 1992, quite a few Lehigh Valley people went to Philadelphia to see Nation of Ulysses at some South Street storefront. Ajax saw Eric outside and introduced me. Eric acknowledged me and that was that. NOU didn’t get to play. The cops shut down the show and people got arrested.

I do not know when Eric and I started talking. He was in Philadelphia. I was in flux. My teaching career was off to a rocky start and every summer meant I was looking for a new job.

It had to be the fanzines. Eric had Raw Pogo on the Scaffold. I had Chumpire. RPOTS dealt in magical realism. I dealt in the literal and the pedestrian. Maybe it was our shared admiration of JT and The Original Sins.

Whatever the case, we were communicating often by the start of 1994. That was a magical year. What incredible record did not come out that year? Ox had a strong set of songs. Our first recording with Fred Weaver turned out well. The Farm Cats and Ernie 7” needed art. Eric did the cover. It had his hand and a touch of Teen Beat. That came out in May. The Don’t Equate a Broken Head with a Watermelon Geek 7” was out in August. Eric did the beautiful, minimalist labels.

Ox quit in November. Eric was playing with the dEalers. Talk about two totally different bands. However, the drummers – Tony and Simon – had awesome intuition and tackled everything with a determination to make it sound good.

Ox had spare tracks. The dEalers had tracks. Why not? We assembled a split LP. Eric and pals handled the pressing details (via A and R in Texas). Eric handled the cover art. Cheap fuck me handled the printing. It shows. Yet it looks good because no printer wants their work to look bad. 500 copies are out there. HeartAttack likened the cover art to a movie and the Ox side to Camper Van Beethoven (at times). It was not a negative review.

The dEalers, to me, classify as night music; perfect when you’re alone and don’t want to sleep. Their music is akin to what I would hear LATE at night on college radio when in my car going from pointless A to pointless B.

Youth Soccer Pt. 1
The Red Wine Emo
The Pot King of Bethlehem, PA

They are timeless and incredible.

As for Ox, the first five tracks and “ox rap” sum up the randomness and awesomeness of being in a band that had no agenda.

I have a couple of copies. I do not see it for sale in the shops where it should be in a used bin. I am not surprised. I am not disappointed.

Chumpire (Greg)

Ox Side

10 – Ox – Another Song About a Lousy Childhood
11 – Ox – Ox-Rap
11 – Ox – Wage Slave
12 – Ox – Ar We Having Fun Yet
13 – Ox – Metal
14 – Ox – Chumbire Ad
15 – Ox – My Left Tooth Hurts
16 – Ox – Stage
17 – Ox – Channel One
18 – Ox – Boohoo 1994
19 – Ox – Commercial
20 – Ox – Ice Cream Dialog

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Other Ox Music

The Dealers – is the getting it together gone LP

Time for the Dealers! Looking back on all the great, grimey 90s Philly bands, the Dealers still sound apart from the scene. The improv/free jamming trio of Simon, Eric D and Charles were the best house party/basement/backyard of the time. Clouds of skunky smoke and red wine lipped smiles and confused looks all come flooding back listening to this CD that Eric Z released on his Low Orbit label back in… 95? 96?

So very of a time, but so out of time and timeless, these jams hold the heck up! Shimmering guitar, Moss Icon-ish peaks and valleys of bliss to overblown Spacemen 3 feedback howls to chopped up noisy bursts, acoustic strum blips, all mixed and recorded strictly lo fi with tape warbles ala Lee Scratch Perry and a bit of silliness. One of the few times “spoken word” is not a distraction or a dis. Add to that, commercials for long lost Philly periodicals like Raw Pogo, Little Brother’s Almanac and Nice Pooper and you get an audio snapshot of a time when bike messengers ruled the world and everybody smoked cigarettes.

-Andy P

is the getting it together gone LP

01 – Andrew’s Wings
02 – Youth Soccer Pt. 2
03 – Sun Rise For Davis
04 – Sunset At Camp Mischief
05 – My Religion Belief Is
06 – The Vermont Getaway
07 – Charles Is Lost Then Found/Millionaire Hair/I Am You (live from the House of Toast – 48th & Walton)
08 – Raw Pogo On The Scaffold ‘zine commercial
09 – Amusia 1992
10 – Little Brother’s Almanac ‘zine Commercial
11 – I Love You Again & Again
12 – Easy Subcult Lapan Commercial
13 – Nice Pooper ‘zine Commercial
14 – Mau-Mauing The Scenesters / album credits run out….

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