Posts Tagged ‘1993’
Paul Dianno is coming back the the USA?!
According to published reports, Paul got his visa cleared to do a US tour. I guess I will try to go since he will be playng a few blocks from my apartment.
My history with seeing Paul live is pretty interesting, well to me it is.
The first time was Battlezone/Obsession in 1987 at the Boathouse in Norfolk, VA. I loved the Battlezone records and got stoked on seeing 2 bands that I loved. The whole time Battlezone was on stage, we were hanging out with Obsession and I never really got to check them out. Pity.
The second time was in 1993. The bill was Paul Dianno’s Killers and Solitude Aeturnus at the original Peppermint Beach Club in Virginia Beach, VA. At this point, I was a HUGE Solitude fan and was more stoked on seeing them than seeing Paul. I thought his Killers stuff was terrible. I get to the venue early that afternoon as I was always prone to do to get some stuff signed and Solitude was inside hanging out. I had them sign both of my cassettes(!!!). Super cool guys. Shortly thereafter Paul and his band came in and I had him sign my Battlezone LPs, Iron Maiden’s Live +1 (Greek pressing) and a compilation called The Best of British Rock which featured Dianno’s first post-Maiden band “Dianno” doing Antigua which was a great song. That album also had Persian Risk on it which featured some of the guys that were in Battlezone/Killers. Paul called his bandmates over and they all signed it and we hung out for a while. Paul asked me if I played pool and drank beer. Yes! We shot pool together and drank a few pitchers of beer and just talked about stuff. I never talked about Maiden with him other than to say that I was a big fan. He was pretty cool. Now, if you’ve read his book “Beast”, you’d see the other side of Paul that it seems most people saw and I got to see later than evening.
After Solitude Aeturnus played to a crowd of a whopping 30 people or so, I helped them get their gear offstage and ended up hanging out backstage with them during Dianno’s set, missing him play one more time. About ¾ through the set we hear the music stop suddenly and one of the Solitude guys opens the backstage door. On stage you see Graham Bath holding his jaw and Dianno says, “We’ll start playing again as soon as my guitar player stops playing like a c*nt!” I remember looking at John Perez of Solitude and thinking WTF? John said it was a common occurrence. Paul talks about his habit of fighting people over stupid stuff quite a bit in his book. I feel lucky to have survived my few hours with him unscathed!
So…2 times I’ve gone to see Paul play and missed him both time. Hopefully in February I’ll actually get to see him play.
Buzzard – Churp!!! (1993)
Here’s another rarity for you fine readers out there. Buzzard’s debut album Churp!!! on Hellhound Records. 
I remember back in the early 90s going to see these guys at Kings Head Inn (RIP) on Hampton Blvd in Norfolk, VA. A buddy of mine said, “Dude you have to see this band. They are insane. Their drummer is phenomenal and he’s only got one leg!” So I went. I was completely floored by everything that this band was doing. They were tight. They were erratic. They were brilliant. They were ugly. Dudes that looked like street urchin gutter punks with beards and dreads. Never got close enough to see if they smelled badly. Didn’t matter. They were a machine. A force to be reckoned with. I went to see them whenever I knew that they had a show. With that original era of the band I think I saw them 4 or 5 times within a year or 2. Every time I was blown away. Never really tried to speak to the guys as they all pretty much looked like they didn’t wan to be spoken to.
Buzzard was on Hellhound Records which was primarily a doom metal label…but Buzzard was anything but a doom band. They mixed metal with jazz, punk, Miles Davis, Zappa, Yes, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return to Forever…
Their live show was pretty mind-numbing. Odd times signatures, stops and starts, no real cues given to each other. They all knew what they had to do and when. At that time they consisted of Patrick Walsh (Guitars), AJ Long (Vocals), John Finney (Horns), Andy Brown (Bass) and Joey Rudacil (Drums). Just insane I tell you.
Several years later I am hanging out with some friends and see Patrick Walsh from Buzzard come in the bar I was in. I was there with his sister and didn’t realize that they were related. Buzzard was reformed at this point as a 3-piece with Kevin Anderson on bass and Mark Henry on Drums. Patrick and I quickly connected and started hanging out a lot. Ultimately he became one of my best friends. Brilliant guy. Phenomenal guitarist. Helluva a nice guy. We jammed together briefly with Joey Rudacil and Todd Owens. It only lasted about 3 or 4 practices but it was fun. I ended up in another band with Joey a few months later and had a blast but we could never secure a singer.
Anyway, I was working the door at the Taphouse in Norfolk and Buzzard was scheduled to play their first show in 7 years. I was fortunate enough to get to sit in on several of their practices and was blown away even more by how much their sound had progressed. It went from the Mahavishnu-esque psychojazz to a math metal thing like Watchtower on meth. people came from up and down the east coast for this show and the place was over capacity with a line of people out the door and wrapped around the building trying to get in. It was an incredible show. They have done some subsequent shows but I think the last one may have been in 2007. It’s time for more!
I keep praying that they put out a new record with the newer songs on it. They recorded a 2nd album several years ago that never really saw the light of day. You can listen to some of it on their website.
Churp!!! is one of the toughest releases of Hellhound’s to find nowadays. I fortunately have 2 copies that I cherish. The album is an incredible piece of music…of art…an experience. AJ’s vocals are simply incredible. If you download this, please listen to the album as a whole. Don’t skip any of the 16 tracks. You’d be doing yourself a great disservice.
Tracks:
| 1. | Cyclops | 02:28 | |
| 2. | Shadows Without Substance | 03:03 | |
| 3. | The Fellowship (varieties) | 04:45 | |
| 4. | The Given/Grinding Wheel (including, but not limited to the following) | 08:38 | |
| 5. | Ear To The Ground | 03:44 | |
| 6. | His Descent | 01:35 | |
| 7. | Carpetbaggers | 05:13 | |
| 8. | Fluorescent Orange Bag O’Goodness | 02:09 | |
| 9. | Thirteen o’clock (frumpy smokes a fattie) | 05:21 | |
| 10. | Escape From The Island Of Misfit Toys | 06:01 | |
| 11. | The Secret Doctrine According To Simon | 03:36 | |
| 12. | Grand Poo-Bah | 00:48 | |
| 13. | The Return Of Frumpy And The Scrubby Jazz Hippies | 01:55 | |
| 14. | Musica d’Apocryphonica (no. I adagio) | 00:48 | |
| 15. | Savage Paisley Vortex (part I) | 00:59 | |
| 16. | Savage Paisley Vortex (pert II) The Ritual Dance And Initiation Of Chicky Boy | 07:01 |
Check out the vids from back in the day…
Screaming Trees – Sweet Oblivion
So early in 1993 I was drumming in Epitaph, a band that consisted of some of my best friends. It was fun being in a band with those guys, especially since we always basically agreed on everything that we wanted to play. Good times had by
all. The only real problem I had was that I wanted to play out. Sure we did the occasional party here and there but I wanted to get into some clubs. We were certainly good enough but those guys didn’t have much interest in it and it wasn’t too big of a deal. I understood where they were coming from.
So one day I cruise over to Mark S’ house and hang out with him a while. I had known him for quite a while as we worked together at the grocery store in 1986 and there weren’t that many drummers in our small town, therefore we all knew each other. Mark was/is an incredible drummer, definitely someone I’d love to be drumming for me now (I can’t play anymore; I should blog about that sometime). So we’re in his garage and doing some drum tradeoff stuff. I was dazzling him with my double bass skills and he was dazzling me with his overall drum badassedness.
Anyway, to make a long story longer, he told me that he was playing in a band (I AM I from Virginia Beach, VA) but had to quit it for whatever reason and hooked me up with an audition. I got the gig and it was fun while it lasted (1993-1995). We played out a lot. It was what I would call a progressive rock band. It was tough to quantify as we all had such different influences. We had quite an array of songs, 4+ sets of material which were about 50/50 originals to covers.
One of the covers we did was Nearly Lost You by Screaming Trees. I had not heard this before but I liked it. I ultimately heard the song again in the soundtrack to the movie Singles (great film). Screaming Trees got pigeonholed as being a grunge band but personally I think they were heads and tails better than most of the bands that came from that NW rock scene and they were doing their thing for several years prior to that wave of music. They had a certain something that was very different. They were dark, depressing, heavy at times but not in a Nirvana kind of way. I ultimately bought the album Sweet Oblivion and instantly loved it. There was something in Mark Lanegan’s voice that just screamed that he was hurting deep down. It reminds me a little bit of Hank Williams, Sr. No matter how upbeat the song sounded, you could hear the pain in his voice.
This album has that front to back. Great hooks and melodies, Lanegan’s haunting vocals. It’s a perfect album in my opinion. Oddly enough for as much as I adore this album, I never delved into the rest of their catalogue. I remember hearing Uncle Anesthesia a few times when it first came out, but it didn’t stick with me, nor was I ever really trying to listen to it as it was always background music to something else. I heard some of Lanegan’s solo stuff and it’s very dark and moody. I briefly jammed with Drew from Unicorn Records in Portsmouth, VA and we did a few of Lanegan’s songs. I never got into his work with Queens of the Stoneage.
The Metal Files 
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