The Sound of Young Seattle

The Sounds of Young Seattle came out in 1984, cassette only, and was put together by local musician David Kulczyk. Described as the “psychodelic bastard children of the Seattle Syndrome” the two volume compilations ( the second one was released in 1985) are documenting a post punk scene that grew around the Pioneer Square dens.

The first volume, the only one available in mp3, so far, features some darkish psychedelic tunes from A Western Family, Big Boat, Crypt kicker 5, Dr. Bombay, Life In General, Ministry Of Love, PMA, Room Nine and Feast Of Friends (would later become Feast).

A Western Familly - The Umbrella Theory

Big Boat - Free Willed Social Animal

Crypt Kicker Five - Ya Ya Love Song

Dr. Bombay - In A Time Machine

Feast of Friends - Emotions

Life in General - Desperate Reminiscence (Live)

Ministry Of Love - Dancing On Air

PMA - Obsession

Room Nine - Seas Without a Shore

Note: David A. Kulczyk played guitar in A Western Family, a band that formed in 1983. The band’s line-up also included John Massoni on vocals, Liz Schmoe on bass and David Thierry on drums. After releasing two cassettes, “A Western Family” and “Music from Tiger Mountain”, the band called it quits. It was 1985. Some of the remaining members went on to form A Weather Theater.

And also a couple of A Western Familly tunes

Persian Carpets

Behave

Update Overlord and Bible Stud

Greetings! My apologies, I’ve been gone for so long. Things got little busy lately, as I am trying to put together a local fanzine.

The Overlord and Bible Stud posts I’ve done were not very well documented, so I thought of a way to make up to you guys. I’ve got my hands on some articles about both bands, articles from magazines such as The Rocket, Backlash and other local reviews. There’s stuff there that must be checked out. Like, did you know that Steve V.L. wasn’t the original Overlord vocalist? Thought so….

Click on the links bellow for download and stay tuned, because I’m planning a post on a long forgotten Seattle compilation featuring bands such as Room Nine, Feast, A Western Family or Crypt Kicker Five. Cheers!

Here and here

Treeclimbers: At the edge of Seattle’s new wave

Again, I apologise for the delay…those “couple of days” were more like two weeks. I’ll keep my promise about one thing though, that I will share my knowledge about the Treeclimbers with you.

The band formed in the early 80’s in the glory days of the Seattle’s post-punk. They recorded a self titled Ep in ’85, released by Larkin Record. And while I was expecting this record to be, maybe a little bit boring, I was surprised to be proven otherwise. The record is amazing. It contains four tracks, in which, the band managed to modelate a warm, but rhythmic, popish post-punk. “Greener” is probably the best song on the record followed by “Longing” (check out the killer sax!!!), “On Location” and “Seconds n Counting” which may be the outsider because of its darker influences, like an early Siouxsie and the Banshees rip-off.

Studying the back cover of the EP, we find out that the band is composed by: Jonathan Poneman - bass, Gary Thorstensen - guitar, Loren Evans - vocals, Jeff Lindeman – keyboards and sax and Peter Barnes on drums. The songs were recorded and mixed at Triangle studios in Seattle.

Treeclimbers were a “rotating cast of characters” as Jonathan Poneman recalls: “…some real "characters"! - who played in a band whose nucleus was Gary Thorstensen (ex of TAD) and myself. We were around for 5-6 years and managed to put out one ep, produced by Peter. While I have a fond place in my heart for that EP, Gary and I were always striving for a more nuanced, textured sound that neither of us could adequately convey to our various bandmates”.

Regarding shows, bills and gigs, the Treeclimbers may have been more of a “studio band”, and please correct me if I’m wrong, the comment section is at your service.

See you next time. Enjoy:

Greener

Longing

Sad news about The Fluid's guitarist Rick Kulwicki

Sorry for the lack of updates, but I’ve been quite busy. I’m coming back with some tragic news that many of you probably heard by now. Rick Kulwicki, the guitarist from The Fluid, died on the 15th of this month. He was 49 years old. Here’s an article from the Sub Pop’s website.

Rest in peace Rick Kulwicki!

I’ll be back in a couple of days with a post about the Treeclimbers (a mid 80’s band that feautured Gary Thorstensen from TAD and Jonathan Poneman). See you then.

Birthday Gift: More DC Beggars

NorthwestNoise turned 2 this November...shame on me for not knowing the exact date. Ok, if you look in the archive, the first post was written in December 2008. The truth is, the fist post ever was actually made in November 2008 and it was about Dale Crover Ep, but that post was erased a long time ago.

Never thought I'll be bloggin' this long...hmmm. I've been thinking about what would be the perfect gift for my readers and I’ve finally made up my mind ...I'll be sharing the DC Beggars - Love, Money and Power Ep. No introduction about the band because I've already written one here. I won't give away the music like I usually do. You'll have to mail me, my e-mail address is on the top of the right corner, and you'll also have to leave a comment on the post.

Also for the DC Beggars - You're so pretty 7'' check out this blog here. This fellow is doing a great job!!

Happy Birthday Northwest Noise!

Love and Respect: Why we love punk-rock for!

A year ago Volker Stewart wrote a piece for us about his record label, Penultimate, where he confessed that his favorite part of the Penultimate portfolio was none other than Love and Respect. Many of you grunge-fiends probably heard of the band before, but few of you know who they really were.

Love and Respect was one of the finest supergroups in town. And I say supergroup because the line-up featured of Ed Fotheringham from the barf-rockers The Thrown Ups, Whiting Tennis and Joe Culver from Big Tube Squeezer, along with Steven LaRose and occasionally Steve Turner from Mudhoney. Although the band had a short existence, it managed to put out a 6-song EP called Deep and Heatfelt and a LP, namely The Love & Respect Record.

The idea for a L&R post came after I accidentally found Steven LaRose on youtube, and he agreed to help me by financing my blog with L&R tunes and a great story about the band's short history. The story was put together by Steve himself in a day of facebook message exchanges with the rest of the crew (isn't facebook great?!). Lots of thanks to Steve, Ed, Joe and Whiting!!! Enjoy:

In 1985 I met Whiting at my first job out of undergraduate school painting sets for the Seattle Repertory Theatre. Whiting invited me to share some of his studio space which was located next to the Comet Tavern. Ed had the space across the hall, but he enters the story later. First, Whiting meets my friend from college Joe and they form the band Big Tube Squeezer. It must have been the summer of ’88 when Joe and Ed started joking about the idea of a band while at Mung Fest, a big pre-rave, low-impact, camp-out jam-session that Whiting and his family/friends had cultivated.

I distinctly remember our first “practice” because I was so freaked out. Ed took us to the “E” level of the University of Washington’s parking garage. He knew of this place because he and his ensemble The Thrown Ups had used this space for its unique location of electrical outlets. I just watched as the others attempted to jam.

We played at a couple parties and like Joe says, “it was a semi planned spontaneous appearance, like we didn't care and had never practiced before.” I was very uncomfortable most of the time and have no sense of music so I had to turn and look at Joe

for timing clues. However, one time at a party, I remember finally mustering the co

urage to turn around and the only two people who were there were Tad and Bob Whitaker. They were happy pogo monsters. I was so proud.

Somehow, we got on a bill at the Vogue. Cat Butt and The Fluid were the real acts and we were a novelty opener. I was still dependent on Joe so we put him up front and me in the back so I had to face forward. There was also a homemade bubble machine. Ed - “The Bubble Machine!!! Totally forgot about that. It was a floor fan blowing a home made circular turbine made from balsa (for the propellers) and coat hangers (for the circle thingys that make bubbles). The air from the fan would simultaneously blow the turbine around, dipping the circular coat hangers into the soapy liquid, blowing bubbles when the coat hangers emerged. Fucker worked!”

We also played a party at our friend Victoria Haven’s studio. There are some great pictures from that night. Joe- “I remember vic's studio show being a bit of a "Moment" where we thought, hey this doesn't suck that much.”

So maybe this is around the time we played the Squid Row. None of us remembers playing there, but Volker does and he is the one that eventually paid for the recording and the records and all that. “Oh yeah, it was definitely Squid Row - Turner was playing his lap steel and Pavitt was doing a crazy dance in front of him. Maybe you were the only one dressed well at Squid Row, which may have made me remember the v-neck! I remember Squid Row shows cos it was easy for me to get home - I lived around he corner - less misery.”

Oh yeah. . . Steve Turner. Ed – “Steve was an interested half-member...” It seems we were taking ourselves slightly more seriously at th

is point but still having loads of fun and drinking lots of Schmidt beer. Whiting - “I was definitely jealous of how easily Love and Respect wa

s getting shows, recording etc, cause I was putting much of what I had into Big Tube Squeezer and it wasn't really going anywhere. So I was frustrated in that way. But at the same time I loved the shows, and not having to write or sing or be in front- I totally loved that. Plus playing bass is easy as shit to play drunk.”

We played another show at the Vogue. Mudhoney and Swallow were on the bill. Mudhoney couldn’t make it that night. I think it was a rare

Seattle snow. Joe – “I also dimly remember a horrible jam on stage at the end of the evening.”

This all lasted a year. We played once more at Mung Fest in 1989. There was a recording session with Jack Endino, maybe twice. Joe – “One, just us, and one with Steve T

urner. Those were a solid good time. Low expectations, but it sounded decent. Jack gave me the "mudhoney" reverb/eq for the snare and I was happy”.

You can also catch up with L&R on facebook...here. And come on good people, leave comments, suggestions, don't just download :D !

Chlamydia

Stupid Pretty Girl

Wanda Fuca

Car

Couldnt Get High

Fishy Respect

Crunchbird: Shit Happens !

I was looking for Ash and I found Crunchbird. Yes! A few months ago I began a little investigation about the band Ash. I didn't know anything about the band except the fact that they were featured on this famous gig poster. Next thing I found out was that the band was, among many, the one that Jaime Robert Johnson joined around '85 - '86. Jaime relocated from Detroit to Seattle in the mid '80s. He joined an early version of the band Crisis Party called, On the Rocks. Then he formed the band Urbanilla which recorded 6 songs with maestro Jack Endino, but during these sessions the band also called it quit. For the next couple of years Jamie kept joining and quitting bands such as Ash, Naked Lunch, Public Domain, and a few more. In 1987 he started working with Jack Endino on what will later become an earlier version of Crunchbird, called Ghostflesh, featuring drummer Art Jiron and bassist Lynn Paulson. By 1989 the band became Crunchbird and finished recording the Shit Happens cassette (only), with the new line-up which now included Lonnie King and KCMU DJ Captain Skillit Weasle. Also Jack Endino mentioned that he played drums on a couple of Shit Happens tunes, and also recorded a few of 'em. Nice! He also played drums for Crypt Kicker 5!

In 1990 the band played the famous 4 Bands for 4 Bucks! show with Nirvana, TAD, and the Gits at the Hub Ballroom. Soon after that, Crunchbird broke up and Jamie formed Karma, that will later become Angelspit. They recorded with Jack Endino the Youth Apocalypse Fashion Crime release and the Speculation/Dogs of Class Warfare 7'' released by Vagrant Records in 1994.

During this time, Jamie along with Geo Lane on bass and Erik Dannevig on drums, recorded a hand of acoustic tunes that were released as Reject in 1995, under the ''landmark'' Crunchbird. Next Jamie began recording a new potential Crunchbird record, Tales of the Ultra-Renaissance also known as Grungaholica. Musicians involved in this project were: Greg "Sledge" Peterson, Geo Lane, John "Baker" Saunders (from Walkabouts), Ian Raskin taking of bass duties, and Jack Endino and Simon Grant on drums. Grungaholica remained unreleased, with the exception of the song History that made it on the 29 Live compilation. Jamie was booked for an acoustic act for the release party of the 29 Live compilation at the OK Hotel in Pioneer Square in Seattle. The songs performed there by the band (now featuring Simon Grant on drums and Tannar Brewer on bass) were recorded in the fall of 1997. Five of those songs were released by the band, same year, as Vagrant Sessions (a limited edition CD). Then the band broke up once more and Jamie formed Electric Orchid.

Shit Happens is the pure definition of grunge. It contains elements of Nirvana's Bleach, Cat Butt, and maybe The Fluid, with strong vocals and distorted guitar riffs. In my opinion, this is probably one of the best scene-defining records. So...tell me what you think!

Crunchbird - In Deep Shock

Crunchbird - Subway Circle

You can also check out my youtube channel, here. Not many uploads yet, but there will be.

Cheers!