Audioblogging: Beware, 1986

I intend to post lots more of the music I used to make, but not in any kind of sensible order. Here's an outline of my 80s musical activities:

• 1983-4: Bible Party, Tucson. Teen prank garage band. Complete recordings here.
• 1984-5: ∑, Tucson. Two-person experimental noise/rock duo with Joe Humble.
• 1985-6: PS Bingo, Tucson. Noise/rock foursome. See previous post.
• 1986-90: PS Bingo, San Diego. Mostly solo noise/electronica.
• 1987-88: The Lemon-Fresh Pinetones, San Diego. Three-piece improv/rock band.

After settling back in San Diego in 1985, I retained the PS Bingo moniker as more-or-less a solo act (a bit later there was briefly a second member; I'll get to that in further posts). At the time I was heavily into noise music, and had worked on several experimental recordings myself. So gone were the vestiges of rock/punk music which the Tucson incarnation of the band had.

This piece of music was originally released on Al Margolis' legendary "cassette underground" label Sound of Pig Music as a split cassette with his band If, Bwana.

The original raw recordings for this were done in Tucson during the Summer of 1986 at my friend Sam's house. It was a noise-jam session I recorded on reel-to-reel tape with a young, affable punk rocker named John Langford who had expressed an interest in noise. I honestly can't remember what we used to make sound, but I think it was mostly toy instruments and an ancient toy electric organ. I brought the tapes back to San Diego and, with the assistance of my college radio buddy Joel Nowak, I slowed the recordings down radically and layered some additional tape loops on top.

The result is a murky, kind of ambient noise-drone epic (it's 45 minutes!) not unlike early Nurse with Wound or HNAS.

Obviously this isn't going to be everybody's cup of tea, but I still really like this, and still listen to it fairly regularly.

The 62mb zip file with artwork is downloadable here.

By the way, I did perform stuff like this live in San Diego. The performances were generally disliked, but it started a hilarious cycle in which I became somewhat "notorious," so clubs kept booking me because they heard I was "edgy." But their version of "edgy" was something like... I don't know... Talking Heads? I rarely played the same venue more than once.