To every part one is the part two, and here it be, McGee. The second part of the Circus Lupus demos from 1990. Although the tape was originally from the legendary Chris Thomson tape dump from last year, I had a better version of this tape courtesy of my old pal Mark Stelmach.

This is, from my estimation, the band's first ever recordings when they were still in Madison, Wisconsin with Reg Shrader (later of Seam) on bass. I'm 99.9% sure that this is the session that produced the band's first single on Cubist Productions outta Pittsburgh.

Really not much else to say. If you're a Circus Lupus fan, you've gotta have this (much like the Monorchid or Skull Kontrol mp3s I've posted). But hey, this stuff just finds me. I'm merely offering this stuff up, and you know what? I'm happy to share.

Circus Lupus - Cat Kicking Jerk (8/90 demo)

Circus Lupus - Chinese Nitro (8/90 demo)

Circus Lupus - Deviant Gesture (8/90 demo)

Circus Lupus - Kansas City Bomber (8/90 demo)

Circus Lupus - Marbles (8/90 demo)

Circus Lupus - Tightrope Walker (8/90 demo)

Circus Lupus - Mean Hot Blessed (8/90 demo)

Circus Lupus - Pulp (8/90 demo)

Circus Lupus - Thermo King (8/90 demo)

By the spring of 2009, I had written off going to SXSW. My dealings with SXSW proper had discouraged me from doing another Chunklet party and my further dealings with one particular shithead promoter I had helped further sealed the deal. Screw it. I wasn't going.

Then I found out that Mayyors, a scrappy band with two singles to their name, were doing four shows in Austin. To my fevered brain, this was a game changer. Now, I get to hear a ton of new music. And this band? I don't know. It was like a punch to the throat. And deep down? I knew they'd be just tremendous to watch perform. And boy, I wasn't wrong.

Where's Waldo? Mayyors at Spiros (FMU/AQ showcase)

I asked my lovely and overly understanding wife three days prior if she'd mind if I went to Austin solely to see Mayyors and she was agreeable to the idea. In an effort to save money on plane flights (Atlanta to Austin is super expensive for some reason), I flew into Houston, rented a car and bee-lined to downtown Austin. I arrived around sunset and immediately planted myself at Spiro's for the WFMU/Aquarius Records showcase which had no shortage of bands that I was thrilled to see. I mean, hell, I finally got an opportunity to see the six-person line-up of Major Stars. That's enough right there, huh?

But Mayyors hit the stage and were everything I had anticipated. Short. Sharp. Swirling. Punishing. Brilliant. Everybody that was in the front row of their performance I'd see the next day as I went to see them at Sound On Sound which was a record store north of downtown. SoS might sound familiar to many of you as the place where Chunklet hosted our SXSW 2-stage parking lot soiree a few years prior with Ted Leo, Carbonas, Torche, Part Chimp and a zillion other bands. But this gig was inside SoS (which since then has sadly closed) and saw Houston's Rusted Shut do an hour long 'endurance test' gig directly before. And seeing FMU's Brian Turner, Load Records' Ben McKosker and both Allan and Andee from Aquarius Records assured me that I wasn't alone in being excited about seeing Mayyors once again. Click on the mp3 attached to hear the show.

And after going to The Salt Lick with Andee and Mr. Turner (which was my only proper meal in the 28 hours I was in Austin), the final Mayyors show I got to see was later that evening at a house in suburban Austin. As I pulled up, Chris Lombardi (Matador's co-owner) was leaving because there weren't any bands setting up. Uh, oh. As he piled into a cab with his colleagues, I joked with him that he needed to go find some fresh powder to ski down. Some jokes never die. But regardless, after the cops received complaints from neighbors during Thee Oh Sees set, the show eventually went inside and all the bands play in the home owner's kitchen. Brilliant.

I got to stand directly next to the band amidst the kitchen sink, cabinets, groceries, pots and pans as they whirled up a hell of a racket. I remember seeing somebody crowd surfing which was without a doubt the only time I've ever seen that happen *IN* somebody's kitchen.

Did I regret the $500+ it took for me to get out to Austin? NOT. ONE. BIT.

Mayyors at Sound on Sound, Austin

Now fast forward to this morning and I get an email from Mayyors' 'singer' John Pritchard who stated that the band was about to play their final four shows ever as a band. Now, while I'd love to make it to the west coast for these gigs, I think it's a borderline impossibility. However, to anybody out there with Delta SkyMiles, I'm open to your generosity. Or if the brilliant organizers of the SMMR BMMR in Portland want me to emcee, I'm 100% down. SERIOUSLY!

But if you live in Northern California or Portland, Oregon, you really have no reason to NOT go see them perform before they pack up. I'm sure I could rattle off a slew of bands that have come before Mayyors, but really, do you need any more endorsement than this post?

Also, if there's anybody out there recording these shows, send 'em on and we'll trade.

08.13.10 - Portland, OR - SMMR BMMR @ Plan B w/Woven Bones, The Lamps, Wounded Lion, Meth Teeth, GGreen, Burning Yellows, Myelin Sheaths, Therapists, Manic Attracts, Fist City, $12, 21+, 6pm

08.14.10 - Portland, OR - HOUSE PARTY @ 110 n. failing w/Jonny X & the Groadies, GGreen, Big Black Cloud, all ages, $5, 8pm

09.03.10 - Daly City, CA - @ Serra Bowl w/Ty Segall, Culture Kids, Blasted Canyons, all ages, FREE, 8pm

09.05.10 - Davis, CA @ d.a.m. House w/Thee Oh Sees, The Lamps, all ages, $5, 7pm

-------------

Sure, bands break up every day, but the video that's included with this post (shot at Budget Rock 7) does a remarkably accurate job of showing what a mind-blowing band we're losing in a few weeks.

Mayyors at house party at 1118 Linden, Austin

Mayyors - Live in Austin at Sound On Sound '09

"The year Touch And Go Magazine ran its last issue, I had just hit my teenage years in northern Colorado. I was listening to Cheap Trick and Pink Floyd on my Walkman as I trudged along my paper route in a foot of snow. Trading a couple of tapes with junior high school pals led to my discovery of what we then called "college rock". It was this discovery that led to my obsessive teenage self seeing the Minutemen open for R.E.M. in 1985. For me, that moment was the beginning of the end. Whatever punk and hardcore was selling at that moment, I'm still voraciously buying all these years later. By the late ‘80s, I had become a feverish cross-referencer. Seeing one name on the back of an album would send my pursuits in a million different directions. From my tiny bedroom, letters would be sent out to labels asking for catalogs and bands asking about tour dates."

What you just read was the first half of an essay I turned in to the folks behind the Touch & Go book last year. I'm publishing it here because, well, it was cut out of the book and it serves as a good jumping off point for Steve Miller. Apart from being the singer for The Fix and Blight back during T&G's heyday, Steve was the editor of the behemoth literary feat that is the Touch & Go book. A cursory look of the T&G book will immediately make one realize the somewhat under-appreciated, yet unquestionably important, role Steve had.

Yes, go buy this NOW.

Now, I had a pretty lengthy interview with Mr. Tesco Vee a little while past, but I feel so strongly about the book that has come out that I believe a Q&A with Mr. Miller is mandatory. So I sat down, cranked out some questions and little more than 48 hours later, my in-box was filled with answers.

Also, in honor of Steve's involvement with the early hardcore scene and/or Touch & Go, I'm including a *gasp* radio broadcast of The Fix from Club Doo Bee in Lansing back in 1981 where they shared the stage with (fellow T&G'ers) The Necros.

So how did you fit in to T&G's existence during the late 70's and early 80's?
We were a band that played music that the guys at T&G liked. We had known of them before The Fix started as wise ass locals with a little magazine that had some reviews of stuff we wanted to learn about. Then I met DS [Dave Stimson -ed] at the Census Bureau office, where we both worked in May 1980. The Fix was new and I invited DS to a party we were playing, where he was somewhat shocked that we were actually great. He spread the word to Tesco and in June we played some little room at the back of a restaurant and he loved it as well. By the end of the year, they wanted us to do a single for this thing they called a label. We were honored of course, and it gave the whole thing a great deal more direction. I mean, we had to wonder who the fuck would care about a record by us. But we weren’t going to refuse the opportunity. They believed in us as much as we did, although our reasons for existence were somewhat complex – we wanted to confront people with a sound that we heard in our heads that came running out our hands and hearts. And T&G understood it. You know, none of this means T&G was a rubber stamp for The Fix. DS berated us a couple of times. I think once was for his misplaced perception that we were too focused on appearance. And another time he mistakenly thought we might have been behind some head bashing at one of our increasingly infrequent live shows, as in our pals were conducting the stomping. Overall, we all got along well together and the book does a good job of following that.

How would you describe T&G in relation to the music scene and/or other zines/publications?
It was kind of the water tower. All things flowed from it in terms of serious local music, and its national role increased with every issue. There were others with similarly great ideas and a willingness to tell it straight up, like Your Flesh. There were other ‘zines that were simply boosters, like Ripper on the West Coast and the Big Takeover. None could carry the sense of humor that T&G had though. Tesco and DS were just plain funny.

The Fix

Seeing as how The Fix only released a very limited amount of material, how powerful was T&G's endorsement in print and subsequently releasing your two singles?
It meant a lot to us because we were not following the program at all and to be kind of the lone rangers meant that we had to be gratified by our own music. T&G embraced us and that meant we didn’t just have to look at each other and say, ‘hey, nice set.’ And people are followers by nature, so when T&G endorsed us, there were some who eventually felt it was okay to listen. That helped a lot. With the records, it was simply advertising in the magazine and they handed off some records to us. We didn’t know what to do. Hell, I think Mike and I each gave one to our moms, fer god's sake. We just had no idea what to do with them. No one we knew really liked us. It wasn’t as if we had a cadre of punks hanging at The Fix house.

It seems like The Fix has a permanent place in the altar of hardcore. How do you react to that?
Cult band.

So between the early 80's and, say, two years ago, were you still in pretty routine contact with TV and DS?
Tesco and I kept in touch over the years, especially when email came along. DS I hadn’t seen for years before running into him at a record show someplace in Maryland. I was living in Washington DC and had run onto people who told me he was around but it was a random meeting that got us together.

Whose idea was it to do a book? Who brought Ian Christe's Bazillion Points imprint into the picture?
I had mentioned it to Tesco at some point when I moved back to Michigan in 2005  - I had been working for 14 years in Dallas and Washington D.C. - and so we decided to get a proposal together. We went to the local Kinko’s with a briefcase containing the original issues and went to town copying the best stuff, whatever we thought best represented the magazine. Then I wrote a proposal treatment with the ideas for essays, flyers and so on. We pitched it to a guy I knew who had a publishing house in California and he didn’t share our vision for a complete reissue, so we sat on it for a while. I subsequently put together a book proposal for a true crime book connected to a story I wrote for People magazine, and that sold quickly through a friend who served as agent, Chris Fuller. So I told him about the Touch & Go thing, and he loved it. So Fuller took it around and it was he who arrived at the doorstep of Bazillion Points. Smart guy for a lawyer.

As the editor of an anthology of T&G, what exactly were you doing for the project?
Reading, writing, encouraging, organizing, fixing, rinse, repeat.

As far as timelines go, when did you get involved in the book and how much time did it consume until it ended?
From the start to the end. In the middle there was considerable heavy lifting from the graphics guys, which I stayed out of. In the initial stages, before this book was ever sold, we would discuss layout and the dream scenario, which pretty much came true thanks to Ian Christe. At one point, maybe 2007, I took a bunch of different types of covers of books and laid them all out  on a table at my place and asked Tesco to look and see what he liked best. He liked one very similar to what we have today.

In relation to the throwaway/disposable nature of current music journalism, how relevant/pertinent do you think a T&G book is?
A complete history, the intersection of Hustler, the New Testament and Circus. And those three are forever, right?

Describe what went through your mind once the book landed in your hands.
I have a poor capacity to enjoy the present and I regret that. I think I was wondering what was next. I did sort of smile when I ran my fingers over the lifted text on the cover. By the time something comes out, be it a record or a book, I am usually consumed by the next thing.

Although the book has only been out a couple weeks, what have the reactions/reviews been like?
Read ‘em and pause a happy pause. Takes one second then it’s gone. Always good to see something worthwhile appreciated, since the good shit gets ignored too frequently.

Has it already exceeded your expectations? Did you even have any expectations?
I had no expectations, never once wondered how it would be received. Sort of like making music; you’re gonna make it no matter what, because you have to. And it’s cool if someone likes it. And if they don’t it’s fine because you did what you had to do.

The Fix - Live at Club Doo Bee 1981

After long hours, nay...days, of consulting an array of experts from every State and many Nations around the globe, with marathon sessions of debate, arguments, and mediation, pot after pot of black coffee and pack after pack of smokes, with charts, graphs and mathematical formulas, yet no fisticuffs, we have determined the winning entry in the Chunklet AxCx Song Title Contest:

"Windchimes Are Gay" IS THEE GREATEST AxCx SONG TITLE EVER! As Posted by MacDara @ 07/21/2010 07:59 PM!

This proud winner will get to write their very own AxCx song title, have it written, recorded, granted liner note credits and of course greased a free copy of the 7" when complete. Oh the glory! This is all part of much broader undertaking, details as they become available from the powers that be.

Gay.

There were many great entries but that one just sealed it. After all, what's better than to slur an inanimate object? The second place prize of the other stupid 7" (be it Jimmy Eat World or The Mighty Mighty Bossstones) could be available to any of these oh so close runners up: (Hit us up via the contact page, maybe we can make the magic happen?)

Women: Nature's Punching Bag
Posted by Derek @ 07/24/2010 09:37 PM

"You Have Goals"
Posted by Stoat Mixen @ 07/19/2010 01:25 AM

Being a Cobbler Is Dumb
Posted by Adam D'Andrea @ 07/18/2010 11:37 AM

"Being Ignorant Is Awesome"
Posted by hensley @ 07/24/2010 09:44 PM

"I Ate Your Horse"
Posted by pdf @ 07/18/2010 02:44 PM

Look for the FULL DETAILS of the AxCx project which you can still get in on courtesy of Limited Appeal Records. - just click the Seth Putnam Contest Tab! Thanks for playing, you should all be very, very proud of yourselves. Except for that one dick.

(Runner-up prizes have all been claimed, contest here complete, check the LAR link for other goodies via them.)

Its time has come. In the comment section name your favorite Anal Cunt song title of all time. If yours is picked as the, uh, ‘winner’(?) – then you shall receive your choice of either a Jimmy Eat World 7” or a Mighty Mighty Bosstones 7”. I know what you’re thinking; "what do those bands have to do with A.C.?" NOTHING! If any of it made sense, it’d be less fun. How will the winner be chosen? Hell, I don't know. We'll read them all and it will dawn on us like a light switch being hit - BOOM, that's the "funniest" one. But wait, there’s more. We have rules and they must be followed:

red on black attack

Rule 1. Must be a real, non-augmented/edited A.C. tune.
Rule 2. All comments must be just the song title. None of this "I saw AC back in 1993 at basement show" crap. Please, no stories/commentary. Keep things on track and moving.
Rule 3. No lists. ONE song per comment/poster (Sorry Oliver, et, al.) -and don’t try that fake name maneuver, we can spot that crap. Besides, just be cool & don’t ruin that sport of it all. Take your time, pick wisely, and hope for the best. And watch out that you don’t repeat an already selected A.C. gem. (And yeah, it’s a web search nightmare…or dream?) Plus, need we mention, it's just a joke, relax, have fun.

This Just In!
HUGE PRIZE WINNER NEWS! - who ever the lucky soul is that takes home the Championship to this sucker will now receive :(GET THIS!)
***To dream up a song title for AxCx/Seth to record.
(given it's not completely over the top, I can't be part of that.)
***Their name in the liner notes.
***And a free copy of the record. (7" I believe?)
So, you still have to select a REAL A.C. tune as your entry (there are only a few hundred left...) & some folks are repeating ones, so watch it. And now not only could you win an incredibly insipid 7" - but have a shot at true immorality/Immortality !

(ALL PRIOR RULES MUST STILL BE FOLLOWED, & IT'S ANYBODY'S BALLGAME. GOOD LUCK & GOD BLESS. Billy.)