Gathered Here.

I met Jonathan West through James Whitten when they were playing together in Structural Damage. I started seeing Jonathan around at a lot of the Plan It X type shows like This Bike is a Pipe Bomb and the Devil is Electric and a handful of hardcore shows. He started coming out more and more, and we became pretty good friends. After Gathered Here, Jonathan went on to start The Ghostwood with James. All three of us moved out to Oakland together after Hurricane Katrina, lived in the same building, and played together in Path of Daggers Crown of Swords. When we moved back to New Orleans, Jonathan played a few solo acoustic shows doing some unused Ghostwood songs and some other stuff he had written. Right now, he's not playing with anyone, but I think there's still hope.

After Structural Damage had broken up, I was doing a show at Cypress and Jonathan told me he was starting a new band with Greg Stein and Steven Roussell from Hatchback with this nutty kid Darin Acosta from Norco. Hatchback had been one of the greatest bands to come out of New Orleans, and Greg and Steven are incredible musicians, so I was pretty excited about seeing them in a new band. I knew Darin from his sister Megan and from my friend Steven Mudge. He also came out with us on the Eat a Bag of Dicks, so I think at this point, I was pretty familiar with his antics. After Gathered Here, Greg went on to play bass in the post Dear Diary band A Hunger Artist. He's not playing with anyone right now, but still occasionally records bands. Darin is now in an acoustic band called Sorority with Nathan Jesse (The City is the Tower), and sometimes Eric Martinez (Rougarou, PROMIS, Chopsley, etc.) and Emily Hilldore (local classical musician).

I remember when Jonathan was first talking to me about Gathered Here, I thought it was silly that he was going to just sing in the band when he sort of knew how to play bass. At that point, it seemed like good musicians were few and far between in New Orleans, so it just seemed like a waste to use someone who could be playing an instrument on vocal duties. What a fool I was! His vocals in Gathered Here were a huge leap forward from Structural Damage. He really blew me away when they started playing out. Really, the whole band did. Steven's drums had always had that sort of jazzy / clicky French emo sound to them, really fast with tons of fills, and Darin's guitar work really complimented that, seeming to draw an obvious influence from bands like Anomie and Fingerprint. On a whole they sounded like an amalgamation of the straightforward Refused hardcore songs, the start-stop / brevity of Kid Dynamite, and somehow the melody / noise dynamic of Fugazi. They were also a really tight live band, had a ton of energy, and kept their sets short and simple.

Gathered Here never toured, but I think they played some shows in Pensacola and maybe Athens. They were supposed to meet up with Dear Diary on our last tour, but ended up breaking up a few days before they were going to hit the road. We tried getting them to come out anyway with Steve Wiegand and/or Eric Martinez filling in on drums, but they didn't want to do it. I think Darin went to Mexico or something instead. I also tried to get them to play the last Dear Diary shows with Majority Rule, but their differences were irreconcilable, so it never happened. The Dear Diary / Gathered Here 7" that was supposed to come out on Deadtank was also scrapped after both bands broke up, but it might end up still seeing the light of day as a split 12" on One Eye.

Along with the Faeries, Gathered Here remains one of my favorite hardcore bands and one of the best bands to come out of New Orleans period. I wish these guys would get back together or start new bands with a similar sound. Here's everything they recorded:

2.5 Years
Good Intentions
Here Come My Friends
Killing Friends
They Say We're Not Alright

Fuckmorgue

Many were the ghosts who haunted the End of Banks Street warehouse--Black power Mike from next door, Fat Brian who squatted our couches, the guy from out of town who called a house meeting because of his scabies, the crazy lady who planted small crosses on the neutral ground--not to mention some of our grave-robbing, drug-dealing, gun-wielding, Funck-denying roomates.

In September of 2004 while I was living at the warehouse on Banks Street, just months after the future Mrs. Emily McFunck had foolishly spurned my affections, three traveling punk ladies from Winnipeg stayed at my house: Morgan, Janelle, and Natalie. Nice ladies all, into hardcore, and flirting with straightedge (UPDATE: that playful love affair has now turned into a life long marriage). They wound up getting stranded in New Orleans for an extra week or so because of Hurricane Ivan. When they eventually made it home, Morgan mailed me her band's CD. It was amazing gothic black metal stuff. Totally brutal and melancholy. And here it is in it's entirety.

Down Forever
Like the City
Hooker with a Heart of Gold
Dead I Will Not be Forgotten
After Derbie Died
Chapters Coming Forth by Day
Where He Goes
Cacaphony

That's the back of the CD below. The Slug & Lettuce style pictures are scans from Winnipeg's weekly "Uptown" paper. And there's also a poster from one of their shows below.

In the summer of 2006, a few of the folks who lived at the warehouse and I went on a two-month road trip in the summer that finally took us up to Winnipeg. We finally got to see these folks in their natural habitat, stay at Morgan's house, and buy a bike rack from Natalie's mom. Morgan took a ride with us to Banff and tried to grill some food on the side of the road with eternal handy man, which is probably even funnier and more amazing than you can imagine. Banth, on the other hand, was a total letdown. Don't go to the "hot springs" there. It's just a glorified public bathtub.

From Morgan:

"And after you dropped me off, I hitchhiked to Calgary, flipped a coin in a back alley of the main drag. It was heads, so I got on the junk train that was chugging through town fell asleep in a grainer and woke up in a field in saskatchewan. I trudged through the field, slept (it was 8 degrees C, didn't even have a hoodie, food or more than a half bottle of water, let alone real shoes. All for the sake of letting chance determine my path!!), got back to a highway, and hitched a ride to Winnipeg with a Bosnian refugee / trucker who tried to tell me about watching his wife and kids get slaughtered. Then he tried to get me to have sex with him. I refused, he let me know he wasn't going to rape me (how nice!!), and we parted ways. A month later I moved to Montreal."

A short update on the band members:

In addition to Fuckmorgue, the Morgan that I know also played bass in Vernix and is now living in Montreal, playing a little music, and spending time as a student and tattoo artist. The other Morgan in FM played guitar in Kursk and now lives the married life in NYC. Nancy is living in Vancouver, is a carpenter, and played in Witchking. Erica is living in Brandon, Manitoba at school for music. And Sean is somewhere in BC, laying low, living a life shrouded in mystery.

Big Baby demo

I first met Dan Fox in 1998 when he was helping our friend Kelly McGittigan put on shows at their house uptown on Robert Street called The Ranch and then down at the Audubon Hotel. Offhand, I can remember them putting on some amazing shows with Dropdead, Crispus Attucks, Fat Day, and Casket Lottery, but I know they did a ton more than that. Local bands like Hatchback, Community, and Dogapillar were also in constant rotation on their shows. I think Dan was officially just a "sound guy" or maybe just helped Kelly out, but it definitely seemed like he was always on hand at those first Kelly shows I started going out to. Dan played with Templeton Peck and Indignation (a personal favorite) and would later go on to play guitar in Hatchback, bass in Stupid Fucking White Man (the precursor to The Faeries), MC in The Interview, and a few instruments in the brief but amazing Gretna Sewing Circle. I should also note that I pretty much ripped off Dan stylistically on the flyers I make. I remember him making fun of the computer-generated flyers I was scamming and then taking me to kinkos with him and introducing me to the world of broken typewriters, cut-and-paste, the "negative image" button, and staying overnight in the 24 hour copy shop. I distinctly remember a couple of cool posters he did for me for two of the Page Ninety Nine shows and one he did for the This Bike is a Pipe Bomb / The Wednesdays / Hatchback show at the Mermaid Lounge (That show was the same night as Creation is Crucifixion / As They Wept at Dixie Taverne, and I missed both shows because I was at the computer lab literally writing six papers the day before they were due! A fool's errand!).

Although hailing from the cancerous suburbs of Destrehan, Justin Grisoli was a veteran New Orleans punk of the Faubourg Center and Jimmy's days by the time we started running into each other. I caught his old pop punk band The Santa Smokes a few times at those shows and later on when Eric Martinez was briefly putting on shows at Movie Pitchers. I think the first time I really talked to him was at the big Avail / Propaghandi / Leatherface / Hot Water Music show at Southport Hall. Not long after that, I was throwing a lot of shows at the Dixie Taverne, and he had moved into one of the apartments above the bar. I started seeing him more and more and eventually joined a band with him called Eat a Bag of Dicks. While that band was still around, Justin had a lot of different musical projects going on--Stupid Fucking White Man (and the Faeries after that), The Black Sun, Gretna Sewing Circle, Marx Marvelous, Christ Reverse Psychology Experiment, Mean Day, and probably some others that I'm forgetting. He would also go on to help found the seminal, post-grunge Red Beards. Pretty much every band Justin has been involved with has been amazing, original, and influential on some level, not to mention being a versatile musician, having mastered drums, bass, and guitar.

Brian Serpas was a good friend of Justin's from Destrehan. I don't think he really got into punk until he was 23 or so, and the first stuff he started listening to was Page Ninety Nine, His Hero is Gone, and all the other really extreme, fringe stuff that Joey Gates and Justin were feeding him. I think that gave him a pretty interesting perspective on things and sort of shaped his music writing. He's always had a penchant for writing really strange and original, non-traditional punk guitar riffs--which I've always thought have been pretty amazing. Brian started coming around more and more when Stupid Fucking White Man started. Later on, he would live with me and Justin at the Banks Street Warehouse.

Although a few other folks have come and gone (James Hayes, Chris Prince, Jay Steigner), these three gentleman make up the twisted, maniacal soul of Big Baby, a wonderfully hard band to describe. The first couple of shows they did as an instrumental band, and the music closely resembled early 90s, southern California, emo/hardcore like Downcast and Universal Order of Armageddon--a lot of repitition, that vague Rage Against the Machine type riffing, but still somewhow in the outer realms of punk. After they started adding vocals, things started getting a little stranger, more experimental, a bit more 90s alternative influenced. These days, their sound is a sort of post-punk, grunge-worship slowly making its way back from a long and bizarre sojourn into the far reaches of space and time. It's the sort of music Kang the Conqueror would listen to. Or Mike "Prophet" Taylor and Rebecca of the High Order or the Turboslut.

Despite all of my difficulties with these guys (and by that I mean my brother Dan), I love them to the death. They're certainly one of the most original bands to come out of New Orleans in a long time, and they are all very talented musicians. I know they recorded fairly recently with Greg Stein at the Studio in the Country, but I'm not sure if that stuff is going to be released. They also recorded a recent show (where they covered Bikini Kill's "Rebel Girl"), but that apparently came out too poorly to ever be heard again.

Here's their demo from 2007:
Goblin Church
Roach Laughter
Bleeding Assholes
Creepy Alone Time
Warlock Adventures
Storm Dog

The collage picture above is from a few different pictures that Lauren Goldstein took. Justin and Dan are both at the Outer Banks. It looks like Brian is too, but for some reason, I keep thinking that his picture is from the Banks Street Bar.

You can find updates on Big Baby via their myspace, the only website they have (one of those bands).

In other news, the three have started a separate project with Stupid Fucking White Man / The Faeries vocialist Joey Gates called Stupid Man. They've done a 2008 update on songs from both bands and should be playing out very soon. I think this is definitely something for folks in New Orleans to look forward to, as both of those bands were personal favorites of mine in both a local and global sense. I think the Faeries record is one of the best hardcore records--not to mention the great chemistry that these guys have together and their amazing live performances--so Stupid Man will definitely be something to look out for.

His Hero is Gone, Medicine demo

I saw His Hero is Gone in New Orleans in 1997 or 1998 at a tiny warehouse space off MLK called The Temple of the Becoming. Andon did a reunion show to open, and that in and of itself was pretty insane--with them thinking Shaggy wasn't going to show up, and him running in the door at the last possible second and grabbing the mic just as the vocals to the first song were supposed to kick in. He ended up puking in front of the stage after their set. So then His Hero is Gone plays. And they were amazing. And after that, these crazy bywater-style circus freak weirdos start putting all kinds of metal rods in the face and lighting the ends on fire, swinging a flaming ball and chain around the small space just inches from folks' faces. I only wish I had heard more of His Hero is Gone before seeing them live--like so many amazing bands who I would catch live before really getting into, Avail, Dropdead, Tragedy, etc--I would've flipped out if I had only seen them a year later.

For people who don't know anything about His Hero is Gone, they were from Memphis, Tennessee and played music that was dark and heavy. This is real hardcore. Ex-members of Copout, Man With Gun Lives Here, and Face Down. Folks from this band went on to be in Tragedy, From Ashes Rise,Deathreat, Call the Police, Dimilaia, Warcry, and Union of Uranus.

uncut live set at the Shelter Club in Tokyo, February 18th a long time ago

Medicine demo tape
Like Hell
View from a Holding Cell
Ghosts of Regret
Explosion
The Oracle
Of Thieves
Descent
Thank Your Lover in Sincerity
Bombs Away

Robinsons post-discography tracks

It's Just Rock & Roll
Slow Down
Vanessa
She's Basically My Girl
Cruisin'
I Keep Hitting on Girls, They Keep Hitting Me
Hop to the Record Shop
You're Just a Cover
You Can't Run From the Sun
Bryan Funck Ripped Us Off
I Love You (But the Game is One)
Bye Bye Baby

I Wanna Be a Ramone
Fun Times
Do the Gal-I-Gator
I'm Doing Fine
The Lucky One
Punk Rock Girls
I Should've Known Better
Tell Me Why
It's OK
She's Coming Over
I Hate Sonic Records
Excited
Dianna
Heathcliff Theme Song
Lovely Day to Break Up
You've Got to Hide Your Love Away
Where's the Rock & Roll?
Butch
Rock & Roll High School

Heathfliff / Suzie
Vanessa
She's My Girlfriend
I Hate Sonic Records
Stay the Same
Pulling Strings
I Keep Hitting on Girls, They Keep Hitting Me
Beat on the Brat
KLSU
Lucky One
Bogalusa
Punk's Not Dead
She Likes the Beatles
Beat on the Brat
She's Coming Over
Adam's Kazoo
One for Me
829 Kurt
Angela
And I Will Be with You
Hold Your Hand
Forty Dollars

Marrow tour demo

From the ashes of Greyskull comes Marrow. The new band includes Adam and Tony from Greyskull, Justin from Degania, and Parker from Taiga. Great, amazing hardcore. They're still looking for a full time bass player. Anyone live in the NW? The photo above is by Paul Smith. The demo below is three songs they did for a recent tour with Sojourner, a few songs that will probably be on the full length they're about to record.

Water Liver Fire - 1st Movement
Water Liver Fire - 2nd Movement
To the Lighthouse

Greyskull demo

One Christmas I got an email from a guy named Adam from a band from Tacoma, Washington called Greyskull. They were touring with Bafabegiya from Reno. They wanted a show on Christmas night, and some friends were already throwing a show at the infamous Dixie Taverne. I explained to them ahead of time that it was a bar show, but that they didn't card and that this was well known, so the show was all ages for all intents and purposes. Well, when they got there, someone was carding, so they were basically like "F this s!" and left. I think they tried calling me, but this was before I broke straightedge and had a cel phone. So they took off, and that was that. Until I moved to Oakland following the hurricane. I went and saw both bands open for Requiem at Gilman St., and dude from Bafabegiya got up and said "I love Gilman, blabbidle blah blah. You know, New Orleans just got hit by this hurricae or whatever, and it might never get rebuilt. We tried to go there once and the show wasn't all ages, so we didn't play. So who cares if New Orleans ever gets rebuilt? F it. Gilman rules." What a cracker.

Well, throughout all this tom foolery, I finally got to meet Adam from Greyskull who is sometimes awkward, but definitely a swell dude. Greyskull pretty much blew me away. It was like the second coming of Catharsis even more so than with Die Young. After this demo, they did a few splits, and had recorded a full length LP that was going to be released on Crimethinc. But they had some kind of band drama and broke up instead. Adam is now in Marrow, Tony is in Marrow and Owen Hart, Stephen is in Graf Orlock (and he also played in Owen Hart for a minute, I think), and Jules played in Elphaba. The picture above is by Seth from Mohoram Atta. The tracks below are from Greyskull's 2004 demo.

Rainbow Glitter Unicorn vs Rambo Nuclear Uniform
Smuttire
The End Result of Four Years in Temp Labor
Vegan Death Squad
When You Use the Word Gay as a Pejorative, You Sound Like a Big Fucking Idiot