Joseph McRedmond Interview + TCR Unreleased Demos w/ Alex Dunham

'An Open Bottle'

First of all, here's a set of unreleased demo tracks from the Crownhate Ruin with Alex Dunham that were temporarily lost from the internet - Joe McRedmond still has them on tape - but which have resurfaced recently. This is what the man himself said about them on his Facebook page, apparently:

"Some unreleased not very good, poorly recorded The Crownhate Ruin songs with Alex joining us, and David Titus Batista on drums. I’ll be surprised if you enjoy it."

True, they're not great sound quality, but they're still a fascinating - and enjoyable - listen if you want to hear the sound of the Crownhate Ruin paired with some of the extra guitar/vocal pyrotechnics of Regulator Watts. Essentially an album's worth of new songs - tracklisting at the bottom of the post - plus a great version of 'Blood Relative' from Until the Eagle Grins:

Download (thanks to Nick at dischord dot org)

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Secondly, here's an interview I did in the last couple of days with Joe McRedmond - the guitarist for Hoover and the Crownhate Ruin, as well as many other Hoover-related projects (see below).

If you want to hear what he's doing now - and I definitely recommend this - check out Saggiatore.

Tell us about yourself:

My name is Joseph P. McRedmond, I am a half Irish half Sicilian male born and I am considered tall.

Of the various bands you played with after Crownhate, i.e. The Boom, The Sorts, Sea Tiger, etc., which albums/singles did you record on?

I remember recording on a couple of songs with Sea Tiger, The Sorts last record "Six Plus", touring with the Boom, recording on the Him record "New Features", playing bass on two Michael Nace LP's, recording demos with The Perfect Souvenir with Vin, and many practice tapes and live recordings of Rancho Notorious, and unheard demos playing bass with Gun, and a couple of singles with Admiral before all of this. [Edit - and my short lived project with James Brady from Trusty called "The Velvet Kid"; there is 1 limited edition single out there somewhere. I think Tanzania.]

Of those groups, were there any experiences that were especially memorable, or groups that you enjoyed playing with the most?

I remember them being all memorable at the time it was happening.

Within Hoover - e.g. 'Electrolux', and 'Relectrolux/Electrodub' - and in later groups like the Sorts, and in Regulator Watts as well, there's a lot of dub influence: I know that's common with a lot of Dischord and related bands, but was there anything or anyone specific it came from in Hoover? Or was everybody into it equally?

Everybody turned each other on to different musics, we would all bring mix tapes and would request things when necessary...and Jamaican music is the best music, as you can see in its influence on the world...there'd be no hip hop without Jamaica...it's deep late night party music with your friends usually with a message.

Until the Eagle Grins is usually the first record people get into after The Lurid Traversal. When you started up The Crownhate Ruin with Fred Erskine, what was the musical idea behind it? Where did you want to go from Hoover?

To keep playing and touring and recording and find a good drummer. and that's just what we did. And then we would jam forever and take our time putting music together and mostly just play as much as possible. We did a lot of quick out of town trips those two years.

What was the origin of the name Crownhate Ruin?

On the way home from rehearsal one night we passed a Crown Gas Station and Fred said "What do you think of the name The Crown Ruins? and I said what about the Crownhate Ruin? and then it was the name.

Kerosene 454 are listed in the thanks for Until the Eagle Grins, and I heard that you jammed with the Wall brothers for a while. Apart from the label (Slowdime Records), what was the connection with that band?

I originally met Alex in the summer of 1989 in Pittsburgh when Admiral played a show with Wind of Change which also featured Jim and John Wall. When Alex moved to DC he moved in with me, and I was already playing with Fred and Chris after Chris and my band with Geoff Farina of Karate, (our band was called Victor Deluxe) broke up after two shows as Geoff decided to move back to Boston. Alex started playing with us of course. On our first tour we played some shows with Kerosene, and then they moved from LA to DC. Hung out together at parties and more and more people move out here. In the middle of The Crownhate Ruin times, Fred and I moved into a house directly behind Kerosene's house, so we put two ladders up and climbed the chain link fence. After Crownhate and Kerosene broke up we had a little band called Vita Bruno with Jim, John, Vin, and myself. Rehearsed for a year and never got anywhere. Then Fred asked me to join The Boom, with a little prodding by myself, to go on a tour of Europe. John Wall was in the band at the time. We would practice in the Kerosene house. While we were gone, Vin replaced us with Mike Markarian who I lived with and Brandon Butler. They played as Vita Bruno til Brandon replace everybody and started an earlier version of Canyon.

The unreleased Crownhate demos with Alex Dunham are pretty much all new songs, apart from 'Blood Relative'. How likely was a second Crownhate Ruin album?

It was very likely, but we just couldn't play together anymore... Fred was busier with June of 44, Alex with Regulator and Vin with school. So David and I continued playing together off and on.

What do you think about the term 'emo' (or its sister codeword, '90s post-hardcore')?

I don't think about shit like that.

Anything in current punk or hardcore, or post-hardcore that you still listen to or enjoy?

The Eternals. The Good, The Bad, and The Queen, the more funky stuff.

Favourite record (new or old, I guess) of 2008?

Kutiman's "Kutiman" or the Jackson Conti record.

Favourite record in the Hoover family tree (that you didn't play on?)

The Him record "Universe Peoples" or "Many in High Places Are Not Well" or The 2nd Boom record "Any Day of The Night", or The Sorts "Contemporary Music" or most of the Sea Tiger LP.

Favourite record in the Hoover family tree (that you did play on?)

The 3rd Boom LP that never got released, but I have on soulseek.

Thanks

No sweat.

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Demo tracklisting:

10. An Open Bottle

11. The Two Fuckers

12. Trapped Like A Mime

13. As Your Hatred Grows

14. Baby Blue and Black

15. Blood Relative

16. Dismantling Hell

17. Success

(6- An alternate version of 'Open Bottle', from this four-song, 8-track recorded first demo by the band, from 1995 - thanks to Matt)

The Sorts, Sea Tiger - 'How Did You Get There' and 'Theme Song' 7"s

Now is probably as good a time as any to say that, unfortunately, I won't be going to the Hoover/Bluetip reunion show this Wednesday, 27th of August in London. In case you haven't noticed, I don't live in the UK, but neither is London that far away from Dublin... just a few hundred miles, with a short sea crossing in between. Still, it works out a bit too expensive, so no re-living the mid-90s* for me.

This weekend my part of southside Dublin has been hosting the annual Dún Laoghaire Festival of World Cultures. Usually based around a few shows by big acts - this year included jazz/afro-beat group Ethiopiques and Chinese singer Sa Dingding - with entertainment and shows in every pub, hotel and open space in the town. Last night we spent some time at the Mr. Whippy Soundsystem parked down by the Carlisle pier, an old railway terminus for the mailboat between Dublin and Holyhead in Wales. It's an ice cream van with a DJ booth inside and, um, 'speaker cones', in which selectahs Mr. Whippy and DJ Bass-Berger, among others, provide "softly-lit, world-wide-water-side downtempo, dub and ambient selections".

* when I was less than 10 years of age.

In honour of those two things, I thought I'd present these two 7" singles that I got recently from Interpunk. An additional reason is Blend's recent post on Zen and the Art of Face Punching: Sevens - 777 which gave the Hoover Genealogy Project a nod. That Sevens 7" ('Hammer'/'Booty', well worth hearing) actually features Joe Lally of Fugazi on drums rather than Chris Farrall of Hoover, but the later releases of Sevens do involve Farral along with Josh La Rue and the Sullivan brothers Bobby and Mark.

As Blend mentions, the web of Hoover and other connections is complicated, but it's particularly complicated with these two bands. Sorts (going by bandtoband.com's listing for the 1999 album Contemporary Music) was made up of Carlo Cennamo (The Boom, HIM), Christopher Farrall (Hoover, etc.), Joshua La Rue (Rain Like the Sound of Trains, Sevens, The Boom, Sea Tiger...), Stuart Fletcher (Sea Tiger) and Vin Novara (1.6 Band, Crownhate Ruin). I suspect not all of those people are on this release, but some of them surely are. Sea Tiger (again, going by the listings for their 1999 album Teenage Bandit) included Chris Farrall, Dave Batista (John Henry West), Joseph McRedmond (Admiral, Hoover, the Crownhate Ruin), Joshua La Rue and Stuart Fletcher.

The Sorts have been featured here once before, on the Hoover mixtape, and I discovered them through the two albums, Common Time posted previously on Zen and the Art of Face Punching. 'How Did You Get There' sounds similar to the style on those two albums, with the same key characteristics (laid-back guitars, Chris Farrall's drum fills and, yes, Josh La Rue's warbling vocals) but kicks off in a heavy dub atmosphere. A little descending riff holds the song together for a while, before it locks into a tenser groove at the end of the first side where after emerging into clarity it returns towards the dub sound.

The second side, or 'How Did You Get There Pt. 2' buzzs in as a continuation of the song, but slightly louder and more assertive in both the guitar and the additional sonic surroundings (in fact, if you listen closely it sounds a little bit like the ominous, vibrating hum of 'Electrolux'). The lyrics, which on the first side mostly consist of "how did you get here/way ahead of me?" expand to "use a magnet/not a real magnet/you know what I mean" and "use a ladder/not a real ladder/you know what I mean" (the label for Side b is subtitled or parenthesised as 'use a magnet').

Sea Tiger are a new one to the genealogy here, but given that they are supposed to contain both Christopher Farrall and Joseph McRedmond, it's about time. 'Theme Song' is a much shorter record, with the grooves on the A side extending to barely half the width of the record. It's more like incidental music than the name perhaps does or doesn't suggest, but based around a catchy guitar line and Farrall's rolling drums it's enjoyable enough to listen to. The jazzy feel of the track (including a sort of bass solo in the latter half) gives way to a brief dub treatment at the end, an indication of how close these two bands are in style.

The flip-side, simply entitled 'M.V.', is another relatively brief instrumental piece, but this time with a heavier, deeper guitar riff and with a heavier beat to it. For stretches it alternates high and low phrases on the guitar while the rhythm section keeps up the dubby jazz feel.

The excellent Epitonic site, which introduced me to a lot of the D.C./Chicago/Mid-West bands including Abilene and Radio Flyer, have this overview on Sea Tiger:

"Like so many underground DC bands, Sea Tiger likes to get real funky. They create complex instrumental arrangements which feature an array of instruments centered around a basic three piece band. The songs are sometimes languid and jazzy, sometimes choppy and funky, but always engaging.

Featuring members of The Sorts, Hoover, Regulator, and Crownhateruin, Sea Tiger lets it all hang out and lets the good times roll, weaving math equations that drop science on your rhythmless buttocks. So kick back and enjoy this collection of lovingly crafted works straight from the minds of some of DC's finest musicians."

As a side note, if you're familiar with vinyl records you might have noticed from the scans above that these two seven inches have wide centres, originally designed for use in jukeboxes. Since these were both released in 1997, I'm assuming this was done somewhat ironically (in addition to the generic label sleeves). It's slightly troublesome as well as being ironic, though, as to play them an adapter needs to be placed around the spindle of the turntable. Mine came equipped with one, that neatly fits into a recess on the base, and which I had all but forgotten about since getting the turntable.

Sorts - Sea Tiger 7"s (vinyl rip)

Sorts and Sea Tiger 7"s on Interpunk.

These singles are apparently some sort of joint release between Southern Records and 'Copper Spurs Productions', although I can't find anything about the latter on the internet, and who were presumably just an ad hoc group or even just a name (the symbol is on the front of the Teenage Bandit and other covers, though.) Below are the stickers on the back (a continuation of the title stuck on the front) which show the rest of the information about the releases. Finally, Juan Carrera, who helped to mix both records, was co-founder of Slowdime Records which released records by Regulator Watts, Hoover, Abilene, The Boom, and The Sorts as well as Kerosene 454 and Bluetip.

Hoover - s/t, (reunion) EP

In response, or rather in addition, to:

Burning Down the Dreams of Forever - Hoover, The Lurid Traversal of Route 7

Hoover are one of the great emo bands, as well as one of the great 90s Dischord groups, and a great post-hardcore group, and the originator for a whole bunch of other great bands (Crownhate Ruin, Abilene, Radio Flyer, Regulator Watts, the Sorts [sorta!] and whatever else you can they list on bandtoband). So yeah, they're pretty damn important. As sbj said, "Whether you know it or not, this is the soundtrack you've been looking for". You'll probably have seen the term 'DC-style' thrown around a lot; and musically, as well as lyrically and artistically, this band is it - "...something of a milestone. A paean to the suburban disenchantment that looms over the nation's capital like flies on shit."

I use this guy a lot, but his description of this band in particular is one of my favourites:

"Wow. Some people say this sounds like Fugazi,and they miss the point. It sounds like classic DC twin-guitar midtempo style, as do Fugazi and a hundred other bands. The important part was the way the evil slithering basslines made it seem so dark and serious, and the way the singer worked up from whispering to a tortured animal howl at the end. 'Cuts Like Drugs' has it all." (Andy Radin, fourfa.com)

Lurid Traversal is, of course, doubtlessly the Hoover record. It gives you plenty of listening (13 tracks and just over an hour on the CD remaster, which appends the 'Return'/'Private'/'Dries' 7") and is pretty much a 'great' of 90s hardcore. But, if you still want more, they returned four years later to release a five-song EP on Slowdime Records, an offshoot label of the whole DC/Dischord scene. Here's a contemporary review of the record from Suburban Voice, to be found on the Operation Phoenix Records' zine archive:

"Hoover (Slowdime, EP)

Most emo bands today want to sound like Hoover and with good reason; they were a great band. They took that Fugazi/Dischord post-hardcore sound a step further into Eastern melodies and reggae. So Hoover re-formed last year to record four songs they had written but not recorded and one new version of a song from their lp, "The Lurid Traversal of Rt. 7". It's a spotty release: "Breather" sounds like mellow grunge and their new version of "Electrolux" has a great reggae/dub sound and cool horns, but goes on for far too long. For Hoover fans, this provides a chance to hear what they might be doing today; for those just getting into emo and/or Hoover, it's advisable to pick up the album or the seven inch first. (PO Box 414, Arlington, Va 22210) (Rachel)"

(Issue #42)

I think she's kind of harsh in parts although - and with a personal propensity to eulogise albums incessantly - that is in hindsight, Hoover having recycled its popularity many times over since with new emo kids (like me!). Nevertheless, 'Breather' - which others, like Andy Radin, call one of Hoover's best songs - "mellow grunge". What does DC mid-tempo post-hardcore normally sound like, and what's wrong with mellow grunge? Personally 'Breather Resist' doesn't entirely overwhelm me like some Hoover songs do, but I think it really points towards the later, more developed sound of Regulator Watts - another Alex Dunham vehicle with that same alternating lulling, melodic and white-hot angry guitar sound.

And the remix of 'Electrolux' - 'Relectrolux/Electrodub' to give it its full title - is lengthy, but mereticiously so. I mean, come on, it's a dub version - it's meant to go on for a long, long time - and Electrolux was never meant to be short in the first place (and had horns originally, I think). Interestingly, Regulator Watts did the same thing - spaceing out and creeping out further an already spacey and creepy song - with 'False Idols' first, on The Aesthetics of No-Drag, and then 'Version Idols' on the Mercury CD. It's just my opinion, but I think 'Relectrolux/Electrodub' is a great idea - and I don't even smoke. (There's also, on the Twenty Years of Dischord box set, a dub version of Government Issue's Asshole, performed my Ian MacKaye's Minor Threat. So yeah. Curious and curiouser...) Furthermore, it also provides a handy classification for the Hoover family tree: whether they are more Relectrolux / Electrodub than Electrolux, or vice versa.

The other three songs, 'TNT', 'New Five Drive', and 'Weeds' are very good, too. They all sound like they would fit in well in either Hoover's original album or in Regulator Watts/Radio Flyer (the, ahem, Electrolux end of the Hoover genealogical spectrum). 'Weeds' especially, with its screamed chorus of "Your backyard's overgrown" does the band justice. But see for yourself (not sure where you can get your hands on an actual CD copy, other than obscure distros. If anyone knows I'll put the link in, for ethics' sake):

Hoover - Slowdime EP