Audio Resuscitation

In anticipation of some truly exciting developments looming on the horizon, it’s time to pump some life into the Audio Division.

We are pleased to announce Audio Resuscitation, a new series of Soundcloud audio tracks pulled from the archives of all current BSM recording artists. The majority of featured tracks will be previously unreleased rarities including personal home demos, outtakes, practice tapes, and obscure cover songs, plus details of pedigree, circumstance, and anecdotal reference from the artists.

To kick things off, here are three tracks from Christian Adams’ 2000 Demos, the title itself a play on the year it was recorded, and a mild exaggeration of Christian’s demo catalog. Only 10 copies of the CD with original artwork were printed and passed out to friends; it is uncertain if any copies still exist.

“I’m High” – During the mid-90s there was a club on the north side of Chicago called Delilah’s where I would occasionally score dope from a guy who looked like Elvis. That’s the first verse: ‘A slow death in fives/The fix is inline/It’s on at Delilah’s tonight.’ A five was one mini-Ziploc of 50mgs, so for a quarter gram you’d say “Five on five” or “five” and get a bundle of five baggies. So that’s where most of the lyrics came from; basically cribbed from memories of being really high at Delilah’s. The place was always full of freaks and I mean that in a good way. None of my friends knew I’d been dabbling in heroin, and none of them hung out at Delilah’s on a regular basis. Then I left Chicago and moved to S.F., where I started secretly using again, hence, the inspiration for the music itself. While the song was definitely written under the influence, I’m pretty sure I couldn’t have pulled this off if I were nodding out.

“I’m Higher” – Unlike its predecessor, “I’m High”, this was absolutely 100% recorded while super-extra high on a combination of recreational substances. I’m pretty sure the idea for doing it came when I was super-high, too. Since I like to drink more than anything else, I had to be really careful about mixing and matching. Booze and pot are simpatico; I don’t even really think of them as drugs anymore. But you start messing around with narcotics and the risk factor for disaster goes way up. Also at this time I’d gone back to school for my bachelor’s degree, so I wasn’t taking big chances. I treated myself to a mini-binge holiday every so often, and thank God nothing bad ever happened. Anyway, this track didn’t take longer to record than it took me to get completely wasted on a bottle of red wine, countless bong rips of medicinal, a couple of fives, toss in a few beers and half a Xanex at the end. One minor incident stands out; as I was laying the feedback guitar parts, one of my roommates came pounding at my door, “What the fuck are you doing?!?” It was like Friday midnight and the amp was screaming; I’d totally lost track of time and concept of volume. Very humbling experience. For a long time after that, I only tracked guitars with a direct pedal at home.

“Untitled Police Rip-Off” – At some point in 2000, I was listening to a lot of Brian Eno and The Police, especially Ghost in the Machine, which is possibly their darkest album. Meanwhile, I was reading my way through the Henry Miller catalog, by this time I was at The Air-Conditioned Nightmare. A lot of times when I found myself lacking inspiration for writing a new song, I fell back on old habits. One such habit was picking a song off an album, for instance “Secret Journey” from side two of Ghost, and saying, “OK, let’s try to write a song that sounds like that.” Of course, the result is usually light-years away from the intended target, as is the case here. The lyrics came from a collection of ramblings I’d written about technology, since this was right after the dot-com bust and it seemed to me that people were in a panic about what to do next. ‘I am your cellphone/I am your electric backbone’ was probably the best line I had to work with here. The rest of it pretty scattered and nobody liked the song anyway.

From the liner notes:

Almost everything was recorded by yours truly with the usual instrumentation on a Tascam 424 in the comfort of my S.F. apartment. Acoustic and electric guitars, the P-bass on occasion, two ancient Casios, a single Shure SM58, Fender Power Chorus and Pro Reverb amps, a paper-thin Sears Kenmore toy amp found at a yard sale, a Boss delay pedal that works on it’s own terms, and a Gorilla distortion pedal, which for some reason didn’t seem to mind if you’re going to plug it straight into the four-track, which I did. The drum machine parts are semi-live; programmed beats were augmented by fingertips on separate tracks and mixed down to one rhythm track. Nothing fancy. Just demos. The vocals stink but I always think they stink, and I’d like to personally thank my 1980 Fender Squire for being there when I wanted something to sound worse than my voice. The sound bytes on “Quakers” are in order: American Graffitti, a random television commercial, Gargoyles, and a speech by Louis Farrahakan. ©2000, 2001 Capricorn Fetish/HM6 Music Co. [Editor’s note: 2000 Demos contains versions of two songs (“Impossible Cuts” and “The Future of Nuclear Criminals”) which were re-recorded for Henry Miller Sextet’s Metal Never Made a Friend, Volume 1.]

Complete Track List

1. I’m High

2. The Future of Nuclear Criminals

3. Instinct is Useless on Saturn

4. You Can’t Escape My Love

5. Impossible Cuts

6. Magnificent Desolation

7. Untitled Police Rip-Off

8. Plus Elmo Shirt

9. Magic in Theory and Practice

10. To Leave a Lazy Lover

11. That Was Before The War

12. Quakers

13. I’m Higher

14. Scene From a Melodramatic Action Film In Which The Protagonist Drives Around The Industrial Section of Big City In A Sports Car at Night, Brooding Over the Loss of His Best Friend or a Large Sum of Money or Both

Recorded April 2000-January 2001 except “Magnificent Desolation” and “That Was Before the War” recorded in March 1999. Various parts of Track 14 were recorded and re-recorded over the years, so it’s hard to say what’s what. Chris Lanier and Matthew Tucker play bass and drums respectively on “To Leave a Lazy Lover.”  Elsie Brieske provided the monologue for “That Was Before the War.”