The House That Built The Garage
“It is the very mark of the spirit of rebellion to crave for happiness in this life”― Henrik Ibsen
It has been a minute since the last Signal, and ever since its publication…ever since talking about the new Cheater Slicks/Don Howland single, I have been on a deep dive into the early days of both the ‘Slicks and Howland’s band The Bassholes, both whose records were released by In The Red. In The Red Records, along with Crypt, Estrus, Goner, to some extent Sympathy for the Record Industry (they released SO much stuff from SO many different genres) and a few others were at the forefront of the new garage rock movement that bubbled up in the 1990s. The blistering garage rock music from that time period doesn’t get much hype in the bigger picture of garage rock music history, which needs to change. The sound from the garage…primal, raw rock ‘n’ roll, starts in the 50s as popular music rocket-fueled by Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry, develops a grunginess-in-actual-garages lo-fi-er crunch with bands from both sides of the pond such as The Sonics and The Troggs in the ‘60s and finds its way to the present (how is that for a jump) with Shannon and the Clams and the Osees in the 2020s. While not a mainstream sound, the garage rock of today, with flavors of its 50s and 60s past, as well as a gnarled punk rock ethos it picked up in the 70s, packs the clubs full of young hipster fans. It is a movement that only seems to gain momentum with every xeroxed, stapled single that hits the local indie record stores, with every annual John Waters emceed Mosswood Meltdown in Oakland or Gonerfest in Memphis, TN.
As I said in the last newsletter, the 90s were a time when garage rock was NOT in the hipster vocabulary and most garage rock shows were attended by just a handful of freaks. It was a time where most bands knew each other, toured together, sometimes swapping members. The lack of fandom provided a freedom of expression, of not caring to stick with a specific sound, to experiment around the edges of taste, tuning and abstraction. The fanbase was small but rabid: they all knew each other, saw each other at the clubs and house parties where the bands played, opened their homes and kitchens to such touring bands who needed a place to crash, crash so they could awake to blast out another blistering show at another half-attended dogged stage in another ghost world of an American town.
At the center of the rise of the new wave of garage rock music was In The Red Records, helmed by Larry Hardy. Larry had been deeply plugged into the noisy side of punk rock since the early days of the Los Angeles scene, witnessing the rise (and sometimes fall) of bands like The Germs, Black Flag and The Circle Jerks. He, like myself (although being younger, I fell into it all after the fact), was deeply in love with the English punk scene featuring The Damned, The Fall, and The Jam. A problematic record collector, Hardy never stopped collecting punk singles from all corners of the world, and by the time I met him in 1992 (or was it ‘91?), had decided to take his love one step further and start releasing records from bands whose records he wanted to buy.
While sitting around Larry’s apartment, stuffing singles, he would play for me his favorite modern bands, bands like Thee Headcoats and The Gories. He would play all of the Back from the Grave compilations on Crypt Records, lost trashy rock ‘n’ roll that label head Tim Warren had meticulously excavated from trips around the country, to give me a sense of the incredible history behind the lo-fi garage rock sound. And of course, he would play me the bands he was soon to be working with, bands he wanted to work with, crazed bands with buzz saw guitar sounds and raunchy, distortion that created an artistic palate with calculated, celebratory anarchy. I fell in love with the music Larry was releasing, inking a first-look deal between Warner Bros. Records and his label, and even producing some of the bands, learning how one goes about creating the most bombastic, searing sounds ever.
The following are some of the great records from the early days of In The Red…the early days before the world took notice, with each band’s release adding X and Y chromosomes to the evolving garage DNA; releases that also triggered the growth of what would be one of the world’s greatest and most authentic underground labels.
While In The Red Records started with a few singles in 1990, it was in 1991 that the label released what I consider to be the first of its true classics, The Gories’ Here Be The Gories with two Detroit killer numbers, Telepathic and Hate, and the labels first Cheater Slicks release I’m Grounded/Can It Be. Both Telepathic and I’m Grounded start defining a standard for the label: out-of-tune-out-of-care brilliant guitar chords, tidal waves of crunching energy, and brain tattooing songs. In the times of hair bands and slick punk rawk, these singles were the antidote. The Night Kings single came in 1992, after the release of a handful of other singles. It was the only In The Red release of Rob Vasquez’s Seattle band (although Larry released a single by Rob’s other [very similar] band The Nights and Days), a band that to this day has not gotten its due, but Bum b/w Ain’t No Fun is a perfect budget rock gem, showcasing how great of a raw singer and songwriter Vasquez was, and how they could sway from volcanic punk to brazen heartfelt melodies (if you like the single, make sure you listen to their full-length Increasing Our High that Mudhoney’s Steve Turner put out on Super Electro).
Larry also turned me on to the Gibson Bros, a Columbus band that he revered, whose punk twisting of the 50s twang was an inspiration to him. We listened to every crazed rockabilly sludging Gibson Bros record while stuffing the Gibsun Bros Knock Down My Blues b/w I’m Drifting single1, a single that featured Jon Spencer sitting in on guitar. Larry explained to me the genius of the band’s two singer songwriters, Don Howland and Monsieur Jeffery Evans, and how the band had already splintered into two others. Within months Larry had us stuffing singles of the subsequent bands that were formed, Howland’s two-piece Bassholes (fesaturing the art damaged slide-driven Texas Alexander cover of 98° In The Shade) and Evans’ ‘68 Comeback, with a classic line-up of the band featuring Darin Lin Wood and Jack Taylor (RIP) on guitars, soon-to-be-Royal-Trux Dan Brown on bass and Peg O’Neil of the Gories on drums.
Larry Hardy is a huge Jon Spencer fan, has been from back in the early days of Pussy Galore, a band that showcased an industrial massacre sound that pushed through the already dark and blistering New York noise scene. I remember how excited he was when telling me that Jon Spencer had started a new band, The Blues Explosion, and that In The Red was going to be releasing a jukebox single as part of the band’s public coming-out. The The Shirt Jac b/w Latch On release was the biggest (I believe) seller of In The Red’s short life, showcasing a free jazz take of the rockabilly sound of The Gibson Bros. Larry would go on to release a series of Blues Explosion jukebox singles, all sporting Spencer penned drawings on the label and including a jukebox title strip.
The choice for In The Red’s first long player in 1992 as The Bassholes Blue Roots, and the second in 1993 was The Cheater Slick’s Whisky. Those two bands cemented their importance of cornerstones of the label, and of the movement, each delivering strong, very different albums. Don Howland and the Bassholes was pushing the sonic barriers of a two-piece; Blue Roots showcases a unique, electrified sandpaper sound that would become more abstract from record to record; the record features mostly reworked blues covers, with the uncanny ability of making each song sound as if it had birthed from Howland’s quill. With Whisky, The Cheater Slicks further cemented their place as modern super fuzzed manifestations of Back From The Grave 60s garage rock bands, Tom Shannon and Dana Hatch taking turns on the mike from ass kicking rocker to ass kicking rocker, with brother Dave Shannon providing his signature ripping guitar leads, demonstrating over the course of a full record why he should be thought of in the same spaces as Bryan Gregory of The Cramps and Blue Cheers’ Randy Holden. The final song, Thinking Some More, whose 27+ minutes takes up all of side B, is a never-ending drag race, speeding up time as it goes into major Velvet Underground Sister Ray/High Rise territory. As for the Blacktop record, the first Mick Collins' band post-Gories, also the first record I produced for In The Red (more about that here): it helped establish the label as a place where the best underground rock musicians were going to realize their trenchant, alien visions. I Got A Baaaaaad Feeling About This might be looked upon as the bridge between The Gories and The Dirtbombs, but it holds its own with some great lo-fi rock and soul from one of the scene’s greatest singers (just check out Tornado Love or the Captain Beefheart cover Here I Am I Always Am).
Over the next few years, In the Red grew….grew in stature, grew in the amount of releases per year, signing bigger bands, getting more records into shops. Larry was having a blast, releasing records by both his all-time favorite bands as well as fantastic new and upcoming bands. The first Reigning Sound record came out the same year he released a Pussy Galore live record (which they endearingly titled Live: In The Red). The first Dirtbombs record, which rocket-fueled Mick Collins’ career, came out as Larry also released a classic record from Memphis legends Panther Burns (which I listen to regularly to this day). The through-line for every release was the noisy, exciting modern often fucked-up sounds that screamed from the grooves. Yet every band was different, every band displayed a unique musical point of view, each helping pave the road to a musical movement that was three-dimensional and exciting.
It has been 35 years of In The Red Records. With almost 500 releases in the label’s catalog, including records by artists like Ty Segal, The Osees, Jay Reatard, the Linda Lindas, King Kong and BBQ, Alan Vega, Fuzz, Redd Kross, The Scientists anon anon anon…and CCR Headcleaner (I love them). Hell, they just released this past year a boxset from the early days of The Saints, one of the greatest punk rock bands of all time. It is a mighty label.
As for the Cheater Slicks and The Bassholes2: it blows my mind that they are not revered as much as they really should be. But isn’t that so often the case with artists that set the pace, that come before a scene is a scene, and light a fire that only the lucky ones get to see3…
****Shortly after this newsletter was published I learned that Scientists drummer Leanne Cowie had passed away. An incredible talent, may her memory be a blessing.
This looks like an incredible doc about Rocky Horror featuring all of the living members of the cast and team…and damn, it seems like many of them weathered the crazed 70s and 80s to tell the tale. Rocky creator Richard “Riff Raff” O’Brien’s son is the director here, and seems to have created something pretty special.
The Cat’s Meat Man: Feeding Felines in Victorian London
Cat Meat Men…the seeming Geeks of street venders…led a pretty nutty life in late 19th and early 20th century London and this piece of journalism digs into the craziness. I had no idea about these men and this article is just an excellent read all around (with a Jack The Ripper appearance): “Some were ‘born into the trade’ but others went into it at the scrag end of their working lives. Two common scenarios were butchers who had failed in business and lost their shop, or carriage painters whose health had been broken by the noxious paints they had been inhaling for decades.”
A Song for Cameroon: on Manu Dibango’s ‘Soul Makossa’
So interesting: “Makossa’s waning influence predates the Anglophone crisis, rooted instead in the rise of digital platforms in the 2000s. While these platforms democratized access to music, they also facilitated piracy, eroding the financial foundations of Cameroon’s music industry. Meanwhile, neighboring countries like Nigeria and Ghana adapted quickly to new trends, with Afrobeat and hiplife dominating international airwaves. Cameroon, by contrast, faltered.”
Highlights from the 2025 Outsider Art Fair
“The best and worst of the Outsider Art Fair, which opened to the public Thursday night, seems to come down to clutter. There’s the material excess routinely spilling out of the booths, which sometimes feels captivating, like exposing the machinery of a live mind; and other times gratingly self-conscious, like those nouveau-old antique boutiques. This is a markedly subdued edition, at least compared to last year, but the issue stands. Since its start in 1993, the fair has become known for noise, but in this context, chaos can be equated with an outstanding imagination.”
San Francisco church leader asks public for help returning stolen historic saxophone
Archbishop Reverend Franzo King is a great leader of the community and a friend who shows up, year after year, when we produce Tashlique at Crissy Field for Rosh Hashanah. The fact that his sax was stolen…the fact that it was Coltrane’s sax at one point…is beyond maddening. Support Saint John Coltrane Church.
Director Osgood Perkins Tells Us Why Horror Movies Are the Best Medicine
“The horror genre continues to subsist with the idea that things have never been worse. They felt that way in the late ’60s during the Vietnam War, and it made Night of the Living Dead….The horror genre always exists as this salve on the fact that things appear to have never been worse, but they’ll always be that way. There will always be death and tragedy. You can’t fix that. You can’t move away from that. All you can do is take it with you.”
Legendary Late Sixties Music Magazine, World Countdown, Gets a Reprint in Book Form
This looks pretty damn cool….
We Are the Music-Makers
by Arthur William Edgar Shaughnessy
We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams.
World-losers and world-forsakers,
Upon whom the pale moon gleams;
Yet we are the movers and shakers,
Of the world forever, it seems.
With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure
Can trample an empire down.
We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;
And o'erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world's worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.
One more thing: Sam Macaroni died this past week suddenly of a brain aneurysm. I met Macaroni on the set of the third or forth installment of the Captain Jackson series, a superhero that took bong rips to become a huge, green hulkish creature. I was a zombie in this installment, the creation of a scientist, played by a character actor who was in the original King Kong, created to fight the Captain. While I died (supposedly) at the hands of Captain Jackson, my head was never cut off and therefore, in zombie lore, I was still undead, roaming the land. I used to call Macaroni randomly, letting him know that the zombie was still alive, and I was out to get him. I have lost touch with Macaroni over the years, as he started a career making big budget films, but remember him as just a great, enthusiastic, wickedly smart and funny guy. Steve-O posted a sweet tribute to Sam, his dear his friend. RIP Sam Macaroni.
Happy 152nd birthday Max Reger
A few lucky fans have a single which, if they look closely at the underside of the cover, carry a scrawl that reads: Bill Bartel was a cop.
Check out the record I worked on with them, When My Blue Moon Turns Red Again
Enjoyed reading this and look forward to digging in. I'm familiar with the Estrus label, Reigning Sound, Tav Falco etc. but not these bands.
such a beautiful tribute to Larry.