OFF: The Hard & The Heavy Volume One

[Doug Pearson]

On Tue, 11 Dec 2001 13:32:36 -0500, K Henderson <henderson.120 at OSU.EDU>
wrote:
>I'll defer to Doug P. who will almost certainly give us the full deal...

Here's the skinny on pre-'Spine of God' Monster Magnet (to the best of my
knowledge) ...

The band formed when Dave Wyndorf (ex-Shrapnel, the "combat metal" band
that Bob was referring to) joined up with John McBain (lead guitar) and Tim
Cronin (drums, vocals) of Dog of Mystery.  The early MM stuff is super lo-
fi, garagey, sludgey, blanga.  Makes 'Spine of God' sound like 'Rumors' or
something; avoid if you're a "fidelity freak".

The first release was the "Lizard Johnny"/"Freak Shop U.S.A." 7" single on
Circuit records.  "Lizard Johnny" also appeared on their first demo tape
(aka 'Fuck Life, I'm High On Drugs'), along with an early version of "TAB",
a cover of "Brainstorm" and a couple unreleased songs ("Black Wawa", "Eight
Ball"); I have a copy that the band sent me, after I wrote them asking
about the Hawkwind cover.  Reviews of this 7" uniformly said "Stooges-like".

The next release was the "Murder"/"Tractor" 7", on Caroline's Primo Scree
subsidiary.  The Glitterhouse self-titled EP/mini-LP thing came out at
around the same time, 5 tracks on 12", 6 tracks on CD.  Included are
remakes (completely different than the single/demo tape versions!)
of "Lizard Johnny" & "Freak Shop USA", as well as early (again, completely
different from the subsequent 'Spine of God' versions) renditions of "Snake
Dance" and "Nod Scene".  The other two tracks are the 7" (one track of
which doesn't appear on the 12", but both are on the CD version).

Their final pre-'Spine of God' release was the '25...TAB' CD on
Glitterhouse, with an even longer version of the title track than on the
first demo.  Let me know if you need anymore info ...

>I think perhaps the most necessary MM thing is 'Viva Las Vegas'.
>
>Grakkl (FAA), who saw them just once when they opened for an absolutely
>miserable group called Korn.  I didn't make it through ten minutes of them,
>and even though MM only played 45 minutes, I'm glad it wasn't the other way
>around!  What Doug saw last week doesn't sound so bad now, remembering
>these butchers!

Yes, Korn are rap-metal as bad as anything I saw on friday.  Faith No More
are (were?) considerably better, but probably can be partially blamed for
all those awful current bands ...

    -Doug
     jasret at mindspring.com