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love trails

by the SUB-MENSAS

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about

UNRELEASED 1988 STUDIO ALBUM with bonus live material....

there is a ton of video on youtube recorded by fred collins from this era -
live at the rev july 1988 WITH PSYCHEDELIC LIGHT SHOW :
www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwL890VgutKKtgfcnOzUmNwHLTGNLr3_D
the rev aug 1988 :
www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIPwVYu2gjo
some of these shows were total funky-psycho-punk-freejazz freakouts !

here is what we looked like without all the lights and such, rehersing at "the art attic" , an art gallery on saratoga street in downtown baltimore that was across the street from grandmas candle shop and a couple doors down from the maryland arts place (MAP, original home to the 14-karat caberet).... filmed around august 1988 -
part 1 www.youtube.com/watch?v=29g2EpGD19o
part 2 www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_aBJGkS4Zg
part 3 www.youtube.com/watch?v=MboLVDPQ_kA
part 4 www.youtube.com/watch?v=hI7euUL3W-I
part 5 www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKeI8aI3Q-o

now, about this album....
in early 1988 the submensas had been together for about 5 years at that point, when long time drummer darryl dardenne announced his plans to leave the band. he was still living in washington dc and didn't have a car at the time , and the submensas were basicly based in baltimore by this point, with jim living in annapolis, and the 3 of us taking turns giving darryl rides to rehersals and gigs. i'm not sure where we found sean or if he found us, but he became our drummer that spring. we found our sax player matt solomon through roy buchanon's bass player's son - pete van allen jr - who recomended his 14-year-old hot-shot-jazz-sax-playing friend that he knew from the baltimore school for the arts. (another interesting name-dropping connection was matts poetry and grafitti artist buddy from the same school who came to a couple of our all ages shows. his grafitti tag was all over baltimore - "2pac" - he later became famous as rapper tupak shakir. i have to wonder if damon norko had any influence on his writing....) ANYWAYZ.... we rehersed alot and got to be the tightest band in town, and with a light show, a "must see" spectacle. getting this to vinyl would not be easy.... all our other recordings were done at storeroom sound studios in langley park maryland by the great greg berzinski. i'm not sure how we ended up at invisible sound, i think that was damons idea. they had some cool vintage gear, but the engineer joe rinallio was not the right guy for the job, and we clashed immediately. first he insisted on playing us tapes of all these other local bands he was recording at the time, such as the allmighty senators and monkeyspank, and was pretty intent on "producing us" HIS WAY. we wanted to record the band live , all in one take. he wanted everything done one instrument at a time. he wouldn't listen to anyones suggestions, and seemed to resent the fact that i was also a trained studio engineer with maybe a bit more experience than him, who knew what the band was supposed to sound like and how to get that sound. that didnt matter to him, it was his equipment and we were just to play our tracks and let him do the rest. things really came to a head during the first mixdown when i went to adjust a track that he had too high up in the mix. he slapped my hand away from the mixing board and shoved me across the room. i walked out, and damon got a crappy sounding mixtape of the album dubbed "the joe rinallio mix". it sounded horrible. there were goofy effects on the vocals, and the guitar and sax were flying through the air from speaker to speaker. the drums were too loud and the bass was too soft. that tape SUCKED. jim and i decided to go back in and do it OUR WAY. we brought along our platinum slug brother brian boyer as a heavy. we told joe rinallio - a) we are paying for the time and we are going to mix it ourselves or else take our buisness elswhere and sue him for the money we had spent already, b)there is to be no interferance from him and definately no physical contact of any kind, and c) if there were any problems, he would have to deal with brian boyer, who replied "yeah, and i just shot up a butt-load of meth, and i'm gonna destroy you and your studio if you lay one hand on my friends here". the platinum slugs had spoken and we were ready to get to work on the submensas album.... after successfully mixing the album to be a non-stop sonic masterpiece, damon and i had a falling out, a fist-fight actually, over matters that are none of your buisness. matt left the band, damon replaced jim with greg stinson who recorded his guitar tracks over some of jims original tracks, then sean was sacked and darryl brought back in. the tape got left in invisible sound never to be seen again. all we had left was joe rinallios mix, and the masterpiece which you can now hear and download from bandcamp. the vinly version is presented here with a "side A" and a "side B" , and at the end as individual tracks. there's some great live stuff - TWO wild versions of "go away from baltimore", which was never done in the studio, and the complete sowebohemian festival set from 1988, which starts off with an already irate soundman cutting off damons microphone when he walked onstage (not realising he was the singer), and then adding echo and feedback to our over-compressed mix, resulting in a noisy sonic mess that the crowd just loved!!! the summer of 1988 turned out to be a scorcher - july brought us 3 weeks of temperatures that peaked in the 100s everyday and cooled off to the mid-80s at night. there was no air, it wasn't moving at all, and a thick toxic smog descended over the city. to make matters worse, that august a nearby chemical storage tank collapsed and sent a bright pink cloud over west baltimore. the only relief seemed to be drinking gallons of beer and indulging in lots of other mind altering substances. that summer we just got so far out there both onstage and off that we were the talk of the town..... enjoy the album , watch the videos , and remember this is all a pale slice of life compaired to how it really was at the time.....
mike bell 2013

credits

released November 3, 2013

produced and mixed by jim mcpherson and mike bell november 1988
engineered by joe rinallio at invisible sound - baltimore md
live recordings by mike bell , fred collins , and unknown soundmen
wcvt radio interview recorded by mary owens

damon norko - vocals
jim mcpherson - lead and 12-string guitar
mike bell - bass , rhythm guitar, slide guitar
matt solomon - saxophone
sean mccall - drums , backing vocals

all lyrics (c) damon norko
all music (c) mike bell except : dreams are eternal - nathan long / barbed wire - richard drews / anarchy love - steve geest
anarchy love (different mix) first appeared on the submensas"honesty is the best policy" cassette (p)1988 ripe records
(p)2013 sonic kitchen of love all rights, etc...

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sonic kitchen of love recordings Baltimore, Maryland

founded in 1998 - releases from : FUZZ UNLIMITED, the PLATINUM SLUGS, DJ HERBAL-T, the DIRT, WHISTLETIPS, the SUB-MENSAS, MIKE BELL, JENNIFER BLOWDRYER, the BILLY SYNDROME, ANANDAS PARASITES, the NO-FI and more.... new material,
previously released and out-of-print titles,and unreleased studio and live archives
... more

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