The Mal Thursday Show: The Ballad of Mal Thursday Pts. 1-10

In lieu of therapy, I have been dedicating the occasional episode of The Mal Thursday Show to "The Ballad of Mal Thursday," a series of semi-autobiographical podcasts that attempt to make sense of a life misspent. Listen, download, and subscribe to the podcast via iTunes, Mevio.com, or GaragePunk Pirate Radio. Here are the first ten installments in the ongoing narrative:

THE MAL THURSDAY SHOW #55: The Ballad of Mal Thursday Pt. 10

 

THE MAL THURSDAY SHOW #52: The Ballad of Mal Thursday Pt. 9

The Mal Thursday Show #46: The Ballad of Mal Thursday Pt. 8

The Mal Thursday Show #43: The Ballad of Mal Thursday Pt. 7

 

The Mal Thursday Show #41: The Ballad of Mal Thursday Pt. 6

The Mal Thursday Show #39: The Ballad of Mal Thursday Pt. 5

  

The Mal Thursday Show #27: The Ballad of Mal Thursday Pt. 4

 

 The Mal Thursday Show #15: The Ballad of Mal Thursday Pt. 3

  

 The Mal Thursday Show #14: The Ballad of Mal Thursday Pt. 2

  

 The Mal Thursday Show #13: The Ballad of Mal Thursday Pt. 1

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The Mal Thursday Show #53: Mass Pike Memory Lane

Mal Thursday takes a trip in time and space to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for "Mass Pike Memory Lane," an episode featuring 30+ Bay State bands 1964 to now. Dedicated to the Rodney Sinclair Defense Fund, raising money to help pay the legal fees in a case where an old friend of Mal's finds himself in the crosshairs of America's misguided war on drugs, on trial for his freedom. There will be a benefit concert on October 4, 2013 at J.J.'s in Florence, Massachusetts, featuring a reunion show by the Unband, with special guests Playtopia, The Nice Try, and Unagi/Jack Falcon. The PayPal address to donate to the cause is middlefinger@comcast.net.

Presented in Living Monophonic Sound.

Playlist:
THE REAL KIDS: Better Be Good
THE REMAINS: Once Before
THE BUGS: Slide
THE BARBARIANS: Hey Little Bird
THE BOLD: Gotta Get Some
COBRAS: I Wanna Be Your Love
THE ROCKIN' RAMRODS: She Lied
THE MODERN LOVERS: Roadrunner
BARRENCE WHITFIELD & THE SAVAGES: Ramblin' Rose
THE NEIGHBORHOODS: The Prettiest Girl
THE HOPELESSLY OBSCURE: She's My Best Bette
THE BROOD: In and Out
THE FLIES: In the Dark
THE ODDS: I'll Make You Sorry
THE PRIME MOVERS: 1-2-5
THE TIME BEINGS: Why Don't You Love Me
CLASSIC RUINS: Geraldine (I Need Money)
LYRES: Tear You Up
KENNE HIGHLAND CLAN: Everybody's a Lyre
PRESTON WAYNE FOUR: Kumbaya (bed)
RICHIE'S RENEGADES: You're in the Pepsi Genration
DMZ: The First Time (Is the Best Time)
THE MALARIANS: Good Times
THE VOODOO DOLLS: Bad Feeling
THE UNBAND: We Like to Drink, We Like to Play Rock n' Roll
TAG SALE: Why You Smilin' (Live at the Pulaski Club)
SCUD MOUNTAIN BOYS: Midnight Cowboy (bed)
MISSION OF BURMA: That's When I Reach for My Revolver
SEBADOH: Skull
NEW RADIANT STORM KING: I Am a Scientist
BUFFALO TOM: Going Underground
THE PIXIES: Ed Is Dead
MORPHINE: Cure for Pain
MUCK AND THE MIRES: Gone, Gone, Gone

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Chunk Archives

Announcing the official launch of Chunk Archives, a new indie/garage/reissue label based in Austin, Texas. The label is the brainchild of Mal Thursday, who ran the "obscure but rewarding" Chunk Records label from 1986 to 2000. Chunk Archives will be reissuing many classic recordings, as well as new and previously unreleased material.

The initial releases from Chunk Archives are the reissues of the LP catalog of '80s garage rock semi-legends The Malarians, and are currently available as mp3 albums on iTunes, Amazon, CD Baby, and other leading digital retailers:

In The Cool Room

Know/Finished In This Town

The above titles are also available as limited edition CDs from The Malarians Online Superstore.

Not Quite Finished In This Town

I've been out straight ever since I got back to Austin, so I haven't done a blog post in a month. I'll start with some of the press I got while on tour with the Malarians and the Cheetahs. First up, "Not Quite Finished in This Town" by Matthew Dube, originally published June 10th in The Valley Advocate:Countless area bands have been conceived, lived and disappeared since former local impresario Mal Thursday (pictured above, center, with The Malarians, 1987)—also known, equally enigmatically, as J.M. Dobies—last stepped off an area stage.

Thursday's heyday was concurrent with a very active time in local music lore. Any night in the '90s could find him all over Northampton, somehow simultaneously booking shows at the Baystate Hotel, leading a band of garage rockers through a rousing rendition of The Standell's "Dirty Water," and shaking hands with someone on a deal to release a 7-inch single on his own Chunk Records.

After vanishing from the scene under hazy circumstances and leaving music altogether, Thursday is currently in the midst of a prodigal Massachusetts reunion run, playing shows with two of his former Valley bands, The Malarians and The Cheetahs. He checked in by phone from his current home in Austin, Texas to talk about his bands, his disappearance, and his spate of impending area gigs.

The Heyday

Mal Thursday's first band, The Malarians, was born in 1984 and lasted until 1990. The group was a rave-up garage band known for rollicking live shows and matching black turtlenecks.

The group produced three releases, In the Cool Room (1986), Know (1988), and Finished in this Town (1990), and reached a respectable level of success in their day, receiving good airplay and cracking the CMJ Top 20.

Thursday transitioned to a new project, The Cheetahs, following the breakup of the Malarians. They released a holiday single in 1992, followed up in 1993 by a split 7-inch with Angry Johnny, featuring the band's version of the Johnny Cash classic "Ring of Fire" with guest vocals—and pig squeals—from Angry Johnny himself.

Around this time, Thursday was cranking out releases on his own Chunk Records, an imprint that quickly became known for releasing solid singles by national acts and for producing some of the area's finest recordings before or since. His roster included seminal acts like Guided By Voices, Sebadoh, DMZ, the Lyres, New Radiant Storm King, Scud Mountain Boys, and Silver Jews.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

The Malarians' 'In The Cool Room,' 'Know,' and More Now Available as Digital Downloads

Originally released on Chunk Records in the 1980s, the recordings of my old band The Malarians (the American Garage Band, not the Spanish ska band) are now available as digital downloads at Amazon and several other services, and coming soon to iTunes. The remixed, remastered, and reanimated version of In The Cool Room, our lovable first LP from 1986, is available now at Amazon.com, on the Chunk Archives label.

The 20-track 2-for-1 Know/Finished In This Town CD combines the Malarians' most successful release, 1988's bombastic, blistering five-track statement of purpose Know with the equally feverish 1989 live recording Finshed In This Town. Available June 1st.

Mal Thursday & the Cheetahs: The Complete Recordings

Mal Thursday & the Cheetahs:The Complete Recordings

Following the break-up of the Malarians, Mal Thursday formed the Cheetahs, with whom he released the heartwarmingly profane holiday classic "A Message to Santa Claus" on Chunk Records in 1992. That was followed up in 1993 by a split 7" with Angry Johnny, featuring the band's version of the Johnny Cash classic "Ring of Fire" with guest vocals (and pig squeals) from Angry. Now you can get the complete recordings of Mal Thursday & the Cheetahs, produced by Mal and Sean Slade.

Recorded at Slaughterhouse in Amherst and the Lanes in Boston and mixed at Fort Apache, it's 13 tracks of raw power and awe-inspiring stupidity from Mal and the Cheetahs: Nelson Bragg (now with Brian Wilson's band), Chris Soucy, Ezra Gale, and Brent Nielsen, with backing vocals and tambourine from garage legend Jeff Conolly (Lyres, DMZ).

The Complete Recordings includes "Get Outta Dallas," "Torn Up," "Try It My Way," "Spundalina," "It's All Going By Too Fast," and all of the tracks from the Chunk seven-inches.

Get it HERE, only $9.99 (plus shipping) via PayPal.

The Biggest Sucker in the World

That'd be me.

How else to explain my continuing obsession with rock 'n roll music, which, as I was quoted in The Miami Herald earlier this year, has been going steadily downhill since 1966?

Beats the hell out of me. In more ways than one.

First, I eschewed grad school in favor of playing with my band, the Malarians, after I graduated from college. Not the greatest career move, J.M.

There was a brief period in the middle of the last decade when I actually made a living from rock 'n roll, when I was running the show at the semi-legendary Bay State Hotel and putting out vinyl with Chunk Records, my independent label ("Medium Fidelity, Extreme Quality"). I got fucked over by the band I'd groomed for bigger things, thanks to my naivete, stupidity, and R.E.M.'s lawyer. I lost my appetite for the whole thing overnight, and Chunk died a protracted death over the last few years of the '90s. At least I missed out on the downfall of the record industy, but then again, if I'd only managed to hold on to all of the back stock, I'd be an Ebay millionaire by now, or at the very least make my car payment every month from selling my old records (see "The Chunk Records Story, Part Four" for the grisly details).

And then there's radio. I'm told I'm a brilliant DJ with a great voice and impeccable taste. That and $2.95 will get me a small coffee at Starbuck's. I love the medium itself, if not the current state of the industry, and the internet has provided me a worldwide audience for my current projects, The Mal Thursday Show and Florida Rocks Again! Terrestrial radio has been less than kind to me, however, and here's hoping against hope that will change with my new show. The Sisyphean quest continues.

Why all the gloom, doom, and self-laceration, you ask?

It's mainly because I've been re-reading Mainlines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader the past couple of days, and I keep flashing back to when I was 16 years old, and had subscriptions to both Creem Magazine and The Village Voice. I loved reading Lester's stuff back then, and reading it again thirty years on, I have been getting little pangs of sadness and regret for all of the wasted energy and lost years spent on such an unworthy mistress.

Bangs, like me, was a true believer against his better judgment, and his stuff is still compelling 25 years after his death. I share more than a few parallels with him (for one, I'm writing this from Austin, where he once lived), and agree with his stance that "listening to music made 20, 30 years ago [now it'd be 40 or 50 years ago] is not living in the past, is not nostalgia...it's good taste."

Of course, in the very same piece ("Bad Taste is Timeless"), he also asserts that "I can guarantee you that there will be no Throbbing Gristle repackages from Japan in the year 2000."

Actually, I think most of the Throbbing Gristle import boxed sets, of which there are at least five, came out in 2003-2004.

Anyway, I could go on and on, but I won't. Suffice to say, I still love the music. Even if it doesn't love me back.

While My Turntable Gently Weeps

At heart, I'm a vinyl man. Always have been, always will be. Back when I was running Chunk Records, I had over 30 releases, only about five of which were CDs. The rest were 45s and LPs. I resisted the CD format at first, because it seemed somehow cold, and the shrinkage on the cover art was appalling. I later embraced the compact disc because it became the undoing of the greedy pigs of the record industry, who lacked the foresight to realize that digital media could be copied endlessly without generational loss. Napster and its stepchildren fucked them but good, but it was too damn bad: they'd sown the seeds of their own downfall.

Now, the industry has almost managed a full recovery, thanks to iTunes and the ubiquitous iPod, in the process taking a giant step backward, away from the full-length album and returning to the single. At 99 cents a pop. Actually, they've jacked it up to a buck-twenty-nine, which is bullshit, but so it goes.

Which is my long-winded preamble to the news that I have joined the 21st century: I got an iPod for my birthday. It's a mere 8 GB, so it only holds a fraction of my collection, but it's still pretty cool. I like the way the cover art comes up on the little screen when the track is playing, even if said artwork is even smaller than CD and about 8% of the size of an old-school album cover. Because I'm a record geek, I went online and found JPEGs of various picture sleeves and label shots to properly adorn the songs.

The little thumbnails I created for my podcasts look pretty cool as well. Hopefully, now that I've uploaded them, anybody who downloads the shows off of iTunes will get them as well. Not sure how that works.

Of course, now I want one of the 160 GB models, so I can dump as much of my collection into it as I can.

I'm so easily corrupted...

The Malarians' In the Cool Room Now on CD!

Well, kiddies, my first album has come back into print, thanks to John Lebhar, a/k/a Johnny Tomorrow, my old co-conspirator in the '80s neo-garage band the Malarians.

In the Cool Room was the Malarians' first album, released on LP in August of 1986, recorded at Trod Nossel Studios in Wallingford, Connecticut. The original mixes and mastering left much to be desired, leading to a bad review in my own memoir, "The Chunk Records Story" (Part One).

Now, Johnny has worked a sonic miracle, addressing the production deficiencies of the original pressing to create a new and improved, remixed and remastered edition of In the Cool Room. It's available for the first time on CD in a limited run, and I've got a few of these rare items for sale at $17 postage paid, via PayPal HERE.

In any case, it's a pleasant surprise to the ears that my playing and singing aren't as horrible as I remembered, and a joy to rediscover the playing of my brothers in arms, Johnny, Lime, Bobby, Jimm, and the late, great Slater Awn. Of the 12 tracks here, there a number of standouts: "Tuesday's Child, " our twisted ode to Aimee Mann, the frantic Diddley basher "Gilligans Wake," a nice cover of Donovan's "Superlungs My Supergirl," and one, "The Lone Star Surfer," that's going to be on the pilot episode of Texas Tyme Machine.

And how could we have dropped "Where You Gonna Go" from the original running order?

There's a nice arrangement of Jimm Chanson's "Old Enough to Know," sung by the composer himself, which is from one of his rock operas, but I'm not sure if it's from 2520 Metonymy Street or No Sky at Lunchtime. Special props to Johnny for adding the Leo Gorcey samples to "Up to No Good," which totally make the tune, and for making "Mopar" and "Deep Inside" sound as good as they do.

Click HERE if you would like to purchase this delightful curio of the Paisley Underground.

Track Listing:

Tuesday's Child / Gilligan's Wake / Where You Gonna Go / One Time Only / The Lone Star Surfer / Super Lungs (My Super Girl) / Old Enough to Know / Up to No Good / Little Girls Cry / Mopar / Deep Inside / Brightness

If you dig the Malarians, you should also dig The Mal Thursday Show #9: Sons of the Stage, featuring a lengthy set of songs we used to cover, and the band's 1988 recording of "What's New, Pussycat?"

The Chunk Records Story: The Complete Saga

"The Chunk Records Story" remains the BLOG!'s finest hour. It tells the true tale of the rise and fall of the label that delivered "Obscure but Rewarding" recordings promising "Medium Fidelity, Extreme Quality." To mark the tenth anniversary of its demise, here is the Complete Saga:

Part One
Chunk Records Is Born

Part Two
Salad Days

Part Three
The Beginning of the End

Part Four
The Decline and Fall of Chunk Records

Massholes

When I was living in Western Massachusetts during the ’80s and ’90s, first as an undergraduate at Hampshire College in Amherst, then as a post-graduate slacker/rock ‘n’ roller/indie label mogul in Northampton, I encountered what I came to know as Massholes (Massholus Erectus), a species unique to the Commonwealth.

Over time, I came to be one myself.

A Masshole is defined as "a person from Massachusetts who is regarded as an asshole, or engages in behavior generally considered to be asshole-like." It can also be used as a term of endearment among Massholes. Recently, I've expanded the definition beyond the borders of the Bay State. I hereby coin the term Masshole to mean a Mass Media figure who is also an insufferable asshole: Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Dennis Leary (a Masshole by both definitions), Octomom, A-Rod, Kobe, and that douchebag from "The Hills" would be prime examples.

Anyway, my old friend Frank Padellaro (King Radio, the Cheetahs, Scud Mountain Boys) tells me that he’s putting together a three-volume compilation of Northampton-area bands from three distinct eras: Sheehan’s (’80s to early ’90s), The Bay State Hotel (early ’90s to early ’00s), and the post-Bay State period (early ’00s to present). Being a horrible archivist, I have only a fraction of the material I released on my old label, Chunk (read “The Chunk Records Story” HERE), and have misplaced most of the live tapes I recorded over the years. I do have in my possession a few of the records I put out on Chunk (had to get some of them on Ebay), and a handful of live recordings of my old bands. Brandon Staiger recently sent me a CD-R of my old band The Mal Thursday Experience (later known as the Cheetahs) playing live on the “Homegrown” show on WRSI in 1991. It’s a bit rough and under-rehearsed, but the sound quality is pretty durn good. Thank you, Brandon.

Anyway, I think Massholes would be a great name for the compilation series. There have been Northampton-based collections in the past (Big Fish in a Little Pond, Chunk’s Hotel Massachusetts, and the Northampton Music Festival samplers), but no one has taken the historical approach. I’ve always loved '60s garage compilations, especially those with a regional angle, and Frank’s comp idea reminds me of those. So I’m stoked, and will rake through the ashes of my collection to find some tasty nuggets for the project. Thanks, Frank.

When it's done, I'll cherry-pick the best cuts for an all-Masshole edition of The Mal Thursday Show.

The Chunk Records Story, Part Four

In Part One, Chunk Records began as an outlet for '80s garage band the Malarians; in Part Two, it was reborn as an imprint for limited edition 7-inch singles; then in Part Three, Chunk made a move toward bigger and better things, only to get caught in a perfect storm of hubris, naivete, and alt-country effrontery.

Chapter Six: After the Gold Rush

At the end of August 1995, I moved with my then-girlfriend from our downtown Northampton apartment to a remote two-story farmhouse at 23 Beaver Drive in South Deerfield, Massachusetts. There was an above-ground pool and a spacious downstairs bedroom that became the new corporate headquarters of Chunk Records.

A week later, my girlfriend moved out. She later said of our two-year relationship, "I was young and lost. What was your excuse?"

I had been abandoned by both my girlfriend and by the Scud Mountain Boys, who, having paid me off, were now recording their debut album for Sub Pop. I was pretty desolate, but was cheered a bit when the buyout check arrived in the mail.

In November, I had a week-long whirlwind courtship, followed by an impulse marriage to Wednesday Thursday. Most of my friends didn't give the marriage six months, but we proved them wrong. It lasted a year and a half.

CH4520: GUIDED BY VOICES/NEW RADIANT STORM KING

Split 7-Inch

Here's a near-perfect record in the grand tradition of split singles like the Sonic Youth/ Mudhoney "Touch Me, I'm Sick"/"Halloween" (orignally released on Sub Pop, ironically enough), where the two bands covered each other's songs. It is perhaps Chunk's finest hour.

Matt Hunter of New Radiant Storm King was a big fan of Guided By Voices, and soon found his band sharing bills with the Ohio-based lo-fi legends. Bob Pollard of Guided By Voices was a big fan of New Radiant Storm King, and so this split 7-inch came to pass. It was originally going to be released on as the first release of a label called Indi 500, a fledgling enterprise started up by, if I recall correctly, Nate Albert of the Mighty Mighty Bosstones and filmmaker Chris Appelbaum, among others, but the venture got back-burnered when the principals all had found they had better things to do than run an indie label. That thankless task is reserved for schmucks like me. And thus the record fell into my lap.

GBV chose to cover "The Opposing Engineer Sleeps Alone" from NRSK's difficult second album Rival Time, while NRSK returned the favor by turning in a stellar rendition of "I Am a Scientist" off of Bee Thousand. This would be the last Storm King release to feature original drummer Elizabeth Sharp.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention the sleeve art. The GBV side sported a collage by Pollard, while the NRSK side featured artwork borrowed from '50s sci-fi paperbacks. At the time, I was working with local graphic desgner Eric Olsson, who did the layouts of many of the best-looking records we ever did, including all three Scud Mountain Boys releases, the two DMZ 45s, and this one.

CH1012 THE VERONICA CARTWRIGHTS: One Careless Match CD

Prior to this record, the Veronica Cartwrights previous releases were all Chunk products: their 3-song 7-inch from 1993, "A Message to Pretty" on 1994's Unloved and "Frog" on Hotel Massachusetts. And so it came to pass that the band's full-length debut, One Careless Match, would bear the Chunk logo as well. Unfortunately, it also bore the imprint of another label (whose name escapes me) started by this guy (I think his name was Corey) in direct competition with Chunk, who hoped to take advantage of our distribution channels and indie cred by making it a joint venture.

The upside was that the other label paid for the pressing; the downside was that the record sold poorly, and the guy from the other label kept pestering me for money that wasn't there.

CH1013: FLYCATCHER: Pee CD

Flycatcher was supposed to be Chunk's Nirvana. Instead, the band helped dig the label's grave.

A record I committed to back when I still expected a 50 grand buyout from Sub Pop, Pee was already in production when the Scud deal went south. Otherwise, I would have pulled the plug. Not because of the music on the record, but because the band had apparently signed a contract with some Manhattan Rock Skank who was a total mental case, and who bedeviled me with phone calls threatening all manner of legal mayhem. I wasn't about to shelve the record, since it was too late to cancel the order from the pressing plant and the artwork was already done.

Despite being overly derivative of Nirvana, the album definitely has its moments, and sounds great, thanks to the stellar production of Mark Alan Miller. There was also a limited edition sampler 7-inch released simultaneously.

Unfortunately, the band broke up right around the time of its release, and sales were next to non-existent. Not exactly what we needed after the Scuds' defection.

CH1015 RAY MASON BAND: Missyouville CD

Ray Mason is a Western Mass music legend who has been cranking out his brand of "Silvertone Pop" for decades. Chunk had provided distribution for Ray Mason Band's Between Blue and Okay CD, and Ray's "Falling Down" was a highlight of the Hotel Massachusetts compilation CD. Although the record-buying public was largely indifferent to Between Blue and Okay, I agreed to release the follow-up. Part of the reason being that I was expecting a big windfall from the Scud Mountain Boys signing at the time, so I could put out Missyouville as a "loss leader," because it was a damn fine record.

Ray was fond of saying of his often under-attended live shows, "I play the same whether there's six people in the audience or half a dozen." Coincidentally, this album sold in the dozens, although it probably made more money for Ray than any other record in his catalogue, because the following year, when the ship was going down, I gave him boxes and boxes of Missyouville CDs at no cost, to sell at his gigs. Since the Great Scud Mountain Buyout turned out to be something less than the bonanza I had once anticipated, the dismal sales of this record and a couple of other non-starters pretty much blew the buyout loot.

Still, a damn fine record, and I'm glad we put it out.

HAMLET IDIOT:
CHD1016: Tango Palace CD
CH4517: Don't Let Them/Hypnotized

Here's a couple of records I don't remember a whole lot about. Hamlet Idiot was an Amherst-based noise outfit who made a series of obtuse, skronky records with producer Steve Albini. I do recall that the band paid for the pressings, provided the cool cover art, and headlined an underattended record-release show at the Bay State.

Hamlet Idiot's fearless leader Dylan Metrano later formed Tiger Saw. Although the band was pretty obscure in their day, Hamlet Idiot reunited in 2005 for a couple of shows in the Boston area. No word on the attendance.

CH4518 THE FIGGS: Christmas Shake 45

Here's another record that got delayed until it was too late to make a profit on it. Due to the demands of Figgs' manager Brad Morrison, and then having to wait for the unremarkable cover art to come from the graphic artist dude, this 7-inch got released about three weeks before Christmas, and thus sold only a fraction of what it might have.

Let me just say here that the Figgs were, and are, awesome, a great band with great material that should have been the kings of pop-punk, but unfortunately got beaten to the marketplace by Green Day.

At the time of this release, the Figgs had just gotten signed to Capitol, where they released their somewhat disappointing Banda Macho album. Some of the material on this 7-inch eventually got rereleased on a Capitol sampler CD.

The EP combined group originals with a sparkling cover of the Kinks' "Father Christmas," and along with the Cheetahs' "A Message to Santa Claus," puts Chunk alongside K-Tel, Ronco, and other great purveyors of holiday hits.

The Figgs' Mike Gent responds:

"A manager who was difficult? You actually lose money selling 45's??? You don't say?...Also, Banda Macho was not a disappointment for me. I bought at least three guitars, two amps, paid my rent for two years and made The Figgs Couldn't Get High with Banda Macho money."

CH1018 DRUNK STUNTMEN: Taking My Pee Pants Off CD

Drunk Stuntmen originally hailed from Taunton, Mass., and came west to the Pioneer Valley in the guise of a high-energy jam band called Soup ("Bring a bowl for Soup" was their slogan, as I recall). The band changed directions in 1995, reinventing themselves as whiskey-swilling country rockers. In the process, they alienated their UMass hippie fanbase but gained renown among the local indie rock cognoscenti.

Their first release under the Stuntmen moniker was Taking My Pee Pants Off, recorded in their basement by guitarist Terry Flood's brother Mike (who was immortalized by Sebadoh in their song "Flood"). True to the Chunk aesthetic of "Medium Fidelity, Extreme Quality," the disc is a little rough around the edges, but features some great tunes, most notably Alex Johnson's "Statue of Joe Raposo" and the album opener, Steve Sanderson's "Jesse James Dean," which contains the immortal line, "You can all go to hell/I'll go to Texas."

Words to live by, brother.

CH1019: TAG SALE: Trashed and Bent CD

By the end of the '90s, Chunk was a going concern in name only, as the day-to-day business of running the label was no longer my focus. Surviving was more my immediate concern at the time. However, our last two releases, although financed by the bands and released through a distribution network that was a shadow of its former self, are among my all-time favorite Chunk records.

Tag Sale was a local punk squad made up of several of my friends that was a bit polarizing, as they were loved and hated with equal vehemence by the local scenesters. I loved 'em, and I still listen to Trashed and Bent, their lone release, a claim I can't make about a lot of Chunk stuff. I even co-produced a couple of the tracks, which we recorded at the end of a chaotic video shoot for "Jet" (see Appendix B).

Among the highlights are "Rear View," "Space Frontier," and "Traversing the Wave," an homage to the Pixies that is one of the live tracks at the end of the disc.

CH1020: THE COOPERS: American Car CD

The last ever Chunk record, put forth by a young garage band in suits and ties whose demo had caught my ear. I really loved this one song about the singer buying pot in Pulaski Park, but this great song was excluded from their debut album, and since there would not be a follow-up, never got a release. I had wanted to direct a music video for that song, but since it wasn't on the CD, I did one for the title track, an unconscious plagiarism of Billy Idol's "Dancing with Myself."

The video is a visual tribute to A Hard Day's Night, shot on black and white super 8 film. Unfortunately, on the day of the shoot, we quickly lost the light, and the second half of the video is pretty dark.

Jed Smith, the leader of the Coopers, is still active musically in the NYC area, and tried to get in touch with me a while back via MySpace. I'll have to get back with him, now that I've listened to his old band's record for the first time in years.

Postscript

When I originally sat down to write "The Chunk Records Story," I had no idea it would take me four months to finish telling the tale. I made a conscious decision to focus on the music as much as possible, rather than on the often insane goings-on behind the scenes. As it was, I'm sure I pissed a few people off with what I did write. In fact, I know I did, in fact, as I received a message from Angry Johnny saying that I had made him, well, angry. Anyway, in respect to various individuals' privacy and my sense of self-preservation, I left out a lot of bad shit.

Frank Padellaro (King Radio, Scud Mountain Boys, Cheetahs, Miss Reed, etc.) put it this way:

"In your defense, I've found your history extremely entertaining and surprisingly even-handed. I laughed out loud when you described Miss Reed as 'less than the sum of its parts.' It was my favorite review since, 'this record is blander than corn and harder to digest.'

"The part you are really missing in the downfall of Chunk is how you were completely out of your mind. It isn't like you made one or two bad decisions. You were making them too fast to count.

"The thing is, I miss those days more than I care to admit, and you, your delusions of grandeur, and your bitter wit will always stand out as high points in my memory.

"In the end, Chunk Records was a mirror image of you. It was hard to tell if all those records had any impact on anyone, until they were gone, and you realize what an empty hole was left in their place.

"The day you left the Bay State, the Northampton music scene started its long slow death, or at least it contracted some kind of withering illness. The day Chunk put out its last record was the day most of our delusions died. Without your boundless influx of positivity and energy, it was impossible (for me anyway) to suspend disbelief. Most of us woke up one day to realize we were coffee shop employees, cooks and sales clerks."

Thanks, Frank.

I no longer have any of the master recordings of Chunk's 30-odd releases, save for a CD-R of the Cheetahs' "A Message to Santa Claus." I have very few of the actual records in my possession. After my marriage broke up, I stored the back catalog in Frank's garage. When his marriage broke up, he moved out of the house, and all the records got swiped by the cleaning crew. They eventually wound up at the Hadley flea market, and in the hands of several local collectors. I bought a few on Ebay, but it's kind of tough having to buy back records that I paid to make, and having to pay collector's prices. thanks to Ken Reed of Main Street Records for selling me at a fair price the GbV/NRSK split that I had sold him all those years ago.

Appendix A:

Announced but Unreleased:
13 Chunk Records That Never Saw the Light of Day

ARCITECHTURAL METAPHOR/SONS OF THE CORPORATE DOG Split 7"

THE CHEETAHS: It's All Going By Too Fast LP/CD

DMZ: Live at the Rat '76/Live at the Middle East '93 CD

ZEKE FIDDLER: "Socket" 45

Framin' Gloovies: A Tribute to the Flamin' Groovies LP/CD

Hotel Massachusetts II Compilation CD

LYRES: "Zebra in the Kitchen" 45

THE MALARIANS: Finished in This Town CD

NEW RADIANT STORM KING:

Singular, No Article CD, My Little Bastard Soul LP

SCUD MOUNTAIN BOYS: Pine Box 8-Track Cartridge

TAG SALE: Fuck the Age Difference EP

THE UNBAND: "Why Do You Think They Call Us Dope?" 45

Several of these titles eventually saw the light of day on other labels. Most of 'em remain unreleased.

APPENDIX B: Music Videos Directed by Mal Thursday

HOSPITAL: "Crazy Train"

TAG SALE: "Jet"

THE COOPERS: "American Car"

THE MONTREAL EXPOS: "Vladimir Guerrero"

The Best of BLOG! 2007

Body Odor

Brave Hater 10.1.07: Our Favorite Year and 8.27.07: The One-Pitch Comeback

The Chunk Records Story: Parts One, Two, and Three.

Getting Fired and Getting Fired 2: Electric Boogaloo.

The Glory Stompers

Horror Movie Reviews at Viewpoints.com (November 2007)

Led Schleppelin: 13 Hours at the Crestwood

Lord Love a Duck

The Night Owl Drive-In

The Oliver Reed Film Festival: The '60s, The '70s, and The '80s 'Til Death.

Under Friday Night Lights

So there 'tis, the best of BLOG! by JM Dobies.

Nominated in multiple categories for the 2008 Bloggie Awards .

A gala awards ceremony, where the winner of the ultra-prestigious Weblog of the Year will recieve a check for $20.08, will be held right here in Austin, Texas, USA at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival in March.

Good night and Good Luck.

JM Dobies

The Chunk Records Story, Part Three

Part One and Part Two of "The Chunk Records Story" traced the evolution of the indie imprint from vanity label to trademark of quality (and quantity) with releases featuring New Radiant Storm King, Sebadoh, Silver Jews, and Lyres, among others. With the 1994 compilation Hotel Massachusetts, Chunk moved beyond vinyl into the realm of CDs.

Chapter Four: The Beginning of the End

Hotel Massachusetts had sold well for a comp, and proved that Chunk was more than just a boutique label dealing in the hipper-than-thou 7-inch vinyl format. I wanted to find a band to groom for development into a major label act, that was as yet undiscovered, but who would be ready when the majors came calling. Like Sub Pop had done with the money they made when Nirvana signed with the David Geffen Company, Chunk could then further develop its roster of bands, and be a legitimate, profitable independent label.

One night, I was having a pint at the Northampton Brewery when it hit me that the little group playing the open mic was just the band I'd been looking for. The Scud Mountain Boys weren't your garden variety indie rock band. Far from it. They didn't even have a drummer. But they had a genius songwriter and a haunting, lonesome sound that was truly unique.

I decided to make them an offer they couldn't refuse. They didn't refuse, but they would later renege.

No less an authority than Robert Evans once said that "there are three sides to every story: yours, mine...and the truth."

Here's mine.

CH4511: STEVE WESTFIELD & THE SLOW BAND/

SCUD MOUNTAIN BOYS Split 7-Inch

Steve Westfield was a local singer-songwriter who had been around since the early '80s heyday of the Western Mass Hardcore scene. He was best known from his days with the Pajama Slave Dancers, a joke-punk act with several LPs to their credit, featuring titles like "Train Wreck on Prom Night" and "Full Metal Underpants." He later went solo, and made a series of records, of which "Sittting on the Bottom of the World," his side of this split 7-inch, is fairly representative. The thing that helped garner sales, reviews, and airplay of this otherwise unremarkable performance was the presence of Sebadoh's Lou Barlow on the track. It also attracted the attention of Lou's new label Sub Pop, but they weren't interested in Steve Westfield. They were interested in a Slow Band all right, but not Steve's. It was the Scud Mountain Boys they wanted.

The Scud Mountain Boys - Joe Pernice, Bruce Tull, and Steven DeSaulniers - were the band on which I had chosen to focus my efforts to take Chunk to the next level. They had great material, a cool stage gimmick wherein they performed seated around a table, and a unique sound: confessional country rock on heavy downers. They put the depression back into "No Depression." Their half of the record, "Television," captured their slow acoustic aesthetic perfectly, but was just a warm-up for the one-two punch that was to follow.

CH4512: TIZZY: "New Jersey"/"Betty vs. Veronica"

Tizzy was a band that was two-thirds female, full of quirky energy and poppy, punky songs. They were one of the bands featured on Hotel Massachusetts, and their 7-inch reflected the DIY

ethos of Chunk by its painstakingly hand-painted sleeve. The band members added the paint as fast as I could sell the records, which wasn't all that fast, but it sold respectably enough.

CH1007:

SCUD MOUNTAIN BOYS: Dance the Night Away CD

Track List: Freight of Fire/One Hand/Peter Graves' Anatomy/Letter to Bread/Television/(She Took His) Picture/Where's the Playground Susie?/Combine/Silo/Reservoir/ Sangré de Cristo/ Sweet Sally/Closing Time/Kneeling/Helen

Whereas the Scud Mountain Boys' split 7-inch with Steve Westfield was intended as an appetizer, Dance the Night Away was meant to be the main course, a tour-de-force displaying everything the band did well. As the bigtime beckoned, the Boys had added former Hoolapopper frontman Tom Shea on drums and mandolin, and he appears on several cuts.

A couple of the tracks dated back to their days as the Scuds, an earlier, electric incarnation I had witnessed playing at Sheehan's, and later booked on one of the first Bay State Cabaret shows. I remember my foremost first impression of the Scuds had to do with Joe's girlfriend, who was quite lovely (the phrase "cupid's bow mouth" comes to mind). Some of Joe's best songs ("Grudge Fuck" comes to mind) were directly inspired by her.

The Scuds were OK, but the Scud Mountain Boys were great, and had indie cred. They were a band's band, a critic's wet dream.

Anyhoo, when I made my offer to sign the band to Chunk, the Scud Mountain Boys were still a fairly well-kept secret, and completely unknown outside of the Valley. We had a sit-down at the Bay State, with their producer and designated consigliere, Thom Monahan, sitting in. I offered them a deal that would include the split7-inch, the CD release of Dance the Night Away, a vinyl pressing of their previously cassette-only Pine Box (and also on 8-track cartridge, if possible), plus the all-important option for a third full-length, that would necessitate a buyout should they sign with a bigger label, as per my master plan.

We shook hands like honorable men, and I arranged to have our agreement drawn up by a local attorney who shall remain nameless, although I will say that she was the sibling of one of the Mamas and Papas. Unfortunately, by the time she actually drew up the contract, the records were already released, and the feeding frenzy had begun.

CH1008: MISS REED: Corn CD

Anyway, this was another band-financed effort that hoped to exploit the indie cred of the mighty Chunk label, but failed to sell for various reasons. It was too pop for a lot of the indie rock types, and too metal for the shoegazers. Also, it's best track was already on Hotel Massachusetts.

Miss Reed was a band that was less than the sum of its parts. Leader Ray Neades was a talented songwriter and excellent guitarist who I'd played with in the Cheetahs and who would later be part of the plus-size AC/DC tribute band Beefy DC. Bassist Frank Padellaro, who I also played with in the Cheetahs, would go on to replace Stephen Desaulniers in the Scud Mountain Boys, and front his own band, the genius King Radio. Dave Trenholm, another once and future Cheetah, is a skilled arranger and guitarist who would also be part of King Radio. Drummer Paul

Pelis was a heavy hitter who would go on to play with several top combos.

Ray passed away in December of 2009.

CH4513 & CH4519: DMZ: Live at the Rat '76 Volumes 1 & 2

Vol. 1:

First Time is the Best Time/Boy from Nowhere/Go to School

Vol. 2:

Ball Me Out/Lift Up Your Hood

These records came about as the result of another advance paid to Jeff "Monoman" Conolly of the Lyres, and were originally intended to be teasers for a full-length release that would also include a 1993 DMZ reunion show. Though that CD eventually came out a couple of years later, it was on another label, not mine.
These tracks are the very best recordings ever made of DMZ at the peak of their punk power. While their Sire LP suffers from overproduction and a bad mix, courtesy of Flo & Eddie, the Live at the Rat songs sound absolutely killer, having been remixed from the original multi-tracks and lovingly mastered by Erik Lindgren.

"First Time is the Best Time" was DMZ's first 45, and features an incredible vocal performance by Conolly that is an unholy marriage of Joey Ramone and Bryan Ferry. Studio recordings of three of the tracks wound up on Bomp's Relics LP, but those versions pale in comparison with these. "Go to School" was previously unissued in any form, and helped Volume One sell out faster than almost any other Chunk release.

CH4515: PUSH KINGS:

Slow Down, This Is Not Monte Carlo

The Push Kings were nice, Ivy League boys who were seduced by the lure of indie rock obscurity. They sent me a demo that my girlfriend fished out of the pile of unlistened-to cassettes in my office, and popped in the tape deck. "They sound just like your beloved Pavement," she said, and damn if the songs didn't sound just like outtakes from Slanted and Enchanted. I played the Push Kings demo for Pavement aficionado Zeke Fiddler, who gave it a bemused thumbs-up.

Through David Berman, we arranged for Pavement's Stephen Malkmus to write liner notes for the resultant 7-inch EP, SlowDown, This is Monte Carlo. They were suitably dry and ironic:

"The all-around sound of this group reminds me of many things. The heritage is all-apparent: tense-chordal future sound, indeed! The orthodontist straightens my teeth, the PUSH KINGS rearrange them in a way only a god could design. Their sound is incisor rock, and if we are lucky, all bands will sound like this one day."

Chapter Five: The Big Gundown

1995 was our best year yet, at least the first half of it. I was on a roll, as every new release increased the buzz about the label. I even got a raise at the Bay State. I now had interns to help me with the day-to-day business of running the label. I had guitarist/accountant Frank Padellaro, formerly of Miss Reed, to help with the bookkeeping. I had a publicist to handle press and radio for the Scud Mountain Boys CD and the label as a whole.

I had made the right choice as to which band to focus my resources and energies upon, as the Scud Mountain Boys scored one great review after another, their CD was selling briskly, and they were now being courted by the likes of Sub Pop and Warner Brothers. Joyce Linehan at Sub Pop, somebody I had worked with since her days booking Green Street Station in Jamaica Plain (or was it T.T. the Bear's in Cambridge?), wanted the Scud Boys wicked bad, to use the vernacular. She arranged for them to be flown out to Seattle, to meet the head of the label, Jonathan Poneman.

I got left on the tarmac, so to speak.

CH1009: SCUD MOUNTAIN BOYS: Pine Box LP

"This time of year the light comes through the pines in flat beams and spark points, glancing off the frost that decorates the grounds of the light-studded medical cities. For a six-sided second I feel like I'm back in the haunted Piedmonts, a decorated major in the Japanese Inner Space Program, renewing my vow to bear down on the truth even if there is none for the hundredth time.

After the exodus of the Calm Reflectors I had started seeing the Scud Mountain Boys around town with their Baltimore haircuts, the guitarist's guitarist carrying his 1873 'trapdoor' Springfield rifle, the progeny of the muzzle-loading French Charleville muskets that had whacked so many Redcoats around these hills. I had heard it was the band's tradition to lay dinner on the table uncooked and then set the table on fire.

I was out for a walk with Mr. Fiddler the other night, when he turned to me and said, 'this is the time of year when the region is at peace with itself.' I turned to laugh in his face when the impulse subsided. He had been right of course. I'd already seen it happen in the slide projector's cone of lit dust: the November sky hovering over lives of dark employment like a televised clay bank, breech-loaders replacing muzzle-loaders, crows wired to the sky like marred pixels, portraits cubed into accordioned life while every single object of perception waited for us in the air conditioning. Yes, tennis crested in the seventies, killing Eddie Money and the last of the Holmby Hills Rat Pack, but how many times did we have to witness the L.A. fireplaces reflected in L.A. wineglasses before it ended?

You meet these suburban kids with Biblical names, but there are walls behind their eyes, strange mathematical mountains at whose base we sit playing our native keyboards and rinsing our teeth with digital snow. I'm starting to believe that the inscription above the portal describes this side, not the next.

Few people know that George Washington's favorite song was 'The Darby Ram,' or stop to think that before he was a statue he scratched his weld, got the hiccups, and danced alone in his room. All the 'human things.' He must have been scared when he fought in the woods, hiding in the dormant Christmas trees, his hand gripping the black walnut musket stock.

In those times and these we turn to the pacifics of a Gamelan orchestra for transport and release. We stand by the hind legs of a K car, listening to the new city cassettes, searching for some sign of human residence here beneath the justifiably uncelebrated Massachusetts sky.

This treasured early work brought calm forecasts and sad peace to our house. I hope you take it with you when you go."

- D.C. Berman

Original Liner Notes to Pine Box LP

As promised, the LP reissue of the Pine Box cassette was delivered on time to coincide with a series of showcase gigs in New York and Boston. I even had an old-timey circus-type showprint poster made to commemorate the releases. As I mentioned earlier, the attorney I'd hired had taken several months to complete the contract that had been agreed to by the band when had our sitdown in late '94. By the time she'd had it drafted, the band were no longer willing to sign it.

As they began to receive offers from bigger labels, they hired an entertainment lawyer named Josh Green, who counted R.E.M. among his clients. He told them in no uncertain terms that they didn't need to pay me anything. So one night I was summoned to the Scud mansion to discuss our deal. It was an ambush. The knives were out, and they would find their mark.

The band informed me that not only would they refuse to sign the contract to which they'd already agreed, but also that I would not be receiving a buyout, as they figured I had already recouped the money I'd spent to produce their records. Besides, they reasoned that any buyout I received would come out of their end of whatever deal they signed. Stephen D was particularly vehement that the original agreement wasn't "fair." Turned out that he had been nursing a grudge since the Scuds were left off the Hotel Massachusetts CD. Hey, if he'd bothered to give me a copy of the Pine Box cassette, I'd have gladly bumped Squeek or the Dots in favor of the SMB.

Joe demonstrated great balls by paraphrasing Sally Tessio from The Godfather: "It's nothing personal, Mal, it's just business."

Anyway, I walked away from the meeting completely shattered, enraged at the band's betrayal, and especially at myself, for not having gotten it in writing. I had counted on the friendship I'd forged with the guys in the band to somehow overcome their ambition.

How naive can you get?

I guess they figured I would take it lying down, turn the other cheek, and go away. Instead, I got on the phone to New York.

So they had R.E.M.'s lawyer, and he was telling them to blow me off? So I hired the guy who'd represented Scat Records when Guided By Voices signed with Matador, and he assured me that I'd get paid. Maybe not the $50,000 I might have made had I done the paperwork beforehand, but probably about half of that. Cool, I figured, that's enough to keep us going in the right direction.

A couple of days later, Stephen D approached me, obviously very pissed off. "What are you trying to do to us?" he asked.

"All I want is what you agreed to."

"The Sub Pop deal might not happen now. I hope you're happy."

"No," I told him, "I'm not happy at all. This whole thing has left a bad taste in my mouth."

He walked away. A few days later, I sat down with Joe Pernice at Rooster's, a diner in Sunderland, Mass., to try to come to a resolution of the dilemma.

He started by offering ten grand. I turned it down.

He asked what I'd be willing to accept. I told him.

I should've asked higher, but I liked and respected the guy, especially his talent. The guy's a fucking genius. And an excellent negotiator.

He said we should meet in the middle. I stupidly accepted.

We shook hands, for the last time.

My lawyer ended up taking almost a third of the payout, leaving me with enough money to make a couple of full-lengths and a 7-inch or two. Unfortunately, back when I was expecting 50 grand, I committed to a some records that ended up selling less than zero, so that money was already lost, so to speak.

CH1006: SPORE/QUEER: Phuko & Flanista Split LP

This split LP took a while to actually come out, so despite the matrix number, it actually was released months after CH1007 and CH1008, by which time both Spore and Queer were in their decline phase, or already broken up, and past their peak as commercially viable indie rock bands.

Or so the dismal sales of this record would indicate.

Not that there wasn't some good stuff to be found on it, including Queer's cover of "Hot Child in the City" and the two bands covering each other's songs, but I was stuck with boxes and boxes of unsold Phuko & Flanista LPs that ended up in the local landfill after the label went under. But I'm getting way ahead of myself.

In Part Four of The Chunk Records Story, Mal gets married, gets fired, and goes broke. Featuring a bold last volley of releases by Guided by Voices, New Radiant Storm King, The Figgs, Drunk Stuntmen, Tag Sale, The Veronica Cartwrights, Ray Mason Band, The Coopers, Hamlet Idiot and Flycatcher.