MASQUE OPERA!

Masque Opera - Demo CD + Comp Track
(Streaming link at the bottom of the post, Untitled comp track is download only for the time being)
 
Masque Opera from Redondo Beach, CA, blew me away from the first time I saw them; they were like nothing I had ever seen or heard.  Two guys, one enormous sound system, and an odd bunch of electronic devices that I never really wrapped my head around.  They were LOUD, dark, and intense.  I interviewed Freddy Ruppert.

Freddy started going to shows early on at local places like Frogs, the Wolves' Den and TJ Charlyz.  
Freddy:

"I went to shows at all the local places. When I was going to those shows I wasn't in any band or playing any music. But I would always go to Deviates shows and a lot of the 'south bay punk' shows every weekend. Then I started jamming with a friend on guitar and another friend on bass and then from there started doing bands.  When I got a bit older and was in high school I started to go to shows at the old Koo's in Santa Ana and the PCH club and the Smell, Headline Records, etc. I remember being super excited about a lot of shows, like Dystopia, The Blood Brothers, Jerome's Dream, Le Shok."

It was in the middle of this that he met Josh Stewart, while attending Redondo Union High School.
Freddy:

"I guess I must have been in 10th grade and he was in 9th. We became friends and started hanging out over a mutual love of crust punk and political and animal rights ideals. We shared general interests, and Josh got I into a lot of stuff I had no idea about at the time, as well as into DIY ethics."  

Before forming Masque Opera, the two had been in a handful of bands together, ranging from crust punk to hardcore, eventually evolving a more electronic and gothic sound in Velvet Noose, the immediate predecessor to Masque Opera.
Freddy:

"Josh and I were in Agon. It was a crust punk band, we released one demo tape and that was it. Sex Shoppe was myself on vocals, Bobby Shank on guitar, Chace Richwine on drums, Josh Stewart on bass, and Jordan Jakubowski on guitar. We released one demo tape and played a handful of shows including Koos, The Smell, a bunch of places in the south bay, and Headline Records.  After Sex Shoppe came briefly Velvet Noose, a goth band that Josh and I briefly did, where it was just myself on guitar and vocals and Josh on bass and we had a drum machine for the beats. We did one show. Then came Masque Opera because we switched interest to synths, drum machines, electronics. "

Keeping the dark gothic sensibility of Velvet Noose and transitioning to a wholly electronic sound set Masque Opera vastly apart from bands in the south bay, and even most of what was going on in the LA scene generally.
Freddy:

"When I got into electronic music, Josh and I were just listening to a lot of Skinny Puppy. So it sort of inspired us to ditch the guitars and start buying synths and drum machines and see what we could piece together. We had no idea what we were doing just that we wanted to make stuff. The only other band in L.A. around the time of doing Masque Opera that I felt like we fit with was Babyland. We were constantly going to all the Babyland gigs, gave them a demo CDR and then started to play shows together. "

The equipment the band used evolved over the course of playing together, but was anchored down by their incredibly loud, human-sized P.A. speakers.
Freddy:

"It was a bit of a pain in that we bought our own huge P.A. system because most of the places didn't have a good enough sound system to be as loud as we wanted to be. So we had to carry that fucking thing around everywhere, two huge tower speakers and a big power amp and a mixer. Other than that, in the beginning we had a boss drum machine, some electribe samplers, a yamaha cs2x synth, and a yamaha dx7 synth. After that, we started to get into computer music and Josh gradually introduced a laptop."

Despite being an odd fit, Masque Opera played frequently around the south bay, LA, and beyond.  In early 2003, however, Josh started school at the SF Art Institute, and because of that, and the fact that both he and Freddy were ready to move on creatively, the band came to an end.
Freddy:

"It basically ended because we sort of kind of got into different stuff and went different ways and maybe it sort of felt like we didn't have somewhere else to go with it."

Josh continued to make music getting deeply involved in the noise scene in LA at the time, with Moth Drakula, Ex Jesus and collaborating with many others.  Freddy continued to make music under his own name, as This Song Is A Mess, But So Am I, and as Former Ghosts, and now lives in the Czech Republic. Enjoy the Masque Opera demo!

Special thanks to Joey DeStefano for uploading the demo to youtube and scanning the artwork for me. 

FROM.!

Download: From. - Demo

(youtube link at the bottom of the post)

From. was an eclectic surf-influenced band from Redondo Beach, California.  Though short lived, they were instrumental in the development of the scene that most of the bands I have written about so far were a part of. I talked to drummer Sean Johnson and guitarist Daniel Woods.
Sean, Daniel, and bassist Dan McLeod had been playing in bands for years before coming together to form From.  Sean started playing drums at age 11, and was in his first band in the 6th grade.  One of his earliest was a ska band with Dan McLeod called Nasty Nate, a reference to the movie Half Baked.  He later replaced Matt Larrabee as drummer in the punk band Code 7 along with Tony Conte and Sean Loeffler.
Sean:

"In a weird way Sean Loeffler inspired me to pave my own way and book shows. He definitely hustled booking shows for us, and even though we were playing like the Whiskey pay-to-play stuff, that drive really inspired me to move on to the next level." 

After Code 7 broke up, Sean started playing with Daniel Woods.  Woods had begun playing guitar around 1996-7, around the same time that he was going to see local punk shows at the now defunct Wolves Den.
Daniel W:

"What got me wanting to play guitar were two things, Kurt Cobain, and I remember listening to All Along the Watchtower by Jimi Hendrix and I just couldn't believe that was a guitar, and I thought, 'that sounds really cool, I want to learn how to do that.'"

Their first performance together was in a "jokey 80's metal cover band" for their high school battle of the bands, but they quickly went in another direction.
Sean:

"I had always wanted to be in a straight up surf band, just a real simple surf group, so Daniel and I wrote this thing called Graveyard Stomp that we submitted to KROQ for some Halloween competition.  They never played it on the radio but it sort of got a bug up our butt to start writing music.  So we started writing simplistic surf music.  Then once McLeod decided to stay in the band with us we started getting a little more weird."

The first show as From. was in February of 2002, at the Knights of Columbus hall in Redondo Beach with Playground Warfare, Scarpochi, Fade Scene, and Odella.

They immediately stood out among other South Bay bands because of their unusual, eclectic, and sometimes nonsensical-seeming style.
Sean:

"Our influences were so vast… It started with surf and on the surface it was always surfish with Daniel's tone, and I like playing surf beats, but we started integrating our other influences like Frank Zappa, Mr Bungle, some of the jazz we were listening to at the time." 

Shortly after forming, they recorded their 6 song demo.
Sean:

"We recorded the demo in our high school band room.  I was working on recording stuff in high school and our band teacher let us spend the weekend in the band room, lock the door, be there and record it, so we just knocked it out in a weekend.  Our friend Dominique did the artwork, she did it on a scratch board.  On the top right there's a little head with glasses… that's her.  She did a really good job!"

From. continued to play shows regularly around the South Bay at venues like Sacred Grounds and Suzy's, as well as out of town in places like Arts in Action in Downtown LA.  In the summer of 2002, they went on a brief West Coast tour with Two Minute Hate.
During that same summer, From. got together with Jon Hylander of Two Minute Hate to record their album.
Sean:

Jon was learning to record stuff at that point and wanted to record us as practice, so we went ahead and recorded every song we had.  And that turned into "Copernicus".

Because of some difficulties with the pressing plant, however, From's debut album did not see the light of day while they were together as a band.
Sean:

"[Copernicus] didn't get released until a year later because the pressing plant I hired ripped me off.  I payed for it and then they went out of business.  I had to threaten to sue them… I had talked to a lawyer because I was calling them and calling them and no answer.  Then I had my dad pretend to be a lawyer and threaten to sue them, and slowly but surely we ended up getting the product.  Sort of my first foray into learning the shadiness of some of the music world."

Despite the problems releasing it, Sean looks back on the album fondly.
Sean: 

"I listen to [Copernicus] now, and in a way I think its some of the best stuff I've ever done.  There's no pretense."

 

By November 2002, From. was ready to call it quits. 
Daniel W:

"Dan McLeod decided that he didn't want to do it anymore.  He wanted to jam with some other guys.  I think he thought of it as a drag to have to practice all the time.  I think it was too much for him at the time.  Then he went to Humboldt.  That might have been part of it, knowing that he wanted to move up to Humboldt, he just didn't want to put in the effort anymore."

Sean and Daniel Woods quickly formed Vaudeville, a band that continues to play yearly to this day.  His time playing in the South Bay scene left a lasting impression on Sean.
Sean:

"There was this ethos where you have to think about the audience, you can't be greedy.  And that was the cool thing about growing up in the South Bay and being around punk bands and not really being in a punk band, just carrying that ethos throughout my life now.  Even now, if I book a show at say the Echo I don't want to charge $10, I just feel wrong doing it, even though its sort of the norm now.  Especially Two Minute Hate, I think you guys helped shaped that in me too, and were on the same wavelength.  I'm looking at this flyer that we made in San Francisco, and I remember actually making it in San Francisco.  It's all hand-written, it's that like cut-slips-of-paper-and-paste-them-on-other-pieces-of-paper type of flyer and... It's really fun, I really miss that stuff.  It was all hands on, you hand made your own demos, or 7"s, it sounds cliche "d.i.y." but you did do it yourself, and that was a cool thing.  And that's why I started Otik Records... I'm not going to try to get From. signed, let's just  put out an album.  For better or for worse, that's what I've been doing this whole time." 

Enjoy the demo below! From.'s album Copernicus can be streamed and downloaded here, courtesy of Otik Records.

The Flyer Artwork of Steven Hoffman

Steven Hoffman was a prolific back-of-the-classroom artist in high school, and when we needed artwork for flyers, he was always more than willing to provide it.  We would paste the show info onto his drawings and run off hundreds and hundreds of copies, taking liberal advantage of Office Depot's photocopier honor system, and put them everywhere we could think of. Enjoy!

THEE VINCENT BLACK SHADOW!

Download: Thee Vincent Black Shadow - Demo
(youtube link at the bottom of the post)

Thee Vincent Black Shadow started in late 2001 or early 2002.  Though short lived, playing fewer than a dozen shows in their on-and-off/college-schedule-determined existence, they recorded this fantastic eight song must hear demo along the way.  I talked with singer PJ Shakstad and guitarist Todd Amaral.

Along with PJ and Todd, the original lineup of VBS included bassist Greg Sidman, guitarist Amir Shoucri, and drummer Alex Tauber.
PJ:

I always talked to Amir when he was in Miyagi, and I used to sing for them at practices if Luke couldn't make it or something like that, and we had always talked about making a band.  Then when they all went off to college Miyagi broke up and Amir and I wanted to do something.

Alex left shortly after the band's first show at the Manhattan Beach teen center.
Todd:

"We had Alex Tauber for one show and Alex was like [laughter] 'Man I don't know what you you guys have been smoking, but this ain't for me, I'm going to go play some straight edge...' and Peter [Mackinnon]came and played drums... Pete was in high school, I think he was a freshman, and didn't know how to play drums."

Since Amir was in school at UC Berkeley, the band was really only able to get together over summers and holidays.  After an intermittent year together, VBS went to John-Paul Caballero's garage studio in Hermosa Beach to record their 8 song demo.
PJ:

It was a lot of fun! Down in JP's dungeon... It's weird, singing in a studio. At a show there's so much feeling in it.  In the studio it was just five dudes hanging around an Astrovan.  I think that Astrovan made an appearance. 

Todd:

We were hanging out in JP's van in the garage to kill time while PJ is singing Tonight, and someone honked the horn.  In Sicilian Death, when it breaks down... you can hear this creaky door open.  The way we recorded PJ's vocals on that was just through a 15 watt amp with a mic plugged in, and then mic'ed that.  It gives it a little bit of distortion.   That's all I really remember from that, It was a long day.

PJ always had an intense approach to performing, and his enthusiasm, his rock and roll nihilism, got to be a little too much for the others.
PJ:

"I feel like a lot of people break down music differently, and some people analyze it and for some people… there's just a lot more to it.  For me its always been something to kinda run into a wall to.  I think that ended up fueling some creative differences where the rest of the band wanted to grow and I wanted to keep doing the same thing."

Todd:

"We played a show at Sacred Grounds, we had a good show.  We were drunk and afterwards PJ tossed open a trash can, opened it up and started throwing things everywhere.  It pissed off the people at Sacred, which was pretty easy to do.  It was rock and roll, man.  We were 19, we were getting drunk, we were playing rock and roll, things were good.  Six months later we played a show up in Berkeley or Oakland, some place called music.com or livemusic.com.  After that one, PJ decided to climb up the venue building, and then onto the building next to it, and from there up on to a billboard.  Greg and Amir were... not having it."

PJ:

"I always thought that playing a show and practicing was one of the best forms of expression.  For most of my life, and probably even still to this day, I don't feel comfortable expressing myself in a bunch of ways.  Music was one of the only ways where I was comfortable doing it.  There are a lot of things where I was an idiot, but I felt comfortable doing it, and it was fun.  There were some things that I did that were over the top, stupid, but it was just part of... everything, and it ended up coming off alright.  Nobody got hurt and nobody died, which was probably because of luck more than anything else.  I've always thought music was a vehicle for emotion, to get things off your chest, and playing it was the best way and most comfortable way I've been able to do that."

After parting ways with PJ, the band tried briefly to go on without him, spreading singing duties to the remaining members.
Todd:

"We had these egos, we thought 'We don't need him, we can sing.' It was horrible, and that was it."

Enjoy the demo, truly one of my favorites from that era.  Having only recently reacquired it myself, I can truly say that it has only gotten better with time.

Special thanks to Hayley Fox for taking the photos, and to Gabe Abaud for the saving/sending the SG flyer.

THE RED ONIONS!

Download: The Red Onions - Demo
Download: The Red Onions - Live Wire b/w Sexy Thang
(youtube links at the bottom of the post)

The Red Onions from Gardena, CA screamed onto the South Bay music scene in 2002, instantly establishing themselves as one of the most exciting live bands in the area.  I spoke with drummer Jorge Gutierrez to get their story.

The Red Onions were Jorge, singer Paul Gonzales, bassist Hugo Salgado, and guitarist Kevin Gonzalez.
Jorge:

Hugo’s my cousin so I’ve known him all my life; Paul, Kevin, and I met in high school. I used to play music with Kevin in his friend’s garage; later on I started writing my own songs with Paul and decided to start a band. We were barely starting to go out to check out bands around that time; we used to go see II Minute Hate, which became Rock Goggle Fantasy, and Neon King Kong. Later we discovered other cool South Bay bands like The Rolling Blackouts.

Though they all had some experience mucking around a little in the garage, The Red Onions was the first band that any of them had been in, a surprising fact considering how fully-formed, confident, and outrageously energetic their shows were from the very beginning. 
Jorge:

Paul’s craziness was there from day one. He jumped onto my drums at our very first practice! He was bouncing around the garage like a madman! We all thought it was funny and awesome. Paul enabled me to let go of my inhibitions and just have fun.

Paul was so wild and fearless, but such a diminutive guy that even when he threw himself recklessly into the audience no one got hurt and everyone had a great time.  As for their sound, each member came to the band with musical tastes that were all over the place, and it all came together in the raucous, frenetically hybridized, music they made as a group.
Jorge:

Around that time, Kevin was listening to a lot of 60’s psych. Paul was listening to a lot of punk, Hugo was into Metal, and I was obsessed with soul and funk. When we rehearsed I guess it all came out.

From the very beginning they were eager to get their first demo into everyone's hands, a spray painted CD-R that came in a black paper sleeve held together with painter's tape.
Jorge:

The demo was actually recorded in 2001-2002 before the band even existed. I recorded all the instruments and vocals myself in my bedroom and later presented it to the guys to see if they wanted to start a band. Paul later recorded over my vocals then put it on cd-r and that’s it. 

The Onions were quick to set their sights out of the South Bay, and they were, almost from the very start, playing shows with a lot of the incredible LA bands from that era.
Jorge:

We had only one show under our belt but and our friend Diana helped us book a show at Daisy’s Vintage Clothing store in Uptown Whittier. We loved the Fuse! and asked them to play with us, they did and after that we started opening shows for them. I also gave my demo to the Flash Express then started doing shows with them. Then the Juvee started and we started playing shows there.


By 2003 they had befriended Gabe Hart, then of the Starvations, now of Jail Weddings, and he agreed to put out their first single on his Revenge Records label.
Jorge:

We recorded two songs on my 8-track (the same one where I recorded my shitty demo) and we decided to release it as a 7”. I asked Gabe if he would put it out and said he had no money so we paid for everything and he just put his seal of approval on it. 

The Live Wire b/w Sexy Thang single was recorded in Kevin's garage in Lomita, CA.  The funky, Stooges-y energy of the bands sound shines through much more than on the demo, and is enhanced by a Funhouse-worthy sax solo recorded by Larry Sanchez.

The Red Onions went on to release two more 7"s and a CDEP, all of which are worth tracking down.  Jorge now plays in The Savage Gospel.  Paul plays in White Murder and Death Hymn #9.  Kevin plays in Feral Kizzy. Enjoy the Demo and the 7" and some parting words from Jorge
Jorge:

A big thanks to all the South Bay bands we played with during our existence and a very special thanks to all the kids who came out and had fun with us! SOUTH BAY IN THE HOUSE! 

FOOT FOOT!

Download: Foot Foot - Demo

(youtube link at the bottom of the page)

The core of Foot Foot was sisters Robin and Carrie Dietz, heiresses to the Manhattan Beach Dietz Brothers Music dynasty.  I talked to Carrie to get their story.

Foot Foot started in 2002.  By the end of that year they had recorded the seven songs that make up their first demo in the back room of their parents' house.
Carrie:

"I was a freshmen in high school and Robin was finishing up college. Our charming cousin Pat [Fleck] played on the demo along with some other friends.
Some of the best foot foot songs are on the demo. I remember that you (Frank) took a liking to Shasta Heavy! Since then that songs has always reminded us of you. Robin wrote Shasta Heavy about Geek Love. I really love All Heat and No Light. I played slide with this weird pipe that was cut down the middle. Pat played a bunch of different instruments throughout the demo including this ratchet contraption built out of a fish washboard, copper bells, and a hi-hat stand."

I had supposed all these years that the name Foot Foot was a reference to the song "My Pal Foot Foot" by The Shaggs, a much more unusual and infinitely less competent, though charmingly so, all-sister group from the sixties.  Turns out I was wrong.
Carrie:

"Foot Foot is named after this cat of Patrick's, who was named after Gummo.  Pat's cat had these janky paws that each had ten toes.  RIP you mangled little buddy."

One of my favorite aspects of Foot Foot was the loving arts-and-craftsy way they approached the packaging on their CDR demo and early merch.

Carrie:

"Rob and I sewed all of the paper demo jackets and block printed the song titles on the back.We broke two sewing machines along the way and a computer from burning all the discs, none of which belonged to us. I tea-dyed a bunch of our band shirts and did some real shitty embroidery on them."

Recording the demo was just the beginning of Foot Foot's long on-and-off history, which may be due for a revival.
Carrie:

"We practiced all the time in our backyard and started playing shows during the summer of 2003. We figured we needed eleven songs and once we got them we started playing shows. Our first shows ranged from The Smell to our cousin's grad party.
Foot Foot morphed into many different combinations over the years to follow, all of which were fucking great. There are rumors flying around promising a resurgence of Foot Foot mania Summer 2015." 

So there you have it! Keep an eye out for upcoming Foot Foot shows! Special thanks to Joey DeStefano for saving and scanning the cover art for me.  Enjoy!

ANIMAL MANNEQUIN!

Download: Animal Mannequin - Demo+

(Streaming link at the bottom of the post)

As is the case with so many bands, Animal Mannequin existed in garages with a handful of transitional lineups for a while before they made a public debut.  I spoke with singer/guitarist Rhea Lewitzki, bassist Jasmine Watson, and drummer Jeff Enzor to get their story, or however much of it they could remember.

Rhea started Animal Mannequin in San Pedro, CA in 2002 or 2003, shortly after she finished high school.  Prior to AM she had a project called I Artichoke You, about which she didn't have anything interesting [or, I suspect, non-embarrassing] to say.  She met Jasmine through a mutual friend.   

Jasmine:

"I had never played bass in a band before but had been learning on my own; learning songs by Flux of Pink Indians, Joy Division, The Cure...  I went to Rhea’s house in San Pedro to try out. The garage had been converted into a very cute living room/studio space. I remember playing part of Lovesong by The Cure, learning a couple Animal Mannequin songs and being asked to be in the band"

The first solid lineup of Animal Mannequin was Rhea, Jasmine, Andrew Monzon on keyboard, and Pete Mackinnon on drums.  Just before their first show Pete was in a pretty serious car accident.

  

Jasmine:

"A lady making a right onto PCH clipped the back of his truck as she accelerated onto the major street and fish tailed his truck ultimately causing it to flip until he landed upside down on top of some newspaper vestibules. He wasn’t wearing a seatbelt and somehow was not ejected from his truck. He just kind of pressed himself into the seat as the truck flipped fully aware of what was happening the whole time. He was surprisingly mostly unharmed, just understandably sore from what I remember. We were very psyched that our friend made it out alive and mostly uninjured but we were unsure if he’d be able to play our show. So Rhea and I got together and practiced playing bass drum or high hat along with our guitars. We practiced until we felt confident we could play the show like that and it was fun learning our songs this way but thankfully in the end Pete was well enough to play."

Their first show was at Sacred Grounds, a coffee shop on the corner of 6th and Pacific in San Pedro that held all ages shows several nights a week for years, a true rarity at the time.  A place where young musicians and music heads could meet and perform, Sacred Grounds was possibly the most important venue for nascent scenesters in the South Bay area while it was around.

Rhea:

"That was a big deal for me. Growing up in San Pedro it was something I looked up to doing, which is kind of silly now, but, at 17 it seemed cool."

This is when I was introduced to the band, and they quickly made an impression.  Rhea, waifish and painfully shy, hiding behind over-sized flower petals taped to her microphone while she sang in a surprisingly well tuned and powerful voice; Jasmine always beaming as if there was nothing she would rather be doing; Pete smashing on the drums, overflowing with incorrigible enthusiasm; they were always a blast.  They played a handful of what Rhea lovingly recalls as "dirty beach punk" shows, including at Sacred Grounds, Naja's in Redondo Beach and the now local-legendary demolition party at Tom Dunbabin's apartment in Hermosa Beach.

Jasmine:

"Tom was moving out of his apartment because the building was to be torn down. Instead of carpet his floor was covered in a thick, beachy layer of sand. We crammed into the tiny living room and everyone went nuts. I’ve seen pictures from that show and so many people are smiling, moving, dancing and jumping off of things."

Pete left the band around 2004 to join the thrashy hardcore band Find Him and Kill Him in San Diego.  He was replaced by Jeff Enzor, who was suggested to the band by mutual friend Gabe Aubad.

Jeff:

"He asked me and I was reluctant because 'I wasn't really into punk' but I liked the demo I heard enough to give it a shot."

With a new drummer, Animal Mannequin finally got into the studio.  Over the course of a few days they recorded their debut EP/Demo at Pat Enzor's home studio in Torrance, CA. Larry Sanchez played saxophone on Fake Kids, and Gabe helped out with the hand claps.

Rhea:

"I had to do all my vocals in a closet two rooms away from the studio, partially for acoustics, and partially because I hated people watching me sing"

Animal Mannequin continued to play shows all over the Los Angeles area.  Some time in the summer of 2005, the band fizzled out.  Their last two shows were acoustic sets, one of which was captured on tape and will be the subject of a future post.  Members went their separate ways, but the experience left its mark on them.

Jasmine:

"It’s funny going back and remembering all this. Animal Mannequin was one of the first bands I was in and I think it informed a lot of my involvement in music even to this day. Booking shows, playing shows, writing songs, the beginning of my love for Acoustic Bass Amps, Rhea pushing me to improve my parts and not play the same thing four times... In general, just having a higher level of involvement in music and the local punk community and really enjoying that."

Jeff:

"In general it was one of the funnest bands I ever played in, for sure. Good vibes" 

Rhea later played in the band Big Death and currently plays bass in Workshop with yours truly. Jasmine now lives in the SF Bay area and has played in Neo Cons, Neighborhood Brats, Fractures, and Girl-illa Biscuits. She currently plays in No Babies, tørsö, Everybody Row, Composite, and Anopheli. Pete continues "constantly sexing his drums"[Rhea] and has played in countless bands with everyone you know. Jeff has also played with The Imperial Way, Dios, Big Death, and Merry Christmas and currently drums in Joyce Manor. Special thanks to Christian for uploading the AM Demo to youtube!