Starkweather Reunite (But Not Really)

Last Friday, the original trio of Starkweather -- Doormat, Jay Matuschka, and Pius Panzram -- met up in Beautiful Downtown Oshawa to drink, be merry, hang out for the first time in about 16 years (!?), and speak with author Nick Martino.

To mark the occasion, this crappy photograph (L-R Jay, Pius, Doormat):

Starkweather on Buller's Variety

Back in August of 1994, I became aware that there was a Rogers local access Cable 10 show in Oshawa called "Buller's Variety" booking local bands to perform. Starkweather* was of course very interested in the idea.

I called Ben Rotterman, the guy in charge, and he agreed to have us on, saying we'd be playing one song ("preferably unplugged. No swearing, and no acting like a schmuck") followed by a short interview with two members of the band. I asked if the whole band could be present for the interview, but he said the set wouldn't allow it.

The night of the taping, we had a short practise before making our way to the Rogers studio. I'd initially wanted to play our newest tune, "Teenage Sicko", but we decided to go with either "The Bushwhack" or "Aluminum Baseball Bat" and "High Octane Death". When we arrived at the studio however, they told us they wanted up to five minutes of music, so ultimately we wound up playing both "The Bushwhack" and "Aluminum Baseball Bat".

One song was about oral sex and the other featured the word fuck, but we hoped no one would notice (and no one did).  I tried not to act like a schmuck. Jay Matuschka and I were interviewed.

After we finished recording, we emphasized that we didn't want effects such as Shadwell's Jacket had had the previous week; Ben Rotterman showed us a whole bunch of possibilities, and we decided to go with grainy black and white with a slight strobe and some fake hair on the lens for that old timey look.

What follows is the two songs, recorded at the time on a VCR. The interview is missing, which is just as well.



* later changed to The Starkweather Fix

The Starkweather Fix on SoundCloud!

Another late account with a popular web service, another blog post. This time the service is Soundcloud and the post is to let you know I finally joined, and have uploaded much of what I'd previously made available as (none too reliable) mp3s on this blog, namely unreleased recordings by my first band, The Starkweather Fix. Circa 94-97.


Wig out.

Panzram's Ghost & Zine Dream 4!

This past weekend was the rare one in which I actually went out and did something worth writing about here - to wit, as you may have ascertained from the title, attending the Panzram's Ghost (and Metz and Holy Mount) show at Oshawa's venerable Atria Saturday night; also, the fourth Zine Dream festival of zines, art, and music the following afternoon at Toronto's Tranzac club.


I can be a remarkably lazy person.

One way in which this vice of mine manifests itself is by often waiting to go to a show until three or more bands I'm interested in are all playing on the same bill. Tonight was just such a lucky occasion: 1. infectious slow'n'low trio Holy Mount, whose new "We Fell From The Sky" record has been on frequent rotation in my place of residence; 2. the mighty Metz, who I've wanted to see for a long time, and whose stellar reputation precedes them (people whose tastes I respect had told me they were one of the best bands around); and finally, 3. the one and only Panzram's Ghost, a band with whom I have a 'special relationship', and who I'm always happy to see. 


I had to drive a fair ways to get to the Atria, and opener Holy Mount had already started when I came in. Drat. I did see most of their set though, I think, including the title track off the new record, which is my current fave. These are songs that would sound great with just a voice and acoustic guitar alone - actual good tunes IOW - but, played heavy as hell by Holy Mount, they rock in extended fashion with solid head-bobbing grooves, sweet solos, and psychedelic FX.



Speaking of FX, how many effects pedals do Metz have? And how bad a segueway was that?

Another LOUD & heavy trio, Metz blew me away with apparent ease. They earned every bit of the praise I've been hearing, having genuinely created their own kind of heavy sound and putting it across as powerfully as can be imagined. In my personal musical pyramid of greatness, Jimi Hendrix is pretty much at the tip top, and Metz evoke a sensation I can only compare to the Master himself; their music is actually transcendental (not said lightly). I really look forward to seeing Metz again soon, and to hearing their debut full-length (coming fairly soonish).




Panzram's Ghost are a long-running cover band made up of Clayton, Willie and Matt from Anagram, as well as Andrew from Quest For Fire; they mostly play songs from the 1993 Starkweather tape "This Band Has Seconds To Live", but their repertoire has expanded to include tunes by GG Allin, The Pack, and The Dicks. This was their first show since the last time they played the Atria two years ago.


I have to be perfectly honest and confess I get a kick out of seeing Panzram's Ghost play songs I used to do. I would imagine that gratification can't be too surprising? What might surprise you though is the unique vantage point I have while hearing these songs now that I don't have to be facing the audience onstage singing them; in other words, I can sit back and relax, revel in my anonymity, and ogle women's butts in tight summer shorts, watching them bounce around to stuff I wrote! A point of view I never had before. So nice.

I can surreptitiously dig that scrub sitting at the bar, slowly getting into "Aluminum Baseball Bat". Check out people nodding their heads to "I've Got Fangs" or see them moshing to the band's titular theme. It's fun. It feeds my poor, starving ego, and feels more than a bit perverse (or, as Matt put it to me at the Dirt Picnic, "awkward"). And I get to be so lazy while it's all going on, almost like being a ghost at your own funeral! I hope PG never stop playing shows, I really do…

I asked the guys to pose onstage for a quick pic, seeing as how they'd played in near-darkness. To my surprise, they happily acquiesced. So here are perhaps the only 'band pictures' you'll ever see of Panzram's Ghost --



When the show was over, it was about 1:30am. I waked down King Street, past Oshawa's most outsized dance club The Big Sexy - with its usual stretch limo out front, drunken couples arguing, and young ladies in tight dresses huddled together with cellphones in hand. Just past the club, I was amused to see a wig (or part of a wig, anyways) lying on the street corner. Yes, somebody actually left their weave out on the sidewalk in the rain.


A catfight? A ménage à trois gone wrong? Saturday night in downtown Oshawa.


The next day I got up earlier than I'd have liked (ears still ringing from the night before) to attend Zine Dream 4 at Toronto's Tranzac. I was so overwhelmed by all the cool stuff on display that I forget to take any crappy pictures - you'll just have to imagine lots of awesome zines, prints, records, shirts, and comics…


I ran into a bunch of folks I hadn't seen in awhile, including my very good friend Davis Weir, there selling his excellent anthology Everything Elevator, a new zine of prints, and a new line of limited-edition cassettes under the label name of Trouble Door. I mention these because, well… I'm on two of them.

My own Sleazy Meanz has its first honest-to-goodness release - "Pornography God Man" (a plunderphonic loops-type thing put together last year); and Shar Pei, a longtime musical collaboration between Davis & I, also has its first actual release - 1997's "Urusai Kusai". The other two Trouble Door cassettes are: "Juntök", the latest effort by Davis' solo project Skulleraser, and "Space Waste", a 2001 record by Dumbodian (another Davis collaboration, this time with Erik from Whitby's The Cleavers).


I grabbed all four tapes, plus Davis' new zine, as well as other stuff from Lorenz Peters, Marc Bell, and Ayal Senior (two CDs from Kevin Hainey's Inyrdisk). That hot new BBW-themed zine Thickness? Grabbed one of those -- and a really excellent triple 3" CD comp called "Songs of Toronto" put out by Kevin Crump's Wintage Records. I had hoped to see elusive Dream Zine organizer Jesjit Gill (previously mentioned here on the blog) but he remained elusive so… Hi, Jesjit!

Is it OK to reveal here that Jesjit did the awesome artwork for No No Zero's forthcoming record? I hope so.

The Starkweather Fix's Turn For Videos!

So I have continued using iMovie to (fairly quickly) create 'videos' for Youtube, this time for a couple of tunes by my first band, The Starkweather Fix. First off, I tackled "Quickie" which, being all of ten seconds long, was not so challenging; a few pics of PG kneetremblin' action going down, a couple of band pics, and we're off to the races.


Next I tried that new mix of "Wet Blanket" that Neeler Peeler did last year on his Missing Tapes site. This track was a good minute and a half and I was trying to use all band-related pics - could I make it work? Well... I could've used more pics, no doubt about it, but a bit of repetition at the end is no big deal, I figure.



Hope you enjoy. I'll likely be adding some bands I dig in the coming days (I have a couple of White Flame tracks up already) so check back at my account. Who knows what we'll see posted?

***MORE!!!***

Video for "Tourniquet", a song played only once, improvised live at the Different Drum Cafe in Oshawa, March 31, 1996

More Missing Tapes From The Starkweather Fix!

Just in time for Christmas, here's the first four tracks posted at The Missing Tapes - a collection of previously unheard songs (or previously unheard recordings of older songs) from the first real band I was in, The Starkweather Fix.

These songs are: "Can't Find My Mind" (a cover of The Cramps tune), "My Body Is An Eyesore", "Sonic Youth Bootlegs", and finally, perennial crowd favourite "Wet Blanket" (with the later 'big ending').

The Starkweather Fix - The Missing Tapes (first four songs)

If you like what you hear, leave comments at the site and needle Neeler Peeler to post more. I can only nag so much, myself.

The Starkweather Fix Got The Cramps!

I recently gave my brother a bunch of old ADAT and DAT tapes he was interested in transferring to digital - these were mostly of our old band The Starkweather Fix (I sang, Neeler Peeler played bass), and a lot of those were songs we'd recorded with Andy Owen in Oshawa back in the mid-1990s.

Andy had a lot of new gear and agreed to record the band for free in order to get some experience using it: in addition to recording our sole CD What The Swedish Butler Heard, he also recorded us playing quite a few songs we'd already released on our sole cassette This Band Has Seconds To Live, as well as enough unused material for the CD to make another album (we'd wanted WTSBH to be a double-CD but we didn't have the money to make such a beast).

Neeler Peeler has today unveiled a site of his own design called Starkweather: The Missing Tapes. On this site, he pledges, "a series of never-before-heard mixes that will be released over the coming months" (he's a busy guy so cut him some slack). The first of the released mixes is "Can't Find My Mind", a cover of The Cramps tune off their Psychedelic Jungle album (probably my fave). We had recorded the song for This Band Has Seconds To Live, but this is a few years after that. I like the bass sound on this recording, the heavy feel, and how it turned out in general.

The Starkweather Fix - Can't Find My Mind

I'd like to send this out to Dawn McLeod b/c it was always a song of ours she particularly liked. Band pic above is by Mark Laking.

The Starkweather Fix - Majestic Burning Bush!

Here's a song The Starkweather Fix recorded sometime after What The Swedish Butler Heard came out that has until now never been released in any way, shape or form. We played it live though, so it may ring a bell if you saw us playing shows.

The Starkweather Fix - Majestic Burning Bush

Band-wise, this is Fucker Bob on guitar, Neeler Peeler on bass, Jay Matuschka on the drums, and me yowling away. What am I yowling?

Queen Pussy's on the prowl
burning for a man
blow a napalm kiss
sizzle in the pan

crushing under heel
their dead sex deal
crushing under heel

all this empty air
is gonna fry in fire
and your majestic burning bush
made childhood a liar

the tables turn
the very air will burn
the tables turn

blazing breasts
hot hips
suck on sexy sauna scent
between her steamy lips

every day this old world
burns away a little girl
every day this old world

humidity
stifling
hard to breathe
but you'll never leave

cauterizing flames
are the heat you feel
and this majestic burning bush
has the power to heal

Starkweather Fix Live in 95!

This took me by surprise - someone called theemadmullet recently uploaded footage to Youtube of The Starkweather Fix playing "Mutant Cock Rock" at Toronto's El Mocambo, way back in 1995. The show was Hempfest, and DV8 and Guitar Army were also on the bill.

Aside from yours truly, we see Jay Matuschka on the traps, Neeler Peeler playing the bass, and Dusty Bible on the lead guitar (pulling double duty this eve as he was also playing bass in Guitar Army). Neeler's playing Dusty's bass here in fact.

If you have any footage of The Starkweather Fix, I'd love to see it. Write me at cheekycheese [at] gmail [dot com]. Thanks to theemadmullet.

Dusty Bible Does The Starkweather Fix!

I have spoken of the Nottingham (by way of Oshawa) Madman Dusty Bible here before, and told you of his having been in way-out bands like The Starkweather Fix or Designer Babies.

Like the wind, he is ever unpredictable, and the last few years have seen him move from a solo blues act (sometimes with fiddle accompaniment) billed simply as Dusty Bible, to psychedelic freakouts at Peter Gabriel's surreal Real World studios, to his latest musical expression -- "weird electro band" Din Din (from whose recent premier gig the photo above originates).

This post here is about a couple of choice Starkweather covers Dusty Bible recently sent my way - "Fucked Up" and "Shiveraltitude", both tracks originally appearing on The Starkweather Fix's sole CD, What The Swedish Butler Heard.


I'm pretty chuffed by both. I love the crazy noise breaks on "Fucked Up" and the insistent keyboard underneath the verses. Also how Dusty sings it in that wonderful, rich voice of his.

"Shiveraltitude", which The Starkweather Fix often opened our shows with, is here less the live powerhouse and more the slinky psycho cathouse, a great song for Dusty to lay down some tasty bluesy licks on. And some theremin at the tail of that beast for added spice.

Hope you dig 'em both!

Fucked Up
Shiveraltitude

The Starkweather Fix - What The Swedish Butler Heard

Here is the only CD my first real band put out. We started in December of 1991. In 1993 - then known as Starkweather - we put out a 90 minute tape called 'This Band Has Seconds To Live'. At some point we changed the band's name to The Starkweather Fix* and that is how it appears on our 1996 CD, released on N.A.R. (as was the subject of the last post, Ocosi).

I could go into way too much detail about this record, but I'm a terrible judge of what is relevant or even interesting; I'm just too close to the thing. So let me simply run down who's playing what, I'll stick up some reviews to provide a clearer picture afterward, and we'll leave it at that.

The band -- Lt. Fucker Bob guitar, Neeler Peeler bass, Jay Matuschka drums, and yours truly vocal microphone. Also Slim Tornado saxophone, Nervous Rex space guitar on 'Edin Na Zu', Randy Groin (who also recorded the record) x-tra guitar on 'Quickie', and finally Art Martian numerous cut-ups and mini-mixes throughout the record.

The Starkweather Fix -- WHAT THE SWEDISH BUTLER HEARD [Neg. Air Research]

In a page ripped straight from the Oblivians' Playbook o' Dirty Trix, these guys got my immediate attention with the CD cover: a gawgeous woman with truly enormous hooters and a big, black... microphone... sandwiched between said golden globes. So right away we know they are shameless. Flip the case over and check out the titles... "Miss September," "Fucked Up," "Girl With a Toke," "Eerie Psychosexual History," "Easy Lay," "Dirty Fuck"... ah, they must be a trashy garage band!

They also have mighty odd ideas about how trashy garage rock is played, which is actually more interesting that all the lowbrow scuzziness imparted from the CD graphics. For one thing, they appear to have two bass players; they also have a guitarist, although he doesn't seem to play very often -- i get this great image of them all bouncing around the practice room while the guitarist stands around smoking Lucky Strikes and every so often he goes, "Oh yeah, i got this here guitar strapped on, i guess maybe i should, like, PLAY something" -- at which point he generally rips off crazed runs like one of Buck Owens' stellar sidemen possessed by the Satan of Surf. They also have a sick fondness for connecting the short blasts o' primal steak with odd bits culled from bad science fiction flicks, which is truly hilarous. This last bit really turns into an art of its own on the last track "Edin Na Zu," in which -- after spending 24 tracks play stripped-down short blasts of trashy rock and roll, they reveal their REAL ambition: to be the poor man's drunken Yes, waffling on in a rambling, stoned jam for a time roughly equal to all the rest of the songs put together, interspersing said rambling with occasional deluded (and hilarious) quotes from more bad cinema. A stroke of sheer fucking genius if you ask me.

So let's see... highlights.... the lurching, death-metal-meets- rockabilly groove of "Fucked Up"; the jumpin' sock-hop groove whose wasted innocence is quickly soiled by the dirty lyrics in "Mutant Cock Rock" (which features a tremendously nifty guitar solo worthy o' Dick Dale); the jumpy bass throbbing of "Shiveraltitude," followed by the guitar wailing that pops up midway through, sounding like the wailing at the end of "Spirit in the Sky," only as done by someone drinking lots of high-tension booze. Then there's the eerie, ominous bass rumbling and creepy arppegiated guitar squealings of "Tourniquet"; the grinding roar and feedback of "Eerie Psychosexual History," which sounds like maybe they managed to set the amps on fire while playing; the crawling kingsnake shuffle of "Death Trip"; more Oblivians-style raving on "Too Late"; more time-warp sonic trashiness in "Bad Back".... Jeez, the whole disc is pretty damn suave, although they get a little to excited for their own good (not to mention listenability) on the hyperkinetic "look at how fast we can play!" numbers, which are thankfully few and far between. These drunken white trash scumlords are better at the slow groove thing....

It must be said: This would be excellent background music for taking over a hotel party on the thirteenth floor to drink all their beer, open the windows, and test the dynamics of Einstein's Theory of Gliding Hotel Furniture. Strictly BYOB, though... i get the feeling they don't share....

- The Moon Unit, fr. DEAD ANGEL #26 (ezine) 6/97

A few years back, four nice, polite, somewhat shy boys from Motown, Ont., (a.k.a. the 'Shwa) created a controversy within these very pages. Somehow, their decision to name their own homemade pop group after the infamous American serial killer Charles Starkweather managed to flood the eye office with mail. Immoral! Obscene! Outrageous! the letters cried. These four sweet lads were cast as "sick, perverted fuckers" by complete and utter strangers. As sad as this injustice is, it could have been a lot worse. Imagine if any one of these decency-patrol officers had actually heard Starkweather. Blood would surely have been shed.

The Starkweather Fix (name changed due to legal intimidation from similiarly monikered U.S. groups) throw down pure garage-punk raunch over the 73 minutes of their debut disc. There are plenty of two-chord odes to sickness and perversion such as "Mutant Cock Rock" and "Easy Lay", but those who take the narrow view and have written Starkweather off as mere purveyors of stupid, sloppily executed filth may be surprised. A lot of the material here shows a band that has evolved beyond that stage, as heard on their home-dubbed demo tape from 1994 (a Can-indie classic, in my incidental opinion). The addition of the tenor sax adds a wallop of free jazz/R&B chaos to the already lurching rave-ups on the opening track "Miss September" and surefire party hit "The Bushwhack".

The track that strikes me the most is "Apocalypse Revisted", which features Fucker Bob's eerie surf guitar over Neeler Peeler and Jay Matuschka's pulsing Velveteen rhythm. Pius Panzram's lyrics describe the internalization of the nuclear threat within our generation better than anyone else has (including Mr. Gen-X himself, Douglas Coupland). Observe: "Mushroom clouds are nostalgic to me/Paranoia doom all I hear or see/memories of WWIII to be". Nukes are no longer an immediate threat, but have become a latent, more insidious one.

The Starkweather Fix may be sick and twisted perverts, but they are also smart fuckers. And they are blessed with a sense of humor, of which no further illustration is required than the cover of this CD. The letter campaign begins now, good citizens.

- Jonathan Patrick, eye (Jan. 30, 1997).





Just in time for Valentine's Day, Durham Region porn pundits The Starkweather Fix ejaculate 73 minutes of lurid, lascivious libido that will offend just about everybody (more than once I found myself raising my hand to my mouth and saying, "oh my"). Debauchery prevails and sexual mores are of course obliterated, but what surprises me is t.s.f.'s refined musicality. Their rock-a-billy tunes are nastier, their blues tunes dirtier, and punk songs tighter. In addition, they even get experimental with some groovy stuff and other altogether weird shit. Still, the best way I can describe What The Swedish Butler Heard is the rendered sound of William Burroughs, Russ Meyer, David Chronenberg, and Ron Jeremy playing strip poker.

- Dylan Brisebois, The Gargoyle (Feb. 13, 1997).




It's rude, it's crude, it's lewd, it's the debut CD from the swamp bred and raunch fed Starkweather Fix. A bubbling blob of sex, surf and swing. It's called What The Swedish Butler Heard. It puts the dirty back in rock 'n' roll. It is sexual mutants dating dilinquent deviants. It's a date with yourself. It's David Lynch and Tim Burton in a trailerpark stripjoint. It's discovering your Dad's porno collection. It's Larry Flint Vs. Dick Dale, Henry Miller Vs. The Cramps. It's in and it's out...and back in again. It was known as Starkweather. The whipping boys of the Purple Toads and any number of 60s garage bands added to their moniker before they had to. It is Pius Panzram, Lt. Bob, Neeler Peeler and Jay Matushka finally after four years getting laid on disc. Their debut cassette from 1993 This Band Has Only Seconds To Live only hinted at what this band would become. In the interim Starkweather Fix have become a staple in the southern Ontario centrefold. They have gigged with Local Rabbits, Suckerpunch, Hanson Bros. and Nimrod. A total of five compilations feature their contributions and the band have enough studio outakes for a whole other album to be released in the near future. Starkweather Fix picked up $500 in a garage wars by playing fifteen songs in seventeen minutes. It's seventy three minutes, twenty five songs, the twenty fifth twenty five minutes long. All original, all new, one cover of co-locals The Brown's 'Sugar Goat', one ab-lib recorded live at the Different Drum coffee shop in downtown Oshawa. Slim Tornado, Art Martian, Nervous Rex and Randy Groin all contribute to the frenzied aural orgy. It's behind the bikeshed lyrics, unprintable song titles and controversial art. It's all in fun. It's sex-positive rock n' roll. It can be yours. It's at any record store that knows good rock n' roll. It is released on Negative Air Research Records, co-operated with producer and former Voodoo Chicken Andy Owen. But that's, as the man on Tales From The Riverbank would say, another story.

- Will McGuirk, The Woolly Toque E-Zine (March 1997).




Back in the infancy of rock'n'roll, Howlin' Wolf recorded "Evil (Is Going On)". Music has changed, punk was born, Charles Lester died (may he RIP), but now a new Chuck is here: the Starkweather Fix, and they're as evil as evil be. Formerly known as just Starkweather, the band started out as a garage band winning garage band contests by playing 15 songs in 17 minutes...or was that 17 in 15? If that wasn't fast enough, their first release was a lo-fi tape called This Band Has Seconds To Live. Besides being liars, these guys are the baddest lyrical perverts around. The sound is brooding punk and '50's dirt. Songs like "The Bushwhack", "Death Trip", "Easy Lay", "Dirty Fuck", and "Mutant Cock Rock" make Howard Stern look like the mama's boy he really is, and that's why I like this disc. It's heavy and fun, it makes me want to booze and dance, two chords really are enough, it scares my mother, they play faster than the Ramones, and the CD has tits on the cover.

- Chris B. Dunk, Exclaim (June 1997).

The Starkweather Fix - What The Swedish Butler Heard (1996)

*to avoid confusion with the US hardcore band Starkweather.

The Starkweather Fix @ The Star Club!

This is a scanned close-up off a contact sheet I found recently, which I believe was taken by Mr. Mark Laking. I probably could have cleaned the contact sheet better before I scanned it, but whatever. I think any dust/scratchiness just adds to it really.

Not sure what date this was. I suspect it may be a show known as Fuckfest, in which case it would be May 6 1994. Incidentally, my girlfriend at the time was the spicy hot number in the lower left corner. Me-ow.




The room we're in was the Eclipse Club on Simcoe Street in Oshawa, which was next door, connected to, and sister club to the Moon Room.

Mike Star, of Star Records fame, had been presenting shows for many years (and at various venues, such as the Orange Temple, seen below) by this point -- the banners in the back attest to the Eclipse taking its turn here as the Rock'Roll'N'Blues Star Club of our drunken memories.

My Body Is An Eyesore!

Oshawa's Last Night!

[UPDATE: MP3 at bottom of post!]

My good buddy D_W_ recently made me aware of his blog Everything Elevator; as I was perusing the archives there (full of awesome graphics), I came across the photographs above and asked if I could reprint them here. Mr. W_ generously agreed, and so here they is* - a couple of photos from the last time The Starkweather Fix ever played Oshawa, all the way back in July (18th) 1997.

The venue was one of the Polish Halls there (Banting? Olive? I can't remember), and it was quite the humdinger of an evening. Other than Ron the soundman, we were probably the oldest people there - the audience was all teenagers, pretty much. Crazy teens, wild energies, everybody into it. I remember most of the crowd being on acid. I know I was.

Anyways, in these photos we've got yours truly on the mike, and Mr. Dusty Bible on the guitar (also playing bass in Guitar Army). Dusty, for those of you who might not know, later moved to Nottingham, England, and was in a wicked crazy band called The Designer Babies. Apparently, he is now doing solo blues shows. I miss this guy something awful, he was great.

The drummer in the first shot is Mr. Jay Matuschka, who sadly perished while shooting the world's first combination surgery-porn film. He is missed. No, I'm just kidding, he's still with us. In the second shot here, he is replaced on the traps by Mr. D_W_ himself, who you'll recall from the first paragraph. I'll let you try and figure out what's going on here.

Billed as "Oshawa's Last Night", with a poster featuring then-Mayor Nancy Diamond that got some people upset, the show featured a bill for the ages: the droney Malediction (with Dusty's brother Paul, later of Shwa superstars Cuff The Duke), The Cleavers (by this point a trio, with Tex Ranger on bass and vocals), The Void (featuring Matt Mason, later of local legends Anagram), EOF (who I regret I can't say anything about, I think I was washing my dick while they were on, don't ask), The Starkweather Fix, and, headlining as I recall, the great Guitar Army (whose last show this was, I believe).

*D_W_ says the photos may have come from Julie, so thanks to Julie if this is so. Or even if it is not.

Update: I realised after I posted these pics that I actually have audio for the end of Starkweather's set that night. So here it is -- "Barrel of Monkeys", an improvised jam. That rowdy you can hear whooping it up at the end by the way is none other than Mr. Tex Ranger himself.

Another Update: More pictures from the night! Guitar Army! Commander Freakout Drum Solo! The Cleavers!

The Starkweather Fix does Mai Lin!

Speaking of Mai Lin, here's an unreleased song my old band The Starkweather Fix did that is dedicated to the lady herself.

According to what I have written down, this was recorded way back on August 11th 1996 at Secret Swamp Studios in Oshawa (Jay's parent's basement), live straight to tape via 8-channel mixer. Unfortunately this is not the greatest copy of the tune, but it's all I have available at the moment. Thanks to Derek for the band photo.

I'm gonna send this out to Mr. Jay Matuschka as well as everybody who came out to yesterday's festivities at the Shwaltz. I'm really bummed I couldn't stick around for Anagram's set at The Atria.

Hope you enjoy --

Mai Lin

Mai Lin
mistress of sin
the gates of ecstasy are hers
and I want in

an Asian beauty
with long black hair
please pardon me
if I tend to stare (at)

Mai Lin (3x)

sucks dick
like I've never seen
my balls empty
when her movies are screened

a sense of humour
and that's high on my list
she's one porno star
I really miss (yaw)

Mai Lin (3x)