From Ever Since

July 23rd at the EARL, Noot d' Noot unleashes its 3rd album in 2 years, "From Ever Since." Engineered by Ed Rawls on 2" reels at The Living Room, the record is packed with many staples from the band's live sets such as "Balm Yard" and "Jack Move." Working in The Living Room allowed for a more focused studio effort, with all tracking being done between Feb 20-26th, Apr 1-7, and some other lost dates throughout April, with mixing taking place on May 9th-13, 17th and 18th 2010.

List Of Aux Sends:

1. Plate

2. Echoplex

3. RE-101

4. Leslie

5. Fairchild Spring Reverb

6. RE-201

7. Memory Man

8. Moog Analog Delay/Moog Freq Box/ Moog Low Pass Filter/ Mutron Phasor

Track Listing:

1. From Ever Since (Prologue)

2. Balm Yard

3. Take It Off

4. Light As A Feather

5. Jack Move

6. Know That Feelin'

Side 2

1. Super Double Buzz

2. The Tribes Hatchet

3. The Traveller

4. Machete

5. A Little Goes A Long Way

Homicidal Regicidal

If you ever wondered about the music James Joyce and I, along with Gray Kiser and Greg King made in 1996, Beyond Failure is now featuring a detailed eyewitness account. An excerpt from Gray's chapter below:

My first show with the band was on New Years Eve at the I Defy house playing with a bunch of other bands who I don't remember, but Inkwell headlined, and there seemed to be lots of folks from Florida there, so maybe Reversal Of Man played or something. Didn't matter. That show marked a decided shift for the band, as we would now file the music down to a dull, blunt instrument of assault. The fast parts were to be more intense, the heavy parts more suffocating, the noise factor more piercing, and the lyrics more combative.

Everything was to be administered at the highest volume available, and with maximum prejudice. If the music wasn't going to be enough, we would literally hit you in the face with a dead animal. Literally. That show had it all, fire, blood, interpretive dance, flying squirrels...everything.

One final anecdote, and probably a fitting epitaph for the band; we were playing in Gainseville (again with the fucking Florida, what's with that place?) on the partially aborted Regicide/Hal al Shedad tour, when the stocky guy from Hot Water Music, who's name I forget (further proof my memory is terrible), but who was a really nice guy, and our host for the evening to boot, started doing what we as a band wanted people to do at our shows, and that is get loose and go off. He may or may not have been pretty hammered, but that didn't matter, what did matter was that his good time began infringing on good time of someone else there, and the two decided exchange words whilst slam-dancing around to a Regicide soundtrack. At some point in the exchange, the Hot Water Music guy figured his point had not been adequately made, so he felt the need to reinforce it by pounding it into the other dude's face over and over. It really was a good beating, poetic in it's efficiency, but never sparing on the brutality of it's message.

So as this is happening, the other audience member s begin the ritual of pretending they are going to break it up, gathering in a loose circle around the action and more or less hooting and hollering. The band played on. One audience member actually tried to grab the microphone from me mid song which was met with a swift push back and the band played on. As an artiste, I could not allow this one person to ruin the enjoyment of the show for others in attendance (regardless if they were currently on the loosing end of a savage ass kicking). This person then approaches a second time, and screams in my ear, "you have to stop this!" implying that the band was responsible for policing the activities of this establishments (presumably) paying clientele. I grabbed his shirt, got as close as possible, and yelled back into his ear, "don't you get it, this is what we want!", and the band played on.

InstaCool

Noot d' noot's own Mathis Hunter aka Bimbi S. Garraux damn near reassembled the Good Friday Experiment (paging Dr. Pahnke) for another performance of works from his solo venture, Soft Opening. The band plays July 2nd at the historic Highland Inn, alongside The N.E.C. Rubiaceae-fueled visions certain to startle the iliac crest on down into submission. Just another Friday night uprising against the Casimir effect.

When In Montreal Pt. 2

Damn. Knew this would happen. Its all becoming a distant memory now. What's next? Fri, Ches-a-rena, Cheswick, PA, which is not quite Pittsburgh. A giant skating ring converted into a Ultimate Fighting Arena, and sometimes a place for shows. Lots of security folk that grew up on some hockey. Weird Shit.


Saturday Nite, South Street in Philly at TLA. Prolly my favorite show of the tour. Philly is a nice hybrid of ATL and NYC. Its got all the thangs I can dig about the big Atlantic cities without having the be ye olde apple. Which was where we headed next, w/o Of Montreal. You should try entering the Holland Tunnel on the Sunday before Memorial Day. Its about like a bebe shooting down the birth canal.

The Lower East side offered us a cold dose of reality. I can guestimate there were 20 -30 patrons at the Cake Shop who got to witness Jah Scorp ravage thru several back line amps during our first number in hopes of finding one that could make a slight impression of bass vibrations. Still, it was good to see a lot of old friends and to play w/ Jim Mchugh's new ensemble, Gay Africa, who are now known as Night Jazz. On drums was the cat from White Hills, Lee, who incidentally is a bad brotha on the skins. When Lee told me that Noot had taken James Brown and successfully crossbred him w/ Hawkwind, I nearly teared up.
Monday and back in the South. Charlottesville, TJ's stompin' grounds. Played a club of his namesake, The Jefferson. Had a cool underground tunnel to take you from front of house to the greenroom. You could hear everyone stomping the floor as you passed thru. Good show, good crowd. Shortest drive of the tour was to Richmond, so we went ahead and got ourselves there.

One of the real cool thangs about this tour and Of Montreal in general is that the shows are all ages, or at the least 14 and up. As this picture shows, the kids are allright. I remember what it was like to see shows when I was this age, and man it was a lot of fun. We definitely fed off that energy and I hope we can find a way to play more all ages shows now that we're back at home.

We stayed in this shithole hotel in Richmond for 2 nights cuz we got rooms for $35 a night. I don't really have a picture to do it justice. The National was rad, definitely the coolest green room on the East Coast if not the country. Cafeteria, hot tub, sauna, pool tables, and 10-12 giant plasmas. Sleepy called it 'Livin the Life.'

Last show on the tour was Chapel Hill and outta nowhere, this dude shows up. It was great timing, cuz by this point we had a lot of people coming down with a gnar gnar recycled air virus and the troops were weak. Dookie saved the day. Of course, after the last show you gotta drive home, no matter how far. Pulled up to The Living Room with the sunlight fully upon us. 8:15 AM I would estimate. Things haven't looked quite like this since.

Fly On, Starchild

Fly on, brother. It was little more than a year ago that I saw a 50-something year old man in a diaper deliver a sanctified testimony about the Cosmic Slop and now he is gone. Truly one of the great singers in a tribe of great singers, not to mention the ability to turn a guitar into a rubber banded banjo. The music lives on.

Cons

Chuck Taylor wanted to know how Noot does it.

Good Times Tonight

Dookie Platters opens it up at The Sound Table tonight, before Cosmo Baker and Kon & Amir take you higher. Judi Chicago and Joi get it rowdy on the stage next door. Plus art from artists, including Baxter Crane who created a gorgeous Zombie Dinosaur, which I in turn gave to my wife.

Eulogium

The record is mixed, the record is sequenced, the record is mastered. The record is headed to Baltimore to be cut. Doing all this listening, I feel sure Jerry Wexler's tombstone spells it out for us all. Two words: More Bass.

Extreme Gambling: The Die is Cast

Shakedown Records product placement. Not unlike cupping the underbreast, bra.

Skins Alone

¿Donde?

When In Montreal Pt. 1

Fri Nite: 9PM, May 21. The time chosen to meet at The Living Room and pack "Midnight Steel," the stand in for Good Friday Experiment's once mighty steed, "Blue Steel," who has sat idly in the driveway since an electrical meltdown back in the fall. The time chosen to gather the 9 musicians that were to make up Noot d' Noot for a 2 week tour supporting of Montreal. Down 1 from our 10 piece line up since Dookie Platters was to be wed 2 days after our return, the remaining 9 Noots agreed to meet on Friday night to insure a timely arrival in New Orleans for the Saturday night show. First call came in about 8:30 from Electro Siren aka Karima indicating she would not be home from work till around 11PM.

Even the most punctual folks were running behind schedule when I got my first contact with the percussion section. It was from B. Cruzan, the timbale player, and he was to inform me that Skins Malone, conga player extraordinaire, 1st chair of percussion, and OG Noot, was OUT. Not going. After all the work the band has put in over the last 3 years, at our most flourishing moment yet, dude tags out. He delivered this message to Cruzan, and has not been heard of since. 10pm. 8 Noots left, 4 at the studio.

Cruzan had to make some quick decisions: should he be the timbale player or the conga player? He hadn't practiced as the conga player, but thought it more crucial to the operation. In the end, he became some kind of combination of the two. He went back to his house and McGuyvered a new percussion station together and I went to get him. By the time I got to The Living Room with B and Circuit Diva, it was about 12am. The 7 of us headed over to Kirkwood to get the last passenger, Karima. Just as we were about to get on I-20 at 12:48am, she realized she had left her phone. Might as well make it 1am.

So we drove thru the nite to the outskirts of Mobile, AL and put a serious dent in the drive. Upon waking, the challenge of 8 adults trying to make group decisions became a very cruel reality. The first battle of the "Metabolism Wars" took place at Waffle House when 2 all star breakfasts were moved from plates into plastic containers and consumed in Midnight Steel. Suffice to say, who was going to eat what and when was definitely the most complex and sensitive issue of the entire journey. Forget about what songs you're gonna play or how well the show went. Folks gotta eat. The basic breakdown was the punker "Get In The Van" mentality versus the "I don't know what you think this is, but I'm not going anywhere until I have a meal." I'm not going to break down who fell on what side and who said what to who, because no one remembered any of it by the time we got to our destinations, and certainly no one remembers it now.

Anyways we were at the Howlin' Wolf by 2ish and meeting up with the of Montreal cats. In true rock n' roll style, Kevin was rehearsing with new drummer Clayton for the first time because he had been in LA mixing the new record all the way up until the tour. We had plenty of time to kill and headed off to the French Quarter. We didn't make it a block before getting our first drank.

Needless to say that swamp weather and an entire day of drinking took its toll well before the sun went down. Is it the weather that makes people get so faded? Maybe its the only way to combat that environment.

I don't know if it was because it was my first time seeing of Montreal or the crowd, or the heat, or what, but the New Orleans show stands out in my mind's eye as the most psychedelic of the tour. The way of Montreal set up their screens that night in a concave pattern made their visuals that much more otherworldly. Not to mention all the kids out in front of the club just gone. Not for the rest of the tour was the drug usage that rampant, and I think that is more a reflection on New Orleans than of Montreal. From inside the van, we watched this kid on the sidewalk, who couldn't have been more than 17, rip a blotter page and put the tabs in some tin foil and then gobble one himself. I remember as we were getting ready to leave, this car full of girls pull up on the sidewalk right in front of the club and then jump out of the car and proceed to dance circles around it with some craaaazy ass dance music blaring that sounded like it was from another planet. Literally a dancin' in the streets dance party! No other city in America comes anywhere near as beautifully strange as NOLA.

Sadly, we had to leave the Dancin' in the streets party because the next show was Austin and that's a pretty healthy drive. Got our 1st ticket about 45 minutes after leaving NOLA. Don't really remember where we stopped for the night, but the ticket had not slowed Jah Scorpion's roll just yet and by the next afternoon we had another one. Hit some bad traffic and tried to access the access road to the side of the highway just in time for a sheriff to block us off and start screaming at us. Amazingly, he told us to get back on the highway, avoiding a 3rd ticket. Got to Austin a little tense and just in time to soundcheck before the doors opened. Played at The Mohawk, which is a rad club in a rad music town. And there's nothing like some Austin breakfast tacos.

Onwards to Dallas, which is not so bad a drive. B Cruzan was still working out how to consolidate the drum parts to one player, and I remember us taking some risks in the set list. This was not our finest performance, but it made us really figure out what we needed to do for the rest of the shows. By Tulsa, we had a set figured out that we pretty much stuck with. We had left a drum trigger back in Atlanta, and The Late BP Helium went out and purchased one for us. This cat got us on the tour, looked after us the whole time, and even made suggestions as to make the set flow properly. He's what you call Good People, and we are very grateful to him.

Cain's Ballroom was one of my favorite clubs we played because the place has open since 1924 and is home to Bob Wills. This one cat had been working there since he got out of high school and was telling us about when the Sex Pistols came thru, David Lee Roth era Van Halen, and Cliff Burton era Metallica.

To get to rock my Rickenbacker bass on the same stage where Cliff rocked his, now that's something. The crowd response in Tulsa was really insane. All in all, a solid show.

The 9th Street Summerfest in Columbia, MO was next. It was a huge turnout, as an entire street was blocked off to allow for the outdoor stage. Good show. And then on to Buster's in Lexington, KY which was a great show, as we were joined by BP Helium performing as "Mecha-Dookie Platters."

Dream Sanitation got a pretty good repertoire going with Priceline and haggled us hotel rooms for the prices we were willing to pay. Probably the nicest hotel we got to stay in was in downtown Lexington, most notable because it was not a chain. A one of a kind place that had its own charm.

As we approached this 4 story hotel, I noticed open blinds in the corner on the top floor. It was late, I was tired, and of Montreal has an overwhelming amount of heads on sticks floating around their production. But what I saw certainly seemed to be a floating Yoko Ono head whipping around like some sort of witch or a startled stallion in the window. The closer I looked, the more flesh I began to notice surrounding this head. Suddenly, it dawned on all of us that now we were at a show, and this Yoko character in the window was the star!!!

It would have been rude not to watch, so we took in the slaying for a minute while Crab Louie offered a "thumbs up" to which Yoko reciprocated her own positive gesture. I went on inside but apparently a few minutes later, Yoko's counterpart wanted to get a part in the show, which sent everyone running for cover.

By now, we are up to the following Friday in our recap, more than halfway thru the journey. This is where we shall draw the line on Pt. 1.

Occasions

From the Granada Theatre In Dallas



And The National in Richmond

Back In the A

Our Spacecraft reinterred the 285 troposphere about 7:45am Thurs morning bearing an extra passenger, Mr. Dookie Platters, who flew into Raleigh to play the last date and raise the morale of an exhausted 8 piece Noot just in time. Everyone was at home and in bed by 9am, with exception of our driver, Mr. Jah Scorpion, who went directly to teleworking and who flew out to Springfield, MO for a lab study early this morning. This is what you might call overachievement in efficiency and we tip our hat to the man who drove all but 1.8 miles in a 13 day 4350 mile journey. Now that we our safely on the ground and possess the intangible "free time," maybe we can begin to tell our tale.......