Steve Roche Philadelphia Permanent Heading Damage Recording

May of 1998 in all their sloppy and unedited glory.  I still laugh when I listen to all the between song banter on this, so I left it all in.

I really don’t know where to begin but wish I only knew some of McKee’s Beau stories a little better right now.  This was the first time I got to hang out with these guys.  Also this was during that brief stint without Andrew Martini (Beau was playing bass and Pat was still playing guitar).  They rolled up to the studio in a minivan (this was before its door fell off of it on the Goethal’s Bridge) and after they played, McKee told me Niki was an exotic dancer?

I have a pretty clear memory of Dave (”Mr DJ”) trying to ask McKee how many shirts and records they wanted to give away and McKee having no clue what he was saying, but somehow working his response into the lyrics.   And there is the amazing part in the last verse of “I Apologize for my Hunger” where Jeremy plays the verse long, so Mike and Niki come in for the vocal early and then don’t come in when it does go to the chorus.

All that said, this band was amazing and this was easily one of the most entertaining bands we had up at WNYU during my tenure there.  I am also super glad to still see all of them pretty frequently, 11 years later.  Knowing this band definitely helped to convince me to move to Philly.

here it is

I honestly can’t remember for the life of me what year we did this. Either 1998 or 1999. We did it one afternoon before they played ABC. Again, this is before I realized I shouldn’t be mixing with headphones so the guitars are horribly quiet - they were barely audible before i started messing with EQ and whatnot. Funny enough, this recording was a big reason they came up to record Namaste with me in that very same cramped room in 2000. Though those were very different circumstances - three consecutive nights working from midnight until 8am because they could not be there for a weekend. This included having to scrap an entire nights work due to issues with the bass amp/bass which I think made for some very grumpy horn players from West Virginia that they had brought along to record with them. I’m getting away from myself.

I only chopped this into a couple tracks as most of the songs blended together.

Here goes

I had just seen Twelve Hour Turn for the first time the night before along with Engine Down, Closure, and I Hate Myself on a Tuesday night at ABC No Rio.  I think it was February.  It was pretty cold and I think there were maybe 15 people there.  Super impressive.  I can’t remember if it had been pre-arranged or maybe organized the last minute.  But Twelve Hour Turn and I Hate Myself were going to play live on WNYU the next night.

I remember turning up early - squeezing two live bands into a 90 minute show was not easy, considering soundchecks and all of that - to find out that there was some basketball game being broadcast live so we weren’t even on the air.  Instead we just recorded live sets of both bands to DAT (90s!!) to be aired later.  Admittedly, the I Hate Myself set was never aired, it was pretty awful.

I Hate Myself definitely played first.  I think they shared some gear and I’m not sure what was going on, but you can definitely hear a very dramatic fade in of the drums on the fist song here.  Just like Racebannon, the early 7″s and splits this band did are always going to be my favorite.  Don’t get me wrong, I like Victory of Flight a whole lot, but the early stuff still speaks to me most.  Especially Wide Awake.

This is definitely before I realized to not mix with headphones.  Again, the guitars are buried.  The floor tom is also crazy loud.  Not sure how that managed to go unnoticed for such a long time.  Oh well.

Here goes

Not remembering much about this one, admittedly.  Though listening to these songs reminded me how much I liked this era of Racebannon - with Chris Williams adding vocals and the song with the beat-boxing.  I saw them many times with this lineup, playing mostly these songs.  Good stuff.

Nothing really stands out for me in terms of recording this.  Though you can hear me fucking with the compression on the snare drum at some point.  Listening to all of these sets makes my poor monitoring situation there pretty apparent - mostly relying on headphones, causing a serious lack in upper midrange.  And being so close to the liveroom and immediately under the monitor speakers in the dj booth made gauging the low frequency content pretty difficult.  You would think I would have figured that out after a year or two.

Here it is

I found this cassette in my dad’s basement late last year after I thought it was lost forever.  This was probably the first set I ever did by myself at the radio station.  Surprisingly, it doesn’t sound that horrible.  The reverb is out of control, the snare is way too compressed, but the balance isn’t completely fucked up.

The hiss is very loud as well, especially considering I had to go a little crazy with the EQ to get anything over like 6kHz to be audible.  The tape is a little eaten at a few points and there is that very loud accidental ID at the start of the set.

I definitely remember showing up to the station a little late after work to find that I had to actually set up the whole thing and get it ready to go on the air in about 45 minutes.  I was a bit panicked about the whole process, but fortunately their stuff sounded pretty decent and they could play their songs.  This made my life much easier.

here

From early 1997 until 2002 sometime, I did live sound for a radio show in NY.  I kinda watched this guy do it for the six months prior and then took over as he was graduating.  Bands started using the live sets I recorded for records (Indecision, Kill Your Idols, etc.), so I bought an 8 track to use on the weekends to record bands, one thing led to another and well, here we are.

Eventually, these will be available to be downloaded directly from this site, but until I work all that out, it will be a sendspace link or something.  I will do my best to do a little write up of each one.  Most of these sound really terrible but I am trying to clean them up.  On deck in coming weeks:  The Red Scare, Trial, Racebannon, Song of Zarathustra, Ten Grand, and lots more.  I still have a huge pile of old DAT tapes I need to try and transfer.

So the first intstallment is Yaphet Kotto.  I don’t really understand the drastic volume drop at the beginning, maybe I thought I was clipping the DAT?  I dunno.  I definitely remember struggling to have Mag’s vocals audible as the more I turned him up and compressed them, the more the sound of the crappy little linoleum room comes through the vocal mic.  Though I do enjoy hearing them step on the pedals.  The guitars were barely audible before I toyed around with this recording.  I have come a long way.

I think we did this on a Sunday night in early April, the day after they played at Sound and Fury.  And I remember the shithead security guard insisiting Scott open up all his drum cases on the way out.

Track IDs may not make a lot of sense, and I tried to edit out some of the tuning.  Here you are:  Yaphet Kotto

Enjoy.

Steve

Permanent Hearing Damage has a new home on the web.   Richmond is taking over our live room.  We just finished a new LP for The Catalyst last week.   Gull will be here this weekend to work on a new EP.  Good stuff.