All the recordings

I started playing guitar at 14, and started a band 1 month later in the tiny northwoods town I grew up in. Certainly the first and maybe only band to ever come out of that depressing place. Like many learning an instrument at the time I learned the Smoke on the Water riff, then Metallica through tab books. Played my first show at 16 with my band “Ordog” (which means satan as it says somewhere in the first few pages of Dracula). We put on our own shows at friends houses, barns, the local bowling alley, and VFW halls, renting PA’s and generally just Doing It Ourselves like the aspiring punks we were. Ordog morphed into Earache and My Pet Rock, then, moving to the big city of Milwaukee became Earl. Earl played local places like the Unicorn, The Globe and Okay’s Coral in Madison but we disliked the clubs and were only 18 anyway so put our energy into house shows. We started a house show space which was later dubbed The Earl house. The Earl house was the real introduction to the international DIY punk world for me. Bands like Hiatus (Belgium) The Varukers (England) HIckey and Fuckface from San Francisco and so many more played there, establishing connections to the larger world that simply spread from there. Next to Albuquerque putting on house shows for bands like Milhouse (NYC), the Fanatics (CO) Word Salad etc, then Oakland putting on shows at the 40th street warehouse with bands like High on Fire, Merzbow, Melt Banana, Dystopia and so many more. To Minneapolis putting on shows at the Seward Cafe and house shows for Submission Hold, From Ashes Rise and others, to Portland house shows, Liberty Hall, the Back to Back cafe and any other DIY space I could find. Repeat, repeat.

Below you’ll find an incomplete chronical of the recordings of bands I’ve played in throughout the years. Likely you’ve never heard any of this. What’s posted here is what is digitally available online, some recordings pre 2000 don’t exist digital or maybe at all anymore but in some dusty box in storage, which is probably for the better. Any of the physical copies you can probably find online for next to nothing or I might have one in the deep archives if you’re interested. Some of these bands toured a lot, some went to Europe for months on end, some stayed local. It’s a long story. Ask me about it sometime.