At right is a live performance from a great Austin band of my college era, Lusting After Mary. It's their second best song (the Joe of the song is their guitarist, one of the kindest people I've ever known). The keyboard player is philosopher Mike Einhaus, and I used to jam with him and philosophers John Heil and Jim Hankinson (Heil and Einhaus were grad students at U.T. then, I was an undergraduate, and Hankinson was and still is faculty there) and less often other assorted members of Mary.
Einhaus is also an incredible accordian player. Sadly, Mary's best song, Ice Capades, is not on youtube.
There singer wasn't that charismatic, but that's is a little unfair of me to point out. It's actually pretty hard to get up in front of a lot of people and sing. For singers, guitarists, and keyboard players, unless you're gifted with a particular kind of glamour and grace, it's almost impossible to know what to do with your body so that you don't look like an idiot. If I do anything other than just stand there and do my job while playing music, I look so ludicrous that people laugh (this is no exaggeration).
The eponymous Joe (the guitarist at left) actually had enough innate rock charisma/glamour for the rest of the band. He moved gracefully too. You can see him jumping up and down at the beginning here and get a sense of it. Einhaus was also fun to watch in an Olympic athlete way too, because the music was so piano based and the guy focused everything on providing the bottom for everyone else. I mean, watching anybody focused so much on doing their best, and delivering on it is aesthetically pleasing.
But the camaraperson here is focused on the singer dude, which wasn't really the phenomenology of one of their shows. It would be like filming an AC/DC concert and just following Brian Johnson around.
For the record, I should note that Jim Hankinson is actually a hell of a blues singer (and rhytm guitarist, for that matter). He has this song called "Slow Blues" that will make you weep. At the philosophy parties we also regularly played the Beatles' "Why Don't we Do It in the Road," Elvis Costello's "Pump it Up," and whatever the rest of us came up with on the spot.
This is a cool thing about the interwebs, finding old bands you used to jam with. Most haven't survived though, or sometimes someone else got the same name. I know that the current Ducky Boys of Boston have nothing to do with the (much better!) band from Montgomery Alabama with that name. On the other hand, from what I can tell, the Vicious Diplomacy that became a key part of the Carolina hardcore scene probably was a ship of Theseus like descendant of the band I knew (they took the bass player from one of the bands I was in at the time, breaking us up).
Somebody has been putting some of Steel Fury's (not to be confused with the video game of the same name) stuff up on youtube. They were originally from Montgomery and one of my bands shared a warehouse with them. There are lots of stories not safe for the blog from then. . .
Sometimes me and Fury's bassplayer, Tim, would take a break from our respective bands (this when I was playing with Vicious Diplomacys' bass player, who also sang in my band, but then didn't later in Vicious Diplomacy) and I'd play Tim's bass and Tim would play my guitar and sing. It was just a joke, but it rocked out in a weird way. We'd just make stuff up for an hour or so and people would take turns drumming, all the hangers on getting crazier and crazier with the slam-dancing and other forms of delinquency. We actually had a name for our improvisational "band" but I can't remember it, nor can I remember the name of my band that shared the warehouse with Steel Fury (which is sad, because the songs that Dave, of later Vicious Diplomacy bassplaying fame, wrote were actually good).
This is perhaps my one claim to musical fame, or to being a footnote to a footnote of fame (you have to be a pretty big metal geek to still hold a flame for Steel Fury). If I remember right, before Steel Fury moved to Southern California they actually had a singer, and the only time Tim sang was when he was playing my guitar and I was playing his bass. Maybe seeing how well his singing went over with me was part of them ultimately reducing to a three piece and handing the duties over to Tim as in the above video. Also, I think the guitarist's DK (for Dead Kennedy's) sticker might have been influenced by the exact same sticker I had on my guitar. I certainly had the sticker first. Both of these things might be misrememberings though. As noted, I can't even remember the name of the band I was in that shared their upstairs warehouse space (the cover band I was in at the time was called Side Effects; I did a much better job in the punk band).
I also just found a song from the great Austin band, Three Lesbian Folksingers, fronted by Phillip, still up on myspace (unfortunately not their best song, Espanol es la Linua de La Rock and Roll, or their second best, Wee Little Wee, or the other one where at the end Phillip would just scream his head off for a few minutes). My band at the time "Ben Wa Blues" played gigs with them, by his own admission he actually lifted the primal screaming bit from me, which was cool, and makes me a third order footnote at least. The thing is, it was just weird when I did it; it actually worked for them. They were a much better band, and I'm bummed that all I can find is their Jello Lover song.
I'm a much happier person these days, but all that music produced some really good times. I can't wait to teach my kids to play, but they'll probably get in to jazz flute just to rebel against me. That's O.K. though.
