Bubblegum Crisis
If you were a bored teenager in the '90s, you did two things: write zines and start bands. While doing the former, I became pen pals with Seth Bogart, a kid in Arizona writing a hilarious zine called Puberty Strike. Although we didn't meet in person for over two years, we emailed and talked on the phone semi-regularly and one day I proposed that his band, The Knock-Ups, and my band, The Chase, should make a split LP. Seth was game and I had saved up a lump sum from my job at the public library for pressing so we retired to our separate quarters to record. In the Knock-Ups case, this was a studio with the bill footed by Rhino Records as The K-U's would be recording a cover of "Johnny Are You Queer?" for a Rhino comp CD in the same session. For us, that was drummer Abigail's garage with the closest thing we could find to a four-track: a dual-cassette karaoke machine Abigail's parents had purchased for parties at their house. I put one microphone in front of my guitar amp and the other hanging between the bass amp and drums, then flipped the tape to the second slot so Abby and I could sing over it. To this day, I believe the only thing which salvaged the recording was being able to borrow the expensive mics my dad (a professional flamenco guitarist) used to play at weddings.
The pressing ended up being a disaster: Rhino threatened to sue us over The Knock-Ups including an alternate version of "Johnny Are You Queer?", making us remaster the entire record. The remastered plates broke at the factory so the original was used, including the offending cover, but Rhino's comp had already come out and hadn't been the commercial success they were expecting so they didn't really care.
The original split LP was very well-received, getting positive reviews in Maximumrocknroll, Roctober and Tobi Vail's Jigsaw fanzine.
The Chase
The Fall Colors
music
The Fall Colors
People usually say this is the best record I've done. Catchy, sassy pop with 3-part harmonies. Great production by our friend Heath Berg.
Compromise and Collapse
A very rough-around-the-edges collection of songs I recorded to 4-track in my apartment over a 5-year period, including some early versions of songs later played by The Fall Colors. Not for everybody but if you like the other stuff here, you might dig this one, too.
Live in the Infirmary
Rosy, Dan and I had recently starting playing together when a guy with a microphone and a vaguely-Scandinavian accent started attending local shows in Santa Cruz. Many people were initially suspicious (or embarrassed) when they realized that their bands were being
Cherry Ames
Pleasure Holiday
All of these originally resided on LPs, cassettes or online. Now they're all free to download off the Bandcamp site.
Sleep Tight
First Pleasure Holiday release in recent memory. A sad/mad song with guitar and layered vocals. Also has a video.