Condom Mints (2003)
the end of GWD as almost no one knew it.
here we have a bunch of out-takes and live tracks from the final three-piece lineup. hardly essential, but the live version of gutter trash is sort of fun (complete with a different opening guitar solo, the unplanned sound of a guy announcing last call over a separate pa system, and some silly scatting about day-old donuts at the end), and how it shows is probably the closest we ever came to a bona fide pop song. tyson once described it as “bob seger being molested by jesus christ.” maybe it should have replaced something like “asphyxiate” on GOOD LUCK IN THE NEXT LIFE instead of being left on the cutting room floor, even if i had to replace gord’s bass playing with my own a year after the fact because the usual lack of rehearsal had left him cold for once, and he was audibly unsure of what to play for most of the song. ethiopian salmon is an out-take from SUBLIMINAL BILE, with a cool middle-eastern/desert vibe in the beginning before it loses focus. it’s pleasant enough to listen to and features some nice moments of guitar/bass interplay…just not really album material. you can hear gord laughing near the end in approval of my distorted guitar noise, though i think we all knew at that point that the song was toast. a similar thing happens with the same difference, ousted from STELLAR; it has its moments, but doesn’t seem to know where it wants to go. i didn’t have any real lyrical ideas, and it shows, though gord and tyson were strangely fond of it anyway and wouldn’t have objected to it being thrown on the album proper. at least there’s an interesting rhythmic fake-out at the beginning, a bit near the end where my voice sort of circles what i’m playing on the guitar to cool effect, and some nice lead bass from gord right at the very end. it’s also kind of interesting to hear some of the STELLAR tracks in embryonic form during the unused first session for the album, though they’re quite clearly inferior to the final versions. that night the inspiration just wasn’t there. two days later it was another story, when we recorded what became the first half of the album. still, it’s fun to hear “pigeon shit” as hollow, with me and tyson goofing around at the beginning, and you could never be is an exercise in how much a song can change if you let it (it shows up again on the solo cd KEEP YOUR SCARS as a completely different creature). of the two versions there are of time again, the live take is probably the best, but neither one of them can touch the papa ghostface original.
which brings us to the live set. on the one hand, it’s probably historically important because it was pretty much the last time we ever played together as a band, not counting one last session where nothing was recorded and i intentionally made tyson feel uncomfortable by dragging a bunch of dissonant noise out of my guitar with my back turned to him (sort of a long story in itself). on the other hand, the show was a complete disaster, making the windsor sportsman’s club fiasco (for more on that, take a look at A STONED CONVERSATION in the “other things” section) look like kid’s stuff by comparison. getting into the specifics would entail writing until my fingers killed themselves to end the pain. it’s also difficult to explain why and how the band broke up without writing an insane amount of words and having it all come out looking like bitter character assassination. simply put, we were another victim of “bald drummer syndrome”, wherein the afflicted drummer decides that he is the band and the world revolves around him. i could fire off a litany of examples, but it’s really as simple as that. i didn’t want to admit it for a while, but it became painfully clear that our days as a band were numbered. when i found out that tyson was about to sign a recording contract with another band while trying to hold onto GWD at the same time without breathing a word about it to me, it was the final straw. i tried to keep the band going with gord, looking for another drummer, but that just led to some terrifying experiences with strange people, and even the two of us ended up drifting apart eventually.
but i’m getting a little ahead of myself. the show, as i said, was a disaster. for a while gord and i were prepared to make it a papa ghostface evening, because it seemed there was a good chance tyson wouldn’t even show up, but when the big day came he was unusually prompt. the sound check was tense, because by this point i had decided to give tyson back a bit of his own medicine; i sang the songs like i didn’t give a shit, sleep-walking through them and replacing the lyrics with random stupidity. i later found out that this really did a number on his head, and he was concerned that i might just sing like that during the actual show. gord had to reassure him i was “saving it for later”. to make a long story within a longer story not so long, the dinner banquet we were playing at (could you pick a more inappropriate venue for guys with dicks? i think not) went on longer than it was supposed to. we were scheduled to take the stage at 9:00 pm, but didn’t get up there until more than two hours later, because it took that long for ken bondy to shut the fuck up. by the time we were finally able to grab our instruments, a crowd that had been at least a few hundred people strong quickly dwindled. people were tired, and so they left before we even started playing. in hindsight we probably should have just made up a bunch of dirty new songs on the spot as a two-finger salute to the whole situation, but that thought didn’t even enter my mind at the time. within a few songs we were playing for maybe twenty people. at least one good thing came out of it—a friend from WOHIS used what little tape he had left in his video camera to record the first two songs we played and somehow managed to make it look like he had two or three different cameras at his disposal. i recorded most of the songs we played on my mixer, though a few were lost because i ran out of recording time. we stopped after about an hour because there wasn’t much point in going on any longer. gord and tyson were feeling good, while i felt about ready to run in front of a train.
still, the video footage is nice to have, and it sounds quite a bit better than the songs on cd that were properly recorded that night, which makes me wish more than just two songs had been captured on camera. gord looks very serious and a little nervous. tyson looks even more serious, his head bobbing back and forth in concentration. i’m the only one who looks relaxed, making silly faces and mocking the fiasco that the show has become. the face i make after letting out a scream in the middle of mean it pretty much sums up everything i had to say that day. something about lies kills the cd version, and it’s probably the best live performance we ever gave, though there isn’t much competition. the songs captured on the mixer are kind of a mixed bag, and the sound quality is seriously flawed. it’s odd, because coming out of the pa the sound was great (as the video footage attests to), but on the mixer things weren’t quite right, with my voice distorted most of the time and one of the mics on the drums making a weird rattling noise. it’s kind of surreal to hear some applause between songs. tyson’s way-too-fast drumming tarnishes half of them (listen to what he does to rancid popcorn for christ’s sake!), but i guess it was to be expected since he didn’t bother to play the songs properly during many of our rehearsals, preferring to insert disco flourishes and random screams during slower numbers to amuse himself. it was amusing for a while, and then not so much as the date of the show grew closer. at least a few things manage to survive with some sexiness intact, like the aforementioned gutter trash and a strangely defiant-sounding time again.
there are also a few demos, one a very early version of nicotine & beer, and a little spoken word thing i recorded on my own at the end of the STELLAR sessions. as the best of the bottom of the barrel goes, this ain’t half bad, though it isn’t something i listen to much.
TRACKS:
“we should make an out-takes cd” (studio dialogue)
your own kind of logic (demo)
nicotine & beer (demo)
ethiopian salmon
how it shows
happy, happier
time again
it’s not necessary (false start)
it’s not necessary (false start #2)
it’s not necessary (complete take)
you could never be
hollow
the same difference
mean it (live)
what else? (live)
beauty breeds confusion (live)
gutter trash (live)
happy happier (segue)
rancid popcorn (live)
time again (live)
electricity (live)
stop thinking about it
STUFF TO LISTEN TO:
