EDB–Another Six-Year-Old + interview (New Wave Theatre)
December 23rd, 2009 . by JKAudio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Scraps from the Web
November 14th, 2009 . by JKOne never knows when sites (including this one) will go dead, so I’m just preserving a few mentions of EDB I’ve come across.
The first claims to be from a journal entry written Sept. 1982, perhaps by someone named Phil Wahl:
Later we went to the Anti-Club. It is not identified as such, announcing itself over the door as “Helen’s Place”; luckily we heard the give-away sounds of a slapped, ill-tuned snare and over-amped keyboard: Art! This had to be the place. Indoors was, ah, “refreshingly different”: Helen’s Place is a country music bar, and dangling from the ceiling were saddles, and covering up large portions of the walls were large wagon wheels (I leaned against one a good part of the evening)—between these were various accoutrements of the Old West. Of particular interest was a large display, labeled and all, of a collection of barbed wire.
Three bands played that night. First was Earth Dies Burning: singer, aged circa sixteen, two on casios, one circa fourteen (the singer’s brother; their parents sat next to us, adoringly), the other circa sixteen (and who played drums one night for Nervous Gender at Al’s, subbing for Don Bolles who was with 45 Grave in Arizona; the kid was a real formlessly energetic drummer and lots of fun), finally, a drummer, circa thirty. The latter’s set was cruder than mine, his crash looked to have been run over by a tank. They played a real short set, including a version of “Heartbreak Hotel” retitled “I Like Fishsticks And So Does Dad” (you see, father was injured in an auto wreck and is paralyzed from the waist up—and when Mom goes out to play Mahjong all he can prepare for diner for himself and son is fishsticks). Also a great version of “Psychotic Reaction” which was as good as the Urinals doing the “Jetsons” song and [my old band] Keene White doing “Rave On”). A great, stupid, short set.
The second is from a site dedicated to San Diego underground rock from the 80s, written by Matthew Rothenberg of the band Noise 292. Have not determined what year the show described took place in.
Noise 292 once played the Anti Club in LA with a very witty band called Earth Dies Burning. We all went to Canter’s Deli on Fairfax afterwards, and the lead singer told us how he’d transfixed an audience one night by solemnly intoning, “Tonight’s show is dedicated to a man responsible for so much of our musical heritage … A giant of the underground … A man who passed away today … Ladies and gentleman, Mr. Lou Reed!”
The audience gasped, and someone said, “Oh, my God — he’s serious!” Then the band broke into a (if I’m remembering this right) a disco version of “Heroin” while he somberly peeled and ate a banana.
(I liked that band. They did a song that went, “Pork yogurt — meat at the bottom!”)