#damaged bug

[b4rk1ng-l0t]

Kriselle Songs

Not Snowgrave

Dess would've loved Le Tigre

Snowgrave

Lyrics

Les and Ray

In October 2019 I Called a Suicide Hotline

snowy!

Rasin Lungs

Clifford the big red stab wound

Over-Exposed

[musickickztoo]

John Dwyer *October 3, 1974

[dustedmagazine]

Damaged Bug — Bug on Yonkers (Castle Face)

Bug On Yonkers by Damaged Bug

There’s never been another rock guy like Michael Yonkers. He built his own guitars and amps to produce an instantly recognizable, cavernously echoing sound. He started recording in the 1960s, but due to bad luck and a freak accident (he was working in a warehouse and had some shelves fall on him, bad enough, but the doctors gave him a treatment that made him much worse and he’s lived in pain ever since) never got a big commercial break. He’s best known now for the otherworldly freakbeat/alterna-drone masterpiece Microminiature Love reissued in the early aughts by De Stilj and again in 2011 by Sub Pop, but he also dabbled in eccentric acoustic folk music, foreshadowing the New Weird America movement by a couple of decades. Last I caught up with him, for Dusted (old Dusted, unfortunately, the piece has disappeared), he was gracious enough about talking about the past, but really, mostly on fire about his new collaboration with the Blind Shake.  Anyway, lovely guy, singular guy, late life fame could not happen to a better person.

John Dwyer of Coachwhips, the Ohsees and, in this instance, Damaged Bug, is likewise, a singular force. He is one of the best and most demented of all punk front men still working, but also a thoughtful curator of current and older music. Pretty much everything on the label he co-heads, Castle Face, is worth a listen, ditto to the man’s own output, which is prodigious. And, here comes the Reeses Peanut Butter moment that I’ve been winding up to this whole review so far: put them together and it becomes something very special indeed.

In Bug on Yonkers, Dwyer’s Damaged Bug revisits nine Michael Yonkers songs. Four are from 1968’s Microminiature Love, Dwyer’s point of entry into the Yonkers catalog (and, honestly, almost everyone’s point of entry). One is a very early (1966) cut from Yonkers’ pre-Microminiature Love outfit, Michael and the Mumbles. Two are from his psych folkie experiments Lovely Gold (1977) and Grimwood (1968), and one is a previously unreleased song. Yonkers has never played live much because of his damaged back, but he and Dwyer did one show together around the time of the Sub Pop reissue and kept in touch by email. Dwyer, thus, had access to lots of Yonkers rarities, on CDRs made by the artist himself. He says in an interview that he roughed out about 40 Yonkers cuts, then got high and cut them down to nine.  

With the Ohsees, and now Damaged Bug, Dwyer has evolved a psychedelically expansive, motoric-ly propulsive rock and roll sound that is both elementally simple and familiar and deeply, mind-shiftingly strange. As such, he and his crew (Tom Dolas, Nick Murray, and Brigid Dawson) are almost ideally suited to interpret Yonkers, whose rock material shares these very same characteristics. The two cuts that elicited the first listen, “holy shit, what is this?” from yours truly were “Sold American” and “The Thunder Speaks,” two pounding, howling, vortex-staring cuts that set up a short hypnotic riff, then implode it from the inside with explosive drumming and big guitar chords. They are both insanely great songs, both from Yonkers’ great defining 1968 record, both delivered hot and raw and without reverence.

The odd acoustic folk songs are somewhat more of an acquired taste, but Damaged Bug does justice to them as well. Bridget Dawson takes over the vocals for “Sunflower,” the lone cut from Grimwood, an airy, lullaby sheathed in echo with a sax blowing softly in the background; it is as pretty, and as unusual, as the Yonkers original. “Lovely Gold” written a dozen or so years later, pumps harder, but with whimsy, a Roky Erikson-like jug sound percolating in the interstices.

The disc closes with a Michael Yonkers song you’ve probably never heard, an unreleased ballad called “I Tried” which Damaged Bug plays slowly and sweetly with a steady undercurrent of cello sound. “And I have found a way, and I will be okay, and I can be around the lights, that I don’t understand,” intones Dwyer. You can hear one artist reflecting on another’s accumulated art and wisdom and nodding in recognition.

Jennifer Kelly

[kickerofelves]

[spectrometrie]

[radiosetentayuno]

(Castle Face Records)

[jjdaus97]

Went to Brighton and spent all my money in one store... way to go...

P.S Robert Beatty is a god!

[b4rk1ng-l0t]

Damaged Bug songs for Mouthwashing Characters

that moment when you realize that a song writer has created awesome songs for your hyperfixtation IVOLGIVHEOHEVEFHBSFHJDFN FVDN

Guys you dont understand how well some of these songs fit them YOU GUYS-

In general? Cough Pills

Outerspace. "Youre not as worthless as you think" is easily him to Anya/Jimmy. In general, this song is Curly and Anya.

Anya (weirdly Curly too)-- Goodby Sunball

It reminds me of her and Curly looking at the moon

Daisuke-- The Frog

Talks about excitement entering space and not wanting to leave

Curly-- Eggs at night + Gloves for Garbage

Him in the cryostasis chamber/sitting in the medical bed, looking back on life and regretting not firing Jimmy when he had the chance while wishing he can hold a partner's (Anaya's) hand.

Swansea-- Eggs At Night + Gloves for Garbage

Swansea looking back on his life and expressing regret (before Jimmy kills him).

Gloves for Garbage is his resurfacing drinking habit.

Jimmy-- Rope Burn

Expresses anger + remorse. Easily him to Curly post-crash when he's putting him in the cryostasis chamber.

Links to the songs:

Cough Pills

Anya

Daisuke

Curly + Swansea

(Eggs at Night on left. Gloves for Garbage on right)

Jimmy