#sub city

[figmentjedi]

[chicagopunkstuff]

[vinyldamage]

The Weakerthans Fallow by John Massel

I moved out of my parents’ home in the summer of 1999 and into a house with three other guys. Two of which I didn’t even know. The two guys I didn’t know were from a small town located two hours north of Grand Rapids, Michigan called Manistee. I’d only heard of Manistee because a lot of the redneck kids went up there with their fathers to go hunting. My knowledge of Manistee began and ended with rednecks and hunting. So, I was surprised when my friend Ian approached me to live with him and these two punk kids, Aaron and Brad. Ian really gave me no choice in the matter. He showed up at the record store I worked at with Aaron, and basically told me I was moving into the house whether I liked it or not.

I met Ian four or five years previous when he was working at another record store in town, and my band was looking for a bass player. I used to go to his record store every Friday after I got paid and blow all my money on records. It was my favorite store in town. On one such trip while looking over the tack board for upcoming shows, I noticed a flyer for a bass player looking for a band. The flyer listed his musical influences which just so happened to match what myself, and my friend Matt were into. I knew this was the guy. The only contact info on the flyer said, “ask for Ian at the front counter.” Ian’s reputation had already preceded him before I had even saw that flyer. I’d heard from some punk kids around town that Vinyl Solution had hired someone that was taking over the punk record ordering and that this person had been to Gilman Street, and had the membership card to prove it. At that point in the mid-‘90s to a sixteen year old kid obsessed with punk rock, especially punk rock coming out of the bay area, that was just about the coolest thing ever.

I approached the counter and asked for Ian, and this guy with a shaved head and a tattoo on his forearm looked up from a stack of order forms to introduce himself. “Yeah, I’m Ian.” I told him my band the Addictives were looking for a bassist and he told me he had already joined a band, and that he forgot to take that flyer down. We chatted for a bit, probably about some punk band of that time, and then I took off. I ran into Ian a lot more after that and we struck up a friendship. We dug the same bands and had a similar sense of humor, and most importantly we loved to make fun of the local drunk punk scene. It was around this time that he reminded me of our first meeting and the real reason he didn’t end up playing bass for the Addictives was because he knew who we were, and that we sucked. He also admitted that he wasn’t really that good at bass, so it worked out for all involved. We lost touch for a bit of time after Vinyl Solution closed and he moved out of the apartment he shared with our mutual friend Lara, but we crossed paths again when he started working at the hip coffee shop in town, Kava House. I think it was during these meetings at Kava House that the idea about having me as the fourth roommate entered his mind.

I moved into the house at 344 Carlton at the end of the summer in 1999. Whatever reservations I may have had about living with two other people I didn’t know quickly faded away. Aaron, and Brad were really great guys and we hit it off pretty much instantly. It was around this time that the three of them were in the beginning stages of starting a band with our mutual friend Spencer. I had also just started a new band of my own called North Lincoln. It was a very inspiring and creative time to live in that house. We were all throwing ideas out to each other and trying to push each other to better our bands. Brad had his drum set in the basement and we would go down there for hours playing drum parts we had come up with, or trying to figure out drum parts from records we were listening. Each person living in the house had varied tastes in music and most of the time it clashed, but there were a few occasions where the house could agree on a band, or a record. One of those records we all came together on was Fallow by the Weakerthans.

Up until living at 344 Carlton I had never heard of the Weakerthans. I’m not entirely sure what member of the house played it for me, but whoever it was must have known subconsciously that it was what I needed to hear. The music I listened to at that period of my life was either some variation of what was going on in the bay area, or unintelligible hardcore records that screeched to a hault before you had time process what you’d heard. Fallow was like a breath of fresh air that made you stop and take notice. I remember it being the first time since I had heard the Dead Kennedys that I was paying attention to the lyrics, and that my only focus musically wasn’t on the drummer. I was listening to a record as a whole, and listening closer than I had ever before. Sure, there had been records that have hit me like a ton of bricks before Fallow, but this was something special. Maybe it was something about the timing that made it all the more important? Living in a creative environment with other aspiring musicians, and living on my own for the first time may have made this record stick out from the pack? Or maybe it just stuck out because it is just that goddamned good.

Listening to Fallow some 17 years after I first heard it, brings up all kinds of memories. Doing my homework at our shitty kitchen table while everyone else was at work; Aaron coming home from his job as a line cook with a Labatt Big Blue to watch the newest episode of MTV’s Undressed; the time Ian’s sister’s dog shit all over his bed; my high school relationship falling apart; a new relationship beginning; the death of a friend from a drug over dose; our New Year’s Eve ’99 party where I almost died; the countless times Brad and I watched our VHS copy of the music video for “Diagnosis”, to figure out that damn drum fill Jason Tait did at the end of the song. Mostly when I hear the record now I’m reminded of how things in my life changed dramatically. Living in a house surrounded by other musicians and having this record as our defacto soundtrack gave us the ambition to make music our sole purpose. Before I lived in that house with those four individuals I surrounded myself with people that talked about making music and how they were going to make the punk scene in Grand Rapids great again, but instead these people spent a majority of their time either drinking away their passion, or sticking a needle in their arm to destroy it. Never once did they think outside of Grand Rapids at a world out before them.

Fallow is not only a record that signifies a turning point in my life musically, but also personally. I began to distance myself from those people and a scene that was killing itself, to create and build a new scene with like-minded people that wanted more. Some of us did just that, and though some of us didn’t at least we gave each other the push to figure out what we wanted from life.

John Massel is a musician and writer living in Portland, Oregon. He plays drums in the band Evil Speakers and Bothers. He oversees the blog, These Are the Records of Our Lives.

[harleyquinncomfort]

Awh Puddin' you're so festive! SubCity - Dublin

[tacoflavoredliz-blog]

Clockin. In for my petty shift.

Misery lovesssss company . But not good conversation ?

[hopelessrecords]

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