The Artist Presently Known As Ed

Return to drumming, 1989

My return to drumming came in 1989 after about four years away from it. When I returned, I used the same kit as before; one that my grandparents bought me in 1985. This picture is perhaps the only known one of that kit. That kit got sold early in my return to drumming. I don't really know why I sold it; the next kit was not very much better until it underwent a comprehensive makeover and continuous improvements over the seven years I had it.

Snare drum: bigger is better

This is taken in the week after I got my new kit. I guess I took the snare drum to show off at a church group I was part of then. I had made a lot of talk about it by then, so this was the evidence. Those glasses are embarrassing. I was an uptight kid then, and because I was in church all the time, I had this idea that I would tithe my income (which was nothing, I realize) or do something else sacrificial if I could get the money together to buy this new kit. I am pretty sure I forgot that soon after the purchase.

My first kit had a shallow, standard issue 5.5" wooden snare drum. The new kit I perceived as better in part because it had a 6.5" steel snare drum. Somehow I got ideas in my head. 

I bought the kit at a store just two blocks from my house, New World Music and Sound. That place was instrumental (pardon the pun) in introducing me to a lot of things. They were a rather more refined place with professional gear oriented to the electronic market—drum machines, synths, modules, and the like. They ended up morphing into a more full featured store with guitar and drum departments. In 1989-92 or so I used to go in there and hang out to learn stuff, read magazines. Like the Command Post before it, I was a sycophantic kid learning the new field, asking dumb questions. I used to unbox sets as a volunteer and set them up, tune them up a bit. The long lasting effects of hanging out there were a few that unfolded over time:

Craig Zarkos worked there and indulged me in drumming knowlege. In June of 1992, he asked if I'd be his drum tech and cartage guy while he pursued work in LA. I'd drive his van and all that. I was just about to fly off to Europe for the summer and barely knew what the hell he was talking about and maybe deferred to my schooling plans. Later on, Craig did figure into more work for me after I got my foot in with Rockola.

Upon starting in Rockola in 1995, I found that I recognized their soundman, Mitch Grant. Mitch used to be the pro audio department manager at NWMS and I recall seeing him floating by in that department, probably wondering why I was around so much. I ended up working for Mitch quite a lot from 1997-2003, perhaps more than anyone else. Every so often I do a gig for him still.

It was just about the same time as Craig Zarkos made his first offer that I was hanging out watching the video of a band that just blew my little mind. A guy played a really weird electronic/acoustic kit while another played some damned weird guitar stuff like he was molesting it. Another bald headed guy played a straight instrument I never saw before while the next guy sat to play guitar in the shadows. The song titles were like from a foreign language! I asked John Hernandez who they were and what this music was called. It was my first time watching the 1984 version of King Crimson. JH called their music "avant garde jazz."

New World was that indeed.

The new kit, March 1990

This is more or less what I started with when I got my second kit. Pay attention to how it progresses. I got this in March 1990 and ultimately sold it in 1997, but it was far from the same kit by then. I don't suppose I know why I took the drums to the driveway for these periodic photo shoots. It did afford me some space to move and clarity with respect to illumination.

The cymbals here are Zildjian Scimitars, a starter kit of ride, crash, and hi hats that might safely be described as the worst thing Zildjian ever signed their name to. They were ever so slightly more musical (but more durable) than garbage can lids. (For the kiddies out there, garbage cans used to be made from steel.) I recall dreaming of drums. This particular setup with two toms mounted on a stand was something that I dreamt of and drew a picture of before getting the hardware to make it happen. I thought I had arrived. Little did I know how restless one could get with the Erector set that is a drum set! The various photo shoots usually were done after some new breakthrough in configuration of this and the Premier kit later on.

The presence of the cowbell was made possible by my first trip to Music Mart in January 1990, just before the sale of the first kit. There I met one Dave Flewelling, a sweet dude who indulged me in an insane "bro deal" that involved the cowbell and hardware and a couple heads for the old kit. I got to know Dave a bit through Music Mart, and eventually I worked at MM myself some time after he did (and at a different store). Later on, after some time out of touch, Dave appeared onstage with one of the bands I worked for—NRG—while working for Mitch Grant! Dave later got a family and needed stability and sought out professional electrician's work. When I needed to remodel the room at my Quapaw house in 2004, I enlisted him to come and do the wiring properly. Dave is a great fellow.

The Beginning of my recording career

Okay, this is one of my cringing moments. I am actually putting this out for the world to see. When you want to know the history of my recording and cover art projects, this is it. I won't kid you. All this was was a clever way to label a tape with my early attempts at recording for the sake of reviewing my performance. At the time, most of my musical influences were touched on in this random bunch of stabs at my favorite songs.

The "additional musicians" were little bits of audio from the recordings I was trying to play to with headphones on. I seem to remember the crudest form of audio editing to place crowd noise after some of this. 

The bit about "side 2" is ripped off of Rush's album Presto, which I just got from my former English teacher in May. He had it on LP so there was actually a notice like that in the liner notes. Not understanding the mastering concerns associated with the physical space on vinyl records, I thought they were just making one of their jokes, so I copied it.

The "copyright" still amuses me. I used that on subsequent tapes like this. Now I just claim Creative Commons By/NC/SA for my legal notice.

The notice about playing in my garage has an interesting story. I recall that day even now. I set up in the garage while my old man was at work. Above the garage lived a guy who kept late hours and was kind of a recluse. Even playing for a couple hours in the middle of the day ("on the sly", as much as it could be) was enough to tick the guy off. He ratted me out to the old man. The old man, not yet turned against my playing in the house, was dismissive enough of the guy's claim and gave him a pair of earplugs. The guy later sued for some amount of rent. After that, by the end of the summer, I was getting the first instance of something that became a chorus for years to come: "the drums don't belong in the house."

Rock Show 90

Say it with that big bold, FM Radio DJ voice...RAWK SHOWWWWW NINE-TEEN NINE-ty!

This was the show that I saw as a junior in high school, and a drummer who had not yet been playing for a year. I was literally being tickled by the sounds of Rush, and this helped push me over the edge. The guys in Squirt Guns and Carnations (guns and roses, get it?) played the fuck out of Tom Sawyer. Dwayne Sutke was the guy to match or beat in high school. But look on the other page and there's another guy you'll read about more on TAPKAE.com: Mike Bedard, as a 9th grader. At the time, I regarded Mike as a bit of a dull dude, a metalhead. I had no interest in metal. I was into Jethro Tull, thank you very much, and they just won the best hard rock/metal grammy a year before. So Mike's band Metal Burger did not get my small plus sign for the stuff that I did like.

Destiny, a cornier name than most of Iowa could muster, was really a good band made up of a bunch of dudes who were aiming for the stars in contemporary Christian music. I was a moderately close friend of their circle so I was inclined to like them, but really, all the other music was just unfamiliar to me then.

This very show was what prompted Shawn Zizzo and Tomas Enriquez to form up and at least once we played as a two guitar/drums band trying to hash out AC/DC or Aerosmith. The following ad tried to find additional musicians to fill it out. As it happened, we did nothing of the sort until just about a year later when our own senior class talent show was upon us. Then we did play our own version of the RAWK SHOW with a more complete band that covered Walk This Way, ala RUN DMC.

No Metallica-ites

After seeing the RAWK SHOW at school in April, Shawn Zizzo and Tomas Enriquez and I somehow found ourselves jamming at my house once over Memorial Day weekend. That was a trip. My old man was off on one of the annual motorcycle rallies that I used to be a part of through 1989. But this time I stayed home and probably said nothing of my plans to jam with the guys. We set up in my living room. Drums and two guitars. I wanted to play Tull and they wanted to play AC/DC, Aerosmith, and the Cult. I had no love for Metallica and so I wrote this ad as you see it. I think we played just that once before we got ready for the talent show a year later. I guess we didn't find a bass player or keyboardist or singer to fit the bill.

The funny thing is, I discovered the San Diego Reader in the spring of 1990. This had to be one of my first ads ever. Taking a look at it years later, after getting to know more about the local players and studios, it was interesting to look back and see who was trying to do what. There was also a girl from school who was part of their survey question page. At that time, I did not know her, but after she joined Madison in senior year, I knew her. But it was years again before I recognized her in the Reader.

Basement Tapes

You will never hear this tape. And a good thing.

Kris Blais is a great guitar player. He's probably playing some Christian band's stuff now, or producing, or something. But back in high school, and on one particularly dreary June Gloom day in my bedroom, we jammed some guitar and drums. I didn't really know shit about playing with anyone; this might have been the first time, or the second or whatever. Pretty early stuff. I only had a feel for some classic rock but I had prog rock ambitions. I had no idea about metal, but he could throw down a few metal riffs, and I responded in the worst possible way. Total shit.

Anyhow, this is here to call attention to my humble beginnings of making recordings (though this wasn't my first), and then attaching liner notes in some kind of a cover. I realize this is total shit. But from here came the ambitious approach to my Rhythmic Catharsis stuff, and all the solo work to come, and even if you will, podcasting now and attaching a website as additional material. I always loved to read liner notes with all the details. Later on, part of the charm of Mike Keneally was that he flooded me with liner notes and details. Ah...

Holding a bass

This is an example of me holding a bass. I have to say that because it certainly wasn't something I knew how to play. My grandmother wasn't entirely off the mark when she heard me playing piano and exclaimed that maybe music wasn't my strong suit. She said that three years after this was taken, so this must have been a miserable time. I remember thinking I was going to play some Rush. Like hell!  I had no idea what this thing was or how to use it. I just borrowed it from a church peer. Notice the Neil Peart posters. Shelby, my odd friend, used to give me hell about those posters and my Rush listening for years to come.

The senior picture, alt pose

This is one of the photos from my senior photo shoot. Unfortunately, the yearbook required the dressed up ones, so these were for fun and family. I had just bought that drum in the few months before, and I was nuts for it. I didn't part with it until 2001 or so. I loved Premier snare drums so much then. There was one other picture in formal dress that was good as this in its own way. Nice hair, none of those godawfully dorky glasses—but the mysterious operators in the dark room picked the dorkiest of the entire series to use for the yearbook. I heap pox upon them! This shoot was quite fun, and got me out of a summer-long depressive episode, and warmed me up for getting into school a week later.

During the Gulf War

Okay, my conservative roots are showing here. But I think more than that, my young mind was not yet ready to see the Gulf War for what it was. So I got a little caught up in the patriotic fervor that year. It was a war that was fought and won in one school year, and one where I was somehow awakening to things, but apparently not this. The pink shirt was a push into a new territory personally, but more advanced social critique was years off. I left my little paragraph about this short period in my sprawling journal from the day after I graduated a few months later. It remained, but was severely reduced by some editorial comments!

Talent show program, 1991

Here is the program to the one big thing I did in high school, other than to show up regularly to class. The band didn't actually have a name when the show went on. The reference to Subliminal Gestures was something that later musing produced, in time for writing the article a while later in the school paper, the Talon. Since this part of the site is being done in 2011 and I have had nostalgic tendencies of late, you can do a category search for 1991 stuff that will link you up to other tales from the period, including some about this show.

Worse than Fox news—Subliminal Gestures

The absurdity of my writing a newspaper article to talk about a band that I played in is not lost on me. Nor is the fact that quoted myself in this absurd example of journalism that sort of makes Fox News Corp look a tad more legit. But you can do that when you sit on the school paper. But here it is people, the proto-TAPKAE.com! It was really my first foray into journalism, being on the Talon paper. Now 20 years later, I still write about myself. Only I pay to do so and the layout is far nicer and the colors are rich!

My true prom date

You realize this shot was posed very intentionally because when you are a teenager, you obsess about whatever hobby or interest you have, and everything is seen through that paradigmatic lens. So here I am on my prom day, about to leave for my date's house, and oh! wait! Gotta get one with the drums! You can see pix of my real prom date Trudi in the midst of the Skool Daze gallery.

This is one shot taken in my bedroom in 1991, a period when apparently my bedroom was still a viable place to hit the drums. That deal lasted until about October or November when I was given orders to take them elsewhere. My father was not going to modify the house in any way, so all I could do was to get giant chunks of foam and wedge them into the single pane window openings, and wrap the louvered windows in towels, and then to cover the whole thing with a number of blankets. All that essentially rendered my room terribly dark when it was set up. And of course, it all did nothing to contain the sound pressure that radiated through walls anyway.

By the end of 1991, my first era of playing drums at home had come to an end and I was sort of exiled. My job at Subway led me to meet Matt Zuniga who was interested in helping because he too wanted to play drums.

DWA bridge

One thing I took to doing was to take my drums initially to Matt Zuniga's house across Clairemont. That worked okay for about five weeks until his grandmother had the same response to loud drumming as did my father. So we took our show on the road, literally. We packed my kit into his car and went out to places we thought we could play. Parking lots, parking garages, under bridges. We tried a number of places. This particular one in Fashion Valley area was somewhat secure from passersby even as it was fully visible from a couple angles. The fence helped. This is where we first recorded our drumming and noise and shouting. We called ourselves Drummers With Attitudes (DWA—a not so subtle play on NWA!). It was the start of my recordings and most especially, it was the first experience that led me to do any songwriting and composition.

You can't really see it clearly here, but the black kit now has more cymbals but also has additional Pearl Export add on 8" and 10" toms. The snare drum was one that I liberated from an old broken Pearl kit at Madison High. It was in sorry shape when I got it but I ended up making something of it and was fond of using it for its sensitivity. 

1992 bedroom setup

We were exiled most of the time, but I got some okay to play if it wasn't as loud. So things got brought back into my room at times during 1992, and I began to play with rod sticks for less attack. You can see the scheme I had for covering the windows. I wedged that big seven piece kit into my room, taking up about half the space. The big change here was that I got a new rack built for this kit. My father made it from stainless steel and I used off the shelf clamps for the drum hardware. The rack worked pretty well. A few years later I sold it to Mike Bedard and bought the Pearl Porcaro rack. Mike had it for quite some time and interestingly swore by it saying it was the best piece of equipment he had. I guess it's funny that another drummer would say that my dad's contribution to his career was that positive. Obviously, I differ. Mike told me he sold the rack to some student of his not long ago. I guess when you're drummer/musical director for Jordin Sparks on her tour, you can move on from the stuff that got you started.

On my way to Neil Peartdom

Lookin' pretty cocky at this giant kit. All my Subway effort is showing some gains. Too bad I got canned a few weeks after this picture. Or maybe I had already been. Anyhow, you can see the rack and the added toms. Still have dumb looking glasses though.

The poster of Neuschwanstein castle shows what a Germany geek I was then. I had been there though.

Rhythmic Catharsis cover

As far as I can tell, this is the beginning of the Rhythmic Catharsis franchise. This is the first iteration of the screaming players representing Matt and me. Early May 1993.

Over the top posing

I think I was going for the artist-endorser look here. There is something intimidating about looking at a drum kit from this angle.

Rhythmic Catharsis logo

The logo as it was found on a school chalkboard one afternoon at Mesa College.

Toy kit

This kit is less intimidating. I was sort of miming the logo image I created for Rhythmic Catharsis. That is the name Matt and I went by after a short period of the DWA moniker. It suited us better and was more original. Look on the bass drum head when the 1993 kit shows up. It is the one with the black Porcaro rack. The RC logo is painted on there, and this photo is emulating that.

Matt Zuniga in San Clemente Canyon

Maybe you notice something different? The drums all got a uniform refinishing wrap in May 1992. This, coupled with the rack, made it an impressive thing. The process for doing the refinishing was really ghetto in its execution but turned into a kit that sounded a lot more powerful. I cut the bearing edges myself using a crude file instrument made of a flat stick and sandpaper. I filled in the grain on the insides of the shells, sanded it all smooth, primed it, filled the remaining gaps, and then primed and painted the entire shell in gloss black. Then I wrapped the shells and replaced the hardware. They got a lot more power in the upper overtones that way, since they were essentially turned into cannons.

The snare drum here is my Premier, the first good drum I owned. It was this lovely shiny thing that I got while working at the Command Post two years before. Around that time while hanging out at New World Music and Sound, I developed a thing for Premier snare drums. I was rather thrilled with their clarity and cut, and they had a wild 9" deep brass/wood snare that I lusted for. This was from the same line and was what was affordable and reasonable. Later on, I did get one of those Heavy Rock Nine drums, and of course my remaining kit is Premier Signia. Oddly, now my go-to snare, after paring down from four different snares in recent years, is a Ludwig Super Sensitive bronze shell.

We went to a range of places, and one day in June 1992 we went to a wide open part of San Clemente canyon near my house. Of course, the sound is not so favorable as being under a bridge or in a garage. We only did this once, just to find that out. Slowly we developed a feel for the right place to use. Eventually we honed that selection to places that had available AC power for our recorder.

RC at the industrial park

This place was in the wide open parking lot of an industrial park. Shot on the same June weekend as the canyon shot. I had just finished the whole kit's new look and it felt like something brand new and imposing, situated on my custom rack and all.

Now this was pushing it. One time we found what seemed to be an abandoned warehouse that was full of all sorts of junk. Somehow it was open. We cased it out and found we could go in and play, unseen, out of the elements. One night we even told other musician dudes (including Mike Bedard and Ed Talorda) about it and we all went and jammed there. After that, somehow it got sealed up and we were on to other locales.

Drums at Volt

One of the more reliable places we played at on weekends was in Kearny Mesa, a vast commercial district in town. This place was under a building and blocked from the main road, but was otherwise open and easy to get to. We used it for the whole second half of 1992. All we did was drive in with my piece of shit Ford Escort wagon, set up drums and recorder, and jam our budding songs. By the fall of 1992, I wanted to make something more than just collections of shouting and noise and drum only renditions of our favorite songs, so I started writing nonsense lyrics about farm animals and weirdos. Our recordings of that were my first songs.

Not so lucky was a time in fall 1997 when I took my kit there with my four track recorder, set up and played drums and vocal overdubs on a song called When Elephants Fight. It was a pounding tribal kind of thing that Matt and I used to play. I was redoing it on my own as part of the new idea I had that later was called ReCyclED. One lone office worker working at midnight or so called the cops and had me shut down, saying I was screaming about raping children or something. That little meeting with the law gave me part of the basis for the song Bad Cop, No Donut which appeared in 1999. The other half of the song's genesis came from the infamous San Diego Streaker incident with Toss Panos in 1997, just weeks before the Elephant song.

Me at Volt, 1992

This is just about 180 degrees away from where the shot with the red Escort is. Lots of irreverent, noisy, obnoxious and rude stuff going on at Volt that season. What a way to spend a Sunday. Wholly un-holy, we were.

Matt at Volt, 1992

Usually we traded off somewhat, but the business of thinking like a band caused us to move into roles more along the lines of me playing drums and Matt doing the screaming vocal parts. I could barely hear him during all of this, so I was just giving it my best to try to lay something down that he might be able to sing to. Much creative tension in RC. I guess I would rather have had a home space to play in, but I have to say, the places we played in made the drums sound god-like.

At home, 1993

1993 was a chance to return to home for a while. I am not sure how that all worked out, but we cut more recordings using our little boombox with a totally crappy mic that we used to add to existing recordings. I tended to like getting a thundering recording at a parking garage and then coming home to add additional percussion bits and some voice effects. But I was happy to get whatever I could, wherever I could.

In the background is my word processing typewriter that I used to create quite an extensive and totally absurd Rhythmic Catharsis universe. I did some old school newspaper style "fanzines" that are the perfect precursor to blogging and doing a site like this. It was totally over the top and Matt was probably embarrassed. He never told anyone about us really. It was just my thing and we got to blow off steam in doing it. But my proclivity toward writing insane amounts of liner note material was started in earnest during this period.

The Neil Peart posters are still up, even in July 1993. Eat your heart out, Shelby.

Matt at home, 1993

This time facing Matt and the piano that my grandmother gave me that spring. It was an odd thing doing the crazy spontaneous RC stuff on drums and trying to learn piano, but working with the usual folk and pop song repertoire that one starts with. As a result, it took years before I integrated keyboards into my music at any appreciable level. I still don't fancy myself a piano player.

Matt would like to never let me forget that among all the stupid jokey songs I wrote during this era in 1993, the stupidest one was a barely-sketched thing that we improvised—Matt on piano with no fucking clue of what he was doing, and me reading the lyrics to a bit called "Auto Mechanics Don't Play Piano." Oddly, the nonsense piano playing was a perfect backdrop, but I was not about to proclaim that "Subway Sandwich Jocks Don't Play Piano" because some might. The song idea revolved around being rather greasy and with busted knuckles. Not exactly compatible with a career in piano based music.

Notice that the elaborate window dressing from the previous year was removed. I remember we played at the house that year, but probably not as long, not as often, and with rod sticks part of the time. My neighbor, basically right outside the wall behind me in the other picture, was a cranky old man who had no patience with the drums but was given to sitting in his van, in his driveway for hours at a time, possibly avoiding his Jehovah's Witness wife who was even more uptight and reclusive inside the house. One time after I was playing in 1991 or so, after the cymbals faded and I took off the headphones, I heard him shouting "STOP PLAYING THOSE DAMNED DRUMS!" That became the name of the first tape I did with the name Drummers With Attitudes in March 1992, recorded after my neighbor got his way and got me ushered from the house.

In the background is a map of Germany, this time after my second trip there. I think I mapped out my 1992 tour on that map. 

Ed at Murphy Canyon, 1993

I guess I don't know anymore what led us to be at home sometimes and out in garages at other times. I suppose it was just that some nights we had to rawk with wild abandon. Occasionally we took the drums out for a photo shoot and ended up playing there, or bouncing around, hitting a snare drum at a new place until we got found out and were asked to leave. If not, we'd put the kit up. This place was one such place where we got away with it for a day or two.

This is also the photo debut of yet another new development—the Pearl Jeff Porcaro rack. All of a sudden, this kit got to looking rather sexy in its black and silver wear. You can see the logo painted on the drumhead.

Matt at Murphy Canyon, 1993

A lot of people think we used drugs or something. Actually, we were straightedge back then. We just had to blow off steam and screw around. Hell, I was 19 then.

You'll notice the toms got shifted down one position. The old rack got to feeling very wide with four toms up front, and the new rack was more close feeling and allowed me to be more ergonomically correct.

Silver kit at Murphy Canyon

This kit peaked in its function and appeal in summer 1994, about a year after this. But for a year or so, this seven piece with its rack was a force to reckon with. It was loud and brash due to the entirely sealed shells. When I got into Slaves By Trade, it got to be clear that a five piece was good enough, so that began to change things. But when this picture was taken, me and Matt brought the noise.

NES at Kelli's, 1993

Just as Rhythmic Catharsis folded up in August of 1993, I coincidentally found myself jamming with a band called New Electron Symphony. The first such instance was at the notorious Spirit club, where on the day when Matt and I were going to do our first or second Rhythmic Catharsis show (something he never wanted to do anyway), he flaked on me, leaving me in the stupendously embarrassing situation of having my drums there, ready to go, and then going on and trying to make something of it, while never having ever tried to sing anything while playing drums. Of course, that didn't matter, because hardly anyone but the staff was there that Tuesday.

Anyhow, NES was there one of those Tuesdays and had no drummer at the same time as I had no band. So we got together to jam on stage and see how things went. The group was fronted by Ian and Cindy, a couple living in Ocean Beach, the misfit center of San Diego. Ian was influenced by all sorts of avant garde music, and it was through him that my musical world exploded in terms of consciousness. He embraced all sorts of things from Led Zeppelin to Sun Ra; Stravinsky to P-Funk; Miles Davis to the Talking Heads. Of course I never really got that far into things but I learned some lessons about simplicity and groove—the kinds of stuff one does not need to be concerned with when jamming on drums with just a guy who screamed lyrics. Ian played bass or guitar mostly, but he was also into his form of electronica, using odd pawn shop and electronics store items like dictaphones and pickups, or homemade percussion—shakers, kalimba, and so on. He would run stuff through echo and other effects. It was a trip, particularly for me who was neck deep in Rush and Jethro Tull then.

NES at Kelli's, 1993

Cindy played violin mainly, usually cueing off of Ian for guidance. Sometimes she played fretless bass while Ian was on guitar. Guitarist Jerry Kenne was along for the ride and kept us in stitches between jams. Otherwise, he was ready to go on the mostly improvised excursions we made. Ian recorded us sometimes on his four track, and did more elaborate treatments of some of the few things that got done that way, but mainly, we jammed at their house and played a couple times in public.

The stand seen between Ian and Cindy is my microphone stand for the evening. I had my two shitty mics that I bought at a store like the Wherehouse. I used them to record all the stuff I did with Rhythmic Catharsis and occasional things with NES. I used them straight to a cassette field recorder that I um, liberated from Mesa College. That did some good service for some years to come while I was still using tape. I wonder what happened to it.

These pictures are taken at a party we played at Kelli's house in Mission Hills on New Year's Eve coming into 1994. That was a hoot. By the end, we gave up jamming and were in a conga line and dancing our way up to the neighbor's house in her hillside and highly irregularly laid out complex.

Premier the Premiers!

In August 1994, I finally blew out a share of the first inheritance I got from my grandfather. Guitar Center got the better of me when I had a moment of blissful weakness before this Premier Signia kit. I had played one while in Europe a couple years before and found them heavenly. So it was a no brainer that I would get this when the means, motive, and opportunity all lined up for me. Coupled with a bunch of cymbals I had bought earlier in the year, this became a quite professional kit for a guy who had not yet left parking garages far behind. In fact, Matt and I took the kit out to one just to take pictures of it in that setting!

I got this kit just at the time when I was thinking Slaves By Trade would be a viable band to play with for a while. Two months later, we were done and never played another note together again!

The Mysterious Matthew

Who could predict any of the stuff Matt was going to do? He was a madman.

The Mysterious Matthew, dancing fool

Truly mad. You just don't know with the Mysterious Matthew. He had to keep himself amused somehow.

Ed snarl

I guess I just don't know how to explain this. That shoot must have been fun.

Ed and Matt, 1997 garage drumming

This picture is chronologically out of order but says about the same stuff as any of the Rhythmic Catharsis stuff would: playing drums in garages (this one was at National University) because apartment life could not hold drums. I don't recall if this is reliable fact, but this was one of the last times I played drums from September or October 1997 until Hog Heaven Studio was ready for service in June 1998. Without Matt in the picture (he was on a brief leave from the Army, something which he later went AWOL from and then just settled for a dishonorable), I had no real interest in playing drums outside, but did resort to it a couple times for the sake of trying to capture ideas for future recordings. Playing outside when you're smothered in noise, isolated, and alone is a bit nerve racking. I always feared some interference, particularly in the era of the new drum set, which even today looks like a fine target for mischief.

Matt 1997 garage drumming

The days of the Premier kit were firmly in the era of trying to actually play music. The old silver/black kit was tailored for overplaying in the way that was all I could do in Rhythmic Catharsis. But by the time of this new kit, my sensibilities had been better honed. The drums themselves were let to speak in nicer, fuller tones that I was able to get because Roger Friend had finally taught me to tune drums.

I see that this was during a spell when I employed one stand with a horizontal section of the Porcaro rack attached to it to help mount things. I still like that idea for loading up one or two sections like that but then it means the rest of the rack is sitting in pieces somewhere.

The presence of a few channels of microphone inputs was a new development from the old RC days when we just used one shitty mic and captured it to one cassette. At this time, I was just on the verge of moving out of four-track cassette land and into the VS-880 era.

Ed 1997 garage drumming

Four tracks was indeed a huge step up. The "big improvement" visible here is the presence of two SM-57s, my entry into using real mics. Gosh. I wonder what parking garage recordings would sound like now with my Focusrite/iMac/Logic rig with a mix of real mics. THAT would be godlike.

Woodham session drummer

The recording with Steve was new stuff for me. It was SO anti-anything I had done. My style was always rough around the edges, a bit too flailing and prone to overplaying a lot. All that time blowing off steam in parking garages wasn't too good a preparation for playing with a guy who counted Vic Chesnutt and the Beatles and the Dead Kennedys among his influences. But somehow after a rehearsal in his house, we convened on the studio and I punched in tracks for four songs. I was prone to consciously thinking of Ian McGee of NES telling me about restraint and not doing fills and crashes. So I took it seriously enough to actually leave most of my kit at home, bringing in just the meat and potatoes for this recording. The thing that bugged me was that the first order of business was to take the front head off my kick drum and to stuff a blanket in it for that 70s era thud that was later processed back into some life. I tend to favor just tuning the drum for wide open tone and letting it be. I didn't know that then, but I knew that after playing the enormously explosive spaces of parking garages (with a kind of sustain that delights), this dry bedroom playing was uninspiring.

Slaves by Trade with Allan

Slaves By Trade called me too. On the day the ad came out they called and woke me up, saying they needed a drummer that night. Could I learn ten songs by showtime? In the spirit of "can do" I got up and whisked my too-large kit up to their rehearsal space and tried to get their songs into my head. None of it was particularly hard, but that was no time to allow for memorization! The show at least had a crowd of rowdies that was content to drink and congratulate me for stepping in on such notice. Their people were always good to me. For about three months there was a singer, Allan (right) who didn't like me much, and wanted to go play more Pearl Jam stuff. All these guys were in the Navy, and in the same shop, so I had to tread lightly with them. Eventually he got canned from the band and Jim Pupplo (to my actual left) stepped up to sing, and did a better job of it.

Woodham, Lucas, Tolley

Back to 1994 for a while now. That spring, I put up a Reader ad that got a few responses that put me in new musical territory. In about the same week or two I was invited to play in three different settings: Steve Woodham and his acoustic folk pop; Slaves By Trade and their grungy metal; Purple Cush and their laid back California sound with a dose of jazz and punk and reggae.

Steve Woodham, a guitarist and songwriter got me in to do a few songs with him. We recorded with Andy Tolley, who I called upon when it was time to do the Slaves By Trade recording in August. Andy used a retired 16-track machine and recorded punk bands mainly, all done in his house. He was raving about his analog console that he picked up from one of the major studios not long before. For a cheap demo den, he had a nice sound. It would be nice to track there then take it to digital to cut and manipulate.

Jim Pupplo shredding

We really only played a few places, but we played a number of times. The San Diego dive bar scene was open to us in the form of the Spirit club (open to anyone, including some dude who plays drums in parking garages and shows up without his vocalist), Dream Street, Bodie's, The Madhouse, and a few others that have names I can't remember. This was at the Spirit, a place interestingly located across from where I worked at Subway, a few blocks from the band's house on Knoxville St. and just a few blocks more from a house that I took up residence in many years later. I was at least able to leave my drums at their house much of the time, but I also had other opportunities to play with Purple Cush. Everywhere I went, I took that big seven piece kit, until about June, when I decided to pare back and go to a Bonham like five piece kit with no rack.

Jim was an accomplished amateur guitarist. He was well rehearsed and could articulate a lot of stuff. But he was pretty plain in his imagination—maybe because he was just starting off with songwriting in a style that itself is not really that varied. And his solid state, digitally processed tone sucked (this might be what kept us from sounding like the Seattle stuff with all their reliance on old and/or cheap tube/analog gear). The nature of the music gave license for that kind of thing, but even as we got a pretty good recording at Andy Tolley's place, the music still lacked dynamics. Apparently though he could play so fast he blurred!

Ed blurred in SBT

Jim blurred, and I apparently rocked the foundations of the earth so much that I blurred too.

This is from April or May 1994, before I got the good sense to cut back on the drums. And WTF does one need a splash cymbal for in a hard rock band with grunge aspirations? I had much to learn about the appropriate gear to bring to a gig. After this, I cut the kit back, tuned the drums down a bit and tried to clean up some of my playing so it would drive harder.

Pupplo the angel of white metal

In 2004, I was watching the news (an odd instance considering my avoidance of TV) and the report came over that four Navy aviators were killed in Okinawa. One Jim Pupplo was among them. He had made the jump from an enlisted man to officer some years before so the news report didn't make sense to me originally since I knew him as a shop guy, an enlisted guy. I was a bit uncertain about whether it was this Jim Pupplo, but eventually I became certain it was.

All that aside, I have to say he was the first guy I turned to in late 1994 after SBT ceased to be, asking for some guitar tutorial. I'm not sure I actually learned much, but he was gracious enough to coach me a bit and send me on my way. Slaves By Trade had served its purpose.

For his part, he went on to sing for a two-guitar stoner rock band called Typhoid Mary, and later on, to play guitar when they cut back one member and renamed themselves as Pincushion. That was the last I saw of them.

One Twisted Individual, Separated At Birth

From my first "solo album." Here is the digitally composited cover that helped set this project apart from all others that were done by hand and with black and white copies. Believe it or not, I paid some place to do this, though I was a total newb as I sat and directed things over the guy's shoulder. Some of the stuff was already collaged with paper photo prints and was subject to the limitations that creates. But the twisted image was totally Photoshop and made me giddy, probably. The back cover is a bit more reasonable.

My old man left a note for me one day, which I put onto the back cover:

"I've been listening to your lyrics. They are stupid. I think they are not productive and won't appeal to anybody. Rethink your efforts more carefully, will you?" —the Old Man, 1995

1995 business card

By the next year, I was trying to pare my wordiness back some and turn to a slightly more whimsical style using a bit of clip art from the Reader or elsewhere. I posted these in Music Mart, and for a while, I was working there in early 1995 and got paid to talk drums and tune them and all that.

This card did actually start my career in this area though. After a few small local guys who were bashing out their stuff in garages and storage lockers and basements, I did get a call from one Marty Eldridge of Rockola. He and I met a few years before when I worked at Subway in Clairemont Square. He lived across the street and came in once in a while, mentioning a band. At the time, he was most certainly just joining Rockola. Later on, he spotted one of these in Music Mart. I recall he came in and asked about me driving his car for him since he lost his license. He wanted me to set up his drums. I wasn't quite that interested, as I was already working a job and a half. He asked me about renting my Premiers for three weeks for a session that he was recording at his home ADAT studio. I did go for that. He paid me a whopping $300 or so for using them, but I was rather anal about letting them out of my sight, and how they'd be tuned. (I was new at this.)

Eventually, in July 1995, he convinced me to work for him as his assistant/driver. He paid me $20/gig, got me food, let me use his car to do whatever I wanted during the show. No tax. No bullshit. Rockola worked three days a week. Man, $240 a month to set up some drums??? Hell yeah. By the middle of the next month, I quit my crappy job at Advance Recording Products and worked exclusively for Marty. A short while later I became drawn into the Bob Tedde gravitational pull, and did his work too for a while. I was paid a whopping $35 a gig to do setup, stagehanding, strike and sometimes even storage of things overnight. Eventually, Marty pulled out and I was left working for Bob and the band's general needs. Not always distinguished work, particularly once I was there to do shows. But this card started that off, and it led to other stuff that sustained me for a rather long time to come.

Waldo review in DRUM! magazine

Ed Lucas

Age: 21
Equipment: Premier Signia drum set, Premier hardware, Zildjian, Sabian and Paiste cymbals, Remo heads.

Lucas—who has played drums only five years—sent in a compilation tape of the various bands he has drummed with since '92. Most of them have a hard edge, with Lucas playing a loose but driving, backbeat-oriented groove that is fueled by delightfully-unrestrained fills and a powerful attack. The Squid's favorite track is one of Lucas' earliest recordings, "Hobbledehoy," a spoken word/drum solo by the band Rhythmic Catharsis, which sounds like it was recorded in an aircraft hangar. Though his chops were somewhat limited at this stage, Lucas flails with an admirable sense of abandon, and comes off sounding like the wackiest-possible cross between Keith Moon and Joey Barron. It's a charming standout among the otherwise okay thrash-and-burn tracks. Standing out like a sore thumb, however, are two songs Lucas recorded with singer Steve Woodham, that have a laid back acoustic folk rock sound. The contrast is remarkable. Instead of going bonkers, Lucas concentrates on playing time and keeping a steady beat, carefully choosing his fills. Although his drumming sounds comparatively stiff and self-conscious on these tracks, the Squid bets that they proved to be a real learning experience for him.

1994 business card

This rather pretentious bit of self promotional propaganda was perhaps my first "business card." After I got my new drum set in the summer of 1994, and after Roger Friend (drummer with lots of people, most notably, tour drummer with ABBA) showed me a real clever way to tune the toms to each other, giving them a great jazzy bark with a nice melodic interval between each one, I thought I was all bad ass. In 1992, I had already been kind of a stickler for extracting an open and boomy sound from my older Pearl Export/knockoff kit. I had taken that one apart, filled in the woodgrain, painted the inner shells with enamel and rebuilt it with a new wrap. It was a lofty thing to do. It did something that gave them a kind of articulation they didn't have, and a rather thunderous tone from being made like cannons. Anyhow, the new Premier drums didn't need that. Roger showed me how to get a studio quality sound with no muffling.

All the guys in the bands that I saw and played with, and all the local recordings of the time struck me as hopelessly shitty sounds. So this little campaign of mine was my initial foray. This little thing, one quarter the size of a regular piece of paper, was impossibly small to read. My loquacious style was on full display then. But it did give me reason to go up to one young looking guy who could play the fuck out of his little four piece Noble and Cooley set at a beach bar gig at the Salmon House. His name was Cliff Almond. I was 20 years old, stealing into the bar with Robin, also underage. I had no idea who he was. (And a few years later, I found out that his mom was the organist at my church for a while.) Cliff was quite cool and over the years, he did remember me and called me for cartage and setups, though I doubt I ever put tuning key to one of his drums!

Woodham vs. Waldo

Steve was quite the self promoter, and I know he found the DRUM! magazine review on his own and took to saving face. His flattering comments are close to true. I did get things done reasonably fast, but I was no Jeff Porcaro. There was one track I totally missed the feel for, but fortunately the studio owner, Andy Tolley, was a drummer who knew that the track was essentially a revved up punk feel. He came in and whipped it out in one take on my minimal kit while I got left on the sleepier tracks. I think it is fairer to lean toward Waldo's comments more than Steve's. Compared to the next project, Rebel Romantic, this project was just a breeze, coming in and leaving in about three hours time.

Drums drums everywhere

I can't believe I had two kits. It took an empty room in my house to keep my music stuff. Eventually, I ended up keeping one kit set up in one room, piano along side it, desk and other non-bedroom type stuff. This room became my bedroom once the other room was turned into a work space during the post-Slaves By Trade era of late 1994 through August of 1996 when I was pressured out and pressed to moved in two hours.

The guitar case belongs to the Strat that I now claim as my own. But at the time it was on loan to me by my girlfriend, who was keeping it on behalf of a friend in prison. She let me use it and over time, no one ever asked for it back. So eventually I began to strip, repaint, rebuild, and remodel it periodically. I still have it, though it is far from the instrument I once received.

1995 goofiness at home

The post-Slaves By Trade era was one of feverish recording. I began to record just before Christmas 1994, and while it was based on some of the stuff that Matt and I did in a Rhythmic Catharsis-like formation, the boundaries were pushed outward. Drums certainly were a central component, and a lot of things had some earlier recordings drawn in, but there was a considerable amount of collage work and early experiments with guitar and bass. I was ready to try anything using the gear on hand. A lot of cassette decks were among my collection, and with no particular sense or awareness of "proper" use of anything, I set out to record my odd rhythms and textures. I used tape pitch control for additional effect, and a lot of crude sampling and cutting and pasting. I wasn't writing songs in the strictest sense, but a bit of that showed up. I was just experimenting with sound a lot.

In this picture is (from top down to the right): The recorder from Mesa College; the body of my dual deck boombox which was most helpful in launching the recording career of Rhythmic Catharsis at the start of 1993 with one cheap add on microphone that was combined with playback of an existing tape; two stacked dual deck cassette components that either had a pitch knob or a nice recording level knob to work with, and maybe other useful controls; and to the right of my ear is an all-in-one kind of stereo that I had that also had dual decks. All told, there were nine cassette decks to work with in various combinations. One of the component decks was a gift from Robin, my girlfriend at the time who seemed rather supportive of me. That's her in the background.

I recorded something around Christmas that I called Ed's Big Rusty Guns, done entirely on cassette, and with the obligatory liner notes done with typewriter, copy machine, and markers (color copied). Not long after, more such experiments turned up the infamous project One Twisted Individual, Separated At Birth (OTISAB). This was the thing that introduced me to Mike Keneally. Gawd! It was more craziness of tape editing, spoken word, manic drumming, soundscapes and noise. It also had the first digitally produced CD cover, and in fact, the first time I digitally compiled a bunch of DAT recordings into a composite album and presented it on CD, ala Mike Keneally and Frank Zappa. After a couple years I heard FZ's We're Only In It For The Money and realized I was quite far behind him in tape editing and collage work. The one CD was from the days of the $15 blank recordable CD. Add studio time, and it was a couple hundred bucks to make one CD!

This picture was one that got included as part of the cover to OTISAB.

Michael Kropp

Just as I was starting to record exclusively in 1995, I heard King Crimson's new Thrak album, and the Chapman Stick became appealing to me. I put an ad out for Stick players in town. One of the people who answered did not have a Stick, but assured me he could play the six string bass with a comparable approach, and knew King Crimson stuff. He was a student at some Eastern school, maybe Julliard or Berklee or something, and for some months through the middle of 1995, he helped me articulate a new vision for making music. In fact, on reflection, the music aesthetic that Receiving models is the same thing that I set out to do in 1995—to record dark atmospheric music using rock band instrumentation with processed effects and noise. Michael set me on that course.

For a few occasions that year, he and I joined up with a synth guitarist named Steve Snyder. Michael, ever the adventurer, not only played bass with the tapping method, he also set up a guitar (my Strat before its makeover) on a Gracie stand and simultaneously tapped that too, ala Stanley Jordan. A Chapman Stick it was not, but it was clever and interesting to watch.

The Artist Presently Known As Ed 1996 recording

This shot was taken in 1994 but perfectly illustrated the stuff I did in 1996. The particular image here is a recreation of the one that I once had done but was never handed to me in a digital form. (At the time I was years from being able to do anything with it.) Karen Chatfield, wife of Scott, who is in turn Keneally's partner in Exowax (which also was a while off still) did the original for something like $50. It didn't amount to more than a scan and some text and some black blocks and copying my liner notes verbatim, which was rather unfortunate because I got my latin languages mixed up. I meant to put "grazie" (thanks) but ended up brain farting my way and put "gratis" (free). Oops. Karen did the first "nice" looking package for me with tray card and labels that harmonized. I was stoked.

This tape, a few things notwithstanding, was the first of any of my recordings to be relatively successful at maybe over a hundred made. Not bad for a solo guy with no real musical ability and a totally self produced effort, right down to the duplication.

Greg Broulette

Not long after Kropp came onto the scene, I got a call from a real Stick player. And more so, he was in touch with a group of players in town, and they all happened to be meeting that night! From there, I met this player, Greg Broulette, who came in and played some stuff for some of my endless tracking done in the middle of 1995 and later on in 1996. It was with Greg that I realized not everyone played Stick like Tony Levin or the dude in the band Laundry. Greg was an interesting Stick player among Stick players. He might be the only nine-fingered one among them. You can barely see it here, but he is missing a pinkie on his right hand. He could still play the thing enviably.

A couple of the amps on the right are Greg's for both outputs of the Stick. The top one, a Gallien Kreuger, is on loan to me from Rockola. I didn't really know what I had on my hands then but it was great with acoustic guitar.

Hog Heaven begins

Sometime in late 1996 while living at my girlfriend's place for a few months, I happened to take a picture of toy pigs on this background (a curtain or tablecloth) and dubbed it "Hog Heaven." That was the beginning of my Hog Heaven theme that named a recording of mine from the following year, my studio a year later, and a half joking recording label after that. Sometime in the midst of all that, Matt of Rhythmic Catharsis was having fun with my label maker and had to caption the picture in his unique way. He had a way of leaving little pornographic easter eggs all over my stuff, and it might take weeks before I'd discover them. But this is where the Hog Heaven stuff starts, folks.

Keneally tour 1099 statement

I was a drooling fanboy that year. It was on a couple of occasions in the early days, starting with the very first show I saw in 1994, that I made myself useful to Beer For Dolphins when they played San Diego shows. The first was righting Toss Pano's remote kick pedal after he knocked it over. I jumped on stage and put it upright. Another time, Joe Travers forgot his hihat cymbals so I ran home about eight miles or so and got mine for the show. Another time, MK himself busted several strings in the same show and I tried to change them the best I could. Eventually, at that latter show, MK and the band and Bob Tedde of Rockola went out to Denny's and I was along like an eager pup. Later that year, Keneally called me to do a five week tour of the US. The thing was, it was to be in five days, and as he said, the pay was "really sucky" as it came to him, even as he was playing in Steve Vai's band primarily. But the share that BFD could get was a portion of his wage, I guess, and I was a portion of that. He assured me $25 per day. By the end of the tour, I was paid a bit more than that by the fact that in order to secure the space for BFD equipment on Vai's truck, I was sold into slavery at the end of the shows so that my labor would help Vai's crew who was in fact nice enough to accommodate extra gear on their truck.

The thing about this tour was that I had just been in my new apartment, my first proper residence after leaving home. (I was literally the homeless drummer living at my girlfriend's place for about two months as an interim measure.) I was paying for it on the strength of just a month and a half's work at Pizza Slut. I was feeling like it was a tentative new level of security in a world that was feeling quite hostile.  But this call from Keneally was so much a dream come true I basically said yes first then figured out how to solve my other issues. I ended up being able to return to Pizza Slut a couple weeks after the tour, and things went okay, but it was a huge illogical jump for me to do this.

Uncle Jesus

Uncle Jesus was a band that I once auditioned for in 1995 in the midst of a period of frequent auditions and jams with whoever was in the Reader that week. Eventually I settled in to playing and recording my own stuff at home, feeling a need to broaden my experience on instruments, writing, recording. After I got exiled from home in 1996, I was open to anything since it all had to be done outside of my own apartment. Somehow I reconnected with Joe the guitarist and he asked me to play a show in February 1997. I was fresh off the Mike Keneally tour of late 1996 and was all jazzed to be playing drums again. Unlike SBT, Uncle Jesus gave me a week or so to get cozy with their music, and the show was much nicer. They were working with a U2 guitar sound of shimmering rhythmic echoes and a Marvin Gaye kind of soulful voice. When it came time, Joe put on something of a Hendrix solo.

Good Neighbor Studio mk2

Through most of the first nine months of 1997, I was using a recording setup that was not much more than this. Drums were absent, having them upstairs in an apartment was an unsatisfying proposition if it meant moving all that myself and going to unsecure locations to play in the middle of the night. So I worked with tapes that I had on hand, and got clever with using percussive sounds and some sample-and-hold delay effects that faked the drum sounds. I also used keyboard and guitar for the basis of a bass sound, since at the time I had no bass guitar. (The Steinberger bass here is on loan during a slightly later period.) From this time I completed my CD, Hog Heaven, a dark, dark, tormented collage of sound and voice that struggled to sort out the dismal family dynamics and dissolving relationships from 1996.

Here we have a modest rig of TASCAM four track recorder; Mackie 1202 mixer; Alesis 3630 compressor; Digitech Studio Quad effects; Yamaha DX 100 keyboard on loan from Bob Tedde of Rockola; the Strat, now remodeled and equipped with new pickups; a couple tape decks, and the corner of the Steinberger bass; a few pedals of nasty distortion and wah effects. Basic stuff. The drums at this apartment were stacked in the living room, and the other kit was on loan and subsequent sale to a friend from my job at Pizza Hut. I wonder how those drums are doing now...