One thing that has been a major part of my life for the last five years or so has been playing music with other folks in front of a bunch of strangers, instead of by my lonesome in my room. My decision to leave the Detroit area in 1995 was majorly influenced by this desire, after I learned that my hometown offered a music scene that welcomed everyone. This was a scene that emphasized performance of original music over trying to make money. Naturally, I took to it like a hydrogen-breathing gas entity to Jupiter. The Combs
Within a couple months of moving back to Houghton in 1995, I joined a band my old friend Shawn was putting together. I originally came in on bass, but soon switched over to guitar (my primary instrument) when my younger brother joined us on bass. Shawn was the core songwritere and played an acoustic guitar through a small amplifier. Adam was the singer, a tall bald guy who smoked good pot and drank choice microbrews, and wrote odd lyrics and danced like a shaman. His brother Aaron played drums, a woodworker who had recently sat behind a drum kit for the first time and started playing like he was born to it.
The music was weird, like nothing I or anyone else had ever played or heard before. Shawn's major influences were old-school industrial and punk rock, but he was teaching himself jazz guitar at the time. I was heavily into punk, ska, and Irish music at the time. Adam listened to everything. My brother, Mike, was a jazz player, getting ready to go off to college to study it full time. Aaron just played like the spirits told him. We ended up sounding like a folk band that had got stuffed into a blender with Black Flag and the essence of '70's prog-rock, then liquefied.
After this line-up solidified, we had a gig booked at the local underground (literally) music venue, the Suburban Exchange, opening for the Pounding, then still a noise outfit. This gig happened to be our singer's birthday, and was also two weeks away, so we decided to write some songs. In those two weeks we wrote six tunes and were at a loss for a name. We bowed to pressure from Emily, who ran teh Sub-X with Bernie, for a name and told her and my fiend Justin to come up with a name, then stick it on the poster. Justin came up with Six Hundred and Sixty Six Chirping Chipmunks. Emily selected the moniker of The Combs, which fit on the poster, and so we debuted.
Over the next nine months, we played out a few times, and managed to get kicked off the stage at a New age festival for being too loud. My brother left for college, and Aaron returned to Washington to make furniture. For a couple months, we could not find replacemnets, so we just jammed like crazy, coming up with riffs and songs that began and went nowhere. Then Frank and Tom joined us.
Frank was a 14 year old drummer who could produce only the most basic 4/4 beats and Tom was a 48 year old recent transplant from North Dakota, a blues guitarist so desperate to play that he joined US on bass. We moved up to the Calumet Theatre to practice, Shawn having the run of the place as manager. During this time, we played most of our gigs at the Sub-x and recorded a track for the Misery Sessions local music compilation (vol. 3).
About a month before we were scheduled to perform at the Misery show, Tom left town without warning. Our friend James Harju, a local musical jack of all trades, came in on bass. This was the final incarnation of the Combs. I finally got a song I had written into the set list. Our Misery set was our shining moment, people actually danced to us and Adam's little son got up on stage and danced like crazy.
We had one last show, at which we played my song, and then Adam left with his family for Washington. Although, we had planned to continue with James singing, Adam's presence and energy turned out to be the cohesive force of the band, and we eventually stopped practicing together.
SONGS:
The Warren Commission
The Warren Commision was without a doubt the stupidest and loudest band I have ever played in. The style of music couldn't be much more different than the Combs: Gothic-industrial rock with an emphasis on volume. I was asked to join them after their first show, originally on guitar but before my first practice with them I was switched to bass. This reversal of my role in the Combs came across because the guitarist I was to replace decided to stay. The band was in need of a full-time bass player, as theirs had just picked up the instrumentand was trying to sing lead vocals at the same time. The band when I joined consisted of Matt "Wana Buy a Magazine?" Bradley (of Senator Dextor and Skokopelli) on lead vocals and guitar, Mike "Tyrannosaurus in Heat" Couling on lead vocals and noiz bass, Dove "Sperm Burping Gutterslut" Dewey (of Senator Dexter)on lead guitar, Caleb "Where's C, again?" Larsen on keys, and Allen "Rude Boy" Phillips on drums. With me on bass, we had quite the mighty wall of sound.
The songs were simple, usually one or two different riffs. I saw my role as adding complexity within the confines of just two riffs. I played syncopated rhthyms and odd arpeggios in an attempt to spice things up. We played a number of shows, opening for the Hentchmen from Detroit on one occasion. We never got a chance to appear on any compilations but managed to tape a few live shows. Caleb left the band in early 1998, which gave us a little more room to move around (both on stage and musically), as well as permission to spew forth profanities (something Caleb was adamantly against). One memorable moment form this breif period before the band broke up that summer was a gig we played at MTU's Spring Fling, on the NORML stage. We played to a group of mainly uninterested and confused frat boys and sorority sisters, with a scattering of friends for support, but managed to make an impact when some of Mike's bellowing managed to drown out the band playing the main stage across campus.
Our last show that year was at the "mini-Misery" show organized by the late, great Oren Krumm, in order to keep the tradition of an end of school year multi-band concert going. We were scheduled to play a normal set, but then Allen had to leave town for a funeral. Drummerless, some of the guys were willing to hang it up, but I came up with the idea of playing an acoustic set to open the show. I borrowed my brother's acoustic/electric fretless bass and brought along my guitar. Dove supplied a small hand drum as well. Mike concentrated on singing. In two days, we reconstructed our set into an "unplugged spectacular" and manged to suprise the hell out of everyone (including ourselves) by pulling off an acoustic set that let the real songs shine through for the first time, free of the encasing layers of noise that had trapped them before. No song escaped severe reworking of course. I managed to come up with a new, menacing riff for our opener, and totally rearranged the feel of our most plodding, thudding one riff wonder song, to turn it into a sparkling protest tune. I manged to add a bit of reggae flavor to our rap-metal parody, "white and poor", which ended up bounding beautiful. We managed to record this show as well, and it remains our best show ever, musically, and the one I am most proud of.
The spring of 1999 saw a breif reunion forone last show. This time, we approached the music like we should have in the first place: tongue firml in cheek. We wanted to create a huge spectacle and parady industrial music as a swan song. Accordingly, only half the band played sober. A video tape was made of our monstrosity, which includes the horrifying closing image of Mike's poo-stained ass mooning the camera in response to what he thought of the show. We managed to drive away most of the crowd, leaving only three people besides the sound guy. Triumph!
Songs:
Subshine
The best band I was ever in. I finally got to write the music, we put out a cd, and rocked to the end.
Forming this band allowed me a degree of input and creative contorl over the music I was playing like never before. Although we never got to play as many gigs as we wanted to, I think we struggled through the loss of a friend and the illness of a band mate to be one of the best bands of that time in the Houghton music scene. I played guitar and wrote most of the music, and the lyrics to two songs. Mike, the singer from the Warren Commission, played bass and contributed most of the lyrics. Mel B. sang her guts out and scared people with her primal scream. She also provided a lot of attitude and wrote the lyrics to Parasite. Ashley Baldridge came in on drums after our original drummer, Beth Kampschror, bowed out to scheduling conflicts. Ashley was not only the best drummer I ever worked with, but knew when I was trying to put too many elements into a song. She's a master of keeping it real and was the heart of the band, as far as I'm concerned.
We got the chance to play with one of the very best bands to come out of the UP, man Ray 19, which was something I had wanted to do ever since I saw this phenomenal band perform. (Go check out their page if you have never heard of them before, in the section of this site about the UP music scene. We also got to perform a short acoustic set on crap equipment at the Sun Project cd release show, minus Mike, who was in Scotland. This was the last time we played together.
The complete Subshine story can be found here.
Songs:
We also enjoyed cover songs:
Currently, I play by myself again. I am kicking around teh idea of getting a reggae band together, and one of my near future goals is to acquire a four or eight track recorder, a drum machine, and a bass so I can construct songs here at home.
