to live & shave in L.A. what are they up to?

And what does TLASILA actually SOUND like?

tom smith gave one of the greatest interviews in your flesh a few years back that i've read anywhere...totally opinionated, hilarious prick bastard: "like this band lightning bolt? where the hell did they come from? if i could spend the night talking to both dj spooky and scanner with the promise of doing an eight ball and getting a really great blow job besides, i'd still listen to the lightning bolt record."

The "debacle" has just been released on Menlo Park Recordings - it should be in the hands of your local retailer by January. It's a double CD; I spent five years working on the damned thing, so I trust you'll enjoy it. It's the final official album, and a fitting coda - we went out at the top of our game.

I've done nothing but work in the six years since the KF36 collab was initiated, producing albums for the Electric Eels' Brian McMahon, Scissor Girls, Duotron, Harry Pussy, Silver Apples, Obliterati, Splotch, Leslie Q, Evil Moisture, Frosty, Sightings... I could go on, but I will spare you the minutia. I'll soon be producing an album for Hair Police; I've just wrapped production on the second Gravy alb. I'm the exec producer of both the "group:XEX" reissue and the Reverend Lester Knox compilation on the Flemish Masters label.

I disbanded To Live and Shave in L.A. in August 2000; afterwards, a spate of spin-off "clones" emerged: Weasel Walter's To Live and Shave in L.A. 2, a second (!) TLASILA 2, fronted by Miami's Gerard Klauder, Rat Bastard's TLASILA 3, the New York-based Born in East L.A. (now known as "BIELA or Belial"), I Love L.A. (fronted by Wolf Eyes' Aaron Dilloway), To Live and Shave in L.A. 1975 (from Rochester, NY), and I Live in L.A. (from the St. Louis, MO/Lexington, KY nexus - they've since transmogrified into Hair Police, and a debut alb was just issued on Freedom From). Weasel took a live Chicago FM broadcast of To Live and Shave in L.A. from our 1999 tour and stuck the TLASILA 2 logo on it; that act of somewhat inspired detournment represents the bulk of their output. BIELA issued a cassette. If I'm not mistaken, an I Live in L.A.'s live show may be downloaded from Supersphere. Most of the clones have long since given up the ghost.

Since 2000 I've begun a new group with Dave Phillips (Schimpfluch Gruppe, Runzlestirn and Gurglestock, et. al.) called OHNE. Our web site is located at: http://ohne_zentrale.tripod.com. We are based in Zurich; our 2001 tour of Europe was postponed in the calamitous wake of the September 11th terror attacks; the tour will now begin in April 2002. We have signed to Mego; this, as you may expect, was for me a source of considerable amusement.

I continue to work as a freelance journalist as well - I've written for Bananafish, Blastitude, 200 LB Underground, Minneapolis City Pages, Miami City Link, Atlanta Creative Loafing, MTV.com, etc.

The Squelchers comprise Rat Bastard and a rotating list of performers. Musically, there's not a lot going on. As performance, uh, art, however, they put on a fun show. Lots of drunk chicks rolling around the stage, Rat doing his Rat thing, etc.

Thurston Moore's Esctatic Peace label will be issuing To Live and Shave in L.A.'s "God and Country Rally!" ablum sometime in 2002 - it was sucked into oblivion after Vulgar Tango, the imprint which originally had sought to release it, went belly-up in '99. And a TLASILA box (comprising the standard truckload of remastered/remixed tracks, outtakes, rarities, live recordings, etc.) is on tap for 2003.

That's it for the moment.

Hope this info helped...

The "official" TLASILA site is located at: http://members.dencity.com/mpolk667 . It hasn't been updated in ages.

Cheers,

Tom

>what do they sound like? jeez they took the top of my head off first time i heard them. imagine david yow out of the jesus lizard multitracking himself jabber "poetic" porno / drug / sex gibberish on the day he gets sacked after doing a shitload of speed.

no single person i know who has seen the shave live thinks of dave yow when smith is on stage. he's a total original, and the "poetic" "gibberish" he "jabbers" is miles beyond the reach of most lyricists. i've seen them live many times, and i've read his words... have you?

>"METAL!" (devil hand sign).the backing music is constructed out of tom's wonky tape loops of motorhead / van halen / various cheese metal / ben wolcott's oscillator(just a load of high pitched squeals) and some very vague improv punk bass from rat bastard.

as tom previously pointed out to the nimrods at muckraker, there are no metal tapeloops to be found within any of the eight or so shave albums. no metal, dude. it's all in the mastering - it sounds like rock should sound - dirty and fucked up. good thing they're so "wonky" (what are you, another brit stone roses fan?) - they kick unholy ass. again, as to ben wolcott - have you seen them live? have you listened to what the guy can do with those boxes? he builds them, and has a tremendous amount of control over them. far from being "just a load of high pitched squeals." yeah, and derek bailey's just playing a lot of disjointed notes. what is "vague improv punk?" again, you've obviously never seen the shave. i've opened for them, seen them, jammed with tom... rat's bass playing is amazing, dude. what are you into - hair and skin trading company? get a grip.

>"tonal harmony" has some more "considered" & post produced pieces on it

i'm enjoying your obvious bias here - smith was nice enough to actually reply to you, but i would have long ago lost my patience. "considered," in quotes... to infer, what? that their work is NOT considered? oh yeah, radiohead's last album certainly featured more "considered" production than "the bends," and how dare the beatles work on a piece of music for more than a minute! sgt. pepper was so "considered" compared to "love me do." pretentious bastards...

>the early stuff uses FM radio pause button recording collage as a basis for the cack,

yeah. ain't it cool?

>harry pussy's bill orcutt joins in on guitar occasionally (what's he doing now - anyone know??)

he lives in california and plays the banjo - true.

>where a horse has been standing sounds like a child messing around on a reel to reel with tapes of the band. .very disorientating & headache inducing.

hard-on inducing for most of us, however.

your prejudices have the better of you, bob.

my thoughts are with you as you progress to the exalted plane that tlasila effortlessly inhabited. but you're gonna have to dump those amm albums first!

xmas xmas,

aaron, wolf eyes

who knows owt about bill orcutt's forthcoming 7 " on chocolate monk? i cannae get the pintoes.net site up last few times.

(btw Chaki this is the To Live & Shave in L.A. thread.)

is what was reffering to

right, stick to the comedy metal.

piss on YOU, jack. i seen wolf eyes at a house party earlier this year and they had alot of cool gear. other than that it was pretty dull.

http://www.the-beach.net/~thelaundryroom/inc.htm

The band will be releasing a new album called God and Country Rally later this year on Smack Shire Records. The 10-song CD was recorded before they took their vacation in 2000, but considering the album title, it could have been written and recorded last month. Just another reminder of the prescient qualities that make TLSLA such a fun and often surprising listen."

Andrew W.K.

Andrew WK,Don Fleming,Mark Morgan(sightings), and the Shave founders Tom Smith and Rat Bastard

WAAAAAAAAAA!

m.

WOOOOOOOO WOOOOOOOOO

Rat Bastard - Quad Mixer, etc.
Don Fleming - Guitar, Synth, Vox, etc.
Mark Morgan - Guitar, Vox, etc.
Tom Smith - Vox, Laptop, etc.
Andrew W.K. - Drums, Vox, etc.

WOOO HOOO HOOO HOOOO!

Hey Jon,

Yeah, it's gonna be Pengo and Foot & Mouth Disease opening for TLASILA @ the bug Jar on Wed. Sept. 15th.
Gonna be totally insane!!!! Should be a sell out due to Andrew W.K. playing with 'em so tell people to get there early.

Yeah, August is gonna be crazy. Hair Police 3 times next week.

Pengo is playing in Brooklyn on Saturday @ North Six too!!

John.

yaaaaaaaaay

Klauder and Smith also record under the "Memories of Underdevelopment" moniker; their debut CD, "Throat of a Black Kitten," which will be released in the autumn by Menlo Park Recordings.

TLISILA are slated to play on my show 9/21 as well, it should be a barn-burner!!

Tom Smith was a DJ at 'FMU? Really? What kind of stuff did he play? How long was he on the air? And how did the Xex album get lost in your library?

Tom DJ'd for about 6 months, before he moved back south. Late night -- fun shows, his distinctive commentary. I don't think they're archived though on the site- it was before we were doing that full-time.

Pity... Well, word has it he's a drifter at heart. As for 'FMU, that just tells me how cool a place must be. You've had so many distinguished voices in your line-up over the last decade... Very suave.

He's done a lot since, of course, but might as well revive here -- sadly, Chris Grier has passed on

http://www.wonderingsound.com/news/chris-grier-to-live-shave-la-died/

Chris was an amazing person. RIP.

Shitty news, can't really believe it. I worked with him at the Virginian-Pilot newspaper in Norfolk VA. He was a good dude. I was a barely passable guitar player and he was full of encouragement always, even pushed me to play a short improv gig with him once that cleared out the front room of a local bar, haha. Also when the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack was getting popular he tracked down James Carter and ended up getting him a royalty check for his chain-gang song ... the article Chris wrote about it doesn't seem to be online but he's the "Florida investigative reporter" in this Times piece.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/03/us/an-ex-convict-a-hit-album-an-ending-fit-for-hollywood.html

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/artsdesk/music/2014/07/11/chris-grier-experimental-guitarist-and-former-d-c-musician-dies/

another obit

I’m sad to report that Tom Smith has passed.

I posted this on Facebook a bit ago.

The summer of 1998 fell between my junior and senior years of college, and for some reason or other I decided to rent a room in an apartment in town and work at the campus library - where I usually worked during the academic year - for three months. Summers on the Maryland Eastern Shore are brutal, muggy, buggy. I was neither prepared for that nor for how bored and empty it would all feel with so many friends gone. When not wandering around town or at work a lot of time was spent listening to CDs.

This was almost 24 (!) years ago, so specifics are hazy, but three stand out. One was Adore, by the Smashing Pumpkins. Another was Terraform, by Shellac. (Chicago represent.) Those were store purchases. But then there was another record.

At the time I was freelancing for a Chicago-area print music magazine called Tail Spins that usually didn't pay in currency or, I guess, the currency was promos. Some familiar, some kinda obscure, some totally bizarre and random. Brent (who may be reading this) would just ship his writers a tennis-shoe box of CDs and tapes with a note that said "hey, review as many of these as you want." And I got a tennis-shoe box at that apartment that summer. God only knows what was in that box for the most part. But there was one particular, crudely designed cardboard sleeve that stood out. The title was an extended taunt. The band name was a regal dare. I threw the disc into the platter and wasn't sure whether I was having a stroke or the band making the music was sharing a collective stroke. This was sound beyond comprehension or logic or propriety and, instinctively, I didn't crank it up, because I didn't want the other people living in the apartment to freak out. Sure, I'd heard noisy music before, but this wasn't Sonic Youth or a Sonic Youth tour opener - this shit was cracked. Something changed inside of me and while a few years would go by before the time came to commit to the genre in a more meaningful way this record became a personal talisman; in late 2021, when I was toying with a book proposal (scrapped for now) about formative personal noise experiences, the record was among the first lodestones that sprung to mind.

That record was titled Where A Horse Has Been Standing and Where You Belong. The band was named To Live and Shave in L.A.

A lot of people have been in that band. One of the most important, Tom Smith, has passed away.

I never met Tom in person, so those sorts of anecdotes aren't mine to share. But he and I chatted so frequently on Facebook that it felt like I met him. (How and why did we connect? I don't know.) The messages remain in the guts of this platform. What did we talk about? We talked about life, and music, and goals, and politics - and the mighty Sightings, who he collaborated with. It was always amazing to me both how positive he was about creation, how sunny and forward-looking and how he was constantly working and creating and collaborating. I'd order an album or two from him by mail and he'd stuff the parcel with extra magic - a lot of it sprawled out on my dresser upstairs.

In the summer of 2018, TLASILA came to perform in Baltimore. I was psyched to meet Tom, he was psyched to meet me. The show took place the same day as a massive "Families Belong Together" public action in Patterson Park. I'd planned to go to the protest, go home and cool down, then hit the show - but the emotion of the day wiped me out, and I apologized for not seeing the band live. He took it well and I figured, hey, there will always be another time, right? Another tour and another show. There's always that feeling that tomorrow's there for us inevitably but no - not every time.

RIP, this guy was an true original

Think I saw him in Peach of Immortality in DC once. Was away at school though when they opened for Husker Du. RIP

ugh, cancer .

holy shit. we were not worthy. ;_;

yeah POI was my introduction to his work. He also used to have an amazing MP3 blog with rips of these insanely rare Aktionist LPs from the 70s.

I hosted him, Rat, and TLASILA for a show in 2008(?) ... he was super funny and clever and gracious ... we all went for late night sushi after the gig. Last week was Bruce Anderson. This week it's Tom ... I feel like I'm getting to the age where it's a steady stream of death, and staying alive is actually an accomplishment

<3

I saw TLASILA once when the band I was in played a show with them, which I am not exactly sure how it got lined up, there were some distant connections (we knew some of the same people) but mostly they were on tour and we were on tour and in the same place.

No one in my band cared and I don't think anyone in Shave cared for us, but I did, even if I wasn't a complete stan, I had a bunch of records and obv knew who Tom was through yrs of collecting noise tapes, zines interviews, I knew the history (Boat Of, POI, Pussy Galore, SY connects, etc), he was the man.

And he was very sweet and funny and charismatic. I was sort of embarrassed at the time cuz they were cool noise dudes and we were a "rock" band and it seemed like there was this gulf between us, a gulf I am pretty sure only really existed in my mind becuz when I think back on it does seem sort of like an inspired pairing.

Anyway, we played and then TLASILA played & I didn't really know what to expect, I knew they played live but wasn't sure what it would be (and maybe they didn't either). This was spring 07, about a week before the WNUR session that is on Youtube. It was this really sleazy bar in Nashville that we had played before, lots of local weirdos and drunks and drug-addled combinations thereof, this might have been one the times I got into a fight with an audience member & one of guitarists tackled this guy and played the rest of the show sitting on his chest and if it wasn't it gives of a sense of the vibe at least.

So...TLASILA starts. It is kind of a blur but they were more rock, way more show then I was expecting, Tom singing, bellowing, swaying on the mic, Rat doing, whatever fucking thing he does, it was loud, huge, sweaty, ecstatic, loud, like being trapped in a orgone box with people fucking, it was loud, did I mention that? Just fantastic, total noise, but not like a lot of super-serious noise-table stuff or even kind of that RISD-adjacent east coast mask rock stuff, this was chaotic and wild but it was a "show", a performance, it was funny and entertaining and life-affirming and weird! All of sudden there were these beautiful girls onstage, where they in the band?, hanging on Tom and screaming into the mic and I was like "where they hell did they come from?" I wonder if I hallucinated it? Maybe the music tricked my brain? Anyway it was great. There were like 50 people total and no one in my band ever mentioned the show again and maybe it didn't even happen I think about it all the time.

Thanks for all the great music Tom and thanks for the enduring memory of you being drenched in sweat sitting on some noise-generating box with a scantily-clad woman on your knee crooning in that voice into the microphone under a spotlight like a debauched Sinatra.

it was loud, huge, sweaty, ecstatic, loud, like being trapped in a orgone box with people fucking, it was loud, did I mention that?

yeah, that was the vibe at the show I put on for them. This was when Weasel was living here, so one of his free jazz groups opened, with this dude visiting from Philly, and then he sat in with TLASILA (Weasel, not the Philly dude, but the Philly dude went out for sushi with me, Weasel, Weasel's wife, Tom, Rat and ... one other person who I forget ...

All of sudden there were these beautiful girls onstage, where they in the band?, hanging on Tom and screaming into the mic and I was like "where they hell did they come from?"

ha, probably connections w/Rat and his many INC tours w/Squelchers that are basically him and hot local chicks.

That's what I assumed but in the context of the night they just...appeared out of think air, it was magical

RIP to a wild visionary.

There aren't a ton of clips on youtube, but this Miami cable access TV appearance from 1994 is priceless:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPVxSjSmlbk

Unfortunately the performance is brief and the goofy-ass host Doesn't Get It. Tom had such a deep, rich speaking voice, could have done movie trailer voiceovers.

RIP Tom Smith

Only familiar with the TLASILA stuff but I openly lol-ed realising one of the POI albums is called Talking Heads ‘77

that was the first one I heard <3

thanks so much for that video clip above, fantastic