What's up with US Maple?

i didn't really like purple on time when it came out but now i'm loving it.

i was listening to acre thrills through my ps3 (because i don't have a cd player in my living room right now) with the visualizer on and it was like a slideshow of planets and stars and space, it was hilarious

For all that people dismissed Al Johnson as the most disposable member, I was amazed by how much I missed him when I finally heard the Singer album.

al disposable??? heresy.

btw, ritman's new thing, D. Rider, is WAAAAAAAAY better than singer

i bought the d. rider album, can't really get into it for some reason :/ the vinyl/packaging is awesomely obnoxious though, it's like turquoise and neon orange

isn't there another project, not singer or d. rider, but a group w/the other USM guitar player? i can't recall the name of it

Miracle Condition.

I really like that Singer album, but maybe I am just willing to cut ex-US Maple guys (and Robert AA Lowe) a decent bit of slack. If anyone has the cd and too much free time, take the insert with the linoleum floor on it, place it over the floorboards on the back of the jewelcase and then stand up the cd booklet on it. It forms...some kinda room. As rad as a Mad Fold-in.

I went through a period of trying to describe this band to people who hadn't heard them.

I just realized that there is a former member of US Maple (about which I know absolutely nothing) in one of my favorite my local synth groups. Huh.

US Maple is so good, though super-strange. What is the synth group btw?

This one is great and kinda rocks traditionally for them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHepUIx9tKo

Dhalgren -- lots of stuff on bandcamp, and I can recommend it without reservation.
They're doing a new recording thing on Sundays.

Thanks, always interested in what the U.S. Maple folks are doing, though I didn't love Singer or D. Rider as much as I wanted to.

Flashbacks! Al Johnson and Mark Shippy were originally in Shorty, a band on the Skin Graft label. They were the first band I saw at the Empty Bottle after they relocated on Halloween night, 1993. I had mutual friends with Pat Samson and Todd Rittman, who were in Mercury Players. I loved that band, but they didn't really take off. I used to have a 7" of theirs but I can't seem to find those records. Another old acquaintance dated one of them for a long time during U.S. Maple years, but I haven't heard anything lately other than Dhalgren, indeed a quality synth band.

Once saw US Maple (who my wife can't stand) play the U of C's tiny WHPK studio. She really had to go to the bathroom but was afraid to walk around the band-in-progress for fear of collateral Al damage.

Are all of their songs that groovy? What else should I listen to?

This is my jam:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDZucpcvc_w&feature=related

dead rider (or d.rider) is really good

I like groovy/messy songs with lyrics that are totally unintelligible or just nonsense repeated over and over and over -- will check it out! I feel like I've heard of this band forever but their name was so boring that I never checked them out. My loss!

...until today

I like groovy/messy songs with lyrics that are totally unintelligible or just nonsense repeated over and over and over

Me too!

u.s. maple is the greatest for realz

sang phat editor is a great, underappreciated album

One of my favorite bands and a hugely important band to me personally. I saw them several times and I cherish every one of those shows.

The greatest.

local noise band Tips for Twat remind me of them a little bit, though slower and shaggier

by local i mean mpls for those at home.

i mean, two detuned-ass guitars, it's not rocket science i guess

Ooh Shorty! I have a 7", "Fresh Breath" I think? Did they make an album?

La Lechera, if you like one or two U.S. Maple songs you will probably like them all. The album "Acre Thrills" is a good starting point, but people differ on which is their favorite. "Sand Phat Editor" is also great.

I have liked two so far, so I'll look around for that album. What a pleasant surprise in a day full of not-pleasant not-surprises.

my take:

Acre Thrills is the best starting point IMO
Sang Phat Editor & Talker are probably the most "US Maple" albums of their discography, Talker is particular is them taking their sort of bizarre weird quiet disjointed approach to its extremes
Long Hair in Three Stages is great, but def feels "early", they haven't quite shed the late 80s touch&go type stuff, but i think it's awesome
Purple On Time - they changed drummers and came back with a more straightforward "rock" (using straightforward and rock only in relation to their earlier stuff), it felt like a betrayal to me at the time but now i love it and right now it's probably my favorite and i wish they would have continued as a band

Yes to Acre Thrills. Start there for sure.

Mark Shippy stuck a guitar pick to my sweaty forehead while they were playing. Rad night.

haha awesome.

they were something live! man...

Really sad that I never saw this band live. Somehow they just never came near me at the right time. I can only imagine what it was like for people in the audience who didn't know what was coming.

didn't they open for pavement at some point? i can't even.

there's also something about the way he speaks in interviews that makes me think it's partly mental illness that's at play. I almost wonder if he avoids reading because of how strongly it affects him.

― michael bolton's reckless daughter (Hurting 2), Thursday, October 18, 2012 3:53 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol if so...wow....i only saw them on skin graft tours w/likeminded bands and labelmates mostly

hahaha! that's xposted from neil young thread!

goodnatured lols!

haha C&P errors very much in character i guess

i actually saw US Maple twice! but i never quite "got" them. think i should give it another go.

didn't they open for pavement at some point? i can't even.

they did, and it was very VERY funny

one of the only times I've seen a band in a huge venue (the Fillmore) aggressively antagonize the audience, who were booing and throwing shit

yeah i saw them alienate crowds that were waaay more into weirder/noisier shit than pavement.....i've given maple a whole lot of thought and i think the thing with them was the dichotomy of playing this sort of obscure/skewed music that never really let you get your footing juxataposed with a live persona that was kind of in your face and flashy, almost rockstar like in a way that you'd think they were playing this really anthemic stuff....

yeah that was what was so funny - guitarist was windmilling and jump-kicking all over the place like he was playing "Baba O'Riley" but the actual music couldn't have been further away from that

i read an interview with Al Johnson once in Skyscraper and he said his ideal model for live performance was a Judas Priest concert he went to as a young kid w/an older sibling or some older kid, he recalled being really scared by the whole thing, all the weird heshers and leather and stuff...he said he felt like rock concerts should be like that

people should devote more time talking about how good a frontman al johnson is

The thing that was most astounding about their live performance was how faithfully they replicated the off-kilter arrangements from the albums. Even the stuff that sounded pretty much improvised.

Yeah, I interviewed Al once, and not only was he a really nice guy, he affirmed that the stuff was all pretty much composed and arranged. Storm & Stress was another one of those sorts of bands.

(Obv. Storm & Stress dude went on to Battles)

Ohhh, I didn't know that. I dug S&S.

man i kinda forgot about storm & stress, i had one CD by them that was amazing....

i remember one time i saw maple Al had this captain and tenille type hat on and a yellow shirt that said "banned in boston"

i had a storm and stress lp that was either clear or the sleeve was clear or something. the packaging was amazing.

"improvised-sounding" rock is such a 90s thing i wish hadn't gone away.

jesus lizard dudes got into free jazz and shit got real

Cows maybe the only other band of the era who could be so uniquely unsettling (in a their own way)

the state of US Maple is bad

US Maple is never bad

I dunno man, Dead Rider went nowhere, I haven't seen Al since 2004, what's even going on? What are we left with?

I liked that song they did where it sounded like it was falling apart

Shippy has been making lots of music in Chicago but I haven't seen him pop up since covid

Yeah I like that trio Shippy has with Ben Baker Billington and Daniel Wyche, though I have only heard the one release on Astral Spirits. Nice to hear his playing in that kind of context though, and they are all very good players.

"What are we left with?": all of the great records that U.S. Maple made. I get the sentiment though hah hah. Very little else like that particular sound.

Right, but I was just summoning Left

Aw, Dead Rider is certainly no patch on US Maple, but I dug Crew Licks. Never did get around to hearing that record with Paul Williams though.

saw Dead Rider last summer at a fest in Iowa, absolutely amazing

just bought Talker on vinyl off their Bandcamp, what a record

Whoa, cool! May have to grab a copy of that myself (no idea where my CD is).

yeah I don't know why, I wonder if they found a couple of boxes in a closet

Huh, they have copies of "Acre Thrills" too. I mean Drag City has copies of stuff I am often surprised by, so they must occasionally just put stuff back in print when it is sold out (maybe?).

Drag City reissued Talker last year
https://www.dragcity.com/news/2019-07-25-talker-returns-to-the-conversation

listening to Long Hair in Three Stages, this rips so hard

and you say......you ASShole!

It sure does. I am sad I never got to see this band live, they are just so good.

I saw them once (Purple On Time tour, new drummer). It ruled.

Wish I had Long Hair on vinyl, prob my favourite album that I don’t have on that format— too expensive to consider tho

This was always my jam:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nH3VawiyTMw

We used to stumble across US Maple sets enough that my wife hates them to this day.

My wife saw them once (opening for Pavement or something), and hated them... tho she also saw Royal Trux somewhat early on, and says they were awful; I'm jealous about that, lol (didn't see them first until '97).

I saw US Maple open for Royal Trux!

I opened for US Maple!

I have multiple US Maple CDs!

I apparently stopped reading the thread after my last post because assuming a person named above is the same one I've met, I saw Cheer Accident play in her apartment many years ago

Fond memories of getting bored of the party I was hosting and putting on "Hey King" and doing dual air guitar opposite my buddy Jessie, the funnest best way to end a party

Sometimes I reply "maybe!" to somebody with the same inflection as the band does on "Running From Kabob" and smile, inwardly

For as fucked up as their music is (in a great way!), I was shocked by how note-perfectly they replicated it live. They were tight. Miss u, boos.

Breaking US Maple News: the Peel Session has leaked.

Wow loving this

Also another interesting document on the same channel: something called "The Miracle of Recreation", Part 1 and Part 2.

Whoa seems they are playing with most of Melt Banana on that Peel Session? Wild pairing.

i'm thinking this might have been the same skin graft tour i saw w/maple and melt banana on its UK leg?

fucking great

Peel seems...maybe not too into it? haha

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JarSldMzLfo

sick

Amazing ty

Super cool. A bunch of behind the scenes studio stuff I just stumbled upon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loni6SVagbw

Al sometimes had an almost Charlie Chaplin aspect to his movements

I kinda sometimes always kind of thought of US Maple as an ingenious parody of the Jesus Lizard.

they had very good hair