What's up with US Maple?

I connected with an old acquaintance, Scott, for the first time in about 18 years. He recorded what was supposed to be the first Mercury Players album, Damn. I'm hoping I can convince one of the members to Bandcamp that sucker.

Mark Shippy plays in a number of projects, including a band called Miracle Condition along with original Maple (and Mercury Players) drummer Pat Samson. They've put out 68 Degrees mini album in 2009, and a self-titled full-length in 2010. Some great noise/psych/shoegaze. They're playing the Empty Bottle (w/ Grimble Grumble & Whales, $8) on November 15th!

http://miraclecondition.bandcamp.com/

Todd Rittmann has a band called Dead Rider (formerly D. Rider) who are exceptional. Scott said the latest album is one of his all-time favorites. I'm picking up a copy after work! I can't believe I slept on that. Steve Albini didn't -- they opened for Shellac in August, and they are playing at the Shellac-hosted All Tomorrow's Parties at Camber Sands Holiday Camp, UK, Nov 30-Dec 2!

Dead Rider - The Raw Dents (Tizona, 2011)
http://cockasnook.bandcamp.com/track/mothers-meat
http://deadrider.us

Oh, and Al Johnson is the only one not currently active in music. He is now living in my old hometown, Dubuque, IA, havin' a family.

Wonder what it will be like when the kids see videos of his old band.

man, what's there to do in dubuque i wonder

Not be in a band for one

i bet the dubuque not being in a band scene is pretty vibrant, yeah

My friend's parents live there, he could give me some ideas. I think it's mostly mischief, and avoiding East Dubuque.

When I was growing up in the 70s and 80s, Dubuque was an extremely depressed industrial town, with massive layoffs from the meat packing plant and John Deere. One passtime I had was throwing railroad spikes at rats down by the Corner Tavern ;) I liked to call it Satan's Taint. It's cleaned up a lot the past decade, given the gambling casinos, new convention center, a winery at the former location of the Star Brewery (where parts of Take This Job and Shove It were filmed, along with F.I.S.T. with Sly Stallone, in which my gramps was an extra). It's also sort of a Midwest tourist destination along with Galena and House On The Rock (which is featured in a great scene in Gaiman's American Gods) with riveting features like the bluffs overlooking Lock & Dam #11, 4th St. Elevator and Julien Dubuque's grave. There's actually a bar that hosts some good touring bands lately called Off Minor at 1689 Elm St.

For some reason, Dubuque is regularly referenced in books, movies and TV, as some sort of mythical Midwestern city that nobody on the coasts have ever been to. It was just mentioned in Elementary last week, the Sherlock Holmes show with Johnny Lee Miller & Lucy Liu.

Early Mercury Players tracks. Hope it works, I can't test it here.
http://chestfirst.blogspot.com/2010/01/mercury-players-5-songs.html

That makes me wistful for my industrial midwestern adolescence.

xpost. That Dead Rider album is pretty great, and thanks for the heads-up. Interesting because you can hear bits and pieces of US Maple, but it comes off very much as its own thing. The next-to-last track morphs into something that sounds very Bowie (Low/Lodger) that has me hitting repeat a lot.

Ok I have a new favorite -- Total Fruit Warning.

aw y'know that's my #1 mapes track too!
i'd recommend the arto lindsay trio's "aggregates 1- 26" to anyone who hasn't heard it & wants maple-wise ticklage. the dry cubist DNA thing gets a bit more fluid, but it's still scratchy / fractured & arto's growly singing voice is clowny no-wave blues-geek hilarity.

"whoopee invader" off of purple on time. is another fave. about their live performance, i was surprised at the frequency of rittman's secondary vocals, and how i mistook them for al johnson's vocals on their albums.

Man, "Whoopee Invader" is so good. Biggest plus of this thread revive is that I am relistening to Purple On Time for the first time in a long time and it is so cool. It's like their classic rock/glam record, if that makes sense.

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.

― grandavis, Thursday, October 18, 2012 12:18 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this Invisible Things record is amazing -- sadly only three tracks from it are up on bandcamp: http://invisiblethings.bandcamp.com/

Whoa, thanks crüt. More Mark Shippy! Can't listen right now but looking forward to it.

Arto Lindsay album (with Melvin Gibbs and Dougie Bowne?) is awesome.

All my posts today are basically "this is on Spotify" but anyway, Invisible Things is on Spotify...

Cool interview with Al Johnson here.

I’m fascinated with the degradation of language; I am also disgusted by it. Languishing linguistics, slurring, mispronunciations, street-slang, street-code, conversations one can and cannot make out. I love the mumbled death. This is where I pulled from. I continue to do so

La Lechera, is this your favorite band yet?

I can totally tell from their song titles that he's like that. I love the mumbled death.

<3

wow awesome interview....thanks!

I remember two things: chasing a cockroach while eating a Snickers bar outside the venue before the show and then tumbling off the stage in beautiful slow motion.

He has an impeccable ear for detail, that's for sure.

poor Adam Vida was on clean-up crew that night
;_;

magic job!

Hell yeah. One of the few U.S. Maple songs you can say has a killer groove. Really fun walking down a city street listening to U.S. Maple, especially songs like "Magic Job".

I know I can't resist spinning some classic Al Johnson moves when I do that

Really sad that I did not see this band live. Which I already said upthread. But shit, I wish I had seen this band!

More accounts of the Pavement tour would be great

Seconded. I assume that at least someone in Pavement was a fan, as otherwise that would have been crazy.

So I was reading about larva trapped in amber that was discovered in Spain that carries trash to camouflage itself, and the phrase "dense trash packet" reminded me of US Maple. Can I be an official fan now?

good mental association imo

"Dense Trash Packet" would certainly make a good U.S. Maple song title, so yes, you are an official fan!

For some reason I just remembered the MC Paul Barman line, ”I almost threw up when I saw you at US Maple”

Some recent Al in Dubuque:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14LtqVbxL-Q&feature=youtu.be

wow thanks for sharing. that's the most i've ever heard Al speak.

It's pretty cool for sure, interesting mix of approaches!

also reading maple lyrics, crazy!

Yeah, I loved that bit. So weird without the music. I have never had to memorize lyrics, but I imagine that I would need to remind myself of a bunch of them (or read them) if I did this kind of thing.

First album is getting reissued on vinyl w/metal sleeve and the bonus track. Nice.

original is super expensive now so that's cool

oh word? pretty sure both mrs. a & I have our copies from our chicago days

http://www.discogs.com/buy/Vinyl/US-Maple-Long-Hair-In-Three-Stages/22249499?ev=bp_titl

whoa

It's time to go down the U.S. Maple listening hole again. This is awesome:

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

i was just wondering what al johnson was up to last week, and i found no answers. i was going to revive this thread but i forgot!

Huh, embed didn't work for me, but that is a full set from Baltimore in 1997. Pretty good audio and the band seems "on", though I never got to see them personally. Whoever posted the video claims the band is in good form, and it sure seems like it to me. Best band.

oddly enough, i just got this email
TODD RITTMANN'S DEAD RIDER SIGNS TO DRAG CITY;
NEW ALBUM, CHILLS ON GLASS, OUT MARCH 18TH!
http://youtu.be/TWNCaRAuMH4
Dead Rider's third ride, Chills On Glass, is as distinct from the second time around as The Raw Dents was from their debut, Mother of Curses. The goal for Dead Rider, always: super-heavy, super-driving, more 'up' moments than ever before. An album experience; listening, you're put through some changes. Illusions radiating out from the real. You're rocked into submission, but asked to participate on the listening level. Rebuilt, regrooved, with favorable upgrades. Chills On Glass moves forward in this tradition, juxtaposing high and low values - serious playing, danceablity, controlled-outcomes experimentation, don't-give-a-f**k rad-itude. Shocks don't surprise the band - it was the effect they were looking for, just what the song needed. All the sounds in the songs - the shouts, croons and whispers - draw you into the fantasy of Dead Rider, the spectacle of a night on the town, gliding through the darkness while thrust up, out of the limousine's sunroof. Scribble, confetti and other sonic details rain down like snow, providing an exquisite dressing for thick and thrashing rhythms and expertly maneuvered tight corners. Vocal textures smooth and sandy rub together and ignite, blowing glass as you head your body through the labyrinth. Rhythm is king in Dead Rider, but melodies, changes and production carry the crest in this processional.

Self-recorded, produced and mastered, Dead Rider leave no stylistic stone unturned in their restless path and no knob on the board untwisted in their search for the mixe parfait. This is composition that uses improvisation as an element within a larger structure - the ultimate streamlining of production, where songs are processed on several levels, mirroring and flashing their meanings through tactics and layers, backgrounded by a panaroma of yawning, silent, benevolent and black velvet.

Todd Rittmann, infamous from his daze in U.S. Maple, is a guitar warrior with intensive craft at his fingertips. For the past five years, he's been furthering his reputation by doing further damage with his instrument and others, reconfiguring sonic relationships, imagining the sound of a rock band reshaped into a gleaming spectacle, and by spreading the carnage wide with Dead Rider, comprised of Matthew Espy (drums, conga, percussion), Andrea Faught (synth, piano, trumpet, trombone, vocals), Thymme Jones (synth, trumpet, vocals) and Rittmann (vocals, guitar, drums). Lurching from pole to pole, pausing mid-stop, leaping and bursting into a double-twist and then resolving into a sweet glide; the dust they kick up in this fracas glitters gold, spicing the recipe with elevated powders of perception, deflecting metallically, hip-hoptically, free and jazzy, operatic, electronic, flashing like squad-car rollers.

Scroll up the thread for a bit. There is some recent Al posted there. He is on twitter, and goes on bouts of posting but has been pretty quiet recently.