Grifters: C er D?

this is a band I played with from late 98 to 2001.
I wasn't doing too much musically after the grifters'
initial demise so I was elated when my friends Stu Sikes
and Brian McKay called and asked me to join.

Initially the band was the 2 of them with Max Tepper.
Max moved back to NYC and started the band Natural History
but we carried on with some guest guitarists. One of whom was
Tim Prudhomme who lived in Mempho for about 5 years.

If you listen to the song Song In F you can hear pretty much
every guitarist who ever played in the band. It was a song Max
kinda started, then he left. In fact, when Max he announced it
to me first and the first thing out of my mouth was "Can we keep
Song in F?!"

So Max wrote a good chunk of the verse, Brian wrote the chorus
and I more or less came up with the bridge (bridges are my specialty)
and on the bridge you can hear Max's guitar, Brian's, Tim's, Jared McStay's, and Jerome's. (as well as my bass and I also laid down all the electric piano and mellotron.) So that one part of the song features performances recorded over the course of a year and a half.

It was pretty sweet being in a band with Stu because it meant we got to practice at Easley/McCain's. And record there for free basically.

If you like what you hear you can order it from Shangri-La.

http://www.shangri.com/cd_memphisindie.html

ALSO I should mention that Max left us Song In F before any lyrics were written so we all took a try at writing them but ultimately we took a poem my wife wrote and rearranged it slightly. Then Jerome and Lori McStay sang it.

My wife cried just a little bit the first time she heard it.

or here

http://www.myspace.com/lamarrecords

it's a little label me and Jared McStay started a few years ago
(Jared from the Simpletones, now owner of Shangri-La records)

We basically started the label so the Jetty Webb cd would see the
light of day.

We also put a STAFF ep. STAFF was me and Tim Prudhomme and Geoff Soule of the band FUCK. Technically, I'm still in Staff but Geoff now lives in Italy. Tim moved to New Orleans about a month before Katrina hit. They use whatever bass player they can get their hands on but if they're ever in my neck of the woods I get to be the go-to guy.

the other band on there is PAPER PLATES which is another band I got asked to join. I probably would've passed but Bobby (Dragoon) was writing really sweet pop songs and I couldn't resist. So I pretty much joined Staff and paper plates around the same time (2002)

And Breeze isn't that hard to find on the InterWeb, for anyone lookin'

I put some live stuff from the 2000 reunion tour on the myspace page.

the version of Crashing Jet on there alright. the mix was a little wonky, drums are way up there. BUT it's the only version there is of us doing it.

the live version of Bronze Cast and Dayshift (which I'll post sometime soon) are from the same show. Lawrence, KS. December 2000. I believe we were playing with Califone that night!

For those looking to contact me, I can be found during my days right now at the Middle East where I'm in charge of local booking. I've also got a slew of bands I'm playing in that you can find online: myspace.com/mostbitter myspace.com/cbop most prominent among those.

Anyway for Grifters content: I still have my 'Grifters Rock My World' handmade t-shirt from that first show at the Blue Note (Monday Night with Zoom and Seam) (hey Tre, I always thought you were in the rafters with Dave not Tripp). I'm trying to recall how many states I saw the band play in but there's a lot between Boston and Texas and Atlanta (hey this is Superbowl weekend, you're not in some stripmall bar in Miami, are you?)

Last time I saw the band was at the Pilot Light in Knoxville which was a truly divine night in late 2000...

xoxo to all
Jeff

http://www.myspace.com/141849898

I don't expect anybody to be impressed but hopefully it'll make you laugh a little. But like I said, once it gets up into our senior year of high school things suddenly get a lot more rocking.

here's a little bit of trivia for ye..

...where to begin..?

I use to date this girl named Jean when I was like 21. It turned out she was Shouse's main squeeze and she was kinda using me to make him jealous. I guess it worked cause she dumped me after a month or so. But we remained good friends.
The first time I met Dave was at a DB's show at the Antenna Club in mempho circa 1987. He knew about who I was and I knew who he was and we didn't say much to each other.

So a while later they broke up. She and I hung out a lot (she was gorgeous and I had a huge crush) but she knew about BOB. I'd played her some stuff which she probably thought was terrible.

in late 1988 Dave met Scott through Think As Inca's drummer Paul Buchiniani (sp?). Paul and Scott went to school together and paul gave Dave a hot monkey tape. So that's essentially how dave and Scott met.
they tentatively started a band that had no name.

in early 89 I moved back to memphis after living in Roanoke Virginia for about 8 months. I ran into Jean pretty quickly and she told me her old boyfriend Dave was starting a new band and was looking for a bass player. She said she had told him about me and BOB and that he loved the name BOB for a band and, according to her, he wished he could've used it.

What did he come up with instead?

You guessed it.

BUD.

.....

I told Jean I wasn't interested if for nothing else i was scared to death of playing in front of people.

a month or so later jean pointed out to me that Dave had placed an ad in the Memphis Flyer. it said something like "Bass player needed. Influences: Mission of Burma, Pere Ubu.. (somebody else). call Dave"

I didn't answer and as far as I know only a couple of dudes did. And they didn't pan out so well.

So out of desperation Dave called me and we got to talking and it turned out he lived literally right around the corner from me so I walked over and he smoked me out and played me a few things. I think it was The Want, Daydream Riot, and an early version of Black Fuel to which I added the bridge.

And we were off.

I didn't meet Scott til a month later. He apparently was following the Dead around selling acid quite a bit back then. We finally met and realized we'd seen each other at the Tiger Den (the commissary at our college Memphis State) and it turned out he was friends with all the hippy kids in my art classes that I couldn't stand. Little did I know they would all end up being our original fan-base.

And they had some goood weed so that didn't hurt.

We made it to Mempho in '98 and amongst other less obvious sites, we made it to Shangri La and The Antenna - I swear i spooted two Grifters shirts there that night, but sadly it was some hardcore band from Ohio playing.

The Antenna was like a bigger Adelphi to me. Classy joint.

GRIFTERS - out and out classic to me.

Reformyafuckers

Cheers
Paul

Remember that time in the bathroom at the Corky's in Germantown with the german sherpard and the paraplegic fortune teller?

Steve Shasta
Professional Wakeboarder
Asst. Editor, WakeboardingOnline.com

this is kinda weird cause i was just talking to a co-worker of mine about that Hull show this afternoon I swear to god.
Told him how I made the classic american blunder...

our FIRST show overseas was in Hull, England. We flew into london, went and rented our equipment, stopped at a truck stop and had mushy peas and gravy then hit the road for the 5 or so hour drive to Hull.
So we were pretty zapped. When we finally pulled into the verdant paradise that is Hull (wink) I went right to the bar and got a beer. the big lug that ran the place and apparently lived upstairs (?) gave me a nice big pint and I took a sip and said 'Whoa man, I think your refrigeration unit is out or somethin;...'

So he loved me, I'm sure.

that was also the night whassisname came to the show and wrote about it. ... ...... god what was his name......
Everett True!

I remember my bass fell off me during our set and the head of he bass landed on my beer glass. But I caught it by the strap so it didn't fully hit the floor, the head just hit the pint glass with a 'tong' sound and a big triangular piece of glass broke off and landed in the glass. Since it was my last beer (fuckin' drink tickets!) I picked it up, pulled out the shard of glass and finished it off from the unbroken side.

hey. I've done grosser shit, believe me.

Btut Everett romanticized that moment in his article like it was some great punk rock moment. Really, I'm just a clumsy drunk.

Paul Jackson - still lives upstairs and still wears his Grifters shirt. No, really. . He gets quality beer in and turns it all into warm vinegar.Legendary cellarman - but it ain';t a cellar - I can't tell you where it is. So where you stay that night?
Legendary club though thanks to that man really - hey you tread the same boards as Radiohead, Oasis, PJ Harvey, Naked Raygun!, the once OK soul Asylum, God Machine, my band.

Take care.

Some nice insights there.

Let snobby people scoff, but I loved a lot of Grifters music- I really did. You had your own special sound and gave me a lot of pleasure.

Hull Is not too disimilar to Memphis btw. i guess you didn;t make it down town? The gallows and so on?

I remember ET being there. Wasn't he Kurdt Cobain's dad or something? He posts on here I think- or has done

really.

so how widely read is this board?

Cause i've been saying all this wacked out shit.

Tabloid journos, solicitors, Gary Numan, the peabody ducks, Poison Idea roadies.

Keep noodling that bass fella - us Limeys off to bed. Good talking to you. Cheers

goodnight you....Princes of Hull.

we stayed upstairs at the Adelphi that night. with the other band I think. It was just some big junky room with some sofas and carpets and crap layin around. it really was like some kind of weird dream.

mostly what i remember is our tour manager, who we'd obviously just met, this is our first night all bedding down together. a) he's walking around in some pretty tight Calvin Klein underwear and socks and thats about it. While we're all fully fully clothed for fear of bed-bugs ( which we had encountered before staying at some punk rock club in kansas) .

and b) our new TM gets up in the middle of the night and walks over to the wall near where Dave is sleeping, and he whips it out and starts to take a leak!

good times.

ps. no-one was peed on

If anyone's interested email me. I think he's asking 1500.

One memorable offstage moment happened in the front 'bar' at Adelphi. I was playing pool and heading for an eight ball ,of course, but then - mucky water started spurting onto the table from the lampshade above - the lights started to flicker, the dodgy indie band in the front started to wobble - and then - without warning - Jacko burst through the door leading 'upstairs' engulfed in steam and a fleabitten , dog chewed, very ill fitting towelling dressing gown- chanting 'Oh dear!' at his soggy ceiling- the hardcore scenescetter had overflowed his bath. Fkin rock n roll!

Please use this thread to continue to tell Grifters stories, they are highly enjoyable. I'm sure you have a million of 'em. Also, I listened to One Sock Missing a few days ago and "Bummer" is still in my head--no need to get it out at the present moment.

Best,

Clif Steele's Doppleganger

now THAT's funny!

btw i didn't mean to sound like I was ragging on Hull. We loved it. I remember tall tall grass growing out of the pavement and around the buildings. For being the first place I'd ever visited overseas I thought it was (sniff) magical. Even the Adelphi. That was such a great time.

What kind of bands have you seen over in Hull lately? Anything stick out?

bands, I mean.

thats digital.

imagine Scott and Gene Simmons hanging out backstage.

i do.

all the time.

Cinnamon was written one day when we were stuck at Dave's parent's house in Fayetteville Tennessee. I don't really remember why we were stuck there. But we were there for three days. and it was boring. We set up in their garage and killed as much time as we could rehearsing. ( I think we just had three days in between a couple of shows and it was a free place to stay..so..)

Some of you may remember that at live shows we used to do this thing where we would throw sheets of paper on the ground with notes written on them. Musical notes, like one sheet had a big G on it, another one had a big Bflat on it and so on. Sometimes at shows (usually during the bridge to Bummer ) one of us would walk up and step on the G and we'd all start jamming on G. Sometimes we'd step on a combination of notes. Like Dave would walk across and step on G, Bflat , and F or something and we'd try to hit it all together. Most of the time it was pretty wild. A few times it kinda fell on it's face. But for the most part it was pretty entertaining. one time we hung the notes over the stage so the entire audience could see what we were doing.

SO ANYWAY, back to the Shouse family garage. We thought we'd try writing a song using the note-sheets. Thats what Cinnamon is. thats why there are these dramatic key changes throughout the song. Like, within the verses. But especially in the third verse (?) where it's like a hot potato is being passed around.

it was just weird. Kind of an unnatural way of writing a song but fun for sure.

And here's a little spoiler..if you want to retain 'the mystery' read no further.
.
.
.
.
the crazy ending to Cinnamon was a total flub.
What happened was I had the idea for the fake-out ending while we were recording it (this would've been just a month or two after writing it in the garage) So I hit that bass riff "Boogay-Doogay Doo-dow , Boogay-Doogay Doo-dow, Boogay-Doogay Doo-dow. Boogay-Doogay Doo-dow" and Stan got lost and didn't know where the 1 was. So he came in on like, 2 and. (1and2and3and4and) but that was one of those happy accidents. We played it wrong but it sounded cool.

me and Stan use to have people come up to us and they would specifically point out that part of the song and it was like they thought we were from Frank Zappa's band or something. They'd be like "you guys are the tightest rhthym section, man!" and we'd just laugh.

We tried to play Cinnamon live a few times but the arrangement was so tight that invariably one of us would eff it up. So we gave up on it and we never wrote a song using the chord sheets again. But it was an interesting experiment.

Flecton Big Sky - I stumbled across their myspace site some months ago and right away heard da Grifters sound, so that fits.

So, while were on the subject tell me about the guitar tunings - a fair wack of alternate tunings? DADGAD?

Go write a book man! If any of those musings are anything to go by...

D
A
D
Gflat
A
D

..

the tuning for Covered With Flies was real messed up

B
B (yep, the whole octave_
B (the same B as above)_
Gflat
B (another octave up)
and probably another Gflat

the first two chords of the song are just the open strings
then you grab the 2 middle strings (what would nromally be the D and G strings) on the second fret and just bend it around some.

Then pretty much every riff in the song consists of making the chords by holding down all the strings on the same fret

the ending is a lot of fun to play that way. also fun to play slide on. amaze your friends!

it's a great memory!

Tragic memories based purely on the landscape of the town... I'd say thats a tie between Dresden (Germany) and Detroit.

it'a just a thre--fingered chord, all in the same fret.

if it's like this

1
2
3
4
5
6

then on the same fret hold down 1, 2, and 4
and slide that baby around the neck some.

------*---
------*---
----------
------*---
----------
----------

if you hit a sour chord just slide whichever finger you have on the 4th string and slide it down one fret.

------*------
------*------
-------------
---------*---
-------------
-------------

this is like, a zillion grifters songs.

How the heck did you guys get that exploding guitar sound on "Black Fuel Incinerator" the one that kind of blows up and then phases all over the place on the last chorus. That thing sounded really wicked.

Hull has got a lot in commom with Dresden -they were both reciprocally Blitzreig bopped in WW2 - in fact, the Adelphi car park is a bombsite- in more ways than one, all literally.
Detroit looked like a bombsite when I was there in '94- all these unwelcome wide open spaces downtown. I was there with my good friend Tim who used to run Ajax records - he is now an elite marathon runner

You asked about recent bands playing there. I saw the terrific juggernaut Lightning Bolt ,and the the excellent Centro _matic fairly recently.

I don't get out as much now - the lure of a lady (and added bonus of a 7yr old kid) has taken me to the south bank of the Humber (remember the suspension bridge?)- as ill - advised, stupid, and downright boring culturally as it gets - perhaps like if you relocated to west Memphis?

well, I can't be 100% sure which guitar you're talking about.
Dave did one track of backwards guitar that starts during the bridge. He wrote a line for it thenrecorded it on the four-track then played that backwards and learned how to play it backwards.
So when were were recording the actual song Doug and Davis flipped the 2inch tape and Dave played the 'backwards riff'. So when we flipped the 2inch tape back over the riff .
I seem to recall this was kinda inspired by Twin Peaks when David Lynch had them learn their lines backwards (for the black lodge sequences) then they'd show it backwards so it sounded like an alien language.

There's another guitar that Scott laid down that comes in right before the first chorus. I don't know what he did exactly. Sounds like maybe he was messing with a digital delay..?

so it makes an A major when you play it all open.

then me and John used to do an open E tuning
then Dave figured out it was easier on the guitar neck if you tuned everything down to a D (as opposed to winding all the strings UP which makes them snap a lot more easily.)

if you try the A tuning try these chords

__I__I__I__I__I
__I__I__I__I__I
__I__I__I_*I__I
__I__I__I__I__I
__I__I__I__I_*I
__I__I__I__I__I

and this one

__I__I__I__I__I
__I__I__I__I__I
__I__I_*I__I__I
__I__I__I__I__I
__I__I_*I__I__I
__I__I__I__I__I

and combinations of those up and down the neck.

thats a whole bunch of Big Star songs. Try picking out
Watch The Sunrise and Try Again.

Even if you can't play the guitar you can do the D tuning and you too can sound amazing instantly!!

Most people decide they want to learn guitar but give up after a week because you don't sound kick-ass immediately.
I swear, try the D tuning and you be whiling away the hours.

whiling?
is that right?

You correct about alt tunings being a remedy for guitarist's block - back in the day i used to fk around with all types of tunings, mainly due to lack of ability and creativity - the beautiful dronings and harmonics you just cannot get with standard tuning.

Dragoon sound mighty fine btw.

I'd say the Dead weren't an influence musically as much as they were philosophically. And the Dead provide a unique perspective on the band/audience dynamic. that point is not lost on anyone who has ever attended a Grateful Dead show proper. There's a real connection.

here's some grifter trivia for you...

did you know that Scott and Kurt Cobain share the exact same birthday.

Like, the same hour.

If a local band wears their Big Star influence on their sleeve too much though it's kind of a turn off.

On the other hand i remember seeing the band Agitpop at the Antenna Club and they did a cover of You Get What You Deserve and everyone there wept copious tears of gratitude.

ok, maybe not but it did mean a lot to the audience.