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1994, February 8th: The Motley, Underground - TraumaFeast

(to see the full show poster, pulled from the Wckr Spgt fb page and mirrored locally here, click here)

From the Wckr Spgt website:

The best of the Inland Empire Bands gathered at the "new" Motley for a grand celebration in honor of Mike Newman from Traumatone Records in Burnam-on-Sea in England. Refrigerator, Diskothi-Q, Wckr Spgt, The Mountain Goats, The Salvation Brothers, Chicken Damage, Franklin Bruno, and (although not listed on the flyer) Shoeface showed up for this all-star romp. Band members outnumbered audience members by three to one. The show itself was cramped and quick as each band only had five minutes apiece in which to wow the assembled masses. And Mike. So each band played rapid-fire versions of their best songs while Peter Hughes stood on stage and played with god-damned near every band. All in all, not the best show in the world but to get all of those great bands in one room at one time counted as much as the sweat on Franklin's brow.

A camera onsite partially recorded the show, and the VHS has been digitized and uploaded. From the video, we have the following information: 

• There are about 5 minutes of footage of the Salvation Brothers (Howard Drucker on vocals, and Howard also introduces the backing band as Roger Gee, Mark Givens, and "Sister Rose") playing some upbeat traditional hymnal stuff.
• The videotaped portion of Diskothi-Q's set runs from about the 8-minute-mark to the 34-minute-mark.
• Shoeface's set runs from 34-and-change to 45:45 or so.
• Wckr Spgt's set cuts in at 45:56 mid-way into "Gone to Stay" and runs until an hour and four minutes into the recording.
• Chicken Damage appears at 1:04:36 to play two songs.
• At 1:07:46, the recording finds "Francis Mitterrand" already in progress, featuring the Spgt+NPB lineup, plus Rachel Ware and Rosanne Lindley. This audio is also on the Spgt site's Live '91-95 collection. 
• When the others walk off, the Nothing Painted Blue chyron appears at 1:09:08, leaving Franklin, Kyle, and Peter onstage. Most of the Nothing Painted Blue set appears to be lost.  
• At 1:13:39 you can hear the bass for another NPB song start, but the recording cuts abruptly to a Mountain Goats song in-progress. All recorded footage of the Mountain Goats is solo despite Bright Mountain Choir personnel being present at the event. 
  • The recording cut begins during a partial recording of an unknown early Mountain Goats song, unreleased. John D. Mountaingoats says he recalls it somewhat but not what the title might have been. 
  • At 1:14:10 there are more fragments of the NPB set, including a portion of "Spread Your Poison" that goes longer and is focused on the band. Other song fragments play with the camera pointed elsewhere. 
  • The chyron for the Mountain Goats formally appears at 1:14:42, finding "Extreme South" in progress. 
• The tape meanders around the crowd for a bit after this.
• Refrigerator appear on stage at 1:19:48, and goof around for a little while. It's just Dennis Callaci and Allen Callaci for the whole set, with Dennis playing kickdrum with one foot and playing guitar. They play until the end of the tape, at 1:40:47. 

One caveat: the digitized footage was taken from an old VHS, and the original filming was in a dimly lit room. Mark Givens and Joel Huschle put up the recording with only color-correction and the explanatory text overlays. The gifs reflect the actual quality of the footage, with minimal compression. And let me be very clear: much like the cassettes I archive reflect the recordings of the time just as they were captured, I would not trade this grainy, half-lit, aged video for the world. There's a real warmth to all the shadowed figures and there's a charm to the digital artifacting that tries to approximate analog darkness. Sometimes during the Spgt set, Joel Huschle is just the reflection of his glasses catching in the dark, and Mark Givens is almost always just a silhouette. Every band's drummer is decently lit at the back of the stage. Bob Durkee is a majestic blur. You can actually see John D. really well while Chicken Damage plays. Allen Callaci melts half into the shadows singing. It's great.

And REST ASSURED... more gifs are coming. But it's an hour and 40 minutes. Give me time to keep whittling down the good stuff. 

ONE MORE NOTE, THIS TIME ABOUT THE AUDIO, BECAUSE I WOULD NOT NORMALLY DO THIS: On the original recording, the audio is all on the left channel. I've made the personal choice to edit the audio rip and upload it in mono, pan-to-center, for simplicity's sake, in the example audio here. I promise if I'm handed a standard consumer audiocassette where everything is on the left channel, that's what you're getting. 

I've uploaded the full Salvation Brothers audio here because it's not too resource-intensive. Enjoy! Additionally, here is the description the Wckr Spgt site provides for The Salvation Brothers:

An extension of the performing version of Chicken Damage with the addition of The Reverend Howard Drucker on vocals. Performed one live show at Traumafeast in 1994 with Rachel Ware joining briefly.

It's a shame you can't see them better, but you can get a general idea:

Stay tuned for audio from the Diskothi-Q set. The videotaped portion of Diskothi-Q's set runs from about the 8 minute mark to the 34-minute mark.

• "Going to Nick's" (partial)
• "Bitter Muse"
• "Chandra Mukhi"
• "Most Eligible Bachelor"
• "Lucky"

The full Shoeface audio is below. Shoeface's set runs from 34-and-change to 45:45 or so. Nathan Wilson sings on all of the songs.

• "Lust to Love" (Go-Go's cover)
• 2nd song (for Bill Chen)
• "Benign"

Stay tuned for audio from the Wckr Spgt set...

• Wckr Spgt's set cuts in at 45:56 mid-way into "Gone to Stay" and runs until an hour and four minutes into the recording. Two songs from this portion ("Please Don't Look (At My Nipples)" and "Hitchhike") are on the Wckr Spgt site in the Live '91-95 collection.  This lineup of Spgt is Joel Huschle, Mark Givens, Franklin Bruno ("Victor Frankl"), Kyle Brodie, and Peter Hughes (identified as Dave Carpenter, jokingly, when Joel introduces the band.)
  • "Gone to Stay" (partial)
  • "Fortune Came Today"
  • "Cream"
  • "Please Don't Look (At My Nipples)"
  • "Heartfelt True-to-Life Real Emotional Love"
  • "I Drink Water Like A Dog"
  • "Hitchhike" 

No audio/gifs for the Chicken Damage set just yet.

• Chicken Damage appears at 1:04:36 to play two songs:
  • "Insignificant Other"
  • "I Like My Bike"

Most of the Nothing Painted Blue set appears to be lost. "Control Freak" is played in its entirety...

And here are the NPB partial recordings that play in between the Mountain Goats fragments. 

On the plus side, there are two whole videos elsewhere in the Video section where you can see plenty of Nothing Painted Blue gifs. Here are these two gifs from Traumafeast, for now... 

No audio/gifs for the Mountain Goats set just yet. (It's just solo John D. anyway, not hard to find video of him from this time period.)

Stay tuned for audio of the Refrigerator set... 

• "Saturday"
• "Sara 99"
• "Mistake" but with lyrics about Liz Phair
• "Class of Next Year"
• "Wish And Need" (partial; it's a work in progress)
• "Sandfish"
• "North Caroliner"
• Refrigerator also announces they're going to cover a Franklin song, which seems like a Callaci brothers joke, except they actually do launch into "Epistemophilia" to end the set.

For the time being, you can see the footage in full via the Wckr Spgt YouTube channel. All timestamp notes refer to this upload.