I know, I have alot more than three. Maybe Ill participate later.

aw man... it's the perfect middle ground of sonic youth, wayne rogers, and rock your pants off rock & roll. it's damon che playing guitar and singing, karl hendricks on bass, and noah leger on drums. as close to a perfect record as i've ever run into!

i wish i had an easier way to dump lp's to mp3, or i'd send it to you! it's out there in .rar land, though-- SO good!

Plus this.

hmmm Geoff is almost there........ one more to go d00d

I am listening to it now, and it is definitely cool.

I come at this stuff from a weird angle for sure. When i first heard Don Caballero, it might as well have been from outer space. I knew Slint, Squirrel Bait, and all of the quarterstick records sort of bands, sort of related noises, but there was definitely a missing link sort of situation there (for me) for how shit got from there to don cab.

After the fact, now, as i go back and listen to stuff like this record, and even to stuff like Hurl, which i was not all that familiar with back in those days, i see that missing link has surfaced, and it is pretty cool. I wish i knew of this stuff when it came out. But then, if i did, i wonder how hearing don caballero for the first time would have affected me.

Tangentially: As i think of it, sometimes it might actually be a positive thing to be missing some of the links, it keeps the building of noise more mystical or something. Like, it is impossible/infinitely unlikely for a sound to emerge from thin air, but if one does not know of the linking sounds, it can appear that a sound has simply dropped out of the sky/from the void. And that is a concept that i think is good and can be helpful/encouraging for folks who build things. The idea that really new things really do exist or can be constructed...

Hmm, this is one for sure. I will never get tired of this album.

This I think is a brilliant observation and I agree.

Coming from someone who likes to dig into where the noises they're into came from and is possessed of some fairly obvious influences.

Yeah, i too am totally am inclined to go as far back as possible, but have generally also always had kind of an internal switch that is like a "stop here" button, whose existence i had not really thought too much about before. I just know that with some things that i *really* like, i can sometimes find myself to stop digging, a lot sooner than i think i do with most everything else.

And i think it is probably my head trying to keep those few weirdest* things i like the most in a place where they can retain that "alien technology" sort of quality.



*(or whatever it is. i do think it is a novelty thing though. things not before heard or projected via ones experience up to the point of exposure...)

well here's my take on how punk rock got to don cab.

you have damon, who was a government issue (ubertight punk rock), bitch magnet reveler. dude's a music sponge, college radio at that time was FANTASTIC-- two great stations playing killer music constantly. pittsburgh is a music bucket. he's just in that river, albeit a kook, and kooks do alright in a town fulla kooks.

you have mike b- who is also a music sponge. he used to be a big COC freak in a band called slag.. but that's just part of his brain. loves big guitar sounds, super melodic player and a fantastic guitarist all told. he also dug sonny sharrock, james blood ulmer, neil young, norman blake, 80s hardcore, emo... slint was part of the equation (as it was for pretty much everybody at the time, i think). somehow this crazy melodic chug got thrown in with a subtle-eer rhythmic thing... there it was.

you have ian-- who was a math freak. far as i knew him, he was always a mathrock nerd a'la breadwinner, and he used to blab with penn rollings. there was a LOT of honor role/breadwinner in him-- but he was also the drummer with karl hendricks in a band called sludgehammer-- so he had this goony indie rock thing. ian: mixture of goony indie kid and crazy theory rock. he tried for a long time to get this bizarre math thing going with a cat named mark-- and it just kinda baffled people-- myself included. tempering it with the melodic chops of mike... good combo.

and pat was the guitarist for a band called the northern bushmen who were very like a lotta amrep/touch & go stuff-- scritchy gravelgrinder guits and strong rhythm sections. no idea at the time he was NEARLY as great a bassist as he is- but he borrowed a peavey amp and a g&l guitar from noah, and they made great music for a while.

anyhow-- i think it was pretty organic-- early DC was way more of a slag/breadwinner/slint/bitch magnet ROCK fusing-- after ian joined the band, and pat left-- the mathiness sorta got pulled out and indulged a whole lot more- which was definitely an ian thing. mike was pretty into adding prepared guitar reichel style, and the main writers were digging on all kinds of modern 'classical'.. then you had a rock rhythm section.

pretty much all told-- lotsa rock, lotsa other. lotsa kooks fusing shit.