2. Couch
I was probably 16 or 17 when we went to go see the Laughing Hyenas play at a house party in Ann Arbor. I was always trying to find kind the crazier, weirder punk music – I remember ordering Alice Donut record from Alternative Tentacles just because there was an ad in Thrasher that said ‘New York’s weirdest!’ or something. Laughing Hyenas weren’t like a regular punk band, so we went to see them. Laughing Hyenas were the biggest band in Ann Arbor at that time, so it was just crazy, packed with skaters, punks, freaks, weirdos and hippies. There were way too many people in this tiny basement. This is where I would see a lot of people who ended up becoming friends. There was a crust punk guy named John Rastafari, who was guarding the furnace, and there were people guarding the Laughing Hyenas because there were just so many kids in there, and everyone’s just pushing and freaking out. There was this band opening called Couch that none of us knew, and who didn’t have a record out yet. I remember the first thing I noticed was they were all wearing suits, and one guy walks by carrying a keytar. They were about 10 years older than us and had these nerdy glasses, and then they just started freaking out.
A couple of months later, I went to Schoolkids [records] in Ann Arbor, and saw they had a 7" of this band Couch. I wondered how this band could even have a record out, but I bought it and remembered a couple of things from the show, I’m like, these are songs?!
Did you come out kind of feeling like the world and changed? Was it one of those shows?
Yeah, absolutely. We would have these little gigs – my friends’ band Brown Hornet would play at a golf course in my hometown every other Friday night, but it was just 15 kids or something. This was a whole other world, you know? Me and my buddy Justin had a band called Galen, and after the Couch show we were like, ‘we don’t play chords anymore’. Justin restringed his guitar, so he couldn’t play normally and made up his own special tuning.
I ended up joining Couch in 1995 and going on a west coast tour with them as their drummer. I got to play gigs with all my favourite bands, like Caroliner and the Icky Boyfriends. It was the first tour I’d been on that wasn’t just a long weekend – I think it was 3 weeks. One of the funnest times ever. I was 18 at the time so a couple of gigs got cancelled because the venue found out I was underage. Jim Magas and Pete Larson from Couch kind of became my underground music mentors, turning me on to Bananafish Magazine, Japanese noise and RRR and Chocolate Monk, Blackjack Records… I remember Pete said: “Ya just send a tape of you vacuuming the carpet and Chocolate Monk will put it out!”
