Monday, February 11, 2008
TheTonebenders s/t
The Tonebenders s/t 7" (Hit Records Label, 1995)
This little zero-rep 7" made it's way into my trembling mitts courtesy the platinum pen of Mr. Mike Lucas, the widely-acknowledged Bay Area-based sexpert on the subject of what makes a great garage record "tick", regardless of decade of origin. I got an article together back in 2000 for Maximum Rock 'n Roll whose putative purpose was to rattle off all of the best 7" of the 1990's (this was waaay pre-blog mania folks), and Dr. Dante was one of those invited to hold forth. One of his picks was this obscuro, whose mere existence had previously flown completely under my sticky radar up to that point. Couldn't have that. COULDN'T HAVE THAT. So, I started lookin' and lookin' and it took a good year of internet searching to dig up a copy, and one listen to that wall of pickled cardboard fuzz on "Root Beer" makes me realize that, yup, Dr. Lucas knows what ails ya. My personal cure was a one-off 7" by this bunch of clammy Swedish boffs.
The Tonebenders, it turns out, were not really "a band" within the filthy confines of plays-shows-and-actually-exists-as-a-band. They played one show, their recording career barely spanned a single afternoon, and then they moved on. The brief paragraph detailing the full scope of their rise and fall can be found over at the Xotic Mind/Subliminal Sounds website. Just scroll about 2/3 of the way down.
Thanks again, Lucas. You, uh, suck. Right. -Ryan W.
