Friday, July 29, 2022

A Very Nerdy Sunday: MC Chris, Mayor Wertz & Crunk Witch

 On July 17th I went to see MC Chris on his farewell tour and ended up falling in love with the openers in the process

Mayor Wertz

The first opener was a local musician, Mayor Wertz. His nerdy music never failed to make me smile, dance, and clap! Like most nerd rap (or similar) it employs the juxtaposition of reality and expectation. This is most apparent in songs like 'Please Leave by Nine' (which you can listen to here) which is about hosting a party and wanting to pass out at 9 PM. It was genuinely funny, lighthearted and relatable. My favorite song he played had to be the finishing song 'Dad Life', though, which is a remixed version of the Home Depot theme with lyrics about things that dads do. It was hilarious. Every time you started to think you could predict it, it'd hit you with an unexpected funny one-liner and keep going. You can listen to Dad Life Here.

After the show I purchased this CD from him featuring a decent collection of things off of various EPs of his. He complimented my Monster Energy tab necklace and when I'd asked him to sign it, he wrote "Vince! Red Monster 4 Eva!" 10/10 would see again

Crunk Witch


    Ahh Crunk Witch. They're a husband-wife EDM duo who I could simply not get enough of! Their music reminded me of early 2010s kids dance music for an older audience. My favorite song they played was called "Start of It All" (which you can listen to here) which details how the lead (the husband) met his wife (the DJ). The first lyric is "It all started on myspace" and it hooked me in from there! I cannot recommend this enough to people who miss or feel nostalgic regarding the aesthetic of early 2010s internet music.
Watch my live video of this song here!


I also bought this "Heartbeats in Hyperspace" CD which features their song Start of It All. Check it out here!

MC Chris

The whole reason I went to this show to begin with was to see MC Chris. His music has had an impact on me due it being a constant in-the-car soundtrack throughout my childhood and teen years. I found out he was touring for the last time and immediately saved the date. His performance at this show was pretty great. He brought along his son who he affectionately nicknamed MC Skullcracker. It was a little awkward to have a young child on stage when the music is about very adult themes, but otherwise it was nice. He picked the songs Chris played. Not bad! All bangers! I had a lot of fun at this show. At the end he gave a very long emotional speech about how you should always follow your dreams and not let anyone push you down before he played the last song. I would be lying if I said I didn't tear up just a little bit! I unfortunately could not afford any of his merchandise, but I did get these:
A few videos of a few songs including WiidPizza Butt, and Nrrrd Grrrl
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In conclusion, I was surprised by how much I actually enjoyed nerdcore music. If you like video games, early 2010s EDM, or Star Wars I'd check all three of these artists out! Enjoy!

The Restless Ghost of Ghost Bees: A Coffin Full of Demos

 Hello everyone, it's been about a week since I published my first and only blog post, "Ghost Bees' "Demo 2007": The Found Album, And the Elephant in the Room", which goes into detail about twin folk duo Ghost Bees and their history and lost media legacy. Since posting this I have made some discoveries I think are worthwhile to mention in a new post. 

First and foremost, I'd like to announce that I have started a new page on my blog dedicated to cataloging every single mention of this band on the web which includes live videos, archived audio performances, music downloads, photos, interviews, etc. I have tried my best to archive all the sites I feel like are vulnerable to takedown, so hopefully none of the links become broken over time. Everything linked here is also linked on my archive page! Please check it out.


The Fate of the Demos

   
    In my original post about this topic, I gave a list near the end detailing all the songs I thought were lost, correctly attributed, and incorrectly attributed. Thanks to Lrexie and Soulseek user Sexint we now have a new collection of demos unearthed which includes a large chunk of the ones I identified originally. 

(Left, my updated list,) (Right, list of files listed as "demos" under Sexint's upload on Soulseek)


    You may notice that in my updated list there are two colors of highlights. In finding and listening to these demos I made the realization that the two in blue were already found under other names. "Isabelle" is also known as "Happy Now", and "In Rivers Passing" as "For Flannery O'Conner" on my Demo 2007 CD. 'Rebel's Sin', 'A-Minor's Rust' and 'Prophecies From a Sickened Lie' are all new unheard-till-now songs, though. In my last post I made it a point to say Isabelle "may not exist at all" and that I was sure the song was mislabeled but that seems to be thwarted by new information.

    What happened here? Well, we know my Demo 2007 CD was recorded in/attributed to 2006/2007 which means it was released before their album Tasseomancy in 2008. I am no closer to finding out where exactly this CD came from but there is more evidence now pointing to it possibly being a CD sold exclusively at concerts in 2007 pre-Tasseomancy. Just for fun, here's a video of them performing at The Casbah in 2007

    In a conversation with Sexint about the origins of the "Demos" collection they said this:


    Due to this I am going to safely assume that this collection of demos was available on their Myspace for download AFTER the release of Tasseomancy, when they would have had more motivation to spice up the names and release songs that they had been playing live for at least a couple years at that point. This is backed up by the fact Sexint and their girlfriend have been fans since around 2009 or 2010, when Ghost Bees slowly started to switch their name to Tasseomancy. 

    TLDR; I believe a few songs in this collection of demos have different names from the tracks on my Demo 2007 CD because they had moved past the "this is all we have" stage to the "here's what we have left over" stage and had more time to give more thought-out titles to these demos. This makes all of the title discrepancies make sense. In the Ghost Bees Exclaim! article the twins even cite Flannery O'Connor as a huge inspiration of theirs, further cementing the thought that the twins /are/ responsible for the name changes and that they are /not/ fan made discrepancies.



    Speaking of this change, this is an amendment I'd like to make on my other entry: Tasseomancy (band) and Ghost Bees used the same myspace page, there was just a name change. This is an important distinction to make because despite the huge change in their style when Ulalume released, they didn't exactly immediately bury or destroy everything from their Ghost Bees era and instead saw it as a name change with a new album. This is apparent the more you look into the few years in-between the release of Tasseomancy and Ulalume. In many places like in the audio release of 2009 Pop Montreal they played Ulalume songs in the Ghost Bees style and simply stated "these will be on our new album". It was not an immediate switch like I may have accidentally led you to believe. The above image proves this without a doubt as it shows Tasseomancy's Myspace blog section. It features the exact three blogs whose titles are available on the Ghost Bees Myspace, effectively confirming Tasseomancy was nothing but a name change for a long while.

    In earlier interviews re: the name change both Sari and Romy made it clear they were just changing their name. As time went on, though, they would seemingly resent the existence of Ghost Bees and even go as far as to say they didn't exactly like it anymore as it was, in their words, their first album together before they could really settle on a genre or anything. They've "matured" in their sound since then. 

    I am currently working on figuring out a photo to use for the new demo uploads for YouTube but for the time being you can listen to them or download them Via my Dropbox linked here. The link to download this among other things is also in my Ghost Bees archive page on the righthand side of my blog. I will make further updates once necessary. There is no response from the twins on my email, nor is there one from the other Ghost Bees fan I emailed, BUT I do know of someone who has a vague connection to at least one of the twins so if something comes of that I will be sure to update then.

    I am glad that this has a happy ending. So many things that go missing never surface back on the web. I'd again like to thank Lrexie, Sexint (and their girlfriend), Juniperro, and everyone else that helped me uncover these songs and related info!

Woodlands Video


    You may recall me mentioning this woodlands video in my previous blog as well, and while there hasn't been any progress on finding it, I dedicated at least an hour to digging through archives of the Aux.TV site in order to view the broken pages for these as well as locating an email to message. Scott Cudmore did a lot of films about musicians under 'Camera Music', even one of Timber Timbre who Ghost Bees would go on to co-create a song with. He still works in film, and I was able to find a general contact email so hopefully I get a response. In the meantime, at least I retrieved the thumbnails and confirmed its existence. Here are some more screenshots with more information regarding the Camera Music episode featuring Ghost Bees.


Did The Red Sea Part?

Cover Art by Melissa Federowicz


Next on my list of things to update, I was able to find out where "Did the Red Sea Part?" came from! It was created and released on a digital compilation album from defunct record label Peppermill Records in mid 2008 called "52 weeks: Spring" It was a collection of 52 songs, one for each week of the year, published in seasonal sections. This song was featured on the spring collection. This clears it up! Ghost Bees was also a part of several other compilation collections, only one of which with a CD release, all featuring previously released songs. Please check out the Ghost Bees archive to learn more.

Demo 2007




This part is being added after the initial publishing because I'd like to clear something up without destroying already written content. During my most recent research session I came across the Ghost Bees sonicbids page, and it listed their two releases as "Tasseomancy" and "Ghost Bees EP". While Demo 2007 is NOT a self-titled full album it is PROBABLY a self-titled demo EP given out/sold at shows in 2007 before they released Tasseomancy. Due to this revelation, I will be specifying this in my older entry and my YouTube uploads as well as on Discogs.  

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    That is all for now! My next blog post will be out relatively soon. It will either be about Cake Bake Betty's two album legacy, a brief overview of Brad Petering (of TV Girl)'s musical past, or a short couple posts about recent concerts i've been to. Thanks for reading!

Saturday, July 23, 2022

Ghost Bees' "Demo 2007": The Found Album, And the Elephant in the Room

 I figured as my first post here on Bargain Bin Basement I'd explore a more personal and anecdotal piece of lost media that I myself am responsible for uncovering: The topic of today's post is twin folk duo Ghost Bees (also known under their new project's name Tasseomancy, not to be confused with the Ghost Bees album of the same name), and a brief overview of their history, as well as their lost (and found) content.

(PLEASE READ MY UPDATE POST AFTER THIS, AS IT HAS MORE UP-TO-DATE INFO REGARDING THESE LOST SONGS)


     In my freshman year of high school, I was in the market for new music to listen to. Spotify was and still is my streaming platform of choice, so I made it a goal to pay attention to the music it was suggesting me. After a while I was recommended a song on an album called Tasseomancy by Ghost Bees. I did not really think much of their music other than the fact I liked and streamed it because it seemed too niche to have that much more information. That was until they disappeared from all streaming platforms a year later. I didn't notice at first, but I eventually started to wonder why songs like 'Vampires Of The West Coast' and 'Tear Tassel Ogre Heart' wouldn't come on shuffle anymore!


    See, Ghost Bees was made up of a twin duo: Sari and Romy Lightman, who originally created the project around 2005/2006 and would go on to write/release a single album in 2009 under the name. It honored their great-great grandmother Clara Chernos, who appears on a cake in the album cover while also touching on other folklore they were deeply connected to. Chernos was very intertwined in the art of Tasseomancy, or tea leaf reading due to it being one of her only forms of income and passed it down to the entirety of the Lightman's family. This explains the frequent use of the word in their music ventures. 


Ghost bees itself did not last very long, though, and in 2010 the duo decided to switch from the name Ghost Bees to Tasseomancy (in honor of the album), and in early 2011 they released their first album under this new name: Ulalume. While the same people were responsible for both projects there was a distinct change in the content they were making, separating the two from each other distinctly. One of the major pushes for this was that they were simply tired of what they were doing and wanted to try a different approach. 

Ghost Bees' Tasseomancy album was up on streaming platforms for many years following the dissolution of the moniker, until one day in 2019 when it was mass deleted from everywhere on the internet. Many months after this loss there was a single song uploaded by Youtube user Juniperro in 2020 and then followed by the rest of the album Tasseomancy in 2021. These MP3s were likely ripped from the CD release of the album or taken from a music site like Soulseek because they were effectively lost on the surface web for close to a year before being uploaded to Youtube. As a huge fan of this band, I was upset to find the album gone, and am forever thankful for Juniper's upload. On the topic of this user, Juniper was one of the only active people with any semblance of interest in this group and I felt compelled to message them regarding this when I purchased my Demo 2007 CD.


This is my Demo 2007 CD.

    One of the major things that becomes increasingly clear as you look into or research any band that was just starting to make music with the beginnings of the internet is that you often overlook things, or rather, things just aren't saved and if you weren't there to see them when they happened, it's like they never existed at all. This is what I found myself thinking as I went onto Discogs in December of 2021 and saw a new release for sale under the Ghost Bees name. 


"A self-titled album? really?" I said to myself in disbelief as I went to open the Wayback Machine to see if there were any crawls on their now defunct myspace from the time this album would've come out.


    There was one copy for sale by the person who uploaded the entry to Discogs. It was 6$ USD with 5$ USD shipping. One of the major reasons I immediately bought this was that the track list listed two songs that I'd never heard of before. Especially because there really is not much to memorize with a single album group. After the purchase I waited patiently for it to come in and tried to do additional research. I was dumbfounded at this because none of the information COULD HAVE lined up even if it wanted to due to the date and the proclamation of it being its own album. That's a huge thing to proclaim!

    In the interim I messaged Juniper, the person who uploaded Tasseomancy to Youtube, to ask if they had any insight into the existence of this supposed self-titled album that was not once mentioned anywhere, not even in interviews for the release of their 2008 album. It didn't make sense. While they had never heard of this release at all, they did tell me they received an e-mail from another fan of the band at some point with a mysterious MP3 attached that was labeled "Isabelle". I had not received my CD at this point so as far as I knew there was a third found lost Ghost Bees track, and I'd even uploaded it to Youtube with the track name "Isabelle". Once I got my CD in the mail though I ran to my CD player and skipped to the songs I'd never heard before. When it played 'For Flannery O'Conner', I came to a sudden realization: everyone who had been distributing this song, Isabelle, had actually been passing around a mislabeled song. This song was NOT called "Isabelle" at all, and frankly I'm unsure if that song exists at all anymore. Going along with this, while the rest of the songs are ones I'd heard before that were released on Tasseomancy, every single one of them except "Haunting Intervals" was a demo version of its respective track. Most of the "demo" songs lack strings or other specific music details that would later complete them on their full release.

    Another thing that the original Discogs uploader got wrong was the date and the name of the album. This album was actually called "Demo 2007", released in 2006. You'd think with this new information I would be able to locate this release and figure out where it came from! Well, it's not that easy. Knowing the name and release date was only half the battleIt isn't even listed here, on Youth Club Record's own release page. There is still no information about it surfacing anywhere and that is unfortunately where I have left off the search for now. I emailed Sari and Romy on April 23rd this year, 2022, with no response yet. I even emailed the original emailer of the 'Isabelle' MP3 with no luck! I really do doubt I'll get responses from either.
    Juniper said something during our conversation that made me realize how truly lost everything is: "there was that huge online purge of Ghost Bees stuff right after the Tasseomancy album got wiped." Yikes. it's true. A lot of content was wiped, when it came to streaming and even their myspace that shut down in 09/10. We have to essentially grasp straws for the lost stuff until we find someone who knows more than we do.

    Now, this begs the question, where am I now? How much is still out there? How can you help?
That's truly the elephant in the room, isn't it? after all, I am making an entire blog post about this band and its lost and found content. I cannot be sure at a 100% accuracy that everything I list after this will be salvageable, but I will try to only include things I am fairly certain 1. existed, 2. are find-able.

First off, we have the list I've concocted of songs that they may or may not have released at some point on Myspace. They closed their myspace so early that there is no way to access their music on the Wayback machine to see titles.


I am confident that these exist out there in MP3 format or similar because Happy Now and For Flannery O'Conner were not the only random lost songs. Here's "Did the Red Sea Part?". I still have no idea where this song came from, but it has the Ghost Bees sound more than the Tasseomancy sound and is labeled as a Ghost Bees song most of the time when uploaded. This gives me the hope of finding these supposed songs. 



Here's a lost video with a broken link that is on the Youth Club Records' Blogspot Blog under "News"

Can you help? well, why not! Just be nice and don't harass the twins. We will never know how much is truly lost until all of it is truly found, and that is the best and the worst part of searching for lost media. I love Ghost Bees and Tasseomancy.
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If you'd like to learn more about Ghost Bees, you can check out these posts below!
(#6 is special because they play some songs that would later be released under their new name in their old style!)
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If you have any leads, PLEASE contact me through my Email at Grzybowt@gmail.com, or check my "contact me" page for more info.

Melt-Banana: A Photo Album

Hello! I saw Melt-Banana play tonight (10/17/22) and it was fantastic!  I'm happy to share there will be more photo albums from now on! ...