Willow Folk Festival 2006 - Fireside

Round 2 here of the Willow 2006 recordings. i transferred these recordings a few years back, but upon recent listens i feel like i probably have more recordings from that year somewhere. There's a lot of the Chris Bathgate/Michigan crew on this one here. These takes are all after hours campfire jams from Saturday night. Throw another log on the fire.

Willow Folk Festival 2006 - Stage Performances

I'm getting kind of hooked on this whole blogging thing over the last couple of days. This is something that I've wanted to post up here for a long time. The Willow Folk Festival is a down home cornfield music festival that takes place near Stockton, Illinois every August. I grew up in nearby Freeport and have been going every year since my senior year of high school. I hold this festival as a pretty special tradition as it is just a beautiful commencement of amazing people and amazing music. If it weren't for this festival I would never have met anyone affiliated with the Dekalb S&S crew. I saw Little Headhunter play there in '05 maybe, and I was pleasantly moved by the music. I introduced myself to Tom Cober later that night and we hit it off pretty well. He told me about shows at the attic and 7th Street Space and I decided to check it out a month or so later. The rest is history I guess. A lot of great friendships I've made with people (especially Scratch and Sniff folks) are ultimately rooted at Willow. In 2006, I started bringing my tape recorder everywhere I went at Willow due to my documentarian/preservationist leanings. I have countless tapes from the past 4 years (except from '08 when my tape recorder was rained on) that I've been slowly digitizing and planning to put out in some format to sort of showcase the array of talent and great music that happens there. Well, here's batch number one of numerous volumes to come. These recordings are solely from the "stage" performances (open to anyone that signs up) from Saturday and Sunday. This is in contrast to the campfire recordings of the evening jams that happen after the stage performances finish, soon to come. It is by no means ALL of the performers, but I feel that it's a pretty good cross section of the talent there. I don't know the names of all the performers and songs so everything is just listed as "various artists." - matt - Willow

Scrambler 2004

Jeezus, sorry for the million year delay between posts, if you're actually still checking in. I've been lazy (of course) but have also had difficulties in the form of crappy sound input devices, making it hard to rip anything but cd's at the moment. Anyway i haven't forgotten about this blog and here's a bootleg of performances from the 3rd Scratch & Sniff Records Scrambler, recorded by Andy Herald on November 6, 2004. This was the first one to feature all cover bands. Please correct the erroneous/missing song titles if you know 'em, and enjoy.

DeKalb Smells! - Scratch And Sniff Records Compilation cd-r

It really does!



1. Little Headhunter - French Fries
2. Fusco - Gus
3. Pinstripe Mind - (C)old War Fight Song
4. Icarus Syndrome - Erica
5. Della Drive - Cheeseburger Samba
6. Shuffleplay & The Mutations - Potential Energy
7. Justin Bailey - Comfort Rock
8. Handmedown Satellites - You Were Sleeping
9. Horseparts - Breadwinner
10. Window Well - Rain On Parade
11. Candy Sweat - Paperweight
12. Crusher - A British Mile
13. Coin Operated - Slattyak!
14. The Variable Why - I HATE My Computer
15. Things Falling Apart - He Is Cured By Faith Who Is Sick Of Fate
16. Gaslight Gaslight - Untitled
17. Secret People - Battle Of The Clones
18. Hilo - I Got Convoy

Scrambler 2005

get scrambled

Pre-Halloween Variety Scrambler, 2002 (c-90)

90 minute cassette of highlights from the first scrambler

Strange What Desire Will Make Foolish People Do

12 wicked covers



S&SR 2008

Organnnnnn

I don't remember who originally came up with the idea for this compilation, but it was probably inevitable as it seemed like everyone in DeKalb and their mother had an organ or two of some sort lying around. Here be fourteen songs recorded on all manner of electric, air and otherwise organs from 2004. Rank literalits amongst you will note the lack of an actual organ on the cover. Oh well.

let's get organized

1. Mayflower - Spitoon Moon
2. Icarus Syndrome - Lizard Breath
3. XXXperience - Pussy Lickin
4. Coin Operated - Mambo In Space
5. Justin Bailey - My Heart Is An Or
6. Short Circuit - Climbing Stairs
7. The Variable Why - Shadow Lines
8. Coin Operated - Garage Sale Reed
9. Gaslight Gaslight - Opening Organ
10. Hand Me Down Satellites - Safe Handling
11. E - Tiddlywinks
12. The Variable Why - Lull
13. Flesh And Stuff - Yellow Jacket
14. Handmedown Satellites - Scattered Lights

DeKalb-A-Kopia compilation tape

Does anyone have a sleeve for this? I'm not even sure if I ever made standardized artwork for it, or if they were all done by hand or what.

Anyway what we have here is a very very lo-fi (even for here) C60 compilation taken from live shows in DeKalb, Illinois circa roughly late 2001 to late 2002. All the bands featured were DeKalb-based with the exception of They're Like A Union from Peoria, and Princess Sweepstakes, who were from Carbondale at the time. This was all recorded on my once-trusty portable Sony Tapecorder 800B(apparently Richard Nixon had one too).

Ummm, what else? That drunken moron screaming during like every song is probably me. Corduroy Vomit became Horse Parts in case ya didn't know. Scratch & Sniff catalog number 000. And who knows the missing song titles?

download-a-kopia

1. Shuffleplay & The Mutations - Make It Happen
2. Corduroy Vomit - ?
3. They're Like A Union - ??
4. Honkies With Privileges - 6x/y=HWP
5. Holtron - Holtron Theme
6. Fusco - Stranger Days
7. Hilo - Demographically Yours

8. Melony Ether Missing - ???
9. Icarus Syndrome - Foggy Night
10. Princess Sweepstakes - Black Balloon
11. Bicycle Day - Sing Songs
12. Corduroy Vomit - ????
13. Secret People - Mob Action
14. Hilo - Mint Soda
15. Fusco - Dead End Street
16. Shuffleplay & The Mutations - Go Anywhere Refrigerator

Shuffleplay, AEP, Secret People, and Mellowflex - Live At 809 Kimberly 7-21-01

Another deep plunge into the Bob Aspatore archives brings us this eclectic DeKalb apartment show from July 21, 2001, with cool sets all around from Shuffleplay & The Mutations, Alternative Education Program, Secret People and Mellowflex. This happened just three weeks before I moved to DeKalb and met any of these folks! So I obviously missed it and can't comment except to say this is quite a treasure as only the Shuffs ever got around to recording any kind of proper album, and this is way earlier in their development anyhoo. The Secret People set came out briefly as a tape on Scratch and Sniff in addition to a demo but AEP and Mellowflex to my knowledge only had some tracks on the Expiramental Musicians Union comp, which i'll probably get up here someday. Anyone got any comments/insights as pertains to any o' this?

Shuffleplay + AEP + Secret People + Mellowflex


Thanks again to Bob!!!

COMPS!!!

SCRATCH AND SNIFF CIRCUS
Thanks Dean for loan of the scratchless copy of this!



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SONGS FOR THE ROAD AND ABODE
Here's a pretty good idea. Ask your friends to each record a song, bring your Tascam and a sixer of PBR to their house or designated practice space, maybe help play on some of the tunes, and release the results. Curated, recorded and compiled by Thee Automatic Paul Kim in the fall of '05.



songs for the road and abode - a scratch and sniff records mix

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FLIES IN THE MOUTH
C-47 on Rugburn Records that came with the 5th issue of my semi-defunct picture zine, Patter. Brings together the typical Rugburn cast with a bunch of semi-lost one off sessions and bands that never were. Only 30 copies I think.

flies in the mouth