Roots, pt. 3: Mr. Disco

First and foremost, a wish of a happy birthday to the lovely and exhilarating Super River frontwoman Kathryne Dameron-Johnstone.  In other Super River news, The Ball Python Manual is nearing completion and of course we area all very excited for its release.  It is a dark new direction that captured the feelings of 2012.  I am quite impressed so far.

Kathryne smothered with love from her bandmates and brand-new brother-in-law Daniel Johnstone.

And now onto out main subject, Mr. Disco.  This article precedes Love Athena because the recordings predate the Love Athena recordings I will share.  The band itself began about five months before Mr. Disco.

Mr. Disco began in theory in March of 2004 when faced with a two-week break from school that would affect myself, Sam Deutsch, and Aidan, but not current Love Athena drummer Peter Cross.  Sam and I got the idea of creating a two-man project that would just be for fun and simply rip off Lightning Bolt who were then riding high with the recent release of The Wonderful Rainbow.  Luckily, our music ended up being quite different from the Providence band's.

Sam and I assumed the aliases Arthur Disco and The Lummox, respectively, and began with an impromptu performance at a party hosted by Bobby Tarantino one Friday night in Prince Edward Point, Basking Ridge, NJ.  Liam played that last night, I think with Jason Paskow and Bobby T in a band best known as Bobby T and the Classic Rock Junkies which at one point also included former Shears Alec Signorino and later Jesus Cookie (with Paskow) Jason Sobieski.  First though, Mr. Disco debuted with a brief set dedicated to Ernie Keebler with myself on bass and Sam on drums.

Days later we recorded Larry David Salad Bar at Sam's where I began to play my busted old bass outfitted with an untuneable string and an acoustic guitar string nicknamed "the Machine" played through Sam's distorted Marshall.  All three tracks were recorded and improvised live with samples and synths added later.  The track order on the EP is the same order in which the songs were recorded.  Younger siblings Aidan McEneaney and Jenny Deutsch were also present with the latter being left in disbelief that there were not separate guitarist and bassist.  This is a testament to the power of "The Machine."  This would be the extent of the band's recorded output.

Luckily the band played another live show at The Montclair Kimberly Academy's After Class Thespian Spectacular (ACTS).  The audience was even less welcoming, but we had a fantastic time performing a new piece entitled "Midnight in the Garden of Salad and Breadsticks."  This title was even printed on that afternoon's program.  It was a miracle we were allowed to perform after a rusty set at the rehearsal the afternoon before in front of the often tyrannical Dominique "Domdom" Gerard," but these were the golden years of MKA.  Mr. Disco was informally retired afterwards.

DOWNLOAD: Mr. Disco - Larry David Salad Bar (2004)

"Liam, Show Us On The Doll Where He Touched You" is clearly a warm-up and the record's least impressive track.  It has a surfy vibe and opens with a sample of an AppleTalk transcription of a woman who accused Bill Clinton of sexual harassment and concludes with a Charles Bronson PSA.

"Cicada Season" is undoubtedly the strongest track and is one of the darkest heaviest songs you will hear.  Straight out of hell, really, and that's why we agreed that nothing fit better than a sample of a Hitler speech at the song's peak.  No idea what that's about.  We just took a fearless approach in making some very dark music and as odd as it can feel I can't deny that music is very chilling.  This is an achievement and fans of heavy rock should not miss it.  The fun vibe of the band returns at the end with a sample from a Deathwish film.

"Who Do You Sell Ketchup to a Ketchup Salesman" is good too, though clearly steam is being lost and the growing song lengths shows this.  It opens with an exchange between John Wayne and Katharine Hepburn and then kicks in with Sam's classic heavy beat.  Unfortunately the drums are a bit too loud which detracts from some cool riffs.  I don't know what the end sample is, but it's pretty funny.

The one flaw with this record is that it's a bit quiet, so you're going to have to crank it up.  It's a pretty concise little piece of noise-metal and another example of the rare talent possessed by the teens of Basking Ridge in this era.  Listen without prejudice, as they say.

EDIT:  This is a response from Liam Carroll about his performance the night of Mr. Disco's debut:

Excellent piece, although the gig in Bobby T's basement went a bit differently: myself and the Jasons performed sans Alec and Bobby, calling ourselves Automatic Stop (after The Strokes song of the same name). We played first that night, and even though we practiced our asses off for a week, our set was a disaster. We only played two songs, and they both went terribly for various reasons. Then you guys played that totally improvised set afterwards, and I was honestly in shock at how good it was, and dismayed you guys were that much better than us with 100% less practice. I was trying to take The Classic Rock Junkies in a noisier direction anyway, which led to me getting fired from the group, but that's a whole other story.