Along with the drawings from the daycare center, other of my personal memorabilia was recently almost killed by water damage. Some of that memorabilia existed from my days playing and singing in a Tampa band called The AmeriCar Underworld, with Jack (local promoter bigshot) and Damon and Aaron (of November Foxtrot Whiskey).
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AmeriCar was one of the highpoints of my life (maybe…probably). I plan on writing about the band some day when I'm older. There's just so much to say. So fucking much.
AmeriCar began with just myself, Damon and a goofy bass dude named Gabe (this is Gabe's Americar site). At that time we sounded like angry, but creatively ambitious immature boys. We sounded like shit actually: a loud and noodly cross between The Nation of Ulysses and Guns N' Roses. We had different second guitarists as well: from Shayde Sartin of Tomorrow to a girlfriend of mine who could pull off RATT solos note for note. They were both awesome but also added to our innate loudness and noddliness. It was insane and effecting music…if not good. We rarely hit the mark with what we were trying to do but we gained some unique skills while trying.
We knew Jack from playing shows he set up at Stetson College in Deland. He happened to move to Tampa just as Gabe was leaving the band. When Jack joined we changed immensely.
Jack was a few years older than us, and further evolved in his music tastes. He turned us on to Tortoise and Jeff Buckley and Aphex Twin and other music more thoughtful and mature than our previous noisy inclinations. We added Aaron on keyboards and with Jack and Aaron's influence we calmed down, matured, landing somewhere between The Nation of Ulysses and Pink Floyd with a slight, cheery Motown pop influence.
We were still very cluttered musically. Everyone in the band was brilliant. And our music was often as unpleasant as staring into the sun. Sometimes it was perfect. Most times it was still awkward. But every month we gained and gained on our muse.
The imperfection was sometimes overwhelming and frustrating. We often thought we sucked because we weren't what we wanted to be. But we were attempting something difficult that could never happen without lots of trial and effort.
But our youthful impatience in waiting and fighting for the perfection, coupled with average band drama, broke us up five years after we'd started. If we had been mature enough to come to terms with the fact that AmeriCar would never, by a long shot, be instant gratification: we would by now have something wholly unique and beautiful and honest to every band member's individual direction.
Some day I will write about the minute particulars. They will move you. But right now, with the aid of my new scanner, I'm documenting some pieces of AmeriCar history before they are inevitably destroyed in some freak accident and lost forever.
THE LEGEND AT THE bottom DECODES THIS COLLAGE:
a) The first tape we ever put out, before Jack was in the band, was a continuous arty mix of samples and snippets and long extended prog-punk songs. It came in a tiny brown paper bag with a red "AmeriCar" guitar-with-wings logo stamped on the outside. Inside was a playing card with the song titles printed on the back. This is the front and back of said card. It was pretty cool, resourceful packaging. We sold over 150 tapes altogether at $1 a piece.
b) Jack used to work at Exotic Dancer Publications: a trade magazine for strippers. It was a glossy full of escort service and strip club adds. Jack gets MAJOR street cred in my book for having had that job. While employed there, Jack's friend took pictures of a transvestite wearing one of our "Bitches love The AmeriCar Underworld" T-shirts. This is said transvestite.
c) Several years ago, the coolest thing about living in Tampa was HOME and EVERGLADE and SCROG. HOME has always been one of my favorite bands, I think, objectively; not just because they're from Tampa. Getting to play with them was always a big honor for us. Even though I was always kind of a loud mouth ass around them and Andrew would always try and steal my girlfriends.
d) This was the design from another of our shirts. As you can see, it's an appropriation of the Aerosmith logo. Appropriation was big in Tampa's snotty, punk scene a few years ago. EVERGLADE used the Little Caesar's log saying "Everglade! Everglade!" as opposed to "Pizza! Pizza!" Scrog appropriated Minor Threat's "Out of Step" and we stole the Aerosmith logo. But no one ever liked us near as much as those other bands.
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THE LEGEND AT THE bottom DECODES THIS COLLAGE:
e) This is actually a picture of another band featuring Damon and I and the original Dumbwaiter's bassist, Jessica (way pre-Dumbwaiters). Here we are opening for EVERGLADE, SCROG and HOME on the same bill. The show was our second ever in Tampa (Sight & Sound Laboratory) after coming here to college (our first ever Tampa show was the night before at Blue Chair Records with Monday Mornings). HOME had invited us to play after stumbling upon our practice one night at USF. I have always thought the HOME guys were probably stoned when they first saw us practice, because after we played this show with them they seemed to politely realize that we were pretty awful. Except for my sweet, long, red, grunge hair.
f) More appropriation. This time the "Steal Your Face" Grateful Dead logo with our guitar-with-wings. We never made T-shirts with this design.
g) We played a show at The Ritz (now Masquerade) in Ybor and got paid six bucks. They were really picky about giving receipts. We didn't care that we made so little because they put our name on the HUGE lighted marquis right outside on busy 7th avenue. It was the biggest rush we'd experienced up till then: seeing our name all big and lit up.
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