Dave Bell Memorial

A memorial for Dave Bell is being held Tuesday, October 29, 2024 at 4:30 p.m. at Loutzenhiser-Jordan Funeral Home, 366-368 S. Main Street, Greenville, Pennsylvania USA.  Dave died this week from cancer.  An obituary and more information on the service is at https://www.loutzenhiserfuneralhomes.com/obituaries/david-bell.  A good buddy of mine, Dave is missed.  I first met him in 1990 if I remember correctly.  My mom was set up at a flea market and made Dave's acquaintance.  Dave was helping his grandmother who was also set up there.  He liked cool music and was a cool kid, so we soon struck up a friendship.  We played in many fun bands together including Yeast?, Angry Housewives, Anal Spikemobile, The Lenin Spoonful, Rage Against Dabney Coleman, Ungoat, and probably a few others whose names I forget now.  We also saw many great concerts together including Nirvana, The Boredoms, Slayer, Pavement with Gary, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Guided By Voices, and many, many others.  

In addition to punk/alternative/indie/whatever you want to call it, Dave also played hip-hop, electronica, noise music, and even drummed in a polka band once.  After playing in the Pennsylvania/Ohio scene (Youngstown, Warren, Pittsburgh, and so forth), he was active in the Kent, Ohio USA music scene of the 1990s.  Some of the acts included Black Squirrel And Freaky and The Sacred Hearts Auto Club.  After that, he moved to Columbus, Ohio, where he caught the tail end of the 1990s garage rock scene that produced The New Bomb Turks and Gaunt.  Upon moving back to Western Pennsylvania, he made a variety of music on his own and played with various acts.  At one point, he was involved with the Cleveland noise music scene.  Even while undergoing cancer treatment, he was still making music.  I remember him showing me some cool beats he was making on a drum machine.  With luck, maybe we'll all get to hear some of the unreleased music down the road (I particularly loved one silly song called "I Like To Ride My Helicopter Around Town"), but, unfortunately, that's still no substitute for Dave.  He was like no one else.

If you want to hear some Dave music, then you can hear The Angry Housewives and Anal Spikemobile.  That's Dave singing on "Duster" by Yeast? as well.

The Return Of Anal Spikemobile!

Anal Spikemobile · In Through The Out Hole (Full Cavity Search Edition)

I am still clearing room on the main SoundCloud page, so Anal Spikemobile is next to graduate to their own page, which you can find here:  https://soundcloud.com/user-457336879.  I wrote about the album in a previous post.  Listening to it remains a trip and cracks me up.  If you want to download the original track, it's still up for the moment at https://soundcloud.com/wredfright/anal-spikemobile-in-through, but whether you download it from the old page or the new page, I would download it if you like it, as Internet music sites have a tendency to disappear (though the original track has been up since 2013, which is an impressive run, so SoundCloud must be doing something right).  I like the description on the new page of the band:  "Anal Spikemobile was a band from Pennsylvania/Ohio USA who terrorized audiences in the early 1990s."

That about sums it up.  Dave and I did some crazy stuff live.  One time we played from different sides of the room (The Gargoyle in Warren, Ohio USA if I remember correctly, which was very tolerant of our various musical projects).  Another time, though it may not have been Anal Spikemobile officially (Maybe Rage Against Dabney Coleman? I don't remember), we opened for The Entombed and scared their tough metalhead audience (I kept swinging out into the crowd with a long microphone line--somehow we didn't get into a fistfight with anyone; I think a couple of them even said they liked us).  So if you're listening to this nuttiness on the recording, then imagine what it was like live.  Fortunately, we didn't play out often; otherwise, we might not have survived.  In any case, it was a far cry from today's shows, where people are asked to show their vaccine passports and usually just stare at their cellphones instead of watching the band, and the band's more worried about extending their brand on social media than they are about rocking out.  Let's hope the times get cooler and to do that let's be cooler ourselves.  A good start is to rev up The Spikemobile and take it for a drive here!

For a more conventional but still fun listen to music by these musicians, listen to the Yeast? 7"!

And, speaking of Yeast?, here's a bonus for you:

Yeast? · Ambulance Driver

Anal Spikemobile

Well, I promised/threatened/warned (take your pick) you.  As the grand finale to my little cassettes project wherein I rooted through a box of cassettes while salvaging a few tracks before giving them the old heave-ho, here are the complete recordings of Anal Spikemobile.  I'm calling it the In Through The Out Hole (Full Body Cavity Search Edition).  In Through The Out Hole was the only proper album the band made, and I've attached a couple of other random tracks by the band to fill it out.  In Through The Out Hole was released (supposedly released--I never got a copy) as a cassette on Black Egypt Records in 1994.  Our pals in The Plague Dogs ran this little indie label, and In Through The Out Hole arrived just in time to kill it apparently.  Dave and I recorded this album in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina USA while hanging out with our pal Jen in March of 1994.  We had fun.  When we got back from South Carolina, Dave played a bit more around with it, and it was done.  For legal reasons, I better not add anything else.  In any case, it's better to leave the Spikemobile shrouded in mystery.  Enjoy!