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 Angry Housewives Return!

 

If ever a band fit the mood of 2020, it is The Angry Housewives.  Trapped at home and getting angrier every day.  Strangely enough, they existed in 1990.  Anyway, I had to clear up some space on my main Soundcloud account, so The Housewives have graduated to their own page.  You can glory in the domestic madness here.  Sadly, as a result, all the links and embedded plays for previous Housewives posts on this blog will no longer work (and, no, I won't be going back and updating posts from years ago); just use the link above.

If you want to hear more conventional music from these musicians, then the Yeast? 7" is still available.

One Last Angry Housewife For The Road

The final track of Galgenhumor is fairly quiet when compared with the rest.  The Angry Housewives had apparently calmed down a bit.  It does have a nice drum beat though.  Some hip-hopper should loop it and rap over it.  The good news is that I'm all out of Angry Housewives tracks to upload.  The bad news is that I just digitized some Anal Spikemobile tracks today.  Hmm . . . we'll see.

There's Nothing Wrong With Your Speakers . . .

. . . it's supposed to sound like that. Yes, it's the penultimate track from Galgenhumor by the Angry Housewives, and, as usual, it's really strange, like The Monkees on acid or something.  Wait!  The Monkees were on acid, weren't they, at some point?  Better make that like some monkeys on acid.  Enjoy?

Music Of The Future Now

Someday, music will get weirder.  Young people will embrace it because it speaks to them and it irritates their elders.  Maybe someday it'll sound like this thing, a track by the Angry Housewives from Galgenhumor in 1990, remixed for the future today.  It's got a good beat, and you can dance to it.

Some Sort Of Chant

I have no idea what we're chanting here in this next Angry Housewives track, but I can assure you that no animals were sacrificed during the recording.  After that, it looks like we liked the rocket countdown sound effect well enough to use it again and mix it with some classic rock and roll.  Believe or not, this track is lots more normal sounding than the next couple.

Sirens And Gunshots

This track sees (hears?) the Angry Housewives dig deeper into the sound effects record for some sirens and gunshots. You also get to hear me say "Thanks, man" a couple of times and Dave ask me a question.

Mi Casa Es Su Casa

This next track of Galgenhumor shows the Angry Housewives getting into reggae and rocket countdowns.  The rocket countdown, of course, comes from the trusty library sound effect record.  I'm not sure where the reggae comes from, but we match it with some rusty Spanish by chanting "Mi casa es su casa", which translates to "My house is your house", fitting for a housewife band.  This track also features some backwards singing from me, and somebody playing harmonica, probably me (I'm impressed that whoever it was could play harmonica and another instrument at the same time as I doubt we had one of those harmonica stands Bob Dylan is fond of and we didn't do multitracking from what I recall).  As usual, this is a strange piece of music.  Enjoy!

What Is That Sound?

On this track, the Angry Housewives get a groove going only to be interrupted by . . . well, I'm not sure what that sound is.  Maybe an engine backfiring?  Someone farting?  Someone flapping his lips really quickly?  A deck of cards being shuffled loudly?  With the Housewives, one can never tell, and I don't remember.  Other than that, it's the usual noisy guitar and beating on pots and pans.  And just like you probably, I have no idea what the hell we're screaming either.

Seviwesuoh Yrgna

On this track, the Angry Housewives sound a bit different, almost like we're playing classic rock backwards.
 

Perry Farrell?

I talked with Dave recently, and he says that Galgenhumor actually did have a cassette insert.  For some reason Dave doesn't remember (I didn't even remember the album had artwork), Perry Farrell was on the cover.  We both liked Jane's Addiction, but it's still odd we would put a picture of Farrell on the cover (maybe we thought he looked like an angry housewife--he did a lot back then).  I doubt we made many copies of the tape.  We probably just gave some to friends, and maybe I tried selling a couple at Madhatter Music, a cool record store that sold local band stuff on consignment, in Bowling Green, Ohio USA.  Maybe we sent a copy to Farrell in hopes of getting signed to a record label, and he was on the cover to flatter him, but I doubt we were ever that delusional about the appeal of this crazy music.  We just had fun playing it.  Posting these tracks on the blog probably gives them their widest exposure ever; distributing music is a lot easier in the era of the Internet.  Of course, since pretty much every musician does that, it's just as hard to get listeners as it probably was back then; still, for that aspect, I prefer now to then.  Anyway, this next track continues the "Oh, close the door please" motif from the last couple of tracks with its repetition of "Thank you".  Dave used to take the raw recordings home and mess with them on a synthesizer or something.  Other than the electric guitar, which I usually played, he handled the fancy musical equipment.  I played things like the horn on this track, which was useful since we got a little cowpunk in the middle (the Dave Bell in the image, however, is not the same Dave here; Dave did not go on to have a country music career, though it no doubt would have been an interesting one if he did).  I was a big fan of Walt Kelly's Pogo, so that's likely why I say "Pogo" here.  Based on the end, it sounds like we were revving up to try our hands at a rock and roll classic; of course, we had to add a jackhammer to it.

More Galgenhumor

This second bit of Galgenhumor finds the Angry Housewives utilizing a sound effects record Dave got from the library (I think; I don't remember every detail from 1990).  On this track, you can hear seals and ping pong.  Dave's playing drums (pots and pans mainly) and I'm playing guitar, my old Gremlin, which was my first guitar and not very good, but then I wasn't a very good guitarist so that was all right.  When we were in Yeast?, we formed another duo called Anal Spikemobile in which I played the same guitar (for Yeast?, I played a better one) for a similar noisy aesthetic.  I have no idea what Dave is singing, but I'm just making some sounds.  If I remember correctly, most of these "songs" were written on the spot, though I might have used some riffs that I had been playing around with but hadn't used in a proper song yet.  As we evolved into The Lenin Spoonful, we would write lyrics exquisite corpse style by passing around a notebook.  At this point, I don't think we even bothered with writing lyrics.  Everything was improv, and thus the songs tended to be very short.  In addition to the songs becoming more songlike, another reason we changed the name of the band was that we thought there was already a band called the Angry Housewives (you can see them in the image, which is from a local newspaper).  Years later, we'd figure out that it was just a production of a play (which I've never seen, but would love to--it sounds fun).  By that point, our band was long gone, as we had moved on to adult life and thought we had better things to do than spend a few hours  beating on household objects and recording the result (maybe we were wrong--it was fun and probably made for good therapy).  Anyhow, here's some more Angry Housewives.

The Return Of The Angry Housewives

I've been going through a box of old cassettes and listening to them one last time.  Most of them I haven't listened to in a decade or longer, so I figured it was time to stop carrying them around.  I shed most of my cassettes about a decade ago, trying to find good homes for them, and that was a hard task, but I succeeded.  Despite the cassette making an ironic hipster comeback, even fewer people seem to really want old cassettes today.  So some I've passed on, but a number of others have, sadly, ended up in the trash.  However, I was too fond of some material on the cassettes to confine it to oblivion.

Such was the case with the Angry Housewives.  It was a band that my pal Dave Bell and I had where we beat on pots and pans and whatever was on hand.  Later, our pal Damon Mahon joined, and we evolved into the Lenin Spoonful and, ultimately, Yeast?  Mainly, the Housewives were a bedroom recording project.  I think some of our recordings were even made on my old Sears boombox, though others might have been done on Dave's 4-track.  The Housewives definitely fall into the category of music more fun to play than listen to, but some of you out there, the more experimental music minded, might enjoy these tracks.  I like them in moderation myself.  Below is a track from a cassette called Galgenhumor, which features just Dave and myself.  The cassette had no insert, so I have no idea what the titles of the songs were or even if they had titles.  When I digitized the tracks, I couldn't always tell when a song ended, so there are probably a few on this MP3.  And, since there was no insert for the cassette, I just used the cover of a later cassette for the image.  I think we only made two records, so this was the first.  The next time you have guests who won't leave, just put some Angry Housewives on.  I bet they'll leave soon.