First Entry

January 25, 2010

Early in December I was talking to my friend Anthony when he asked me what was going on with Distorted Pony. I had no idea and the first thought that ran into my mind was that they were going to release some rare stuff or something like that but he said that on facebook they mentioned they were thinking of reforming and playing some shows.
I quickly hung up with Anthony and called up David U. I left him a message expressing how excited I was that they were thinking of playing together again and that anything I could do to help out I’d be more than happy to lend a hand. David lives in Austin and the rest of the band lives in Los Angeles so I knew he’d need to travel back and forth and I offered to lend him gear or Total Annihilation Studios to rehearse. We play similar gear, in fact the gear I have is based to a good degree on the first time I heard Distorted Pony at Jabberjaw back around ’91. I remember walking into the hot, stale, sweaty “coffee house” and hearing this amazing wall of sound. My friend Usen once said that they sounded like the apocalypse and I think that states it best. Anyway, I heard that sound I instantly knew what I had to do. Both David and I are gear geeks, him to a greater degree but still we can go on for quite a while talking about guitars, pick ups, amps, tubes, etc…Over the years I bought a Soldano Decatone, Tele, and a pair of Travis Beans, all guitars which both David and I love. He’s usually a step ahead of me in regards to pick ups that he’s swapping in and out of the Tele.


What I really love about Distorted Pony is that they are heavy but not metal, fast but not punk, slow and dirgy without being doom and dark without being obvious or “goth.” The lyrics were about the darker side of life and people but not “evil” and stupid. There are songs about cancer, politics, pining, despair, vanity, boredom, greed, lust, hopelessness and faith, yet it is up to the listener to make what they want of it. It’s not spoon-fed and blatant, things are hinted at and subtle. You have to do a bit of digging and contemplating to get an idea of what is going on. You need to spend some time with the songs to gain perspective on them.
Moving along, I was seeing all this great music and that really compelled me to start a zine to get to know bands that I really liked. Distorted Pony, Sandy Duncan’s Eye and Janitor Joe were in it as well. I got to interview Kristen Pfaff who was the bass player at the time before she joined Hole.

After that interview for the zine (in fact we interviewed David twice because the tape recorder malfunctioned) I began to become friends with all of these musicians. I really liked being around all of these people and always had questions about the music and what they were up to. A couple of times I went to the Distorted Pony house aka Surrogate Spike studios they’d be practicing or there’d be a band recording there. One time I went there was just to check out a Travis Bean wedge that Albini eventually ended up with. Another time I was there Down By Law was recording an album. Slug did records there and countless other bands were in and out of that place. Amongst all this music and noise the one night a week there wasn’t sound pounding the walls was when Beverly Hills 90210 was on. I don’t know what it was about that show that these noise rock geeks were attracted to but on Thursday nights around 9pm you knew there were members of various bands all gathered there to see what Brandon, Donna, and the rest of that bunch were up to. David wrote an article in a zine about that show that I wish I still had. It was like a dissertation on the damn thing. I think he’s still doing the same thing pursuing a PhD. in media studies.