jfotoman pictures website

It's hard to imagine the 1980s/90s Columbus music scene without the photography of Jay Brown, better known as "jfotoman." Hundreds of photos capture plenty of Columbus bands, like Pica Huss, Gaunt, Monster Truck Five and many more, but also the touring bands that played at places like Stache's including Nirvana, Laughing Hyenas, White Zombie, Urge Overkill and more.

Jay now has the photos for sale on this website here.

Video: The Feelers - Childrens Are Kids Too (2007 European Tour)

Agit Reader: The Feelers - It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday

Kevin Elliott at the Agit Reader went in-depth with members of The Feelers, here is some of that interview:

Despite a stunted history and a general ambivalence towards their rank in the annals of Columbus music, for a brief rift in time they were capable of transcending the stock punk model and shredding off one for the ages. 

You were all in other punk bands before, so what was the intent of the Feelers? 

Dan Riffe: Basically we just wanted to play at (Columbus dive, in the most extreme definition of the word) Bernie’s and drink a lot of whisky—and high-five babes. 

So after being in Eric Wrong and the Do-Rights and the Nurses what did you want to do differently? 

Aleksey Shaulov: Actually the band started because I hated being in the Nurses, and I had to vent. I said, “Hey, let’s start a band,” to which they replied, “Hey, we don’t play anything.” I said, “You’ll just scream a lot.” That’s how it started. The Feelers came before the Do-Rights. 

How were you so quickly indoctrinated in the underground network of punk bands that were on Contaminated Records and Dead Beat? 

Joe Riffe: It wouldn’t have happened if those guys hadn’t taken our first 7-inch up to Chicago. Shawn (the old bassist) was in the Reatards and he was really into it and that’s how it got passed around. Then Darius from Criminal IQ was also into it, so having both of those people into it kind of got us into that crowd. That’s how we met pretty much everyone we know now. We didn’t really know anyone until Aleck and John went to Chicago and tried to set that up.

New Additions: Nothing Always 7" single by The Feelers

Even though they were active around the time I was playing in a band in Columbus, I was not at all familiar with The Feelers. I'm not sure how I missed them, but I'm making up for that now. Though only around a few years, they managed an album and a bunch of singles, one of which I snagged off of Discogs not long ago. It's aggressive, blast of energy punk that has lineage to the best of Columbus punk, the New Bomb Turks.

Know Yer Band: The Feelers

Band: The Feelers

Members
Vocals - Prof. Dan "Feelings/White Pepper" Riffe
Guitar - Aleks Red Menance
Guitar/Vocals - Jon "JG/J. Ghad" Gray
Bass - Sean "Sensation" Redd/Donovan "Smashy" Roth
Drums - Joe "Q.T. Thunderguns/Canivorous Supremacy" Riffe

Releases
2004 - Fuhrers New MiniSkirt 7" single (Death By Noise)
2004 - Split w/Blank Its 7" single (Contaminated Records)
2005 - Parts And Pieces 7" single (P. Trash Records)
2005 - Learn To Hate The Feelers album (Dead Beat Records)
2006 - Just Can't Get Enough 7" single (Contaminated Records)
2007 - Nothing Always 7" single (Bachelor Records)
2007 - 2007 European Tour 7" EP (P. Trash Records)

Video: If You Want My Love - Cheap Painters

Here's a fun nugget from Columbus music history past. At Workbook Studio, there was an ongoing in-house recording project called the "Cheap Painters," which was doing Cheap Trick songs in the style of the Red House Painters. In this case, it's Dan Gerken and Billy Peake of Miranda Sound, along with Neal Schmitt of Workbook and Pretty Mighty Mighty, and Jay Macke.

 

Video: Fight by Miranda Sound at Independents' Day 2017

Denver Post: Ohio’s Miranda Sound puts its angst to work

When Miranda Sound was active, they were active, as in getting around the country. When they released their self-titled album in 2008, they toured out west. Here is part of an article from the Denver Post:

Billy Peake and Dan Gerken do little to dismiss the notion that the best art is made under conditions of duress. 

It’s a cliché for a reason, as countless musicians have found inspiration in the physical and emotional threshing of their lives. 

Peake and Gerken, who share singer/guitarist duties in the Ohio post-punk quartet Miranda Sound, will tell you their new record better reflects their onstage sound, that it’s a culmination of their nearly eight-year run together. 

That’s true, but it obscures the fact that “Western Reserve,” released in July on Sunken Treasure Records, came kicking and screaming into the world after a violent conception. 

“We had a crazy couple years with our personal lives, and we set out to make an extremely honest, direct and energetic record,” Peake said this week from a tour stop in Houston. “The production wasn’t as pretty as it’s been in the past, and we didn’t do a lot of crazy instrumentation and overdubs.”

New Additions: Engaged In Labor by Miranda Sound

Not true at all. I've owned this since it came out. When I was active in the Columbus music scene from around 1998/99 to 2008, Miranda Sound were the band we were closest friends with, having gone to college with Billy, Dan G. and Sean. But here's the thing when your in a band playing with lots of bands, you don't spend a ton of time listening to other records. I was listening to new releases maybe once or twice, then moving onto the next thing. So, while I dug this, I hadn't actually put it on in a long time. Glad I did, because it was like discovering a new band. The track "Midas" was always a favorite, both personally and for crowds, but the rest of the record ebbs and flows so well, it's worthy of checking out either again or for the first time.

Know Yer Band: Miranda Sound

Band: Miranda Sound

Members
Vocals/Guitar - Billy Peake
Vocals/Guitar/Keys - Dan Gerken
Bass/Keys - Sean Sefcik
Drums/Percussion - Scott Haynes/Dan Bell

Releases
2001 - Baby Inertia album (Reverbose)
2002 - Baby Inertia (re-release) album (Standard Recording Company)
2002 - Engaged In Labor album (Standard Recording Company)
2005 - Donewaiting.com Volume No1 Tiara vs Miranda Sound split album (Donewaiting.com)
2006 - Western Reserve album (Sunken Treasure)
2008 - Miranda Sound album (Sunken Treasure)

Newcity Music: Quotas System - Mike Rep and Tommy Jay’s Creative Life is Best in a Basement

True Believers wasn't the last time Mike "Rep" Hummel and Tommy Jay played and recorded together, not by a very long shot. This article at Newcity Music from 2013 digs into their history, here's a snippet:

The music whizzing around Rep and Tommy Jay eventually found itself synthesized in scores of recordings—the overwhelming majority of which remain unreleased. What got set to tape during those formative explorations didn’t become immediately available. 

And when “Rocket to Nowhere” showed up in 1977, it seemed like no one was listening.
“We were more influenced by our isolation than by being part of a scene, pre-’78,” the multi-instrumentalist says of his first few years tinkering with recorded songcraft. 

Rep, though, was undeterred and continued recording at a prodigious rate, woodshedding in basements, goofing off with his friends but only emerging later in the decade as a member of the True Believers—a group orchestrated by Tommy Jay. 

The band issued its lone recording, “Accept It” on Rep’s fledgling New Age imprint. It was 1980. The three songs toss off a surprising range of music, considering the players seemed wrapped up in punk concerns. Even the title track reveals a gentle melodicism alongside the genre’s quick pacings. 

Rep, again deferring to Tommy Jay’s talents, says the album ranks as an UR-recording and that his companion’s recognition is usually glossed over by virtue of the Quotas using Rep’s surname. 

By the time the True Believers were kicking around, though, Rep says a concerted scene had begun to coalesce around groups like Ron House’s Twisted Shouts and Jim Shepard’s Vertical Slit. There were even a few venues daring enough to host performances. Rep and Tommy Jay persisted, this new enclave serving as proof that what they were blindly pursuing had pent-up meaning. And someone cared, somewhere.

Video: True Believers - Accept It!

HoZac Records: True Believers

HoZac Records in Chicago are responsible for the reissue of the True Believer's 1980 single Accept It! originally released on New Age. They posted an nice write-up about the release, here is some of that:

What exactly is the germ of Columbus “weirdo” rock? There have been many left-of-center acts around the Heart of It All (i.e. Ubu, Eels, Devo, Numbers), but what sparked those in Columbus, or better yet, greater central Ohio? Was it the Beatles-mocking talent shows (faithfully preserved as Acid Archive relics) at Northland Mall? Terry Davidson and the Barracudas? The appearance of the Velvets at the once revered and now (somewhat) defunct Valley Dale Ballroom? The day Shep stepped off of the Santa Maria from distant Florida? 

There were Slits and Shouts and Urges permeating in Columbus back in the day, but none more unified in sound and vision as the True Believers. The True Believers, who existed in the capital from 1979 to ’81, consisted of dudes who would go on to amass a string of records that laid the blueprint for home-recorded freak-rock. For the city, and the various bucolic ’burbs that make-up Central Ohio, these were men well versed in records and “alternative” universes, rituals, and barbiturates. We do live within extreme proximity to the Serpent Mound, a well-known refueling station for aliens and depleted soulless souls. Then there’s Harrisburg. That mythical po-dunk has been the home base for these misfits: Tommy Jay, Mike “Rep” Hummel, Nudge Squidfish (the “Indian” of the group), and a guy they call The General. Before all of that—the Quotas and Bugmen—naughty things were being done with tape in basements in Bexley and Grove City. Counter cultures were being waxed and pontificated upon with pills.

New Additions: Accept It! 7" single by True Believers

Truth be told, this isn't actually that new of an addition. When I first started the book project in Spring/Summer 2018, Kyle at Lost Weekend Records advised me to pick this up, and I'm glad I did. First, I had never heard of the band, it would have taken me a while to backtrack to it without Kyle's advice. Second, it's one of the rare instances of a hard to find 70s/80s release getting reissued with a bunch of info, so that's helpful.

Know Yer Band: True Believers

Band: True Believers

Members
Tommy Jay - Drums, Guitars, Vocals
Gen.Robt.E.Lee - Bass, Vocals
Mike Rep - Guitars, Air Organ, Vocals
Also - Nudge Squidfish

Releases
1980 - Accept It! 7" single (New Age)

Complete Dance Party Video And The Edicates

Although the 1960s are not going to be covered in the bulk of the book, there are important threads that trace back from the 70s and forward to that era. Finding video of bands from the 1960s is rare, so having this of The Edicates playing a show called Dance Party on WLW-C in January 1969 is something special. If you're familiar with the band at all, you'll know that Glen Cataline, who would later join The Godz, played drums and sang for The Edicates.

 

Video: Ego Summit - We Got It All

Agit Reader: Ego Summit - Summit Talks

Veteran Columbus writer Stephen Slaybaugh wrote about Ego Summit for The Agit Reader back in 2008, here is some of that article:

When the annals for the rock scene of Agit hometown Columbus, Ohio are written, there are certain names that will stand out, their direct input and/or influence sewing a thread that cuts across decades and perhaps generations. Taking their cues from the “anyone can do it” ethos of punk, but losing some of the urbanity for distinctly Midwestern accents and skepticism, a close knit bunch of book-fed and alcohol-bred minds formed the nucleus of the indie-genous scene in the late ‘70s and throughout the ‘80s and into the ‘90s. Don Howland, Mike “Rep” Hummel, Jim Shepard, Tommy Jay, Ron House—among others, the contributions of these five to the Columbus pantheon (if there is one) can’t be overstated. Gibson Bros., Great Plains, V-3, Quotas, Bassholes, Slave Apartments—Columbus’ musical DNA can be traced directly to these bands. 

But despite crossed paths in various combinations, it wasn’t until a weekend in 1997 that those five all got together so that, as Hummel put it, “some documentation to that fellowship (would) be recorded on tape before the participants doddered off into old age.” With Jay, Hummel and friend Jerry Wick (of Gaunt) manning a four-track, the group convened at Jay’s studio barn in the rural suburb of Harrisburg and recorded over two days. The result was The Room Isn’t Big Enough, an album released on Hummel’s Old Age/No Age label under the fitting moniker of Ego Summit. While the contributors’ credentials spoke for themselves, the album received little attention when it was released.

New Additions: The Room Isn't Big Enough by Ego Summit

Is Ego Summit the Columbus equivalent of a super group? The coming together of artists to form a one-off project from bands such as Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments, Mike Rep & The Quotas, V-3, Bassholes and more. Maybe none of those bands made an impact nationally, but locally, they all have are all of legendary status. It does speak to the stature of this release that it has been re-released twice, once in 2009 on CD, and then again in 2013 on vinyl. I managed to track down an original copy, and glad I did, as the artwork is much more DIY than the re-releases, a cool aspect of many Columbus records.

Know Yer Band: Ego Summit

Band: Ego Summit

Members
Don Howland
Ron House
Mike "Rep" Hummel
Jim Shepard
Tommy Jay

Releases
1997 - Ego Summit album (Old Age/New Age)