Bela Blog: Monster Truck Five & Jack Taylor

Because of the short existence of Monster Truck Five (or 005), there is hardly anything written about the band, and coming up with articles was a tough get this week. However, Bela of Anyway Records has an eloquent and stark recollection of High Street in the 1990s, and wrote several times on the band, including the short life or Richard "Jack Taylor" Violet. Here's a bit of that:

A great deal of the decorating was done on several spastic afternoons by Jack Taylor (birth name Richard Violet), who was fired and rehired by Dan Dow. Jack, like the décor of Used Kids was a living example of a life half finished, this is not just for the fact that Ritchie (as I first knew him as) died young in an unremarkable fashion. While giving up the lures of the city, Richie moved home to lonesome Urbana, Ohio and got a job at a local United Dairy Farmers convenient store. A long drop from the coolness of playing CBGB’s and getting name checked on an Unsane record. It was there in the vast flatness of western Ohio that Richie took a shot of dope too deep for his veins and died behind the UDF store, proving that heroin can be found everywhere.  Richie, was a cross between  Bluto from “Animal House” and a tarnished flannel shirt, he could be devastatingly charming and brilliant on one hand and on the other he could stab you with an insult that could bring the worst of high school back in a flutter of embarrassed red cheeks. He was the first member of Monster Truck 005 to die.

614 Magazine: Where Did the Punk Rockers Go?

Interesting question posed by Chris Gaitten of 614 Magazine back in 2015:

In 2008, CDR released the first of the unheard stash, Tommy Jay’s Tall Tales of Trauma, from Tommy Jay, a member of the Quotas. Jay and Rep hailed from a tiny hamlet just south of Grove City called Harrisburg, where Jay had created a practice space and studio in his home. For decades, a rotating cast of musicians known as The Harrisburg Players rehearsed and recorded there, influencing and often comprising Columbus’s underground bands. 

CDR hit overdrive in 2009, starting a singles club in addition to the new releases, reissues, and previously unheard music. They distributed 16 records that year, often at the expense of relationships and showering, Smith said. Over time, they put out releases from lo-fi luminaries like Cheater Slicks, as well as the next generation of bands like Psychedelic Horseshit 

Their production levels decreased in subsequent years, as bands like Bassholes and Cheater Slicks only recorded new music every so often, and the unreleased Harrisburg stash was eventually tapped. Koe-Krompecher had revived Anyway, and other local labels like Superdreamer Records had begun popping up.