Video: Great Plains - Letter To A Fanzine (1987)

Robert Christgau on Great Plains

In case you were wondering what the dean of American rock criticism thought of Great Plains, here is your answer. All of Robert Christgau's blurbs are captures in one place, here's an example:

Great Plains Naked at the Buy, Sell and Trade [Homestead, 1986]
If they don't quite live up to titles like "Chuck Berry's Orphan," "Dick Clark," and "Fertile Crescent," who could? If their organ-drenched four-four jams are objectively boring, they'll make you hum and pat anyway. If the organ-hooked "Letter to a Fanzine" is the sole masterstroke, hard-to-resists are almost legion. And if "Why do punk rock guys go out with new wave girls" is part of the parody, I bet these punk-wavers know the answer from experience. B+

New Additions: Length Of Growth 1981-1989 compilation album by Great Plains

It's rare that a Columbus band has a compilation album, let alone more than one, but that's how important Great Plains are to the scene. For a long time, I had only known them as "Ron House's band before Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments." It took until this project to actually dig into the catalog, and while many of their records are worth checking out, the 2000 compilation Length Of Growth 1981-1989 released by Old3C Records is a great primer, capturing nearly every studio track the band recorded.

Know Yer Band: Great Plains

Band: Great Plains

Members:
Vocals/Guitar - Ron House
Guitars/Vocals - Matt Wyatt
Keyboards/Vocals - Mark Wyatt
Bass - Hank O'Hare (Don Howland), Mike Hummel, Paul Nini, Bill Bruner
Drums - Robert David Green, James Castoe

Releases:
1983 - The Mark, Don & Mel E.P. 12" (New Age)
1984 - Born In A Barn album (Homestead Records)
1985 - Naked At The Buy, Sell, And Trade album (Homestead Records)
1985 - Slaves To Rock 'N' Roll Live! album (Not On Label)
1987 - Sum Things Up album (Homestead Records)
1987 - Dick Clark 7" single (Shadowline Records)
1987 - Before We Stop To Think 12" single (Shadowline Records)
1989 - Exercise 7" single (Homestead Records)
1989 - Colorized! compilation album (Diabolo Records)
2000 - Length Of Growth 1981-1989 double compilation album (Old 3C Records)
2008 - Live At WFMU album (Old 3C Records)
2012 - Directions To The Party DVD (Old 3C Records)

Bored Out: Interview with Don Howland

In 2016, Ryan Leach at the Bored Out website conducted a lengthy and in-depth interview with Don Howland of Gibson Bros., Great Plains and Bassholes. Here is some of that:

Ryan: How did joining Great Plains come about? Did you learn bass to play in the band? 

Don: I did. I bought a bass from a kid in a trailer who needed money to buy a gun. Bass isn’t hard to learn. I was good enough to play pretty quick. There were only ten or fifteen people in the Columbus scene. Ron and I knew each other from the record store. Amrep (Michael Hummel) and Jim Shepard were around—all the Ego Summit guys. In a bigger city we would’ve likely been acquaintances, but in a city the size of Columbus we all became compadres I guess. I was the youngest in the group. I was an outsider, being from a white flight suburb, but it was no big deal.  Tim Anstaett of the Offense went to my high school, so when he moved back to Columbus from Florida there were two of us. 

Ryan: You wrote for the Offense and contributed to some of the last issues of New York Rocker. 

Don: That was thanks to Tim Anstaett from the Offense. He gave people free reign. Tim had an insane work ethic. Whatever his passions were at the time, he’d devote thirty-six hours a day to them. He wrote a telephone book-sized tome on bass fishing in Florida. Andy Schwartz and Ira Kaplan at the New York Rocker were very open to the fanzine vibe.  Through New York Rocker—I also sent some of my work with the Offense to him—I got to know Robert Christgau at the Village Voice. I started writing for the Voice. Christgau was a super nice guy. I probably learned more about writing and English from him than from anyone else, and I’ve taught English for twenty-one years. Christgau would spend two-and-a-half hours editing a two-hundred-fifty-word piece. That was a great experience. I started with the Voice in ’81 and wrote for them until the early ‘90s. There wasn’t a whole lot of great music going on then. The early ‘80s were rough. When punk died—and you could tell it died—hardcore came along and it’s like, “Shit. This is not the same. There are no girls here anymore. It’s just like a football game.” I wrote for Spin as well.

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.

Yet Another Fanzine: When Cows Ruled The Earth compilation

On occasion, in addition to the band releases, I'm going to post on rare/hard to track down compilations. Here is one such release: the cassette compilation When Cows Ruled The Earth from a 1985 edition of the Yet Another Fanzine zine.

Luckily, the Vinyl Mine blog posted extensively about the release, which includes tracks by Scrawl, Gibson Bros., Great Plains, RC Mob and more. Here's an excerpt:

Yet Another Fanzine were aptly titled since Columbus was a fountain of many, many zines including one of the grand-daddies - The Offense Newsletter. The music and scene echoed the proximity to Cleveland and the first punk wave (Peter Laughner and his gang of merry men) and later no-wave (Pere Ubu, etc.) as well as the Akron weirdness but with a friendly, bent elbows around the bar feel. One of those scenes where everyone knew everyone and pretty much liked each other. There's something about Ohio that drives a man person a bit crazy but in that nice mid-western way. Of course, having a huge University nearby also contributed to the pool of musicians,aspiring songwriters and most importantly bars and people with Daddy's cover charge money.  

I visited Columbus during this time, at the invitation of the great local college radio DJ (and psychologist), s. b. tobias who I met over the early Internet (the wild time between ARPA-net and Internet when several networks were duct-taped together). The weekend I visisted was also "Hands Across America" (no, we didn't participate) and we spent it drinking, hanging out with Ron House (then Great Plains now Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments), drinking, meeting Don Howland (then rock critic now 1/2 half of Gibson Bros.), listening to the Beastie Boys album, drinking and of course hanging with s. b.'s good friends Craig Koon and Keith Baker, who published Yet Another Fanzine and this tape. 

Wex Q&A - Matt Reber of New Bomb Turks interviews Amy Fusselman of The Bread Group

New Bomb Turks bassist and Wexner Center Store Manager Matt Reber interviewed writer/author/publisher Amy Fusselman last year for the Wex website, and dug deep into one of the lesser known Columbus bands of the 1980s, The Bread Group. Here is some of the interview:

Amy FusseIman was the guitarist in The Bread Group. I have been familiar with her writing since the Pharmacist’s Mate was published by McSweeney’s in 2001. Eventually, a thread on the Facebook page “Columbus Music Scene 1975-1985” led to our connecting, and to the reading and book signing coming up.  

What year did The Bread Group form and how long did you play together? 
I graduated from OSU in 1986 so it must have been a couple years before that. Our band was me, vocalist Frank Snider, lead guitarist Richie Athy, bassist Patrick Roetzel, and drummer Andy Izold. I played rhythm guitar. Patrick, Frank and I were all undergrads in the English department and the band stayed together until we graduated. We played mostly at a place called the IP Lounge, which was a bar on High Street run by a Greek gentleman named Louie. He also sold one-dollar gyro sandwiches which were the source of much morning remorse for me.  

What were your perceptions of the OSU/Columbus, Ohio scene at the time?
I was obsessed with music at OSU. That was my real focus of study. I was a DJ at the OSU radio station along with Frank, who was then my boyfriend and is now my husband. We saw bands constantly, mostly at Stache’s. Some of the most important audience-member experiences of my life were at Stache’s: The Butthole Surfers, Big Black, Pussy Galore, Agent Orange … I also vividly remember seeing The Cramps and X at The Newport and The Gun Club at a little bar called Crazy Mama’s. I was so lucky to see those shows!! 

I didn’t really appreciate how rich the scene was at the time. It was just people I knew doing interesting things. I saw Scrawl come into their power and that was really important for me to witness. I saw The Great Plains and The Gibson Brothers develop. Frank and I still quote Gibson Brothers lyrics: Big Pine Boogie!

The American Prospect: Big Wind From Ohio

From a 2005 entry at, of all places, The American Prospect:

Back in the lo-fi bliss of mid-1980s, the Columbus, Ohio band Great Plains wrote a song called "Letter to a Fanzine." It was a brilliantly Janus-faced take on indie rock's navel gazing, neatly encompassing satire and self-satisfaction. ("Isn't my haircut really intense / Isn't Nick Cave a genius in a sense?") Rock critics of that era rejoiced in Ron House's nasal sneer and the garage-band swirl of organ and guitar laid down by brothers Mark and Matt Wyatt. The question at the center of "Fanzine" -- "Why do punk rock guys go out with new wave girls?" -- remains the band's most-cited bon mot. 

But like any novelty tune, "Fanzine" was a dead end. The ultimate joke-as-epitaph. Great Plains' three records on Homestead went out of print, seemingly buried along with the other trendy labels (4AD, SST) the song name-checks. House's next band, Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments, found greater success than the Plains ever glimpsed. They copped a major label record with 1995's Bait and Switch (American). 

Thus were Great Plains pegged as court jesters to a long-entombed scene. In some ways, this tag was strangely self-perpetuating. A two-disc compilation released in 2000 on Old 3C Records, Length of Growth, kicks off with an intro from novelty rock king Dr. Demento. A subsequent odds'n'sods collection, 2003's Cornflakes (also Old 3C), includes House and the band bulldozing through borderline psychotic cover versions of "This Magic Moment" and "Call On Me."

New Additions: Obsessed by Ron House

Although Ron House had two compilations of material release in prior decades, along with all of his recordings with Great Plains, Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments and Ego Summit, 2002 saw the release of his first official solo album: Obsessed. I recently picked up the compact disc (no vinyl version has been released) and was surprised at the quiet restraint. For the most part, gone are the buzzsaw guitars and bombast replaced with introspective lyrics and acoustic guitars.

Know Yer Artist: Ron House

Artist: Ron House

Bands
Great Plains
Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments
Ego Summit
Psandwich
Counter Intuits
Moses Carryout
Twisted Shouts

Releases
1986 - Blind Boy In The Back Seat compilation (Old Age)
1997 - New Wave As The Next Guy compilation (Spare Me Records)
2002 - Obsessed album (Moses Carryout Records)

Aquabear Legion: The Western Reserve Podcast with Paul Nini

Aquabear Legion is an Ohio music blog going back to 2008, and they've hosted a number of podcasts since 2011. Most recently, The Western Reserve podcast featured Paul Nini of Househearts, Great Plains, Log, Old3C Records and more on their February and March episodes. Here's the description:

Episodes 14 and 15 of The Western Reserve are a two part interview and playlist from Columbus, Ohio’s Paul Nini. Paul is behind Old 3c Records and its current form the Old 3c Label Group and is known to Ohio music fans from his bands Great Plains, Log, and Closet Mix. Brian spends the next two episodes talking with Paul about playing in bands, putting out records, and what he’s working on now. All while playing a lot of good music.

New Additions: Counting Fifty Problems 12" EP by Househearts

1985 was a busy year for Paul Nini. Besides taking over bass duties from Mike "Rep" Hummel on their sophomore album Naked At The Buy, Sell, And Trade, he also put out the lone release as a member of Househearts, the 12" extended play Counting Fifty Problems. It's a nice collection of uptempo and occasionally dissonant post-punk that touches on early New Order, Gang of Four, Wire and others. I tracked down a copy via Discogs and was pleasantly surprised how melodic and cohesive the EP is overall, despite being one of the lesser known bands and releases in the heyday of up and coming Columbus independent rock and punk.