video: Wake Up! A Profile of Positive Force

view it on google video

from the google video description:
A documentary about Positive Force, a loosely organized group of young people working for social change. P.F. members volunteer in the Washington DC community and promote benefit rock concerts for a wide variety of groups. They also try to live according to a set of humane values.

Wake Up! was created in 1991 by David Weinstein. It features the punk activist group Positive Force. It also features bands, labels and activists such as Fugazi, Mark Anderson, Jenny Toomey, Tsunami, The Ex, and more.

i especially enjoyed the footage on early 90s DIY washington, DC record label, simple machines. very inspiring!!

slack - cassette

the post with the three shades of dirty demo solicited some really nice responses, including some from the original members of the band, to whom i've corresponded with a bit, clearing up some of the lineup mystery. namely colin meeder, who is currently involved in an experimental project, entitled write that down, playing trumpet, bass, and performing vocal duties. really good dynamic stuff. be sure to check it out!!
i also garnered a response requesting to post the tracks from the slack cassette, which was also another hated-related project, also featuring dan littleton and colin meeder. much like the three shades demo, the internet is a black hole on any information. the slack material is much like the three shades stuff in the vein of well-presented early 90s indie/alternative, with female vocals presented by jenny toomey, co-founder of DIY DC label simple machines and executive director of future of music coalition, also in washington, dc. some of her other musical projects included tsunami, geek, liquorice, and grenadine, most of which had releases on the simple machines label.

from the tool cassette series page on the simple machines website:
Tool 2: Bates Stamper, Band: Slack - Another Toomey project, this one with Dan Littleton from Ida/Liquorice. Slack was essentially a side project for Jenny and Dan, who were often busy with other bands and only had a limited amount of Slack time. They recorded together but only played a couple of shows before Slack got put on the back burner. With no fan base at all, a full release was a bit ambitious. Instead, Slack's songs ended up as Tool 2, Bates Stamper. Slack eventually transformed into Liquorice.

and why these cassettes are fairly hard to come by:
We started the Tool Cassette Series back around 1991 as an experiment and as a way we could keep some great music "in print" on an as-needed basis without having to spend a lot of money pressing records or CDs, since we dubbed the cassettes as the orders came in. For a long time, this was a manageable and fun project - with 5 cassette decks in the basement and a lot of volunteer help, we kept up with the orders. But everything changed when, first, Nirvana got big enough that the Late tape got some notice, and even more when Dave Grohl released the Foo Fighters record in 1996. Suddenly he was mentioning this post-Scream/pre-Nirvana cassette of his great solo songs in a lot of interviews, and we were flooded with orders, like 100 a month. With very little help and deteriorating master cassettes, we got in touch with Dave about getting the master tapes back together and trying to release the cassette as a CD, not as a quick profit maker, but more to keep up with the demand. Dave was more interested in keeping it as a cassette, so we have honored his wishes.

We tried to keep up, with a caveat that it might take a while to get the cassettes since we had so many orders. But when our two master cassettes for Late came to the end of their useful lives, and with some of the other eight cassette masters in the same condition, we decided to remove the whole tool cassette series from our mailorder. It was good while it lasted.

now i really wanna hear that fabled dave grohl/late! tape. time to start digging!!

slack - cassette
http://www.mediafire.com/?zlnlnttm3oa
mp3 320kpbs vbr [42.38 MB]

01 bates stamp [03:58 8.68MB]
02 word traffic [02:55 6.55MB]
03 shrunken head [03:45 8.46MB]
04 glass man [05:14 10.5MB]
05 basket case [03:45 8.18MB]

if you like what you hear, please check out the simple machines catalog and purchase some of the available titles.

three shades of dirty - paper roses demo cassette

here's the first of two reposts that have been requested, and since they came from my old blog, i am going to re-up the entire thing for all of the new readers.  enjoy, it's a good one!!
 
three shades of dirty are one of those bands that the internet is just a black fucking hole for any information on whatsoever.  what i do know, as would anyone else who recognizes the name, is that the band was a sort of one-off/side project of dan littleton after the 1989 split-up of the hated, his legendary DC-styled punk band from annapolis, md.  this recording was only released as a  cassette on the vermin scum label and was dubbed for me back in the mid-90s, from my good buddy punk roge.  we were on a BIG hated kick for a while, chopping veggies for the davis, ca food not bombs on sunday mornings and blaring tapes of the hated.  after which, one fateful sunday afternoon, roge dug up a dusty old box of cassette tapes and popped in this very demo for me.  and history was made.

this band was a very good logical extension of the hated, catchy and melodic, but this time leaning more towards rock than punk.  the lyrics blend the perfect amount of personal and political.  rain like the sound of trains may be the only fair reference i can make, who may very well be another great DC band that is often missed by the radar.  i think my favourite song here is the last track, dancing song - an acoustic number.  i dare you to remove the chorus from your brain after just one listen.  this is one of the songs i might sing in the shower or while driving along in the summer sun with the windows down.  "might," i said...

three shades of dirty - paper roses demo cassette
http://lix.in/-534560
mp3 320kbps vbr [57.8 MB]

01 needing ground [03:25  7.72MB]
02 shelterless and dry [03:20  7.35MB]
03 stalemate [04:07  9.05MB]
04 first fall is fall [03:37  7.59MB]
05 for the meanwhile [02:29  5.56MB]
06 doris and frank [04:05  8.95MB]
07 dancing song [05:31  11.72MB]

see also:

the hated - wikipedia
the hated - discography/tribute
the hated - on KFTH
the hated - myspace tribute
ida - what dan littleton has been up to all these years

also included on the dubbed tape from which these mp3s were ripped was the slack tape (another littleton project) as well as the hated's awl cassette, which was #3 in the simple machines tool set series.  i can post those as well if there is interest.