I Found My Friends Read Online Free
Author: Nick Soulsby
the shapes amid the seeming chaos.
By August, the band had morphed again, into Bliss. Yet having played to a mere twenty-five people in April, the audience this time around had swelled only to perhaps forty.
PAUL MORRIS: We rolled into Tacoma (famous for its poor bridge design) suffering from head colds that I believe we picked up from Youth of Today in San Francisco at the Maximum Rocknroll house.
TIM FREEBORN: We were pleased to sell out the Community World Theater. The first row, anyway ⦠Big Black were playing their final show in Seattle, so I assume that several Tacomans who might have attended our show drove up to Seattle.
MIKE CANZI: Iâm not being sarcastic here, but I think there was someone in the audience wearing a red-and-black lumber jacket.
For Bliss, this show was no more or less successful a musical happening than the performances in April, May, or June.
TIM FREEBORN: Their songs were pretty sludgy and unmemorable, to my tired, ravaged ears.
MIKE CANZI: I have no memories whatsoever of Blissâs music. We heard a lot of bands that summer, but only three stood out in a positive way: Nomeansno, False Prophets, and Porn Orchard.
PAUL MORRIS: Like Tim, at this time I was suffering from the burnout of seeing too many bands in such a short time ⦠Musically and visually I was not impressed and I did not care for them.
GLENN POIRIER: Bliss didnât stand out at all to me ⦠they were a young band finding their way ⦠I liked the Magnet Men that played that night more.
CHRIS BLACK: I do remember a lot of plaid, and long songsâtwo maybe three minutes in length some of them ⦠mumbly stage banter, lots of looking down at the floor, and long, slow-tempo songs ⦠I recall thinking that either speedy hardcore hadnât yet arrived in this neck of the woods, or that they were already past it.
TIM FREEBORN: Aside from the promoterâthe affable and, at that time, broken-footed Jim MayâI can name no one that we met that night ⦠I do remember chatting with Jim May at a greasy spoon after the show about a local scenester with an exotic STD, which produced pyramidal growths on his forearm.
These werenât stunningly professional shows. They were more like exotic sleepovers with no commercial prospects.
DAVE CHAVEZ: I just remember people chanting, âWe brought our sleeping bags and weâre not going home!â
TIM FREEBORN: I remember chatting with the Magnet Men, who turned their earnings over to us ⦠The fact that it was a bag of coins did not lessen my appreciation of either the gesture or the cash.
BRUCE PURKEY: I have a photo of George and me from the same show with Slim Moon playing in the background. So much future fame behind us, but for all of us it was just another night with fifty or sixty of our friends in this cavernous, freezing old movie theater, sitting in the shitty seats once occupied by old pervs, now occupied by young punks, but we loved it. It was ours and we made it something special, if only for a little while. Of course, at the time, we complained about the cold, complained about the small crowds, no money, whatever â¦
Although Bliss was too shy to engage with the audience and too preoccupied trying to perform their intricate early compositions to rock out, they still displayed a degree of ambitiousness â¦
TIM FREEBORN: Bliss kind of sent out ⦠mixed signals; maybe a joke? After all, the guitarist was wearing satin pants and platform shoes (and what kind of looked like a Lynyrd Skynyrdâstyle hairpiece).
PAUL MORRIS: When I saw these guys get up there with platform shoes and silky flare pants, my skepticism went way up ⦠Beyond the clothing there was nothing memorable about the stagecraft.
The clothing was as far as the stagecraft went, but it still represented a band figuring out how to stand out.
Then it all ground to a halt. Burckhard was dismissed and the
By August, the band had morphed again, into Bliss. Yet having played to a mere twenty-five people in April, the audience this time around had swelled only to perhaps forty.
PAUL MORRIS: We rolled into Tacoma (famous for its poor bridge design) suffering from head colds that I believe we picked up from Youth of Today in San Francisco at the Maximum Rocknroll house.
TIM FREEBORN: We were pleased to sell out the Community World Theater. The first row, anyway ⦠Big Black were playing their final show in Seattle, so I assume that several Tacomans who might have attended our show drove up to Seattle.
MIKE CANZI: Iâm not being sarcastic here, but I think there was someone in the audience wearing a red-and-black lumber jacket.
For Bliss, this show was no more or less successful a musical happening than the performances in April, May, or June.
TIM FREEBORN: Their songs were pretty sludgy and unmemorable, to my tired, ravaged ears.
MIKE CANZI: I have no memories whatsoever of Blissâs music. We heard a lot of bands that summer, but only three stood out in a positive way: Nomeansno, False Prophets, and Porn Orchard.
PAUL MORRIS: Like Tim, at this time I was suffering from the burnout of seeing too many bands in such a short time ⦠Musically and visually I was not impressed and I did not care for them.
GLENN POIRIER: Bliss didnât stand out at all to me ⦠they were a young band finding their way ⦠I liked the Magnet Men that played that night more.
CHRIS BLACK: I do remember a lot of plaid, and long songsâtwo maybe three minutes in length some of them ⦠mumbly stage banter, lots of looking down at the floor, and long, slow-tempo songs ⦠I recall thinking that either speedy hardcore hadnât yet arrived in this neck of the woods, or that they were already past it.
TIM FREEBORN: Aside from the promoterâthe affable and, at that time, broken-footed Jim MayâI can name no one that we met that night ⦠I do remember chatting with Jim May at a greasy spoon after the show about a local scenester with an exotic STD, which produced pyramidal growths on his forearm.
These werenât stunningly professional shows. They were more like exotic sleepovers with no commercial prospects.
DAVE CHAVEZ: I just remember people chanting, âWe brought our sleeping bags and weâre not going home!â
TIM FREEBORN: I remember chatting with the Magnet Men, who turned their earnings over to us ⦠The fact that it was a bag of coins did not lessen my appreciation of either the gesture or the cash.
BRUCE PURKEY: I have a photo of George and me from the same show with Slim Moon playing in the background. So much future fame behind us, but for all of us it was just another night with fifty or sixty of our friends in this cavernous, freezing old movie theater, sitting in the shitty seats once occupied by old pervs, now occupied by young punks, but we loved it. It was ours and we made it something special, if only for a little while. Of course, at the time, we complained about the cold, complained about the small crowds, no money, whatever â¦
Although Bliss was too shy to engage with the audience and too preoccupied trying to perform their intricate early compositions to rock out, they still displayed a degree of ambitiousness â¦
TIM FREEBORN: Bliss kind of sent out ⦠mixed signals; maybe a joke? After all, the guitarist was wearing satin pants and platform shoes (and what kind of looked like a Lynyrd Skynyrdâstyle hairpiece).
PAUL MORRIS: When I saw these guys get up there with platform shoes and silky flare pants, my skepticism went way up ⦠Beyond the clothing there was nothing memorable about the stagecraft.
The clothing was as far as the stagecraft went, but it still represented a band figuring out how to stand out.
Then it all ground to a halt. Burckhard was dismissed and the
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