Since we digitized and posted the Trashcan Acid “Live” tape for download, the Cozy Home gears have become a little rusty, but some fresh lubrication in the form of these liner notes by none other than Lucas Humann himself, as well as the inevitability of a few new releases (some old-new, some new-new) has galvanized the post man (post-man???) of this tag team into action.

So without further adieu, we present to you:

Trashcan Acid

Since they love to torture me, I was asked by Bobby & Paul to type up some musings/thoughts etc. about the “Trashcan Acid-Live” release.

Since I in turn love to torture you the nameless, faceless denizens of the internet here it goes…

Pain in the ass/When you gotta go to class

It’s not always fun looking back. Particularly to yr early teens. It’s like seeing that yearbook picture where yr fat, have braces & a shitty perm. (Not me of course. I skipped every “photo day” in high school. My fat/shitty perm pic is a self portrait which I keep in a locket. I never take it off! Even to shower) Anyways…

Yeah, hindsight is 20/20 and all that, so when talking about high school it can tend to seem like everyday was like “Dazed & Confused”. (some days were. Seriously! No shit!) In reality though it was usually scrambling to get some cheeb and hoping to still have enough bucks left over to cop some records from the basement of The Last Unicorn (Utica, NY area indie record store. More on that later…) and maybe a slice of pizza. And… band practice. (More on that later…)

Quick History Lesson (I’ll try to make this as short as fucking possible)

You see Paul & I have known each other for a long time. For better or worse our lives have been intertwined since that first day of kindergarten when I asked Paul “Do you wanna be my friend?” and he replied “Sure”. Over the years we’ve been best friends & worst enemies (particularly 4th grade; on the enemies tip). Around 5th grade or so our other best friend Al Rahman (the “Barry” to our “Maurice & Robin” if you will…) and I discovered we both had our minds totally ripped to fucking shreds by the then new saviours of rawk, Nirvana. (God. Were we in 5th grade? Fuck. I don’t know. I know it was February of 1992…) You see previous to this, we’d been total 60’s freaks. In our elementary school this was grounds to get picked on or get beat the fuck up. Luckily, we were friends with Remus Haden so we didn’t get fucked with too much. (Much love to Remus wherever you may be…) I’m getting off track. So at some point, Al & I decided we were gonna be a “band”. (Somewhere there is a tape. The Cocksuckers-”Demo”. Which is the first definitive use of Cozy Home Records). We kept up this “band” charade for years. Right up and into 9th grade when we met the infamous, the marvelous, the carefully careless, the genius: Robert Levy. Al and I were introduced to Rob (by Pat Carney, thanks Pat!) as “Sonic Youth” “Sonic Youth”. Bernard’s Freek Star was born…

Lesson Part 2 (I lied…)

So we “rocked”. Rob, Al & I. Discovered our mutual love of marijuana, noise music, marijuana and arguing with each other. We then broke up the band (sorta) and Al and I didn’t talk to each other for almost 2 years (it’s all good now. for serious. I promise…) If you’ll allow me to skip back a bit, Paul & I also had a band for about a month & half in the summer preceding 9th grade: “Con Carne y Leche” (sounded kinda cool back then). I “taught” Paul how to play the most basic of drum beats which he couldn’t play very well. Shortly thereafter, we hated each other again. So when Rob & Al were saying “We should have Paul play drums in Freek Star!” I said “No way.” But long, boring story short, right before the falling out with Al I decided “What the fuck!?! Let’s give old Paulo a try”. And it worked. Really, really well. (I’m sticking to that story until the tapes surface, heh-heh-heh…) Rob, Paul & I (Al was out by this point) had a musical chemistry that was undeniable (at least to us and a select few. I’m looking at you, Schram!). We practiced, fought, wrote some “songs”, played some shows. In general had a great psych-e-fucking-delic time for almost a year. So when Rob informed us he was bouncing to “higher education” (SUNY Oswego) we were nothing less than devastated. By this time though, Paul & I had started our side project. Initially, it was to be more of lo-fi hip hop type thing-thing. The first song we recorded was “The Squeeze Technique”. I had an idea for a drum part and had Paul play it. I recorded it to the reel to reel at the wrong speed, so when we played it back it was way slower and very, very heavy sounding. Also very, very awesome. Dubbed some guitar. Added vocals. Scratched a Homer & Jethro record and a Cheech & Chong record on top and VOILA! Trashcan Acid was born. (Note on the name: Pretty self explanatory I’m sure. It means shitty LSD. Well, there is more to it and if you ask me in person I’ll tell you…)

Lesson 3

So that was a brief (sorta) history of the groop. Now I’ll bore you with the details of the tape…

It (the tape) was recorded at a “party” in the living room of Jeff Carney’s house. Jeff was nice dude. I remember he was into vampires and talking about his desire to have anal sex with over half the girls in our high school. It was our first show as Trashcan Acid and we wore dresses. I believe Paul had fake breasts made from some balled up tube socks taped to his chest. At the end of side one you can hear Jeff saying he taped the set as well. I have this tape somewhere. We ended up playing a little bit longer (we took a break to take off the dresses and put our big boy clothes back on) only to have the cops show up (this is also on that tape). Man we should’ve put that version out… We were also very unhappy about our “debut”. Paul reacted by breaking some wine bottles. I reacted by duct taping “Fuck This Town” on the side of a Rite Aid on Oneida St. That duct tape stayed up there for YEARS! I was very proud of that. I was also very proud of Paul for breaking those fucking wine bottles.

The song “Where are You Walking” was actually influenced by the first Royal Trux album. You might not be able to tell but I promise that’s the truth.

During Telekinetic Part 1, we do our psuedo cover of “Brother James” by Sonic Youth. Just saying…

We initially made 25 copies. Most went to The Last Unicorn (the store I mentioned before) and another 4 or 5 we brought to the now sadly defunct Flipped Out Records storefront in Albany. (Sprung from the ashes of the mighty ERL Records I might add! Also, Flipped Out is still an internet entity. Jack is a good dude and all around nice guy. You should buy some records from him NOW: www.flippedoutrecords.com) We sold out at The Last Unicorn (and they ripped us for most of the bucks. we were PISSED for years about that. but I got over it when they finally gave me a job and employed my stanking ass for 8 years). Sold 3 at Flipped Out. Instead of the cash I took a t-shirt and the Jad Fair Short Songs 7″ (whomever I lent that to I would really, really like that back ASSHOLE!) Eventually we morphed into The Avant Audiophiles (release pending) and so on and so forth.

Last Bit

Years after we released the tape, Paul was scouring through the used tape bins at Last Unicorn and guess what he found? A copy of our tape! Somebody had sold their copy back to The Last Unicorn. I felt in some small way we had finally “made it”. Or not.

So there ya go. More than you ever wanted to know about our adolescent terror trips.

-luke human

PS- First of all, thanks to everyone mentioned above. I’d also like give some big thanks/hugs/love what have you, to the following: My parents, Paul’s parents, Al’s parents, Rob’s parents, my cats, C.B., Albert Hoffman, ODB (R.I.P) and Tim Schram (I ain’t forgot you yo!)

peacelovedope…