A couple of months ago, our discussion about Kerith Ravine popped back up after a couple of inactive years. Thanks in part to that, fellow Louisville Buzzgrinderer Derek Knisely decided to record a video of the band’s 1998 split seven-inch with Cpt. Nemo playing through — and reminisce about it a little.

Kerith Ravine played a lot of shows around Northeast Ohio in the late ’90s (they called it quits in 2001), often sharing the stage with Ancient of Days and an array of terrible screamo/hardcore bands. Musicians and music snobs loved their complex arrangements and deliberately patient and proggy performances, and the hardcore kids couldn’t understand why their songs went on for 10 minutes and didn’t contain any breakdowns.

This band consistently put on an excellent live show, always overshadowing their recorded material (probably due to a lack of money for expensive, quality production). Be that as it may, their only full-length, The Streams of Jettison, can still be easily and cheaply attained, and their original EP, The Drafting Sessions, is available for download on their Myspace.

I don’t remember ever seeing Cpt. Nemo play a show, and after Googling my hardest it seems to me that their existence has been almost completely forgotten. Going by their cut on this split seven-inch, they were evidently one of those angsty rhythmic garage bands with an unfortunate energy/ability gradient. Sadly yet understandably, the vocals and lyrics bear the unmistakable silliness of poetry written by a Christian teenager. Anybody able to offer any more information about, or music from, this band?

I have no idea exactly how many copies of this seven-inch vinyl were created, but I’m guessing not many. It is obviously and awesomely 100 percent homemade, from the inkjet-printed flecked card stock to the label-paper stickers. The video includes all of these details, but won’t quite communicate the DIY labels on the record itself (which I had to manually punch through for the spindle) or the hand-cut sleeve; but this digitized archive is a great second-best to spinning your own copy on a turntable.

We were thumbing through the Buzzgrinder microfiche archives, and we found this article from Matt DeBenedictis that never made it up, extolling the virtues of Shellac‘s Terraform on its 10th anniversary. Even though that was a while back, we can’t deprive the loyal Buzzgrinderers from this bit of nostalgia. So have at it.

Read the 10 reasons why Terraform is awesome.

Eric Edward Fishboy, Texas native and Fishboy frontman, took a few minutes away from his busy schedule of writing quirky, knee-slapping numbers to remember one of his favorite underrated bands from the Lone Star State.

The defunct band I’ve chosen to write about is a legendary Denton indie rock outfit that never seems to get enough credit: Little Grizzly. Realized as a full band in the late ’90s and breaking up in mid 2004 at the release show for their final of three excellent albums, Little Grizzly was one of the bands that made me choose to move to Denton and become part of the music scene.

When I first heard them, they seemed to be pegged as the younger more folk-tinged brothers of Denton mainstays Centro-Matic (a band whose members frequently appeared on LG records), and while they may have started out that way, they quickly developed into something greater. At their peak, they resembled a Clouds Taste Metallic era Flaming Lips led by a southern troubadour, or The Band with Keith Moon filling in on drums.

The live show featured a shouting/snarling/crying frontman slamming his fist into an acoustic guitar while the rest of the group literally shook the stage jumping up and down.

Since their breakup, the members have gone on to other projects: singer/songwriter George Neal now fronts The Slow Burners, keryboardist Howard Draper had stints in Okkervil River and Shearwater, and he now plays in Tre Orsi with LG guitarist/producer Matt Barnhart, who was also the mastermind behind the latest album by The New Year. His brother Jake is now in The Naptime Shake, and drummer Colin Carter played with the more-explosive-than-the-blues-explosion epic rock outfit known as Hogpig before moving to Seattle.

The band took the stage for a five-song reunion last week in Denton. I was, unfortunately, working.

Here are two songs from my favorite of their three albums, I’d Be Lying If I Said I Wasn’t Scared.

Little Grizzly – Today Is the Day
Little Grizzly – Mockingbird Classes

I remember when my late high school and early college years, when I would scour Epitonic for great mp3s. And they were never hard to come by on there. Then something happened, and it stopped being as awesome. Now it doesn’t even work. I think it might have something to do with issues they had related to the redesign some years back.

What about you guys? Do you miss Epitonic? Did you find any bands on there that you’re still enamored with? Do you wish there was a site that helped you wade through the garbage as well as it did? Discuss.

A transplant to Louisville, Mark Kramer is originally from Dayton, Ohio, and was actively involved in the scene there. In addition to time with plenty of bands, he was in Stronghold, who was one of the first acts to put out material on Doghouse Records. He also works at Ear X-Tacy, where you go can say hi to him Saturday during Record Store Day. But today you can read Mark’s recollections about another great Dayton band.

For the uninitiated, Brainiac was a band that was often overlooked, thanks to their bigger brother and sister acts who shared the Dayton spotlight, Guided By Voices and The Breeders. But where they were more straight-ahead in their pop/rock dealings, Brainiac skewered their spastic punk and jerky new wave with a 70s-era Moog, various vocal effects and odd electronic gadgets before slapping people in the face with a brilliant hook.

After releasing a handful of seven-inches on various labels, Brainiac signed to Grass Records (now Wind Up Records, home to Creed and Finger Eleven). While on Grass, they released two amazing albums — Smack Bunny Baby and Bonsai Superstar — and continued their relentless touring schedule. This hard work paid off, scoring tours opening for Touch and Go stalwarts The Jesus Lizard and Girls Vs. Boys. This in turn landed them the highly-coveted handshake with Cory Rusk to record material for Touch and Go themselves.

Keep remembering Brainiac.

This week, Kyle Kammeyer of Rodeo Ruby Love gets all teary-eyed (and rightfully so) about Piebald. In addition to his duties as guitarist in Rodeo, Kyle also likes to dance in the middle of the street. But who doesn’t?

Do you ever get that feeling of absolute rage/unsettling jealousy when certain bands enter your head? No, I am not talking about Piebald here (I will be getting to them shortly). I’m merely pointing out the fact that sometimes life just isn’t fair — and if this is news to you then by God you’ll be in my non-existent prayers.

Once upon a time, a friend of mine went to see Piebald, and the opener was none other than the multi-talented My Chemical Romance. Now, doesn’t that just make your ass clench? This little scenario is sadly the story of Piebald’s life; one of the most unappreciated bands of all time.

Continue reading about, and remembering, Piebald.

Superdrag has a new album, Industry Giants, which comes out tomorrow. And not only did the band allow Buzzgrinder to stream it, but John Davis was also kind enough to take over the posting duties for the day. So the staff gets to sit at home and eat bon bons.

Surely The Minutemen will never be forgotten, but when asked to contribute an entry for the Remember… column, they were the first band that came to mind. I can remember very clearly the first time I ever heard their music. I was a few years too young to have witnessed it first-hand. But I was fortunate enough to have a cousin a few years older, who was into good music and didn’t mind me hanging around and listening to records. Now he’s the bass player for Knoxville punk heroes The Rude Street Peters. When I was still in middle school, he was playing me records like The Punch Line, 3-Way Tie for Last, Flip Your Wig and New Day Rising. I can still remember the album covers.

Keep remembering The Minutemen with John Davis. Read more.

You might remember our weekly Remember… feature. It’s back, and we’ve decided to spice it up by asking other bloggers, bands and other random people to let us know who — and why — we have to remember. This week, Mike (a.k.a. silverunity) from Battle of the Midwestern Housewives is remembering Atom and His Package. And if you peruse the blog (which you should), you’ll see why.

Punk rock was not ready. With his QY700 sequencer (the package), Adam Goren released an onslaught of synth-based quirky songs on the unsuspecting punk community, to which they collectively gave each other confused looks… is this punk rock?

I remember when I first heard Atom and his Package nearly 9 years ago completely by accident. I was in my computer science class, and I accidentally downloaded some off of Napster (before I got Napster and MP3s completely banned at my high school, but that’s a different story) while trying to find some Guttermouth. Since we all remember how well tags were on Napster, I downloaded “Guttermouth’s Punk Rock Academy.”

Continue reading about, and remembering, Atom and His Package.

The chapped wood of the stage shook down into the mud a little bit more when Russ Cogdell landed from his Olympic like jump; he never stopped playing the metallic screeches on his guitar even while in mid air. A couple of times during this Cornerstone Festival set I thought the stage was going to collapse into a mesh of firewood and broken amps as a result of the thundering collisions of Jesse Smith’s Slayer gone rock and roll style drumming. The crowd didn’t ease my feeling of possible disaster either. Their waged war to get on stage to jump and scream was just as relentless as Zao’s.

A year ago at this fest all this was different; Zao was an evangelical version of Earth Crisis whose set ended by transforming into a Benny Hinn revival with an oversized crowd falling to writhe and scream out to their specific God. At this moment of 1998 Zao was introducing themselves as a new entity to the Christian underground scene. This new Zao was unlike anything else at that time to bear heavy guitars and say the word hardcore. Zao didn’t feed off e-crunch riffs, sport basketball jerseys, and demand circle pits before every song. Before this moment all hardcore that got branded as Christian seemed like carbon copies of different bands from the Revelation Records roster. But in a year all that would change thanks partly to Zao’s performance at Cornerstone Festival 1998. More »

Just like the first verse from a holy book, the opening scene of a movie or the first flirt before a long relationship, you can tell all you need to know from the momentum and flare that comes in the beginning. A band’s virginal record is no different. When looking back on Drive Like Jehu, it seems you can learn all you need from the first song, Caress, on the band’s self-titled debut. More »