The Normals stuff

I've been working on putting up the old Airline 61 site on tripod.com for Steve H. Airline 61 Records had The Normals, Lump, and Eugene Chadbourne. The Normals were one of New Orleans' first punk bands and are probably the most highly regarded. Lump was previously called The Black Problem, after a remark by whoever that racist sheriff is. Harry Lee maybe? I've been getting the pages off of the wayback machine. Check out some of this cool stuff they had for the Normals:

Men In Black music page

Men in Black have put up downloadable versions of all of the music from their "Burning Fast" cd on this page. They've been around since the late 70's, and their music is really diverse. Really uncategorizable, but very good. I love all the crazy freak-out keyboards. Recommended are Stages of Your Life, Burning Fast, and Goose Boogie. I also like Lackeys a lot. Hearing bands like Men in Black, The Normals, The Skinnies, Shitdogs, Zoomers, Toxin III, Our Favorite Band, etc. makes me really appreciate how diverse the Louisiana scene was. They also have a lot of photos on this page, including photos of Wayward Youth, with who they were closely connected. There are also two Wayward Youth tracks available at this site. They're definitely worth checking out. (Especially El Mundo.)


Men In Black


Men In Black


Wayward Youth


Wayward Youth

Toxin III EP graphics

Sorry for the lack of updates, things have been pretty crazy here. Here are some Toxin III graphics that Chris sent. They're from their Vinyl Solution EP. (1981 I think?) Vinyl Solution was a punk label out of New Orleans. 'Lectric Eye was another one. Both graphics are copyright 1982 by Ray Weiland.

NOLA comp page

The New Orleans underground compilation project is rolling along pretty well. So far we've gotten permission from Die Rotzz, The Normals, A Particularly Vicious Rumor, Burnversion, The Zydepunks, The Tea Sea, One Man Machine, The Other Planets, The Cold, Egg Yolk Jubilee, Hazard County Girls, Men in Black, R. Scully, Charm City Brokers, Wayward Youth, Lump, and Rotary Downs. We're going to burn a preliminary version of the comp with twelve tracks that we have already so we can hit some of the benefits this weekend. We plan on being ready with the full version (18 to 20 tracks) for the following weekend. Here's a page about it that Scott put up: nolacomp.tripod.com . There are links to the bands' various pages from there if you feel like checking them out.

Mike Vallely in Lafayette, late 80's

Pictures of Mike Vallely in Lafayette from John Morrow. The first is at John Wayne, and the others are from Surf-n-skate.







Just for the record, John Wayne was a 10 or 11 foot blue vert ramp with a mini next to it on John Wayne Dr. off of Kaliste Saloom. It was owned by Chad Simon, and was home to the SMP (Southern Metal Posse). Surf-n-skate was the local skate shop in the late 80's and was on Guilbeau. It had a street course outside and a mini ramp inside. It was owned by Ms. Donna? (think that was her name.) When Surf-n-skate closed, they sold some of the stuff to some guys with a little park in Baton Rouge. They sawed the mini in half across the flat and took half of it back with them. Me, Jenkins, and some other fools borrowed a flatbed trailer, scavenged the other half of the ramp and whatever was left of the street course and dropped it off in my parents' driveway. Needless to say, I didn't tell them I was bringing it, and it sat there forever until they were ready to kill me. I eventually got around to ripping it apart and built the old ramp on Lafayette Street out of it and parts of Thomas Couvillion's old ramp. While I was ripping the Surf-n-skate mini apart, I found that someone had written "J.P. SUCKS" on the underside of the plywood layer all over the place (looked like when they built it.) J.P. was one of their sponsored ams. Legend has it that he squanked Ms. Donna. But you ain't heard that from me, because I AIN'T ONE TO GOSSIP.

Fiddycentdraft site maintenance

I did a bunch of maintenance on the site. I uploaded all of the recently received flyers to the Lafayette flyer page, Baton Rouge flyer page, and the New Orleans flyer page. I linked all of the ones for Lafayette bands to their entries on the Lafayette band index page. Scans of zines are now in this Village Photos folder. Band related photos are now on Image Cave. Click here to see all of the different band related photos. Bands that I had a lot of stuff for have their own separate folders. These folders are also linked to the individual band entries on the Lafayette band index page. Miscellaneous band photos are under the folder named "Band_stuff". Skate photos are moved over to Zorpia, and they are split into Lafayette, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans folders. I also made a folder for photos of people we know called "Peeps". A lot of the stuff that was previously dumped in the misc Ripway folder is now there. Finally the photos of clubs and whatnot are in this Yahoo folder. There are also some misc photos of shows in NYC and a folder with photos from Tickle Dracula shows (my band) here. I did all this to spread the material around to different sites so there's room to grow. The Ripway account was maxed out. I'm just mainly going to use it to store all of the flyers now. Anyway, all of that moving may lead to some dead links somewhere, so if you find any, let me know.

Check out this badass Black Flag / Red Rockers / Toxin III flyer from Chris's site:

Photos from Margaret

Here's some more stuff from Maragaret:

I love this picture. They're skating the little tiny drainage channel from the street to the coulee by the old dorms on (I think it's called) Lewis street.


Geg Melancon, Danny Hall, Chris Simon, George Brown, and Bernard Morris at the chicken banks in Baton Rouge.


Chris Cart during his Reality On Trial days.



These are two Baton Rouge skate zines (circa 1986/87?)



Two photos of Heith Copes. I would kill for one of those Eppic Eddie Gomez's that he's skating in the first photo where he's doing the wallie. I had a couple of those. In the second photo at the park in downtown Lafayette, I believe that's a pre-hippy-hair Heith. (Now he has edumacated hair.)


Speaking of Chris Cart, he just put up a new Toxin III myspace page. This one has music on it as well.

Photos of pro skaters in Lafayette

Here are some photos of pro skaters in the Lafayette area. You can see more photos and higher res versions at John's Zorpia folder.


Tony Magnusson at Mt. Taco. In the first photo, that kind of looks like Al Gibson on the deck maybe? I don't remember where Mt. Taco was exactly. It was somebody's backyard I think.


Jeff Phillips at the Sugar's ramp. That is Greg Melancon holding the coping down. (This photo is from Margaret.) Sugar's was where Mako's was later. This photo is looking out towards the house on the corner of McKinley and Jefferson with Nitecaps and The Keg on either side. It's still weird to think that there was a vert ramp on the strip.



These two photos are from a jam in Opelousas. I think it was held in the big ex-grocery store east of I-49 at the Cresswell exit. That building later became a flea market. The first is Mike Vallely and the second is Rodney Mullen.

Flyers from Morrow

These flyers are from John M. REM at the Saenger Theater in New Orleans, Lydia Lunch at some place on Magazine in New Orleans, Gene Loves Jezebel at USL in Lafayette, three from Combined Effort in Baton Rouge - two Blitzkrieg/Otis fliers and one Otis/Piece Core. I couldn't really remember, but Chris said Blitzkrieg was essentially Piece Core with a different name. I think Sidney Fontenot put on the Gene Loves Jezebel show. Anybody know where that firehose flyer is from? Was Power Tools a club or a band? I'll have to ask John.

Faith No More photos from 1987

Here are the photos John put up of Faith No More at Sidney's house in 1987. I'm not totally sure on the details of this show, but I think what happened was Sidney Fontenot booked Faith No More to play at a place in Lafayette called Pappa P's way out on Johnston across from Giles. Then something happened where the show couldn't be held there, he couldn't find anywhere else in time, and they had to play at his mom's house. At least that's what I've been told. I'm sure Morrow, Jenkins, Chris, or Margaret can clarify. Anyway, it must have been a killer show. The last photo is from New Orleans. From the looks of it, I would wager that it was at Howlin' Wolf.

Other news

John Morrow put some more stuff up at Zorpia. Some really great band related stuff like flyers (mostly Lafayette), photos of Faith No More in Sidney Fontenot's house, etc. I haven't had time to do it yet, but I'll add the flyers to the flyer archive and link them to the bands on the index pages. There are three Otis flyers, two with Blitzkrieg (who I'd forgotten about), firehose, etc. Check them out here. He also put up some killer photos of pro skaters at various spots in Lafayette. Check them out here. Mike Vallely, Rodney Mullen, Tony Mag, Gator, etc. Great stuff.

Liz at WFMU played a bunch of Louisiana stuff last Tuesday. The playlist is here. She played Die Rotzz, The Transmission, The Smites, Rare Avis, Urbosleeks, The Zoomers, Toxin III, and Frigg-a-go-go. I know the material is heavily weighted towards Lafayette stuff, but it's because at the time Scott and I made the cds we gave her, we didn't have much New Orleans and Baton Rouge stuff. I do now, and I'm going to get it to Liz, Pat Duncan, and Terre T at WFMU, and also Ivan and Cecil at KRVS. Probably some others too. Also I talked to Bernard from One Man Machine and he said that he got a call from KVRX in Austin about his music. I had sent copies of the stuff I gave Liz to KVRX, KRVS, KLSU, WTUL, and some others a while back. I really didn't expect that the out of state stations would pay much attention to it, so it's cool to hear that not only did somebody at KVRX actually listen to it, but they were interested enough to look up and contact Bernard.

Here's a photo of Mushroom Records by Tulane from Curtis:

Nola benefit comp

We've been working on putting together a compilation of New Orleans underground bands to benefit Katrina relief efforts. Basically our idea is to get permission from about 20 bands, burn the cds ourselves, print decent looking cd labels and inserts at Kinko's, assemble them, and sell them at the various benefits here in NYC (there are a lot scheduled) and also on consignment at record stores, coffee shops, etc. 100% of the proceeds will go to Katrina relief. If anyone knows contact info for New Orleans underground bands, please email me. I think that this project could earn a decent amount of money for the cause and also promote the South Louisiana underground scene.

Toxin III, Snufflix, and Reality On Trial graphics

Check out these badass band graphics that Chris Cart sent. Except for the Reality On Trial dinosaur one, they were all done by Chris's friend Ray Weiland. I saw that he was heavy into underground comics, so it must have been him in this California Comics issue. That would be interesting to see.

Toxin III were without a doubt Lafayette's best known punk band. Thanks to Hyped To Death and Raveup Records, they've had quite a resurgence. Check out some Toxin III photos here. You can also listen to their music here.



Snufflix was Chris's next band. I wonder if they ever released this EP. I'll have to ask him. Check out this photo of Toxin III and Snufflix together. Also, this flyer.



Reality On Trial was the band Chris was in after Snufflix. I love that dinosaur graphic. Also, check out this photo of them at John's in Lafayette and this flyer with the Butthole Surfers.