The End Of a Year 7” that Hex
Records released is a tough one to write about. I say that because the band has been so ridiculously
prolific that some rinky-dink three-song record didn’t really differentiate
itself all that much from the massive pile of other records they did, and
that’s before they even changed their name (and the majority of their lineup)
to Self Defense Family. As End Of
a Year they had no less than a dozen 7”s and three full lengths. Moving on into Self Defense they have
at least 20 7” records with their name on it, as well as several LPs and 12”
EPs. I did a record for them that
contained two good songs and a crazy Talking Heads cover that was not only
halfway botched, but it’s also a pretty second-tier Talking Heads song to begin
with. That’s what sets it apart
from the others- a goofy cover song and an homage record cover that took me
fucking forever to create. All
that said, I don’t know if it stands out from the pack.
I think that record maybe meant
more to me, personally, than it may have meant for the band. It solidified some friendships within
that group that I value. It gave me
a chance to really dive into some graphic design stuff that I was happy to do,
regardless of the time I spent making it.
I can now say I’ve released a record with a Talking Heads song on it,
one of my favorite bands of all time.
And it also capped off an extremely busy year for me (the record was
slated for 2009 release, but ended up coming out just as 2010 began, and after
a few releases that were supposed to come after it), as it was the label’s 10th
anniversary and I was trying to do a lot of special stuff for it.
Says vocalist Pat Kindlon about the
record: “I can say I haven’t seen the record in years so I don’t know what the
originals are on the record. But I
do recall sheepishly submitting it to you because of the Talking Heads cover
being so very bad. You didn’t
flinch. And it was at that moment
I realized we were free to release anything.”
Which certainly holds true, as the
band did begin changing their sound, trying new things, experimenting with
structure and other ideas. But at
the time the band remained very busy between constantly recording and
touring. Much of the recording
sessions took place on their own with bassist (and continuing collaborator)
Andrew Duggan handling the engineering duties.
“We were often running mic cables
from our tiny rehearsal room to another rehearsal room we would borrow to put
the mixing board in and vaguely engineer recordings in that fashion. These songs may have been a product of
that process”, Kindlon recalls.
While that DIY approach served End
Of a Year for quite some time, eventually it got slightly more serious. “Later Andrew got a job at a studio and
we’d go in on empty calendar days.
But this record was so early I imagine we were still in the practice
space”, states Kindlon. And that
was when the band was still based primarily in the Albany, NY region (or as
they would sometimes specify, ‘Cohoes, NY’).
Personally, my association with the
band began when, after hearing about them for quite awhile and others telling
me I’d be into what they do, End Of a Year ended up playing the living room of
Recess Coffee shop in Syracuse. I
remember arriving to the show wearing a Talking Heads shirt. I saw guitarist Hans Leibold, whom I’d
met years ago in a decidedly more hardcore band (Burning Bridges, what's up?) he used to play in and didn’t
realize he was part of this group.
We exchanged pleasantries and he said to me, ‘you ought to talk to our
singer Patrick. He loves Talking
Heads.’ So I found the guy,
introduced myself, talked about our shared interest in Talking Heads, and an
equal fondness for Earth Crisis, and right then and there I knew I’d come
across a pretty good fellow. They
played their set a little later and everyone was right- I really did enjoy their
music, their carefree attitude, and Pat’s lengthy between-song banter. From that point on End Of a Year began
playing Syracuse more regularly.
After some time, the band I played
in at the time, Mistletoe, played a number of shows with End Of a Year in
various places (mostly upstate NY) and we all got a bit more tight. I thought it only natural to ask them
to do a record, and for whatever reason, about a dozen other people were asking
them to do records as well. So I
think the one I did may have gotten lost in the shuffle a bit, what with so
many other labels releasing material for them at around the same time.
They were fine with the idea of
doing a record, however, I wanted to make it a little different than some of
the stuff they had been doing, and asked if they would entertain the idea of
covering a Talking Heads song, which was sort of the jumping off point of
getting to them in the first place.
They figured that would be fine too. I began developing artwork that was a play on the “More
Songs About Buildings and Food” album (the original was a band photo comprised
of hundreds of Polaroids, mine was a digital recreation of that not using
Polaroids) and they even named the 7” as a riff on that classic Talking Heads
album. I sort of figured they
would also go with a classic Heads song, maybe off one of the first few
albums. But why would End Of a
Year do anything that was expected?
No, they went with “Wild, Wild Life”, off the much later-era “True
Stories” record, which is also sometimes thought of as not being quality Talking
Heads material. Sure, it was
a radio hit, and I still like it.
But it’s a little silly.
End Of a Year’s take was even more ridiculous given that they left out a
whole section of the song, and recorded the banter before and after the session
of how they screwed up and would get sued.
Of course, they recorded a couple
others for this as well- the very moving and faith-questioning “Barbara Peyton”
and the brief and faster-paced "Ethan Hawke”. This was around that time where they were naming every song
after actual people that you had to Google to find out what their deal was.
One last bit to emphasize the
rather caviler and um… DIY aspect of this record is I made every one of these
covers. I didn’t really want to go
through a manufacturer for them as it was a weird packaging concept (the cover
folded in half, and then folded again inside to form a pocket for the record)
so I bought the paper (which was quality) and took it to a local copy chain
that did not keep good track of how many copies anyone made and I would use
their color copier to run this heavy-stock paper through their bypass tray,
doing 30-40 at a time, and then cutting them all to size myself, folding them,
and assembling the records. It took
freaking ages. I made so many
trips to that shop (the pressing of this record was 500 copies), and sneaked
out of there so many times with a backpack full of copies that I am absolutely
certain the staff there did not care enough about their jobs to crack down on
my rampant misuse of their color copier.
Also, that store is no longer around.
So that’s the story of “More Songs
About Transportation and Intercourse”, a weird and fun record by End Of a
Year. It’s all gone now, I have no
idea how I got rid of 500 copies of that, but they’re gone, never to be seen
again (but maybe in the wild somewhere).
So if you want it either go to Discogs, or for the next week, get the
digital versions of the songs off the bandcamp for a scant $2. It’s the least you can do.
Currently, you can find vocalist Pat Kindlon keeping busy in Self Defense Family and Drug Church. He also writes comics sometimes, and also is one of the hosts of the Axe to Grind podcast. Hans Leibold and Andrew Duggan host the popular Overnight Drive podcast and Andrew still contributes to Self Defense with recording and occasional accompaniment. And to be perfectly honest, I have no clue what drummer Eric Busta is up to, nor guitarist Sean Doody . But they're both fantastic musicians and it would be nice to find out if they were doing anything these days.
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