These Needles was an art punk band from Iowa City. The band was
formed in early 2009 and, at the end of its run, consisted of Pat Larkin
and Joe Ross on guitars, Joe Milik on drums, Brendan Wells on bass, and
John Nagel on throat.
It was September of 2008 and I, Joe Milik, needed a
change of pace. I lived in Des Moines at the time, at the Haunted
Basement, one of the city's last truly DIY spots. I played in bands and
booked shows at the spot, but over time I had grown a bit weary of the
local Des Moines scene, attendance, attitudes, and all. I needed to
move. I knew a few people that would let me sleep on their floor in
Iowa City so, after wrapping up my bands and my time with the Haunted
Basement, I caught the Greyhound east on I-80 with just my backpack full
of some clothes and a toothbrush, and crashlanded on my friend Charles
Free's carpeted floor. I was now a resident of Iowa City.
I
didn't know much about the local scene outside of the few bands that
would come and play Des Moines every once in awhile (The Tanks is all,
really), so I started going to house shows at places like the Exo Space
and the Molded Nug. I would see the likes of Supersonic Piss, Viking
Fuck, and Warmorgan play (alongside a ton of noise acts coming through
town) and seeing the warm support for weirder bands got me stoked to
start a band of my own in new territory for me. All I needed were some
like minded folks to get on board.
Besides crashing
on Charles' floor, I would also pass out on my friend Darrin Ling's
couch from time to time. This is how I ended up meeting Darrin's
roommate Pat Larkin. I think I was initially drawn to Pat because,
well, he played guitar and he was weird. And him being weird led to
weird guitar playing, which I liked a lot. Pat had heard me talk from
time to time about wanting to start a punk band, and Pat himself had
wanted to start a band himself, so one day we made it happen. We went
down into his basement in March of 2009 and started writing songs for
our new "punk" band. Props to Joe Scott for letting me use his drum
set. Thanks Joe!
We really didn't have a sound we were aiming for, we just knew we wanted it to be "punk" and that's all we went on. Initially the first few songs Pat and I wrote at the time were a bit more offkilter and different than what I had been used to playing (which was thrash, straightforward hardcore punk), and I totally embraced that. What happened from trying to keep up with Pat's weirdo guitar work turned into some cool and interesting drum playing. There were fast and hard punk parts, but all these parts were juxtaposed with a cool breakdown here or a nuts spazzy blastbeat there. I liked where this was going.
So, after we had a few songs written, four
of them, we needed a bass player. I never really had anyone else
in mind to play bass in the band other than Brendan Wells. I had known
Brendan for awhile at the time, playing in bands with him when we both
lived in Des Moines. With he himself being a recent transplant to Iowa
City as well, it only felt natural to ask him. At first, he refused. I
don't know why, but it took a lot of pushing to get him to play in the
band. It was after asking no less than three times and then having him
sit in on a practice that he finally said yes.
We were a
three piece, had a few songs, and we were asked to play our first
show. I think the initial plans for the band were to have Pat do vocals
and play guitar, but that wasn't really panning out at that moment in
time, so we asked Pat's roommate Colin Kraemmer to do vocals for that
show. The show was with Loser Life from California, Warmorgan, and
maybe one other band I can't remember, and it was at Public Space One.
We played 5 songs and a cover of the Ramone's 'Blitzkreig Bop'. Yeah
baby. I don't really remember much about this show, so we probably
sucked, who knows? Brendan's amp might've went out, and Colin lost his
voice, but that's about all I can recall.
Colin was
only down to do the one show, so we needed to find another vocalist. We
had practiced a bit with Peter Tomka doing vocals, but that didn't work
out (sorry dude!). After brainstorming it over with Brendan, we both
came to the conclusion that John Nagel, another kid we knew from back in
the Des Moines days, would probably be the perfect choice. He was
smart and he knew how to write. We asked him to come check our new band
out at the Picador for our next show, the only show we ever played as a
three piece, and after our set, we asked John what he thought about the
band. It was pretty good, he said. We then asked if he'd want to do
vocals in the band, and he said yes.
Having John in the
band was the turning point of having the band being a pretty okay thing
to being something rad that I had a ton of fun playing in. He was a
great frontman, had a great voice, and really knew what he was doing, so
all-in-all, he really made the band more of a weird and fucked up
presence. That all became aparent during his first show with us at the
Molded Nug with Supersonic Piss and Total Abuse (who never showed up):
he showed up right as we finished setting up, got on the mic and killed
it. This was the first show that I remember the band sounding way good
and having lots of mosh happen.
By this time it was
getting the be the end of Summer. Pat moved (back) to Minneapolis, but
that didn't stop him from driving down to Iowa City all the time to
practice and play shows. We played some more shows, some at the White
Lightning Warehouse (which is, in my opinion, one of the most important
DIY spots that Iowa has ever had, and it was a pleasure to have a hand
in making it all happen) and we decided to record our first demo tape.
At this point the band really had it's sound going. Strange and snazzy
songs firmly in the realm of "hardcore punk" but with a weirdo twist
thanks to Pat's jangly, noisy guitar playing and my deliberate attempt
at playing something "different" than what I was used to playing on the
drums; bits of a blast beat here, a weird drum fill there. With all the
details ironed out, John, Brendan, and I drove up to Minneapolis to
meet up with Pat and record in his basement with the help of his
roommate Ali Jafar. We recorded 8 tracks, put them on cassette, and
headed out on a short midwest tour at the end of Novemeber of 2009, with dates in Minnesota, Iowa, and
Nebraska. I like this tape a lot, it really shows off the band's sound as a four piece.
1. Abductor
2. Cover to Cover
3. Another Night's Dread
4. Indebted
5. The Demand for Him
6. When Consumption Assumes Disposition
7. Gutted
8. Labored Breathing
Click to download.
Before
our little midwest tour, I went on a Tanks tour out to the east coast
and back (I met Jeff Nelson on this tour and he gave us a personal tour
of his house!) and Joe Ross, the drummer of the Tanks, had been bugging
me about letting him join These Needles on second guitar. By bugging I
don't really mean bugging, but he did ask a lot! We had talked about it
before with the rest of the band dudes, and everyone seemed down, so
why not? When These Needles had gotten back from the midwest tour at
the end of November, Joe Ross officially joined the band on
second guitar. The addition of Joe made the band sound harsher,
noisier, even more on the verge of falling apart, and definitely solidified the sound as "hardcore punk". I loved it.
Joe
learned the songs, we played shows, and Dan Davis, then of Be Kind To
Yr Neighbor and formerly of Weather is Happening and Ricky Fitts, asked
if he could put out a 7" for us on his new label he was starting called
You Touch Us You Die Records. Of course we were down. I don't remember
the exact conditions that these songs were recorded under, but I do
remember they were recorded at my house I was living in at the time, 649
S. Governor, by Pat to four track. These were the first recordings to
feature Joe and, until now, have been unreleased, which is a shame as
this version of "I Have the Power..." is my favorite. I wonder if
anyone else from the band remembers recording this?
1. When Consumption Assumes Disposition
2. The Demand for Him
3. Cover to Cover
4. I Have the Power... To Change the Channel
Click to download.
By
this point in time, we had made good friends with other local freaks Supersonic Piss, so
we planned a two week tour with them out to the east coast and back when
the weather started to get warmer. Before that though, both bands
needed to record their own respective sides of a planned split 7"
between the two of us with enough time to press it before tour started.
Guess what? Neither band finished in time, so we opted for a split
tape instead. These tracks were recorded in one long day by Pat at my house again. Joe Heuermann did the killer art for it, and when the end
of May 2010 came, we took this tape on the road with us. The newer songs on this tape really show the band becoming more chaotic and fucked up.
These Needles Side
1. Six Pack
2. I Have the Power... To Change the Channel
3. Protoculture Ooze
4. Old & Die Phase
5. When Consumption Assumes Disposition
6. Gutted
7. Indeed I Am My Brother's Keeper
8. Overripe
9. Sleepwalk
Supersonic Piss Side
1. Toilet Death
2. Father Bother
3. Buck Angel of Death
4. Rape Farm
5. Skate
6. Oh, the Nut Sack
Click to download.
Pat documented the trip and you can view his amazing photos of the trip
here.
It was a fun tour for sure. Highlights include meeting the lovely
Sharon and her crackhead lesbian companion in an alley in Baltimore,
floating through a steamy Jason Voorhees style swamp at 3AM outside of
Horseheads, NY, playing with an ex-Verse (straight edge hardcore band,
if you didn't know) band in Providence and watching all the kids that
showed up get bummed when the band got really drunk and played so
sloppy, hanging out in a haunted nunnery in Toledo, and doing the feats
of strength every night that would determine which band played first and
which band played second. Some of the shows were WACK (like playing
with Cottonball Man in Pittsburgh, what the fuck was that shit?) but I
look back on this tour fondly and I'm glad we did it.
When
we got home from the tour, we were invited by our friend Travis Nordahl
to come up to McNally Smith recording college in St. Paul where he was
studying so he could record us on their sick equipment for free. Some
would argue "not punk" but free sounds good to me. Travis recorded all
the songs we had written up to that point onto 2" analog tape. I was
totally stoked because what we recorded sounded a lot better than the
tapes we had been putting out. These recordings sounded a lot cleaner than what we sounded like live, so it really gave a different perspective on our music. The recording took a single session and
mixing took another, and we had it wrapped up outside of level tweaks
within two days. We were planning on putting out our own 7" with some
of these songs and saving the rest for later.
After the
tour and the recording sessions, we wrote a few more songs and did
another tiny midwest tour which included my personal favorite show we
ever played, in Omaha at The Manor, a weird one that involved having a
bunch of mosh bands whose show got cancelled across town come and "open"
for us. There were a bunch of mosh kids there that left as soon as the
last e-string was chugged. It was weird, but we still ruled that
night! We played ICT Fest the next day in Wichita, where they cut us off after
playing 10 minutes but then mistakenly paid us twice, suckers. Another
stand out show at this point was the AIDS Wolf show at the White
Lightning Warehouse, which was Supersonic Piss' first show with Joe Ross
on drums after Jason Miller moved away to Lincoln. This time period
was the best the band ever sounded to me...
...And it's
also the time period that the band seemed to, at least in my eyes, lose
it's momentum. It's hard having a crucial member of the band live 5
hours away. It makes song writing difficult and it was getting to be a
pain to play local shows without having to plan things out way in
advance. It's kind of a bummer realizing deep down that you know
something cool, like this band, might be coming to an end sooner than
you would like, before you could really fully appreciate what you had
done with it.
It was reaching the end of the year now, and Jason Miller
had asked us to come play a show with his new band in Lincoln. It was a
good show, in the basement of a record shop that was going out of
business. Jason's band, Moistoid and the Dumps (or maybe it was The
Duke of the Hazardous Wastepool?) killed it I thought; Jason had gotten
really good at drumming. We also played with Violator X, Acid Mouth,
and Diamonds R 4Eva, who were all good. It was a sick show, definitely,
with a lot of mosh. Afterwards, while staying at Jason's, we had the
talk and, long story short, we decided to end the band after our show
the next day in Iowa City, an all local fest at the White Lightning
Warehouse.
The show, called Santa Fest, turned out to be a wild one. Our
set consisted of tons of mosh and John removing his belt and whipping
the crowd with it. My bass pedal broke for a little bit, but outside of
that, it was a great way to go out. The only actual video that exists
of the band comes from this show (although I do know someone taped us in
Chicago! Who are you dude? I'd love to see that footage too!) and is
just 26 seconds long. Oh well, at least you get to see my good friend
Aaron Barger barrel through the crowd at the beginning of the video:
So, on December 17th, 2010, These Needles ceased to be. We
died. We're dead. RIP. But you may be wondering what happened to
those tracks we recorded in St. Paul? We still had plans for those.
Eventually Brendan, John, and I drove up to St. Paul again, met up with
Pat and Travis, and recorded our 4 final songs that we had written after
the initial recording session. After a long and arduous mixing and
mastering process that took nearly 9 months, the songs from both of
these sessions were pressed to LP. Due to a huge misunderstanding at
the plant, two of the songs were left off the LP, but I've included them
as the final two tracks in the download below. Brendan and I did the
art for the release and compiled a big booklet that comes with the
record documenting the band's existence through flier scans and photos.
We put a lot of work into this, so please enjoy:
1. Overripe
2. Another Night's Dread
3. I Was Ingenue
4. The Demand for Him
5. Cover to Cover
6. Indebted
7. Abductor
8. I Have the Power... To Change the Channel
9. Indeed I Am Not My Brother's Keeper
10. Old & Die Phase
11. Gutted
12. Protoculture Ooze
13. When Consumption Assumes Disposition
14. A New Kind of Voyeurism
15. Labored Breathing
16. Preacher of Whim
17. Freak Out Squares
Click to download.
So, there it is. That's all, folks. That was the history of my little band, and there's all of our recorded output. We played shows and had fun. Sometimes I think back and wonder if maybe we should have done things a bit differently. Maybe we should've tried to work out the problems that band was having instead of ending it so quickly? Maybe not. It was definitely a learning experience and I'm glad I was apart of it. I'm glad I made the music I did and I'm glad I met the people I did. Maybe it was the time and the place, but if it wasn't, These Needles helped me realize that, even if you don't know many people in a music scene, with some heart and some hard work, others will accept and encourage the art you create.
Everyone from the band went on to play in other bands. Currently Pat plays guitar in
the Miami Dolphins in Minneapolis, Brendan plays bass in
Solid Attitude and does vocals for
NERV, Joe Ross plays drums in
Supersonic Piss,
Slut River, and
the Tanks, John does vocals in
Error, and I play drums for NERV,
Big Box, and Error. Check all of those bands out if you have the time. They're all excellent.
If you would like a copy of the LP, I have around 15 left, so shoot me an e-mail: eatapes@gmail.com
Stay punk, folks.
