For this installment of The 7-Inch Corner, These Arms Are Snakes/Russian Circles bassist Brian Cook reminiscences about discovering Steel Pole Bath Tub and their “Bozeman” 7-inch, which was released in 1992 by Boner Records. TAAS just released their new album Tail Swallower & Dove via Suicide Squeeze and you should go buy it now. Read on!

Band: Steel Pole Bath Tub
Title: Bozeman
By Brian Cook

Growing up in the little town of Kailua, Hawaii, I had very little exposure to what was going on in the world of underground music in the early ’90s. I’d caught onto some moderately cool stuff by watching videos on MTV’s 120 Minutes. They Might Be Giants, Pixies, Camper Van Beethoven, and Faith No More were my gateway drugs. But when a classmate hooked me up with a mix tape of various punkbands, my life was changed. The tape turned me on to so much new shit: Fugazi, fIREHOSE, Suicidal Tendencies, and Bad Religion, just to name a few. But the tracks that really blew my mind were by The Dead Kennedys. I became obsessed. I special ordered their records to my local music store. I spent a month’s allowance on a bootleg copy of Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables. The Dead Kennedys were my springboard for discovering this whole new world of music.

I found an interview with Jello Biafra in a back issue of Thrasher and began to explore all the music he referenced. This was in the age before the Internet. There were no zines to be found in Kailua. I found new music by reading bands’ thank you lists and scouring mail-order catalogs. Vinyl wasn’t even on my radar. It wasn’t until I visited Jelly’s, a record store in Honolulu, that I realized that bands still even made records. Jelly’s was Oahu’s version of Amoeba. It obviously wasn’t nearly as well stocked, but in my teenage eyes, it had everything I could possibly want. Overwhelmed by options and short on funds, I picked up a 7-inch by a band called Steel Pole Bath Tub. All I knew about them was that they supposedly had another band with Jello Biafra called Tumor Circus. That was enough of a selling point for me.

Read more of Brian’s column after the jump.

I took the 7-inch home and put it on my parent’s old and dusty turntable. My parent’s record collection had grown moldy from Hawaii’s humidity, so the record player hadn’t seen much use in several years. The needle was worn out too. Listening to the record wound up being a failed endeavor. It skipped ahead every couple of seconds, rendering it unlistenable. But I was fascinated by the snippets I was hearing. It was a total mess.

The A-side featured a song called “Bozeman.” It opens with a snare drum beat and a palm-muted guitar line before exploding into a full-band attack of abrasive and misanthropic noise. To my 14 year-old-ears, the music was angry and discordant enough in its own rite, but then there was this whole other layer of samples on top of the band that made it even more cluttered and chaotic. That damn needle kept jumping all over the record, so I was only getting bits and pieces of the entire composition. But I heard enough to be come intrigued.

The B-side was equally compelling. I had just picked up the bass guitar earlier that year and was frustrated by how few bands had prominent bass lines. But Steel Pole Bath Tub’s second track, “Borstal,” is all about the bass. It opens with a dirgey bass riff and some sparse guitar providing a counter melody. And again, the turntable made it through about one measure before skipping ahead. It was like a movie trailer.

I was getting snippets from the entire work but wasn’t getting to see the whole picture. I knew that the song led into some huge climactic riff, and that it shifted gears into a guitar-driven build, and that it quieted down before returning to the big riff, but I was hearing it in short bursts of sound. It was so fucking frustrating, because these two songs sounded like the meanest, most intense songs I’d ever heard, and I couldn’t even listen to them properly.

I tried cleaning the needle. I tried putting pennies on the turntable’s arm thinking that the additional weight might keep it in the grooves. Nothing worked.

I didn’t get a decent record player for several years after that point. During that time, I would bust out that 7-inch every so often and try to give it another spin. Like those trips to the fridge when you know there’s nothing to eat, but you just do it anyway in case the circumstances have magically changed. That 7-inch hooked me, and despite the obvious obstacle of, ya know, not being able to listen to it, it started my search for vinyl and whetted my appetite for new music.

To this day, the Bozeman/Borstal record is one of my favorite 7″s, and I throw it on the turntable fairly often. It’s one of those recordings that always grabs people’s attention. And Steel Pole Bath Tub remains one of those bands that did things right musically. Their records still hold up, and they’re still as enigmatic as ever.

Tags: 7-Inch Corner, These Arms Are Snakes, guest column //