Friday, July 25, 2008

Wilkommen!



It's been some time since I welcomed a new friend or old friend as the case may be. But I'm really excited about this one!

Enriched Geranium is the blog of Ed, just Ed - you can do any further detective work yourself - a friend from Madison, Wisconsin.

Ed was the bass player for one of the greatest bands I've ever heard or seen - Appliances-SFB. Ed and I ran into each other again earlier this year at The Mekons show up in Madison. I was already excited about The Mekons, but what did appear to my wondering eyes but almost the entire assemblage of the Appliances, trooping in, beers in hands, to sit down a row or two ahead of us. That made my night! I hope I don't embarrass Ed, but he is my Bass God Idol. I dream that someday I can play like him. I won't ever be able to, but I still dream. He was also the nicest record store guy ever, working at the long gone Rose Records. Though a chain, Rose was for a time my favorite store (because I had a grudge against certain of the independent stores in Madison for a few years due to their extreme rudeness).

Ed's still in Madison, which we left back in fall of '92, which for him is awesome because if he were stuck in the boondocks like me he couldn't be meeting the cool people needed to make the great music he's still making. He's working with several bands up in Madison and you should check out the following: The Motor Primitives, Reptile Palace Orchestra, and Veseliyka. If I'm remembering right, my ol' buddy Biff B. is in RPO, as well as still maintaining the weirdness with The Gomers (who, btw, played at our wedding, a tale I'm told that will still buy me drinks if I were ever to tell it in certain bars in Madison).

One of them beers is for you, Ed, one for me. So long as it's not a stinkin' wheat beer, I don't care which. Wheat beer sucks.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do you remember;

A band from back in your Madison days called "Tar Babies", who had a couple albums- one of them called "Fried Milk", I think- and a singer/shit hot guitarist name of Bucky Pope who may or may not have driven a cab as a day job and who could and did, I kid you not, play a show in Lexington, Ky, with a broken thumb on his fretting hand, presumably from playing softball?

gomonkeygo said...

Oh yeah! Check out my post over on Lost-In-Tyme:

http://lost-in-tyme.ucoz.com/blog/2008-07-14-298

Bucky's still in Madison. Has an occasional band called the Bar Tabbies, which I think is the greatest self-spoofing and inversion of a band name ever! Never seen 'em, but if Bucky's on guitar, gotta be hot!

Ed said...

I just got back from a week-long vacation, so I haven't seen this until now. Thanks for the warm welcome!

Regarding "Bass God Idol" status, sure, it's a little embarrassing, but it also warms the cockles of my heart. It helps to counteract those times when I feel like I suck and should grow up and sell all my gear. So, thanks!

As for the Tar Babies, Robin Davies, founding member and bassist, is now playing drums for The Motor Primitives. Since, back in the day, we were both bass players, it never occurred to me that we might someday be in the same band. I think the Bar Tabbies (credit should be given to Bill Feeny for coining this name and suggesting it to them many years ago, although they probably don't remember it) are officially defunct, but I might be mistaken. Bucky is still around (I think he spent a few years on the west coast somewhere) but I almost never see him and don't know whether he's doing much music these days. I'll have to ask Robin. Former Tar Babies drummer Dan Bitney now plays with Tortoise.

Ed said...

By the way, I'm with you on the wheat beer.