Context is a funny thing. I cook food for a living in a “research & development” capacity and one of my biggest pet peeves is when I’m working on something and I’m looking for honest feedback and I hand something to my boss or a colleague or anyone whose opinion I trust and ask them to taste it and tell me what they think, and they hesitate and ask, “What is it?”. Now if they have an allergy or they’re on a diet or just don’t want to eat or drink something in particular, of course I completely understand. I work with some vegetarians and I sure as hell am not going to stick a spoonful of short rib under their nose and ask them to eat it. But when a person just can’t bring themselves to even try something without me first explaining exactly what it is, how it was prepared and what it is I’m trying to do…I’m completely baffled. For me, one of the great joys of eating food is exploring new things, revisiting old classics, and every so often, being completely surprised and blown away by something I’ve never eaten before, whether it’s something I’ve had plenty of times before that’s prepared in a new or unfamiliar way or if it’s something I’ve literally never eaten before. Maybe I won’t even like it? At least I experienced something new. None of us would know what foods we love and how we like them prepared without trying them at least once, right? There’s food I loved as a kid that I don’t particularly care for now but still evokes memories in a way that nothing else does (McDonalds fries for instance) and there’s food that’s considered fancy and sophisticated and costs a lot of money that I think is overrated and just not my thing (“lobster tails” come to mind) See where I’m going with this? If every time I ate something new I got an exact description of what it was, how it was cooked and what the person who made it was hoping I would get out of it, well, I don’t know what I’d do…
So, just for the sake of completely contradicting myself: I enjoy The August Sons 1989 12″ EP “I Am Not A Vampyre” in the context of the time and place the record was made, but if the circumstances were different, and I was told certain details before listening to it for the first time, or immediately after hearing for the first time without any context, there’s a good chance I’d hate it.
According to Chuck Warner over at Hyped2Death, The August Sons hailed from the town of Wiggins, Mississippi and released this record in an edition of only 200 copies, “Though they could only afford 100 covers, which they hand-decorated with $20-worth of fake blood”. The LP was preceded only by a 2 song 7″ of which only 92 copies were pressed. Listening to this record sure wouldn’t make anyone guess the band was from Mississippi, let alone a town that’s less than 12 square miles with a population under 5000 people. While one could probably guess from the album title and cover, the theme here is vaguely “goth”. I can’t say for sure what point of reference these guys had when it came to the dark musical arts but seeing as we’re talking 1989 I’m gonna go ahead and guess they were pretty familiar with at least a few 4AD artists, maybe Echo & the Bunnymen, and judging by two songs in particular, Suicide. Reading clips of articles and interviews from 80’s zines like Touch & Go, Offense and Cle, I’m aware that the influence of some of the darker English new wave bands like E&tB, Modern English, The Psychedelic Furs, Jesus & Mary Chain, etc was a source of contention between those that were drawn to it and felt like it was a logical progression away from punk and/or hardcore, and those that felt more strongly about sticking to their anti-establishment punk roots. I’m not exactly sure where a band from a small town in Mississippi would have fit in here but if I’m sure of two things: 1. these guys were aware of punk, and 2. these guys were not attempting to sound punk at all. Maybe I’m romanticizing the possibility, but Warner mentions that the leader of the band, “leader/audio gear-head Jerry Scruggs”, was a “studio-jockey in an elaborately tricked-out 18-wheeler studio” so I can’t help but imagine he was probably a bit of an eccentric down there. Either way, it definitely sounds like the August Sons got around as they played both CBGB’s and Max’s Kansas City at various points and they were rumored to originally be one of the first acts Homestead Records considered signing when they first got their motor runnin’. The note on the back of the record reads “*NO SYNTHS OR KEYS USED ON THIS RECORD*” and while I want to believe them, there are certainly some percussive stabs and drums on this record that sound unmistakably electronic. I dunno, maybe they weren’t counting their friend “Roland” as a “synth” or “key” or maybe this is the sorta magic that Jerry made happen in that 18-wheeler studio of his. There’s no mistaking the Suicide influence on “Sharp Jagged Rock” but Scruggs (or bassist Marc Lofland?) keeps his Elvis via Alan Vega drawl pretty toned down compared to say, A.R.E. Weapons’ near impersonation. A lot of the sounds The Sons are conjuring here are pretty unidentifiable gear-wise to my ears and I find that pretty impressive considering the time and place. And that’s where CONTEXT comes in with a record like this.
If I were to play this record for you and tell you it’s a current band from Brooklyn or Detroit or Lawrence, Kansas or San Francisco, I can’t imagine you’d have any reason to doubt me. But if it were a current band I can’t imagine you’d find it that interesting, and in fact, I myself would find it incredibly derivative and unoriginal and not even a decent version of what I assume it’s trying to sound like. I know I get all wound up on here about “paying your dues” when it comes to music but that’s mainly because the amount of garbage out there that sounds like it was created to mimic something else, but doesn’t have any substance or original ideas, is the direct result of people latching on to things without any context. Not all art has to be completely 100% original all the time, but when someone who doesn’t know or care about the art they’re trying to emulate creates the art anyway, anyone with any sort of context for the original will almost always see right through the copycat. Listening to the August Sons, I wouldn’t say they necessarily wear their influences on their sleeves, but in the context of when and where they’re from, I think it’s pretty safe to assume what they were going for and in that lies what makes a record like this so fascinating and worth exploring. Yes, great art is great, and garbage is garbage. And, another man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Even with the little information I know about them, I really dig The August Sons but I can honestly say that if I never saw Chuck Warner’s write up about them, I didn’t know where they were from or what point in time they existed, if I was asked listen to them without any context..I can’t say whether I’d like them that much at all, or if I’d even give them a chance to begin with. And that’s contradicting myself for sure.
August Sons went on to self-release a full length CD in 1993 titled “Sonnets and Parables” and then another full length CD on the Seattle label El Recordo in 1995 titled “Plants, Planets And Insects” (with cover art by the great Art Chantry). By the time of “Plants..” the band’s sound had changed radically from the “Vampyre” 12″, despite still consisting of the trio of Scruggs, Lofland and percussionist Steve Noto. “Plants..” sees a band whose abilities had evolved greatly but had gone into so many odd directions they sound a little schizophrenic and possibly a little desperate to stand out among the hundreds of acts vying for major label attention in the newly post-Nirvava/grunge-explosion era of the mid 90’s. It’s worth checking this album out, again, for context, but overall it sounds like a combination of Pere Ubu and They Might Be Giants with some sound collage and Meat Puppets weirdo-twang thrown in here and there to pay tribute to their roots. The DIY innocence and studio minimalism of “I Am Not A Vampyre” was gone by this point (and that’s what interests me most), but “Plants..” is still an interesting document of a mid 90’s act that were 100% doing their own thing in a short period of time where that was probably still marketable.
Here’s a rip of The august Sons THIRD release after the 7″ and 12″: a full-length cassette only release from 1989 titled “Lyrics & Rhythms” that contains all of the vinyl tracks plus more:
