Harry Pussy - A Real New England Fuck Up LP

Label: Palilalia

"The 1996 Shadow Ring / Harry Pussy / Charalambides 'Rose Watson' tour. There were two vans, three bands, two drivers. Tom Lax was at the helm, rationing the booze and blasting Killed By Death Volume Whatever all through the Midwest. I walked out of a gig in Ypsilanti and tripped on a large dildo. Soundmen held their ears in Cleveland. We rolled out of Rochester (after Adris and my bandmate Jason blew an entire soundcheck screaming insults at each other in Spanish) and the soundman stuck his head in the car and yelled 'don't ever come back!' Byron Coley booked a show in Amherst with an audience of zero. Harry Pussy and Shadow Ring played, we didn't, and everyone was hanging out afterwards in front of the Unitarian Church when the local bus pulled up. Its lone occupant stepped out, looked around, and asked 'Is this where the Harry Pussy show is?' The TT's show, snipped from the end of this tour, was a shambolic near disaster. The fact that a recording survives at all is a minor miracle. We arrived to witness openers the Cotton Kings fleeing the venue after eating a bunch of acid, destroying the PA monitors, and swiping Adris's cymbals, which one tripping, bathrobe-clad member slunk back to return later. Mr. Lax tried to calm me down by feeding me bourbon shots. We played. The PA was shot and we couldn't hear each other. I hurled my guitar across the stage, poured my beer over my head, and threw a pair of slides into the crowd, narrowly missing Wayne Rogers. Harry Pussy took the stage and sandblasted the night into oblivion, while I hid in the van (Mac: 'What the fuck is your problem?') until I was sober enough to attempt to find the Greyhound station and catch the first bus back to Houston. Christina spotted me wandering off and forcibly dragged me back into the club." - Tom Carter / Charalambides