So, yeah. Played a pretty decent first Distant Trains set to open up the show on a pretty typically sparsely-attended Wednesday night at the Mews. Went over better than I expected. Todd On Acid is definitely a character. S.E.R.F.’s set was a drunken, technically-plagued mess, but a cool sweeaty rock and roll mess, though I’m not sure they themselves appreciated it as such. Part of rock and roll is playing your songs right, but part of rock and roll is also getting a raucous party vibe going, and they definitely succeeded on the latter. Even when they’re off playing-wise, they’re still a really fun bunch of guys to have up on stage, and I think folks really enjoyed it.

The headliner and definite highlight was The Bassturd. I think he’s always had this show-business-parody angle to what he does, but a lot about his show has tightened up to the point of downright professional, his timing seamless, his array of lighting gadgets, a mix of christmas lights and various Spencer’s Gifts/truck-stop-souvenier material, has gotten impressive enough that he did his set with no stage lighting whatsoever, playing keyboard entirely by touch. Hits such as “Fucking U Down” (with amplified accordion, of course), “Dirty Dirty South,” and “Bling Ballz” were in the set along with Devo covers from his tribute CD The Important Sound Of Things Falling Apart. The audience was mostly established fans very familiar with his material, and he was successfully goaded into doing a bit of “David Geffen Is A Pedophile.” Dan was totally on and in his element, and it was a joy to see him play such a solid show and to hang out with him.

Last night’s show came about as the birthday wish of Kim Hutchison, noted artist and wife of Why Make Clocks frontman Dan Hutchison, that he reunite two of his old bands, the goofball punk of Going To Grandma’s and the bloody-minded prog-punk of Fetal Pig, both featuring brother Jeff Hutchison, and the former also including Jeff’s Blutiger Fluss bandmate Jim Duede. Neither band came with their original bassplayers, however; yours truly did the job for Fetal Pig, opening the evening, easily among the most challenging sets of music I’ve learned and played in my life, and following a second set of no-nonsense rock and roll from Squidboy, Why Make Clocks drummer Will Tarbox took up the bass guitar for Going To Grandma’s, his first performance ever on the instrument. I’d expected GTG to be a fun band, what I hadn’t expected was that they would also be so good. Well written songs with lots of vocal interplay and sing-along choruses.

It’s been intense, playing new and old material for the first time. All humid weather and good times with good people. A lot of folks at last night’s gig seem to think we should play these tunes more often. I’m up for it.

I’m gonna do it kind like the solo gigs I been doing since ’08 or so, with drum machine and looper, but playing bass instead of guitar, and playing it loud and slow and sludgy the way Distant Trains rolls. I could maybe use a bandmate though, for future performances. Maybe someone who plays both drums and spaced-out synthesizers.

The show is at Vaudeville Mews here in Des Moines this Wednesday at about 9:30 pm. The Bassturd is the evening’s headlining attraction, and deservedly so; if you have not seen The Bassturd yet, you really should. The man is a songwriting keyboarding rapping improvising accordioning juggernaut of hilarity, absurdity, and awesome. A past collaborator of The Bassturd is also on the bill, Des Moines O.G. songwriter Todd On Acid, and newfangled local psychobilly outfit S.E.R.F.. I’m not quite sure what the order is other than of course The Bassturd goes on last.

I would have posted this bit of news much earlier but shit has been hectic in Centipede Land. I moved from a rented split-foyer in southeast Des Moines to a cheaper and lower-maintenance apartment in West Des Moines and started a new job as a combination Ruby On Rails programmer and server admin and possible development team lead. It’s the kind of job that forces me to learn a bunch of new shit to keep up, which is the kind of job I like. I went to 80/35, which I’ve already written about. I worked out an apartment-friendly headphone-based practice setup for bass + drum machine. I bought a Stylophone, and that kept me kind of busy for a while. I’m reading about four books at one time. In the process of moving, I unloaded a lot of random, bulky, oddball possessions that I didn’t really have much of a use for any more, but I’ve still got a lot to go. Feel free to make me an offer on a Yamaha CP-30 electronic piano or an epic collection of pencil sharpeners, including a ton of those die-cast metal ones that look like old cars and appliances and shit. The collection of Pascal programming books didn’t sell as well as I had hoped, most ended up in the recycle bin. My Atari 2600 and large collection of cartridges and accessories will be going to the International Video Game Hall Of Fame being started in Ottumwa, Iowa, in hopes that they do in fact appreciate the significance of Chase The Chuckwagon.

Anyway I didn’t start Centipede Farm to be a personal blog, in fact I very expressly started it not to be a personal blog, but you know, I’m sure that’s all interesting shit, and it ties in in some ways with my musical projects. Another rad thing I’ve got going on is the Fetal Pig reunion, which also involves a reunion of yet another classic ’90s Des Moines band, Going To Grandma’s. It will also be happening at the Vaudeville Mews, this Friday, along with another classic Des Moines rock band that needs no reunion because they never went away, Squidboy. Learning Fetal Pig songs, which are these crazy complex riff-fests that sound like a cross between The Minutemen and King Crimson, has been an awesome mind-bending experience and one that I hope will influence my writing for Distant Trains. There is talk that since we’re getting the songs down pretty tight we should go down to Luke’s and record an album.

See you Wednesday and Friday
(Now listening: Sleepy Sun – Fever)

I’ve been having a hell of a good time working with Dan and Jeff on this Fetal Pig reunion show. If you heard the tracks from their cassette EP I posted a while back and thought those were something, they don’t quite do justice to the material we’ve been working up. Seems Fetal Pig had a pretty productive period writing songs after coming out with that tape, and we’re doing a set that pulls pretty heavily from that stuff. And that stuff takes the heavy prog angle of the band a few steps further yet. It’s really expanding my bass vocabulary in ways that I hope will come out in future projects.

Distant Trains was actually going to perform live! There was an early show scheduled at the Mews with My Empty Phantom and Blutiger Fluss next month, but My Empty Phantom canceled so the whole show was scrapped. My plan was to do kinda much like what my solo shows have been in the past, except with bass instead of guitar. I think it’s a good outlet for the heavy intense side of what I’d been working on, whereas I plan to also do a more folky thing, without the drum machine, as just Chuck Hoffman. Might get myself an acoustic guitar for that eventually.

Anyway that’s pretty much all I have right now. I have a bunch of albums that have come out recently that I want to write about, and probably will soon, once I get a couple more listens of them in.

I just had practice earlier today with the reunion lineup of Fetal Pig that’s going to be performing at Vaudeville Mews July 23rd. The lineup is the brothers Hutchison and myself (interestingly, this same lineup has performed as Why Make Clocks once, at The Replay Lounge in Lawrence). It was awesome. Des Moines old-skoolas ought to get your asses out there for this show — Going To Grandma’s will also be doing the reunion thing on that show (same Hutchisons are involved).

“The Centipede Tapes” is supposedly going to be a feature where I post odd or obscure stuff that I digitized from my vast archive of cassette tapes. Assuming I can keep it up.

Up first though, is a tape I got from Dan of Why Make Clocks, of the band Fetal Pig — four studio-recorded songs they put out in 1996. It’s a good thing the cover didn’t look like much (just a pink insert with text on it) because I don’t have a scanner right now anyway. The brothers Hutchison, heard here on bass and vocals (Dan) and drums (Jeff) can now be found in Why Make Clocks and Blutiger Fluss; Karl Siemers on guitar later joined Why Make Clocks, then after a few years moved on to, oh I don’t know, bartending, and then nothing I guess (the circumstances of his departure from WMC are better left un-delved-into here).

Anyway, Fetal Pig had a tight, dissonant, declarative sound full of musical left-turns, rather like a mathier, more longwinded Minutemen. It’s pretty rad stuff.

“Inversion”:

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“Hear Me”:

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“Power Slide”:

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“Invalid”:

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And just because I have them, here are rough recordings of two more Fetal Pig songs dug up from a rehearsal tape:
Blue Collar Sheep
Meaningless