CEREBELLUM
Dates: 1988-1989
Members: as young lads
Jon Cook - Bass
Will Chatham - Drums
Joe Mudd - Vocals
Tim Furnish - Guitar
Breck Pipes: Guitar
Drew Daniel - Vocals/Percussion
MP3
Fire
DISCOGRAPHY:
|
September 19, 1989
Cerebellum
cassette & DAT
[SDK-1] color copied inserts, clear acetate labels with gold embossed printing
The following text is by Scott Ritcher of Slamdek: http://www.slamdek.com/releases/sdk01.html
Slamdek’s eleventh release was the debut cassette by Cerebellum. The
band set forth to tear down cliques and barriers that were beginning to form
in the Louisville punk scene by presenting themselves as nothing more than
a band. A flyer handed out at one of their first shows read, “Cerebellum
is a band. Let’s not try and figure out what kind of band Cerebellum
is, and just accept us for what we are - musicians with a cause. No labels
tonight, or any night, please. We want you to accept the bands for what they
are - bands. Enjoy them for what they are without ignoring their cause. Do
not ignore.”
“
The sheet of paper in front of you is for you to read, and to give you an idea
of what the cause of the band is. It contains not lyrics, but meanings of each
song. We have done this in order for you to get a better understanding of Cerebellum.
Read, listen, dance, enjoy...”
Cerebellum formed during the summer of 1988 after the breakups of Spot, Able
To Act, and Lead Pennies. Spot brought Joey Mudd (vocals and metal) and Breck
Pipes (guitar) to the group. Lead Pennies brought Will Chatham (drums) and
Jon Cook (bass and vocals). Tim Furnish (guitar) joined after leaving Able
To Act. Drew Daniel (metal and vocals) was added later, after Cerebellum
had already begun performing. As a six piece, Cerebellum did a lot of instrument
swapping and was famous for the ridiculous amounts of time they spent on
stage
between songs.
They tried to shift emphasis in the Louisville punk scene from
being tough and textbook punk, to expressing emotions and speaking the truth.
Music seemed
to hold a
deeper place in the hearts of this band. It seemed to be much more important
that the message in the music was genuine and sincere, rather than just a good
message. It showed in everything from their common enthusiasm, to the unconventional
instruments they used. It wasn’t unusual to see refrigerator coils, steel
jugs of bleach, or traffic light covers on stage alongside the amplifiers.
Joey Mudd wrote a short biography of the band in February 1989. It ended with
the line, “We’re playing music we feel.” There were more
words continuing that line, but he scratched them out to leave it at just, “We’re
playing music we feel.” This one simple sentence summarizes what Cerebellum
was about perhaps as well as any could.
The Cerebellum cassette also seemed to summarize what Slamdek
aspired to be about: a total group effort put forth by people who all wanted
to achieve a
common goal. Three members of the band, and members of their families, were
directly involved putting together the cover artwork. The typesetting was done
on an early Macintosh at the Furnishes’ Everett Avenue home, then printed
on a laser printer at (Tim’s younger brother) Simon Furnish’s school.
Their mother, Denise Furnish, made a photostat of the type to reverse it to
white on black. Drew and Joey put together the colored cover design. And Tim
selected the photos for the inside.
When it was all nearly ready, Tim, Joey, and I made the pilgrimage to Kinko’s
on Hurstbourne Lane to have the color copies run. The page was laid out with
the front and back of the cassette insert laying side by side. In doing this,
after say, a hundred copies had been run through the color copier, those prints
could be turned over and fed through again. An identical copy could be made
on the back of each, which could then be cut into two hundred (first-generation
copy) cassette J-cards.
As it turned out, printing a design which was almost solid black on two sides
of the sheet tended to make the finished product fairly heavy. Because of all
the black ink on both sides of the sheet, the Cerebellum tape covers had a
weighty, glossy feel. Almost like thick, glossy paper would feel. And this
flabbergasted those in the Endpoint camp who had campaigned so heartily for
heavier, glossy paper. March 2, 1989, Cerebellum at Juniper Hill:
Will Chatham, Breck Pipes, and Joey Mudd.
For the cassette labeling, I stole an idea from one of my SSDigital customers.
Mark Miceli, a local new age keyboard artist, self released a cassette called
Je Suis, and
|
 |
 |
March 2, 1989, Cerebellum at Juniper Hill:
Will Chatham, Breck Pipes, and Joey Mudd. |
March 2, 1989: Tim Furnish of Cerebellum at Juniper Hill. |
March 2, 1989, Cerebellum at Juniper Hill:
Jon Cook and Drew Daniel. |
had me do the duplication. Mark’s cassette labeling was
amazing. Instead of having paper labels or on-shell printing, he had clear
acetate die-cut labels printed. The lettering was then stamped into them with
gold foil. The embossed impression it gave was a reflective, metallic look.
There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that the looks of these totally blew
away that of the Endpoint tapes. However, that was not the intention. Oh, well.
Over the years, through the abuse that punk rock cassettes take, they didn’t
hold up too well. After hours of baking on hot dashboards, Cerebellum labels
would wrinkle, and eventually make the cassettes difficult to fit into car
tape decks.
Endpoint and Cerebellum recorded at Juniper Hill for their Slamdek
releases during the same set of days. Cerebellum first entered the studio on
a cool
Saturday morning, March 2, 1989. Endpoint came in the following Saturday afternoon,
March 11, as Cerebellum was mixing and finishing up. The two projects were
studies in contrast. Endpoint’s was seventeen songs, while Cerebellum’s
was five. Endpoint’s had a focused sound, while Cerebellum’s deviated
by the song. A party at Karen Sheets’ parents’ house on Friday,
March 17 capped the excitement of the time. Both bands played steamy sets in
the basement, as Bush League, playing out for the first time, opened. Two live
Cerebellum tracks, “Guard” and “Hurt,” taken from Karen’s
jam box recording of the
show, later appeared on the 1989 Christmas tape.
One interesting note is that the second song, “House,” contains
a tribal/rock drum beat, which, alone for four measures, was intended to begin
the song. A problem with the tape reel, however, caused the drum intro to be
distorted. This happened during mixing when it was too late to fix. The band
decided to omit the drum intro and just have the song start. When Sunspring
covered “House” for the 1991 Christmas tape, drummer John Weiss
learned the song from a tape of the Karen Sheets show, which included the drum
intro. So the original, intended beginning of the song could finally be heard.
As fate would have it, though, a recording error on Sunspring’s master
DAT clipped the first two beats. This went unnoticed until days after the band
had left the studio, after which it was too costly to remix the entire song
for the sake of the intro.
Sunspring’s recorded version of “House,” therefore begins
just as Cerebellum’s does: straight in.
March 2, 1989, Cerebellum at Juniper Hill:
Jon Cook and Drew Daniel.
For the fourth song, “Marble,” Drew takes a break from rhythmically
banging on metal objects, to take the vocal duties. It begins with acoustic
guitars, and Drew’s soft, smooth, wide open voice. This makes it a deadringer
for the Smiths, and was, oddly enough, written the night before they went into
the studio.
The final track is the I don’t feel quite so right and I want to feel
better but I don’t know how anthem , “Calm.” Sung by Joey,
he always contended that “Calm” was a live experience and should
have never been recorded. In any event, the six minute, fifteen second epic
which closes the Cerebellum cassette is a testament to the band’s abilities,
and versatility.
By the time anyone’s life was changed by hearing the Cerebellum tape,
the feeling was ancient history. Cerebellum broke up in June 1989, three months
before the release of the cassette. Jon, Tim, Will, and Drew had been working
on a new set of songs under the name Crain. During a series of disputes, Breck
and Joey ultimately left the group thinking it was over. To their surprise,
the remaining members performed the following weekend at the tiny Cafe Dog
on First Street at Broadway. A crowd packed the room which crammed about thirty
people, and the sidewalk which held another fifty or so. Crain began their
performance playing their new songs. Soon enough they broke out some Cerebellum
numbers to the audience’s delight, and Joey and Breck’s dismay.
Within weeks, Cerebellum was buried with the formations of Crain and Crawdad.
The latter was a straight ahead hard rock band, with Joey singing, Breck on
guitar, Kevin Coultas on drums, and David Ernst on bass. March 2, 1989: Tim
Furnish of Cerebellum at Juniper Hill.
In other related business, the Cerebellum catalog number and cancelled Self
Destruct 7" deserve a sentence or two. First, why is Slamdek’s eleventh
release marked SDK-1? (Especially considering the releases before and after
it are HAHX-1256 and HAHX-1799). Well, before Cerebellum even entered the studio,
Jon Cook and I had a conversation. In so many words, Jon wondered why Slamdek
tapes had such ridiculous catalog numbers. They weren’t in sequence,
they gave no hint of the label name, and there were obviously not 1,256 Slamdek
releases. I explained that they meant nothing, they were just there to make
it look like something a little bigger than it really as. Jon pretty much said
he didn’t want some big, huge number on the Cerebellum cassette. I gave
him his choice of the catalog number, and he chose “1.” SLAMDEK/Scramdown
had just been picked up by Phonolog Reports, that big yellow index that’s
in every record store in America, who had issued the label the “SDK” abbreviation.
Cerebellum became SDK-1. This made Jon happy, and was fine with me, too. As
it was my favorite release, and remains so today, SDK-1 seemed an appropriate
number.
A seven inch single of these same recordings of “Fire,” “Marble,” and “Calm” was
also planned before the band recorded. The Cerebellum 7", titled Sarah
Who?, was going to be on Self Destruct Records. However, time delays and disagreements
between the band and label owner Mike Bucayu eventually drained his patience,
and the record was scrapped. The Cerebellum cassette sold 225 copies.
Plays
on both sides:
Fire
House
Winter
Marble
Calm
