Damage
 | Damage was a band out of Winterpark, Florida circa '84. They played hardcore music with synthesizers. Whereas Screamers and Nervous Gender were very inventive and threatening with their use of synths, Damage was extremely clunky and ineffectual. |
These songs came from a 1984 7" on Spacefish Records (Click the image for complete cover) According to this message board, Damage also has a full length. If anyone knows anything more on this band, please post.
Damage - Jay Walk (mp3)
Damage - Fight Or Die (mp3)
Damage - Jock Mentality (mp3)
posted by Gregory Jacobsen at 9:21 PM
12 Comments:
i have a demo tape of these guys somewhere. called tennis shoe massacre or something. it is exactly as you describe. gotta love them.
These guys did a tour around 1988 and I saw them in Houston. They were pretty bad - two guys with keytars and a drummer. I found a cassette of their LP in the mid 90's and it was exactly what you would expect.
I used to own the LP! It probably came out in the late 80s, I vaguely recall a glossy color photo cover, unusual for punk bands at the time. Also the record was clearly a cheap pressing & had a clear plastic dust jacket, which I always associate with "inferior." The LP wasn't very good as per expectations. - Chris R.
They did have an LP as that message board said, but it was not called Synthology, but rather Euphoria...and NO, alas, it's not very good. The drum and vocal production is sure glossy. The title track sounds like All or Dag Nasty with just synths and drums. The cover photo of the band rockin' out with keytars is about as fun as this record gets.
--DJ Rick
I can tell you all a bit.. I knew them and worked with one in another band.
Two of the guys in Damage were Mike Brown - who sings and plays the high synth - and Joe Livingston, known as Skeeter and also a local DJ on drums. I worked with Skeeter in an industrial band and knew Mike a bit. The third guy I do not remember but all three ran Spacefish records and later opened a club spacefish in downtown Orlando. Club Spacefish was shut down in the early 90s due to lawsuits following an infamous G.G. Allen set at the club in which he threw his s**t at the audience. In any event I went to Full Sail recording school also and I did my final mix in engineering class of a Damage cover of "Radar Love" - it was much better mixed and aggressive than this - this EP is Damage in high school. There is more stuff out there - probably alot of Full Sail student reels. Later they added more distortion and it became pretty powerful and it was not as cheesy as this EP - and they were great live. Mike was never into sequencing so it was always live playing and gearwise they are using two Moog Liberations - the strap on Moog synth Devo did ads for.
The blog about Club Spacefish is correct. GG Allen was the last show there and the demise of the club was also the demise of the band. Skeeter, the drummer, and Mike Brown, bass synth, went on to play in a band called Disco Biscuit. Disco Biscuit released a CD called, "Tightening the Screws", and an EP called, "Cornell Brain Collection". Mike played a real bass guitar in Disco Biscuit. The other guy in the band was Dave Gage. I recommend the CD they put out. It's not the best recording ever but some of the songs are really good.
Good luck finding it though.
RE: Disco Biscuit. Mike played bass guitar in it till he moved to New York. I was bass player after that. Mike's on Tightening the Screws and I'm on Cornell Brain Collection. We were in the middle of recording a full-length when I moved to Vermont... The drummer for Disco Biscuit was Ed Schumann. The other keyboard guy in Damage (bass KBD, IIRC), was called Puke. I remember he used to eat a lot of the profits at Club Spacefish...
Hey, just wondering if these are the same guys who are on Mystic Records' compilation, Mutiny on the Bowery.
The track is Yah Die Ho.
I want to include that track in my one and only blog post (so far) but I want some info/links on them.
Any clues?
I doubt it- as the comp was a colletion of NY,NJ,CT bands. This Damage was from Florida. Although! Maybe I'm wrong...but I bet there millions of punk bands called "Damage"
Ok, thanks. I did check out Joe Livingston's site (info in one of the comments) — guess I'll ask the man.
Info about the NYC Damage here, courtesy of Eric (bottom of comments via the link in my first comment on here).
That was my band!
The EP you're referring to was recorded on a Fostex 8 track by a friendly, sometimes drunk skinhead in a storage space in melbourn beach florida during our high school years. That EP started out bad and got worse for a lot of reasons but mostly lack of experience on our part. Still, I like it for it's raw ugliness/crudeness but I wince when I hear it.
The first cassette (tennis shoe politics) was recorded live direct to a radio shack 'realisic' cassette deck in the warehouse of my dad's business (he didn't know about it). That was even earlier, like 1982 or 83. I think it's terrible but we thought it was pretty cool back then.
Anyway, I'm glad I came across the discussion. We really enjoyed recording with everyone at full sail and did put out some LPs and toured around. The best part was playing with and seeing some of our favorite bands like Government Issue, SNFU, Battalion of Saints, Dead Kennedys and many others.
- Mike
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