Silver Currant Blog RIP, Silver Current Records launching!

Hello Everyone,
  After 4 years of posting mp3 downloads of a few fun gems from my archives I am shaking off this incarnation of Silver Currant Blog for a new one that can go deeper on the concept. Within the next month or so I will be launching a handmade record label online that will release limited edition, silk-screened packaged releases along the same lines of the music you've found here in the past; live bootleg style recordings from the past, present and future, demos and lost recordings of interest from the archives and various other kinds of subterranean pieces from bands that I have been involved with in the past and present and now extending outward to include these kinds of releases for other bands that I love.
   Thank you for following the blog as it has existed over the past 4 years. Even though I've been a bit sporadic on the posts due to a heavy touring schedule at times I have been deeply rewarded in sharing and having a dialog about this music with you. I believe that Silver Current's new incarnation as a handmade record label will honor and document the music on a much deeper level by giving it a physical (and beautiful) release into the world so that people that are interested and love this music can have something real for their record collection.
    I have found an incredible art studio for my wife and I to set up the screen printing operation in San Francisco and we will be hand silkscreening all products, each piece stamped and hand numbered.
    My writing and refections will still be a part of the new site as will some of the free download, stream and visual elements that have been a part of the blog over the last 4 years.
    Upon launch there will be lots of live material available in HQ digital download as well as 3 first edition runs of previously unreleased concerts and recordings by Howlin Rain, Comets On Fire and Earthless with much more to follow as I get the site fully launched and dive into the next wave of music I have waiting on the line to print.
   Please follow me over to a new home at Silvercurrentrecords.com. I will hopefully be launching within the next 2 to 3 weeks. Stay tuned and see you soon!
best
Ethan Miller

HOWLIN RAIN, JAMMIN' THE MIDWEST!

Hello All,
I hope this finds you well as spring is quickly running to summer here in Oakland. June has come with a little time off the road for Howlin Rain. Amongst other late spring celebrations and endeavors I've managed to get back through some of the recordings from the winter tour runs. I found the midwest dates had an especially nice cocktail of super jammed out tunes and yet a restless, raw nerve and wild-eyed energy so I put together a comp of highlights from those gigs.
  In the past some folks have asked about hi-quality lossless versions of the releases on the Silver Current blog. I will shortly begin releasing items from the blog as part of a Silver Current "Bootleg" series exclusive to the Howlin Rain merch table and our on-line web store. More on that over the next month or so but for now enjoy "Howlin Rain, Jammin' the Midwest!"

1. Phantom In The Valley
2. Beneath Wild Wings/ Boogie Jam out
3. Dancers At the End of Time
4. Can't Satisfy Me Now
5. Calling Lightning pt 2
6. Hung Out In The Rain
7. Roll On the Rusted Days

get it here:
JAMMIN' THE MIDWEST

The Russian Wilds Harmony Reel

Photo by Hilary Hulteen 2012.

Just back from a Midwest run with Howlin Rain. Thanks to all of you who joined us at the gigs, we had a blast on this tour. The Midwest was beautiful with one foot still in Winter and one foot stepping into Spring (we finished and flew home before the Tornadoes swept the region). We had the pleasure of playing the last 3 shows on the run with Oklahoma's Broncho and Ohio's legendary Buffalo Killers. Both amazing bands and an incredible bill.

Back at home now in Oakland I am working on catching up with my hand held recordings from the SXSW run and the Midwest to post some live comps and gigs here from the HR runs but in the meantime I wanted to share something I put together a few months ago. A while back some folks were passing this Rolling Stone vocal track around of Mick and Merry Clayton from "Gimme Shelter" and I was just floored by hearing it bare like this. The beautiful vintage plate reverb, the finger snapping for time, the huffing for breath between takes and then of course one of the most amazing moments in the history of recorded vocal performances; Merry delivering the 'rape...murder!" line with exploding vocal chords in the 3m--3:15 section and Mick involuntarily hollering out an ecstatic "woooooooo!!!" in shocked praise that clearly remains audible in the final mix. Just like everyone I'd heard Gimme Shelter a million times but I'd never really heard the whole scene and action behind that climactic moment in the song. Now whenever I hear "Gimme Shelter" whether it's on a radio, in the car, in the airport or a bar, when that moments comes all of a sudden my mind is just standing there next to them, Merry 9 months pregnant, nailing her vocals on the first pass and Mick standing there next to her shouting her on in the middle of an empty live room at Sunset Sound. When we hear the music that we have as a final product it is a single entity made up of many unique parts in a system. The tracks all crush together in a mix and instead of roads and mountains and lakes and rivers and celebrations and individual births or funerals and tiny dialogs in this corner or that we hear a song as a single musical world zoomed out until it's just glowing green or blue or red from our distance in the space around it. To me there is something incredibly thrilling and mesmerizing about going in and hearing the tracks by themselves, zooming in from the outer space of a whole glowing spinning song into one section of the world, then closer into one continent, through the atmosphere and clouds, zooming in over a state, than a city, down through 3 different layers of weather, down through a neighborhood, into a air duct system through a spinning tin grate on the roof, into the walls, down through the sheetrock and into the live room where you can hear the puff of a cigarette or the swig of a bottle of bourbon between lines and then the details of the voice so magnified you can hear the nose hairs, the scratch in the throat, the swish of leather boots on the rug at the foot of the mic as the singer finishes a great deliver and spins away from the mic for their beer. It's like putting your eyes on secret letters or photos for the first time in generations that you found in an old chest--though the whole world is different and 100 years have gone by for a moment that breath of passion, those words of love live again between your eyes, the letter and your mind. They come to life in the room, in your hands and in this case in your ears for a fleeting moment.

A few months back Tim Green sent me the stems from The Russian Wilds and for kicks I went through and listened to some of the stuff. I was struck by how detailed some of the vocal arrangements were on a song like "Phantom In The Valley" and yet in the final mix the music was dense enough that although the "feel" of the vocal arrangements remains, much of the detail of their total scope is lost into the greater "feel" of the song--which is exactly what all tracks and elements of a song are supposed to do in a good mix. So I put together a reel of some of my favorite moments, some of the lost dialogs, some of the multi-color details that in final mixing had blended to become a single new color or voice. Originally I just sent this to the Howlin Rain guys and a few friends that I thought might get a kick out of it but over time it has held interest to me as an enamoring peak behind the curtains of a final work where the details of a musical city can spread out again and become individuals interacting for a few more brief moments before being lost back into the history of something greater then themselves.

download The Russian Wilds Harmony Reel:

HERE

you can also watch a slide show of Hilary Hulteen's brilliant photography of Howlin Rain live while streaming on youtube:

HERE

DOUG FIR, PORTLAND, OR, 2/25/12

Hi Friends!

Howlin Rain have been busy on the road since the release of "The Russian Wilds" in February. Thanks to all of you who have come out to the gigs over the past 2 months all across the United States. It's been a fucking blast! We have been deeply humbled at the warm reception of the new album both in the record stores and from the stage, bless you all for your support. Now that we've got a nice string of shows behind us and I have a hard drive full of live hand-held recordings I'm going to begin putting up tapes from some of the gigs from along the way (all in varying degrees of low fi). The first is from the last night of our West Coast tour in Portland Oregon at the Doug Fir Lounge on February 25th. Enjoy and see you soon!

get it here:

Doug Fir, Portland, OR, 2/25/12

PHANTOM IN THE VALLEY

Hello Friends,
Download the first single from Howlin Rain's new album "The Russian Wilds" for free here: www.howlinrain.com. It's been a real journey to bring this album home. We are very proud of it. I will do my best to get some new candy up on the blog soon. Over the past year I have collected more great Rain, Comets and beyond live gigs and archival stuff--some real gems have made their way back to me and been found in the dusty boxes in the closet. For now enjoy a taste of the fruits of Howlin Rain's labors of the last 2 and 1/2 years.
I hope you are all well.

THE RUSSIAN WILDS

STORM THE GATES: GZD Tape club vol IV

Happy New Year everybody! Howlin Rain had a killer winter tour in Europe in December despite the blizzards and freezing weather most of the tour. Thanks to all of you who came out to the gigs, it was great to see you. In the end the vinyl manufacturer didn't finish the Good Life EP vinyl in time for tour so it should be available to ship this month some time. The first pressing is limited to 1000 copies with silk screened covers by Alan Forbes and David D'Andrea. These will sell out very quickly so pre-order a copy here to ensure your copy of this special first pressing. The EP is also available now in digital form, purchase here.

To bring in the new year I am posting another heavy jams comp from the Galactic Zoo Dossier cassette club. I didn't realize when I posted the "Explosive Rock" comp by Steve Krakow that it was actually a part of his tape club series of which I have since become a member. Getting these tape comps in the mail every couple months is nothing short of Christmas 6 times a year! The membership is dirt cheap and analog cassette is without a doubt the best sonic format for killer riffs and dirty lost heavy jams. Write to Steve to join the tape club: plasticcw@hotmail.com. Though Steve's cassette comps run the gamut from "Fuzzed Funk", "Baroque Into Folk", "Avant Pop", "Groove Freex", etc , etc I am posting another heavy riffs super fuzz savage jams edition. There are some old fuzzy favorites here as well as some super rare shit but the comp as a whole is a great day after new year-party ain't over-beer drinking-hell raising soundtrack! So enjoy! Come next week it's back to work on the new Howlin Rain album and we won't be stopping until it's finished. For now, a few more beers and rumbling home stereo speakers! Thanks again Steve!

Storm The Gates: GZD Tape Club vol IV

1. Stack Waddy. With One Leap Dan Was By Her Side, "Muriel" He Breathed.

2. Smile. Blag.

3. Schizo. Telster

4. Wishbone Ash. Jail Bait.

5. Badfinger. Suitcase (BBC)

6. Gun. Dreams & Screams

7. 10 Years After. The Sounds

8. Groundhogs. Soldier

9. Terry Reid. Marking Time

10. Sir Douglas Quintet. Catch A Man On The Rise

11. Dearly Beloved. Flight 13.

12. Rock Candy. Cause We Want To Please You

13. Dantalion's Chariot. World War III

14. Ancient Grease. Women and Children First

15. Pesky Gee! Where Is My Mind

16. Fallen Angels. Something New You Can Hide In

17. Children Of The Root Race. We Are The Dinosaurs.

18. Fraction. Come Out of Her

19. Asterix. Look Out...

20. Nitzinger. Witness To the Truth

21. The Mauds. Forever Gone

11. Som Imaginario. Moise

Get it Here: http://www.mediafire.com/?i10r2erf2wfsw6u

THE GOOD LIFE EP

Album cover artwork by Alan Forbes and David D'Andrea, 2010.

Hello Friends,

As we prepare to embark on a tour of the UK and western Europe throughout December I am proud (thrilled, relieved, short circuiting) to announce that Howlin Rain have a new release coming into the world. No, this is not our long awaited 3rd album, though we are nearly done tracking the new record, making great sounds and progress and should see it's release in summer or fall of 2011. "The Good Life" EP is 3 songs, nearly 20 minutes of new music.

After almost two years of pre-production work with producer Rick Rubin for our next album we found ourselves with an over abundance of material and an increasing gap of time between the forecast release of our next album and our last record "Magnificent Fiend". On the eve of hitting the studio and beginning to record #3, Howlin Rain took a week to step into a studio and complete this mini album or EP. It was envisioned as both an introduction to the forthcoming full length due in 2011 (the songs are exclusive to this EP) and as a piece that cold stand on it's own in HR's catalog as a trilogy of songs that present their own unique journey and sonic arch. After such extended rehearsals and pre-production work we were interested in taking this opportunity to try and produce high quality recordings and performances off the cuff and against the clock that could capture a blend of immediacy and sonic intrigue. All three songs were tracked in one evening live in the same room at Lucky Cat Studios in San Francisco by Trans Am's brilliant Phil Manley and taken back to Louder Studios to be overdubbed and mixed by Tim Green in a handful of days. From the time we set up at Lucky Cat to the time the EP was completely mastered and ready to go was a week and a half. In the midst of a journey to complete an album that will have been years in the making, the Good Life EP is a catharsis of immediacy for us blasted down from a long highway, a postcard from the outer regions where we've been navigating now for a lot of moons.

The digital version of the The Good Life EP, by American Recordings is in gloriously sharp 1's and 0's, the details of our analog recording reproduced and represented in digital for your convenience, each kilobyte of information meticulously placed and crafted by a giant black computer, the only one or its kind, deep inside of the Columbia Records building in Beverly Hills.

The analog version of the EP, released by Birdman Records is a limited edition of 1000 vinyl package. It was printed by RTI on beautiful heavy black vinyl and comes in a silk screened sleeve designed by Bay Area psychedelic artists Alan Forbes and David D'Andrea and printed at Monolith Press in Emeryville.

The vinyl is at the plant getting pressed and will most likely be available in January or February. Pre-Order the vinyl here. Buy the digital EP now from here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/the-good-life-ep/id403876985

best and love

Ethan

Comets & Growing

Tour poster by Arik Roper for Comets/ Growing summer tour 2005.

Wow. It’s been a long time. I have been locked in a jam space in East Oakland with Howlin’ Rain for many moons. My beard is grown long, my hair getting shaggy. The jam space smells irreversibly more like sweat and beer everyday. Well, if we are to believe that time is an elliptical thing in form than no real harm done in wandering your days away in the woods. I have plenty of live shows and comps to post from deep in the archives I just was having a little trouble finding the right thing to really inspire me for the next post. Then two days ago I went over to Noel’s house to listen to the new Sic Alps double album (which is an AMAZING album and also refueled my inspiration!!! Due out on Drag City in the Fall) and while I was there I picked up some files of a session of jam space recordings that Comets on Fire and Growing had made together on a day off in San Francisco in 2005. Like a lot of these old forgotten things that just seemed like beer, friends, loud amps and a dark room with high ceilings during their creation, time has transformed this recording event into an experience full of ghosts and glory upon my listening now. It is altogether more dark, haunted, bombastic and heavy than I remembered it being at the time. It’s strange that only with the passage of time and having forgotten the exact “when” and “why” you did some piece of artistic work can you finally hear it as an outsider with more objective ears. You find the pleasure and admiration of an objective viewpoint, the inspiration of an observer rather than the concerns of an owner. Sometimes these jam sessions with other groups could too easily come off as one of the bands adding to the sound of the other rather than a meeting of minds but on the best days two entities meet in the middle to form a new thing that shines out with the character of both groups in a unique way. Listening now I feel like that has happened quite beautifully here. Another thing that struck me while listening to this session is that the tools and the “sound” of Growing at this time are no longer the tools and the “sound” of Growing today. They are no longer droning guitar and bass through big distorted amps but something very evolved and different and a long way down the road from those roots. To me hearing these recordings feels a little bit like turning the velvet cover back on a birdcage full of memories that have no clear story of your past, just a collection of strange feelings and unexplainable resonance that was no clearer in their original evocation all those years ago. That is not to say that this session was a complicated feeling or that my memories of hanging with Joe and Kevin on tour or recording were complex; quite the opposite. It was a lot of fun, they are great dudes and we drank a lot of beer. All life and relationships should be so simple. What I’m saying is that at the time the music itself felt like good bros, good times and beers and not a greatly resonant piece of music to my ears. Now it holds a more powerful resonance to me since it’s resonance for me has become disassociated from simple “good times”. I hear melancholy, howling, roaring, dancing delicate notes that form complex patterns and tattoo water reflected images across darkly shifting tectonic plates! Great sorrows and pleasures in those drones and hammering marches down old wide streets! Anguished reverb screaming for revenge! Buzzing nonsensical harmonies rolling through subterranean caves! Bats, snakes, dolphins, ocean stones, pillars reduced to broken marble, a field of a million onions under the moonlight! The bubbling of mineral water up from the stones in the last undiscovered foothills on earth! Brilliant child Gods in black satin capes drunk on Sangria and throwing peach pits into the gears of the wheels of time! Etc Etc.

What I can remember about this session is that it was recorded during the daytime at our practice space on 3^rd st. in San Francisco most likely between September 1^st and the 3^rd of 2005. Comets and Growing had toured the Midwest and Eastern U.S. together in June and July of that same year. This is just a few months later and Growing was out on the West Coast to play the first Arthurfest in Los Angeles which Comets also played. I believe this recording session was the night after a Growing gig but I don’t remember if Comets played the gig with them the night before. It was recorded with two PZM mics most likely laid out on the floor at either side of the room between the amp line and the drums, recording to either ¼ inch reel to reel 4-track or an 80’s Tascam cassette 4-track (the latter seems more likely as that was our main machine to use for jam space recordings). We ended up with 6 jams on tape ranging from 7 minutes to over 30 minutes in length. I have taken what I felt was the summary and best of those tracks to present here in the form of what would have been released had we ever decided to. These three tracks are completely unedited and in their original form as I got them from Noel except for a little EQ. It’s possible that he may have edited them when taking them off the original 4 track tape but I doubt it due to their length and rough edges. “Untitled 2” cuts off at 20:45 most likely due to tape running out. The other two seem to run completely through the jams from beginning to end.

All the best to you and enjoy!

Ethan

Get "Comets & Growing" here: http://www.mediafire.com/?k7olke1i7m696ae

Fitz Heavy Riff Comp II

Baris Manco rocking the Bosphorus

From across the Atlantic, all the way from the heart of East London comes the 2nd Riff Comp from the notorious John Fitzgerald. This gem is the second installment of heavy riff jams from the Fitz vault that he has made for me to help inspire the riff writing process in the epic Howlin Rain pre-production journey for our next record. Loaded with international rarities and lost western dance, funk and straight up heavy freak out fuzz and rock classics. In 2010 Fitz has also gone live broadcasting his world wide heavy jams in his "International Psychedelic Podcast". These podcasts are amazing!!! If you've ever ridden shotgun in a sprinter van careening at 90 miles per hour through the Swiss Alps in November while Fitz blasts Edip Akbayram and Baris Manco and exclaims with wonder (with both hands off the wheel) how beautiful Selda must have looked on her wedding day on the Bosphorus with the eastern sun shining down on Asia Minor behind her---well, these podcasts are as close as you can come to that particular exhilaration without actually going on tour! So let some Peppermint Tea steep, set out a bowl of Licorice and Pistachios, jam the podcast and you're as good as in the passenger seat. For the Podcast, go to your itunes, click "advanced", select "subscribe to podcast" and paste this URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/DOODcast. You can also click that link to stream.

In the meantime, here is Fitz Heavy Riff Comp II:

1. Lena. Curtis Knight

2. Omar Khorshid and His Ma. Omar Khorshid and His Ma

3. Whole Lotta Love. Dennis Coffey

4. Black Tears. Witch

5. Girotondo. Il Balletto Di Bronzo

6. Itt A Nyar. Sarolta Zalatnay

7. Yellow Cab Man. Gun

8. East Side Story. Bob Seger and the Last Heard

9. Basak Saclim. Bunalim

10. Flying. Space Farm

11. Blister on the Moon. Taste

12. My Sorrow. Chico Magnetic Band

13. Deniz Asto Koporor. Edip Akbayram

14. Spotkanie Z Diablem. Krzysztof Klenczon

15. Evolution. Lobby Loyde

16. Sha-La-La. Thin Lizzy

17. The Day the White Flower Bloomed. San Ul Lim

18. Exit. After Life

19. Ana Dell. Cheb Zergui

20. Dearg Doom. Horslips

21. Let Me Love, Let Me Live. Aphrodite's Child

Get it from Media Fire: http://www.mediafire.com/?yyjwyg5t0ft

Jack Rose, The Athenaeum, Fredericksburg, VA.

Photo by Ethan Miller, Jack Rose performs at Arthur Fest in Los Angeles, 2005.

Friends, we lost a damn fine artist in Jack’s passing. I am a big Jack Rose fan and his music has and continues to bring me a great amount of joy and inspiration. I wanted to do some kind of memorial for Jack here on the blog and in the end I felt that sharing one of his performances would be more illuminating and intimate to his friends and fans than anything I could write. I have been told that Jack approved of the taping and trading of his shows. Philip Smoker has given me a beautiful live show of Jack’s from last summer in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Phil, also a great Jack Rose fan, felt that this show in particular had an exceptional quality and intensity. I encourage any and all of you to write memories, thoughts, fan’s notes, whatever you want about Jack in the comments section. If you have live shows that you have taped, photos, video or any other item capturing Jack as a musician or a friend and you don’t have a way to get them to his family please email me here: howlinrain@gmail.com and I will help get them to Jack’s family. I’m sure any and all would be appreciated.

Here is an excerpt from an email that Phil sent describing the show:

“…the venue was an old 250+-year-old building with massive exposed wooden beams that had been converted into a bookstore and arts space. There were various seats and sofas and folding chairs scattered around, all occupied but not crowded, as the room was getting muggy from the lack of modern climate control. Everyone lit up when Jack took a seat on the small wooden stage, and he played as brilliantly as ever. He broke a string at one point, and the whole place gasped in unison, but he took it in stride and coolly changed guitars. I met his mom and a few other family members throughout the night, and they seemed thrilled to hear him play. I wish he'd played longer, but I thought that every time he played… listening to this set in headphones, I feel like he's sitting right there in front of me, in a room full of people that deeply care about him, playing beautiful notes and melodies that I just never get tired of hearing over and over...”

I post this gig with loving memories of the handful of performances I had the pleasure of seeing and in honor of Jack's great and joyful music. It continues to ring with undiminished power and vibrancy.

Jack Rose. June 18, 2009 @ The Athenaeum, Fredericksburg,Virginia.

1. Cross the North Folk

2. Dusty Grass

3. Kensington Blues

4. Linden Avenue Stomp/ Everybody Ought To Pray Sometime

5. Luck In The Valley

6. Now That I’m A Man Full Grown II

7. St. Louis Blues

8. Woodpiles On The Side Of The Road

9. The World Has Let Me Down

Download from Mediafire:

http://www.mediafire.com/?wyzw1dwjmon

Howlin Rain Live @ The Sidecar, Barcelona, Spain. 11.12.08

Photo by Le.Aguant 2008.

This Sidecar show is a warts and all event no doubt about it. The recording quality and "looseness" of the band are all part of the glory and charm. This show holds a very fond place in my memory both for the audience enthusiasm and because an old friend of ours from Humboldt County, Aolani Beere, came down from the Spanish hills where she now lives as a gypsy musician to join us on violin for a 12 minute version of "Nomads". To this day I feel that the sound and soul she brought to our song with her playing is among the most transcendent and beautiful moments in the history of Howlin Rain's music. Alas, Aolani's bright star is not the only thing special about this show. Herein also lies the sound of a band that is road weathered. Here’s the thing, I believe that every band that tours in album cycles, usually anywhere from 6 months to 2 or 3 years per cycle, straddles this "performance elevation" trajectory that goes something like this: first 3 or 4 months the band is sinking into the songs and trying to really harness them. At 4 to 8 months the band has both enflamed the power of the beast, enlarged it and at the same time has harnessed it and controlling it nearly to perfection---this zone is the perfect zone to see a band play live in---it's when they take the stage and just command the room, the songs, your emotions, your adrenaline---they are doing something where intellect, physicality and primal knowledge have combined to create transcendent performance. This phase is a high-energy phase and for a few reasons can leave the band with a bit of a serotonin depletion in the next phase. Somewhere around 9 months and on up to the finish of tours (some bands can hold the "in the pocket" phase for up to a year or more but usually it's 9 months or so) a couple things can happen. Because the band has played the songs so many times, the power and tightest moments of the songs and the set are starting to lose some of the high for the band--thus the drug “come-down” metaphor. Musicians inspiration, just like listeners ears, can't just keep beating out these musical subtleties and climaxes and transcendent connections with the same conviction and finesse over and over forever. So at this phase as far as I've seen 2 things usually happen. One is the band has just memorized everything including seemingly spontaneous feeling etc and performs in a satisfactory way so that the fans get to hear the music and see the performance and, they don't feel ripped off, but deep down there is a nagging feeling that a ghost is walking over the grave of the music you so deeply love. This happens a lot when you go see a world touring stadium band that is in their 2nd year of touring a hit record. The other thing that can happen is that because the big headlines and bold print of the songs are no longer providing the challenge and rush that they once did the band begins to look between the lines. A crack fiend endlessly brushing his hand over a white shag carpet for crack crumbs that most likely never fell there--but the motion is wild, focused and invigorated. Or a mad man no longer reading the bible itself but now attempting to decode it's meaning by studying the nuances of color in a plain white wall. The band still has the pedal to the metal, fists white-knuckled on the wheel, burning the fuel reserves down to the rolling gravel at the bottom of a rusted tank but the wheels are coming off the rig and the vehicle is coming apart fast. The Finesse, the precision, the tightness is gone and rusted through but the maniacal pursuit of these things continue. Anyhow, that's all to say that this second option is where Howlin Rain was by this show in Spain. We were days from the end of a year and a half of touring these songs and to me there are echoes of life confusion and tour psychosis there. In a subtle way, Between the notes. There aren't a ton of guitars in this recording. So of course I will be putting up a guitar heavy show at a later date to counter that aesthetic misrepresentation. Despite the lack of guitar bombast this one is about the ghost in the room---not a good or bad ghost---just kind of strange. This is one of my favorites, warts, partying Spaniards, Aolani, ghosts and all.

Get it here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?jem5dtyoywi

Comets On Fire "The Black Cassette"

I was going through a box of old tapes the other day and found this artifact. The Comets On Fire "Black Cassette". This sucker is so rare and forgotten I didn't even give it a catalog release number on my Silver Currant label when we made them. Just its number out of 21 made. Most often in Comets, Noel or I would make these at 2:30 am the night before heading out on tour and we'd just pull old rehearsal recordings from out of a box of hundreds that we have and find a couple killer 20 minute free jams and dub one on each side and there you go. So that's what this is. The cover is made of black lightweight construction paper, the comet symbol is burned into the paper by bleach, the Comets title is silk screened in gray ink and it was numbered in pencil. I'm not positive about this but it sounds like these jams were probably between Blue Cathedral and Avatar, I guess that's sometime in 2005 most likely. Side one sounds like the full band: Utrillo, Flashman, Noel, Myself and Chasny. Side two sounds like myself, Flashman and Utrillo but Chasny or Noel or both could be in there---it's hard to tell. Most likely this was recorded by Noel on a 4 track that we just used 2 channels of with two PZM's laid out on the floor haphazardly and would have just been a regular beer guzzling practice night. It's likely that both jams were completely spontaneous rather than riffs or songs someone brought in.
There is also a "White Cassette" that exists that I am trying to find to put up here but I am having trouble finding it in the vault. Will keep looking though. Enjoy!

Comets On Fire "Black Cassette"
1. Side One
2. Side Two

get it here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?i2anmuoln1l

Explosive Rock comp! by Steve Krakow. Further adventures into battered, broken and bizarre rock and roll!

Sorry for the silence on here. For some reason of the other I’ve just sort of neglected the blog for a while. I think my head has been a little out of it. Don’t know why. I’ve got a few buddies who have written me recently and spoke of a similar low grade early spring depression. I read on line that perhaps I should try putting twice as much gin in my G & T’s and then drink half as many G & T’s per day and I have been doing that but I have added a white wine chaser and it seems to be helping.
One reason I’ve been neglecting is I have got the new incarnation of Howlin Rain as a power rock 4 piece up and running and we’ve been rehearsing like madmen. In recent years I kept experimenting with mellower and mellower music with Howlin Rain and then when we hit the road last year forever I just kept wanting to work the songs into heavier and heavier jams on stage. It’s a blast to make mellow jams in a studio. Maybe even more fun than making heavy jams because there is so much room for nuance but then when you hit the stage it just feels so goddamn good to feel like you are stepping in to the gladiator’s arena to do battle to the death with heavy jams. I can feel these new 4 piece Rain jams like a hungry lion trying to eat me for lunch. You know, you feel like you're under the shadow of something big and wild and you can’t outsmart it you just have to try and tear its eyes out while it takes you down to the dirt and blood.
Another thing that kind of got the spark a little hotter in the engine recently was running into this old cassette tape that was in the car the other night. Yes, my wife’s car has a cassette player still so that’s where cassettes go to die. “Explosive Rock Comp” made for me years ago in 2003 by Steve Krakow aka Crimewave. In fact I’m not totally sure it was made for me or if he already had a library of comps with different themes made up, but at the time I got it I was just immersed completely in heavy-psych-garage-explosive rock from all the touring and album making in Comets on Fire, being in a heavy psych rock band, the bands we’d play with, the music people would give me. Even though I'm pretty sure I asked Steve to make me the comp, I just didn’t want to hear “heavy psych rock” for a spell at that point. I thought the comp was well above average of course because Krakow is like the Library of Congress of lost rock and roll and I remember listening to it quite a bit when I got it but it wasn’t until March 30th, 2009 (4 days ago), that I really got the full impact of this killer comp.
My full taste for busted gnarly broke dick savage rock and roll has come back full force in the past year or so and when I pushed this dusty, rattling old cassette into the player I got my mind blown. It was just what I wanted to hear. You may know some of these songs and bands or you may never have heard any of them. It is indeed a great "Exploding Rock" comp either way. It’s an incredibly inspiring riff comp also for you song and riff writers out there, and perhaps even more inspiring are the wild solos. Lots of unhinged, fuzzed out , I don’t give a flying fuck cause I’m on speed and acid and I have this Hi-Watt cranked solos!!!
So I guess the long and the short of it is that this is the second in the series of “Great Riff” comps (more to come) that I have been given that I am using as inspiration for heavy riff writing but this one waltzed out of a corridor of my past to find me instead of me asking for it. Well, I asked for it in 2003 or whatever but it hibernated in a glove compartment and came back to me when I really needed it for inspiration.
A couple notes about the comp itself. I have transferred it to mp3 from cassette. Krakow’s shit came from his 7 inches and albums not mp3s. He made this before all this on line shit was mainstream. It’s questionable whether he even has a computer now with any music on it. Some of the songs skip when he made it. That’s just how it is. I like to think of it as part of the charm. He probably dropped the cherry of his joint onto the 45 as it was recording and was frantically trying to brush it off and knocked the needle but didn't go back and rerecord the jam because he was on a roll.
Amen!
Thanks Steve, in case I never said it back in 03.
Nobody love's the mother fucking HULK!!!

Explosive Rock!
1. Futilist's Lament. High Tide
2. Its Too Late. JPT Scare Band
3. Why Can't Somebody Love Me? Edgar Broughton Band
4. Hassles. Fresh Blueberry Pancakes
5. Chauffer. Black Cat Bones
6. Vacation. John Mayall
7. Cradle Rock (Live). Rory Gallagher
8. Virgin. Brain Box
9. Is There A Better Way. Status Quo
10. Wonder Woman. Attila
11. Nobody Loves The Hulk. The Traits
12. Only Good For Conversation.Rodriguez
13. Seven Times Infinity.Sunlight
14.Lame. Incredible Hog
15.I'm A Freak. Wicked Lady
16.Grey Skies.Northwest Company
17. Can't You Feel It. Water Music
18. It's Just the Way I Feel. Mt. Rushmore
19. Sticky Living. BB Blunder
20.Child He Die.Rats
21. Photogenic Jenny.Curfew

get it here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?ni5nztxtemt

Howlin Rain Unreleased Haunted Acoustic EP from the Vaults: "Three From A Phantom Saloon"

This is a 3 song EP that Joel and I recorded at Louder Studios in SF with 2 acoustic guitars and a piano. It is 3 Howlin Rain songs rendered into mutant acoustic versions. We mostly just ran tape and played and sang with a piano overdub or a vocal overdub here or there when we felt we could do better or to round it out. It was a quick little session that we did in one evening in some left over time from a mastering or editing session that was for something else to do with preparation for Magnificent Fiend's release back in late '07. I just came across them and took a listen the other day and they sound raw but beautiful and ghostly to me. More like ghosts than old songs and recordings usually sound to me. I Especially dig the haunted saloon piano vibe and "Romancing The Stone" soundtrack-esque acoustic solo. The proper accompaniment drink for this EP is a tall Vodka with Club Soda and plenty of fresh Lime. AKA the Tim Green fave.

Howlin Rain.
"Three From A Phantom Saloon"

1.In Sand & Dirt
2.Calling Lightning pt 2
3.Nomads

Photo of Ethan & Joel at Old East Oakland practice space by Hilary Hulteen, 2008.
download here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?zjzn2nncju4
Enjoy!

Monk's Rules To His Band

This has been posted elsewhere and is not exclusive to Silver Currant but it is just such a simple yet transcendent set of commandments I wanted it here too in case folks had missed it elsewhere. Click on the image to enlarge for viewing. Fellow musicians, these are your marching orders, they will never fail you!
Peace

The Lost Electric Six Organs Of Admittance Album

This is the unreleased Electric Six Organs record. It’s a short record because the tape ran out on one song. I think of myself as fairly unsentimental. I am much more of a “fuck the good old days” kind of guy but listening to this for the first time in years the other day took me back for a moment to May 22, 2002. Usually when I listen to a record I’ve made or even happen upon a bygone rehearsal tape I can’t for the life of me imagine what I was thinking, where I was or why it was done this way. Perhaps it is because this tape is so raw and off the cuff but when I listened to it again I could really see the room, remember where everyone was standing, the lighting, the kind of beer we were drinking, for once I could understand where, why and how we did it.

It was made during the Field Recordings From the Sun rehearsals. Ben Chasny decided that he wanted to do an electric project with some of the Six Organs songs. He wanted a mellow groove oriented backing band as a platform and a foil for wild guitar and the Six Organs narrative and asked Comets On Fire to be the band. We set out with the idea of doing a few short rehearsals and then record an album with my Otari 8-track. The album was recorded but never released and in fact these recordings are from a 4 track reel to reel in what I believe was the first rehearsal. In the end the 8 track stuff just never had the same energy we captured that first time so that is why you are hearing that instead of the 8 track recordings, these would have been the release. Unfortunately the tape ran out on the end of “Even if You Knew”. Fuck it. We did tour Electric Six Organs alongside Comets on Fire on the U.S. West Coast including Canada. But this was before Field Recordings came out and really very few people saw us. I think Chasny even designed a record cover for the LP release of this album but at some point it fell from his grace or just fell to the back of the burner and then off the stove completely, I'm not sure which.

I can hear so much of that excited reckless energy in what we were doing with our music at that time in these recordings. In Chasny’s soloing and the general vibe of Electric Six O songs there is this incredible blend of spiritualism and nihilism. I guess to me, that’s often been the complex, struggling and overwhelming element of Six Organs in any of its forms, but I feel like that battle is laid out in a very raw and explicit duel in these three songs. Chasny's soloing was different in these sessions, it had a different tonal character and a different sense of space. Perhaps that has something to do with the groove beneath it--that element of swing groove rhythm isn't common to the Six Organs sound. There are some beautiful ghosts of melodies haunting the feedback on this record that I've never heard him do in quite the same way on later albums. I believe that up to this point Six Organs was still pretty much acoustic on record and live. This was kind of the gateway into the electric Six Organs phase, or the incorporation of electric instruments into Six Organs. That phase has since been incorporated in sometimes more subtle ways and sometimes more extreme ways but the roots of many of those ideas are here as an experiment, a beginning point.

One of my favorite anecdotes of this period, and forgive me if I’ve told you this one before, was on the way to the studio during the Field Recordings sessions at Tim Green's and we were all so excited about recording in a real studio for the first time. We had all the major basic tracks in the can too---in fact originally we had so much material and length that Field Recordings was going to be a double album but we brought it down to just over half an hour in length---good move!) and Chasny was going to lay down solos and perform “The Unicorn” that day and he was seriously hung over and in a fairly black mood and told us if we had any balls we’d take the master tapes from this record when it was finished and pour gasoline all over them and then bury them in a tar pit and dig them up in ten years and release that! For some reason, perhaps because I was on the brink of finishing my first real album and it was such a precious accomplishment to me that the thought of that was so horrifying but somehow wonderful at the same time. That really stuck with me over the years. Chasny wrote me the other day and told me he actually finally did make a record and buried the tapes and was going to dig it up in some years and release it. Pretty killer.

Electric Six Organs.
Recorded in San Francisco, May 22, 2002

1.1000 Birds
2.Close To The Sky
3.Even If You Knew

Musicians:
Ben Chasny, Vocals & Lead Guitar
Noel Harmonson: Bells and Rhythm Guitar
Ethan Miller: Rhythm Guitar
Ben Flashman: Bass
Utrillo Kushner: Drums

Chasny in Europe Photo by Mathieu Betard.

Get Electric Six Organs Album here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?t4quz5nzjmt

Enjoy!

ARIK ROPER'S BEAUTIFUL MUSHROOM BOOK!

My good friend Arik Roper, (you may also know him as the graphic artist for both Howlin Rain albums, High On Fire, Earth, The Black Crowes, Sleep and many other album covers, posters, t-shirts, Arthur Mag illustrations, etc) is about to see the first major publication of his work in book form. In early April Abrams will release an extraordinary coffee table book on Magic Mushrooms illustrated by Roper. The publishing world is a whole other mother fucker and as a friend and a fan it gives me a great deal of pride to see Arik's accomplishment and hope that his beautiful water color work continues to reach an expanded audience. Visit Arik's website for pre-order.
Congratulations Arik! Fuck Yeah Brother!!! Next stop the California school curriculum!

http://arikroper.com/

Abrams Book description:

"For centuries hallucinogenic mushrooms have participated in a sublime relationship with humankind, thanks to their psychoactive chemicals that shift and modify the human mind. Arik Roper's exquisite painted portraits of magic mushrooms illustrate more than 90 of the known hallucinogenic species from around the world. He captures their powerful auras, adding to a tradition of Mushroom art that stretches back more than 400 years.
Popular culture critics Erik Davis and Daniel Pinchbeck provide background and testimony in elegant essays, and mushroom expert Gary Lincoff contributes notes. This beautifully designed and profusely illustrated mushroom bible will appeal to nature lovers, mushroom hunters, and enthusiasts of all things psychedelic."

Unrivaled International Psych, Savage Jams, Broken Rock & Battered Soul Comp by the Mighty Fitz!

As the premiere posting olive branch I present to you a shrine of psychedelic music. This incredible grail of savage jams, battered Soul and international Psych warriors was compiled by the legendary John Fitzgerald (aka Fitz) for me after I told him that I wanted him to make me a "riff" comp to inspire me to write heavy riffs for the next Howlin Rain record. Fitz has booked and driven and promoted Howlin Rain across much of the UK, Europe and Scandinavia in the last year and most of the time some glorious unearthed heavy psych gem was blasting from the stereo, out of tune guitars wailing, drums pounding, some foreign rock god or goddess shrieking bloody murder in some unrecognizable but hypnotic tongue as our van screamed down the M1 or Autobahn! Fitz is a true lover and collector of underground and the esoteric of international hard rock psychedelia, the more riffed out the more beautiful. Thank You Fitz!
Please enjoy and share.

FITZ KILLER RIFF COMP.

1. Metamorphi. Four Levels of Existance
2. Lagoa das Lontras. O Terco
3. Ve. Erkin Koray
4. Human Being. Coloured Balls
5. Egy Lany Nem Ment Haza. Omega Redstar
6. Noc Je Moja. YU Grupa- Yu Grupa
7. Negros Son Tus Ojos. Las Grecas
8. Let Me Start. Telegraph Ave
9. Bullets. Zipper
10. Gdyby's Kochal Hej! Breakout
11. Sevenler Aglarmis. 3 Hur-El
12. Violence. Blue Phantom
13. Nao Fale Com Paredes. Modulo 1000
14. Toma El Tren Hacia El Sur. Alemendra
15. E Assim Falava Mefistofeles. O Bando
16. Cynthy-Ruth. Black Merda
17. Thinking Black. Ike Turner & His Kings of Rhythm
18. Midnight Train. Tommy James
19. Your Love Has Been So Good To Me. Ruth Copeland
20. Show Stopper. Iron Knowledge

Get comp here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?zlywiemlnjx

The Birth of the Silver Currant Blog

Good Day,
Welcome to Silver Currant!
I now have a place to post music, books, photos from the road & recordings and gin and tonic ponderings of all sorts that relate to the Howlin Rain or anything otherwise. I have named the blog after my first and only record label; Silver Currant, that I began in Santa Cruz, Ca. in the late 90's. All my releases were usually limited to about 10 copies or so, cdrs and were all hand silk screened covers. I think we released about 2 or 3 Comets on Fire live shows in the Silver Currant cdr roster and so far one Howlin Rain live disk---all those beat out the edition of 10 mark and climbed well into the hundred range! Anyhow, thats where the name comes from. I may be a little slow getting started but I'm going to post some killer tunes and other delights soon. Enough bullshit---I will do my god's honest best to keep the bullshit rants to a minimum and tunes, art and strong cheap dope to a maximum here!
PEACE
Ethan Miller