BOB URH 2013 BIO I was born on just another grey day in Cleveland, Ohio, 1963. Motown was big then so maybe “love child” was blasting through a tiny speaker coming from an AM radio. The first single I bought was “Green Tambourine” by the Lemon Pipers and I had a small 45 player that my mom says I used to dance around dressed like a Beatle. Next thing that caught my attention was “wipe-out,” and then a lot of county music like Hank Williams, Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn, because of two hillbilly bars my family owned. A few years later we were all listing to the Raspberries and the Outsiders. Then punk hit with the Dead Boys and that was it for me -- I loved the bands that were playing in Akron and Kent, Ohio, so I would make trips to these clubs to see the bands that made up the early punk scene there and would take a lot of pictures and hang out. Things were getting out of control in my life in Cleveland so I left and went to Kent State university where I met the future other Ragged Bags at a place they ran called Garbage Inc. Very democratic place, only 50 cents to enter and anybody could play – not just punk bands, but bands that couldn’t get gigs because of their more arty music and image. They also sold buttons with fresh food in them so you could watch it rot later. It was that kind of abstract stuff and tons of self-published books of writing. I was in heaven!! I escaped death in Cleveland and found a new home were I was learning/ working with new friends. I did my first gig in Cleveland at a punk place called the Lakefront. We did a lot of improving quickly and did a 12-track recording and a filmmaker made a short movie about the band that had a great premier on Kent State campus. A lot of speed and gigs, as well as me having an attack of Bell’s Palsy, made me and the band more volatile. And at the point when I thought I wasn’t happy but could have been, I quit and moved to NYC, gave up playing forever. Selling all my stuff except for my Vox tornado that Keith Busch sold me when in the Bags. After seeing Richard Hell read some poetry in Chinatown, and being a huge fan of Jim Carroll’s “I Write Your Name,” music and words, I decided to start playing again and formed a loose 2 piece that got together for some weeks under the name Cream Colored Babies, aka Seasons Greetings. Also started working on a tune that would end up in the Ultra 5 repertoire, Alistair’s Time. Speaking of the Ultra 5, I worked with a couple musicians during the day and they knew of a new club that was opening in Brooklyn and needed bands and the drummer Bob Osuna asked if I would do it IF I had a band and I said yes IF, but I don’t. The next day he came to work and says we’re booked! What? We added John Chua on bass and my girlfriend Ariane Root on keyboard. This lineup would change many times over the years (10) but it was always Bob, Ariane Root, and Tara McMunn with various drummers (14). The band began with three guys and one girl and ended with three girls and one guy with Piki Soul on drums. We recorded and toured a lot from 85-95 then things fell apart due to the usual reasons. In 1992 I started the Lone Wolves and pursued this till 1994. 1995 I decided to change direction with a new band in the same vein as the Stooges/Saints kind of direction called Zero Child named after a Ultra 5 song with Tara McMunn on bass and David Ensminger on drums. And tons of wha wha! We played Mexico City as well as Coney Island, USA and a lot of gigs in every cool dive in NYC and had two CDs, as well as tons of comp tracks, released. After 20 years of playing in “normal ” format bands 4 or 5 piece units and a lot of songs I wrote over the years that would be great finished, but were not band unit type tracks, I formed the Bare Bones. This is a loose band with ever changing lineup depending what’s needed or wanted, from single solo acoustic subterranean blues a-go-go, to a six-piece on the HooDoo Garage recording of Bad World Revisited (recorded in NYC’s Funhouse studio), to a Hypnowheel single recorded at Coyote Studios with Tara McMunn, Greg Clarke, and Tony Matura. The next two albums are solo, with me playing all of Swamp O Delic and The Cha Cha Cha Review, both on Green Cookie records. In 2011 I appeared on the Pirate Cat Radio in San Francisco’s Mission District to have an interview and play 8 songs live. Left Of The Dial said about the Bare Bones: “Senor Urh is best known for his stints as the leading light of raucous garage rebels such as Ultra 5 and Zero Child, New York heathen rocker types who managed to bridge the worlds of camp and the Cramps with the Detroit-dirge of the Stooges. This outing finds him personal and lo-fi, using basement tape possibilities to explore Jeffrey Lee Pierce landscapes of mutant blues punk, esoteric ramblings, and haunted hootenannies. “Iron City Blues” is a crunchy, layered cocoon of mystic words about suns, moons, and industrial landscapes set to churning guitar, restrained earthy vocals, rattling shakers, and interwoven solos. “Ramblin’ Man” comes on slow and poetic, like a noir nightscape at first, with a tambourine setting the minimal Velvet Underground pace, though eventually a free jazz slide guitar seems to stir at the end. The acoustic art shroud of “Black Black Widow” is humid and gothic – imagine Nick Cave on Quaaludes recounting the folklore of spiders on a ratty porch in Mississippi. Some 1960′s garage rock underlines “Zombi-fied,” revealing Urh’s taste for the 13th Floor Elevators and Link Wray, mixed with an equal love for mondo horror movies. “There She Is” sounds like a spare, kitchen sink love poem stolen from the mid-1960′s Rolling Stones, before psychedelia sideswiped them. Other standouts include the bareboned “Boom Boom A Zoom Zoom,” with its lingering swampiness and lurid New Orleans swaying, and the stream-of-consciousness “No Matter What,” which reveals that his “heart’s cut out.” Then he offers the slow, meandering “I’m Sick,” which strips down into casual carnality (“I’m sick, how about you?”). Though this all might be a different musical face than the Au Go-Go punk of the Ultra 5 and the New York dirty boulevard voodoo of Zero Child, the album is naked, candid, and raw – both vulnerable and quietly volatile.” In January 2012 I was asked by all-girl garage band The Vinylators (Mexico) to contribute to three tracks for an EP called Ultrapsychovinylization to be released on Green Cookie. After a successful recording (during my 23rd trip to Mexico) the band asked me to join and appear live at a show with them doing It’s a Long Way Home and Trouble. So now I have a new international psycho-garage band called Bob Urh Y Las Vinylators. After 30 years of playing and releasing psycho-sonic-sounds-galore globally (34 releases since 82) there’s no reason to stop now. Especially with unreleased tracks oozing out of the vaults!! As well Bare Bones tracks for new LP titled Haunted Hootenannies ‘N’ Hoedowns and talk of a full LP for Bob Urh Y Las Vinylators. SO KEEP YOUR PEEPERS ON ULTRAPRODUCTIONS & GREEN COOKIE RECORDS FOR TANTALIZING FEATS OF SONIC SURPRISE! ULTRAPRODUCTIONS, 2013
Posted on: Fri, 20 Sep 2013 23:08:25 +0000
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