ILLUMINATING DRINK: The Mark Mikel Hallucination Blatant Ripoffs

Thursday 20 December 2007

The Mark Mikel Hallucination Blatant Ripoffs

OMNIPHONIC 1996

This was the actually The Pillbugs before the name change from The Mark Mikel Hallucination They recorded a tribute to other Toledo bands by stealing their songs. Only 1000 copies made. Songs: Serious Folks (The Kind)/I Don't Hope For Her (Gone Daddy Finch)/Belly To The Moon (Uncle Knucklefunk)/Catch My Breath (Tomorrow's Clown)/Busy As A Bee (The Sprags)/Chelsea Day Blues (The Rivermen)/Bessy (The Flecks)/Skin (Moby Jane) bonus tracks: You've Got The Moves (live)/Your Artificial Stand-Up Man (live)/I Am The Walrus (live)/Love Is What You Want (live)/20 Foot Rock Star

Mark Mikel "After the local radio stations stopped playing local bands I knew we just need a good idea to get noticed again so I came up with the brainiac idea of doing an album comprised solely of cover songs by some of the many groups I’d produced records for. The idea was to try and do their songs our way and then give all the discs away at one concert as a tribute to the success of Toledo rock bands. By this time the line up was Mark Kelley, Dan Chambers, Dave Murnen, Scott Tabner and me and the album was a training ground intended to make the band an actual recording entity. The Pillbugs' first recordings are on this in that the first appearance of all five of us would be the live recordings done at Howard's Club H in 1996. A few of those tracks are included as bonus tracks on "Blatant Rip-Offs."

Mark Mikel "I made a reel of tape that I called "The ? Project."I didn't know what I was going to do with these songs (I was used to doing solo albums and there was no Pillbugs yet) and they were mostly experimental. I was recording the songs BEFORE writing them (a method used pretty regularly during the 1st bug CD). The ? project tape turned out to be demos for that first Pillbugs album and it ran like this:Plastic Surgical Holiday
Morning Mr Brain...To You
She Done Alotta Dope
You'd Better Sit Down
The Kick-Around Boy(around this point in the tape I started adding WRITTEN songs)
No Imogene
Comburda (Davey's demo)
Paper Aeroplanes
Pretty Young and Free
As you can see the flow and order was virtually already there. I wrote more parts for Plastic, You'd Better and Kick Around to make them full songs when the bugs re-did them.That was really the second experimental tape I was doing. The first run of experimental (and segue'd) demos was on an earlier reel (while taking a break from Blatant Rip-Offs). That tape was like this:Thou Doth Warm Me (Like The Sun)
I could Never Be A Bird
Black Sombrero
Undecided
Being Myself
Pretend You're Not Home
So the mood of the next album was pretty well set from those demos. I actually used backing vocals from those demos that I wasn't really willing to re-do.Other songs that were written as they were being recorded:
Captain Nemo (demo)
Illuminating Drink (which was originally 30 mintues long and edited down)
Might As Well Fly To The Moon
Goodnight To Babylon (although Dan had the arrangement down to a science- Davey and I wrote the vocal melodies and lyrics after the basic track was already taped)
And here's a credit that never gets mentioned: The lead vocal on the end of "Morning Mr, Brain ...To You" is Mark Kelley."

tomorrow's clowns

April 1995 - The Amazing Music of Toledo Free CD
This compilation was produced during the spring of 1995 and was released that summer. It featured local bands from Toledo, Ohio. It was the first compilation produced (to my knowledge) whereby local-business advertising dollars more than paid for the manufacturing. The discs were then all given away for free through the businesses that advertised.
1 Agent Dating - The Sprags 2 Under My Car - Lush Puppies 3 Being Myself - The Mark Mikel Hallucination 4 I Know How You Feel - The Gigantics 5 I Could Kill You I Want - Gone Daddy Finch 6 The Laughing Truth - Jason & The Argonauts 7 To The World - Pulled Groin
8 Any Door - Rob Seng 9 Stawberry Flavored Cadaver - Evolotto 10 Q - Glide 11 Lorita - The Kind 12 Sing The Song - Tomorrow's Clown 13 Bessy - The Flecks 14 Rode Hard and Put Up Wet - Michael Robert Dearth 15 Soul Sign - The Stain 16 Thoughts - lb. 17 Silence Begins Now - Chicken Dog 18 South Philly Gestapo - 5 Story Fall 19 Godseed - Descendent

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Welcome to the multicoloured world of The Pillbugs

Official Bio. The origin of The Pillbugs can be traced back to January of 1991. That's when Mark Kelley first called Mark Mikel up and asked him to form a new band. Kelley brought in drummer Dan Chalmers and Mikel brought in vocalist Dave Murnen and a guitarist who would eventually be replaced 4 times until they found the perfect fit with Scott Tabner (a mutual friend of Kelley and Mikel's).
They became The Mark Mikel Hallucination and started performing shows around Toledo. In 1996 after a respectable amount of local recognition and radio airplay, Mikel wanted to create a new identity for the group. "They deserved to be seen as equals and not just my backing band," Mikel said, "I came up with the idea of The Pillbugs and that we'd go WAY deeper into psychedelia. We released our first album on CD in 1998 on our own label (Omniphonic). I believe it was the first debut release to contain a double CD's worth of new and never-before-released music. Until someone proves me wrong - that's what I believe. The point is we wanted to make something people had to notice." This first release took off very slowly but eventually (with the help of the internet) became a somewhat sought after CD.
The second Pillbugs CD "The 3-Dimensional In-Popcycle Dream" (originally another double set) was completed in early 2001. With no real money to put behind it, it sat on the shelf until 2003 until later when they signed with indie label (Proverus). "Proverus had us strip down the album to 1 CD (a brilliant move actually) and then we inserted a 3D Viewmaster reel to make it really crazy," Mikel reveals.
That album was released during the summer of 2003. Proverus helped the group get a lot of notoriety (especially on the web) and also helped to book and manage gigs. 3D sold out of the first run in a matter of 2 months (most of them going to Japan). That was successful enough for Proverus to want a follow-up. The next summer they released their 3rd CD "Happy Birthday" though dark times were looming.
Mark Kelley had been diagnosed with a rare form of lung cancer in 1999. By the time "Happy Birthday" was released in August of 2004, Kelley had lost his voice completely and could hardly stand on his own two legs.
Knowing their wasn't much time left, the 5 friends took to recording one last album together. "Buzz for Aldrin" sessions began in Sept. 2004, just as Mark Kelley took another down turn and was admitted to the hospital. Recording continued with The Pillbugs not knowing if Kelley would ever return.
He eventually did return and was able to contribute the bass guitar to most of the album from his wheelchair- with a permanent breathing machine surgically attached to his throat. Then the studio recording equipment broke down and it was in repair for over seven months. "By the time the guy got around to fixing it," adds Mikel, "Mark Kelley was past the point of being able to record with us. It took me a long time to get back into the groove and finish the album."
"But we eventually finished it though the recording sessions seemed jinxed from start to finish."
To provide the right grandeur for the release, The Pillbugs employed renowned California artist Mark Roland* to supply the CD art.
The new Pillbugs double disc set "Buzz for Aldrin" was released by Proverus on June 19, 2007.
The Pillbugs signed with Rainbow Quartz and their first CD with RQ, "Monclovia" was released on Oct. 30, 2007.
Everybody Wants A Way Out their second rainbow Quartz album was released Nov. 10th, 2008.
In March 2011 Mark formed two new combos, The Mark Mikel Band and Dark Ocean Colors with Scott Hunt, with two albums by the latter coming soon on Rainbow Quartz

*Mark Roland is indeed a very talented artist look here for a few more examples of his art
http://www.orycon.org/orycon26/markroland.html

update...and his new website is here
The Art Of Mark Roland
http://www.rolandscapes.com/

Thursday 20 December 2007

The Mark Mikel Hallucination Blatant Ripoffs

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