Another Exterminator (Eaten By Bugs)- a Jim Shepard thread

http://www.acuterecords.com/Exterminator.mp3

then again, jim killing himself also pisses me off because he let the failure of his one major label release get to him -- he bought into the bullshit of mainstream success and let his failed attempt gnaw away at himself, even if that was only one bit that contributed to his death. i cant imagine what it would be like fucking up my hand and having to relearn guitar.

fuck, i can't say anything clear about Jim. i just know that treasure what i have heard and im glad i had my one chance to see him perform live, even if i was surrounded by a bunch of GbV fans with their backs turned to the band.

"picking through the wreckage with a stick" is overall pretty great. i have "psychic dancehall" and i find the (male) vocals and lyrics a little lacking at times, but i don't think it has found a niche in my consciousness just yet.

"under the blood red lava lamp" = cool!

inarticulate!

haha.

anyway - if it wasn't for dan, i might not have heard jim shepard. so thank you dan, because photograph burns is one of my all-time favorite records.

I've ripped the CDs I have to iTunes and when I get some time will burn more of my favorite stuff from vinyl, I'm especially obsessed with one of the songs on the Launchpad Explosion EP, am hoping to get copies of some of the many things I'm missing, and will at the very least make my own faves CDr.

I recently pulled out Negociate Nothing, too. But, the title track kind of pissed me off when thinking of Shepard killing himself.

"negociate nothing. tear it all down. don't make no promises. leave no one no doubt. wish away cheap stuff bargain basement days. negociate nothing. amber-lit skylight. wander down your own thing. don't give in to anything."

I used to listen to that song all the time and get all amped about creating my own unique life amongst a herd of absolute squares.

yes, perhaps!

will at the very least make my own faves CDr.

ever make this dan?

I still haven't heard Ego Summit!

I'll look for the website...the guy who put it together I thought had it on his label's website, but I can't find that link right now. I see it mentioned above, Mental Telemetry, but that site seems to be down as well.

a v-3 7 inch ep i'm blanking on that wasn't that remarkable

was on Siltbreeze and I sold it years ago.

Now I regret it. It sticks in my head and I miss hearing it.

Next time yer in the neighborhood, stop by the shop and I will GIVE you a copy.

and Ned, i think the Ego Summit LP is still available--try Ed @ Eclipse, since he's in yer neck of the woods now. He may also have the Siltbreeze CD.

The hell? He moved to California?

I have some the Vertical Slit stuff and while good, it didn't hit me as hard as the V-3 stuff.

"Ego Summit" is crucial, I'll have to listen to it tonight

Another day, another relisten to Photograph Burns...

Shit, all I've got is Ego Summit and a stray V3 track or two. And a little Vertical Slit. I've played Ego Summit a lot in the last year. I did an underground Ohio radio show at the beginning of the summer, it was fun.

Just relistened to Unbroken Silence, which I have on a shitty cdr I was given. Want more bad. Never seen any of this stuff in UK sadly.

There used to be scores of quid copies of the Photograph Burns promo all over England. I made me feel sad.

I finally got Ego Summit, thanks to John Allen. It's all great, but of course Jim's tracks standout for me.

Here's one of the songs I was talking about above, digitized a few years ago from one of the V3 singles.

Check-Out Time

man, i wish i had bought a copy of photograph burns back when they were ubiquitous dollar-bin fodder.

This has only stoked my appetite, not sated it. But thank you, Dan.

http://magicistragic.wordpress.com/2008/11/11/v-3-photograph-burns/

these events must be in some way connected. Thank you, o cosmic suggestive power of teh internet's universal unconscious...

Jim was a friend of mine. I saw him play in 1978 at a Nowhere show in Columbus, Ohio. He was in Vertical Slit & I was in the La-Z-Boys. Soon thereafter I recorded him in a record store with my bass player's reel-to-reel and 2 mics I stole from a psychology lab at Cleveland State. That recording quickly became an EP. We tried to play a double-bill at Artreach art gallery, but before Jim could play, and while I was on stage, the police shut us down. It wasn't long before Jim's band left town and my singer took off too. So we formed Phantom Limb with those who remained plus Roxanne, his girlfriend. We played maybe a dozen shows and recorded some at Recording Workshop. And then that split up. I was out of control in many ways in those years. I hope to issue a CD & 7" of those recordings someday. Years later, I had a tiny recording studio. Jim recorded Psychic Dancehall and we assembled Vertical Slit & Beyond there. Jim eventually lived in the studio for awhile. Jim & I kept in touch until his death. Jim was great guy who could easily be called obsessive. I'll always miss talking to him, usually about obscure music stuff. I keep in touch with many of his old friends & Roxanne & the kids as well. I hope that someday we will all have the time to edit Jim's old tapes.......Kurt

Just found a cdr with the trax from "under a blood red lava lamp" and one of the New Age 7's. It holds up pretty good. I think Byron Coley called this stuff "Midwest gaqrage Prog" back then maybe throwing'm in a basket w/early Ubu and MX80.... I saw Jim play many times, I moved to Ohio in '85 and got into the Staches/Browns whatnot rightaway-even tho i ended up much more rocker/metal dude w/a fairly open mind, (saw Marble Sheep in CLE last month-mind blowingly good band).

Anyway I'd just like to give thumbs up to Jims music and the great folks that played with him and note how hes turned into a real legend wit the Columbus Discount Records crowd, I could see them doing a tribute, especially Times New Viking.

the thrilljockey record is Evil Love Deeper and yes it is an absolute MUST HAVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ego Summt has been released on
CD by Columbus Discount. If you go to Amazon you can actually pick up Photograph Burns for 31 cents. And speaking of tributes
myself and Chris Loper did a limited pressing of a double vinyl for Jim and then in 2003 I did a 6 CD - 1 DVD
(featuring two live sets of the original V.3 - their first show in NYC at CBGB's and a show from Staches from right after
Negotiate Nothing came out) box-set. These were projects I put out on myself to pay tribute to my friend who I so dearly miss.
It is an absolutely tragic more isn't being done to get his work out there, but it is around you just have to really want to
hear it. What someone said above when they were wondering if it was because Jim killed himself that perhaps made this person
have a stronger emotional resonance and I just want to say that I always felt a strong emotional resonance with Jim's art
I mean how could you not he was a living breathing ACTION PAINTING! Living and now sadly passed away he always made a
strong imprint because his hands will never sleep. - Charles Cicirella

the thrilljockey record is Evil Love Deeper and yes it is an absolute MUST HAVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ego Summt has been released on
CD. If you go to Amazon you can actually pick up Photograph Burns for 31 cents. And speaking of tributes in 2001
myself and Chris Loper did a limited pressing of a double vinyl for Jim "Matter Dominates Spirit" and then in 2003 I did a
6 CD - 1 DVD (featuring two live sets of the original V.3 - their first show in NYC at CBGB's and a show from Staches from
right after Negotiate Nothing came out) box-set "Spirit Dominates Matter". These were projects I put out myself to pay tribute
to my friend who I so dearly miss. It is an absolutel tragedy more isn't being done to get his work out there, but it is around
you just have to really want to hear it. What someone said above when they were wondering if it was because Jim killed himself
that perhaps made this person have a stronger emotional resonance and I just want to say that I always felt a strong emotional
resonance with Jim's art I mean how could you not he was a living breathing ACTION PAINTING! Living and now sadly passed away he
always made a strong imprint because his hands will never sleep. - Charles Cicirella

Bumping this -- good string of posts that we haven't followed up on!

so, really. when are the reissues coming? an LP reissue of Slit and Pre-Slit to start, please. surely Columbus Discount must know the right dudes to get this sorted??

hmmmm

This is a rare record, no doubt; but more importantly it is perhaps the best Vertical Slit release in their catalog. Tom Lax said in a Terminal-Boredom article about his label, Siltbreeze that he was given the master tapes of Slit and Pre-Slit sometime before Shepard's death with the hopes to one day re-release the LP in a more available quantity. I hope that is still the case someday.

just got this record from fusetron today. so far it sounds great.
absolutely fucking great actually...

ha! i had no idea this was out!

http://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_cart_LG.gif

...I think you meant something else.

uh, no...

just intended for it to show that i just ordered one

Ah right. I thought you were trying to show the cover of the album and I'm all, "Wait..."

fair enough. of course, it's possible that the image i posted is indeed the album cover. bet you didn't consider that one, eh?

And thus I am shamed. (A common occurrence.)

It hasn't been updated in a while, but this blog is great.
http://foreverlowman.blogspot.com/

Just got a new copy of Under the Blood REd Lava Lamp through the post today. Still sealed. Had thought the cd would be long long gone but got that for £5.

Had bought it around the time it was released on Siltbreeze and misplaced the cd. Found the case but plastic holders had broken and cd wasn't in it.
Still somehow managed to get it on the library I put on my walkman after Xmas and tracks turning up on that had me wishing I still had the disc.

Sound is admittedly pretty low-fi. But the music is incredible. I love that bass.
Just been googling them and wish I could lay my hands on the rest of their material. That 1980 video thing sounds like something I'd really love to see. Also see that a very limited edition reissue of the first lp Shepard put out came out in 2010.

Good grief! You want as comprehensive an archive of Jim Shepard on the web as you can get, you got it:

http://obscurowidr.blogspot.com/2014/03/jim-shepardvertical-slitv-3-megapost.html

Also, from one of the comments:

It looks like his ex-wife and son are re-releasing some of classic albums pretty soon here.

Just heard about this...looks pretty cool!

http://smallpresspreviews.tumblr.com/post/119445396595/jim-shepard-negotiate-nothing-by-bela

Nix Comics is happy to announce Bela Koe-Krompecher’s follow up to 2014’s “Do You Remember Rock and Roll Record stores” which will feature his memories of his friend and DIY music pioneer and cult favorite Jim Shepard. Jim began producing and distributing self recorded tapes and records in the late 70s and continued through the late 90s both with his solo efforts and with bands such as Vertical Slit, V-3, and Ego Summit.

Jim Shepard Negotiate Nothing will be a 20 page comic-zine written by Bela Koe-Krompecher with illustrations by Andy Bennett. It will be released at the Small Press and Alternative Comics Expo in Columbus on July 18th-19th.

Jim was a close friend of mine. One of the closest, actually. Despite the fact that we only met for about 10 hours during our two-decade friendship. We first got in touch when his Vertical Slit "Slit and Pre-slit" LP was released in 1977. I read about it in the local music press and gave him a call. We had a long long long discussion and he sent me a copy of the LP. In return, I sent cassettes with music by my band at the time. Since then, we exchanged cassette tapes and letters through the mail on a regular basis, and after a (long) while (starting out around mid 1980's), we tried to make a musical collaboration across the ocean (Jim in Ohio, me in Sweden, then Holland, and finally France). Jim sometimes went to "Kurt La-Z-Boy' for studio assistance. We had a decent amount of material in progress, and my dream was to get together both of us in the same studio and put it all together seriously. Then, Jim's career started taking off with the record contract and the recording of Photograph Burns and the touring to promote it, and our musical collaboration screeched to a halt (but not our communication, nor our friendship - I was thrilled for Jim!). Unfortunately, the Photograph Burns release did not lead to a second release, the communication from Jim slowed down, and then one night I got a call from Roxanne to announce that Jim was not with us anymore. I was devastated. To honor his memory and our project together, I went on to make a CD-R with material we had created, and with music I had sent to Jim for his contributions but him not gotten around to. Only about a hundred copies of that CD-R distributed, but one of them ended up much much later at a Dutch underground label that contacted me (in 2018!) for a vinyl release of selected tracks. I dug up source material, sollicited other involved for any good quality recordings or source tracks, transferred to digital, remixed and (with the help of Sander Wildeboer of the Enabling Works label) remastered for vinyl pressing. A long process that is now finally completed and the album released : SnoOks / "unfinished business". This release is maybe not the type of music you might expect from Jim Shepard. It is not the raunchy style, nor the folky style. More of a synth experimental style. But still poetic and out of the ordinary. Jim was passionate about our project and performed many songs live in concert in Columbus, Ohio before the V3 tours commenced.
Find out more at :
facebook : @Snooksofficial
Discogs : https://www.discogs.com/sell/item/1552862875?fbclid=IwAR3zwa6-2SZ5npseJ1bD5jCuJs6CQr63ym46cmEjl2jrCVegsUg9m4zp6fE
Bandcamp : https://snooks.bandcamp.com/
YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCoML-K2mh8

Wow amazing, thanks for sharing. I'm gonna spread the word on facebook, this is really cool.

Byron Coley called him "one of the greatest inventors of our time." Ron House: "He wanted to be a cult figure." Charles Cicirella phrased it this way: "The impressions he continues digging into our consciousness outlast life's hollow and pathetic excuses."
Just like one of his idols, John Lennon, Jim Shepard died aged 40. I first discovered his work on college radio in the late 90s, shortly after his suicide, and I've been a fan ever since, be it of his ventures into mainstream pop sound or of the more experimental, hard-to-categorize stuff. He is one of my favorite artists. Nudge Squidfish in particular wrote a lot about him, and by all accounts, Jim seemed like such a great person, too.
I'd place him in the same league as people like Iggy Pop or Henry Rollins, but indeed, he is not a fraction as famous as any of them, and I will always be surprised that no one has ever made a movie about Jim while there are two about Basquiat. I think he should be part of every art discussion on the planet. A pop song like "Central Park" or the emblematic riff of "Metal or Meat?" alone would have catapulted lesser artists into stardom. It just seems to me that he was an amazing musician who was overlooked because of a total lack of the secret sauce of professional marketing.
I collected everything of him I could get my hands on, even though I live in Europe and it is tough finding it here. V-3, arguably his main artistic outlet, had a new triple album featuring archived material out late last year, which I listen to almost daily.
What do you think of Jim's writings, e.g. "Drapez"? I have not read his books and don't know where to find them. I would have loved to see his paintings, too.