STEEL POLE BATHTUB Some Cocktail Suggestions EP 1994

by request

 
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Steel Pole Bath Tub is an American experimental rock band that was formed in 1986 in Bozeman, Montana by Mike Morasky (guitar/vocals) and Dale Flattum (bass/vocals).
They moved the band to Seattle, Washington where Darren Mor-X (drums) joined the band, before they all moved to San Francisco, California.  

Tracklist

1		Ray	6:08
2		The Living End	3:25
3		Slip	2:29
4		Hit It	3:43
5		Speakerphone	4:34
6		The Wasp Jar	5:03

 

STEEL POLE BATH TUB The Miracle of Sound in Motion 1993

Discogs

Artist Biography by Steve Huey

Enigmatic noise rock trio Steel Pole Bath Tub crafted a grungy, droning, offbeat sound from a palette of fuzzed-out bass riffs, blasts of guitar feedback, and tape loops, plus a raft of alternately kitschy and disturbing dialogue samples from vintage TV shows and movies. Additionally, the band had a penchant for deconstructive covers of rock classics, some of which appeared only on 7" singles. Critics were split on the effectiveness of their often repetitive compositions, with some praising their originality and others bemoaning a lack of consistent songwriting polish. A highly unlikely bet for commercial success, Steel Pole Bath Tub nonetheless managed to score a major-label contract (albeit briefly) during the alternative rock feeding frenzy of the mid-'90s.
Steel Pole Bath Tub was founded in Bozeman, MT, in 1986 by guitarist/vocalist Mike Morasky and bassist/vocalist Dale Flattum. After moving to Seattle, they joined up with drummer Darren Mor-X (born Darren Morey), a veteran of the local early-'80s hardcore band Mr. Epp (which featured future members of Green River and Mudhoney). Taking their name from a feature in a true-crime magazine (a Clue-type combination of murder weapon and location), the trio relocated once again, this time to San Francisco.

Steel Pole Bath Tub landed a deal with the Bay Area indie label Boner, which was also home to the Melvins in their pre-Atlantic days. The band's debut album, Butterfly Love, appeared in 1989, and was followed in 1990 by the Lurch EP (both were later combined on a CD issue). These early releases established the band's fascination with pop-culture references and TV dialogue snippets, and led to several Bay Area side projects: Morasky teamed with Boner label head Tom Flynn in Duh (aka Death's Ugly Head), and the whole group worked with Jello Biafra under the name Tumor Circus.

Fans and critics tended to agree that Steel Pole Bath Tub really began to hit their stride on 1991's Tulip and its follow-up, 1993's The Miracle of Sound in Motion. During the same period, Morasky and Flattum teamed up (under the aliases C.C. Nova and Bumblebee) in an electronics-oriented side project called Milk Cult, which gave their interest in sampling a whole new outlet. 1994 brought a new Steel Pole Bath Tub EP, Some Cocktail Suggestions, which would prove to be their final work for Boner. Slash Records -- at the time a subsidiary of Warner, though they would shortly switch affiliations to London -- offered the band a major-label contract, perhaps swayed by similar jumps from Steel Pole influences the Butthole Surfers and labelmates the Melvins.

Steel Pole Bath Tub's major-label debut, Scars From Falling Down, was released in 1995. Due to copyright concerns, their trademark dialogue samples had to be held in check, which placed more focus on the band's music itself. In 1996, they set about recording a follow-up, initially hoping to cover the Cars' debut album in its entirety. Slash, unimpressed with the postmodern prank and the demos of new material that accompanied three Cars covers, promptly dropped the band from its roster. Caught in limbo, Steel Pole Bath Tub gradually drifted into oblivion. The bandmembers remained active, though -- in 1997, Milk Cult received a grant from the French government to join an artists' collective in Marseilles, where they recorded an album that would be released in 2000 as Project M-13. Morasky subsequently went to New Zealand as a special effects technician on Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, while Flattum retired to North Carolina to pursue the visual arts while working for a software company. Morasky (now calling himself Agent Nova) and Mor-X reunited as Novex in 2002, pursuing a style similar to Milk Cult on their debut, Kleptophonica. Meanwhile, Steel Pole Bath Tub finally recovered the rights to their lost major-label follow-up, and issued the material in 2002 on the 0 to 1 label as Unlistenable (the title a quote from Slash executives' response to the tapes). The group briefly reunited that year to perform at the Beyond the Pale festival.

 

 

 Tracklist 

1	Pseudoephedrine Hydrochloride	5:26
2	Train To Miami	4:46
3	Exhale	4:09
4	Thumbnail	4:48
5	Down All The Days	3:43
6	Carbon	3:59
7	Bozeman	2:57
8	Borstal	4:42
9	594	4:06
10	Waxl	2:58

DUH Blowhard 1991

Discogs

Review by Ned Raggett 

It has to be said, it's a wonderfully funny/dumb band name, and having the painting of a moron or something similar on the front cover beneath the big red letters of said name is deeply, wrongly entertaining. But is the album any good? Constructed from folks in the Boner/Steel Pole Bathtub orbit, including veterans from groups like Star Pimp, Blowhard is somewhere between a put-on and seriously rocking out, and it's not too clear where the boundaries are. With lead vocals from one El Bobo, the quartet kicks up a rough, aggressively produced stink; while the result isn't exactly Steel Pole Bathtub redux, it's clear that the connections had an impact. Guitars and bass both show the expected in-your-face, heavily produced crunch from said band, artily aggressive and all the better for it. Where things get a little goofy is in the lyrics; though they're hardly needed to enjoy the music on its own terms, a quick review of the various chants and screams in the CD insert indicates a deep San Francisco area in-joke at play. Sure, some things like Jello Biafra's name listed for no particular reason seem more like they're there than anything else, but then there are tracks like "The Second Coming of Mike." Winners from this one include the chorus "I've got it all/My legacy: Maximum Rock and Roll," referring to the punker-than-thou Berkeley indie fanzine of note (though its founder and editor was Tim Yohannon). Not that everything is quite so directly sharp, but even the more cryptic lyrics read a bit like intentional parodies of something else -- whether it's the band making fun of itself or with someone in mind is admittedly unclear. Even if the targets are fictional, though, the nuclear body slams that appear in "Mr. Mud" and "Spaghetti and Red Wine" are a hoot. 

Tracklist 

1	Spaghetti And Red Wine
2	Transformer
3	Solo Hanneman
4	The Second Coming Of Mike
5	Tugboat Anchor
6	Hex
7	Mr. Mud
8	Hot Day For The Ice Cream Man
9	Brick Catcher
10	Solo King
11	Dim Bulb
12	Wiley Coyote
13	And She Said

MILK CULT

Love God

1993

Burn or Bury

1994

Discogs

Artist Biography by Steve Huey

Milk Cult was a Steel Pole Bath Tub side project spearheaded by bassist Dale Flattum (aka C.C. Nova, aka Agent Nova) and guitarist Mike Morasky (aka Bumblebee). More electronics-oriented than their main vehicle, Milk Cult gave the duo an arena to explore their interest in sampling, tape manipulation, and found instruments. The results sounded more like industrial music than the guitar-driven SPBT, but were often just as noisy and chaotically surreal. Nova and Bumblebee kicked off Milk Cult's existence in 1990, and issued their debut album, Love God, in 1992 on Boner Records; a portion of the record was devoted to their score for the Frank Grow film of the same title. Flattum subsequently issued a solo C.C. Nova album, confusingly titled Milk Cult Dispatch, in 1994 on Communion. Milk Cult's next effort was 1995's Burn or Bury, released while SPBT was in the middle of its short stay on a major label. Burn or Bury featured guest appearances from Faith No More's Mike Patton and Billy Gould, Jawbreaker's Blake Schwarzenbach, and the anonymous Conko, among others.
With Steel Pole Bath Tub stuck in label-imposed limbo in 1997, Nova and Bumblebee managed to score a grant from the French government to join an artists' collective in Marseilles. They spent a year recording the material that would eventually become 2000's acclaimed Project M-13, which featured deconstructions of traditional Corsican singing, Buddhist chanting, and a large African orchestra, among a vast array of other sources and guests. Morasky then moved on to work as a special-effects technician on the Lord of the Rings films, and Flattum took his Agent Nova alias to a new project, Novex, which reunited him with SPBT drummer Darren Mor-X.