The Imperturbable Teutonic Griffin never recorded anything.
Mitch Easter has a long history before Let's Active started recording in the early 80's.
Easter was in the ninth grade when he left the wonderfully named Imperturbable Teutonic Griffin to join a band with an even better (and shorter) name: Sacred Irony. Sacred Irony is described as a "bruisingly loud psychedelic outfit" and that seems to be an accurate description. Sacred Irony recorded an LPs worth of songs and you can hear (and buy!) a couple of those here. They covered the MC5 & King Crimson, backed up Bobby Sherman and got bumped out of a festival appearance by a new group called the Allman Brothers Band. "I See Love" was released on a very good compilation of North Carolina 60's garage bands called TOBACCO-AU-GO-GO.
Rittenhouse Square was Easter's third band with a great name. It's was also the first band that future dB's Peter Holsapple and Chris Stamey would record with. Stamey had previously helped out with Sacred Irony recording sessions. The songs are ,errrruhhhh, interesting. It sure doesn't sound like anything that these guys would record later. Rittenhouse Square self-released one very rare ( only 100 copies, I think) LP on R-Squared Records. I've never seen a copy.
Easter & Stamey went on to form (and break the string of great band names) The Sneakers with another future dB, drummer Will Rigby. They released one 7" EP and a 12" EP called IN THE RED. I found a used copy of IN THE RED and when I was paying for it a copy of the 7" record slid out of the sleeve and onto the counter. The guy that owned the shop snatched it up and said "that's not for sale!" I offered to pay for the 7" and he said that he had been looking for a copy for years and didn't even know that he already had one in his store. Dang.
Both of these records and some unreleased tracks were reissued on one CD in 1992 by East Side Digital. It's out of print but can be found in the better used bins. It's worth looking for and you can hear what Stamey, Rigby and Easter would be doing later on.
And finally the two song that got me started on the whole Mitch Easter post. I don't know when "Prying Eyes" & "Law Of Averages" were recorded but they first showed up on a UK compilation called SHAKE TO DATE. It's a collection of singles released on Shake records, a label run by Alan Betrock. But it looks like these two songs never got released anywhere else.
Tomorrow, I'll post the Peter Holsapple songs from SHAKE TO DATE. And another one from Rittenhouse Square.
Easter was in the ninth grade when he left the wonderfully named Imperturbable Teutonic Griffin to join a band with an even better (and shorter) name: Sacred Irony. Sacred Irony is described as a "bruisingly loud psychedelic outfit" and that seems to be an accurate description. Sacred Irony recorded an LPs worth of songs and you can hear (and buy!) a couple of those here. They covered the MC5 & King Crimson, backed up Bobby Sherman and got bumped out of a festival appearance by a new group called the Allman Brothers Band. "I See Love" was released on a very good compilation of North Carolina 60's garage bands called TOBACCO-AU-GO-GO.
Rittenhouse Square was Easter's third band with a great name. It's was also the first band that future dB's Peter Holsapple and Chris Stamey would record with. Stamey had previously helped out with Sacred Irony recording sessions. The songs are ,errrruhhhh, interesting. It sure doesn't sound like anything that these guys would record later. Rittenhouse Square self-released one very rare ( only 100 copies, I think) LP on R-Squared Records. I've never seen a copy.
Easter & Stamey went on to form (and break the string of great band names) The Sneakers with another future dB, drummer Will Rigby. They released one 7" EP and a 12" EP called IN THE RED. I found a used copy of IN THE RED and when I was paying for it a copy of the 7" record slid out of the sleeve and onto the counter. The guy that owned the shop snatched it up and said "that's not for sale!" I offered to pay for the 7" and he said that he had been looking for a copy for years and didn't even know that he already had one in his store. Dang.
Both of these records and some unreleased tracks were reissued on one CD in 1992 by East Side Digital. It's out of print but can be found in the better used bins. It's worth looking for and you can hear what Stamey, Rigby and Easter would be doing later on.
And finally the two song that got me started on the whole Mitch Easter post. I don't know when "Prying Eyes" & "Law Of Averages" were recorded but they first showed up on a UK compilation called SHAKE TO DATE. It's a collection of singles released on Shake records, a label run by Alan Betrock. But it looks like these two songs never got released anywhere else.
Tomorrow, I'll post the Peter Holsapple songs from SHAKE TO DATE. And another one from Rittenhouse Square.
posted by KS at 2/07/2005 11:18:00 AM
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