October 23, 2005

Floating in Formaldehyde

When I was 19 or 20 I moved back to the DC area, after a disastrous attempt to escape to New York by leeching off my girlfriend Nadine’s life savings. I lived in the basement of a group house on North Glebe Road in Arlington, Va with Bruce Merkle, XoXoX (who was dating Bruce’s sister Leslie), Leslie and her kid and many others who came and went. Bruce formed the band Color Anxiety which later morphed into 9353.

Specimen Fred were comprised of RICK (guitar, synth, vocals), XoXoX (synth) and TOM (bass, vocals).

Specimen Fred only ever played two shows. One was an multi-act art terrorism event at DC Space called the FBC Horror Circus, and another time Rick & XoXoX did a dual-synth act opening for 9353.

Penis Surgery at the FBC show (MP3 - 96 seconds)

Rick Rodine was the de facto architect of the band, the promoter (to the extent they ever wanted one) and the person who hand-crafted the individually decorated cassettes that are pretty much Fred’s only physical legacy. I remember visiting Rick in his basement room, getting stoned and listening to the tapes he’d made of himself on guitar, which he’d multi-tracked by playing along with previous recordings, one boombox to another. Rick was very influential among his friends, inventing a strange idiom based on comedy and alienation. He and I collaborated on Fat Bleed Comics and other shit-disturbing flyers and stickers that got distributed by hand to the business-suit class in Arlington, Rosslyn and Northwest DC. (Doing my “research,” I discovered a huge cache of periodicals and flyers by our various friends in my closet. I have no idea to what use to put them.) This carried over into a campaign of cryptic stenciled graffiti messages spraypainted on downtown office buildings. Those perpetrators shall remain nameless. We also used to sneak into abandoned or unguarded sites and climb up tall fire escapes to dilapidated rooftops, among other crimes. Ah, those were the nights.

Most tunes were recorded at FredQuarters, the bright-green-and-dark-purple-painted basement room of Tom’s peculiar mom’s house in ArVa. Though Rick was the prime motivator in the band, it was a real collaboration. Sometimes only two sides of the trio would record (and there were also millions of one-off jams with members of our extended clique).

Often XoXoX (a prodigy who shared my enthusiasm for certain substances) might establish an off-putting, almost non-musical theme on rhythm synthesizer while Tom Crawford (an anti-scenester, very focused guy who mostly liked heavy metal and Killing Joke) laid down an intimate line of precision bass. But there really was no format; the approach may have been technically strict but the product was incredibly varied and largely instrumental. Lack of a drummer forced the band to play it tight. For all I know, Specimen Fred may sound “quaint” to moderner ears, but as an art-damaged young man with a love of Devo, the Residents, Eraserhead and SPK, it all went straight down my piehole without mastication.

Rick is a visual artist living in NYC and Tom has fallen completely off my radar - last I heard he was still married, in Northern Virginia.

After drugs, girls and circumstance conspired to break up Specimen Fred, Rick Rodine joined with Rick Hall, Mike Horsley and Bill Kamens to form the band Rick ‘n’ Mike ‘n’ Bill. There’s lots more history, but I know you’re probably getting bored.

I’ve always dreamed of putting a collection of Specimen Fred material out on vinyl or possibly a limited-run CD, just for the sake of posterity. As you can see, I don’t even know the names of some songs. The members of the group are notoriously averse to promotion - that’s why if you google “Specimen Fred,” this page might be the only relevant result. That’s just a goddamn shame. After you download, post a comment and let me know if you think there’s an audience for this stuff, and then I’ll see what the band’s big-ticket demands are.

Specimen Fred - “Specimen Comes Home”
Specimen Fred - “When You Die”
Specimen Fred - “Yo Pablo”
Specimen Fred - “Another Realization”
Specimen Fred - “Floating in Formaldehyde II”
Specimen Fred - (no title) #23
Specimen Fred - (no title) #37
Specimen Fred - (no title) #35
Specimen Fred - (no title) #25
Specimen Fred - “Those Kids”

Rick at 11:09 pm

7 CommentsÈ

Thanks for doing this, Rick!
But…What, no “Kick in the Butt”?!?!
Harumph!

Comment by Ivan Lerner Ñ October 24, 2005 @ 8:50 pm
this is really good stuff, rick. if it was isssued as an LP or CD, i would gladly pay full price for it, and listen to it often.

Comment by monty Ñ October 28, 2005 @ 1:29 pm
What about the ‘n mike ‘n reunion with myself tour? I’ve toyed with a RMB website. By the way I have very vivid memories of the House and the basement room you lived in. Remember running down I-66 in the middle of the night before the highway was opened to traffic.

-Lee Hiway

Comment by Ed Porter Ñ October 29, 2005 @ 2:20 pm
take one look at the mega-careers of such guitar giants as ERIC CLAPTON, or the songwriting skills of a PAUL McCARTNEY, or the synthesizer prowess of a RICK WAKEMAN, or the virtuoso bass playing of that big nose guy from RUSH, and THEN tell me this little piss-ant recording of a never-was pussy-faggot band named SPECIMEN FRED is even worthy of the my three-day old vomit dribblings!!!! …specimen fred… jesus

-E.S.

Comment by Eddie Sfumato Ñ October 30, 2005 @ 10:46 am
who took the brown thing?

Comment by wi11iam13 Ñ October 31, 2005 @ 9:52 am
Hello!
Nice surprise doing some music searches, came across this.
JJ
(Directed the 9353 video)

Comment by ArtMaggot Ñ January 15, 2008 @ 7:19 pm
Hi Ric, I just talked to Rodine tonight, believe it or not. He told me to google around and find this stuff. We will be collaborating on a future project that he’s promoting in his spare time. Those Fred songs are hilarious to listen to, I haven’t listened to them in years although I do, of course, have ‘em all on tape.

GODDAMN WE WERE GOOD! I still play bass in a local band and we, of course, are also GOOD AS ALL GET OUT! Still playing music after all these years and still loving it!

Drop me an email sometime, I still talk to Jack H. all the time, he’s another one of us “Arlington Loners”, WEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Comment by Tom Crawford Ñ March 17, 2008 @ 10:18 pm