Dear Friends,
I’m having some fun with this fake band bio, for sure, but it is more difficult than I thought it would be. Let’s get back to Bukake Culkin.
*****
Bukake Culkin part two
In an interview published in the Phoenix New Times in December of 1992, Hunt’s Tomb Records founder Todd Swenson talked about seeing the band play live for the first time:
“I was intrigued by the name, as I think we all were, so I when I saw they were playing with Fork and The Unthinkables at Rancho de los Muertos, I had to go. They blew my mind, to be honest. I wasn’t expecting to see such a young band look so comfortable on stage. The interplay between Gator (Nancy Randall) and Ferdie (Fernando Prince) was amazing and John (Preston) ruled the stage. I was in from that moment and wanted to record them,” said Swenson.
At first, Bukake Culkin thought Swenson was pulling their leg. The label was fairly new and had only released a few things up to that point, but Swenson was respected in the scene for having been in the popular Phoenix band, TCW (Truffles, Cunts, and Whores). Cisneros and Swenson exchanged numbers and within two weeks, everyone shook hands and agreed to record the now 11 songs Bukake Culkin had written. If nothing changed, the running time of their debut record would be just over 19 minutes.
The band was excited to go into Blue Sky Studios in Mesa and work with Swenson and his engineer, JC (short for Joseph Campbell) Birnbaum in mid-October. They spent three days tracking, a day mixing, and then sent their recording to local Phoenix legend, Dave Shirk, for mastering. By the end of October, Cisneros and the band had created their album art and the music and art were off to a pressing plant in Mexico for a short run of vinyl. Swenson worked with the folks at Scorched Earth in Tempe to do CDs.
One of the first difficult conversations the members of Bukake Culkin had was how to order the songs on the record. Prince and Smythe, for example, thought they should go in the order they were written, but Randall rightfully argued that while this made sense, it really didn’t flow as well as she thought it could. The band had just played a show at the Art Cage opening for Trance Syndicate’s band, Johnboy, and their set had really flowed. Randall thought the album should follow the set list. After what became a slightly tense conversation, the band agreed that the Johnboy setlist was a really good order and that was that. Here it is:
“There’s No Crying on Indian School”
“I Quit My Job”
“Junius Wilson”
“No Such Thing As A Hate House”
“Crystal Is A Method Actor” (new song)
“Plunging The Clogged Neckline” (new song)
“Song For Jesus”
“Hand Full Of Culkin”
“Rough Kitchen Sex”
“Birdy”
“Magic Powers” (new song)
Cisneros called a band meeting to talk about the need for a press release and a bio of the band. In just a little over a year, Bukake Culkin had gone from being a high school band practicing in a garage to needing a press kit. They had a hard time taking it all seriously.
They had decided, as a band, to put very little personal information on the record. While each song was credited to the members who wrote it, or in a few cases, just to B. Culkin if they felt like it was really everyone involved, their names were not mentioned anywhere else. Hunt’s Tomb Records was working with a limited budget, so there was no insert for the vinyl and the inside of the CD jewel case just showed a copy of the first flyer featuring actor Macauley Culkin.
It seems the band was hoping that they would get sued for the use of this picture and eventually they would get a cease-and-desist letter from both Hughes Entertainment and 20th Century Fox. These letters were eventually framed and stayed on Cisneros’ living room wall for years. A point of pride, really, for any punk rock band, the cease-and-desist letters were enough to convince Swenson to put black bars over the eyes of Macauley Culkin in subsequent releases of I Quit My Job over the years. If you have the first release or the vinyl, you’ve got something that is worth some dough to the right people.
After several hours of discussion, it was agreed that Preston and Cisneros would work on the press release and bio with the others getting to make any changes they wanted to make. Here is what they came up with:
First draft: Press Release
I Quit My Job is a punk rock record by Bukake Culkin. It’s loud, fast, and like the band’s name, will cum on your face. It’s on Hunt’s Tomb Records and you can buy it in December. If you want to review it, prepare to get wet and sticky.
PS. Fuck Merle Haggard.
PPS. Interviews will be denied upon request unless you are Merle Haggard.
First draft: Bio
There are five members of Bukake Culkin. They are, in order of importance, Fuck You on guitar, Fuck You on vocals, Fuck You on bass, Fuck You on drums, and Screw You on guitar. Screw You does not condone unnecessary profanity and is a good Catholic. Screw You will, though, let you cum on their face. Have a nice day.
PS. Fuck Merle Haggard with Johnny Cash’s dick.
When Cisneros and Preston presented their first drafts to the band, they were written in purple crayon on large sheets of white paper used in the Preston family restaurant to line cookie sheets. It took exactly two minutes for the band to decide, unanimously to ratify these statements as law with the only hang up being the question of who would recreate them, in crayon, and what would it cost to send these out.
“There is no way Hunt’s Tomb is going to pay for this,” said Prince, and he was right.
See you tomorrow.
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5PnR1VJBkTkVQqqPIPjbqy?si=6eb3f8154a9a4a4b
Comments