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Live Oak

Filter Kings

Poetry Attack

Our Camp

Didactyl Brothers

Roundhouse

 

Live Oak
Poetry Attack

Genre

New Wave

History

Menlo Park, California 1979

After grad school, Max spent a year living in a group house on Live Oak Street in Menlo Park and working in a nearby music shop, apprenticed to Bruce Kaphan, a luthier and an experienced session player with his own studio.

New Wave music, ranging from DEVO to Elvis Costello, was taking over the radio waves, inspiring Max to write his first adult rock songs, several of which Bruce recorded in his home studio. These were Max's first professional recordings.

Personnel

Tim Ludington (Max Carmichael): lead vocals, electric guitar

Bruce Kaphan: drums, audio engineering

Various session players

 
Filter Kings
Filter Kings

Genre

New Wave / Punk

History

CalArts, Valencia, California 1979

Mark invited Max to CalArts in fall 1979, to join his band Filter Kings. In keeping with the name, they scrounged the famous thrift shops of Reseda for outdated duds in "cool menthol" colors.

Mark wrote most of the songs, with Max contributing his first "punk" tunes, including the notorious "Time To Get Even". In December, they recorded an album's worth of material on a Nagra reel-to-reel deck manned by a friend in the film school.

Personnel

Mark Norris: vocals, electric guitar

Max Klein (Carmichael): vocals, electric guitar

Glenn Grossman: electric bass

James Fell: drums

 

Photos

Graphics

Poetry Attack
Poetry Attack

Genre

New Wave / Power Pop

History

San Francisco, California 1980

Max had moved to San Francisco in early 1980, setting up a studio in the basement of his rental house, and Mark joined him for the summer, between semesters at CalArts. The music and art scene was exploding in San Francisco, and their idea was to continue the songwriting partnership they'd had in Mark's CalArts project, Filter Kings, and turn it into a San Francisco band.

Working feverishly in between nights spent at nightclubs catching new bands, they wrote and recorded dozens of songs and auditioned dozens of drummers and bass players...and then the summer was over, Mark went back to school, and Max switched to post-punk experimentation.

Personnel

Max Klein (Carmichael): vocals, electric guitar

Mark Norris: vocals, electric guitar

 

Photos

Poetry Attack

Graphics

Poetry Attack collage

Poetry Attack collage

Our Camp
Our Camp

Genre

Post-punk

History

CalArts, Valencia, California 1981-1982

Our Camp was a late night, substance-fueled, Burundi-beat-inflected, drone-heavy art student project that resulted in numerous recordings and cross-fertilized with Max's San Francisco band, Terra Incognita.

Personnel

Mark Norris: electric guitar, vocals

Max Klein (Carmichael): electric guitar, percussion, vocals

Claire Dishman: keyboards, vocals

Various other CalArts students

 

Photos

Our Camp

Max, Gary Bachmann (RIP 2012), Mark Norris

Didactyl Brothers
Didactyl Brothers Crack House cassette cover

Genre

Drunken / Infantile / Noise

History

Los Angeles & Mojave Desert, 1982-?

The Didactyl Brothers were (are?) a scandalous, provocative art team who recorded stupid, obnoxious music, noise, rants and comedy routines sporadically for two decades.

The Dides became Max's outlet for extreme free-form self-expression that didn't have a place in his public projects.

Personnel

Daryl Didactyl (Mark Norris): vocals, electric guitar, electric bass, keyboards, drums

Dartaigne Didactyl (Max Carmichael): vocals, electric guitar, electric bass, keyboards, drums

 
Roundhouse
Roundhouse: Katie and Max

Genre

Minimalist folk

History

Los Angeles, California 1984

When Katie and Max met in 1984, they began writing songs together and recording them on Max's new Fostex 4-track. They were inspired by the minimalist folk music of Young Marble Giants, but the content of their songs came from their own childhood memories as well as the world around them, near and far.

Since they were both visual artists, they also focused on graphics, creating a logo with pictograms signifying their band name based on hobo signs.

In addition to the minimalist songs featuring their original lyrics, they built up a number of dense, haunting instrumental tracks. Some of their Roundhouse repertoire found its way into Terra Incognita when they both moved to San Francisco in 1985.

Personnel

Max Klein (Carmichael): vocals, electric guitar, electric bass, keyboard

Katie Rauh: vocals, electric bass

 

Videos

Graphics

Roundhouse cassette cover

Roundhouse demo cover

Roundhouse Songbook cover

Roundhouse Songbook cover

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