For many people out
there Bob Ferbrache is sort of an enigma in the Denver underground music
scene. He has pretty much covered all the genres from punk, to noise, to
industrial, to Goth, and has been involved with a hybrid of neofolk/sound collaging/Celtic
group for the past 20 years. It’s a safe bet that he has tried just about
anything once music or recording wise. After my conversations with Bob, I found
him to be more of a music enthusiast with an incessant thirst to explore and
experiment with sound.
Bob is often credited
for discovering and fine tuning the so-called Denver sound where some might
argue started with the Frantix-My Dad’s a Fuckin’ Alcoholic EP (his first
attempt at recording music that wasn’t his own). Following his punk start he
moved on to capture and help influence the recorded outputs by: Human Head
Transplant, Warlock Pinchers, 16 Horsepower, Slim Cessna's Auto Club, and the
controversial Blood Axis-The Gospel Of Inhumanity LP (Michael Moynihan’s band
and co-author of Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal
Underground)-the above is merely a splash of his accomplishments.
Bob, Big Bad Bob,
Robert or any combination thereof is no stranger to controversy. He’s been
threatened and labeled all sorts things, from a maniacal Carpenters fan (as in
Karen Carpenter), to a Satanist, to a neo-Nazi, just to name a few that have
been thrown out there. “Also if you were looking for more notorious accusations
leveled at me I was accused of the JonBenét Ramsey murder by CBS news. It's a
funny story that was perpetrated by Andrew of the Warlock Pinchers. It even got
me questioned by Boulder’s District Attorney.” Although he has been
self-employed for the past 30 years recording, producing, and playing in
bands, he has quite a list of other experiences that have taken him around the
globe. He doesn’t play up his achievements; he matter-of-factly describes his
work as if he is walking to his favorite sandwich shop down the street.
On a short trip back
to Denver I headed over to Bob’s house in Federal Heights. In my conversations
with Davey of the Frantix, he had mentioned that Bob turned him on to Trappist
beer from Belgium, specifically Chimay. I arrived prepared with a couple
bottles of Belgium brews in a brown paper sack; a tripel and a gueuze in case you're wondering. We
chatted a little and thought we should go grab sandwiches and a couple more
bottles of Belgium beers to continue our education. The evening even included
summoning Davey on the telephone.
Living in Egypt was
another topic that popped up; an experience we both had in common. Bob was
amazed how American soap opera stars past their prime were not only still relevant,
but all the rage and treated like royalty over there. Former president Mubarak even
invited the cast from one of the more popular stories to his palace. “They also
showed western movies on TV when I lived there with all this gang violence and
the dialogue is like, "I'm going to shoot your motherfucker…" but
then they would cut out parts where people are kissing or about to walk into a
brothel.” I relayed back to Bob the one night my wife and I were watching a
cooking show and the word “pork” was bleeped out. The Egypt conversation ended
when he told the story about asking a visiting friend to bring him a hit of LSD.
“The calls to prayer are so dense, it has a psychedelic edge…by design I wanted
to try out acid at the City of the Dead. I hung out there all night long by myself.
Lots of people live in there inside the tombs. Family members of the people
that have died surfaced at night.” It was his last time taking acid.
The conversation
turned to touring Europe with his band Blood Axis and how music and the arts
are more revered compared with the states. According to Bob, sales wise the
band’s The Gospel Of Inhumanity LP was as successful as all of his other
projects put together.
After all this chatting I finally hit the
record button.
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| UNX at the Packinghouse in 1983. Original photograph courtesy of Jill Razer's Denver Punk Scene page. Brush and ink drawing by Bob Rob (Medina). |
…In recording The Itchy-O Marching Band LP, Jello Biafra is
always going to shows looking for new bands. He was genuinely interested in
putting out their record. A year later after he signed the band and released
the album he called me up to tell me the Itchy-O record was the best I ever
made, ever. I was like, "Do you remember when...” I'm grateful he put it
out. He didn't put it out because he's my friend and did it gratuitously; he released
it because he heard something he liked. At the release show I must have had a
dozen people get into my face telling me “nobody can record them” or “nobody
can do them justice” and not a single one of them had listened to the fucking
record.
I admit I was surprised when I heard the album. I was in Denver for a
couple of days and saw the album by chance at Wax Tax. I had seen the band a
couple of times and always thought, "How could someone capture that?"
I shot video with my camera and showed it to my students in Egypt several years
ago. They were dumbfounded by the onslaught of imagery: the size of the group,
the flames, the hearse, the flags, and the overall procession. So I had my
doubts when I saw the record. I took a chance and bought it. I was surprised on
how clean, clear and organized the music is. You layered it quite well. And to
be honest, I didn't know you recorded it.
Most songs have over 100 tracks on it...When I recorded the
Foreskin 500 album that was on a 16-track and an early 2-track digital thing. I
would record two tracks at a time, mix it and dump it on the reel tracks. It
was one of the first albums ever done that way; it became standard practice.
For Denver and music in general, the Foreskin 500 album was groundbreaking.
It seemed like a lot creative endeavors from the early 80's Denver
music scene was fueled by the process to problem solve, survival, and the need
for expression. In my opinion, it seems like a lot of us just thought up stuff
and did it. You got into recording because you wanted to do it yourself?
I can't get a job at all-I've been self-employed for 30
years. Technology has changed that quite a bit. Everybody is doing what I did
now with their laptops or IPhones. People are making whole albums with Garage
Band.
That's a pretty significant change. Most of the bands I was in as a
teen couldn't afford to go into a studio-at best we had ghettobaster
recordings. Think of all those bands that never had a chance to make a proper
recording or to have their songs documented. Nowadays everything is
over-documented…people pulling out their phones and snapping pictures and
shooting video of the most mundane shit possible.
It gives a lot of bands that didn't have the ability to do
it now, but it also gives a lot of idiots that shouldn't have that ability, the
ability to do it. During that punk rock era, that was sort of my legacy-documenting
some of the Denver bands during that time.
How did you get involved in recording?
I wanted to do it myself. That is about as basic as it can
be.
Because you had a band and you wanted to record the music yourself?
I always had bands here and there during that time. D.I.Y. started happening. I had cassette tape recorders and started bouncing tracks
off each other. I initially did that on a 4-track cassette recorder. By the
time I recorded the Warlock Pinchers-Pinch a Loaf, I was using an 8-track reel
to reel.
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| It only seemed natural for the Warlock Pinchers to be in cahoots with Bob. Flier courtesy of trashistruth.com |
How did you find yourself getting interested in underground music?
Jello Biafra and I were friends before he was in the Dead
Kennedys. He turned me on to D.I.Y. stuff. I moved to San Francisco for awhile and
when I came back I started meeting like-minded people...bands that were doing
original music, politically motivated, thrashing...and a lot of that ended up
being done by 15 year-old kids. People my age were dressing up in spandex and
playing cover songs.
How did you meet Jello?
We were rival record collectors. We would go to the record
stores at the same time and would fight over the same record. I wasn't
competing that much because Boulder was their turf. Jello, this guy Sam and
Joe were competing. I'd pop by for a little bout. I owned Wax Trax (laughter).
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| When you literally have one day to advertise a show...2 nite, Mon 13, 8 pm. Flier courtesy of trashistruth.com |
The UNX?
That was an interesting project-we took elements of
hardcore. I hooked up with the rhythm section, the Swank brothers. Miguel was
11 and Chris was 15 at the time. Their ages added up together equaled mine.
People my age weren't into playing that sort of stuff, they weren't even
interested in playing Sabbath-they just wanted to play that strummy Eagle's
shit.
The UNX played a show, maybe with DOA (?) at Taste of
Denver. They wouldn't let our drummer into the show because he was 11. When we
were loading in I carried in the drums, emptied the bass drum case then went
back out to put him in it and carried him in to the show. Once we got on stage,
we played and it was done.
Larry from Trash Is Truth gave me the UNX recordings; it has the
hardcore crunch sounds that you captured with other bands at the time. It
sounded like you wanted to experiment with a nosier direction guitar wise. Were
you looking to expand beyond a punk sound?
The obvious transcription would be metal at that point. The
guitar sound got heavier and noisier. With Human Head Transplant and The Soul
Merchants, that was very heavy stuff. That was the next phase right there. It's
way heavier than the punk shit that I was doing despite the melody, harmony and
the rhythm of that. It had a very Beatle-esque romance to it as opposed to one
chord dissonance. UNX was really fun for a year.
Why did the band end?
There were many different circumstance-they were little
kids.
Were they in a different place than you were?
No, not really. I was immature, still am (laughter). I could
play in a band with an 11 year-old if they were as good as Miguel. No problem.
How did you meet up with those two kid and go, "Hey let's start a
punk band?"
I had a friend Steve Lobdell; I think he played guitar in
Problem Youth...though later he ended up playing in Faust for a while. He was
16 and he was really advanced at playing. I gravitated to him a little because
of his talent. He introduced me to the Swank brothers. He told me they were
looking for a guitar player so we started playing together just like that. By
that time I had already knew the Frantix because I recorded the first record
for them.
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| As opposed to seen and not heard. Flier courtesy of trashistruth.com |
I've seen those Frantix living room recording pictures.
The Frantix recording was the first thing I did other than
my own material.
How did you get involved in recording the Frantix?
What did Davey say?
We didn't talk about any of the recording sessions.
I think it was Matt or Ricky who brought it up, so we had a
party Davey’s mom’s house and set-up and recorded the songs and did the vocals
right there. It was done in one afternoon.
Was there a secret sound to Ricky's guitar sound?
The real secret was that it was done then and forever blown
in the wind. He had a little amp that was blown up to start with. He had a
bunch of small Peaveys at one time that were painted pink and blue psychedelic
colors. He got the acoustic amp later that blew-up and burned down the Fluid, maybe
it was technically the Madhouse practice space. (Laughter) He got the amp
because it was the loudest he ever heard. It came from me. Somehow it caught on
fire and burned the space up.
We should call Davey! (After a quick exchange of greetings, Bob tells
Davey why we’re calling.)
Ferbrache: He’s basically calling you because I can't answer
the questions properly and I have to defer to you.
Davey: If you bring Chimay ale you've got every answer.
Ferbrache: We’ve gone beyond the Chimay.
Davey: Did you ask Bob Ferbrache about the whole experience
recording the Alcoholic record?
Ferbrache: That's why we are calling you because I can't
remember anything. (Laughter)
Davey: Bob, that was the greatest.
Ferbrache: That was awesome, that was one of the greatest
times in my life.
Davey: So Bob shows
up to my house driving a Pacer or Gremlin.
Ferbrache: A Datsun B210.
Davey: He shows up and says he's got a little this and this, 3 microphones and we're like. “Yeah, man, fuck yeah.” My mom's upstairs
drinking a cup of coffee at the kitchen table. What Bob witnessed was with a
real football, not a Nerf. We're standing around in a circle throwing it as
hard as we can at each other's face while Bob is taking his shit in. We don't
even stop; we're like, "Yeah, take it downstairs to the family room."
Ok, we had challenged a whole rival pack of young adults to a tackle unpadded
football game. And this is the whole truth. Early in the morning we've been
playing tackle football in the park with a bunch of young thugs and we beat the
fuck out of each other. We were bruised and everything else. Bob shows up and
we're 3-4 hours into this thing and he goes, "We gotta record this thing
today!" We're like, "Yeah, that's cool' and we all high-five each
other and get back to business. So Bob brings in the three microphones, a
Fender amplifier while we're trying to see who can throw a football the hardest
and knock out or bandmates. Bob steps outside in the middle of all of this and
says "Are you guys ready to go?" We went in, and did it on one take.
It was one sound check. Bob brought in his own amplifier. Ricky plugged into
Bob's amp and went, “Nope.” So Ricky used his Peavey pacer amplifier and it had
caught on fire a couple of nights before at the Packinghouse. We got into a
situation loading out and grabbed drums and amplifier and threw over our heads into
a back of a pick-up truck. Anyhow, Bob goes, "I don't think this is
good." Rick fucks around with the amp a little bit and goes, "This is
good Bob." and Bob goes, "I guess we'll do a take." That was the
deal. One take.
Wait, what was the situation you got into at the Packinghouse where you
had to get out of there throwing your equipment over your head?
Davey: No, no we did that every time we played. (Laughter)
It wasn't a situation, it was, "Let's get the fuck outta here." Bob,
do you remember some cat where the Highlands is now right off of 23rd street
and I-25?
Ferbrache: There was a viaduct there at one time.
Davey: I think Bart the skater had a hand in a house
destruction party there. Bob Rob, somebody had an old house that was going to
be torn down in a few weeks, and put up a flier for a home destruction party
and invited every miscreant deviant; we didn't give a shit. It was a show with no
PA and the whole point of the show was to destroy this fucking house and all
these people did.
Here's the most important thing, you know how Pete Best was
the fifth Beatle? Well, Bob Ferbrache is the fifth Frantix. There was one point
before the Madhouse thing where we got out of the Frantix and didn't know what
we were going to do and ended up being the Fluid and the Fluid ended up being
the Frantix and Rick died. Bob was always right there. (End of phone call)
Was the music you were making and recording on your own more experimental?
It was, but I also like the discipline of working with other
people. My major band during that time was the Soul Merchants. It was still in
the underground realm, we played with Bum Kon, the Fluid and all those bands.
We were more textured and for a lack of a better description, we were a Goth
band. We dressed in black and greased our hair.
How did you get involved with the Soul Merchants?
I saw them as a three piece, I really liked them, and they
had a lot of good songs-I like good songs. The guitar player was a long time
friend of mine and I didn't even know he was in the band. I told him, “If you
had one more instrument in the group, you’d be incredible.” He said, "I
know what you mean." So I started playing with them the next day.
(Laughter).
That’s a way to get into a band, point out their weakness and offer a
suggestion on how to fix it, preferably affixing yourself into the equation.
We recorded and the band had so much material. In a period
of 3 years time, we had close to 80 songs recorded. We released two cassettes,
and an album...the album was only made because I stumbled across a pressing
plant in Canada that was reasonable and would press a 1000 copies. Three
records were made because I found that plant: The Fluid's Punch in Judy, Bum Kon's Ground
Round and our record. Smooch (Andrew Murphy) reissued a Soul Merchants
double CD and the entire 4- track cassette Bum Kon Recordings.
Rumor was that nobody knew about all those other songs on the Bum Kon
recording session, was that tape was lying around on a shelf?
I knew about it, I'm sure Bob McDonald knew about it. I
mixed it once and sent it to him; in fact I sent it to him a couple of times.
It's hard for me to comprehend that people have albums worth of
material sitting around; I guess they had other priorities.
I remember going through all my four-track cassettes and I
had a few things and found an incredible Jux County recording. There was a
Peace Core recording that was never done. I took all the Jux material and gave
it to Mike Serviolo. He has them so if
he ever wants to mix them... That's where the Bum Kon recordings was; they just
sat there.
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| Gotta love sexy punk-goth illustrations. Flier courtesy of trashistruth.com |
You joined Human Head Transplant while playing with the Soul Merchants?
It was concurrent. We did shows together. I worked with HHT
and started recording, it evolved into that. I phased out of Soul Merchants and
phased into HHT. Initially, I had a producer role in HHT; we were always trying
different things. We were doing pop music and industrial. One week we would
play a sadomasochistic industrial show, which was a wall of sound of noise
protesting the Supreme Court actions on the sodomy ruling in 86 and a month
later we would come back and play computerized pop music.
Did you like the freedom of experimenting with different sounds with
HHT?
Definitely. I drifted from band to band; I was never one
that was much interested in the wide aspect of it. I liked doing it because I
liked to have a good time playing parties, getting fucked-up, and carrying a
gun. To be the rock star...that wasn't my interests in it. I worked with all
those other bands and recording them. I was more interested in that realm of
it.
Did you help bands find their sound when you recorded them?
The role in that is, a lot of band never heard themselves
before and they realize good or bad... a lot times someone hears themselves
after being recorded and say, "We sound like that, Oh my God, we need to
do something about that." Even to this day I do records with bands for
what they want.
You’ve also help bands solve problems on the go?
I remember a situation once were the Fluid were playing in
Boulder at the Depot. The Soul Merchants played up there quite a bit. During
one show Matt's on the mic yelling at me and I go, "What the fuck do you want?"
He was trying to get me to come up on stage because his amp was fucked up, I
realized it was a fuse in his amplifier and I didn't any fuses left. What I had
was a pack of gum in my pocket when gum was wrapped in aluminum foil. So I wrapped
the fuse in the foil and stuck it back in and it worked. Since he saw me do
this before, maybe they tried to fix Ricky's amp the same way and that's how it
caught on fire burned down the Madhouse practice space.
I fixed may fuses with foil, even a HHT show in the
Netherlands where we blew out transformers. We blew all this shit up; we took
our own transformers there and fixed them on stage with foil for all three
people that were in the audience. We had great shows in Europe except that
night. We were playing an art galley and it would have been great if 50 people
showed up, but Fugazi was playing next door. The sound guy came in and did a
sound check for us and left it up to us because he wanted to go see Fugazi, he
didn't even want to stay at the show he was being paid to do sound at.
I was talking with Davey not to long ago and he told me that
I turned on to good beer. He said that I was drinking a bottle of Chimay beer
at a Husker Du show at Kennedy’s standing in the front watching the band. I
don't have one recollection of that whatsoever. That’s why he brought it up in
our phone call.
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| Zozobra is one of Bob's lesser known bands. Flier courtesy of trashistruth.com |
That's funny because he was telling me about going to Albertsons and
picking up a cheap 12-pack of whatever is on sale like Miller or MGD. I'm
thinking, "Why would you do that, there are so many good beers out
there?" I brew; I've made several trips to Belgium and rode bikes to
breweries. I'm a fan of Belgium beers.
We played (Slim Cessna’s Auto Club) Belgium in the town
where Duvel is made. It was a youth center where they had a concert hall; it
was literally next door to the brewery. We go backstage and the promoter tells
us, "We have a whole refrigerator full of beer for you, your kind of
beer." He had imported American Budweiser. I go. "I don't drink that
shit, even when I'm in America." He was, "Oh...do you want some
Duval?" I was, "Yeah," He leaves and comes back with 10 cases. (Laughter).
I drank like 8 bottles.
You must have been pretty messed up, it's like close to 9% alcohol.
We revived HHT one last time to make a CD in 91. Bert and I
moved to Seattle at the end of 89 for a couple of years then I came back here.
I hooked up with the Haters and did a tour. HHT did a tour in Europe and
everyone was all into it. We were like, "How did everyone hear about
us." That's how strong the underground cassette culture was.
