Early Midwest Post-Punk: Ron House, "New Wave as the Next Guy"

Ron House, New Wave as the Next Guy (Spare Me, 1997)

Perhaps you’ve heard of Ron House. If you have, chances are you hail from the Midwest, perhaps Ohio, and specifically Columbus. If you haven’t, perhaps you’ve heard—or heard of—a couple of House’s other bands: Great Plains, which recorded several albums for Homestead Records in the 1980s, and Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments, which put out its 1995 Bait and Switch on American subsidiary Onion Records.

At one time a student at Ohio State University, House, now in his mid-60s, has been active in the Columbus music scene since the 1970s, co-owning the Used Kids Records retail store for a couple of decades, and performing in a number of innovative DIY bands—most recently the Counter Intuits—as well as solo. This compact disc, released in the late 1990s by New York City-based label Spare Me (which also put out records by the Bevis Frond, Furniture Huschle, and the Gerbils) collects songs recorded in 1978-1981 by two of House’s earlier bands: Moses Carryout and Twisted Shouts.

Eight of the 18 raw, rough—yet well-recorded—songs “recorded in Columbus in various bars and basements” were previously released on the Old Age cassette, Blind Boy in the Backseat (its title song is included on this collection). The collection is an excellent document of early Midwest post-punk and is worth listening to even if you’re not already a fan of Great Plains or Slave Apartments. Most of the songs are performed in a three- or four-piece setting and usually involve House on guitar and vocals, Tommy Jay on drums or Casio, Chuck Kubat on the “audio generator,” Mike Rep on guitar or organ, Kim Workman on bass, and others. The line between Moses Carryout and Twisted Shouts does not seem to be that fine a line.

Highlights of the record include Moses Carryout’s “20 or 30 People” and its B-52’s by way of Joy Division guitar punctuation, the rhythmic guitar work by Mike Rep and Chuck Kubat’s mysterious “audio generator” on Twisted Shouts’ “Statues Lose” (a song that should be covered even today), Jay’s Casio work on “Where the Windows Are” and Rep’s organ on “New Maps of Hell,” the Cure-like cymbal clash of Moses Carryout’s “Street Was the Soundtrack,” the driving Joy Division-esque drone and David Kulczyk's synthesizer of Twisted Shouts’ “Legalized Emotion,” and the lyrics of “Cause Without the Rebel.” (My copy of the CD contains one glitch; you need to skip past "Chuck Berry's Orphan" because it skips.)

The CD also brings to mind the more recent lo-fi tape movement as represented by Dennis Callaci’s Shrimper Records and Tapes (not a surprise given Furniture Huschle’s recordings for Shrimper and Spare Me, and Franklin Bruno’s review of the Slave Apartments in CMJ New Music) and took this listener back in time to when anyone could be in a band if they wanted to, and bands could play—and record—almost anywhere. 

One article I found online mentioned Tim Anstaett’s Columbus-based zine The Offense, which was a contemporary, so I dipped into the first volume of The Offense Book of Books. There is House, mentioned in Don Howland’s Foreword and listed as a contributor (with Rep!) in The Offense #2 (1980). Twisted Shouts tied for third place in the zine’s first annual readers poll’s Favorite Band Seen at Brown’s category—and for second place in Favorite Local Band.

In a way, then, New Wave as the Next Guy also introduces—or re-introduces—a largely uncelebrated local scene that seems like it was particularly energetic and exciting at the time these songs were recorded. Moses Carryout and Twisted Shouts were just two bands of what might have been many at the time in Columbus, home of Ohio State University. House was not based in Akron, home of Devo, or Cleveland, where Pere Ubu was located. The scenes were independent and interrelated. If House’s early musical activity and the handwritten fanzine pages of The Offense are any indication, this was a lively time for local bands, shows, and record stores (House worked at local shop Magnolia Thunderpussy before opening Used Kids, where Rep also worked), if not radio programs.

Get thee to a local record store, listen to this CD, write a song, and make a tape. Then give it to a friend at the local college radio station. It’s that easy. Or it should be.