SHIT ALL TO HELL
Artists: Smiley Master Clown Assassin Savage & Phats Punishment Distributor
Time: 1998 — 2001
Refers to:
MAG 1 SHIT ALL TO HELL “Eazy, Sleazy, Greazy”
MAG 7 TANGENT “Primordial Goo”
MAG 8 SHIT ALL TO HELL “Flames Baby”
MAG 9 V/A “Night of Satans Sidekicks”
MAG 16 SHIT ALL TO HELL “Women Cry For It, Men Die For It”
MAG 19 ZOMBIE PROM QUEEN “Stone Cold and Grey”
Micheal “Smiley” “Voodoo Savage”Stephens and his brother Sam were active in the thriving noise art music community of Palmerston North during the mid nineties. Both teenagers at the time and children of involved and artful parents, one of which worked at the library, the brothers were exposed to a tonne of great literature, art and all manner of alternative subcultural references. Because of that (we all thought their parents were the coolest), and a healthy predisposition to critical thought, and interesting art they were miles ahead of their time in knowledge. Both were infamously well read and had all the records you were just discovering well before you’d even had the inkling to go discover it. They also had a band together called “Phallus” which was the greatest name ever for a band of brothers. They had a hit on student radio – a version of the Spelling Mistakes “Hate Me”. Later on, while Shit All to Hell were forming, Phallus would branch out into a five piece big band of total carnage, of which I drummed for.
Smiley & Sam Stephens, late nineties
I met Sam first, at one of the Wild Horse Saloon shows. The Wild Horse was one of the few classy establishments to turn a blind eye to children too young to be buying booze — and then selling it to them. It was also one of the few bars tolerant enough to host artful, antagonistic bands that were thriving at the time. A refuge from the opposing dreary banality of Palmerston North. In those super dark booths teens absorbed all manner of illegal activity in relative peace. One of the very first bands I was in played there. Me with my best mates from school, Bad and Boss, played a punk fest there while audience members complained about how Not Punk we were, which we took as a compliment. An older, wiser wizard-like legend named Adam Candy came up and told us plainly that as three miscreants from Pahiatua playing in a band that smashed up our stuff and didn’t give damn was “ Punk as Fuck ” and promptly put our first cassette out on his DIY label Lizardmull. That’s about when I met Sam Stephens, and somehow we ended up becoming good pals. It wasn’t too long after that when I also met his brother Smiley.
Sam played guitar like it was a psychedelic dough that he kneeded into various baked goods. He had some weird harmonic pedal and tended more toward gutteral contortions of texture than what you’d expect any traditional guitar player might do. This was an inspiration and a major relief as I too didn’t necessarily feel comfortable with the notion of “musician”. I was much more interested in what was possible from sound as a wild, chaotic texture than being able to play a song as such. Sam confirmed our suspicions- that others like us existed in the neighbourhood and that music could be pretty much anything you decided it was.
Sam Stephens wrangling like a boss
It was Sam, the only one of us that had an actual job, that lent me the fifty bucks I needed to buy my first batch of blank cassettes. One night as I wandered the boring Palmerston streets, clutching at straws for some meaning to my existence, I just made a decision that I should make a cassette label like other folks I knew, to help document some of the music happening around me. I remember telling Sam about it and he was happy to lend me the cash. I made sure I paid him back as soon as I had it as we were in a community of hustlers, drop outs, thieves and general wayward oddballs. It meant a lot that he had trust in me and I didn’t want to let him down. I learnt then the power of coming up with ideas and making them into real things. Sam was always working on a tonne of his own recordings and within this first batch of, I think seven stink magnetic releases, Sam’s project “Tangent” was included. Later on the brothers made another great album of broken hearted gravel blues under the name “Zombie Prom Queen”.
I began duplicating tapes of my band Dallas Pro Drag Allstars from a live-to-air radio recording and a session we did in the local recording studio the Stomach. I knew there was also a bunch of recordings from friends bands on the other side of the hills too that needed releasing- Mike Fab and Dane Taylors’ Starfactory and the band with the 13 year old drummer- The Wet Pussies. At that point I was living in an old farmhouse in the middle of the city. One of the earliest in the area I was told – possibly the original house as the driveway conveniently merged into the street straight in front of it. Rumour suggested the old man who owned the place was born there and didn’t care that it was occupied by punks as long as it was still there and not developed land. It was severely decrepit. With the back half sinking in the swampy soil, thick oily dust and cobwebs everywhere and a lack of several essentials that would qualify it as “a house”. However it was filled with “vibes” and we would often find great treasures there like the box of plastic envelopes I used instead of buying cases for the first batch of releases.
After living on the dirt under another house didn’t go so well for me, my friend Adam offered staying at this old piece of crap. Shortly after, Sam’s little brother Smiley moved in as well, and we immediately hit it off. He was closer to my age – most of the folks in the local music community at that time were about ten years ahead of us. We were the unintended offshoots at the tail end of a thriving era. We looked over the remains in jealousy but also found a space that needed filling. Smiley and I shared a love for similar records and were both keeping our ears open for the latest Sympathy For The Record Industry or Crypt Records releases. Smiley also liked to write and paint and I enjoyed making videos and collage so we were both on the same page as far as unrestricted creative pursuits were concerned. We were two peas in a pod at that house.
One particularly boring Palmerston North day, we began playing music together. I played guitar and Smiley was a natural poet. He could also hit stuff while he rambled so it instantly made sense in our minds to do this type of activity regularly. After a bunch of mucking around just for fun I borrowed Adams’ four track and started to record. We experimented with layering various pots and pans, boxes, bins and pretty much anything that sounded interesting. I would put a guitar line down and then smiley would both sing and hit stuff at the same time then we would fill the rest of the tracks with random stuff that we thought sounded cool. It was sort of a Lo fi blues punk thing. I guess. We didn’t really care too much if anyone else thought it was good or not or say, in a particular genre or whatever. It’s just “what we did”.
We had a cassettes’ worth of songs in no time and as I had been working on duplicating tapes for the label all of the sudden we had a tape, a record label and a band. We came up with the band name to describe the sound to some extent. One of us said something like shit all the way to hell or something and it was too great to not use.
Like I was saying, Smiley was a natural poet. He could pretty much babble about anything and make it sound great. In fact, he was well know for his extended chats with anyone that would listen, which was excellent because I’m pretty bad at speaking. He could do all the relatable stuff and I was free to go nuts in the background. It was a combination we used solidly for many years after. Basically, we gelled really easily when it came to makin stoopid art ideas and had no trouble just doing it.
Our first show was on the front porch of the house I was just talking about. It was old and covered in worn out couches and broken stuff and sun bleached almost white by being positioned directly at the centre of the solar system. It was loosely decorated with the odd t shirt left to dry or bottle of beer now ashtray. The deep front lawn was overgrown with unnaturally high grass, a house truck or two parked at random and a sculpture in the centre featuring the skull of a large mammal made by a former resident proudly proclaimed our opposition to the world beyond that section. It was about one or two in the afternoon when we got the idea to bring all the stuff out onto the porch and play a set to the civil service engineers working on something at the footpath outside the house. Not sure why, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.
Amps squealed feedback and actual trash was repeatedly whacked while Smiley hollered, spiritually, into a crunchy mic toward the workers about psychopathic lovers and getting drunk on wine and whiskey. It was a total success in that no one turned us off or complained at all. In fact I think the workers may have actually appreciated it on some level.
We didn’t play a huge amount of live shows. I remember some local bars and what would be the closing of a cafe type joint thing but mostly it was something Smiley and I did when we were living in the same place for fun. We would record tonnes of stuff and constantly experiment with various instruments or things that sounded interesting. One particularly enjoyable discovery was using the drum machine on an old Hammond organ. We discovered you could switch between drum styles and get this erratic jazzy robot beat going on. Smiley constantly blew me away with his singing and lyrics. I don’t ever recall him writing anything down on paper and I don’t remember doing more than just one take for vocals. Like I said, he was a natural.
After a couple of years in Palmerston North we both ended up living in the same house in Aro Valley in Wellington. So we did what we always did and ended up making a twenty plus song album of classic hits. Smiley had the same approach to making as me which was kind of a burn and turn method. You just go like hell and then move onto the next song. There were no mistakes. Analysis was boring. And we were in the zone. It was the visceral result of going through the steps of adding to an idea that was the most interesting part. A natural predisposition to “good times” and making music as one activity meant whenever we were together we mostly escaped out the other end with something to show for it.
— Phats Punishment Distributor
Related Bands:
Phallus
Tangent
Zombie Prom Queen
Voodoo Savage and his Savages
Ol’ Four Eyes
