Happy B Day to the HL's... - Down Off The Ceiling (Gold Tapes -> Record Store Day)

pic by Janet Reid Boltz

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The Hard Lessons were integral in getting me excited about local music...

I started going out the same time they started playing out...

For me, they were that thing, that force, that energy, that made me want to keep returning to the front rows of dank, cluttered, cavernous venues... to keep returning to the Lager House as a 21-year-and-13-day-old wide-eyed music listener, shuffling through smoke clouds and over Pabst-soaked carpet spots...

That's nothing profound. It's almost like a coming-of-age cliche... the Lager's been there...and bands have been here for years and years and we all have those same types of loud, distinctively-rock-n-roll-tinged, epiphanies...

But mine... (along with, yes, the Witches)...were these energetic kids...that I apparently went to college with...

And it happened eight years ago...as of yesterday... back to when I was a sophomore at Michigan State University, serendipitously attending a campus Battle of the Bands at the International Center... Read your HL history lesson here. I'm sure everyone has a fateful band... but, I have to imagine that they were that band for many more than just me...

And... for my own nostalgic trip... here's what was likely my 'first favorite' track from their debut LP, Gasoline (download here)...

So then... As HL's heart and soul respectively... Augie and Ko... continue down their latest adventure of intimate acoustic performances, they'll be offering up a cassette tape collection of b-sides and live cuts, on Zac Frieling's Gold Tapes label. Check it out from GT... or download it from the HL's Bandcamp. Down Off The Ceiling collects unreleased songs, alternate versions, covers and live recordings from 04-09... (including a live performance covering the Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter"... which was at Sterling Silver's birthday party at the Northern Lights Lounge circa...07? or 08? I can't remember, but I also can't resist gushing more nostalgia at being there for that particularly inspiring and raucous tear...) Ceiling will be available on Record Store day (4/16) ...at various locations throughout the U.S., but, in Metro Detroit--strictly at UHF in Royal Oak. Beyond that... you can get the tapes at Augie and Ko's live acoustic performances, either at The Strutt in Kalamazoo (4/17) or their Ferndale performance on the 23rd... (more info here) Here's an aural example... a "Sabbath" version of one of their characteristic cuts, from 05's Bamboo EP...