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Baculum is a project put together by Sam Goldman, who was an adjunct member of the fantastic Bay Area band Slovenly during their final years, with two members from Slovenly, singer Steve Anderson and guitarist Scott Ziegler. My Friends Became Junkies was recorded over several years, and involved the help of Tom Banks (Bully Pulpit), Vijay Anderson (Steve's jazzbo brother), Tim Plowman (master stringman from Slovenly), Heidi Peterson, Matt Hohmann, clarinetist Lynn Johnston (Cruel Frederick), Philip Silverstein and Professor Eric "Sludge" Lennchner. The reminiscences below from Scott and Sam below might help put the album into perspective. It was a long process from hearing the first demos sent to me back in 1999 to actually releasing the album in 2002, but let's just call it a labor of love for the odd and downtroddenly heartfelt sounds within. Sam and Steve have considered making another album, but Scott Ziegler passed away on September 7, 2003, likely ending the prospect of the band reforming.
Back in 1978-79 the punk rock scene in L.A. was still new and growing. I had been playing guitar for about a year and unlike most guys in my high school, I thought that being a musician was a lot cooler than being a jock. That's when I met Steve Anderson and Bruce Losson. Bruce could keep a beat on the drums and I knew about three chords so we started a band. Steve had a guitar that he couldn't play but he wrote lyrics so he became the singer by default. We weren't good enough to play covers so we wrote our own songs. I thought it was music at the time, although not one of us had really learned to play much. We called ourselves The Convalescents. Tom Watson was playing guitar in another band from our school called the Jetsons. Tim Plowman played keyboards and Rob Holzman was their drummer. When the Jetsons broke up we asked Tom to play bass for us even though he could play circles around me on guitar. Watson joined the band and we changed our name to Toxic Shock. Those days were lots of fun, we had no idea what we were doing but playing punk rock was all about the energy and we had plenty of that. At a small Mexican cowboy bar called Capone's in San Pedro we had our first professional gig, that night we played with the Minutemen and Saccharine Trust. We were all just starting out and became friends and playing most weekends together when we could get our shit together. We even managed to record a song for Happy Squid Records and it appeared on a compilation called Keats Rides a Harley. As we figured out how to play, slamming out simple songs, our musical direction evolved into something less punk. Tim Plowman joined the band and we replaced Bruce with Rob Holzman. Tom and I were now trading off guitar and bass duties about fifty/fifty. We changed our name again, now we were called Slovenly Peter, a name we took from a book of dark German children's stories that Steve once used for lyrics during a jam. Our music rapidly became more complex, alienating our punk fans and attracting some interest from college radio. We signed with New Alliance Records (the label owned by the Minutemen at the time). L.A. became far too oppressive, so dropping the Peter from our name we relocated to San Francisco in October of '84. At that time we were playing a lot of gigs with the Dicks, and I started hanging out and jamming with the guitarist, Tim Carroll. Tim introduced me to an old friend of his, Sam Goldman. I believe Sam and Tim had played in a band back in Michigan during college called the Dancing Bear Band. Anyhow, Sam was quite a violin player as well as playing bass, some guitar and had the right kind of ideas to fit right in with some Slovenly stuff. Sam moved to San Francisco a while later and played on some of the last of the Slovenly recordings. As Slovenly dissolved, Steve wanted to get something new going with a bit more humor to it so he and Sam started working together, I tagged along and with a slew of other local and not so local musicians namely Phil Smoot, Bruce Todd, Lynn Johnston and the horny horns, and my hero Greg Ginn, we put out a project called Dingle. I think Bruce said that it was his father's favorite record, go figure. I left town for a year or so to put out a couple records with Tom and Rob and toured the U.S. under the name Overpass. When that was over I moved back to S.F. While I was away, Sam and Steve had started a new project and asked me to add a few tracks. We called it Baculum! Now this is my favorite record. It took a long time to record, Sam had just built a small digital studio in his basement and was learning the ins and outs of the gear so there was some trial and error. But Sam had a lot of ideas, Steve knew what he didn't want, and I just showed up for the fun of it. Steve and I were pretty damned lazy so Sam squeezed out all that he could from us and spent endless hours trying to make sense of what was on the tracks. Personally I think it turned out great but I am on the thing! It has been a while since we finished the recording but I am pretty proud of this one even if Sam did most of the work. I have no idea where Steve is right now and I am living close to Santa Barbara but at last the CD is actually coming out. Holy Shit! --Scott Ziegler
I first heard Slovenly when they were on the Keats Rides a Harley record and called themselves Toxic Shock. They did a great song called "Sensationalism." They must have been around 16 years old. It was 1981. I had a radio show on WCBN in Ann Arbor at the time, and I'd play that record over and over. I moved to SF in 1987 and met the Slovenly guys whilst they were practicing in a dank filthy basement pit under Tim Carroll's skid row human-shit encrusted end-of-the-road junky-whore besieged gray fortress down on Minna and 6th. They were big and loud and nice guys, and Scott invited me over for Thanksgiving dinner. They showered even less often than I did, except for Steve, who showered 3 or 4 times a day, which I've never understood. I had a respectable job, which was and still is a real big problem for me, and I think that they thought it was cool that I could apparently balance my two realities, which in fact is simply one badly warped and uncomfortable reality. Steve and I started jamming together in a closet in an old roach-infested Vic that he lived in. We both sucked, so it was pretty fun and unintimidating. Steve had only sung before, so he was insecure playing bass, but he had a great sense of simple melody. I had played violin for many years as a kid, but, of course I had all sorts of emotional horror baggage associated with childhood lessons and wanted to play guitar. Scott, who could actually play guitar, couldn't resist the infectious cheesy ditty-groove that we had stumbled upon and finally relented. Along with Phil Smoot and Bruce Todd, we became Dingle. A great band. We played one triumphant show at Hanno's (remember Slovenly's Highway to Hanno's?), a great bar, coincidentally only 100 feet from the fecal practice pit on Minna where it all began. Our friends drank a lot of beer, so they asked us to come back, but we didn't. Dingle released Red Dog on New Alliance, but then New Alliance wouldn't return our phone calls, so you make your own conclusion. If you can find Dingle it'll be the best 99 cents you'll ever spend. Bruce moved away and Phil had kids and felt that to consort with the likes of us was not a suitable way to behave anymore, but he sends Christmas cards and I don't, so what the fuck do I know. I spent my kids' college fund to buy a bunch of really expensive hard disk recording gear which is fully obsolete now. Steve and Scott started coming over to my basement. We didn't start out to do anything in particular (and, not surprisingly, we didn't do anything in particular) other than drink and see how late we could play before the neighbors got pissed. I recorded many of the tracks and jams and whatever. Every time I'd fill up a hard drive I'd just buy another rather than try to figure out what was on it. We'd spend the whole night singing about pirogys (sp?) or piroshkis. Then Steve found a half-dozen or so old bibles at yard sales and we got the bright idea to do an entire album of bible songs. We tried that for a while ("Artificer," "Babow," etc.) until we realized that it was stupid, but by that time we'd somehow managed to put together 4 or 5 songs which almost sounded like songs. Then began the laborious process of trying to turn 3 hours of some drunkard (me) wailing about pirogys and some drunkard (Steve) moaning about Mormon biblical figures (Moroni and the Lamanites!!) into bonafide songs. That took about 2 years, but who's counting. We're pretty lost on much of this record. We're vulnerable. Oh yeah. We play lots of instruments, lots of baby toys, a joged bumbung (or something close, like on those Balinese Jegog recordings) which we ridiculously dragged back from Bali years ago and which lies rotting downstairs, AM radio, the door, the phone, toy pianos, toy accordians. We do a couple of Brian Wilson-inspired cuts, some homeless beggarperson rantings, Mormon bibles, new testaments, old testaments, sad dogs, sick Steve, something for everyone. So, two final points. First, the name Baculum. It's a penis bone. All mammals except for I think gorillas and sadly, most humans, have an actual penis bone. Some are very scary looking hook- or corkscrew-shaped objects. Mouse baculi (?) are designed to pluck out the sperm of the male which ejaculated into their ladyfriend's vagina before them. I still think it's a cool name, though as Tim Adams has pointed out, it's more befitting a heavy metal act. But for us, the band, we're each of us kind of like penis bones in our own way. And second, where's Steve? No one knows. I heard a rumor that he's living with his mother in San Diego, but today I heard another rumor that he was recently seen around Mission and 16th streets. I hope that he's alive. I hope that someday he will return to bask with Scott and me in the glory of critical acclaim and commercial success that is My Friends Became Junkies. Sincerely,
My Friends Became Junkies CD (3 Beads of Sweat, 2002) Sam Goldman has also performed and recorded with: DINGLE SLOVENLY Steve Anderson and Scott Ziegler performed and recorded with: TOXIC
SHOCK SLOVENLY DINGLE HZ ROUNDTABLE Scott Ziegler performed and recorded with: OVERPASS
Band website: www.baculum.com E-mail: baculum [at] pacbell [dot] net Snail mail: c/o
3 Beads of Sweat
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