Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss

edit to add: and they probably hate this, but I found myself, late last night on Damon Wood’s site, which has a long history of Engine 88. When Adam was interviewed in Rolling Stone he said his favorite SF band was Engine 88. He played with a band member in Sordid Humor. (whereas others in Engine were in Smoking Section — I saw Sordid Humor at Bear’s Lair with Rob Lederman once and also Himalayans at Paradise maybe with AD featuring. Also, I booked Engine once or twice into the Cub — I also booked Patty Spiglanin Naked Barbies once or twice — but this is about Engine not NB)

Engine 88 circa 1998 by Jay Blakesburg: Damon guitar, Dave drums, singer guy, bass guy

It’s kinda weird the only specific thing I recall about Engine is the lyric but not the melody “I used to kill in my dreams”.

Dave Hawkins of Engine also worked for Elliot Cahn to manage Green Day. I used to stalk David trying to glean info about the biz. I recall he called (who I already loved and was hipped to, by my sources friends in Chapel Hill) Eric Bachman “one of the best voices in the biz” about the quality of his throat not necessarily his “vision”.

What spurs this blast is that Terry TMW and I went to the Giants game and had good seats on account of her brother’s shared ticket plan and I chatted up briefly a sports writer named Julie Parker who is stationed just above the aisle behind home plate — maybe that’s why the old hands sit higher up, so as not to be chatted up — mainly because she has a Jawbreaker sticker on her laptop computer. I talked to her about Engine because I think they are related to Engine. Maybe they both were in early Noise Pop when it was a Kevin Arnold gig but before Jordan Kurland. So: I think Counting Crows are linked to Engine and Engine are linked to Jawbreaker yet I don’t think Jawbreaker are linked to Counting Crows. (Nor is Naked Barbies linked to either, not likely). Unless Immergluck played in all of the above. I liked Adam’s monologue about being young and poor — and living with Immi? — that someone taped and posted. Engine played Cubberley twice I think, once with Overwhelming

Colorfast and American Sensei. I recall that Chad Dyer a recent Stanford grad (with Michael Drake) made a cool all type sticker silver metallic but someone put it on a window at Antonio’s nut house and Antonio himself called me quite angry and i went out a bought a wire brush from the hardware store on Cambridge and Birch (now a hair salon, unless it is a turkish restaurant) — imagine how cool it would be to have an Engine 88 sticker still on window of Antonios! Also: what idiot has his phone number — mine– on a sticker? Mike Drake later formerd Oranger and Amazing Grease, maybe with Jawbreaker dude or dudes. I believe I met Michael Drake at my Archers of Loaf show in 1995 — he shook my hand while exciting and thanked me for doing this. Archers drove up from LA tour during a monsoon and flood that cancelled a sharks hockey game. They were on cover of CMJ that same week. The bassist Matt Gentling signed the cover something like “I don’t believe this” or “This is weird’. I think I had to toss the cover and other important Earthwise Cubberley ephemera and records just about a year ago — 20 years on — when I married and moved in with TMW or then known as TMT. I also tossed the wire brush.

and1 or and4:
Tom Barnes, Engine 88: I used to kill in my dreams, (or is it “kiln”? — maybe he wants to be a ceramicist)
Adam Duritz: We got different reasons for that.
Mark Stewart aks Stew, The Negro Problem –opened 10 shed dates for CC in 2003: I burned her at my stake.
Chris Seefried, Godschild and Joe 90, signed to E Pluribus Adams boutique: Freak me out, dead man. Not sure why 3 of 4 above are so violent. Angst about 1990s Cold War Oil wars? Current?

anand: if adam duritz was the allen ginsburg of the late 1990s sf indie zeitgeist then Tom barnes of engine 88 was the john wieners. (I put this on damon’s site where he posted a board tape of the fillmore sessions show in 1996 — i listend to 8 of 10 tracks seeking that lyric before TMW made me help her groom the dog.