Tape >> Would it help if I screamed?

California Month, tremor #4:

Tape - "Fill In The Blank"

(Trank City, 2002)

Tape featured Norm Block of Plexi on drums and was fronted by onetime "paisley rapper" Justin Warfield.  (Check out his interesting Prince Paul-produced 1993 rap album My Field Trip To Planet 9, which is somewhat of a cult classic.)  He later fronted the more commercially successful neo-post-punkers She Wants Revenge, but Tape was definitely his musical peak, though Tape only released six songs and two song snippets.  Tape formed in L.A. in 2001 and were apparently done by late '02 or early '03, unless I'm mistaken.

Man, this could've been a legitimately huge hit song, which is something I say a lot, but I mean it every time.  The whole EP, Amplified / Push Escape, can still be downloaded here, which is where I downloaded it several years ago.  I highly recommend downloading the explosive psychedelic rap-rock cut "True Crime" and the atmospheric "Dream Club."  (In fact, I planned to make this entry about one of those two songs, but ended up choosing "Fill" because it's so dang catchy.)  Definitely a hidden gem of a disc.  "Fill In The Blank" also appeared on Tape's 3-song EP Signal Level Will Now Increase, released June 2002.  Well, just squint your eyes and read the article from Kerrang! below, which calls them "currently the hottest band in L.A. bar none":

L-R: Kirk Hellie (guitar), Thomas Froggatt (bass), Justin Warfield (vocals, guitar), Norm Block (drums, backing vox)

It's pretty weird that a big U.K. metal magazine was covering Tape, yet U.S. music mags apparently had no idea they even existed.  What's that, you say?  Another U.K. metal mag covered them?  Yeah right...

Article in Metal Hammer, Sept. 2002

As you can tell by now, Norm is pretty tall; 6'5", in fact.  Anyway, thanks, U.K. metal mags.  Carry on.

Tape's website used to be www.tapenation.com, but that URL is now owned by an adhesive tape company, so the band's site is currently archived here.  It's tricky to figure out what to click on, but there are lots of surprises waiting, such as a set of dozens of live photos:

Live at the Knitting Factory's Hollywood branch, 11/22/02

I don't usually like to give a bunch of pics of any band, but when the band is as unknown as this one, and has as vague of a name as this one, I tend to make an exception.

Well, not a great day today.  I got bitten by a few dozen fire ants on my bare feet / legs / hands.  Then the garage door came off its track for a second time, and almost scalped me for a second time, so I made some calls to Sears to get the ball rolling on getting that fucker replaced.  And I'm pretty sure I have a cavity, which would my first since that one I had in the '80s.  And it's been raining nonstop for two days due to the tropical storm.  Life goes on.  As this song says, "Life has a cruel sense of humor / Shit is not as bad as it seems."

Here's a collage I made on Nov. 18, 2000, using only comic strips from that same day's newspaper (the New Orleans Times-Picayune).  I've never shown it to anyone:

(As with all images on this site, click it to see it full size.)  I never named it, but I guess "Only Momentarily" would be a good name.  I remember that it was a rainy, gray day, just like today but way colder, and I had just read through this fairly pretentious metal zine called Lamentations Of The Flame Princess (LOL) that I had picked up for free that day.  For some reason it was interesting reading, even though I had completely sworn off metal several years earlier.  It was my first time ever hearing of Opeth, whom I saw a few years later and then promptly forgot all about.

Planets with similar climates - Bailter Space - "Pass It Up" (1997), Plexi - "Dimension" (1996), Pluto - "When She Was Happy" (1996), Social Distortion - "Let It Be Me" (1990), The Sound - "Heyday" (1980), The Pharcyde - "Passin' Me By" (1992).