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DAISYCUTTER BAND PAGE
 DAISYCUTTER
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CURRENT NAME
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Daisycutter | |
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FORMER NAMES
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ORIGIN
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USA | |
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STATUS
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Disbanded | |
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FORMED IN
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GENRE
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Stoner | |
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STYLE
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LYRICAL THEME
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| BAND ADDED | 2006-01-24, 00:00 | |
| LAST UPDATE | 2006-01-24, 00:00 | |
Biography | Band members | Discography | Shows | Forum
| Band biography |
He had asked Reg Hogan, who had recently been in the band FREAK THEATRE (a band that included Tom Southard, who later went on to create SOLACE, as well as Chris Timms of later BURNOUT KING fame) to help him work on a tribal drum project.
Searching for a bass player who could provide some good "wandering bass-lines", the two asked Jim Hogan, who had worked in such bands as the hardcore outfit, DIRGE, as well as SLUDGETANK, the precursor to Southard's GODSPEED, to join the fold. The three began writing songs and Tim suggested bringing in a rather shy, young guitarist by the name of Ed Mundell, who worked with Tim on a project entitled 10-FOOT RIFF. Ed was a natural fit and the group expanded to a four-piece.
The music wasn’t quite what Tim had originally envisioned. This sound was aggressive and dischordant and made great use of weird timing, synchopated beats, and repetitive layering.
It wasn’t what anyone expected, but it was cool. It was as mean and vicious, as it was odd and disturbing. It had a heavy SCRATCH ACID / JESUS LIZARD approach and the band determined that it required a complete freak for it’s frontman. It was then that the group found Seth Fineberg.
Jim Hogan recalls the events:
"One time, long after DAISYCUTTER’s demise, Ed and I were hanging out and he turn’s to me and starts laughing and says, "I still can’t believe you had the balls to call the record ‘Sh*thammer Deluxe’!" I looked him square in the eye and told him, flat-out, "It had to be done."
"Seth was an amazing guy. He was this meek little guy with a lazy eye who reminded us of a sort of Johnny Rotten / David Yow hybrid. He was perfect for DAISYCUTTER. Everything was about bringing a freakshow to whatever club we were playing at, and Seth was the consumate freak. We had these industrial size strobe lights that I bought and, for the entire set, we would be basking in the glow of their oscillating light. It made people sick after the first five or ten minutes. The best part was that, while this was probably enough to qualify us for New Jersey’s greatest freakshow band, Seth was the icing on the cake."
"Seth would tear the shirt off of his wiry little frame and, at least on the video tapes I saw, it looked as though he would grow twice his size and develop muscles; kind of like "Groundskeeper Willie" on The Simpsons. It was beyond strange."
"So here was this 5-foot giant, flailing about; a twisted knot of spit, snot and hair, and he would be writhing on the floor screaming at the top of his lungs about God knows what; and the crowd would just be completely mesmerized. The whole thing was disgusting. No one could take their eyes off it."
"The crowd was never fully prepared for Seth's shenanigans. One time we hung him upside down from the rafters in a straight jacket and he performed half of the set in that position. Another time, he painted his entire body in iodine while on stage. Sometimes, Seth would start running around the stage with scissors. It was a God awful mess with all the prodding and the jabbing. His most notorious trick was to pull ground beef or pudding out of his pants and pelt the crowd with it. Man, that took some balls."
"The best story was when he pulled 20-feet of sausage links out of his zipper. There was this blind guy there, and his seeing-eye dog supposedly ate them. Two weeks later the guy had a new dog. I don’t know if the sausages had anything to do with it, but you’ve got to wonder."
"When Seth had his eye straightened, he came to the show right from the operating room. His eye was blood red and the way he was was screaming on stage, we thought it would pop out of his head. He was never worried about it, but the rest of us sure were."
Several months later, John McBain stepped down as the guitarist for MONSTER MAGNET and Ed Mundell was asked to fill the void.
"We were practicing in Cronin and Wyndorf’s basement. It was this low-ceiling, crawlspace of a basement and we would set our gear up across from Magnet’s and sit in a little circle and play. There wasn’t any room to do anything else. I bumped my head on the pipes every time I tried to stand. Eventually, the house was torn down and turned into a parking lot."
"Anyway, Ed comes to practice one day, and says, "Uh…Dave…uh, asked me to join Monster Magnet. Do you think I should?" Even though we were shocked and saddened by our loss, we all unanimously shouted "Hell yes!" He would have been a fool not to. Ed was born to play ‘big rock’ and we all knew it. He left with our blessing."
DAISYCUTTER needed to find a replacement for Ed, so Reg brought in Mike Schweigert. Mike was a tattoo artist who had played guitar in a variety of hardcore bands. Mike was a natural fit.
"He was covered in tattoos. He was cool to hang out with, and he had a guitar, and wasn't afraid to use it. Tim Cronin summed him up the best by simply stating that "He really leans into it."
"Mike would change equipment on a daily basis. We never knew what brand of guitar he would be playing, but we always knew what style. He was one of the best rhythm players around. Tim was right. He really did lean into it."
At the same time, Cronin had some ideas of his own about expanding the scope of DAISYCUTTER’s sound. He wanted to bring in a flamenco and classical guitarist by the name Kim Rausch. Tim had worked with her at a record store.
"The first time I had a chance to see Kim play was at this coffee house in Red Bank. She was playing these beautiful classical pieces in a room full of caffeine addicts. We gave her a tape and she came to our practice and started playing this weird melody over the song that would eventually be known as ‘Liquid Tape’. I thought to myself, "This will never work." The next day, I heard the recording of band practice and thought "My God. This is brilliant." . . . It really was, too."
"Kim rarely played with a guitar pick. She preferred to pluck at the strings, flamenco style. She could produce these weird, haunting melodies with wild harmonics using multiple notes.It was incredible stuff. I have yet to hear anything like it in the world of rock."
"Together Mike and Kim were a hell of a team."
The group released a split single with Seattle’s ATOMIC 61 on Jim Hogan’s Heat Blast label, as well as a track on Heat Blast's F*ck You In The Eye compilation.
By late 1993, DAISYCUTTER was busy writing their first full-length CD, entitled "Truck Fist" for the Rockville label.
"Truck Fist was our finest moment. It was the crowning achievement for us. We ended up making the charts on a lot of college stations with that release. They were really digging the sound. I think that one of the reasons we became well known so many parts of the nation."
Shortly, after the release of Truck Fist, Tim Cronin found his employment as MONSTER MAGNET’s light technician to be too demanding of his time and had to leave the band.
"DAISYCUTTER was Tim’s concept; his creation, and it’s got to be one of the worst things a person can go through, to have to walk away from something that you’ve put your heart into. The bottom line was that he created MONSTER MAGNET’s legendary light show as well, and out of the two, it was the only job that offered a steady paycheck, so he did what he had to do. There are a lot of different Hells right here on Earth, and that was one of them."
One day, Jim received a call from Roadrunner.
"They wanted me to call Rockville and talk to the owner of the parent company, Dutch East. Roadrunner wanted to license the Truck Fist record from them for a fee or try to re-route the distribution through their network. Things didn’t pan-out, but at least we knew that things were heating up."
Soon after, the manager of the Rockville label resigned and took a job at Roadrunner.
"We called the office for the recording advance for the next record. They didn’t know what to say. Two weeks later they sent us a "Dear John" letter telling us we were dropped. It turns out that they decided to fold several of their in-house labels at that time and, with no one at the helm, Rockville was one of them...and we were out on our ass."
At this point, Mike decided to leave the band, stating that his tattoo business was really taking off and that he would not have the time to dedicate himself to both things.
"Schweigert is one of the top tattoo artists in New Jersey. He’s had a spread in every tattoo magazine out there. Artists can control their own destiny, answering only to themselves, but a rock band has to co-exist and work off of each other as a team, which is incredibly difficult. I think it’s safe to say that he did the right thing. He can be as creative as he wants, make a decent living, and he doesn’t have to deal with anyone’s BS."
Minutes after Mike left the band, Kim Rausch followed suit.
"Kim always felt out of place. She’s demure, very pretty, and very feminine. If you saw us on stage, it was probably very disturbing to see this very normal person standing amidst this Cukoo’s Nest rabble. She was like the eye of the storm…and we were the storm. She had had her fill of the lunacy and was ready to get out."
"Show biz has this backwards property that makes people both smart and senseless…all at the same time. It can drive sane people to the brink of insanity. DAISYCUTTER was the circus life, and I’m surprised that Mike and Kim stuck with it as long as they did."
DAISYCUTTER ended 1994 by re-mixing an old, unreleased track recorded earlier with Ed Mundell, and used it for a split single with CAVITY on Florida’s Starcrunch label.
It was then that Shane Green, who had recently left Nude Swirl, asked for the slot in Daisycutter.
"Nude Swirl had been signed to MegaForce and had been featured on MTV’s Beavis and Butthead cartoon and they were friends of ours, so when Shane asked us for the slot, we said "Welcome aboard!" He had a hollowbody Gretch and a board covered in old stompboxes and started showing us his riffs and it was real ferouscious stuff."
Shane Green’s arrival was followed by that of Chris Kosnik who had previously made his name in the band Godspeed. "Chris was only in the DAISYCUTTER for a short time. He was our rhythm guitarist with Shane handling the lead work. Both of them were seasoned veterans of rock. They had toured the world and had a lot of success, at least in comparison to most of the players out there, and they knew how to play and write better than most, but the vibe wasn’t quite the same."
DAISYCUTTER wrote and recorded another album of unreleased material and pitched it at Roadrunner.
"They were considering signing us, so we set up a showcase. Shane’s amp crapped out on the first song and there was no way we were going to impress the bureaucrats of A&R without a decent sound, so that opportunity went belly-up. Labels tend to remain guessing whenever they run into anything this odd. DAISYCUTTER was certainly no exception and it didn't really surprise any of us that they got cold feet at the last minute."
"It’s my belief that Roadrunner was looking for the Truck Fist era of DAISYCUTTER and, although this new stuff was great, it wasn’t quite what they were expecting. The band had reinvented itself three separate times and it could never be the same."
The band broke-up in 1995.
"DAISYCUTTER had taken the mutant, noise-rock thing to the limit 3 times over. The genre was tapped out and we had explored all of it. There was no ground left to cover. It was time to kill the beast and be done with it."
"DAISYCUTTER was named after a bomb. We made one hell of a bang and left a crater the size of Mars, and we lived up to the name. Mission accomplished."
Frontman Seth Fineberg later turned up as the frontman of NYC hardcore / punk band Blackout Shoppers.
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