Email James: thejames@

Bands James Has Recorded With:

 2005 - Present

A Bunch Of Girls
 
This is the only rock band in New York City. Vanya Edwards, Dave Gwiazdowski, Jeremy O'Brien, and myself.

 ABOG home

 ABOG MySpace

 2003 - 2005

Saint Bastard
 
The second to last rock band in New York City. Martin Bisi called us "Post-NOTHING." Vanya Edwards, Dave Gwiazdowski, Jubal Fearing, and myself.

Saint Bastard MySpace

 
idiot purge
 
This trooly was, and I think still is, my favorite of my old bands: Alejandro de Acosta wrote the lyrics and declaimed them like a muezzin for the philosophical activist left. He has corrected my titling on two songs: "The Care of the Cell 1 & 2" Thanks, Alejandro! I've changed the titles and links, and will do the tags on the mp3s when I can. Kamran Rastegar chopped and scraped and abused his guitar to glorious results. First Joe Futrelle, then Adam Arnold thundered mightily on the drums: Adam on the minimalist kit you hear in these recordings. I played bass. For a while in '92 Joey Boer played guitar with us, until he destroyed his guitar on stage, the only musician I have ever worked with who achieved this act.

Joey, you fucker, next time you google yourself, email me.

We never put anything out. There are some live recordings somewhere but this, the definitive recording, was made in 1994 by Mark Alan Miller at The Slaughterhouse, who recorded us live to DAT with no overdubs, and almost all single takes, virtually real-time: we had almost no breaks at all, and played straight through as though it were a very well-behaved live performance. Mark captured us perfectly.
 
The Care of the Cell 1 & 2 and Empty Person were improvised on the spot. They had never been played before and they were never played again.
 
Update: Alejandro has provided me with the mp3 of Machines, the last song recorded during the session, and my favorite. I believe this was also one-take, and had never been played before. Allie Borten does the vocal at the beginning and the end. I have always been impressed by Mark's intuition in adding the echo to *just* those portions of the vocal that seemed to need it.
 
I've trimmed the dead space from the beginning of Machines, but haven't got to the other tunes here yet so there's some dead space at the beginning of some of these songs. Your patience will be rewarded, I promise you.
 

 
Bloom
 
Albany-based Bloom was Rich Crist on guitar and vocals, J. J. Hogan on drums, and I played bass. Dominick Campana plays the guitar solos on these. I was with them for about a year before I split off for gradschool, and they got a new bass player. But before I left, I managed to record a single with the boys, my first professional recording. I always liked the bass line on Crush, and I got a co-credit on Rail. I may also have some live stuff kicking around, but these tunes we recorded at Fort Apache in Cambridge, I'm pretty pleased with.
 
Check the nifty green vinyl!

 
The Luau Torches
 
Hamilton Billy Greene played drums, Mike Stimac played guitar. We were a recording project; we never played out. We recorded the Sweet & Sour 7" for Kamran Rastegar's nascent Big Sound label, and I think we gave most of 'em away. We had a beautiful time with Mark Alan Miller at The Slaughterhouse, who is a frigging genius at the boards. If anyone ever wanted to put out any of my stuff on CD or anything, I'd go and re-record it all with him. Word.
 
Mike's a good buddy. He's still around.
Kamran's totally a good buddy. Even in Boston.
Billy's gone, but he's still a good buddy. I miss him.

Miscongeniality
 
While I was teaching in northwestern Connecticut back in 1996 I got together pretty regularly with Adam Arnold at his place outside New Haven to rework songs i'd fourtracked, to finish pieces of his, and to write new material together. We eventually combined it all into a CD which I don't think we ever even gave away to people - I certainly never had more than the one copy. But we did some good stuff, I think. We called the project Miscongeniality, and the CD was titled Golden Moments. I played most of the guitar and bass, and did about half of the vocals. Adam played drums, did some guitar and handled the recording and mixing and whatnot. His brother Stefan played bass on some numbers: whist, among them. Thanks to Adam, The James Rocket enjoys an audience in Sweden. And Germany. Wherever he shows up. Hey! I don't even remember the right name for some of the tunes. I just number them. But I like them.
 

 
Tin Honey Gold
 
Tin Honey Gold was my band from 1998 to 2000, here in New York. I was again playing with Kamran Rastegar; Ben Stewart played violin, and the drums were masterfully commanded by Chris Conner, who last played in Channing Cope, near as I know. I played bass. Kamran, Chris and I traded off on vocals. We recorded an extremely limited-edition CD called Cyprus which we hand-stamped ourselves on the wood of the Cypress tree. They looked wonderful. Orleans is the second version of this song: I'd done a version with Adam Arnold for our Miscongeniality project up there. I sing. I holler on Grasp. Sixty Eight, Two Forty Two and 326 are instrumental pieces, so named for their length. 21 Hayes and Who Is My Enemywere sung by Kamran. Branch and Rest and The Planting Trade were sung by Chris, respectively. 
Adam Arnold recorded us at his home in Connecticut in 1999. Enjoy!