Owned since: 2016
Genre: Primitive garage rock
Where I bought it: Bisaufmesser, Berlin?
Year: 1988/2011
Label/pressing: Mississippi Records
Since we’re in the 40 something of these, which makes it one of my most followed through projects, we reach the point where I covered a lot of things that are fairly easy to talk about. Bands with odd histories, well known or with a personal attachment that makes it easy to talk about them. We’re not even reaching the 10% of the total records and tapes I own, but we’re getting pretty close to the 5%. An amazing number still for something that started as a bit Sloot and me kind of half threw together when discussing collecting music during the very start of the Covid pandemic when we’re all locked into our homes without knowing really how long it was going to last [Sloot Editor: I am very committed to bits, it is known]. Now 2,5 years later I’m still writing them(and now publishing this, it’s near 4 years later), not the volume when I first started, but churning out one or two per month. Honestly, with this mindset, just focusing this time on the band that made ‘doing a thing’ their motto.
Where to even start with Dead Moon. There aren’t many bands that have such a sprawling influence on a genre, but always remained in the shadows than them. Fronted by husband/wife duo Toody and Fred Cole till Fred’s passing in 2017, who played before this band in the Rats, they are one of those bands when you dig far enough in famous 90’s bands someone brings them up as an influence. Pearl Jam covered It’s O.K. so many times I lost count for example but they’re one of those weird bands that were way more popular in Europe then in the states. Dead Moon toured since they formed in 1987 pretty much Europe endlessly and would just play their first US tour in the mid 90s, spearheaded by a few bands in the grunge generation being big fans of them.
The EU scene in the late 80s/early 90s was in the twilight days of the original punk venues and squats. Loads of them would shutter by the mid or late 90s through cities gentrifying, shift to other musical genres like techno or had a lack of motivation to keep going. A lot of venues also legalized their squat or temporary status and became legal pop venues which means in some countries getting subsidized by governments to put shows on. It was also a time where the younger generation watching what was going through the punk venues in the early 80s started booking these venues. This gave birth to maybe the most legendary years of Dutch venues like Vera (which was the home for anything garage or noise rock related) or Ekko (home of the more bookish end of post-punk wash outs) and Gen X as a crowd. Perfectly in time for the whole indie boom the late 80s and a little bit of grunge brought. One of the bands that was always touring and selling out these venues was Portland’s Dead Moon.
Led by Fred Cole, a fringe legend in garage-rock/Portland, they pretty much would do 3 months tours through these venues in Europe every 2 years. In the 60s he led The Weeds on their immortal and only release It’s Your Time single that appears on Lenny Kaye’s seminal Nuggets compilation of raw garage rock in the 70s. He then fronted niche but beloved psychedelic pop rockers The Lollipop Shoppe whose You Must Be a Witch appears on the extended Nuggets from the 90s. After this, he formed a bunch of bands that never went anywhere until he and his wife formed The Rats in the early 80’s playing a kind of raw post-punk garage rock music that will be covered another time. Then came the Range Rats, their country duo that released just one record, it’s great, and then the immortal Dead Moon. During all of this he and Toody managed a beloved by punks musical equipment store, a general store and their own label Tombstone which released mostly all of their musical output.
Looking at Dead Moon’s discography isn’t very inviting for sure. The band released 10 studio albums during its run and 6 live albums which all kind of blend together. The band very much stuck to The Ramones mindset of ‘this works, let’s keep doing this’. Which in their case is a unique case of mono-mixed garage rock meets country meets blues rock that sounds like it’s straight blasting out of a jukebox in a sleazy southern crime movie. While it all sounds primitive it also leaves plenty of room for Fred to get out his skills on guitar a lot of the time, it’s packed with firing solos that are over before you notice them and Fred returns to his unstable drawl of a voice which can also scream extremely loud.
In the Graveyard is one of the three Dead Moon records I own on vinyl. The other two being follow up Unknown Passage and Live Evil which captures the band touring around 1988. It’s also the band’s full length debut, but their sound is settled already it sounds like it’s their 15th record. It’s the typical mix of covers (Hey Joe, Toody doing a riveting Can’t help falling in love), loud burning rockers (the two punch of Graveyard and Out On A Wire) and lovely lo-fi country (Dead In The Saddle, Don’t Burn Fires, Where Did I Go Wrong). It hangs a bit more to the country side than their later records because this comes straight after their completely country Range Rats project but it’s impossible to deny the power of Fred Cole howling through Where Did I Go Wrong which sounds like it comes from a busted car speaker. It also is a bit more lo-fi compared to later stuff even though they never became very hi-fi, just listen to this very busted cover of AC/DC’s It’s a Long Way to The Top from 1999’s Destination X. There’s no bad record in their discography.
Fred said several times he mastered all the Dead Moon records on the mono lathe print they mastered Louie Louie on and honestly I believe it. There’s a real guttural back to basics attitude to everything Dead Moon do; barely any effect pedals and always that same monotone dust filled punk sound most of Europe came to love. Down to their fashion which is somewhere between proto gutter punks, cattle ranchers and a long lost trash metal band to long live shows they played during their original run. It’s all so goddamn endearing. If you can find it, the 2006 docu Unknown Passage: The Dead Moon Story is as rough as the band’s output but also is a perfect showcase of a couple still very much in love after nearly 40 years of marriage just touring with their weirdo friend as a band.
That was what they mostly were also a live band. Every venue that used to do punk shows in Europe has a story about a Dead Moon show because they would just play absolutely everywhere and it was where they shined. Translating the lo-fi tremble of their records to a full and loud live sound that never lost energy in the nearly always 2 hours they run which is impressive with how much energy the band played. Fred and Toody are far removed from trained singers and both their raspy vocals still sounded good after so many shows is a wonder, not even factoring in Loomis’s rudimentary but aggressive drumming. My favorite of the live records is Hard Wired Live in Ljubljana, mostly because I used to have it on CD, which sees the band in the mid 90’s burn through an even more spirited set than usual. The real highlight here is the version of Rolling Stones’s Play with Fire they do on there, originally recorded for 1992’s Strange Pray Tell, which has so much venom in it, it should be on the endangered species list.
When starting writing this I tried to remember how I got into Dead Moon even and I honestly can’t recall. Bet it was some obscure reference an artist made or the old dingy record store I used to get CDs at. What I do know is that they’ve been in my taste since I’ve been like 14, so for more then half of my life now. One thing for sure is that Dead Moon always loomed big over the generation before me that liked garage rock. Bookers always booked them when they or the follow up Pierced Arrows were touring and you can still throw a rock in a crowd at any older garage rock band with a chance to hit someone wearing a Dead Moon shirt. When I first started going to punk shows in the late 00’s you would see the skull moon logo everywhere still, if it wasn’t on Fred Cole’s cheek when he was touring again through Europe.
This always leads me to seeing the band several times. I saw Pierced Arrows twice which formed because Dead Moon drummer Andrew Loomis needed to quit through health problems but the ones that stick most to my mind are the other times.
In the end of 2013 just kind of out of nowhere Fred and Toody announced an unplugged tour of the EU which honestly makes a lot of sense. Dead Moon, while helped a ton by Loomis drumming, is mostly the interplay of their guitar and bass work and most important their vocals. So I got my ass through the snow to go see them play the W2 venue in Den Bosch where me and my friend were the youngest people by around 20 years at least. What followed was a near hour set of nearly every classic Dead Moon and related bands songs you would want to hear played by the two wonderfully frizzled proto-punk fossils. Also unplugged is very funny because they both still brandished their electric guitar and bass but just played them through tiny practice amps. An absolutely wonderful evening.
In 2015 Dead Moon reunited for a last time with Loomis for a plan of a bunch of shows but just got to play 5 of them. 4 in America, one in the Netherlands at Dauwpop festival near the Helledoorn theme park of all places. It was around this time Loomis got diagnosed with cancer and the Dutch show was the last show they ever played together. So far I can recall it’s the last show Fred Cole also played before passing away from liver disease in 2017. Like, obviously, they were pushing the end 60’s so the energy of their famous 90’s shows was gone and Loomis has problems keeping up but the spirit was there and boy the crowd sure liked it. I also saw Masters of Reality that day and boy that didn’t help me with feeling really old in my early 20’s.
What to say about Dead Moon honestly? They were a true DIY band in a time where a lot of bands claimed to be that but failed to completely do it themselves. Primitive, spirited and always themselves. A band that was already sounding like the past when they debuted but it turned it around in a way where they became a unique force to be reckoned with. Now long gone but at least the Coles left us an amazing amount of great music spread over nearly 4 decades.
Quick sidebar on Nuggets. Listen to it, if you haven’t. It lost a bit of it’s impact over the years because several music producers for movies have raided it to shreds but when this released in 1972 the latest songs on it were just 4 years old and already extremely hard to find. It has some stuff I never really cared for also but that is all made good by including the castaways’s organ driven Liar Liar, the Seeds’s absolute feral sounding Pushin’ Too Hard and previous entries The 13th Floor Elevators’s You’re Gonna Miss Me. Just an absolute essential to these days collector of a time of a rock music that was quickly discarded in the 60’s but laid the bones for punk music and what followed.
I Hate The Sloots: Me whilst listening
