Old
3C Digital Jukebox
One MP3 from each of our releases is provided here for your listening
pleasure. The files
have been kept small to download easily, and they're not as high-quality
as those you'd buy online, but you're welcome to keep them. We hope you
enjoy the songs, and please use the provided links to purchase our digital
releases. Thanks.
Play
Track 24 | "Revolver"
Vena Cava, self-titled CDR
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Track 23 | "Pardon The Morning"
Mike
Hagen, The Ballad of Fungobat CDR
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Track 22 | "Lonely Heart" (Peck
of Snide) Various Artists, Twenty One and Hungover CDR
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Track 21 | "Seven Years"
Ron
House, Obsessed CD
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Track 20 | "20 or 30 People"
Ron
House, New Wave as the Next Guy CD
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Track 19 | "Internet is Just Bad Pot"
Thomas
Jefferson Slave Apartments, No Old Guy Lo Fi Cry CD
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Track 18 | "RnR Hall of Fame"
Thomas
Jefferson Slave Apartments, Bait and Switch CD
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Track 17 | "Bottle Island"
Thomas
Jefferson Slave Apartments, You Lookin' For Treble? CD
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Track 16 | "The Way She Runs a Fever" (Live, Pop
Shop, Cleveland, 1983)
Great Plains, Slaves to Rock N Roll CDR
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Track 15 | "We Are Carloadbuyers"
The New Normal, The Sprightly Sounds of The New Normal CDR
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Track 14 | "Pizza You"
Shades of Al Davis, Midwest Peace Talks Vols.1, 2 CD
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Track 13 | "Everyone Is Wrong"
Saint Paul & His Coalition of the Willing, Everyone Is Wrong CDR
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Track 12 | "Radio City"
Fungobat, Greatest Hits Vol.1 CDR
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Track 11 | "Still There's Hope"
Log, Logjammin' CDR
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Track 10 | "Black Sox Scandal"
Great Plains, Live
at the Electric Banana, Pittsburgh, 1985 CDR
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Track 09 | "Hollywood Years"
Log Almighty CD
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Track 08 | "Ahab's Leg"
Shades of Al Davis CDR
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Track 07 | "My Evil Friend"
Log, The Early Years CDR
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Track 06 | "Toward Picturesque"
Paul Nini, Life in These United States CD
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Track 05 | "No Beginning, No End"
Peck of Snide, Moot CD
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Track 04 | "Po Mo Fo PO Folks"
Great Plains, Cornflakes CDR
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Track 03 | "Vague Uncertainties"
Paul Nini, The Mannerist Age CDR
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Track 02 | "Old 3C"
Great Plains, Length of Growth 1981-89,
2-CDR retrospective set
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Track 01 | "Reference"
Log, Auto Fire Life CD
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Click here
to play the Columbus radio show that profiled the Log Almighty release.
How to purchase Old 3C downloads
Old 3C works with the good folks at IODA
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and the Amazon
MP3 store. Please visit these vendors (or many others out there
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All Music Guide, 2002, review by Karen E. Graves:
Ron House, Obsessed CD (Moses Carryout)
"Subtlety" is not a concept that one generally expects to be associated with the music of ex-Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments /ex-Great Plains frontman Ron House, but no word more concisely sums up his Obsessed album. Coined a rock opera, Obsessed isn't nearly as pretentious as such a label might imply. Perhaps "concept album" is a more fitting description, as the album's 12 songs very honestly chronicle the demise of a romantic relationship.
Casually strummed acoustic guitars are the standard on Obsessed, and while House 's former Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments bandmate Robert Petric lends his guitar skills to the album, it is not in the vein of his brilliantly over-the-top Thomas Jefferson metal-head fretwork. It is instead a series of subtle accent lines and tasteful flourishes, just enough to add a needed sheen to House 's otherwise almost overly restrained jangle. Petric shines especially brightly on "Seven Years" and "Call Her Up," though one can't help but wish he'd stomp on a distortion pedal and rock out (a guest turn on "Restraining Order" by Moviola 's Jerry Dannemiller proves a bit more satisfying).
Pretty Mighty Mighty's Noel Sayre, Moviola 's Jake Housh, and ex-Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments Ted Hattemer also make appearances. Vocally, House abandons the vitriol that was characteristic of his Thomas Jefferson work and instead offers melodies that are often rather touching (a feat accomplished in the quieter moments of Great Plains, such as "Same Moon"). However, the phrasing remains off-kilter and shaky enough to keep anyone from mistaking this for anything that might be labeled sugary adult contemporary.
While his lyrics have always tended toward a more prose-oriented tone than a flowery poetic one, with Obsessed House 's musings are more straightforward than usual. Verses are driven by strong narrative lines that read like the scattered pages of an unfinished novel, or misplaced journal entries, rather than rhyme-scheme-obsessed grade-school poetry or self-consciously wry indie hipsterisms. While songs like "Breezewood Serenade," "Fossil," and "Call Her Up" are almost uncomfortably honest, with lyrics like, "Can you call her up for me/And ask one more time/Can I come home?," House occasionally has to break the tension with a bit of dry humor, such as "Puritan Sex" and "Restraining Order." The latter is an ode to, well, restraining orders, which might not be all that amusing except that for some reason he says the word "order" with a strange accent that makes him sound a bit like Linda Richman (perhaps it's intended as a nod to the record's Massachusetts-themed summation, but it still seems out of place).
It may take a few spins before the listener can reconcile the notion of the man responsible for writing a song about a prostitute chewing her leg off to escape a bear trap now writing straightforward love-themed songs, but once the initial shock wears off, what you're left with is a disc of catchy, smart, and refreshingly under-played songs that will make the perfect soundtrack to the next night (or week, or month) spent sleeping on a friend's couch after being evicted by your lover. So this is what happens when snide indie rockers grow up? Not bad. Let's hope he beats that Dashboard Confessional kid to a pulp with his lovely acoustic guitar.
blastitude.com, 2002, reviewer unknown:
Ron House, Obsessed CD (Moses Carryout)
Within the first few seconds, over a sunny/sad acoustic guitar vibe, he tells you, "My heart is sick of meaning," and believe me, it's HEAVY. I've never heard the Great Plains, and I only barely heard the one Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments CD that was major-label affiliated (because someone I knew bought it for $2 in a cut-out bin), but I've always heard of the name Ron House, and with this album I can finally fully see why. Third song starts with a high-quality hook: "She's a foxy mother of one," and, of course, gets HEAVIER from there. Can you get to it? Or are you too sensitive? Or not sensitive enough? Ron House might be both; "Throw me a bone and I'll surely retreat," he says a little later. Of course the music isn't itself HEAVY -- again, it's just guy-with-an-acoustic guitar, backed with a nice rhythm/lead electric guitar and there's a bass in there too, seemingly not on every song but maybe. No drums -- kind of a Blood on the Tracks setup. It wouldn't fit on an OOPS! tour, which is why I could never get 100% behind the OOPS! aesthetic. This is more for the Nick Tosches readers. Anyway, I can really relate to this record because my old long-time haunt of Lincoln, Nebraska, like Ron House's long-time haunt of Columbus, Ohio, is one of those beer-drenched college towns that is just big enough that almost anything can occasionally happen and just small (and beer-drenched) enough that even when it does it's not necessarily exciting.
rockbites.org, 2002, year end top 20:
Ron House, Obsessed CD (Moses Carryout)
No drums, no bass, and no fiction. "Obsessed" tells the story of a friend’s life spiraling out of control as he clings to hope. The set is the solo debut from Ron House, who previously fronted Great Plains and Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments.
Boston Phoenix, January 16-23, 2003 issue, review by Franklin Bruno:
House calls: Columbus's Great Plains scene
There's a poignant, even grim moment at the close of Obsessed (Moses Carryout), the solo debut by Great Plains/Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments frontman Ron House. After tracking his middle-age-crazy protagonist's troubles--first romantic, then existential-- through 11 songs, "Implicated" ends with an acoustic guitar that won't hold its tuning, a woozy lead part from TJSA guitarist Bob Petric, and House dismissing the value of the whole enterprise: "Don't condescend with music/Don't throw the scent off with music/Don't send me dead music."
Obsessed isn't a confessional album in any strict sense; its accompanying press is at pains to note that the songs were written in the aftermath of a close friend's marital difficulties. But House has spent the bulk of his adult life as a prime mover in Columbus's fecund rock underground - the scene that gave us the New Bomb Turks, Scrawl, and Moviola, among others--as fanzine writer (the Offense Newsletter), record-store co-owner (Used Kids), and musician. When someone who's been banking on the music's saving power for this long calls it into question, you can't help hearing the doubts as his own.
Another recent release gives us a snapshot of House and compatriots in, as the photo captions say, "happier times." Cornflakes (Old 3C) unearths 26 live and studio rarities by Great Plains, one of the Columbus scene's standard bearers. Most active between 1982 and 1989 (with the odd reunion gig since), the Plains are most often remembered for a single college-radio hit, the indie in-joke "Letter to a Fanzine," with its knowing references to 4AD and SST and its promo-scamming critic's rallying cry: "I like everything I get in the mail for free."
If you've heard only a single Great Plains song, it's probably this one, which is a shame. Although House's unsingerly whine helped pigeonhole the band as "geek rock," he was also capable of microphone-shredding desperation and unhinged vocalise, and his lyrics celebrated everything from civil rights ("Martin Luther King and Martin Luther Drinking") to bakery overstock ("It's day old, but it tastes great"), a combination that one previously unheard song on Cornflakes aptly labels "Po Mo Fo PO Folks." Behind House, the band's main sonic architects, brothers Mark and Matt Wyatt, conjured loose swirls of trashy guitar and cheap combo organ more akin to a Nuggets obscurity than to by-the-numbers barre- chord punk.
The 2000 double disc Length of Growth, which compiled Great Plains' early, self-released EP and three Homestead albums, is the best road map to the band's work. Still, Cornflakes fills in important peaks and valleys, with alternate takes of their rawest ("Chuck Berry's Orphan") and craftiest ("Serpent Mound") material, oddities like the country-styled "History of Sin," and songs slated for their never-completed final album. The real revelations are the discs' cover versions, which seem to have been chosen on the principle of maximum inappropriateness for House's voice. To hear "Everyday People" or Dusty Springfield's "Every Day I Have To Cry" run through the art-garage grinder is to hear the very foundations of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame cracking underfoot.
Cornflakes compiler Paul Nini was just one of several Great Plains bassists. But he's become the unofficial archivist/torchbearer for the band and, to an extent, the scene they helped build. Nini also fronts the Plains' sporadically active Web log, runs both Old 3C and the on-line distributor Popstream, and releases modestly scaled solo recordings at irregular intervals. The Mannerist Age, his latest, is split between sleek, clockwork instrumentals and understated vocal numbers with somber melodies and careful four-track arrangements akin to Elliott Smith's. But peel away the drum programs and delay-blurred guitars and you'll find Nini, like House, giving notice of his diminished expectations from a career in rock. "The Next Seattle" (which Columbus briefly appeared to be in the mid '90s) makes an earnest case for music's private satisfactions: "I don't want to be around/ When the side show comes to town . . . I'm happy by myself."
The Columbus music community, though still productive, has suffered some tragic losses in recent years. The prolific, hard-living Jim Shepard (Vertical Slit, V3) hanged himself in 1998; guitarist Jerry Wick of punk-rock true-believers Gaunt was killed by a hit-and-run driver while bicycling home in January of 2001. Their stories may be one factor in the self-questioning, sometimes bitter tone of both Obsessed and The Mannerist Age. But life and music go on: a recent e-mail from Nini announced that a re-formed Great Plains (along with fellow lifers Mike Rep & the Quotas and Screaming Urge) played a home-town show on January 4, with House planning to "finish the lyrics" to some of Cornflakes' rougher numbers for the occasion.
The next big thing? Not likely. Condescending, or "dead" music? Definitely not.
All Music Guide, review by Karen E. Graves:
Ron House, New Wave as the Next Guy (Spare Me)
Best known for his roles as frontman for seminal 1980s indie-retro-popsters Great Plains and 1990s noise rockers Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments, Ron House got his start in the late '70s and early '80s outfits Moses CarryOut and Twisted Shouts. New Wave as the Next Guy collects those bands' nearly impossible-to-find early recordings, several of which were previously available on House's cassette only Blind Boy in the Backseat release on Old Age Records. House's distinct vocal style, a bit nasal with a tendency toward tantrums, and bitter wiseguy lyrics evoke one of two reactions from listeners: vehement hate or total adoration. Sure, the initial reaction may be shock or confusion, but it very quickly melts into one of the two others, there is no middle ground. Lo-fi and recorded live at various Ohio State University-area venues, the songs have a ragged quality, but it works well for the songs with darker lyrical tones, among them "New Maps of Hell" and longtime House (and later Great Plains) staple "Chuck Berry's Orphan." Worth the price of this record on its own, on "Chuck Berry's Orphan," House's vocals tear through the listener with lines like "Hey Captain, it's been a bad night/My best friend was shot on sight." In all, New Wave as the Next Guy should serve to complete the collections of House fans, but moreover it is interesting enough to warrant the interest of those less familiar with his work and serve as an introduction to his unique musical vision.
