Radiosmack
Radiosmack is rock music for the times, pulling influences from anywhere and everywhere and stewin' 'm up into audio jambalaya. Heavy rock rubs elbows with anci
6
songs
349
plays
Radiation Sunshine Radiation Sunshine
What's right or wrong, or good or bad, is that Sunshine on your head or just Radiation eating a hole in your brain?
The Day I Gave Up The Day I Gave Up
An audio distillation of the final moment of despair...and the moment where I kept going instead of letting it crush me.
Goddamned Asshole Goddamned Asshole
Don't we all ask the question - "why you gotta be such a goddamned asshole?" at some point in our, um, day?
Show all (6)
Radiosmack is the 'tuneful' offshoot of the split of Mettaya into two bands - Mettaya keeps on as the purveyors of psychedelic metal and industrial, and Radiosmack is now the home of the less pounding, visceral songs - more about making a genuinely new chapter in rock and roll history for the first time since (dare we say it) "grunge" came about.
Dan was invited into what was touted as a 'neo-Grunge' band within days of arriving in Venice in 2006; he didn't think much of the idea at the time. "I really think genres, this whole 'categorizing music' thing, is both pointless and out of control. I've seen so many craigslist ads over the years now where people try to create some 'new genre' when they should be concentrating on writing and performing music people want to hear for whatever reason, instead of trying to make your crappy death metal band seem original by calling it 'blood metal' or something.
"However, that spirit, of wanting to take modern music and infuse it with the best of what was in the traditional canon, in ways the older artists never intended, in the pursuit of a new, visceral form of rock and roll, is entirely the point here." Radiosmack delivers by offering songs soaked in the suffering of real life, both personally lived and witnessed, yet rendered by someone who refuses to just become a cynic and be done with it. "I want this band to be more fun than Mettaya, maybe a hair less high minded, more to the point. Maybe I'm gettin' old," (he's a ripe old 30 now) "but this is the band for people who don't want to scream. Cry, drown in a bottle of brown liquor maybe, but it just comes from a different place than the aggro and political thrash of Mettaya, and I felt like both styles of songs were suffering from a lack of people's ability to understand that it's all rock and roll, all from one heart and mind. But I guess I'm stuck like Al from Ministry with 13 bands to keep track of."Band/artist history
This is an offshoot of Mettaya, a band that Dan founded out of a van in Venice with a wannabe singer (who at least had some Crowleyan knowledge and the slim cred of having been smuggled into the country from Canada by Bob Dylan's sometimes-girlfriend) and a washed up former member of the Temptations' road band, David Waller. They were sometimes to be joined by Don "The Bike Doc" from Venice on drums, who brought the notoriety of having learned to play drums in Federal prison after robbing a series of banks (and eluding cops for months...on his bike) to our motley crew.
Minus Don they were swept aboard the tour bus for Sky Saxon and The Seeds' 2007 US tour (all two dates of it, but hey...NOLA, W. Virginia, and Monterey Pop Festival ain't a walk around the block). "Goldilocks", the "singer" choked on the way to Monterey (where Sky was going to give Mettaya one song to play out of the set if we could get it down fast enough with drummer Tommy Gunn) and decided punching Dan in the face was a better option than being found out to be a poser in front of thousands of people; Dan responded in kind with 33 punches to the head followed by a few smacks against the roadside guard rail with Goldie's head for good measure. Christopher Robin (can't make this shit up, though I know it sounds like a bad movie script) summarily tossed Goldie's bags to the roadside and took off in the bus; apparently Goldie was too pissed off or injured to realize it and left his bags where they lay, somewhere in Kentucky.
And thus evaporated Mettaya's chance to debut on the (quasi) 40th Anniversary of Hendrix's debut US performance with the Experience...though Dan was invited into the Seeds as a guitar player, that only lasted through a few rehearsals at a Mendocino pot farm before relations deteriorated with Christopher over money and other things, and Dan had to leave, though not without having earned valuable lessons along with his road rash.
Now, Dan has divided his output into 'hardcore' and 'not', essentially, and Radiosmack is the outlet for the latter - while there are still rocking guitars and beats, there's also acoustic psychedelia and other things that just go better together than they do mixed in with the heavy skull-crushers now making up the repertoire in Mettaya, and offers Dan and Co. an opportunity to give legs to some of the influences that have crept in over the years, like Dax Riggs, Hank III, Tom Waits, and all manner of 'classic' era material that used to be in some 'other' realm to Dan, untouchable by his hands on his instrument, and now the keys have been shown to him. While still a work in progress (The Rolling Stones could be argued to be a continuing 'work in progress' as well) the songs and sounds are compelling in their current demo form on the Fall Apart LP; more stewing, more simmering, and some actual, honest-to-god drumming will bring the material to full palatability, though 'Sunny L.A.' entering the top 100 songs in the Alternative charts out of some 168,000 songs was a nice surprise, despite the obvious 'demo-ness' of it. Where they go from here, no one knows - perhaps, even, somewhere truly new.Have you performed in front of an audience?Dan says: "I'm currently trying to put a good band together in LA, which is basically trying to find three semi-with-it musicians who kind of sort of want to do something like this that don't require outright bribes of cocaine or cold, hard cash just to sleepwalk through my songs like they give a shit. It's even harder than it sounds, but it's a surmountable obstacle, and after it's passed 'we' will be playing live at every given opportunity."
Your musical influences
Black Sabbath, The Doors, Nirvana, Tom Waits, Dax Riggs (Acid Bath/Agents of Oblivion/Deadboy, etc), Mudhoney, Cracker, The Seeds, Monster Magnet, Kyuss, Queens of the Stone Age, Life Sex and DeathWhat equipment do you use?
2003 Gibson Melody Maker RI, McSwain/OLP Tin Top, Guitar Research T30R, Sans Amp Tri-A.C., Duncan and GFS/Guitar Fetish Pickups. "I only use the cream of the crap." - Dan
Lost Angeles, CA
USA
ID
1112213
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