Conan Neutron & the Secret Friends – Dark Passengers.
An 11 song record about depression and mental health. On Learning Curve Records.
You can stream the available tracks and pre-order at: https://neutronfriends.bandcamp.com/album/dark-passengers
Rally, a simple one word name, but a hell of a band. They are both catchy but have some skronk and grind. Michael from Rally has been a NeutronFriends sideman on the guitar numerous times, drummer Dan not only ran Conan and Tony’s old label… but he has sat in with NeutronFriends on drums as well. I’m pretty sure this is their first release, looking forward to many more!
Oh yeah, NeutronFriends side is about messianic figures that turn out to be total jerks. It happens. The badass leads at the end are all NeutronFriends live guitar player Erica Strout of Motherfucker.
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Protons and Electrons Atom 11 is now up for listening and pre-order: It’s Conan Neutron & the Secret Friends (Conan Neutron, Tony Ash, Dale Crover) with The Vig, and Cartographer with Turnip, The Cloth Clown.
I believe this is the first Cartographer release in 8 years. So there you go!
Cartographer is very closely tied to the NeutronFriends mythos, by nature of Conan being bandmates with Ben and Chris in Replicator, and with Chris and Andre in Mount Vicious. Without Replicator (and to a lesser extant Mount Vicious), there would be no Conan Neutron & the Secret Friends in any capacity.
Cartographer is burly, aggressive and uncompromising noise rock. While the band members don’t take anything too seriously, the music is serious as a heart attack. Pummeling drums, jagged guitar and bass that evokes pure sleaze and menace make a fully formed package of Noiserock(TM) delivery. I believe their song is about a birthday clown that wants to have sex with a young Ben Adrian’s mom.
The Neutron Friends tune is an homage to a classic gambling term. The Vig (short for vigorish) is interest principal amount owed on a debt or loan, always at a usurious rate, with the idea being that the borrower never ends up paying down the principal and is indebted to the lender by just just covering the interest. The conceit of the song is applying those principles to psychic costs, but it probably works as a more dead on interpretation too.
The EarthQuaker Devices Bit Commander, features prominently in the “proggy” chorus bit. While, I think the guitar sound in the verses are just straight into a cranked Bassman.
Anyway, vinyl ships in September but you can listen to the tunes on bandcamp now.…
Conan Neutron & the Secret Friends – Atom 2 is available to listen to and purchase!
Secret Friends is Conan Neutron on guitar and vocals / Tony Ash on bass and Dale Crover of the Melvins on drums. Toshi Kasai engineers and produces. This song trends towards the poppy/hooky side of the band and is called “Hate Secretary”
Atom 2 of 12 in the Protons and Electrons split single series.
Side B is the excellent rock band Quivers from San Francisco, California
“Although nobody in Quivers has yet played in Conan Neutron & the Secret Friends, all members of Quivers have been playing together in some capacity before coming together in this Voltron like formation of excellent rock.
As one continues “in the game”, more and more people fall off or become a soft parody of what they once more. These rockers have doubled down and are doing some of their most interesting work. It’s a delight to have played with these fellas and their irresistible hooks in any permutation over the past 18 or so years, and I look forward to doing so for years to come!”
In any case, check it out. They don’t ship until the 1st… but the SF Secret Friends show will be the 7″ release show as both bands are playing. here it is:
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Free to listen, $8 to pre-order vinyl, $2 to buy digital
Conan Neutron & the Secret Friends is, as always, Conan Neutron on Vocals and guitar, Tony Ash on bass and Dale Crover on drums. This time we are joined by Sean Kirkpatrick of the pAperchAse and Nervous Curtains on synth, piano, keys, etc, and Josh Hensley of the rutabega on harmony vocals.
It’s a lot more low key than a lot of our stuff and is directly written about the Amargosa Opera House and Hotel in Death Valley Junction California.
There is a stunning documentary on it called Amargosa.
Here’s what that link says:
“In the ghost town of Death Valley Junction stands the Amargosa Opera House, where for the past 33 years former New York dancer and artist Marta Becket has performed her own ballets in the theater she spent seven years handpainting with stunning murals.”
Yup. I (Conan) consider Marta Becket to be a personal inspiration and the Amargosa Opera House to be a paragon of DIY attitude and uncompromising vision. This song is meant to honor her achievements and memory, and to celebrate the idea that empty spaces are places to paint, what is possible.
If you’ve ever seen Lost Highway, it’s the hotel at the end.
It’s an incredible place in the middle of absolutely NOWHERE and Marta Becket was an American treasure.
On the other side is the incredible Maple Stave, Chris does time as second guitar for us quite a bit and does a LOT of our art. Evan has sat in as well, on guitar and drums. They are a hell of a band.
Let me just quote what Chris wrote about their song:
“The short version: the Maple Stave split with Conan Neutron & the Secret Friends is out today. We recorded it in November with the great Nick Petersen, and it was mastered by the great Bob Weston. It is the first Maple Stave recording since 2006 (I believe) to include bass guitar.
It is available for download here:
The long version:
Back in summer of 1998 things were weird for me. I had started listening to stuff like Polvo and June of 44, which skewed my songwriting, pushing it away from the more traditional likes of Sebadoh and Guided By Voices. It was also weird because I was about to start college, and I was scared to some degree. As far as a band went, I knew I’d start from scratch, and, with that, could do whatever.
On August 5th 1998, I went to the Lizard & Snake (long, long gone Chapel Hill cafe/club), probably on the suggestion of a friend. The show I went to see featured two bands I knew nothing about. They were Bicentennial Quarters (local opener; about 20 years gone as of this writing) and U.S. Maple. Like hearing “Enemy Insects,” “My Black Ass” or “Of Information & Belief” for the first time in my car, on Jefferson Road, not long before, these bands blew me away. (note: I first heard “My Black Ass” in a friend’s car in an Amoco parking lot in Boone, NC somewhere in 97/98) I didn’t understand what was happening, but knew it was good. It gave me a much greater understanding of how much you could play with song structure, and though I’d say that I likely lean more toward traditional styles when writing, it broadened my horizons enough to understand that pushing things further than I had been was absolutely ok to do.
I left that show and came up with the name Maple Stave as a nod of appreciation. I wrote it down in a notebook in case I ever needed it.
I moved to Boone, started college, but caught up with Bicentennial Quarters a couple months later at Carrboro Elementary, opening for Shellac. It was a big deal to see Shellac. A growing number of albums in my collection featured at least one of the band members’ names and I had a quickly growing appreciation for their work (which still carries on; I’ll still sometimes think how good something sounds only to find one of …
