Fetal Pigs: Where's the Drummer?

In the past 10 years or so, I've moved at least seven times. Every move requires me to pack up all of my crap into boxes and shuttle them around. With frequent moves, you end up with some boxes that don't get opened for a few years at a time.

This afternoon, I spent some time cleaning up the basement, and rifled through a few of those boxes. And in one of them, I found a neat old gem... the first "album" I ever recorded, on New Year's Eve 1990.

The band was called Fetal Pigs. It was me and my buddy Mike, who was one of only two or three people I knew who played guitar. We sat next to each other in science class. We'd hang out a lot looking at tablature books, chatting about guitarists and feebly playing. By late 1990, I'd been playing guitar for maybe a year and a half. Mike had been playing about half that time.

Our drummer was a guy named Roland, who was the first guy I legitimately made any music with, ever. Roland and I were the guys in the basement doing air guitar to Def Leppard (and his brother's Depeche Mode albums). We graduated from air guitar to posing with tennis rackets in front of a mirror, and eventually got actual instruments at about the same time. Mike and Roland didn't really know each other if I remember, but by virtue of being the only drummer I knew, Roland was in the band.

Mike had a sleep over for New Years. (This was 8th grade, so not having a big party to go to wasn't overly weird.) Roland couldn't make it. So, we created our Magnum Opus, "Where's The Drummer?" :

I don't remember the exact recording process, but I'm pretty sure it was Mike's tape recorder sitting in the corner of the room. No mics, no drums, no bass, no multi-tracking, just the two of us on vocals and guitar, all live takes. Awesome. The entire album clocks in at about 13 minutes. Note the sticker indicating that this is the "MASTER" recording. I don't know if that means this was actually the tape we recorded on, or whether it's a first generation copy. As a sign of our laziness in obtaining a pristine recording, immediately after the album ends, it bleeds into some random Morning Zoo DJ I'd taped off the radio. I'm pretty sure the stock picture of the drums was from an ad in a guitar magazine.

I don't recall whether we actually did anything with this. I don't know that we made a copy for anyone else, played it for anyone other than our parents, or actually did anything with any of the songs. As I remember it, this was in a complete vacuum.

Notice that little bit of paper sticking out the left side? That's the liner notes:

(My handwriting still looks exactly like that.)

Here's the full page:

But since that's pretty much illegible (it's 18 year old Mac dot matrix), here's the text:

FETAL PIGS - WHERE’S THE DRUMMER?

WARZ SUCK — they just do... (dedicated to Saddam Hussein)
JIMI IS GOD — Mike’s true hero (dedicated to Mr. Hendrix)
EVERY ROSE HAS ITS THORN — as recorded by Poison
BATTLING AXES FROM HELL — a brief moment of inspiration (very brief)
WHERE’S THE DRUMMER — a basic explanation of the album (a joke, nothing more)
ALL CHICKENS ARE NOT CREATED EQUAL — our instrumental anthem (sounds better live!)

Fetal Pigs are:

John Argentiero — lead vocals, lead guitar
Mike Palys — lead & backing vocals, rhythm guitar
Roland Lo — drums

John uses Yamaha Electric Guitars, Washburn Acoustics, Marshall amplifiers, and Dunlop picks.
Mike uses B.C. Rich Electric Guitars, Gianinni Acoustics, Marshall amplifiers, and his favorite translucent purple pick
Roland uses Pearl drums, Zildjian cymbals and whatever sticks he can get his hands on.

If you are interested in playing bass in an up and coming young band give us a call (we can supply bass)!

This EP was written, recorded, and mixed during a twelve hour period between December 31, 1990 — January 1, 1991

Roland was absent at the recording of this EP because he wasn’t sleeping over at Mike’s house on New Year Eve.

Coming soon - FETAL PIGS II: Afterbirth

Some notes on the above:

• The EP is recorded on both sides of a cassette, same stuff on both sides. By weird coincidence, if you flip the tape after the last song, it's almost exactly at the start of the same song on the other side. Bad ass.
• I have guitar solos in most of these songs. They are all exactly the same.
• I was lead guitarist on this effort, but Mike lapped my skill set pretty quickly after this. I believe he went to sleepaway guitar camp, and came back with a lot more technique than I had. Realistically, I never got a whole lot better than what you hear on the tape, I just got nicer equipment. And I switched mostly to bass for the rest of my high school bands.
• In "Jimi is God", I attempt to play a brief guitar solo with my teeth. I had braces at the time. At one point, the string get caught in my braces, very audibly. This is the coolest record I have of anything from my youth.
• Every Rose has it's Thorn was completely my idea. Mike hated Poison. I still play that song in my band. I don't actually play the solo that much better.
• I still love my manically spastic solos on "Battling Axes from Hell". I suspect that with an actual amp, they would have sounded better. Mike's solos are the slower, jazzier ones. Mine are the one's that sound like someone who had too much caffeine.
• The "Sounds Better Live!" tagline for "All Chickens Are Not Created Equal" is a bit of a lie. Fetal Pigs never played live. In fact, I'm not entirely convinced we ever played this in practice. (Nor am I sure we ever actually practiced as a full band.)
• "All Chickens Are Not Created Equal" is really just a bizarre series of overlapping unrelated riffs in different keys played on top of one another. It's instrumental and, in retrospect, a complete waste of tape.
• With the exception of the opening riff in "All Chickens Are Not Created Equal", I'm reasonably sure Mike wrote all of the music and most of the lyrics.
• "Fetal Pigs II: Afterbirth" never actually came out. (Though, I did write some cheesy metal under the moniker Ultradeath using the Fetal Pigs : Afterbirth album name. The listing is still up here, but the file is long gone.)
• We never got a bassist. Roland left the band shortly after this, and was replaced by Dave Mathison, who was probably the only guy Mike knew that played drums. (Band politics in 8th and 9th grade were weird.) Fetal Pigs lasted another few years, mostly as a cover band. I don't think any of these songs were ever played again.
• Re: the equipment list, this was something we saw in all of our metal albums, and it never occurred to me that these rock stars were naming their equipment because they had promotional deals with the companies. We were just naming them because they were the only instruments we had and we thought they were cool. (Though as Mike progressed into more serious guitar work, he was later mortified by his B.C. Rich Warlock.)
• On the equipment topic, most of the acoustic guitar is my 12-string Washburn. All of the amps are single-channel practice amp, and sound painful. My guitar was my yellow Yamaha, which I still have today.

So, those were good times. Fetal Pigs continued to exist as a minor entity until I started playing with Undertow in 10th grade. Mike and I went to different high schools and were heading in different musical directions, and the band and friendship drifted apart. I consider Undertow (more on them at a future date) my first "real" band, since we actually played live shows. But this tape is a really cool document of my first musical experiments. Good stuff.

And since I KNOW you're longing to hear it, here you go. After writing about it, I decided I needed to have a copy for the kids. This is just a walkman into my PC, so the noise level is horrible, but deal with it. (Especially on the opening of Every Rose...)

Presented for the first time since 1991, Fetal Pigs' Where the Drummer. In Mono.

For some reason, the streaming thing isn't working for these, so click to hear them.

WARZ SUCK — 2:14

JIMI IS GOD — 0:34

EVERY ROSE HAS ITS THORN — 4:01

BATTLING AXES FROM HELL — 1:04

WHERE’S THE DRUMMER — 0:55

ALL CHICKENS ARE NOT CREATED EQUAL — 4:04