Bootblogging #11: The Adversary Workers

So it was a Monday night, one of the only nights I still do any of the things I have always done, like sit at a tavern until it gets late, talking and drinking and listening to unusual music.

I was sitting at a tavern until it got late, talking and drinking and listening to unusual music. I was sitting at Eric Hall's bar - meaning, of course, the bar where he works. Ownership never really meant that much to me, unless it was the owner telling me I had better go.

Eric was playing unusual music. It sounded really good to me. Angry, shrill punk rock, but not malevolent or stupid, as punk rock can be. What words I could pick out of the din were interesting and suggestive. "Was it so good? Was it so good?"

I'm the guy who always calls the deejay or interrupts the bartender to ask what they are playing. I interrupted Eric (as usual) and asked what he was playing.

"Adversary Workers," he said. "Local band. Test pressing of their new e.p."

"Cool band name," I said.

Eric nodded. He went back to working the bar, and I went back to trying to pick lyrics out of the din.

At some point deeper into the night, Eric popped a CD out of the deck behind the bar and handed it to me. He may or may not have first conferred with one of The Adversary Workers sitting down the bar to get their permission to do so. Knowing Eric and his consummate respect for other artists, I will say he did so.

Thus, a homeburned CD of the new Adversary Workers e.p., Glenndonia, entered the morass of special recordings in my basement - special, in this case, because the band gave it to Eric, and then Eric gave it to me. I'm sentimental like that.

Then I accepted an invitation to read at Day of the Deadbeats last year. I was keeping a sketchbook at the time, so I drew the other readers on the program and chased them down, after they left the stage, so they could sign my sketch of them.

The guy who had read Kenneth Patchens was one of those young Get Born people, recently relocated to Chicago (for a girlfriend, I think). He was really engaging, and we swapped contact information and endeavored to keep in touch after he went back up to that cold Great Lakes city.

And so we did. He began to read Confluence City. He responded to a post inviting guest bloggers to read and review books I had acquired from a federal public defender in St. Louis who writes lesbian legal thrillers.

I mailed Joe a lesbian legal thriller. He offered to send me something in return, maybe a record by his band? "What band?" "The Adversary Workers." Ah, hah! Yes, of course!

So now I have vinyl of Glenndonia, along with vinyl of Vide Poche, another e.p. by The Adversary Workers, and permission from Joe to bootblog some free mp3s of the band. So, here you go, straight from that homeburned CD Joe must have given to Eric that Eric gave to me: my two favorite tracks from Glenndonia.

Free mp3s

"Goodman Brown"

The Adversary Workers

"In the middle of things"

The Adversary Workers

From Glenndonia
(No Wire Records)

Produced by The Adversary Workers

and Lee Harvey Gunpowder
Engineered and mixed by

Richard Beckman

I can't find any songwriting credits.

Band photo from their MySpace page.

Sketch of Joe Wetteroth reading Patchens by me.

Also in this series

Bootblogging #1: Three by The Lettuce Heads
Bootblogging #2: Three elegies for local musicians
Bootblogging #3: Michael Shannon Friedman
Bootblogging #4: Three more by The Lettuce Heads
Bootblogging #5: Chuck Reinhart's guitar circle hits
Bootblogging #6: The silly side of The Lettuce Heads
Bootblogging #7: Songs for "Divorcing God"
Bootblogging #8: More songs for "Divorcing God"
Bootblogging #9: Adam Long presents The Imps!
Bootblogging #10: More Michael Shannon Friedman