Ball Cheese Forever

Ball Cheese: Ball Cheese Forever Bored guys in the suburbs start bands like Ball Cheese. It has as much to do with fantasies of rock superstardom as it does with the fun of jamming on a Saturday night when there's nothing better to do and there's a place to play, either somebody's parents are away or the band is fortunate to have a drummer who lives in an old house in the middle of an industrial park. The music captures it all, homages to late 70's guitar heroes and wah wah pedal solos. Boredom and restlessness are common themes in songs like "Life So old," and "Weekends Never Happen." A live set from the Live AIDS '86 concert provides alternative versions to several songs. Be forewarned the sound quality is piss poor. The live material was recorded from home video by way of a TV speaker and the rest was recorded in someone's family room. This was long before guitarist Bouzz (as in Bouzz Geldoff) Ballcheese was able to buy Carter Grant Ego's 8 track recorder. Still songs like "The Gordon Skoog Song," "D.W.I.," and "Rambutt," with its references to oil and Vaseline, are funny enough to be amusing at least once. Included, if only to fill up the tape, is a live set recorded by the Original Rex Morgan M.D. Trio at the Live AIDS '86 concert that had George and Ray performing songs meat and flies without a drummer, "amidst a stage full of garbage," while being largely ignored and rushed off the stage. It's all on tape: the sadness and the badness including George Willard's howling vocals, Ray Plantagenant's monstrous bass lines, a tribute to AIDS victim Rock Hudson, and commentary from the hot dogmeister himself, Gordon Skoog. David Craig, Mole Magazine, 1989 Ball Cheese was a garage band in the classic sense, (bass playerless), that grew up suburbanly isolated from anything that would have inspired them to be such. Here is a great set at Live AIDS '86, and some more studio type stuff that was tracked down way back when. Just listen to "Jim's Song," the title's an approximation, but probably close, when Bill sings "you pissed on my carpet," the damn dog's already barking. One of the things that made Ball Cheese special was that they even let the dogs join in. The sound quality ain't great, at least the live stuff's cool and there's an interesting fuzziness to it. The rest of the tape works as a bootleg of an unfortunately obscure group. Yet dream we do, here at Nut Music, of the day we can write Bill Ballcheese a fat royalty check. The Original Rex Morgan stuff was a performance of ragged glory with some attempted passion thrown in. That's something you gotta listen for. And Mr. Plantagenant's bass lines, they were monstrous, in a full, rich, ripe and juicy way. Not much else remains to be said about two guys who call themselves a trio. Quale Smithers, Rock Archivist