Semibeings
Encyclopedia
The Semibeings were an alternative rock band based out of Mercerville-Hamilton Square, N.J. active in the 1990s. The band released Sickness and Health on Shimmy Disc
Shimmy Disc
Shimmy Disc was an influential New York City based record label founded in 1987 by Mark Kramer. Before it was sold to the Knitting Factory, it was responsible for providing a mass audience for acts including Bongwater, Daniel Johnston, Fly Ashtray, Galaxie 500, King Missile, Boredoms, Ruins, Ween,...

 in 1995 and Three Pawns Standing on Seattle’s C/Z label in 1997 both produced by Mark Kramer
Mark Kramer
Mark Kramer , known professionally as Kramer, is a musician, composer, record producer and founder of the New York City record label Shimmy-Disc...

 and recorded at his Noise New Jersey studio. The band’s primary members were brother’s Joe and Pat Baker and Keith Monacchio. Playing numerous shows at the City Gardens
City gardens
City Gardens was a nightclub located at 1701 Calhoun Street in Trenton, New Jersey.The Nalbone family of Trenton and Lawrence, New Jersey, owned the building several years before it became the legendary rock club known as City Gardens. The "City Gardens" moniker was first used strictly as a blues...

 club in Trenton
Trenton, New Jersey
Trenton is the capital of the U.S. state of New Jersey and the county seat of Mercer County. As of the 2010 United States Census, Trenton had a population of 84,913...

, the group disbanded in 1999 to pursue other interests. The Semibeings' music was featured on a number of seasons of MTV
MTV
MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....

's The Real World
The Real World
The Real World is a reality television program on MTV originally produced by Mary-Ellis Bunim and Jonathan Murray. First broadcast in 1992, the show, which was inspired by the 1973 PBS documentary series An American Family, is the longest-running program in MTV history and one of the...

and Road Rules
Road Rules
Road Rules was an MTV reality show that debuted on July 19, 1995. The series, which was MTV's second reality show after The Real World followed six strangers between the ages of 18 and 24 after stripping them of their money and putting them on an RV traveling from location to location only guided...

during the 1990s.

Beginnings

It can be said that The Semibeings started with the pseudo band “The Political Manifestos” in 1989. Joseph Baker and Keith Monacchio became friends while attending Notre Dame High School in Lawrenceville, New Jersey
Lawrenceville, New Jersey
Lawrenceville is a census-designated place and unincorporated area located within Lawrence Township in Mercer County, New Jersey. As of the 2010 United States Census, the CDP population was 3,887...

, during the 80’s. Joe and brother Pat were involved in music from an early age. Joe purportedly has hundreds of cassette tapes filled with homemade albums he has made with the assistance of his brother from 1980 to the present including home made album covers and liner notes for each. Irrationally fearing the criticism he felt he would receive if his peers knew of his hobby, Joe had kept this other life "in the closet" till he chose to reveal his secret to Keith who was interested in much of the same music Joe was into. Keith who was known around school as having a great singing voice had aspired to get involved with music himself, but had never had the opportunity until he discovered Joe’s secret. While living at Long Beach Island
Long Beach Island
Long Beach Island is a barrier island and summer colony along the Atlantic Ocean coast of Ocean County, New Jersey in the United States...

, N.J. during the summer of 1989, Joe and Keith started writing songs together and recording them on cassette tapes as “albums” in the same way Joe had previously been doing and titled their band “The Political Manifestos”. During this time, Patrick Baker whom had developed into a truly gifted guitarist and musician in his own right was busy with the role of lead guitarist as one of the original members of the local hard-core band Mouthpiece
Mouthpiece (band)
Mouthpiece was a New Jersey straight edge hardcore punk band from 1991 to 1996. Often seen as one of the last bands of the youth crew era, or the earliest revival of it...

, co-writing their first EP.

After spending several years writing and recording music together just for its own sake, feeling that their music was good enough that others would like it, Keith persuaded Joe to try their hands at truly coming out of the closet and having a go professionally. Joe, whom feared they would be ridiculed decided that at 20 years old it was "now or never" and decided to give it his best effort. However, Keith had the voice but couldn’t play any musical instruments, while Joe had the creative ideas and wrote the songs but as a musician he was technically limited so it was inevitable that Pat should join. They originally called the band “The Jamboree”. After secretly rehearsing as a 3 piece for about 3 months, they played their first official show at Stevie T’s in Trenton in November 1991 playing a mixture of covers (from the likes of Jane's Addiction
Jane's Addiction
Jane's Addiction is an American alternative rock band formed in Los Angeles, California in 1985. The band's original line-up featured Perry Farrell , Dave Navarro , Eric Avery and Stephen Perkins . After breaking up in 1991, Jane's Addiction briefly reunited in 1997 and again in 2001, both times...

 and R.E.M.) and originals.

Etymology

The band continued to play shows and during a brainstorming session with Keith, Joe came up with the name “Semibeings” to title the band based on the idea that as people they perhaps were not living as fully or to their potential thus “semi-being”. It was also a pun about being crazy; i.e. someone who is not quite “all there”. The word is only now starting to be used in the vernacular and as of yet cannot be traced to being used before the band.

Demos as art

At the time bands recorded “demos” which were usually cassette tapes consisting of 2 to 4 of the group’s best songs to send around to clubs or labels for potential shows or interest. The threesome decided to reinvent the demo format by recording full length albums right away and sending those out in their entirety as their “demos”. The band’s first album was the self titled “The Semibeings” released in early 1992 and which contained 8 songs followed later that year by the 17 song An Emotional Buffet both self produced and recorded at SS Sound Studios in Hamilton, N.J. under the tutelage of the studio’s owner and engineer John Bailey whom the band affectionately nicknamed “Mama”. “The Semibeings” was more of a folk oriented album consisting of Keith and Joe sharing lead vocals with Joe and Pat sharing guitar duties and Pat handling the bass. All songs were written by Joe or with Joe and Keith collaborating on lyrics to Joe’s music. Wanting to make the music that was closer to their hearts; that being rock music, Joe, Pat and Keith realized that they needed to expand the band to include a full time bassist and drummer. Tom McDonald joined as bassist and Dave Von Bargen joined as drummer, both having been friend’s of Pat’s and involved in the local basement music scene in Hamilton. Pat, Tom and Dave had previously formed the metal based band Spiritual Sky, having opened for Rob Zombie
Rob Zombie
Rob Zombie is an American musician, film director, screenwriter and film producer. He founded the heavy metal band White Zombie and has been nominated three times as a solo artist for the Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance.Zombie has also established a career as a film director, creating the...

’s White Zombie
White Zombie
White Zombie was a Grammy Award-nominated American heavy metal band. Based in New York City, White Zombie was originally a noise rock band. White Zombie are better-known for their later heavy metal-oriented sound...

 at the Fastlanes in Asbury Park, N.J. in the early nineties.

The follow-up to the first album was recorded as a five piece. Titled “An Emotional Buffet”, it wound up becoming a local classic. The tape even garnered attention from Alternative Press magazine who wrote “This release is truly one eclectic gem. There are lots of surprises in the seventeen songs. I was seduced to keep listening to each and every one” (AP July 1994). The band’s philosophy of sending out full length albums as demos seemed like suicide to most, but wound up paying off for upon listening to “An Emotional Buffet” local promoter Randy Now i.e.; (Randy Ellis) decided to book them as an opening act for the band Live
Live (band)
Live is an American rock band from York, Pennsylvania, composed of Chad Taylor , Patrick Dahlheimer , and Chad Gracey . Lead singer and principal songwriter Ed Kowalczyk left the band in November 2009....

 at City Gardens. An unsigned local band opening up for national acts at the club was fairly unprecedented at the time, The Semibeings over the ensuing years opened for various national band’s at City Gardens including Jawbox
Jawbox
Jawbox was an alternative rock band from Washington, D.C., U.S.. Its original members were J. Robbins , Kim Coletta and Adam Wade...

, Shudder To Think
Shudder to Think
Shudder to Think is an American indie rock group. Formed in 1986, they released three albums on the Washington, D.C.-based label Dischord Records and were a post-hardcore band, although they drew upon a wide range of stylistic influences, including pop....

, The Poster Children, and Superchunk
Superchunk
Superchunk is an American indie rock band from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, consisting of singer/guitarist Mac McCaughan, guitarist Jim Wilbur, bassist Laura Ballance, and drummer Jon Wurster. Formed in 1989, they were one of the bands that helped define the Chapel Hill music scene of the 1990s...

 as well as headlining at the club.

Shimmy Disc And C/Z

Around this time Joe moved to Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...

 and attended Boston College
Boston College
Boston College is a private Jesuit research university located in the village of Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, USA. The main campus is bisected by the border between the cities of Boston and Newton. It has 9,200 full-time undergraduates and 4,000 graduate students. Its name reflects its early...

 as a literature major while simultaneously traveling back and forth to New Jersey to complete “An Emotional Buffet” and play shows, eventually dropping out of school altogether. It was during this time that Keith started learn to play guitar and write his own songs as well as collaborating on songs with Pat. With Joe’s songs dominating “An Emotional Buffet” and the song writing collaborations between the two lessening, perhaps Keith's survival instincts kicked in.

In early 1994 local label “Inkling Records” released a vinyl EP of new Semibeings work, which Keith promptly sent to legendary eccentric indie producer Kramer who immediately booked the band for sessions at his Noise New Jersey studio. The ensuing album Sickness and Health produced by Kramer was released on Shimmy Disc
Shimmy Disc
Shimmy Disc was an influential New York City based record label founded in 1987 by Mark Kramer. Before it was sold to the Knitting Factory, it was responsible for providing a mass audience for acts including Bongwater, Daniel Johnston, Fly Ashtray, Galaxie 500, King Missile, Boredoms, Ruins, Ween,...

 in early 1995. At one point Kramer was quoted on the Shimmy Disc website as stating that he considered “Sickness and Health” among the five best Shimmy Disc releases of all time. KnitMedia eventually purchased “Sickness and Health” along with much of the rest of Shimmy Disc’s back catalogue.

Option Magazine reviewed the album stating “This New Jersey quintet makes a Kramer-produced psychedelic sound that's got one foot in the grave, one foot at a rave, and the middle leg pissing on the alterna-rock scene” (Option 1995).

During this time, the band played a Shimmy Disc showcase at New York’s Knitting Factory
Knitting Factory
The Knitting Factory is a music venue and concert house with locations in Brooklyn, Boise, Reno, and Spokane. The club originally specialized in jazz and experimental music and has expanded to showcasing all genres of music, performing arts and comedy....

 alongside Kramer and Low (band)
Low (band)
Low is an American indie rock group from Duluth, Minnesota, formed in 1993. As of 2010, the group is composed of Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker , both founding members, and Steve Garrington ....

. Neil Strauss
Neil Strauss
Neil Darrow Strauss , also known by the pen names Style and Chris Powles, is an American and Kittitian author, journalist and ghostwriter...

 covering the show for the New York Times reported “The Semi-Beings were two bands in one. The songs that the singer Joe Baker yowled were hazy, psychedelic rockers imbued with a touch of blues and a dash of dissonance; the numbers sung by the gentler-voiced Keith Monacchio droned instead of rocked and were usually supported by the chiming and ringing of three acoustic guitars”. (New York Times, 1995).

The band at this point started describing their music as “acoustic folk punk” and both their live sets and recordings included playing acoustic guitars through large Marshall amplifiers at high volumes which created a ringing feedback wall of sound.

Kramer and the band completed the follow-up Three Pawns Standing in 1996, with the album being picked up and the band being signed to the legendary Seattle label C/Z which by this point was owned by former Skin Yard
Skin Yard
Skin Yard was an American rock band from Seattle, Washington, who were active from 1985 to 1992. The group never gained a mainstream audience, but were an influence on their contemporaries – most notably Soundgarden, Screaming Trees, The Melvins, and Green River – alongside whom they are considered...

 member Daniel House
Daniel House
Daniel House is a business owner/entrepreneur and musician best known for his contribution to the Seattle “grunge” music movement of the 1980s and ‘90s...

. C/Z also released their song Disco Of Bums on the final Teriyaki Asthma compilation.

The band played various Shimmy Disc showcases with Hugh Hopper
Hugh Hopper
Hugh Colin Hopper was a progressive rock and jazz fusion bass guitarist. He was a prominent member of the Canterbury scene, as a member of Soft Machine and various other related bands.-Early career:...

 and King Missile
King Missile
King Missile is an American avant-garde band that has been led in various disparate incarnations by poet/singer John S. Hall since 1986. Currently, Hall performs with a new version of the first incarnation, King Missile ....

 as well as making the rounds of east coast clubs like New York’s Brownies or The Stone Pony
The Stone Pony
The Stone Pony, located in Asbury Park, New Jersey, is one of the world's best known music venues. It is known as a starting point for many musicians, first and foremost for Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, who were the house-band for much of the mid-seventies, but also for New Jersey natives...

 in Asbury Park, N.J, playing shows with Amandla, Chris Harford
Chris Harford
Chris Harford is a self-taught American singer, songwriter, guitarist and painter. The New Yorker described him as "...A singer, guitarist, and songwriter who rose through the local club scene in the nineteen-eighties, Harford operates in the free zone outside rock's usual categories. He has a...

 and regularly with Laura Dawn
Laura Dawn
Laura Dawn is an American political activist and singer/songwriter. She has been the Cultural Director for MoveOn.org since March 2004 and was named the organization's National Creative Director in 2007.-Musical work:...

 and her first band Fluffer as well as Shimmy Disc label mates Tin Ear. The band also played the West Beth Theatre in New York as a part of C/Z’s showcase in the 1997 CMJ music festival along with Gerald Collier and Moonshake
Moonshake
Moonshake was a UK-based experimental rock/post-rock band existing between 1991 and 1997. The only consistent member was singer/sampler player/occasional guitarist David Callahan, who initially co-led the project with Margaret Fiedler...

.

The band also went on a cross country tour in the summer of 1997, but mainly played in Seattle while crashing at Daniel House’s house. They played a show with Damon and Naomi
Damon and Naomi
Damon & Naomi are an American dream pop/folk-rock duo formed in 1991 by Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang, formerly of Galaxie 500.-History:After Galaxie 500 completed a tour of the US supporting The Cocteau Twins, guitarist and vocalist Dean Wareham quit the band, forcing the cancellation of an...

 at Seattle’s Showbox.

Throughout all this the band lost and then regained Tom McDonald as bassist (Dana Wasserman was bassist in the interim although never recording with the band) as well as losing Dave Von Bargen and cycling through too many drummers to count. Eventually Pat would play drums on their recordings.

Endings

The four piece Semibeings of Joe, Pat, Keith and Tom went on to record The Semibeings Are Bums in 1998 at SS Sound Studios. The album was originally to be put out by C/Z but the label essentially dropped the band due to its own financial hardships. (C/Z folded shortly after, with Daniel House eventually releasing tracks from "Bums" on his online label Weedfiles). Also, since 1994 they had worked on a concept album
Concept album
In music, a concept album is an album that is "unified by a theme, which can be instrumental, compositional, narrative, or lyrical." Commonly, concept albums tend to incorporate preconceived musical or lyrical ideas rather than being improvised or composed in the studio, with all songs contributing...

 based around a "nervous breakdown
Nervous breakdown
Mental breakdown is a non-medical term used to describe an acute, time-limited phase of a specific disorder that presents primarily with features of depression or anxiety.-Definition:...

" called Tales From the Microvoid. During the 1999 sessions, the fighting between the band members particularly between Keith and Joe escalated to the point where Keith left the band altogether. More and more it became evident that the two primary songwriters were writing very different material with the “two bands in one” getting to the point of being incompatible. The three remaining Semibeings finished off “Tales from the Microvoid” and disbanded.

The band in fact did split up into two very different bands with brothers Joe and Pat forming the short lived Junkygood and Keith and Tom forming The Commons. Junkygood made some recordings, most notably with Andrew Weiss from Rollins Band
Rollins Band
Rollins Band was an American rock band led by singer and songwriter Henry Rollins.They are best known for the songs "Low Self Opinion" and "Liar", which both earned heavy airplay on MTV in the early 1990s...

 and Ween
Ween
Ween is an American alternative rock group. They formed in 1984 in New Hope, Pennsylvania when central members Aaron Freeman and Mickey Melchiondo met in an eighth grade typing class. Ween has a large cult underground fanbase despite being generally unknown in American pop music...

 fame. Keith and Tom’s Common's self released a number of albums and in 2007 announced that they were disbanding. As of 2010, Joe and Pat have formed a new band titled Bake, self-releasing their debut EP "Summer Joy".

In reference to The Semibeings work, RollingStone
Rollingstone
Rollingstone may refer to:*Rollingstone, Minnesota, United States of America*Rollingstone, Queensland, Australia...

.com stated “Their intricate, dreamy songs have a propulsive and hard-edged quality that at times sounds like a non-distorted Screaming Trees
Screaming Trees
Screaming Trees was an American rock band formed in Ellensburg, Washington in 1985 by vocalist Mark Lanegan, guitarist Gary Lee Conner, bass player Van Conner and drummer Mark Pickerel. Pickerel had been replaced by Barrett Martin by the time the band reached its most successful period...

 or a more varied, faster Codeine
Codeine
Codeine or 3-methylmorphine is an opiate used for its analgesic, antitussive, and antidiarrheal properties...

. Some of the songwriting is shockingly gorgeous”.

Discography

  • 1992 - The Semibeings - Self released
  • 1992 - An Emotional Buffet - Self released
  • 1994 - The Semibeings 7" - Inkling Records - (3 song EP - "I'm A Man", "In" and "I Am")
  • 1995 - Sickness and Health - Shimmy Disc 078
  • 1997 - Three Pawns Standing - C/Z Records
  • 1998 - The Semibeings Are Bums - Unreleased
  • 1994-1999 - Tales From The Microvoid - Unreleased
  • 1999 - Teriyaki Asthma, Vols. 6-10-Various Artists - C/Z Records (Compilation featuring the song "Disco of Bums" from the unreleased Semibeings album "Tales from the Microvoid")

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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