This live album is a mighty sonic document of one of the most unclassifiable American bands of the 1990s. In the middle of a 1995 tour where their noise rock was often met by the indifference and incomprehension of audiences not ready for such full-on assault, Claw Hammer registered a show in Dallas that reveals the unique, wild and physical style only they possessed. Playing a 750-capacity club in Dallas to an audience of two people was actually not the most undignifying show on Claw Hammer’s spring 1995 US tour. That memorable event had come about two weeks earlier in Toledo, Ohio, where we were paid one THOUSAND dollars, the largest guarantee of our entire trip, to play for ninety minutes in what amounted to the entrance room of a teen dance club. So for an hour and a half, I watched about five hundred in succession people walk from the door to this one particular spot on the floor, stand there and watch us for less than ten seconds, then turn around and make a beeline for the stairs that led to the basement, where a sound system more powerful than ours was pumping “Gin And Juice” for the assembled throngs. We’d had enough of this shit after 75 minutes but the club wanted their contract fulfilled, so on we plowed, into an epic version of Sick Fish Belly Up that deteriorated into one of the most spastic, earsplitting, fist-up-the-yang noise jams I have ever been part of. We just decided to drown out the disco beats for a change, and just pulverize everything in sight into white noise and hand a colossal fuck-you to the bizarre and unfortunate circumstances that seemed to be surrounding us at every turn. By the time of Dallas, though, we were unflappable when it came to turnouts. Almost as soon as we walked into Trees, we could tell it was no rock and roll dive, which tended to be the only places we did well if it was our first time in town. Joe the Soundman was happy, though, and proclaimed it the finest PA system he’d ever worked with. I made sure to pass him a cassette to make a board tape, the result of which you now hold in hand. My major memory of this show is that we had overindulged in tacos, burritos and chimichangas at a famous Mexican pad around the corner and waddled back into the place, having lost track of time, with about ten minutes left before our set. This could explain why we seem to be playing so tight on this recording, we were too stuffed to jump around and there was no one to watch it anyway. So we just stood there and played the tunes while trying not to toss our refritos. One thing I remember about the cave gigs on that tour is, we made the most of every one as a musical happening. You can’t get depressed about no one coming to the show, that’s something beyond your control. But to walk off the stage knowing you just laid a big one, that’s fucking depressing. We were determined to play what we wanted to be heard, come hell or high water. Bob Lee
The Drums