At El Bohio

June 7 1988 Village Voice Let Freedom Blow by Byron Coley 'Halloween '87 found me walking along Christie Street with some pals. We were speaking animately about R.Kern's new haircut when a large, phlegmy ball of skronk came blaring out of Eleanor Roosevelt Park. Interest piqued, we headed toward the source of the hubbub. Three ratty musicians were jamming outside for a small crowd of bums and rats. And when I say they were jamming, I mean it in the most extreme sense of the term. While some guy repeatedly dashed a garbage can and car door into the pavement, the musos poured their bleeding guts into their instruments as easily as Ben Franklin might have emptied his bowels into a French chamber pot. Bass, guitar, drum, and voice all made extended, coarse lurches at an imaginary punching bag: the effect was almost like standing nude in a rainstorm taking a piss while you chug a quart of beer. Holistically cathartic y'know. I later heard that the band was called Demo-Moe. The next time I saw Demo-Moe was May 21 on a stage directly above a police station in Piermont. Nestled against the Hudson, near the Tappan Zee, Piermont seems an unlikely setting for anything but a clog-dancing festival. . . . Demo-Moe seemed a bit less possessed of anarcho-rat-energy in this setting, but their Apollonian roar still drove a number of patronizing straights out of the building.' Demo-Moe. Lived and played around the the lower east side of Manhattan and in Brooklyn during the late 1980's on the fringes of the punk, free jazz, and collective street art scenes. This CD is made from a cassette master.