Che Guevara T-Shirt

NML06c

Track List

1. Un Jou
2. I break women
3. Procrastination
4. Revenge
5. Царское Село
6. Conrad

WAVs

MP3s

Players – matt heuston – baritone guitar, vocals track 4
john olander – drums
k. sonin – baritone guitar, vocals tracks 1, 2, 5, 6

Lyrics

Un Jou – Jou (Jew) Elle a chaud ethnicity (L.A.H. ethnicite) ethnicite est un joue Est une blague pas une homme pas un blanc pas un blague pas un jou

I break women – I needs must go north where the sun will never shine on this dark roads lie ahead bloody rivers rise behind how i tried to warn you how can i warn you no one heeds a warning when they want something bad I’m not trying to break your heart oh no I break women “people just need to be smarter”

Revenge – Have you no way to take revenge you’ll take it by violence in the end choked with a lasso until death against the jersey barriers cars relax in frames have you seen the giant dump trucks asleep at the wheel until dusk when they come to life at night it’ll bury us alive our mouths will fill with sand our broken bodies penitent

Царское Село – 40 years wading in a sea of rum life through me a vest so I drank up death threw me an oar said get a job dad threw me an oar said get a job mother i wonder how did you stop yourself from smothering me so gently in my sleep mother i wonder how did you stop yourself from choking me so softly in my sleep

Conrad – Welcome back Conrad! We wrote down all your lines for you like we used to do! There was a golden boy he blew his golden locks right off his fuckin head now we’re back in the black

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A posthumous future review of the album from defunct site https://stephenconnick.wordpress.com/;

20 Years Prior; Re-visiting Che Guevara T-Shirt’s landmark album ‘Tsarskoye Selo’

In 2016, an obscure band from the obscure city of Albany blew independent DIY music into the water when they released their now infamous breakthrough record ‘Tsarskoye Selo’. Prior to the release, no one had ever heard of dread, croon-doom, anti-hope, progressive sludge, or any of the other genres the album invented and/or pioneered (or the band for that matter). Soon thereafter, indie DIYers all wanted to form their own ‘double baritone guitar’ bands. Thousands of 13 year olds in America and India were begging their parents for an E to E Gretsch for Christmas to parents’ sheer befuddlement. All of a sudden the hippest thing in the world to be was bald, middle-aged, and overweight in an obscure post-rock band that wallowed in obscurity and hopelessness. Not since Slint’s Spiderland had such a sleeper hit become so popular overnight or had such a lasting influence on original songwriting and performing music. Even today, Tsarskoye Selo continues to ‘Unjou men and break women’, and critics ruminate endlessly over the meaning of every lyric, guitar line, and drum roll, and how a band that was so ignored and lambasted for so long became so admired and influential in such a short period of time.

I recently sat down with Che Guevara T-Shirt’s former lead singer and baritone guitar player k. Sonin for an interview shortly after the re-release and re-master of this proto-dread classic. We met in k.’s electric auto-hover car, where he’s currently touring the United States and Canada until, quote ‘everyone feels the Bern! Sanders 2036!’ — this despite the fact that the former first lady has been dead for over ten years now. Sonin sat drinking an electrolyte-free sports beverage while the auto-hover whisked us through Texahoma. Furthering his fashionable claim to fame, Sonin has over the years gotten even balder, fatter, more middle-aged and more hopeless.

SC: Good to see you again Keith.

KS: Fuck off Bob.

SC: Steve.

KS: Chris.

SC: Stephen.

KS: Cunty McCunt face cunts alot with his pal stankass. I’m cooler than you.

SC: Yes. So, with the re-release of Tsarskoye Selo, a lot of press reports are intimating a CGT reunion may be in the making. Any truth to these rumors?

KS: Fuck no. CGT is dead dead dead and should have been before we gained prominence and headed straight downward into delusions of grandeur and vice.

SC: The legends of your demise are even more legendary than your instant rise to fame and fortune. Are you still electrolyte-free?

KS: Yeah. For a long time I was hooked on the sports drinks. Those vitamins and minerals really help you play ball, but I’m telling you they’re dangerous. It got so bad that I remember waking up next to an empty bottle of blue Powerade. And I fucking hate blueberry!

SC: Glad to hear you’re off the elobug. Has Matt similarly overcome his addiction?

KS: I don’t talk to him anymore, but last I heard, yeah, he’s back to veggie sausages.

SC: That’s also good to hear. Tales of his red meat sausage addiction are harrowing.

KS: The worst part is they’re all true! I was there. After the album came out he was swallowing sausages like there was no tomorrow. Pork, veal, armadilloe, he just didn’t give a fuck. I was like ‘Matt, you’re a vegetarian!’. And of course he says ‘Yeah, when we weren’t famous. Now that we’re bigger than Shipping News I’ll eat as much pork and venison and beef as I want!’ His cholesterol went through the roof.

SC: When was the last time you spoke with John?

KS: Years and years ago. After he came out with his tell-all book ‘I was the only real ginger in Che Guevara T-Shirt’ we were all pretty pissed.

SC: His allegations have since all been disproven.

KS: Course they were! He claimed that Matt shaved his head to cover up the fact that he actually had jet black hair, and that I dyed my beard. Just not true. Matt’s hair was naturally redder than any of us! Really hurtful, mean-spirited allegations.

SC: What did you think of his career after CGT broke up?

KS: Same thing I thought of Matt’s. Both of them were just living off our legacy. I mean, the Olander Mahavishnu Airforce was a great band, but they were high as kites all the time. And when Matt joined the remaining members of the Grateful Dead and Pink Floyd to form the Extraneous ones, that was a real shock. I didn’t even know he was a hippie until then! Man, the seventies were a weird time.

SC: You mean the twenties?

KS: Yeah, whenever.

SC: Speaking of which, why did CGT break up so quickly after Tsarskoye Selo came out? You guys had been together over a decade prior to the release of this album, which was, after all, your 6th.

KS: Well fame and fortune takes its toll. I mean, after we signed to Dischord there was a lot of pressure. None of us wanted to do Spooky Christmas, but Ian (Mackaye) was just like; ‘guys, you need a hit record. The Pixies did ‘Death to the Pixies’, Sleater Kinney did ‘Hot Rock’, and my band did ‘The Argument’.’ And we did what he said even though we thought it was a terrible record, but the money was so good. I started dating plus sized underwear models. Matt was collecting orphaned African dogs, John starting buying Fusion bands just to shit in their trumpets…

SC: And then the 8th record was a flop.

KS: Right. We switched from Dischord to k records to get back to our roots, but Calvin (Johnson) was even worse than Ian. “12 Proto-Dread Greats” was anything but. Calvin brought in Justin (Trosper) to produce, and both of them wanted a full orchestra to do this hi-fi wall of sound thing with auto-tune everywhere. You couldn’t even hear the band playing. And they brought in Carrie Brownstein to help us with songwriting, but she just made us do spooky versions of Christmas standards again. We wanted to do our songs, but all the major indies just wanted what our fans expected.

SC: I know this is a sore subject, but ‘Back to the Spooky Christmas Spirit’, your 9th, sold well but was a complete critical and artistic failure…

KS: Don’t fucking get me started. So next we sign with Merge cause they say we’ll get complete creative control and Albini’s gonna produce us, and we get in there and as soon as we get to the studio he’s like “let’s go for that spooky Matador 90s Christmas sound guys!”. He dresses John up in a Grinch suit and says he can only play jingle bells instead of drums, tells Matt to sit in the corner and play the French horn since he’s a ‘half-breed’, and takes me off the album cause I’m an ‘anti-Christmas kike’! We called in Ash (Bowie) to write us some non-spooky Christmas songs, but that’s exactly the opposite of what he did. It’s like all our heroes were jealous of our success and were intentionally trying to make us fail!

SC: I can see why you broke up.

KS: We just didn’t think that Che Guevara T-Shirt, as a band or a phenomenon, was authentic or sincere anymore. I mean, in the beginning we were about irony, hopelessness, and political apathy. I love spooky Christmas songs, especially when the Riot Christmas movement on Kill Rock Stars hit its stride, but it just wasn’t us.

SC: Still, Tsarskoye Selo stands as a great album. Bands still pop up all over the world simply imitating that record. There’s even several international CGT cover bands vying for the actual name ‘Tsarskoye Selo’.

KS: Douchebags.

SC: Excuse me?

KS: I said DOUCHEBAGS! Where were they when we were playing locally to crowds of 2 or 3? When after 10 years and 6 albums we were so hopeless that we were inspired to create an album as putrid as ‘Tsarskoye Selo’? If only, like, a dozen or so of them had come to see us or told us we weren’t terrible, we wouldn’t have sunk to the depths of that album.

SC: And hence you never would have become famous or had dozens of fans.

KS: Oh right.

SC: So what’s the lesson here? What’s the legacy of Tsarskoye Selo?

KS: Um, I guess the point is, when everything looks like it’s at its worst, when no one appreciates what you’re doing and every sign on earth points to the fact that you’re a complete failure and should cut your losses and sell your guitar, that’s when you’re probably at your best. No matter how few people come to see you, how few albums you sell, or how many people and critics simply ignore you or write you letters telling you to ‘stop writing us letters! You’re too terrible for us to even review!’, you may secretly be phenomenal. And if you ever get wind of it, you’ll quickly become terrible. So don’t even try to make albums or play shows. Play the music in your head in your basement not even for your friends. Because art is entirely subjective, and subjectivity is totally dumb. SANDERS ’36!