"Note: Do Not Read The Liner Notes Whilst Dying In A Diamond Mine" liner notes for Dutch Missionary Records Vol. 2, the third release from Dutch Missionary Records. You may ask, "Why is Diamon' Mine so long? Why does it cut so deep?" Because we gave it all we have left. The vaults are empty: if it's not on here, it wasn't worth hearing. Milo Cantos is missing, the studio is in ruins, the bands have dispersed. So what went wrong? The first crack in the astounding non-success of Dutch Missionary Records came when Milo Cantos' favorite band, ultraminimalist duo of The Capricornicoppolas, split up over the issue of the drum. To bypass the 'pro-incest' stipulation clause in the contract (it's in volume 1), the group had let giddy Milo Cantos play drums on their song "The Two Halves of my Heart" on DMR001, but this already bothered rough-singing guitarist Daniel Grade who was indignant at the idea of corrupting the purity of the band's original vision of two instruments, two voices. Meanwhile, his twin brother, bass-playing, smooth-singing Calvin Grade had no problems with drums--he was fine playing on the dutch missionary records supergroup track "The Tiniest Lumberjack" on DMR001, where the drums were actually mixed a little too loud. Things exploded when Calvin suggested that the duo's new song, "Songs About The Future" ought to have some drumming; Daniel stormed out, warning Cantos that if drums were added, he would never record for the label again. Calvin just shrugged. Disillusioned and angry, Daniel tapped dutch missionary producer and engineer Patrick K. to team up with him under the disturbing moniker The Rabbit Wolvesbite, to record "The Metal Rod In My Neck". The intern who mistyped the title on the record sleeve has been severely disciplined. When the wound-licking single failed to chart (what chart?), Daniel bitterly decided that it must be the lack of drums, and vindictively reassembled his high school band from Cupertino, The Ocelots. Or he tried to. He couldn't round them up. Perhaps he should have asked Milo Cantos for pointers, but he was out of the office anyway, reassembling The Heads and Necks for "Arthromusipology", but you already know all about that. So instead, K. just tapped Arty Shake from The Exilics to lend some backing vocals, and the trio recorded "Dead Man" as The Lotsen Otts. Shake is voice 2. Much to Daniel's annoyance, Calvin was not emotionally ravaged by his brother's desertion. He was always the more level-head anyway. Unphased, he pulled together his own group of high school friends--he was successful, of course--to reform Ohswell and record pro-libertinage anthem "The Apple And The Sea". But all was not harmonious in the rest of the label's roster. If you remember, Graham Coppers, who had been the lead singer of The Coins, who ceded vocal duties to Dirk Hammet when the group reorganized into The Running Relapses, and who was ousted by the group for his machinations when they reorganized again as Der Swain!, formed The Last Lines and recorded the bitternal song "The Last Line" as a coded attack on his former bandmates. Although the song by The Lines was all but ignored, tensions within Der Swain! were already starting to build. Their post-Coppers song "Autumn Square" was a relatively considerable success, and with increased external interest came growing pains, particularly the disproportionate growth of Hammet's ego in respect to the rest of the band. Pretty boy that he was, Hammet wanted the group to be renamed "Dirk Alloy & the White Swains", and the rest of The Swain resisted. The consensus was that Dirk was taking it a little too seriously that he could now play guitar. Hammet threatened to leave the group unless one of his two names could be fixed like a hood ornament on the group's next song, and when they just stared at him, he left. The former members of Der Swain! were shocked when the very next week Hammet recorded and released (on Dutch Missionary, of course) the first track ready for the second collection, "The Boy Standing Next In Line". The track was credited to Dirk Hammet & The College Sophomorics. Who were these young (fey) punks who would play the bunch of second bananas? Had they no self respect? Meanwhile, The Last Lines had predictably gone nowhere, and the other members were not even particularly disturbed when Graham Coppers bowed out. He went back to working double shifts at the Photomat and plotting his next slab of loveblornitterness [note: not a typo]. Then he heard about the way Hammet had flourished while the Swain floundered, and it occurred to him that a shared enmity toward Hammet might facilitate a reconciliation between him and his old band (never mind the abandoned Lines). Eager to get revenge on Hammet using the only way available to them--the scathing sting of a higher charting indierock hit--the former Swains agreed to take Coppers back, at least until Hammet could be dealt with. While enough members of the original line up remained to consider the group a reminted version of The Coins, the group decided--against Coppers's objections-- to rename themselves The Battersea Hearts, since no one--including the members of the band--had really understood why the hell they had been The Coins in the first place. Filled with bitterness against Hammet--and perhaps a desire to return to the idyllic days of "Runaway" (which really ought to have been titled "Run Away")--the Hearts pumped out the driving "Lost Pictures". It should not be assumed that Coppers's employment with the photohut influenced his choice of subject matter, even though he was spending most of his time there. Not all the Relapses crossed the post-last-finish-line together. Organ player Johnny Lazlo's talents were not needed on "Autumn Square", and he, tired of beating the tambourine, quietly left the group in between heartbeats. He became withdrawn--not realizing that Milo Cantos would have killed for an organ player in any of his various Garageophile bands--and looked to the internet for comfort. On an Organ Fetishist message board, he met Frederick Ogden, the lead singer of GO PROSE! BEAT POETRY! who was looking for a second organist for the group. The Lazlo-fortified group rushed into the studio and recorded the shimmering salute to ambivalent and ambiguous love "Aberdeen", wielding the Label's incest policy like a drive wedge. But there was no resistance. At the time, Milo Cantos was still out of town, and Patrick K. had no objections. Or did he? He had been happy enough to play the neutral enabler of the Hammet / Battersea rivalry, and he found "Aberdeen" charming, but he was plagued by the nagging doubt that it was all too easy. After recording "The Man You're Looking For" for the freshfaced punkhall group The Weeping Swords (even their name is childish) and perhaps the label's lovesiest gritty song ever "Delayed Reaction" --originally called "2nd Grade Chemistry Class" fer chrissake--for The Febriles, who immediately imploded after the session, he became mildly sickened by songs about love. Thus, when Arty Shake expressed interest in recording the old Exilics live classic "Handshakes" (vain bastard, isn't he?), the producer's one stipulation was that the track be immediately remixed by Anthony Quail, who was, you would be forgiven for not remembering, once a synth player in Cantos' Broken Dials and currently half of the indie-dub group Destruya. The track was credited to The Scream of Breaks. Encouraged by the result--though it was a bitter, and geez, who wrote that chorus?-- K. decided to front a band of his own, The R & R Dream, which recorded "The Simplest Figures". In the meantime, Cantos had reassembled The Heads and Necks from the corners of the earth. To summarize the events of DMR003, Alexander Notoronski, sick of searching for an organista with which to refound label originary band Alternabride Magazine and tired of acting as a hired gun guitarist for Milo Cantos's cascade of similar bands (The Alligator Tears, The Shrapnelles, The Broken Dials), decided to make things difficult for his former student and now tormenting boss. After Cantos had written the five-song-sequence that became the Hnex's "Arthromusipology", Notoronski caught him on the incest loophole and forced him to let Peter LaVal, astranged son of original Head Neck Gill Monk, do the singing. Things only got worse when, in an unrelated incident, Cantos was, and I quote, "sand-bag, blind-side, trash-can dumped". Emotionally wrecked--he was a leaver, you see, never a left--Cantos became morbidly obsessed with the idea that he had blindly written himself into the blind hero of "Arthromusipology" and had been punished for his hubris in presuming to write left songs for the left behind when he had never been one. He was wrong, of course; his being dumped had nothing to do with his songwriting or his pride, and everything to do with his songwriting and his pride. He had been so busy trying to create the perfect garage rock dream band experience around the Necklies that he had left everyone else--Patrick K., Notoronski, his own girlfriend--behind. But he wouldn't listen. So his girlfriend spoke with her heels. K. didn't have the luxury of leaving. Instead of giving up songs about himself, Cantos became more focused on it. Hell, he had never deliberately written about himself in his life, but now he started doing it intentionally. Legend has it that he forced the members of forcibly renamed Heads and Necks (now The Act Naturally) --sans Tears guitarist and new Hnex singer Peter LaVal--into a studio at gun point to record "The Man Who Wrote His Autobiography In Reverse" about his private obsession. Once his gun was discovered to have been hacksawed off an old cabinet of 'Lethal Enforcers', Cantos resorted to knifepointing to reassemble The Shrapnelles and force them to record his indie-acapella track "Not Cryin'" which was of course a bold lie because he totally was. Around this time, Cantos heard the song "Love Trapped In A Bottle" by The Iffy Fifty and became bewitched. Iffies lead singer Arthur Landelle had gained notoriety with his former band's garaginious cover of M.I.A.'s "URAQT", which Cantos wanted to release but could neither legally clear nor find the master tapes (scene legend says that Landelle actually ate them on stage like thin black entrails, although this is unlikely because the files were probably on DVD). Instead, he piled the Iffies into the studio and played guitar on the album version of "Bottle" to get around the Incest stipulation, a frequent plot device (or burden, really). Landelle was heavy drinker and enjoyed the taste of reel to reel tape. He had cultivated a habit for sniffing toner through a hollowed-out goose quill. He and Cantos became inseparable and involved themselves a number of self-destructive acts which masqueraded as the destruction of others property. Many songs were lost. Inspired, Cantos stole the bridge out of Notoronski's next Alternabride song, "This Next One's A Heartbreaker" (and it would have been), and grafted it into his own song "Molar", which featured Landelle and Patrick K.--roughly coerced with the threat of a grapefruit spoon--both playing keyboards to cover the fact that the rest of the actual Broken Dials were hiding from him after the acapella incident. Things had gotten ugly. Cantos was mixing his Beatles references with crude spew about oral sex and biting silence. Robbed of his cathartic hit, Notoronski was forced to release "Screwoff", a b-side from the "Pet Store" sessions, instead of the heartstring slipknot ode, which was probably just as well for him, but not for the world. Patrick K. realized that an intervention of sorts was going to be necessary. He wrote a song called "Attack of the Paper Tigers!" and advertised it to the Dutch Missionary groups as an all-star collaboration, a Tiniest Lumberjack 2006 for the close readers. Notoronski and Coppers once again came in to play guitar alongside Cantos, who, if you remember, can play guitar. K. had Notoronski and Cantos duet on the verses while taking the breakdown himself. And then after the session had ended and as everyone was smiling at each other having momentarily forgotten the bad blood, they pounced, tying Cantos up and putting him under the mixing board with a trash can on his head. Landelle, who had remained a stuperous presence on the couch during the recording, was stripped of his indie cred and tossed out into the streets of Irvine where he was arrested for vagrancy. Unfortunately Cantos was too far gone. Bitterness had taken his heart, and he had self-obsessed himself into uselessness. He and the petty-cash eloped, and as of this writing, he hasn't be seen since. Strangely, the only photo of him available was a still from a film he had been in as a child. Meanwhile, Calvin Grade had redisbanded Ohswell and started up a new drum-heavy indiepop group, The Twitches. His bass playing is pretty much the anchor of their song "Your Music Box". The song of reconciliation reached his brother Daniel, who decided that brothers should not be divided over something as stupid as percussion, and joined his brother in the studio to record "Never Quite The Time" under the new name of The Loams. But the damage had been done. Cantos had not been much of a business man, but K. clearly lacked even the rudimentary business sense to keep a fairly lo-fi label afloat. The landlords notified the label that they would be kicked out at the end of the month. In a last effort to save the ship without a captain and raise enough money to keep the doors open. K. convinced Notoronski and Coppers to join in him recording one last song, "Six Lines". K. played bass. Did they manage to raise the money? Well, a series of events rendered that moot. First Graham Coppers (Glottal Stops, Coins, Running Relapses, Last Lines, Those Headhunters, Battersea Hearts, Dutch Missionary Records) was fatally stabbed while trying to help a mentally ill woman out of a burning car in the photomat parking lot; with his last moments, he staggered back to the booth and burned his notebook using a worn matchbook. Then Johnny Lazlo (Relapses, Der Swain!, GO PROSE!) was shot to death while trying to steal back his vintage B3 organ that he had lost in a poker game to some amateur criminal types. Arty Shake (Exilics, Scream of Breaks) was arrested on an obvious frame for the murder of Milo Cantos, but was assassinated by a garage rock fan on his way to the jail. Similarly, the Weeping Swords (Weeping Swords) were gunned down on the street by a deranged DK fan for a nicked riff. Fenton Landry (Headful Necks, Act Naturally) was crushed by a poorly secured bass-stack in a guitar store. Kyle Tudor (Alternabride Magazine, Glottal Stops) fell out a window while enjoying the view from a tall building and was impaled on the pointy tip of a less tall building. Antony Quail (Broken Dials, Destruya, Scream of Breaks) is with good Dale in the lodge. The Febriles (Feebs) disappeared while returning to London to find inspiration for a comeback single. Frederick Odgen (GO PROSE!) attempted to pick up a senator's girlfriend in a bar and was badly beaten by security; tossed bloody into the alley, he lost consciousness face down in a deep puddle and his pockets had been rifled through when he was discovered two days later. Peter LaVal (Alligator Tears, Shrapnelles, Head Necks) was sold into white-slavery on the ivory coast. Arthur Landelle (Landales, Iffy Fifty, Broken Dials), autoerotic asphyxiation in a Frozen Pops private room. Daniel Grade (Capricornicoppolas, Rabbit Wolvesbite, Lotsen Otts) and Calvin Grade (Capricornicoppolas, Those Headhunters, Ohswell, Twitches) both died of sword poisoning in a climactic duel over a dead girl. Jerry Lazlo (Relapses, Last Lines, Those Headhunters) died smiling on a rollercoaster. Jerry "Capital" Gains (Headenex, The Act Naturally) attempted to saw his own arms off in a friend's basement, but died of acute kidney failure. Stephan H. (Last Lines) was handcuffed to the vault when it blew up. Alexander Notoronski (Alternabride Magazine, Alligator Tears, Shrapnelles, Broken Dials, Those Headhunters, Dutch Missionary Records) died of a drug overdose after being arrested for stabbing to death the girlfriend he didn't remember having; of course, he was actually just committed as a lifer in a mental ward for acute schizophrenia aggravated by female-keyboardist mania. Marky St. John (Ice Nines, Killroy Set On Stunned), criminal neglect. Charles "Oatmeal Stout" Oatman (Last Lines), unforeseen peanut allergy. Maury Stoveman (Heads and Necks, The Act Naturally) got back together with his ex-girlfriend Mary and they died together in mutual orgasm at the age of 72. Brian Martin (Alligator Tears, Shrapnelles) died of some sort of really quite serious malady that I probably should not be joking about. Dirk Hammet (Running Relapses, Der Swain!, Dirk Alloy & the White Swains, some jackoff and the College Sophomorics), chronic sweater allergy. Scarab Barret (H & N, AN) transcended the earthly plain and was sucked into the vortex of his own eyes. Mark Cohen (Coins) was stung by a jellyfish and drowned. And Gill Monk, having finally checked his answering machine and found 52 messages from Milo Cantos, spent his remaining money taking cabs across the country (quite expensive) to reach Dutch Missionary Inc. only to have it explode as he entered the door. And so the actors have fulfilled their contracts and are free to move on to bigger and better projects. Who knows what's next for Patrick K. (Abeeba, Brothers K., R & R Dream, Clever Hands, Act Naturally, Alternabride Magazine, Alligator Tears, Battersea Hearts, Broken Dials, Capricornicopollas, Coins, College Sophomorics, Der Swain!, Febriles, Glottal Stops, GO PROSE! BEAT POETRY!, Heads and Necks, Ice Nines, Iffy Fifty, Landales, Last Lines, Loams, Lotsen Otts, Ohswell, The Rabbit Wolvesbite, Running Relapses, Scream of Breaks, Shrapnelles, Skrimshaws, Those Headhunters, Twitches, Weeping Swords)? Officiating celebrity knife fights, probably. CREDITS all songs written by Patrick K., except 21 by Wilco and 22 by M.I.A. guitar, bass, organ, keyboards, programming, sequencing, triggering: Patrick K. recorded 2004-2006, Irvine, CA by somebody, then mastered on Olivia at the Late News Desk lyrics & tabs available on the Dutch Missionary website www.franzkeller.com/dutchmissionary/dmr2.html Major MINERS: Franz, Will, my folks, Mia, Jonathan, Mike, Jeff, Joe, Tom, McKenzie, Glenn, Brandon, Sebastian SHOUT OUTS: the LA Riots, the Mae Shi, the Bachs, Helicopter Kick, the Flesh Godz, the Iron Monkeys, the Robot Ate Me, The Stairs, Messthetics records, The Saturnines, The Brothers K, The Beat Conflicts