Here’s another track that’s been dipping in and out of my life over the past twenty years or so with a bit of mystery about it. It’s one I see posted here and there online at random points in my timeline, and one I’ve heard at parties or gatherings of totally unrelated people over the years. It’s a track called “Dark Rooms” by an early Chicago post-punk group called DA! I can’t tell you when I first heard it, or when I got a hold of it. It’s just sort of been there flashing up once in a while. Apparently the track enough of an enigma for its relative obscurity that the sole promotional video produced for that track at that time has 300K views on YouTube, which is pretty much the only place you can listen to it unless you’ve got an ancient MP3 rip like I have or happen to have the original vinyl pressing, released as the Dark Rooms/White Castle 7″ back in 1981.
While the band and the track itself work in the timeline of more experimental American groups starting up around this time, there’s a darker feel to this one and perhaps aligns a bit more with early goth rock groups with the early work of Bauhaus coming to mind. It starts off with a simple, spare and chromatic percussive melody, followed by some polyrhythmic tom-driven drum work by drummer Donna Fisher, who refreshingly opts for experimentalism in terms of rhythm, rather than falling into more traditional punk/rock drum patterns. As the track progresses the spacious rhythmic patterns of the guitars and bass loosen up and become more a wire-y sonic drone, overlaid with haunting vocals. For me has it has a feel of a sombre procession that could just as easily be played at some contemporary pagan ritual as it could be in some dingy punk club in the “bad” part of town.
The b-side of this release, “White Castles”, is a more fractured piece of abstract tom work on the drums with shards of guitar cutting, seemingly more in line with no wave acts coming out of New York at the time. Later material from DA!, namely from 1982’s Time Will Be Kind 12″ EP, has more fuller guitar work and is more upbeat and melodic than their earlier material. With the progression in the band’s sound, singer/bassist Lorna Donley’s voice for me has an echo of the quality of Chrissie Hynde‘s voice (The Pretenders). A video for the track “Next To Nothing” from this release can be found below.
For the low budget affair that this video for “Dark Rooms” likely was, there’s some cool shots going on including dizzying journeys down hallways, flashes of abstract paintings, fuzzy silhouettes of the band, and of course a pretty amazing shot of Donley haloed by light, backlit with billowing mist rising from behind her.
Unlike a lot of artists I write about here, I can’t say I have any solid familiarity with DA! for as I’ve said earlier they’re a bit of an enigma, but there’s some information that can be found about their backstory online. Coming from Chicago and that general area, there’s other bands from there around that time that I’m familiar with such as Die Kreuzen, Naked Raygun and of course the beginnings of the late Steve Albini‘s Big Black, the latter two bands sharing former guitarist and now attorney Santiago Durango. I’m not sure if any of these bands shared stages or even crossed paths, but Chicago itself has had a long history of collaboration with musicians working in the underground in that city. A book such as the recently published You’re With Stupid by Bruce Adams — former co-owner of the Chicago-based label Kranky — attests to this.
With the cable access quality of the music video for “Dark Rooms”, I’m reminded of another Chicago video institution with a long history, and that’s the local “children’s dance show” called Chic-a-go-go. Starting in 1996 and taking influence of a similar format done in the 1960s with another Chicago show called Kiddie-A-Go-Go the concept is pretty simple: bring a bunch of youngsters into a TV studio, then bring in a band or musical act of choice and have them play live while the kids go crazy and dance around.
Chic-a-go-go was far more underground however, bringing in some of the more fringe underground groups happening in the city at the time including the avant-garde no wave group The Scissor Girls — dressed like extras out of 1950s sci-fi film — and an early performance by Magas — known as James Marlon Magas — who got his start in bands like Couch and the riotous Lake Of Dracula, with their sole 1997 self-titled album getting a lot of plays in my ears since I picked it up in the couple of years after it was released.
Magas, going solo around the start of the millenium, moved from the band format into a dirty minimal electronic format that in hindsight pulls from minimal wave, electro, punk and very early EBM that got some early momentum with the electroclash phenomenon of the early 2000s. During this time I caught him touring with the like-minded ADULT. when they came through Vancouver in 2003. He has been releasing music intermittently ever since. Magas‘s performance on Chic-a-go-go is a fun watch, with him bouncing around encircled by hyperactive kids and adults (some in goofy costumes) jiggling about.
A full archive of Chic-a-go-go performances can be found on their YouTube channel.
As for DA!, with the exception of tracks uploaded to YouTube you can’t really buy any of their back catalogue nor stream it, with exception of there apparently still being some copies of the original Dark Rooms/White Castles 7″ available here, likely some last remaining stock from the original pressing!