Happy 2013,
Thanks to everyone who’s taken some time lately to leave some comments! I’ve gotten some good ones lately that others will probably enjoy reading too. Especially a lengthy and very informative one from a person who worked at the actual Pentaject Corporation offices that the band named themselves after. He has some very funny, “first person” memories about the band! Visit my original posting of the Pentaject Corporation EP here.
The former singer of Scraps, Patrick Deane, also left a comment about a month ago on my posting of the Scraps single. Then some other people who were there “back in the day” left some comments too. I always enjoy hearing from people who were actually there back in 1981 going to see the band.
I know it’s been over a month since I posted something (holidays got busy with work and family!) but I have some new ones planned that I will hopefully get up here over the next week. I could of course quickly throw up a lot of postings, since there are still a LOT of things I want to put up here, but I guess the high volume approach is not my style ya hear.
Oh, and of course thank you to the people who continue to help me mark things off of my updated want list.
Category Archives: Pentaject Corporation
Pentaject Corporation
PENTAJECT CORPORATION “BLACKMAIL STRETCH” 4-SONG 7″EP (CHICAGO, IL- OWN LABEL, 1982) By request, here is a obscure and rare one from the Chicago area. Thanks to blog commenter C.S. for providing the rips! I do not have a vinyl copy of this record and not many people do, as it is rumored that only 200 copies were pressed and none had sleeves. The price reflects its rarity, as copies recently on the- ahem- “open market” have been priced between $200 and $400 (!). I know nothing about the band and information on the internet is scant. The band has a MySpace page that was created in late 2007 (wonder what the impetus for that was), but they have not logged into it for almost 3 years the last time I checked. The MySpace page has some songs you can stream, and two of these were not on the EP. Somewhere else I stumbled upon the face that one of the band members also went by the name “Sid Hussein Hartha”. Pentaject Corporation turned into a band called Scopdom Scop, which you can see on their MySpace page, was some experimental weirdness. C.S. told me that Pentaject Corporation was apparently a cassette-only band (anyone have any of these?!?) and that this 4-song EP was supposed to be a “best of” from their cassettes. The band has been listed as being from Chicago, but I don’t know if they were actually from the Chicago city limits or one of the many suburbs in the Chicagoland area, as was the case with bands from the area in the late 70’s and early 80’s time period. If you know anything about the band, please leave a comment and let me know. I am curious to find out more, especially what (if any) connection they had to the Chicago area punk “scene”. Or maybe they were kings of their own basement and never played many shows (?). You tell me.
Here is the band circa late 1981 half-heartedly pretending hard to be businessmen
(l to r): Bob Brink, Bob Zasada, and John Nelles. What I do know is that the wood
paneled wall behind Mr. Zasada looks swank like they all did in the late 70’s; Bob
Brink kinda resembles early 80’s Harold Ramis and his glasses scream creative
nerd (which is of course a good thing); and John Nelles looks like he’s about 15.
It turns out that there actually WAS a real company in the late 70’s called Pentaject Corporation that holds some manufacturing patents– ha! They were located in a ho-hum Chicagoland suburb called Algonquin that’s about 40 miles Northwest of the city.
Musically, the EP is a DIY-ish affair and it has an “outsider” kind of quality to it which is nice. The first track, “Blackmail Stretch”, the shortest track on the record, is a slower affair and has some keyboards and a drum machine interspersed in the mix. The next track, “Clamp Is Up”, is played with real instruments and is an interesting one with some subtle guitar noise that is kinda hypnotic. The most upbeat track on the EP comes next with “What A Day” and is the closest thing to what we call “punk” (it’s my favorite song on the EP too). There is some great shouting and a charming, no-talent guitar solo in the middle of it that begs for more practice- I always love guitar mastery like this. The last track, “Shock Treatment…”, has some catchy bass noodling and is in the same vein as “What A Day”. Nice ender. I have no clue what the singer is saying throughout most of the record and this adds to the charm and mysteriousness of it all. As does the production value.
Blackmail Stretch.mp3
Clamp Is Up.mp3
What A Day.mp3
Shock Treatment (Is Too Much For Me).mp3