Genius Hired Guns (1992 - 1996?)

Fake history as Jeff remembers. Someone want to write a real one?

Supergroup? Maybe not, but sometimes housemates Brent, Charles, Colin and Jared formed Genius Hired Guns, a hard rock / alt rock band arguably more fun than anyone's primary bands. The group recorded their full length album "Dutch Mafia" on a budget at WMU prior to Thought Industry's writing and recording of "Mods Carve the Pig...". It was released a few years later on Black Spring's Swollen Lip label. The band played a dozen or a couple dozen shows in and around Kalamazoo. By report, the band never disbanded, only stopped playing as members moved further and further away from each other.

Here's an interesting recording note from producer/engineer (at the time) Benjamin Richards:

Some techie tidbits regarding the recording of Genius Hired Guns' Dutch Mafia: I recorded them at Western, on the cheap; they got the student rate (I forget how). We did drums and bass in one day, then things kind of sat around for the summer. During this time, I was walking around town with a cassette of the drum/bass parts, and really liking it just as it was. Then eventually we got around to adding the other parts. Brent and the others really loosened up the atmosphere in the studio, and kept me from getting too anal about something being technically "not-right-sounding." We got to the point where I had done a few mixes, and they were okay, but one night Brent and I did a mix and got a little more reckless with pushing things through compression, distortion, etc. We really liked how it sounded, and redid the previously-mixed tunes with this philosophy as firmly in hand as our Mickeys 40s. Western had just acquired its first digital editor -- some 2-track software running on a 386 with Windows 3.1. With that we started adding all the in-between samples (the surf at the beginning of "Sinking Jerry" was from a cassette Brent made of the audio from the movie Point Break). The beginning of "Queer" was Colin singing his solo into his guitar. Overall, I think the record really holds up as a snapshot of that time. Great cover photo by Kathryn VonMaur, too.

• Brent Oberlin, Guitar and vocals
• Colin Bradford, guitar and vocals
• Jared Bryant, Drums
• Charles Bradford, Bass and vocals

• Brent played with Thought Industry, Desecrator, Cosmonaut, and with TASM Lab
• Colin played with Screwtape, Doxie, The Shills, Undercast, Astrid Flood, TASM Lab and probably others
• Charles played in Black Spring and Owsla
• Jared played in Clockmaker, Thought Industry, and Table

• None currently listed

Genius Hired Guns - Dutch Mafia

1. 01_Dance_On_My_Head.mp3
2. 02 Lord Of The Softshoe.mp3
3. 03 Centipede.mp3
4. 04 Varsity Sweater Bandit.mp3
5. 05 Lost In Manhattan.mp3
6. 06 Dutch Mafia.mp3
7. 07 My Girls Patriotic.mp3
8. 08 Molly.mp3
9. 09 Hitler And The Flower People.mp3
10. 10 Queer.mp3
11. 11 Sinking Jerry.mp3

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