MORT:037 SCAT - "Addicted to Hell" CDR (2007)

Scat was formed around 2000 by my brother Jeff and the brothers Aaron and Tom Plies. I’m not sure how things came together exactly because I wasn’t there. I can say that Jeff and Tom were really good friends, hung out with each other all the time and listened to a LOT of Melvins and Thrones. I’m sure the band grew out of their friendship and similar tastes in music. After all, isn’t that how most bands form?

The earliest Scat recordings were long (some songs as long as 37 minutes!) free improvisation doom/drone pieces, heavy with keyboard noises provided by Jeff. The “Good Vs. Evil” 2CD, to my knowledge, contains the only released recordings from these days. Recorded in February of 2002, but not released until after their second recordings, this set of songs is torturous to listen to and is a real endurance test for even the most adventurous listener. They recorded this in Jeff’s basement when he lived in the house next door to me. Jeff called me up asking to borrow a microphone or something, I can’t remember what exactly now, so I brought it over. I got there and the microphone placement was fucked. There weren’t even microphones facing amps or anything, just sort of set up at random, hanging from the rafters, etc. I helped them set things up a little better, took some levels and left them to record.

Somehow they asked me to mix these recordings for them. I like working with sound, so it wasn’t a big deal to do it for them. Hanging out with them, seeing their reactions to the sounds I was getting, laughing at their noise they created, was fun. Though their music was directionless and improvised, it sounded like they had fun doing it.

Later that same year, in August, they called asking me to record them at my house on my 4 track. I was happy to do so. We spent all day and night recording what would become “The Pain and Suffering Campaign” CD. This time the songs were more structured, more guitar based and overall more metal. The drone/doom had vanished from their music. This time around, Jeff’s keyboards were only featured on 4 of the 9 songs, though he did get to do vocals on another song. Jeff spent most of that day sitting around. It would appear that Jeff was being forced out and that his contributions didn’t fit the new direction the Plies’ were heading in. Jeff was pretty vocal about not wanting to record a ballad Aaron wrote for his estranged wife, but it went on the album anyway. At this point, his input didn’t matter. The recording went great and everyone was really happy with how it turned out. Everyone was really anxious to have it mixed, so I mixed it two days after recording it. I didn’t charge them anything for recording them.

Shortly after this, Jeff and Tom hung out less and less. Pretty soon they stopped calling Jeff to rehearsal altogether. Jeff called repeatedly, but no plans were ever made to rehearse. Meanwhile, Tom and Aaron rehearsed night and day without Jeff. Jeff eventually became fed up with the situation and showed up at their house to get his drum set back (it was his kit they were using). Jeff was out. Though he was a founding member, he was forced out without even being told so, or told why. I’m sure Jeff took this pretty hard. Though he put up a wall of “I don’t care, fuck them”, you could see he was hurt by it. His project was yanked out from underneath him. More importantly, he and Tom went from hanging out all the time to not even speaking to each other. Not only did he lose his band, but a close friend as well.

When Scat contacted me to record them again it was just Tom and Aaron. When I asked them what happened with Jeff, they explained to me that he was trying to write keyboard parts over their music instead of just doing noise like he had always done and it was throwing them off. Future Scat member Allan Kempf, says that he was told, more or less, that Jeff was holding them back and keeping them from accomplishing their goals.

For the life of me, I can’t remember the name of the next Scat CD I recorded. I don’t remember the name of it because I never got a copy of it. Again, I recorded this one any my house, and spent a couple of days on it. The results weren’t as good as they were on “Pain and Suffering…”. I remember Aaron being really unhappy with Tom’s vocals. They planned on getting together with me again and re-recording Tom’s vocal tracks, but that never happened. As far as I knew, this recording went unreleased. I didn’t find out differently until I became a member of Scat myself and saw it lying around in Aaron’s basement.

I was playing guitar with Billy Crystal Meth around 2005 or so. I hadn’t heard anything from Scat in a while. I wasn’t even sure if they were still a band. I was at a show here in Ottumwa at The Casbah and Scat was playing. I hadn’t heard them since their last fiasco at my house. This time when I saw them they were tight! They trimmed all of the bullshit from their set and added their half brother Allan to the line up playing second guitar. At the time, I didn’t really know Allan. I chatted with him online a few times, but that was it. I was instantly annoyed by the fact that he was a better guitar player than I was and he’d only been playing for a couple of years. Seeing the audience response that night was a great thing. We talked after their set and I told them they needed a bass player, but finding like-minded musicians in this town is a difficult thing.

After BCM broke up the first time, Tom and Aaron called me asking if I was interested in playing bass for Scat. I agreed to do so based on the couple of live shows I caught of theirs recently. After the well-planned disaster that was BCM, I liked the idea of joining a band that the audience actually liked. I hauled my shit down to their basement and began rehearsing with them.

Right away there were problems stemming from that fact that I couldn’t / didn’t want to rehearse as often as the rest of them. Twice a week was plenty for me. I play music for fun. It’s a lifelong hobby for me, nothing more. I struggled to learn their songs at first, but eventually got them down. I even wrote some of the parts that ended up on the CD I recorded with them. Even from the start of my involvement with Scat it was clear that we weren’t on the same page. Tom and Aaron kept talking about how we had to get signed, how we had to send out demos, etc. There was even talk once of driving some 20+ hours to play some festival down south that we weren’t getting paid for because it would be good exposure and there would be “industry people” there. I didn’t care about any of that shit. I wasn’t ready to leave my job to play one off shows 5 states away. I just wanted to write music, record and play locally.

In 2007, after we had 10 songs worked up, we recorded “Addicted to Hell”, again at my house. All of us were really happy with how it turned out. It was probably the best recording Scat had at this point. All of the songs were tight, focused and sounded really heavy. My friend Cole had done two of Scat’s album covers before, but he really set the bar high for “over the top metal covers” with this one. Tom clearly dictated what he wanted on the cover and Cole delivered it 100%. Another friend of mine, Beckham G. Miller, designed the back cover and did a great job with it as well.

I released “Addicted to Hell” on Mortville as MORT:037. I was really happy with this release, thought we had done something great. I was burning the CDs as I needed them because I wasn’t sure how well they would sell. I printed the full color covers and on CD labels at home on my inkjet. It was really expensive to do it that way, but I didn’t want to get stuck with a lot of product I couldn’t sell. I made up 20 or so copies and gave them to the band.

At our next practice, Tom tells me he needs more CDs. I asked him what he did with the 20 I gave him and he said he sent them all out as promos to record labels. I guess I thought all that talk about getting signed would blow over, but it was still firmly planted in their minds. When I released our disc on Mortville, I intended it to be our finished product, not just a promo to send out to potential labels. I told Tom I could give him more, but that they were expensive to make and that sending them out as promos wasn’t what I had in mind. He said he would pay me for them, so I brought another 30 copies with me to our next practice. I was already selling these CDs super cheap, for $3.00ppd through the mail. I think I ended up selling 10 copies of this CD outside of the copies Tom bought from me. I was trying to sell them while Tom and Aaron were sending out messages on myspace 8-10 times a day saying “Free Scat CD to anyone that wants one, just message us!”. I put a lot of money and effort into making these things and they were just giving them away, at the same time ruining any chance I had of selling them myself. I confronted Tom and Aaron about this and they said they would just make their own copies from now on. Oh boy….

If you got a copy of “Addicted to Hell” from Scat, you didn’t get the CD I released. Plain and simple, it’s a bootleg. At the same time, you have something that looks like garbage and doesn’t reflect the music contained. The artwork Cole and Beckham did isn’t even included in the copy the band is sending out. Their hard work was scrapped in order to cut costs and send out a shitty looking CD. I decided to wash my hands of this situation and declared “Addicted to Hell” out of print. If people were getting shitty product, they weren’t getting it from me and I didn’t want them to think I was responsible for it. I’ve offered to email the full resolution cover and CD label to Aaron so that the CDs they sent out matched the ones I was making, but he shrugged it off and said “Don’t worry about it”. To this date I’ve never seen one of the CDs they mailed out, but my suspicions were confirmed when I found this review online later…

http://www.metallinks.nl/01-reviews/myspace.html.

“A straight up doom 'n' roll effort from the boys in Scat, "Addicted To Hell" was actually the sleeper hit of the month! It came to me in an unassuming manila envelope (wrapped in tape and it even had a cigarette burn on it) with it's track list written on the back of a Memorex package sheet. The coverless data disc inside however, proved to be a preverbal diamond in the rough.”

Allan and I became better friends during my time in Scat. We would talk at length about how ridiculous the notion of “getting signed” was. I talked about how my feelings were stepped on and that I felt I released “Addicted to Hell” for nothing. As soon as it was out, Tom and Aaron started saying “Fuck that album, that’s the past. We need to work on new shit, HEAVIER shit”. The bullshit escalated and pretty soon Allan withdrew himself. He started leaving right after practice and didn’t hang out to talk anymore. This was a sore spot for Aaron, I guess.

I wasn’t there to see this, but one day Aaron confronted Allan about this growing distance, getting in Allan’s face, screaming and pointing fingers. Allan lost it and punched Aaron in the face, then left. That was it, Allan was out of the band. I came to practice and they told me about it. There was a lot of shit talking done that night, about how Allan was the weak link and what a bad person he was, shit that had nothing to do with the band at all. I tried to stay neutral, but I’m sure they could tell I thought the whole situation was funny. Suddenly we were a three piece again and I was the only member not in line with their goal of “getting signed” and “making it big”.

We played as a three piece for a while, the whole time talking about how we needed another guitarist. I kept telling them they just needed to iron out things with Allan and get him back in the band. That always led to another 30 minute rant. I liked bringing up Allan’s name at practice and it became something I did each time.

During my final days with Scat, GRAND OLD LADY finally got their shit together for the split CD with BILLY CRYSTAL METH we were supposed to do at least a year earlier. At that point BCM already used the material we had saved on another split. I asked GOL if they’d be alright with doing the split with Scat instead. They agreed, so I brought it up at our next practice. Tom and Aaron didn’t seen to excited about it, said they’d rather work on their new album, but reluctantly agreed. I decided it would be a better idea to get Billy Crystal Meth back together and record new material for the split instead of doing it with Scat.

BCM’s CD was recorded with me doing 2 guitar tracks and it sounded amazingly heavy. Since Allan wasn’t playing with anyone, I asked him to join BCM as a second guitarist. Then, the shit hit the fan….

Somehow, Aaron and Tom found out about Allan playing with BCM and they flew off the handle. Tom called me leaving a message saying “We just found out you’re playing with Allan again. We can’t be associating with anyone that associates with that scumbag, so you’re kicked out of the band. No hard feelings, it’s nothing personal. You never really showed any interest in Scat anyway. You can come get your shit out of the jam-room anytime”. I called them back, asking what Allan playing in BCM had to do with me playing in Scat, but they were unwavering and insisted I was out of the band and that Allan was a scumbag, he would fuck me over eventually and that I’d be sorry. It was awkward, but I accepted it. I wasn’t going to kick Allan out of BCM based on the fact that I had no reason to. Tom and Aaron had the problem with Allan, not me. I went and got my shit from their basement and started practicing with BCM instead. My involvement with Scat was over. (I should note here that I’ve not yet been fucked over by Allan in any way.)

Tom claims I “…never really showed any interest in Scat…”, but that’s not true. During my time in Scat I designed the logo they’re still using to this day. I designed the flyer for most of the shows I played with them. I wrote songs for “Addicted to Hell” and I recorded and released the CD I played on. Not only that, but I recorded everything else they did up to that point with the exception of “Good Vs. Evil” (which I did mix), and I did it all for free, even when I wasn’t in the band. I felt that I pulled my weight as a band mate.

Tom made a point to tell me that this wasn’t personal and that there weren’t any hard feelings between us, but time has told a different story. Right after I was kicked out of the band I went to see them play live a few times and not once did they speak to me. I even texted Tom asking when the show was, so he knew I was there. They walked right by me and ignored my presence. I went to those shows to show them that I didn’t harbor any hard feelings towards them. I was completely ignored by them on all accounts. I’ve known Tom since he was 14 or so, and while I never considered us to be close friends, I did consider us to be friends. I haven’t written about any of this until now because I thought there was a chance we would begin speaking again, but it’s been almost two years now and it hasn’t happened yet. I’ve since given up.

In the years since Allan and my departure from Scat, up until a few months ago there were still pictures of Allan and I on the Scat page. There are still songs we recorded as a 4 piece on their page and I can only assume they are sending copies of “Addicted to Hell” out to venues to get them gigs which seems sort of dishonest considering two people can’t create the sound live the 4 of us did. They have also shot a video for one of the sons we recorded together that makes it look as if Tom and Aaron recorded the song without Allan and I….



They have written slanderous songs about Allan that they have dedicated to him live at the shows I’ve been to, all the while using the songs they recorded with him to benefit themselves. The whole thing has been messy, but only because of their actions. Aside from Allan punching Aaron in the face, neither Allan nor I have done anything to prolong this mess.

I typed this out to get it off of my chest, but also to make “Addicted to Hell” available again with it’s artwork intact. I’m sure you can download these songs, burn them to CDR and have a nicer product than a coverless data disc packaged in cigarette burned envelope with it's track list written on the back of a Memorex package sheet.

My hats off to Jeff for taking the high road and not talking shit about his departure from Scat. I don’t think I would take being kicked out of a band I started so well. In this case, you’ve shown more class than anyone else involved with Scat. Kudos.


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