Post? Boast! Pt. 2.

The Jungle Creeps

This is part 2 of a 3-part series discussing my post-Nihilistics bands. Last week we examined my stint in Missing Foundation, the seminal NY Industrial band led by Pete Missing. I played with Missing Foundation a few years, managing to take part in a half-dozen performances and appearing on three albums produced by Jim Waters at his Meatpacking District studio, Water Music. Overall, it was a desultory experience, ending when the band decided what I was doing on guitar was, apparently, too “normal” (rock & roll) and they need to “move in another direction.” It was a transitional time for me personally, too, with a relocation to Edgewater after the Tenafly house where I’d rented a room five years was put on the market. I’d also begun what would be a long stint at the newly-launched PaperDirect, a direct-to-consumer paper company servicing those who’d purchased a newfangled inkjet printer (I was employee #53).

Around this tumultuous time (1992 into 1993) I saw an ad for GUITARIST NEEDED pasted up around Hoboken, a frequent haunt (or did the ad appear on a bulletin board at WFMU, where I was doing my show Aerial View? Or perhaps in a local music paper? The origin is lost to time). I answered the ad and met singer/songwriter Paula Carino (above, left), then living on Fulton Street in Weehawken, NJ. Paula was into literate 4AD and adjacent bands – The Breeders, Pixies, Throwing Muses – I’d never spent much time with (I tend to prefer stupider rock) and her lyrics were similarly deep and smart, her melodies loaded with hooks I could build on. I joined Jungle Creeps and we started rehearsing and playing out.

One gig forever lodged in my mind due to the overwhelming smell of bleach and what happened between soundcheck and performance was a late slot at the Pyramid Club. It was raining and as we waited to go on, Paula and I stood just inside the club’s door, where she allowed what a bad idea it was to get involved with a bandmate. We did so anyway. I hadn’t had a steady girlfriend and certainly not one leading the band I was in, but misgivings were laid aside. The relationship and Jungle Creeps chugged (creeped?) along and after Nihilistics and Missing Foundation it was a revelation to be in a band where the focus was songs, not spectacle.

I thought Jungle Creeps had a real shot at getting a record deal, so I blocked out three hours in WFMU’s Studio B and we hastily recorded 12 songs live to two-track reel-to-reel tape (running at 15 ips on a Studer deck, tapeheads). Here’s three numbers from that session, which AFAIK have never seen the light of day:

Still In Ether – Jungle Creeps

Howard – Jungle Creeps

Somewhere In Between – Jungle Creeps

I was desperately in love but Paula’s misgivings about getting involved with bandmates must’ve been learned experience. I returned from a Chicago road trip to discover she’d gotten together with a former bass player/boyfriend in my absence. I was devastated, even though we never agreed to be exclusive. I broke up with Paula and left Jungle Creeps. A month later, against my better judgement, we got back together. A few weeks after that I found myself – presto chango! – dumped.

We never did get a record deal.

Paula continued making music with her new band, Regular Einstein. We lost track of one another and didn’t communicate for years. Somewhere in the COVID times we stumbled across each other on social media and messaged back and forth. Paula had become a yoga teacher and then a psychiatrist. She’d gotten married and settled in Brooklyn. She continued making music and when I reminded her how she derided my guitar playing back in the day, asking if I ever practiced at home, she replied You were the best guitarist I ever played with.

She also apologized …for all the pain, chaos and confusion of our dating years, which might’ve mattered more.

NEXT WEEK: Part 3, the tortured history of Wrench.