Speedking

My first memory of Chet Sherwood goes something like this: I was a first semester college freshman enrolled in a really big intro anthropology class. During the course of one lecture, the professor made some snide comment about pocket protectors.

Later that evening, I had a discussion section that was run by the t.a., who in this case was (you guessed it) Chet Sherwood. He was wearing a sweater. And as he sat down he said something about how the professor’s comment about pocket protectors was ridiculous. He took off his sweater and underneath he was wearing a button down shirt. In the pocket was a pocket protector.

That anecdote doesn’t quite capture how ultimately cool Chet Sherwood is. He’s the type of person who tells you something about his life and you have to restrain yourself from responding by repeating the exact sentiment he just expressed only with a question mark tacked on the end. You worked for Matador Records? Your band toured with Slint? You spent a summer studying monkeys in Kenya? Your research focuses on the evolutionary neuroanatomy of primates? You’re married to that really cool woman?

During the course of my college career, Chet ta’ed three of my anthro classes and remained a mentor-like presence (even though it became more sporadic as I began rejecting bio anthro and he spent more time teaching med students all about the brain) throughout my college career. We traded cds, recommended books (or a book each to one another) and he helped me land a very cool internship at the American Museum of Natural History.

So, I was actually a bit sad when I was leaving NYC and realized that I hadn’t seen him in nearly three months.

None the less, it was a funny day in June when I received a press release in my email box from Mike at Tigerstyle records. I count Mike as a friend based on the fact that during the semester I was an intern at an online independent music retailer, I sat approximately 10 feet away from him. I perused the press release and paused for a long long moment when I arrived at the second half.

Tigerstyle was set to release a retrospective of Speedking, a NYC proto-post rock/garage/punk rock band that had been very productive in the mid 1990s and then disappeared. For most people, this didn’t mean much. But, I began talking to the computer screen (hoping that it could confirm my notions) saying “isn’t that Chet’s band?”

I quickly jotted off an email to Mike and one to Chet looking for one of them to confirm my notion. Both did. Mike said that he didn’t know Chet, but that the record was awesome. Chet informed me that he was unaware that the record was even being released.

Mike and Chet talked over the phone and much was cleared up and seemingly years later (actually about 2 1/2 weeks due to some poor addressing and epic bouncing around through the U.S. Postal system because of my constant moving) the cd arrived in my mail box.
It’s a funny thing when you are confronted by a friend’s art. You want to hear it, and in this case I really wanted to hear it, but, I also didn’t want to hear it because if it totally sucked it would be hard for me to lie.

Fortunately, the Speedking retrospective, “The Fist and the Laurels” is crazy and engaging. It sounds eerily like a proto-Le Tigre or Milemarker with a lot less of the blatantly political and female vocals and a lot more of the raw noise and energy. It sounds excellent in 2002, and it makes me wonder what it would have sounded like from 1995-1997 when the band was actually together. Without a time machine, I will never know, but from here on out it will used as the yardstick against which all of my other friends’ bands are being measured.