For Immediate Release: Your Weight on the Moon reissue!

The UK was always especially receptive to Man… or Astro-Man?’s odd mix of traditional surf music, campy sci-fi schtick and southern charm. British radio mainstay John Peel played their debut EP on his show and would eventually have them do several of his “Peel” sessions in studio over the years. From this initial contact a highly impressed One Louder Records struck up a relationship with the band. In December of 1993, One Louder released the masterpiece Mission Into Chaos 7” single. Here's the cover of that one:


The band went on to tour the UK and their outrageous live shows (flaming computer helmets, 50s b-movie graphics and tesla coils) won them a legion of British fans.

In August of 1994, One Louder put out the genre-defining and ground-breaking Your Weight On The Moon 10” record pictured at the beginning of this post (on black, silver, pink and glow-in-the-dark vinyl). Fans were hooked. Even though the band was relatively unknown stateside, Your Weight actually charted in the UK—entering the independent charts at No. 7.

In May of 1995 the Return To Chaos EP was released on One Louder, packaged in a top secret dossier format and with a track so secretive its name was classified. The EP charted at No. 4 in the top 10 independent singles chart. The band had conquered Great Britain. Here's a shot of that one:


One Louder would go on to co-release the Deluxe Men in Space EP with Touch and Go, and the Live Transmissions from Uranus picture-disc LP, but it was these first three UK releases that solidified MOAM?’s legacy overseas. All three records have been out of print for years, and even the label has disappeared. And even though the band continues to record and even tour (yeah!), it is for this early ‘90s period that a majority of their fans will most fondly remember them.

So here’s the good news: Overground Records is reissuing the early One Louder records. This reissue compiles Your Weight On The Moon with the two EPs in a 16-page booklet. It is the first time that some of the tracks have appeared on CD, and it’s the first time in a while that the music from the two singles has been easily available. And for the vinyl enthusiast in all of us, and staying true to the One Louder/MOAM? historical model, the record is also being put out as a limited 12” picture disc. Here is a mock-up of the front side of the picture disc artwork:


Since this is a dumping ground for Astro-man releases, I thought it would be an appropriate forum to drum up some support for the reissue. You should consider picking it. You can order the CD HERE. The 16 pages of liner notes alone will be worth the moderate price tag. For the limited vinyl, you'll want to go through a local record shop. Anyway, here are the techno-specs:

NEW ALBUM RELEASE
MAN OR ASTRO-MAN?
Your Weight On The Moon
Label: Overground

Cat. No. OVER 127CD / 127LP (limited picture disc)
Barcode: CD 689492106225 - LP 689492108267

Release Date: 26th September 2011

TRACK LISTING
Your Weight tracks:
1. Rocketship XL-3
2. Secret Agent Conrad Uno
3. Electrostatic Brain Field
4. Shockwave
5. Taser Guns Mean Big Fun
6. F=GmM(moon)
7. Space Patrol
8. Happy Fingers
9. Destination Venus
10. Polaris

Mission Into Chaos tracks:
11. Name of Numbers
12. Of Sex and Demise
13. Madness in the Streets
14. Within a Martian Heart
15. Point Blank

Return to Chaos tracks:
16. Classified
17. Secret Agent Conrad Uno
18. Point Blank
19. Goldfinger

Overground Records, PO Box 1NW,
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, NE99 1NW

A Spectrum of Finite Scale

A Spectrum of Finite Scale was a self-released, tour only Man... or Astro-Man? album available only on CD. It was limited to 1,000 copies, and was for sale on the band's 2001 tour in support of A Spectrum of Infinite Scale.

There were 13 listed tracks on the disc, and a 14th “hidden” track that was actually song number 32 (placed after 18 silent tracks that were each four seconds long). Musically it was an experimental collection of tracks performed by members of the Astro Staff Live Division, in isolation or in pairs. In other words, it was a series of songs written and played by band members and road crew, with a few extra folks thrown in for good measure. Everyone on the recording had some kind of an Astro-Man connection. Here is a list of the eight performers:

Birdstuff
Blazar The Probe Handler
Coco The Electronic
Trace Reading
The Brannock Device – Live Sound Coordination
Q-Beam – Live Visual Control
Andy Baker
Shannon Wright

Birdstuff, Coco, Blazar and Trace were the official line-up of MOAM? when this disc was released. For some reason, "Monkey Wizard" is dropped from Coco's name. The Brannock Device and Q-Beam were both members of the band's tour crew, with Brannock being the sound guy and Q running the merch table and helping with projection/lighting. The other two are a little more peripheral. Andy Baker played bass on track 6. He also was the recording engineer for tracks 1 and 6 and is responsible for the disc’s mastering. He had previously played in the affiliated band Servotron, alongside Birdstuff and former MOAM? guitarist Dexter X. As a member of Servotron he was known as Andro Series 600. Here’s an old Servotron press photo with an arrow pointing to Baker:


If this appearance by Baker is enough to merit his inclusion as an official band member, then the only member of Servotron in the above photo that never went on to play in MOAM? was the woman: Proto-Unit V-3.

Then there’s the curious case of Shannon Wright. Wright had previously been a member of the Astroman family, part of the Gamma series of Clones. As one of the two guitarists in the Gamma Clones, her name was Carol. Here are two grainy shots of Wright taken during a Gamma Clone performance in September of 1998 in Signal Hill, California:



Where the case for Wright’s full inclusion in the MOAM? pantheon really comes into focus, though, is when you consider that she toured with the band proper, replacing Blazar on the South American/Brazilian tour of 2001. On tour she dropped her Gamma Clone name and took the official Astroman moniker SW6. This, coupled with her playing guitar on "After All the Prosaic Waiting... the Sun Finally Crashes into the Earth" on this recording, really makes a strong case for her legitimate Man… or Astro-Man? membership. Recently, Astro-Man ad nauseam contributor Abraham Lincoln III found a picture of Shannon Wright/Carol/SW6 performing with the band in Brazil. It is the only photographic evidence I’ve ever seen of the full-fledged Astro-Woman:


(That photo is the property of Flickr user withlasers). Note that, in the photo, Wright is wearing Blazar's jumpsuit!

To bring the rest of this recording into visual focus, here is a scan of the front and back of the CD booklet:


And here’s a scan of the front and back of the tray card, and of the disc itself:



And, finally, here’s a track listing with a breakdown of exactly who contributed to each track:

1. After All The Prosaic Waiting... The Sun Finally Crashes Into The Earth
Shannon Wright (guitar)
Birdstuff
2. The Limitations Of A Serial Machine
Blazar The Probe Handler
3. MO₂
Trace Reading
4. Halfway To The Infinite
Coco The Electronic
5. Space Helmet
Birdstuff
Coco The Electronic
6. All The Quietest Whispers
Andy Baker (bass)
Birdstuff
7. Mt-52 Tone/Magnus Opus
Q-Beam
8. Tolerance In A Transitory Universe
Blazar The Probe Handler
9. Analysis Paralysis
The Brannock Device
10. Man Or Man-Machine?
Birdstuff
Coco The Electronic
11. The Potential Energy Of Roger Stone
Trace Reading
12. Mortimer Butomite's Pocket Of Capacitors
Coco The Electronic
13. Fig. A: Dispersion In Full Spectrum Pattern
Birdstuff
Blazar The Probe Handler
32. Untitled
Personnel: ???

And for those of you that are scouring the Internet looking for a download of this disc, consider this section of the liner notes:

Test Specimen Identification & Missed Shows . . .

Sometimes I forget that I spent much of my early life in the Phoenix metro area. We were by no means a big tour stop for anyone, but we often benefited from being on the way to somewhere else. Still, there was a fiercely loyal Man… or Astro-Man? following in Arizona, and this was mostly because of a record shop called Eastside Records. In addition to carrying everything MOAM? and helping to drum up support for their live shows, Eastside went on to put out the Haystack/Needles in the Cosmic Haystack 7-inch and also released the Servotron single Celebration Of Annihilation. The store went through several changes over the years, expanding and contracting in size, widening and then narrowing their sales focus. It recently closed its doors permanently—effectively bringing to a close an awesome chapter in Tempe, Arizona music history. This post cuts across Eastside Records in a couple of different ways. Let me explain.

Eastside was where I first met Ryan O’Sullivan. We met in 1997, the week after I had returned home from serving an LDS church mission to France. This was also just a few days before I saw MOAM? play for the first time. At this point I had already started to stockpile Astroman records and I was coming in to the shop to see exactly how far behind I’d fallen by cutting myself off from society for two years. It took me a decade to track down everything that came out while I gone. Ryan’s band the Stamens was set to open for MOAM? on that tour stop. Even though he was a younger guy, Ryan had already gained some local notoriety by playing with Greg Sage in a rebooted version of the Wipers. After a few years playing surf rock with the Stamens he would start a garage-y, almost Gang of Four-like band with fellow Eastside employee John Minardi and former Stamens drummer Zeke Howard (of Love As Laughter fame). That band was called the Thundercats (later the Tri-City Thundercats). He would also start a small record label called I Don't Feel a Thing that would put out music by the Lottie Collins, the Sun City Girls and Digital Leather, among others.

It came as a bit of a surprise this past week when, after searching non-stop for my old Astroman Test Specimen ID card (pictured above), I would receive it in the mail. It was sent to me along with a letter from Ryan detailing how he had ended up with it and kept it for more than a decade. Apparently I had lent it to him to take along to an Astroman show I had to miss and then I'd never bothered to get it back. When he stumbled upon it recently while cleaning his garage, he immediately made sure to send it back my way.

The Test Specimen Identification card was proof that you were a member of the MOAM? fan club. When you signed up you got one in the mail with your name on the back, a listing of the city where you lived and the date when your member in good standing status would expire. You had to re-enroll every year. Doing so got you a limited edition t-shirt, a handful of stickers and notification in your mailbox whenever the boys were on tour or were dropping a new record. So why had I lent mine to someone else? Because if you flashed a card at the merch table when they were playing your town you got 10% off whatever you were buying. On the front side of the card, among the field of green atoms, you can clearly see a small red graphic promising the percentage off.

Also with this letter, Ryan enclosed a flyer from an earlier show that I had missed while overseas. Here’s a scan:


Man… or Astro-Man? had played that time with the Hi-Fives and the Fells. The Fells were a Tucson, AZ-based garage band that signed to Estrus Records in the mid-1990s. Their one consistent member, a guy named Heath Heemsbergen, worked at a southern Arizona record store called Toxic Ranch. He would also go on to play in Tyvek. And, of course, the Hi-Five had their own previous Astro-connection. They had also recorded a surf record as thee Shatners, and MOAM? had covered their tune “Green-Blooded Love” on the single The Sounds of Tomorrow.

What stands out to me even more than the bands, though, is the flyer itself. The flyer was done by a Tempe-based artist named Brian Marsland. Brian did a lot of show flyers in the ’90s for events in and around Phoenix. His free-hand illustrator style of graphic design was incredibly effective and did much to help get the public out to see bands. I remember on more than one occasion going to see a band I’d never heard of just because Brian had made the flyer. That was usually a sign that the show was going to be good.

Brian had also designed the flyer for the very first show MOAM? ever played in Arizona – a 1993 (?) gig at a fly-by-night Phoenix club called El Rancho De Los Muertos. Here is that flyer:


I did not make it to this first show either – if I remember right I had just gotten back from Lake Powell with the worst sunburn I’d ever had. I heard about the show from everyone in the days that followed. It was because of this performance that I bought my first MOAM? records. The splash made from this show continues to cause ripples in my life today. You’ll notice that the Fells also played this first show, and that Eastside Records helped to put it on.

Brian Marsland was more than just a black and white flyer designer, though. It was also Brian who designed the cover for the MOAM? Haystack single shown below:


That single had been produced by Eastside Records. Around the same time he designed the cover for the Polvo / New Radiant Storm King split single put out by local label Penny Farthing, as seen here:


And to bring this rambling Ryan O’Sullivan / Eastside Records / Brian Marsland post to a close, here’s a shot of the cover Brian designed for the Wipers' 1993 release Silver Sail, followed by a YouTube video of Ryan playing bass with the Wipers in Arizona in late 1996:

Cliffs Notes on Man or Astroman?

The original intention of this site was to catalog Man... or Astro-Man? singles. The thought was that if I put everything I knew about each release online, then people would respond by telling me what they knew. As a project I think that it's been wildly successful. As information has come in I've posted it. At some point I think this could become the spot people turn to for all of their astro-facts (at least until astroman.com relaunches). An unintended benefit, though, has been how much else has been sent my way.

Case in point: a Cliffs Notes-themed band biography

Fellow collector Mike Noon told me about this booklet at the same time he sent me the sell-sheet for the Amazing Thrills in 3-D promo single. I know very little about this booklet. The one long essay, credited to the Quiz Master, is the exact same piece that ran in the Call of the Wild fanzine. If you remember, there was a four-band compilation flexi that came with that publication. If the essay appeared here first, then that would go far to explain why Birdstuff was wearing a sport coat made of Cliffs Notes books in the band photo. The only other bit of astro-trivia that this brings to mind is that I always heard that in an early version of the band's mythology, every member had a snack cake name (only Starcrunch decided to keep his). From this we see that there was also a Nutty Bar, a Zebra Cake and a Fudge Round at some point.

Noon was kind enough to scan the entire thing for me to share. If you're ready to see what late 1992 looked like in one rather cosmic corner of the American south, well, look no further than the following scans:









a big thanks to Mike Noon for holding on to this for so many years and for taking the time to share it.

Big Edit: Another version of the Astro-Man Cliffs Notes recently came to my attention. It was published to a MOAM? Facebook fan page by FB user Jett Strand. It came into her possession when she OUTBID ME on eBay. Here is that version:

Recent Astro-Man Collectibles

Ever since Man... or Astro-Man? started playing shows again in September of 2006, there have been things for astro-collectors to get their hands on. Here's what I've been able to stockpile:

Cryonic Waste Samples
Thrown from the stage at the Touch and Go 25 show. Mini glow sticks that have long since lost their shine. One for each of the original four that played the show. Of course the ultimate take home item from that night was Birdstuff's drum set, that he handed to the audience piece by piece.





Whirlyball Air Fresheners
Made for their March 5, 2010 show at the Whirlyball court in Roswell, Georgia. Made by Henry Owings of Chunklet magazine. I believe that it is "spice" scented, because there wasn't enough time for the factory to mix a custom "space B.O." scent. I currently have one hanging in my car and four in a box in my closet.





The remaining items were purchased/pilfered from the Los Angeles show that took place this past Presidents' Day weekend. There were a lot of things to be had and I got just about all of them. Here they are:

Meteor Mitt
A repackaged dollar store oven mitt.





Space Straws
Silly straws with an astro-man endorsement.





Astro Bag
A black cloth bag emblazoned with the "critical space item" graphic.





Light Switch Plates
Hand-painted light switch plates. No two are exactly alike.







Cosmic Teeth Paste
Creepy glittery blue tooth paste. Was almost taken from me by the TSA.





Set List
Stage man Scotty Lee's list, used to anticipate when to switch out guitars. Autographed by the whole band.

Vintage Astro-Man Collectibles

Man... or Astro-Man? always had plenty of things for sale. In addition to the items I listed in my R.Land post, here are some other astro-goodies that were available back in the day:

Plant Particles
The "Planet Particles" were really just lava rocks.





Space Dust
Dryer lint and hair being passed off as "Space Dust".





MOAM? YO-YO
The official astro yo-yo.





Astro-Man Genome Pack
From the Clone Tour. The four specimens of astro-men DNA were sealed in a plastic case using a strip of warning tape. The picture below is the front and back of the package, plus a shot of the warning tape seal.





Certificate of Assurance
This "Certificate of Assurance" was sent to me with an order from Estrus records. It was also included as part of the Super Atomic Survival Kit that Estrus distributed with early copies of Destroy all Astromen. Similar cards were used to promote horror films in the 1950s.





Astro-Man Letterhead
Correspondence on official MOAM? letterhead was common. This was a response to a letter written by Harry Jenkins that I somehow ended up with. He had requested information on how many records there were and was told to write the record labels themselves. The MOAM? home office had some of the records but dissuaded him from ordering them because it would take 4-60 weeks to fill the order.



Here's another example of letterhead, a standard Astro-office thank you letter customized by Birdstuff, thanking a fan for writing about the band and letting them crash at his place while on tour. Cool stuff:

Found on Facebook. Contact me if you'd like credit.

Super Atomic Survival Kit
This is (sadly) not in my collection. This was an early promotional kit that dates back to 1994. From what I can tell, this was sent out through Estrus mail order with the first 150 red vinyl copies of Destroy All Astromen. The perk was featured in Estrus Update Vol. 5, No. 2. The back image lists all sorts of things in the lot, many of which (space dust, etc.) were also sold or given away individually. The coolest thing in the kit, in my opinion, is the autographed Dr. Deleto tongue depressor. The guy was in the band so briefly that seeing anything with his signature is quite uncommon.

Live Show "Save the Date" Cards
I got a couple of these in the mail when the guys were on tour and I never saved any of them. This one comes from the collection of Henry Owings of Chunklet Magazine. It bears an old address for Chunklet HQ and the Moores Mill address for MOAM?. And check out the postmark: 1992!!