The Bad Form was initiated by Parsipanny, NJ native Avi Cohen, amped up on Stooges fury and suburban boredom. He approached Dan and Jared of PANOPTICON & KABOOM! and Matt from DEAD NATION & TEAR IT UP. Under the guise of "wouldn't it be fun" to start up a messy thrashy band with equal parts early CORROSION OF CONFORMITY, DIE KREUZEN and THE CRAMPS, we started practicing in Matt's basement and later at the Ristorante Retina, when Jared and Dan moved there and fixed the old storefront up.
More and more swampy blues and morbid early rock quickly seeped into The Bad Form's music. Even though we thought we were playing really instinctive and basic American roots music (grinded in the blender of early thrash, of course), most area punks didn't really seem to 'get' what was going on... maybe because we were so damn messy.
We recorded a demo with Billy Hellfire and relatively quickly did this 7", put out by Dan and the rest of the band on Mad At The World, and recorded in a log cabin by reclusive skinhead Harry Baggs.
Perhaps the NY hipsters had some prescient feeling about the flaccid "rock n roll" craze that was about to sweep alternative music (whereby soulless asexual emos could feel a little churn & burn in their nether regions); whatever the case was, we started playing in New York City at clubs like Brownies and Don Hill's (a real fucking sleazy rathole, and not in a good way!), and were fairly well received (although I think we were a little too misanthropic and messy to get very far). We also played live on WNYU and later WFMU. In the interim, Matt had given up his duties as bass player for the band, in order to concentrate on TEAR IT UP. He was replaced by New Brunswick resident Tim Scammell, who brought his fuzzed-out Sabbath-y low end to the band.
Avi did a good deal of the promotion and booking for the band, and hooked us up  with Mark from CHARLES BRONSON and THE OATH. Mark put out our second EP on his then-new label, YOUTH ATTACK. An abortive tour bravely set up by Avi to criss-cross a good deal of the eastern US in the summer of 2001 was sabotaged by me and my poor van Salazar (whose transmission and clutch totally melted down on the first weekend of the abridged tour). After the disappointments of that summer, Jared fled the confines of New Brunswick, NJ and headed for Eastern Europe. That effectively broke up the band, who moved to San Fran, LA and New York, respectively.
-Jared Rosenbaum
|
"One of the least pretentious or cliched outright punk albums I've had come into my hands since the likes of Texas Terri and the Stiff Ones. The Bad Form sound like the kind of punk rock that was coming out of the CA hardcore scene in the early, early 80's like the Child Molesters or Eddie and the Subtitles. Vocally they sound like a New York hardcore band called Crawlpappy. Muppet-like vocals but full of gusto and drive. The lyrics are grim and violent, written solidly. This was a fun listen bordering on garage and punk. The guitar is gutteral but full of Black Flags style leads. This was a great surprise and lets know that punk is not dead."
-deathrock.com
"Is it bad form to release a record that blows away 100% of the competition? Lights Out, people, it’s time for punk to move. The Bad Form is tired of the mundane music boys of the new order. Hardcore the Rock ‘N’ Roll and Rock ‘N’ Roll the Hardcore - fuck it right."
(Best of 2001 list. Placed at number 1.)
" The story of how I heard about these kids and how I finally got their record is a long and complicated tale. So I’m going to bore you with the details. Curiouser and Curiouser… It was a hot summer evening during the first week of August. I was driving in my car to my friend James’ house to partake in our usual unusual escapades. So I was riding along, listening to WFMU (the best radio station in the galaxy), when out of the blue the DJ began to spin this very record. I was thinking to myself, "Damn, who is this? This is some hot shit." Just after the mystery band that caught my ears song ended, and just before I reached my destination, the DJ came on and yelled, "Okay, that was THE BAD FORM outta New Jersey!" I turned off the car and ran up to my friend’s room, praying he wasn’t running around naked as he so often does… "James," I asked, "have you ever heard of this band called the Bad Form from New Jersey?" "The Bad Form." he answers, "Umm…no I haven’t." Although I was disappointed and slightly irate, I soon forgot all about the Bad Form as I was easily distracted by the smell of James’ grandpa’s homemade pizza, which was cooking in the kitchen.
My next encounter with the Bad Form would come when I went out to Ohio to visit Kenny to drink beer with him on the last weekend of August. It was during Kenny’s "keg party" that I stumbled over his small batch of records he brought out to Ohio (cause you know, he’s Kenny on Haight-Ashberry now). Sifting through his 45s I came across this hot pink sleeve with the words "THE BAD FORM" written on top of it. "The Bad Form?" I thought, "That sounds familiar…" Then I looked on the back of the sleeve to see where this Bad Form was from, and mother sick [!], wouldn’t you know it, New Fuckin’ Jersey! So I threw the 7" on Kenny’s ultra pussie turntable and totallyrock that little mechanized prick’s world. Now I’m at this "keg party," with a keg of beer on my right, and a record player on my left… Yeah, I ended up going and getting another beer, and naturally (to me anyway), I forgot all about the Bad Form 7" (again!). Hey, I’m only human…My third (and fourth, I guess) encounter with this Bad Form 7" was only a month ago when Kenny attempted to become a record reviewer. He sent me this email full of reviews; and what record was in that pile of reviews? Why the Bad Form of course! Kenny’s review re-instilled my interest in the Bad Form and I said to myself, "Okay, Joe, when you go down to see Crimson Sweet in NYC on Friday, you stop by that Wowsville store that Mark Murrmann raves about so much, and you look for that Bad Form 7". I mean it! No fucking around this time!" So when my friend James and I actually did find this store, I headed over towards the New 7"s Section and began investigating. Now seriously people, these guys at Wowsville are not very organized, okay? I’m looking through this flipper type device they’ve got for their New 7"s Section on the counter and they’ve got all of these 45s crammed into the thing. So I’m flipping, and flipping, and flipping, when all of the sudden, the weight of the 7"s crammed on top of the other 7"s that were already flipped breaks the flipper type device’s hold on them and they all go crashing to the floor. Luckily they weren’t damaged or anything, but fuck! Take better care of your merchandise! I didn’t find the Bad Form 7" in the retarded New 7" Section they had, so I went for the Old 7" Section , in the ‘B’ division. And low and behold, a hot pink record sleeve with the words "THE BAD FORM" was staring right at me. I shouted, "Woohoo!" and went straight to the counter to purchase my long, sought-after treasure; again apologizing for my clumsiness, though I still say it was a technicality on my part. So there you have it. The story of how I heard about the Bad Form and how I finally got their record. What is it that they say? The things you truly work for are the things you cherish most ? Well, I didn’t exactly "work" for this record in a physical sense, but mentally, whew! I contemplated leaving you with just my Bad Form story, with no description of their music. Surely if I went through all of that I should have perked your curiosity about the Bad Form even just a little
bit. But I know you’re fickle. I know you’ll think I pulled a Shawn Abnoxious on you. So, the best description of how the Bad Form sound that I can give to you is if Minor Threat went towards more of a rock ‘n’ roll noise, but kept their aggressive hardcore nature, and switched to Misfits-esque lyrics. It’s sick. It’s obsessive. It’s damaged. It’s the Bad Form.
-Blankgeneration.com
|
