Gospel Midgets

Gospel Midgets (not to be confused with Gospel Midgets) were post-rock ante litteram---pre-post-rock, if you will. The group existed a few levels below the fecund Richmond rock scene of the 90s, but still employed people who had played with Pelt, Ugly Head, Kingdom Scum, and Friendly. Putting aside the traditional structures of indie rock music, the quartet instead unwittingly channeled influences ranging from John Cage to LaMonte Young to Lee "Scratch" Perry into a sort of shapeless, formless, yet very much present type of noise---not bassy enough to be dub, not distant enough to be ambient, not regimented enough to be rock and not beboppy enough to be bop. Day jobs, higher education, and the waxing crescent that was then Pelt kept the Midgets' output minimal; following an appearance at the inaugural Klang festival in 1994, and a reunion at Harrisonburg's Toaster Museum in 1995, the Midgets did not play again for eight years, until a short, more beat-oriented opening set for Pelt in Baltimore in 2003. Their sole recorded output remains Side One, Two, recorded in a Richmond basement on New Year's Eve 1994, and "Toaster Museum", an excerpt of the 1995 show on the Umlautted V comp. There also was a cassette titled "Outer Space High School Fight Song," a tape of the 1994 show, floating around, but it's not clear if it was ever duplicated or that anyone associated with Klang kept a copy. There are no definitive future plans for the Midgets at this time.

BONUS FUN PAK Recently rescued from a deteriorating backup tape at Klang's offsite archive facility (a.k.a. Mark's basement) are the following answers to once-common questions about the Midgets, circa 2000:

Is anything I read about the Gospel Midgets true? Everything about the Midgets is true, and when I say "true", I mean "false". They're all lies. But, they're good lies. And, in the end, isn't that the real truth? The answer is no... The Gospel Midgets were actually formed in Richmond in 1994, and featured people who had played with Pelt, Ugly Head, Friendly, Buttfinger, etc. Anything you may have heard about them playing the "US" festival with the Knack, or touring with Poison and Brittany Fox, was a fabrication invented by our former PR firm, which has now been sacked. It is true that their Side One, Two LP has sold out, finally.

Who are these bands: Objects In Mirrors, the Myrrorz, the Fuzzlocusts, and the Flyspeck 3? If you believe certain of the stories that have been told about the Gospel Midgets, they started out as Objects In Mirrors back in 1981, at the height of the skinny-tie pop craze. When the power pop scene went bust, they regrouped as the Myrrorz, playing glam metal a la Motley Crue. Eventually the Myrrorz became the Gospel Midgets. As for the Fuzzlocusts, that was a short-lived Gospel Midgets "power electronics" side project, which proved to be too harsh for even Klang to consider releasing (rumor has it that in a blind taste test between the Fuzzlocusts and Merzbow, 99 out of 100 homemakers preferred Merzbow.) Klang is currently considering a 20th-anniversary reissue of Objects In Mirrors' sole release, Objects In Mirrors Are Closer Than They Appear. Stay tuned. And as for the Flyspeck 3... I don't know what you've been told about them, or what you think you know, but I'm telling you, it's all lies. Lies! I have nothing more to add.

Why did the first Gospel Midgets LP take so long to sell out? Everyone tells me Klang releases usually sell out in a matter of days or something. That same PR firm who fabricated all the lies about power pop and psychedelic hair metal also thought it would be a good idea to advertise Side One, Two chiefly in (a) traditional jazz magazines, e.g. "Down Beat" and (b) journals of psychosomatic medicine. This severely limited the exposure this record got to "true" Gospel Midgets fans. Also, the fact that the band has only ever played two shows might have something to do with it. In a random poll of 3,500 Americans aged 18-35 conducted by the Klang R&D department, 3,500 had never heard of the band. Draw your own conclusions.

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around, does it make any noise? Yes, it does. This was conclusively proven at approximately 13:33 into side two of the Gospel Midgets LP, where a sample of exactly such a sound is played. Look it up!