gel-403" class="band-link">MORPHINE ANGEL
Years Playing: 1993 - ????
Members:
         John Fynbu - Vocals
         Paul Macatee - Bass & Programming
         M. A. Farrar - Guitar & Programming, art & graphic design
Releases:
         An Ashen Dream - four song demo
         A Fire in His Hands - six song demo
         Project Isa - self released CD
         Love Nest, Murder Fest - Delinquent Records
Members came from: Fish Box, Red Max, One Dark Rabbit, Weird Beards
Members went to: Asmodeus X (located in Houston, Texas), minus1 (located in Orlando, Florida)

From Michael Farrar: Picking up on where Fish Box never really went (but wanted to) gel-403" class="band-link">Morphine Angel continued to attempt to do what wasn't being done in Lincoln at the time - very dark, gothic and heavy industrial. Thinking we'd learned from our mistakes with Fish Box we intentionally did not play very often - and when we did we tried to put on a complete show with light affects, smoke machines, stage props/decorations, etc. The best was probably the Halloween gig at The Edge. (yet another appearance by Sara Kovanda in the audience!!!)

I ended up leaving the group for several reasons, only a couple of them having to do with personality conflicts - mostly it was to take a very well paying job in Florida. I was replaced by our "manager", Barton Wolfe (this would have been the "personality conflict" - we didn't need a "manager", especially not Barton Wolfe). They re-recorded the material that was on the two demos and self released it as 'Project Isa'. see: Sonic Boom for a review (and since the reviewer picks out the track called "Fine Home Design", yes, it was a cover. It was originally written by Jeff Runnings as a Four Against One song that Fynbu sang on. According to Fynbu he asked Runnings if we could do it and was told not only could we do it but that we did not need to credit him as the author. Approximately 3/4 of the songs on "Project Isa" were written by me and were done without my permission (I do actually have the copyrights to those pieces - oh well, no big deal since I'm almost ashamed of having written them now))

Macatee is currently in Texas with a group called Asmodeous X with Brad Marshall.

I think that Fynbu is still flogging the gel-403" class="band-link">Morphine Angel name around, although I am unsure if he is currently in Nebraska or Chicago.

I left and am now in central Florida with an off-and-on project called 'minus1' - something that can't decide if it's power-pop, gothic-industrial, or progressive metal. Right after leaving gel-403" class="band-link">Morphine Angel I had a small bit part as one of Sara Kovanda's "dancers" for her Yvette & the heShe show at Panic - I played a weather station radio during the opening number.

"An Ashen Dream" was recorded at Serious Fish Studios by Rob Arnold and "A Fire in His Hands" was recorded at Studio Q by Doug Marx.

From Paul Frederic:
Most of Mike Farrar's recollections on the early days of M.A are accurate as far as I can recall. I was brought into the project during the gray area between Fish Box and gel-403" class="band-link">Morphine Angel. I had left Red Max some time ago, generally “given up” on doing music, and was only a step away from joining the Navy when I got the call from Johnny.

Johnny was what you call a "natural-born-rock-singer"—I think this was apparent to anyone who ever met him. With little-to-no professional training, he had a voice that could growl and rumble with angst, ring strong with clarity, or croon in a soft and gentle manner that always gave you a sentimental melancholic feeling. He was forever dodging comparisons with Peter Murphy and Ian Curtis, but those who know him knew also that his real hero was always David Bowie. And his look – the thin, disheveled look years before Marylin Manson, which never changed regardless of what he ate (some people have it sooo rough). He was a veritable urban legend, and his name appears all over this website – Hymn to Joy, DBL, and so on.

He also had this way of talking about the dream of doing music that really made you believe. As I later learned, believing is half the battle. Johnny and I were different in so many ways, but I think it was the feeling of being “outcasts” amongst the Lincoln music scene that bonded us together, and kept us fueled in the years that came. Mike – a fellow outcast in his own right - was into philosophy and esotericism, which was something I had been interested in for years, and especially the notion of expressing it via music. It didn't take long for these guys to give me the “band bug” again.

I wasn't terribly “in the know” over what happened when Mike left – it was really between him and Johnny. Mike was one of the best MA guitarists ever, and with his keen usage of effects he created an ambience and spacey quality that MA never fully recaptured. However, at the time Mike left, my biggest gripe was that he had been giving me Tae Kwondo lessons at the time, and now I was out one helluva teacher. Barton Wolf might have been pushing it a bit in the beginning by presenting himself as a manager, but what he did have is connections with the goth/industrial scene outside of Nebraska, which was just what we needed. He and his girlfriend, Sid Cook, lived in Omaha. Sid was knowledgeable in regards to the music industry, having herself relocated from Houston, Texas where she had worked with an industrial band called Bamboo Crisis. (Make a mental note of Houston – in comes up again later).

Wolf's guitar playing took MA toward more of a Ministry sound. He also had an A-Dat player and mixing board, so we could record on our own. This was very significant, as we could save all the time/energy that would have been spent figuring out how to pay one of Lincoln's 2 or 3 studios of the day, and instead use that money to press our own CD. We founded Black Pepper Records (a name I had used previously for producing my independent film “Shiva”) and this was the vehicle by which we released Project ISA. Lincoln studio guru Eric Medley mastered the first MA album, and in Mike Pardee's studio. I'd actually attended to Lincoln South East High School with Mike Pardee, but the mastering job was the first opportunity I'd had to really work with him.

Project ISA got it's fair share of good press outside of Lincoln – Industrial Nation, Blue Blood, Spectre and even overseas in zines like Bat's and Red Velvet and Dark Angel. It was all print media at the time, and the Sonic Boom review is (unfortunately) one of the only web-based reviews I think it ever got. I also mused over the reviewers comment on Fine Home Design, but chalked it up to coincidence due to the extreme unlikelihood of someone like that actually having a copy of the 15 year-old DBL tape, but who knows. We never got much support from local press of the day, and if you hadn't seen us walking down “O” Street to our practice space at the Hurricane, you might have never suspected goth/industrial to exist in Lincoln at the time. All our support came from the club/bar scene in Lincoln – Knickerbockers, Duffys, and Hurricane (Earnie, Dave Rabies, and Bubba respectively. Amoree Lovell (who now does her own music in Seattle) got us played on KRNU a couple of times.

The Project ISA concept was all fleshed out by Wolf, Johnny, and me. I was really into the runes at the time, and the rune Isa (ice) – symbolizing strength, stability, and contraction - went into the title, and the Dagaz rune became the main graphic, partially because there was a store called Dagaz in Omaha at the time that supplied us with our Stretch F*CKIN Jeans and Doc Martens. Johnny had the idea of adding a rose on the Dagaz symbol and Brad's clever pen made it so. This became the famous MA logo that went on all the t-shirts and stickers. I still see those stickers on the walls of bathrooms in goth clubs throughout the country. Along with press photos courtesy Johnny's wife Tia, we had a package that we could begin doing things with.

With this, MA started touring the U.S. extensively. The Great Lakes area, the South, and the West Coast. Brad Marshal – whom I'd met through Mike and who had done the artwork for Project ISA – joined us during this time as Lighting Tech. I could write a book on all the shenanigans from this period alone. The weather of time and place was the best indicator of whether we adhered to more of a pirate, or Viking, motif. We played with many other bands in the national scene – Apocalypse Theatre, Garden of Dreams, Empire Hideous, Sunshine Blind, Switchblade Symphony, the Electric Hellfire Club, and I'm sure many more I can no longer recall. Also during this time period we came in contact with John Michaels (whom would later co-produce LoveNest MurderFest with me), Thomas Thorn from the Electric Hellfire Club (whom eventually became a good friend), and Jennifer Chen of Spectre Magazine (whom I later discovered was my soul-mate). We also beat Wolf at hearts (card playing in the van was a tradition) more times than I can count, and ne'er did it cease to vex him.

This all went on for about a year. The last tour with Wolf ended in (I believe) the winter of 95. There had been a personality conflict developing between Johnny and Wolf (perhaps having grown from a few to many controversial games of hearts), and it all erupted in a fist-fight between the two of them on the streets of New Orleans – a now almost legendary incident in some circles. One very long, quiet and uncomfortable eight-hour drive later, and we were back in Lincoln -- Wolf back in Omaha. Johnny and Wolf didn't talk again for many years after that.

The good thing about that New Orleans gig was that we scored a keyboard from a fellow Lincolnite (name escapes me) and Brad was promoted to the stage on his first E-mu. To this day he still prefers E-mu (much to my chagrin).

Paul Fredric at Charles Starkweathers grave. Wyucka Cemetery, Lincoln NE (In the background can be seen the infamous M.A. Tour Van, pre-black spray-paint job.) Circa Autumn of 1995

It might have all ended there, but then two things happened: 1) John Michaels – a Sound Tech/Producer guy we'd met on the road, called us from a studio in Alabama and said he could get us some free studio time. And 2) the editrix of Dark Angel, an Australian Zine, wanted to bring us over for an Australian tour. It was apparent at this point that Johnny and Wolf weren't going to patch things up, so I started looking for a new guitarist. Heath Cole (Mannequin Beach, Whiskey Sour Notes, Wide) tried out, but was a bit too energetic (i.e. technically skilled) for our speed. I stumbled upon Carl Gibson, whom I'd known from my One Dark Rabbit days. Turned out, he was one of the 25 or so people in Lincoln then aware of Cleopatra Records – this and his bizarre style got him the job on guitar.

Carl added the most “unique” dimension to MA. He was heavily influenced by Helios Creed and used tons of effects, which brought back some of the early “Farrarian spacy-ness” to the sound. He played guitar unlike anyone else I'd ever seen before or since – like he'd been shut up in a cabin completely isolated for years, and just came up with this style, free from any outside influences. It was actually a bit creepy at times. Yet he was completely on top of all the new stuff that was coming out on Cleopatra Records at the time. Go figure.

Carl and Brad on stage created the MA set-up: Keyboardist in the back center where drums would usually go, Bass to the left and guitar to the right, front-man center. Despite more inevitable line-up changes, this stage set-up would remain an MA constant for years to come.

I set upon writing new music. Brad and I started working together on stuff and on New Years Eve (still 1995, I believe), came up with “Day One” which later became an endearingly dark LoveNest song. Also during this time, Thomas Thorn from Electric Hellfire Club called me about Shane Lassen (EHC keyboardist) dying. This was a heavy thing for a lot of people in our circle at the time who had known Shane, and the song RDL was written in response to that. Soon we hit the road again for some more gigs up north, (had to break Carl in) eventually to plant ourselves at Soundwerks Studios in Decatur, Alabama.

It was a nice, big studio – the real deal (not everyone and their dog was running Power Tools on the home PC quite yet). Michaels had a day job assisting in the studio, and the owners (who also ran Delinquent Records) had given him permission to do his own stuff “off hours”. We set to work and recorded all of LoveNest in like three nights. Everyone was really unprepared, and I ended up actually doing a lot of the instrumentation myself, and started to experiment with sampling and loops and stuff. Finally we were done. Soundwerks allowed us to make some demos for shopping, and then told us the catch – they were keeping the masters till we provided them with some money. Apparently there had been a miscommunication, but either way there wasn't much we could do so we shrugged our shoulders and headed back home to prepare for the Australian tour.

I suppose then it was spring of 96 that we headed to Australia. We drove to LA, left our van with Ryan Springola (Torture Records) in Riverside, and boarded the plane from LAX. We toured up and down the East Coast of Australia for 3 weeks. I could write another book about all the stuff that happened in Oz. We played with Ikon, Immortal, Discordia, and partied with sci-fi writer Storm Constantine. Azriel, who was the editor of Dark Angel magazine and had served as our road manager, had so much fun she decided to come back with us to America for a “few more rounds”.

So eventually we found ourselves back in Nebraska. All that, and still we were thoroughly unacknowledged by any of the Lincoln Press of the day. Thomas Thorn from EHC had been trying to get us to move to Kenosha, Wisconsin for sometime, and we now decided to take him up on it. In the mean time, we did more shows at Knickerbockers, where Azriel – an amazon-sized, out-back woman with fire-red dreadlocks – became a bit of a novelty with some of the locals.

Soon we were struggling to make our way in Kenosha. It was hard at first – Kenosha's economy was worse than Lincoln's. Carl could only take a couple of weeks before he resigned from the project and moved back to Lincoln. This was upsetting at the time, as we were looking to do a Florida tour playing support for EHC, which would have been really good for the band. Carl remains in Lincoln to this day, working on his solo project “Mesmeronicus”. He has also developed a number of intriguing conspiracy theories regarding MA, and “what really happened” in Australia. An intriguing scenario involving a Masonic circle of bankers in Iowa, mind control, and suppressed memories that will surely awaken for me when the time is right. (I'm actually looking forward to it).

Kenosha is a very strange town, the guitarist from the Exploited lived there along with the Drummer from the UK Subs, and they had a new band called Billyclub that I believe now resides in Austin. Also, Giddle Partridge was living there playing Keyboards with EHC, and it was she whom introduced us to the Partridge Family Temple. Kenoshanites boast their town has the most bars per capita in the U.S. I've heard so many other towns make this same claim that I don't know if it's true, but Kenosha sure has a helluva-lotta bars, and I think we managed to hit most of them. Thomas let us set up rehearsal space in his basement, where we set to work jamming and fleshing out new material. We also spent some time hobnobbing in Milwaukee and Chicago, where we met Peter Steele (Type O), Lush, the Unsane, Scary Lady Sarah, Carrie Monster, and many other colorful characters. Azriel decided to move on around this time, and headed to Houston to work for Hollow Point Management (yes, that's right—Houston again. But let's not get ahead of ourselves–). I never saw or heard from Azriel again, which at times gives me sadness. I've since heard she moved back to Oz.

gel-403" class="band-link">Morphine Angel and the Electric Hellfire Club, Kenosha WI, circa Fall of 1996 L to R: Marshal, Carl Gibson, Thomas Thorn, Johnny Lee, Rich Frost, Paul Fredric

The days rolled by lazily in Kenosha for a time. EHC left to go on tour with Gwar, then Danzig, and still we were looking for a new guitarist. We tried a couple of guys from Chicago, but they all just wanted to push the ethereal/ambient sound. I started really working with sequencers at this time, and even pushed for MA going all electro, but it didn't “take” with the guys. Things were on the verge of getting boring when out of the blue John Michaels called from Atlanta and said Delinquent wanted to release LoveNest. We were back in business. We paid off the recording and got a new CD released in one fell swoop.

The whole LoveNest concept was something that actually came into being much earlier. Back in the Wolf days, we were sitting around in Lincoln, watching some slasher film or another. At first it looked like some teenagers making out, and Wolf said, “It's a Love nest!” But then the scene cut dramatically to a psycho with a knife, and I said, “It's a murderfest!” We all paused at how catchy that was, and somehow meaningful. As Americans I suppose we all suffer from a pathology that connects sex with violence, evidenced (or maybe caused) by the media, and epitomized in the slasher film genre. There's always some teenager trying to get it on - which makes them somehow “guilty” in terms of the narrative structure - and in comes Freddy, Jason, Michael or whoever, to dispense justice. The concept also seemed reflective of the MA experience over the last few years – so much conflict and loss combined with so much joy and acquisition.

With a new album in the works and a tour on the horizon, we really needed a new guitarist. We inducted Charley Hickey from Ohio, whom we had met on previous tours. He relocated to Kenosha and began rehearsing in the kitchen of Brad and mine's Apartment – a mere 5 blocks from the beaches of beautiful Lake Michigan. Charley came from more of a metal background, and was into Fear Factory and such. It took the MA sound in a slightly more Type-O direction. Heavy grooves and grinds with melodic and wispy male Vocals.

So LoveNest came out, and we went on tour again. This was to be the biggest, most elaborate, and last tour that gel-403" class="band-link">Morphine Angel would go on as of this writing. We toured with an industrial/rock band from New York called Needulhed, who were great guys and we had all kinds of fun and “Pulp Fiction” moments, from Mafioso club owners in Long Island, to Necronomicon-styled occultists from the trailer parks of Arkansas. We were out for 6 weeks, traveling from the great lakes to the East Coast, down south, and over to New Orleans. Wolf and Sid had since relocated to the Big Easy, and this time through, Johnny and Wolf reconciled, and we stayed in touch with him thereafter. Then Wichita, and the tour inevitably capped off at Knickerbockers in Lincoln. This would have been MA's last appearance in Lincoln, and my own last performance there. We half-expected no one to come out for it, but were so pleasantly pleased to see so many old friends and familiar faces appear there. I had to do some explaining about what happened to Azriel. The tour was financially successful as well, and when we arrived back in Kenosha, we actually had enough money from the tour to pay our rent.

Johnny and Paul rocking out on the LoveNest tour Wichita, KS; 1997

After this we spent a few months gigging around Wisconsin and Illinois, and added a Percussionist – Rick, or (P)rick as we came to affectionately refer to him. It was an electronic stand-up kit, one of EHC's hand-me-downs, and the same kit that Rich Frost had used during his days with EHC.

By this time we had established a strong fan-base in Milwaukee. Eventually, I got a call from a Ms. Dana Dark with Hollow Point Management in Houston. Apparently when Azriel had jetted to Houston, she had taken some copies of Project ISA and various other MA promotional materials with her. She had actually returned to Australia some months earlier, but these CDs were still floating around the Hollow Point office, and her replacement – Dana Dark had stumbled upon them. Hollow Point booked us a little Texas tour and during this time Sean Barush (Head Honcho for Hollow Point) and Dana offered to help relocate MA to Houston.

I already had some friends in Houston and Johnny and I were both sick of living in arctic conditions, so we were an easy sell. The other guys took some convincing, but came around before too long. Before long we were soaking up the sun in Houston. Everything was groovy for all of two weeks before drama struck, and our relations with Hollow Point went south. No one was too excited about the notion of going back to Kenosha or Lincoln, but our presence in Houston seemed momentarily anticlimactic. Bamboo Crisis (whom Sid Cook had known many years prior) helped us settle in a bit, got us a rehearsal studio, and booked us a gig with them at the Annual Vampire Ball, which we later learned was a grand Houston tradition.

We were trying to keep ourselves occupied with this when I got a call from Delinquent. It seemed LoveNest had done well enough to attract the attention of a Chicago “Fat-Cat” Manager by the name of Bill McCormick, and Delinquent wanted to do another MA record. Bill McCormick was the closest thing to a “real” manager MA ever had. Real in the sense that he actually worked out of an office; in fact the offices of JB Roth and Associates, an entertainment law firm who handled big acts like James Brown and Judy Tenuta.

Things started moving really fast again. We had four or five new songs we'd been working on leisurely over the last year, but we needed more. I programmed something like five more songs in three days, and soon we were tweaking them in rehearsal. As these songs developed, I realized that MA had finally “come into being”. These songs comprised the most “essentially MA” stuff to date. They had darkness and a groove that effectively transmitted the last four years of struggle, passion, and sorrow that we had been through as a group, yet maintained a melancholically reflective feel. And they were deep too. Johnny's lyrics worked with the feeling of the music with sensitivity and a passion that I'd never heard before. I haven't heard many of these songs in years, but I still occasionally get one of them stuck looping in my mind, and a teary eye is often quick to follow.

The new album was to be called “Age of Man”, which was Johnny's suggestion. Cosmically speaking, the idea was that we had done the “ice” thing with Project ISA, and the “fire” thing with LoveNest, now let's talk about Man. To me this meant an exploration of what it means to be human, and referred to the same emotions as conveyed by the “weeping” images of Jesus or Buddha, who weep for humanity in all it's ignorance and savagery. Brad made a killer design for it – a stylized face of the Hindu god Shiva – which was absolutely brilliant.

At the same time, Delinquent was releasing a double disc compilation called the Pink and the Black. It was supposed to be a tribute to the connection between goth (black) and glam (pink). It featured MA, and a lot of other bands like Attrition, Bella Morte, Gossamer, and Sunshine Blind. The pink disc featured Dee Snider, and bunch of other glam bands that I was never familiar with, glam not really being my bag. A picture of Scary Lady Sarah (Chicago DJ/Promoter) graced its cover.

We headed back to Alabama and recorded Age of Man in two weeks; with a three-day break in the middle to play a Pink & Black release party at The Bank in Manhattan. After recording, we all went octarate ways: Brad and I back to Houston, Johnny back to Nebraska and then Chicago, and Charley back to Ohio. We busied ourselves through post production by playing a couple of more shows like this – bussing or flying to meet for a weekend in either Chicago or Houston. It was supposed to be a temporary arrangement. Randy Blair who had played with Ohio-based Goth band “Que-up” joined us on drums around this time. This was the final MA line-up involving Marshal and I.

After the Vampire Ball show, Houston TX; October 1998 L to R: Randy Blair, Paul Fredric, Charley Hickey, Brad Marshal, Johnny Lee

The last gel-403" class="band-link">Morphine Angel show with Brad and I in the band was another Pink & Black Release party, this time at the Dome Room in Chicago. Scary Lady Sarah hosted it, and the turnout was huge. We shared the stage that night with an “up and coming” Bella Morte.

I probably don't need to explain that a long distance relationship like this is a big strain on a band. Eventually the black day came when I got a call from Delinquent that they had decided not to release Age of Man, due to various dramas they'd been dealing with from other members. I did my best to run damage control, as I saw the release of this album to be of critical import. However, the scalpel had cut to deep, and I realized at this point how vastly I had been “out of the loop” in regards to MA's business decisions.

This, I believe, is the closest thing I have to a “regret” concerning MA, that Age of Man (as I knew it) was never released. The world missed an opportunity to hear what MA was really supposed to sound like, and perhaps now never will.

First we all decided to part ways creatively, then Brad and I were invited back to reform and continue in Chicago. We both had become fairly “settled” in Houston by this point, and had already started working on the infant material that would later transform into Asmodeus X, so we both decided to pass on the offer. Wolf rejoined MA at this time, filling my roll as bass player, and some goth kid from Houston took over Brad's place on the keys. I don't know if that would all be considered “irony” or “poetic justice”, but it sure made for an uncomfortable moment when Johnny and Wolf appeared at my door in Houston to collect all the MA gear. Strangely, the one piece of gear they missed was “Alice” the Alesis drum machine that had fueled MA's aggression for so many years. It still sits enshrined in my study, waiting perhaps for some mythical Ragnarok-styled melting of the ice to be reborn and start kicking out the jams again.

To cap it all off, the August 1998 issue of Spin finally decided it was time to give MA it's five minutes of fame. A review of the Pink & Black stated that MA “flex too much Neanderthal muscle to make sense in such twinkle-toed company”. For months I pondered whether this should be taken as a compliment or a dig. I guess it's just amazing that M.A. was even mentioned in Spin.

Johnny did continue with MA in Chicago, and after several line-up changes including the retirement of Wolf (whom ironically himself disappeared into the mists of Wisconsin), is still doing it as far as I know. I don't have a problem with it now, nor did I at the time, and in fact I wish him only the best. The creative differences between Johnny and I had been growing for some time, and were bound to manifest, sooner or later. He took gel-403" class="band-link">Morphine Angel, and I took Black Pepper Records, which I later used as a springboard to release “Wolf Age” (yes, I know, I still had some “age” issues I needed to work through) for Asmodeus X. Not long after, the Houston Press did a feature on Asmo and our transition from MA, speaking with Brad and I as well as Johnny, and I think it conveys the mood of the time quite nicely: http://www.houstonpress.com/issues/1999-12-23/music.html

A couple of years ago, Bill McCormick sent me a DVD demo of a new MA song. They sounded more agro/Marylin Mansonish, and the guys he has in the band now are really mean looking. Meaner than a Tasmanian Devil on a coke-jones. The DVD had a bonus video – MA's first live performance ever at Duffy's Tavern in Lincoln. It's kind of grainy, but you can still make out the ghostly images of Mike Farrar and myself on either side of Johnny, pounding out “Cathedral Terror” with all the angst that three frustrated young Lincolnites with a drum machine could muster. You can also see the cool light show that Mike talked about in his recollection. Crack Records was the company that released this DVD, and interested parties are advised to seek them out for a copy.

End Transmission.

You Have Been Judged Again.

Paul Fedric
August 2004
Year of the Monkey