Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Purchasable with gift card
$7USD or more
T-Shirt/Shirt + Digital Album
Random shirts leftover from our last order.
Available:
- Small in steel blue
- Large in a purplish blue
- XXL in orange
Includes unlimited streaming of Archeology
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
ships out within 30 days
8 remaining
Purchasable with gift card
$14USDor more
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Includes an informational insert and a lyrics insert. Back cover hand colored and numbered and the sleeve is stamped by Floating Mill.
500 copies available.
Includes unlimited streaming of Archeology
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
ships out within 5 days
Purchasable with gift card
$20USDor more
Cassette + Digital Album
**FIRST RUN IS SOLD OUT. SECOND RUN EXPECTED BY THE END OF APRIL. CASSETTE SHELLS WILL LOOK DIFFERENT THAN WHAT IS PICTURED.**
Normal-bias cassette recorded in real time by Floating Mill. Features a laser-etched shell and glow in the dark spine. Designed and manufactured by FMR. Includes an informational j-card, lyrics booklet, and a digital download with more information and documents about The Stick Figures.
Includes unlimited streaming of Archeology
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
ships out within 7 days
Purchasable with gift card
$9USDor more
Cassette + Digital Album
**FIRST RUN IS SOLD OUT. SECOND RUN EXPECTED BY THE END OF APRIL. CASSETTE SHELLS WILL LOOK DIFFERENT THAN WHAT IS PICTURED.**
High-bias, type II cassette recorded in real time by Floating Mill. Includes an informational j-card, lyrics booklet, and a digital download with more information and documents about The Stick Figures.
All cassettes ready to ship by September 9.
Includes unlimited streaming of Archeology
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
ships out within 7 days
edition of 25
Purchasable with gift card
$14USDor more
CD
Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
**FIRST RUN IS SOLD OUT. SECOND RUN EXPECTED BY THE END OF APRIL.**
The CDr comes in a 6-panel wallet with an informational booklet, lyrics insert, and a digital download with more information and documents about The Stick Figures. Disc duplicated at 1x speed.
Includes unlimited streaming of Archeology
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Fight it out, fight it out
Contradiction, what it’s all about
Find the message, touch the light
Newly severed, newly sized
Walk the highway, walk the street
Life is real, lines are straight
Watch the houses, watch the cars
Find a rhythm, by the wall
[chorus]
N...Light
N...Light
N...Light
I want everyone to be just like me
So I can stay in the world
Or stay in the world
Fight it out, fight it out
Contradiction, what it’s all about
Find the message, touch the light
Newly severed, newly sized
[chorus]
I want everyone to be just like me
So I can stay in the world
Or stay in the world
Lights on tights
Looks alright
Hospitable
I work in a hospital
Lights are my favorite
Crayola color
Lights are my favorite
Crayola color
Lights on tights
Looks alright
Snow hospital
I work in a hospital
Lights are my favorite
Crayola color
Tights are my favorite
For Crayola bowling
September falling to a song
I’ve known the moment all along
It seems like Monday might afflict me
So I stare
Kids never wonder what to wear
September falling in a word
Whose were those voices that I heard?
It seems like Sunday comes to see me
Once a year
Whose are those voices that I hear?
September falling in the air
Kids always know just what to wear
I’ve heard that Thursday looks like
Every other day
Kids never wonder what they say
Blue orange yellow pink
These are colors
Brown green purple red
These are others
Black and white that’s pretty basic
Yellow red they’re necessary
Purple and pink they’re outrageous
But green it’s contagious
Chorus!
[chorus]
You can eat at a green table
You can wear green lipstick
I can invest in green cars and houses
Everyone indulges our thing for green
Sometimes I look at green
I don’t even recognize it
Sometimes I act real green
Everyone always denies it
Blue orange yellow pink
These are colors
Brown green purple red
These are others
Chorus!
[chorus]
Chorus!
Mr. Simon
He’s on the loose
Mr. Simon
Head in a noose
Mrs. Simon
She’s gonna cook his goose
Mrs. Simon
She’s got nothing to lose
Baby Simon
She’s out tonight
Baby Simon
Gotta get it right
Yesterday
I am talking to myself
I say it’s yesterday
Well today is yesterday
Now today
I am wondering to myself
About the things I thought to say
Yesterday
I wish you didn’t have to
Go away
I wish you’d stay
Stay til yesterday
Yesterday
I am talking to myself
I say it’s yesterday
Well today is yesterday
Now today
I am wondering to myself
About the things I thought to say
Yesterday
Something’s burning
Pushing turbine
Strip my landscape
Urban handshake
Do the skyscrape
Do the skyscrape
Do the skyscrape
Offshore drilling
So fulfilling
Locomotion
Loan emotion
Love in motion
Love in motion
Love in motion
[chorus]
(Energy) keeps me going
(Energy) keeps something moving
(Energy) keeps me on my toes
Pumping ethyl
Pumping methyl
Science friction
Adding fractions
Throbbing action
Throbbing action
Throbbing action
[chorus]
On my toes
On my toes
On my toes
Please show Patricia how to talk
Please help her learn to speak and squawk
All the children in their houses
Burning candles in their rooms
Patricia wants to have advantage
We all want her to real soon
Please help my mama at the stove
She’s got a black cloud made of smoke
Make a Xerox of lasagna
Eating well in Tanzania
Patricia’s got her California’s
Send a postcard from the Amtrak
[chorus]
Knowledge in the air
Clouds all spell despair
Language in my brain
Lips all sealed in pain
Please lock the children in their rooms
Please burn the candles in their rooms
Patricia’s gonna go to college
Everyone may join the Airforce
We’re all going to dance a rain dance
In praise of wine and language
[chorus x4]
There’s some kids in a house by where I live
They screaming all the time
They make it hard to go to sleep
They make it very easy to stay awake
What are those children screaming for?
Well I’m sure I don’t know
It seems they should have just a little more sense
Doesn’t it?
There’s some kids in a house by where I live
They got a house out there in the woods
Who built that house in the woods, huh?
Who brought their kids there?
Who brought their kids there?
Those children seem to scream all the time
I wonder what they’re screaming for?
It’s like living by a high school on a Friday night
In football season without drums
Without drugs
Make a fire, no never make a fire
And never twist towards me
Make a fire, no never make a fire
And never twist towards me
Seems a shame to fix you up
Fix you up, strange enough
Seems a shame to fix you up
Fix you up, strange enough
A knock becomes a fire, make a fire
No never make a fire
A knock becomes a fire, make a fire
No never make a fire
The Stick Figures, formed in 1979 by University of South Florida students Rachel Maready Evergreen and David Bowman (siblings), Robert and Sid Dansby (also siblings), and Bill Carey, were a seminal fixture in Tampa, Florida’s deep and talented pool of late-70s/early-80s post-punk groups.
In a 1981 review from Dublin’s Hot Press magazine touting “places as unlikely as” Tampa being “well in sync with the globe’s pole-position [post-punk] scenes,” Nigel Burnham praises the “excellent” Stick Figures. After noting the band’s fandom of Delta 5 and how they opened for The Fall and Lounge Lizards, Burnham distinguishes The Stick Figures from their contemporaries by claiming that “there is enough here to suggest the SFs are going their own way—with a vengeance...we’re hardly talking here about specific songs—rather a revolutionary approach.” But The Stick Figures didn’t go their own way with a vengeance for much longer, breaking up less than a year after the release of their 1981 eponymous EP.
For the last 40 years, those four tracks were The Stick Figures’ complete discography—until now. Archeology, the first release from Floating Mill Records, takes the original EP and adds six previously unreleased songs, two live tracks, and a reimagining of the EP’s experimental “Ellis Otivator Dub.”
Citing contemporaries such as Orange Juice, The Buzzcocks, and fellow emerging southern bands Pylon and The B-52s as influences, The Stick Figures’ instrumentation on Archeology frequently and proudly wears a warm, exuberant grin. But even from Archeology’s opening lines, chanted in unison over a groove evoking their love for Parliament/Funkadelic (“N-Light”), the conflict between fun, catchy instrumentation and dark, cold lyrical content is spelled out: “Fight it out, fight it out / Contradiction, what it’s all about.” And the two songs where The Stick Figures’ musical grin is perhaps at its widest, “September” and “Mr. Simon,” focus on the uneasiness of back-to-school jitters and a man whose head is “in a noose,” respectively. Only on songs like “Screaming (Live)” and “Language (Live)” do The Stick Figures want you to realize that their grin has actually been a sneer the entire time.
Through those punkier live numbers, Velvet Underground-inspired cacophonous whirlwinds “Green” and “Crayola Bowling,” and consistently dark lyrical imagery, Archeology is able to maintain a sense of youthful playfulness and simplicity that is complemented by Rachel’s twee, “touch-boredom/touch-bitch” (Sperazza!) lead vocal. Even in a song as scathing as “Language (Live),” which claims that “clouds all spell despair” and calls for children to be locked in their rooms, The Stick Figures find some room for humorous amusements: “Please help my mama at the stove / She’s got a black cloud made of smoke / Make a Xerox of lasagna.” And on “Screaming (Live),” The Stick Figures observe that living by children that inexplicably scream from inside their house “all the time” is like “Living by a high school on a Friday night / in football season without drums / without drugs.”
Don’t take our word that The Stick Figures’ music is more dynamic and engaging than just about any post-punk band of their era (or ever, for that matter); take journalist Gary Sperazza!’s from his time at the New York Rocker running “The Crib Death Zone,” a column highlighting and ranking the best demo cassette tape submissions to the magazine. Having listened to 10 Stick Figures’ songs, several of which are featured here, Sperazza! was one of the few people outside the Tampa scene to have heard the band beyond their EP. After hearing these tracks, Sperazza! named The Stick Figures as the winner of his competition of “unheralded genius” in the June 1981 edition of the New York Rocker, asserting that The Stick Figures are, “if nothing else, better than all the other Velvets/Television/Feelies-derived aggregations” due to a “small fortune in good ideas, entertaining songs and imaginative playing.”
Adding even more clout, John Peel also put his name behind the band. BBC Radio 1’s legendary deejay reached out to The Stick Figures’ friend/lawyer/manager, Pam Wiener Dubrule, for a copy of the EP: “Just read about the Stick Figures in Dublin’s Hot Press. I wondered whether you could send me a copy of your EP to play on the radio here in London. This isn’t a clumsy attempt to avoid payment by the way. How much?” Peel lived up to his word, forking over the cash and playing “September” on his radio show in 1981.
Even with Peel’s endorsement, The Stick Figures’ musical revolution, as prophesized by Burnham, never came to fruition. Within a month of that Hot Press review, The Stick Figures charted course for the opportunities New York City offered an up-and-coming band, stopping to play shows in Atlanta during the Summer of 1981 on the way. Just as their ambition and talent finally earned interest from a label, Glass Records, the band, whose youngest member was still in their teens, succumbed to being “penniless and young” in an unforgiving Big Apple stuck somewhere between the 1977 blackouts and the 1981 garbage strike. Within a year of the move, some members retreated back to the Sunshine State before even stepping on a New York City stage while others roughed it out, leaving over 1,000 miles of East Coast to divide the group in two and force them to look for artistic fulfillment in other ventures.
But that retreat was not with their tails between their legs—The Stick Figures had made something together: a damn good EP (and dozens of equally impressive unreleased tracks). And, as unsung pioneers of the budding indie and DIY music scenes, they really “made” that EP. All five band members designed a cover before photocopying, assembling, and hand-coloring the 7” release themselves—all 500 copies—to be sold by Green Records, the Tampa-based label they formed and ran with the ever-helpful Pam Wiener Dubrule and a handful of other Tampa musicians.
While we at Floating Mill Records are no Rough Trade or Visa Records (Sperazza!’s recommendations to sign The Stick Figures at the time), we are honored and elated to be the first label to sign such a compelling band and release their first full-length album, Archeology, on vinyl, cassette tape, CD, and for digital download as our first release.
This release is 40 years overdue, but we feel the music sounds as urgent and awe-inspiring as ever. So put on The Stick Figures, and “Find a rhythm, by the wall” (“N-Light”).
credits
released September 3, 2021
_________________________________________
The Stick Figures’ second full-length album, this one of entirely unreleased studio recordings from 1980 - 1981, will be released by Floating Mill in Summer 2023 and will be available on vinyl, tape, CD, and digital download.
_________________________________________
"This album is dedicated to Pam Wiener Dubrule and Gloria Bowman; two women who provided guidance, sustenance and support even when we didn’t deserve it…!” - The Stick Figures
DAVID BOWMAN - Bass on 1 + 3-11; backing vocals on 1 + 8; farfisa organ on 2; mellotron on 5.
BILL CAREY - Guitar on 1 + 3-11; backing vocals on 1-2, 8, + 11; piano on 1; bass on 2.
ROBERT DANSBY - Drums on 2-11.
SID DANSBY - Guitar on 1-4 + 6-11; drums, violin, and backing vocals on 1; treated guitar on 4; percussion and harmonic guitar on 5.
RACHEL MAREADY EVERGREEN (formerly “Rachel Bowman”) - Lead vocals on 1-11; xylophone on 3.
Track 12, “Ellis Otivator Dub,” was assembled by Rob and Sid using samples of Stick Figures songs and Moog synthesizers at SYCOM at USF’s School of Music.
Track 13, “Ellis Otivator Dub 2021,” was assembled by Rob and Bill using samples of Stick Figures songs and Moog synthesizers.
Tracks 1-8 + 11 engineered by Ken Veenstra at his Progressive Music Studios (Davis Island, Tampa) on a 0.5” 8-track tape machine.
Remastered by Bill.
Analog Transfer for track 13 performed by Bill Smith, United Recording (Hollywood, CA).
Tracks 1-3 + 12 originally released in 1981 by Green Records, Tampa, FL.
All songs written and performed by The Stick Figures.
All songs recorded between April and November 1980.
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