The music that is playing on a near-endless loop in my head this week is a song by long-gone Dallas / Denton band Transona 5, one from their 1998 album Duffel Bag.
Like so many quality Dallas groups, Transona 5 met with a good bit of indifference in their day. The area press was fond of pointing out the 5's debt to the Kadane brothers' Bedhead, still maybe the best band to ever come out of North Texas, and the more filigree-d proponents of "space rock" (believe it or not, this term had some critical currency in Texas independent music circles in the 1990s). But Chris Anderson, G. P. Cole, Chris Foley, Scott Marks and Rachel Smith also produced a number of performances -- "Trucker Talk Ch. 1", "Transona Borealis", "Electrosprite", "No Door", "3 Way Glider", "Coin Toss", "The Great Escape" -- that were so gentle and unassuming you hardly noticed how entrancing they really were. For me, "Hey Hey Hey" is the most superb of these songs.
If the guitars lines weren’t so indolent and yet somehow chiming, you could say they interlock. Instead, the notes circle in semi-established orbits around one another, motes convected upwards up in a shaft of light, falling again as clouds intrude. The rums don’t establish a beat or even much of a pattern. Imagine a porch swing, vacated in some hurry, twisting from end to end and along its suspending chains, but slowly swaying to a point of rest. The intricacy of Transona 5’s music is almost "jazz-like", but the emotional universe it inhabits is very distant. The song pivots on lyrics like "I don’t wanna concede ya", "I didn’t wanna come over", "I didn’t wanna complete ya", and "I couldn’t even conceive it / Now I’m gonna leave you". Chris Anderson sings in a slightly horse drawl, a liquid, anodyne reflection of white noise. Extra ellipses are attached to every statement of rejection…… renunciation…… resignation? I don’t know. The song builds to a guitar "solo" that is both as devastating and as concise as anything Tom Verlaine ever laid down in the studio. And the magical thing is that it came from here, is an expression of here, where I am, part (at least) of what I have known.
There are these climatic qualities of the summertime Dallas that is my home; the city is hot, humid, windy, hazy with allergens. The architectural realities: glass skyscrapers, strip malls, ranch-style homes, cracked pier-and-beam foundations. The economic and social ills of the city I won’t even catalog. Because, damn it, there is the Dallas of my imagination: the hum and regular sibilance of old, black iron oscillating fans set on a hardwood floor -- you can feel the vibrations in the soles of your bare, dusty feet; the overgrown fragrance of honeysuckle, stagnating lake water, wild onions; the sight of pink mimosa blossoms burned less by the sun and more by the smarting blue of the clear sky; the conversation of black and green cicadas leaping from treetop to treetop. I've never left East Texas except to visit, it comes to me, because it floors me, this place.
Yes, I've thought about staying put recently, conserving movment, baking and being baked, weather as a mind-altering experience. All in connection with Texas music. Listening to Charalambides, Transona 5, Bedhead, Mazinga Phazer, The American Analog Set. Something about all this music transmits the unmistakable feeling of flopping down on one's back, staring up. Allowing oneself to be cooled in laying oneself open, in being flattened, boneless, small. To be buoyed, modestly so, by a nameless yearning that sounds just like the sucked-in sigh preceding one's response to the question, "Where am I?"
Posted by joe on May 7, 2004 7:33 AMBecause a bright perfect day in Dallas, with the wind running through the tall grass, is a day suffused with sadness.
Posted by: Joe at May 11, 2004 8:03 AMhi. i downloaded a song by transona 5 many years ago. so long ago i think i may have gotten it from mp3.com. I don't know the name of the song, but one line says my boyfriend says ......thats all i could remember. is this band still around? do they have a website?
Posted by: Mike at September 23, 2004 12:17 PMMIke -- the last I heard of T5, sadly...
http://www.dallasobserver.com/issues/1999-06-03/music/music5.html
http://www.dallasobserver.com/issues/1999-09-09/music/sceneheard3.html
http://www.dallasobserver.com/issues/2000-03-09/music/sceneheard.html
Posted by: Joe Milazzo at September 23, 2004 12:39 PMJust ran a quick search for nostalgia's sake. I like your writing. Thanks for the compliments, too. We broke up in early '99, I think, for the record. bye
GP
Posted by: G.P. Cole at February 9, 2005 10:14 PMI did a search to try to find the track listings for the "going away EP." I can't read the label anymore. GP, help me out!
I was privileged enough to have played a bunch of shows with Transona 5 when I was in a band (My Friend the Atom) that was on the same record label as they were. They were already my favorite band! I only wish they'd recorded the song "circles" which still gets stuck in my head sometimes.
Anyway, great write up. Good to hear these great bands are remembered by someone out there.
I came along this by coincidence. I am from Hamburg, Germany and I bought the Transona 5 LP last winter. And I will have a look for the My Friend the Atom 7" again... I somehow managed to miss that one if I remember right..
Posted by: rasmus at April 27, 2005 6:24 AMtransona five, going away e.p., drawing room records 3 (1999)
1) going away
2) texas
3) graham cracker
4) existential repetitions
5) safe
6) albany
drawing room
1624 alberta drive
little rock, ar 72227
Epitaph for 2, please...
"I'm leaving what I made behind
I'll have to let it speak for itself
Just make sure that I'm remembered
Not for good or bad just not forgotten."
Ah. Hits the spot.
kadane bros. love that bedhead. so, rachel is in a thing called the lickets with a friend from way back named mitch greer. good stuff. ego ridden, but, good. i'll have a cd out in the spring under the name "Mirada". ego ridden as well and probably good. chris foley is in the swells in austin as far as early this year (05). no word on anderson; he wont call back. dick.
Posted by: G.P. Cole at December 29, 2005 1:02 AMHey guys, greg here....
Fondly I remember those days.
I have T5's last show in Austin at the Red Eyed Fly on Minidisc. I'll have to dig it up. It is fucking brilliant.
Does anyone have a copy of our demo tape that we recorded in that house up in North Garland? Has Scouting Album, World's Largest Camera, and sheesh, what else?
I think we do have a recording of circles somewhere. Actually, I have a recodring of it from one of our practices back when Rachel had just joined. It also has Hayukatake on it, it has the actual "birth" of the song where we go from all tuning and the songs just, comes out instantaneously. It captures how we all wrote songs together, magically.
Excuse me while I go cry into my pillow and remember days gone by...
Take care guys. I'll be in touch!
Posted by: Greg at January 7, 2006 8:08 PMWell, since I did a random search last year and found this comment board I've heard back from, or about, everyone who was originally in the band: Greg Morgan, Chris Foley, Chris Anderson. They're all in or around Austin, TX and we're all in agreement that we're going to play again. I don't think it's too far thinking to expect a release from us around the summer. Who knows?
Posted by: G.P. Cole at February 8, 2006 11:11 AMMy friend Ad Frank heard a rumor that Rachel ended up in Boston.
Posted by: Timo Lipping at March 2, 2006 11:35 AMRachel and Mitch are living in Chicago and steady puttin' out Lickits rekkids... You can listen to 'em/buy 'em from their site: http://www.internationalcorporation.net/
(nifty site btw, mitch is a helluva designer)...
Hi G.P. and Greg! Sorry you missed Belle&Sebastian G.P.... They tore it down. Gently...
I was doing some room reorganization last week and came across my T5 cds and gave 'em a spin... They're holding up very well... Kept the "Going Away" e.p. in the cd player for a few days actually... On the rarities tip, I have a Barley House Xmas show somewhere... When I find it I'll give it to ya Geep, that and yr John Frusciante cd that I've had for 7 or 8 years...
Posted by: Joshua B. at March 24, 2006 10:43 PM.................................................. © 2003 - 2006 bagatellen ..................................................