the Laughingstock: a five-year retrospective

Emerging raw and chafed during the final decade of the millenium, the Laughingstock quickly carved out a name for themselves in the Holliston industrial scene, mixing flamboyant live performances with hard-edged, lo-fidelity dance grooves. With Mike Johnson (ex. of Lime and 42 Closet) on bass, Tyler Krpata on guitars, and James Taintor on vocals, the group flared through a short-lived career in the experimental areas of electronic-influenced rock (what Taintor refers to, ambiguously, as "crust-industrial") before fading away into lower-profile projects.

The idea was born, Taintor relates, "at some little pizza joint in Boston. We were sitting around trying to decide what would make the ultimate rock band. I think we came up with something like this: the philosophical bent of Einstürzende Neubauten, the clanging guitars of Ministry, the live theatrics of EBN... I'm not sure when, but at some point it occurred to us that we'd better try to make that band-- if we didn't, who would?" The spark was lit. "I think the name-- 'the Laughingstock'-- was Mike's idea," he adds. "Either that, or it just came to us, all at once. Either way, we did our best to live up to it."

Krpata, now situated in Northampton, MA, remembers the decision as being less idealistic. "Well, everyone else had a band, so we needed one, too. You know, none of us were getting laid all that frequently. We didn't have enough musicians for a hardcore band, so we went the 'machine music' route instead." He tosses in additions to Taintor's list of influences ("I had recently discovered 'industrial'..."): Skinny Puppy, Chemlab, Psychopomps, Penal Colony, etc.

After early rehearsals, the prognosis was not good. Taintor recalls the band spending full afternoons "just hanging around breaking things-- tape-recording the results and listening to them later, trying to detect the basic rhythms and melodies of destruction." Other rehearsals would be spent working on extraordinarly loud and unrefined cover versions of industrial classics like Ministry's "So What" and Skinny Puppy's "Dig It"-- as a result, the band soon ran out their welcome at most of their haunts. Evenings, then, would be spent at the nearby Bickford's, sketching frenzied lyrics and visual ideas onto flimsy coffee napkins, and flirting with would-be groupies.

   somehow I know you're shouting, though I cannot hear a word
     insects trapped under the glass and everything seems so absurd
   we turn in circles in the night and really think we've come so far
     sometimes it's only madness that makes us what we are

   The Feast of Fools album left most of the critics in the dust.  From the tape's opening samples to the final flanged reverb of the closing guitar solo, the trio was in their element.  Tracks like "Metamorphosis" were psychedelic experiments in Burroughs-inspired Surrealism, while tracks such as "You Are What You Eat" took a swing at the confines of suburban life: "images burned into retinas can never be erased!"  The entire recording was carefully layered with shifting static ("to create a well lived-in feel"), and showcased an artistic range that the Laughingstock never really regained.  "Riverside," the album's final cut, remains a haunting ballad, with Taintor's soft and banal lyrics textured meticulously against a wall of undistorted guitar and slightly askew drums.

   Feast of Fools quickly sold out of its first and second pressings, and the band leapt back into the studio to generate a follow-up.

At this point, the Laughingstock live experience was also hitting its stride. The band gleefully incorporated an aesthetic borrowed in equal parts from Mall America and Halloween, utilizing such props as glow-in-the-dark tombstones and bloodied mannequin heads. Tyler recalls, "one time we ripped apart a crucified Power Ranger on the stage. Then the crowd got ahold of it. Unfortunately, there were still nails in it." He chuckles softly. "People were proudly carrying off Power Ranger parts as souvenirs. I think James hated that whole idea, but it was great." Shows at this time also featured a revolving group of additional personnel, dubbed "the Livestock" by Taintor. Including regulars such as Alex Levin on vocals, Adam Nichols (of Luckless Uncle) on drums, and Graham Leonard on keyboards, these additions fleshed out the studio group into something resembling a full band. Fog machines and strobe lights completed the illusion-- the Laughingstock was fast taking on a life of its own.

"People used to tell me we'd sold out," remembers Krpata, an impish look in his eye. "And I'd say, yeah. We sold out Jordan Hall, every time we played!"

The Fifth Night's Dreams EP was a more of a mixed bag. Citing irreconcilable differences, the band opted not to use Schneider again, and instead entered the studio on their own. The additional strains of self-production showed in their output, and they were unable to create enough original tracks to fill out the album, which ended up including re-worked versions of two previously released tunes. These tracks, "You Are What You Eat" and "Feast of Fools," cast and eerie illumination on the direction the band had taken. The melodies of earlier recordings are lost, here, amidst the swirling distortion, and the playful, loose musicianship of FoF has been replaced with an almost obsessive dependence on studio precision. On a lyrical level, the new track "Clockwork" dissolves into a chant of "there's no way out / there's no way out no more"-- the strains of the band are growing faster than Johnson, Krpata, and Taintor can contain. As Yeats wrote, "things fall apart / the centre cannot hold."

After the release of FND, conditions within the band deteriorated drastically. The live phase of the Laughingstock was over, save for a single show that summer, generally considered to be one of their least inspired. Drugs and alcohol were taking their toll, and the growing enmity in the band was devouring more time and energy than the music itself. "I got along fine with those two. Between the two of them, well... no comment," Krpata recalls, before continuing enigmatically: "let's just say there was car-kicking involved." Taintor refuses to comment at all, except to say, "well, I ended up in Westchester County, NY for a few months-- and no one was returning my calls. Next I heard of them was when Mike's solo album [Barefoot & Bloody] came out in '98."

The final official Laughingstock recording, "Behave," seemed to foretell a new direction for the band. Created almost entirely without live instrumentation, the rhythm tracks are subtly shifting layers of motors, industrial machinery, and odd decayed tape loops. "It would not do to wake up here, or now," mutters Taintor in the atonal vocal track, and in the accompanying video a lone man is portrayed thrapped in a small, white-walled room.

Unfortunately, the release was timed badly, at a point when the abundance of glam was returning to popular culture, and the Laughingstock's depressive minimalism fell flat. The track was recorded and produced for the soundtrack of a now-forgotten movie. "Our song got bumped off the final release by some band with a name straight out of Dungeons and Dragons," recalls Taintor. "'The Death Knights' or something like that. When your band is losing record sales to that sort of goth, it's time to quit. That was like an official notification that we'd become uncool. Time to give it up, move on."

Like so many things, the Laughingstock never ended cleanly. The rate of work just slowed at a asymptotic rate, until, somewhere in 1997, it became obvious that there would be no more new music. Several songs were left incomplete, and are presented here in their demo versions for the curious. Eventually, though, Johnson and Krpata formed methodmaniakal, an electro-industrial outfit that gigged around Massachusetts for a year, playing primarily to the Western MA goth scene. Although the band has occasionally worked together on a handful of projects-- including Krpata's dancehall identity Impulse Nine, the short-lived hip-hop group See Jack Cum, and the synthpop outfit the Insect God-- the Laughingstock has never reformed.

   Taintor's last e-mail to me ends abruptly: "It's over.  We were good, but not good enough.  Bands like that can't last-- we were all just learning how to make music, and we weren't all growing in the same direction.  It's over.  Time for something new.  The others were damned good musicians.  Sometime I still think we should collaborate.  Just this time avoid trying to be a band."

   Out in Northampton, Krpata takes one long drag off his cigarette, squinting into the early spring air. He summarizes it all neatly: "Frankly, I was a shitty guitarist.  I'm not sure what I was doing playing one in a band.  Actually, we really weren't very good.  We had some decent songs, I guess. But we had awful equipment, and we didn't know what to do with what we had.  A lot of the old recordings make me cringe.  I'd like to get together with those guys again now that the three of us know a lot more."

   A bright light at the end of the tunnel for these neglected industrial legends?  Only time will tell.

Cambridge, MA. May, 2001.

this article (c)2001, Plastic Nose Music
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all Laughingstock images and songs are (c) Taintor, Krpata, and Johnson,
and used by permission