(Above, Trevor Brown's artwork for the cover of the forthcoming Miss High Heel studio compilation, The Family's Hot Daughter.)
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Miss High Heel was founded in Chicago, Illinois in late 1995 by James Marlon Magas (Magas, Lake of Dracula, Couch, The Many Moods of Marlon Magas, etc.), Tom Smith (To Live and Shave in L.A., OHNE, Peach of Immortality, Pussy Galore, Boat Of, etc.), and Weasel Walter (Flying Luttenbachers, Weasel Walter Quartet, Lake of Dracula, TLASILA 2, Hatewave, Strawberry, Vanilla, etc.).
Joining the no-everything troika were Azita Youseffi (Scissor Girls, Bride of NoNo, Azita, etc.), Jim O'Rourke (Sonic Youth), Jodi McCann (Monotrona, Duotron, Math, etc.), Chuck Falzone and Bill Pisarri (of the mid-90s incarnation of the Luttenbachers), Mike Green (Boat Of, Wyfe, The Fans, Her Hair Jelly, etc.), and Nandor Nevai (_, The Restaurants, other nefarious aggregations).
Everyone involved was/is insanely ambitious and/or ambitiously insane.
They recorded one radio session (at WZRD-FM), performed one live performance (at the Magnatroid, New Year's Eve '95), and spent three months obsessively recording, mixing, and remixing The Family's Hot Daughter, an album that was to have been issued by the storied Skin Graft imprint. When that label lost an important domestic distribution deal, funding for the MHH collection vanished, and the project was shelved.
Tiny noise indie B.Sides (now known as No Sides) released the lone Miss High Heel radio session as Split Wax Cylinder (Inscribed: "Beast 661") in 1998, but the antic tone of the recordings ultimately displeased the group's principals (farceur WW excluded). (Goofing around on a suburban Chicago FM outlet in the middle of a blizzard was one thing, but as the MHH album represented antipodal orders of disquiet and revulsion, profound dissatisfaction with the B.Sides disc was inevitable.) MHH were grateful to label proprietor Billy Sides for his interest and enthusiasm, but the ZRD disc as issued paled in comparison to The Family's Hot Daughter.
(Above, the lone Miss High Heel release, 1998's Split Wax Cylinder (Inscribed "Beast 661")... Illustration by the multi-talented Mr. Walter.)
Eleven years passed. The original album mixes, long vouchsafed within Tom Smith's personal archive, were finally unearthed in 2006. Graham Moore of Blossoming Noise heard five minutes of unedited roughs during an awkward moment at a dinner party and quickly struck a deal. The Family's Hot Daughter is scheduled to sneak out of her room and go on a wild-eyed slaughter spree in the summer of 2007!
Miss High Heel:
James Marlon Magas: voice; Weasel Walter: drums, bass clarinet; Azita Youseffi: synthesizer; Jim O'Rourke: bass guitar, trumpet, synthesizer; Jodie McCann: voice; Chuck Falzone: bass guitar (live only); Bill Pisarri: clarinet, bass guitar (studio only); Nandor Nevai: voice; Mike Green: compere, hermeneutics; Tom Smith: voice, black metal tape edits, mix, production.From a letter to the editor of We Are Bandwagon zine:
"This MHH page was created primarily to alert various enthusiasts about the forthcoming release of an album made eleven years ago. And although Weasel and I are discussing ways to bring about a one-off (?) promo tour (gathering as many of the Miss High Heel principals as possible), there is no MHH, basically. We were designed to exist as a theoretical unit, and sunder at an appropriate moment. The only impediment to the completion of that goal was the collapse of the album release on Skin Graft..."Et vioia! The Blossoming Noise release of The Family's Hot Daughter will at last allow destruction to rain down upon faux-no conspirators... Run for your lives, weepcore curs!