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| Tim Cronin, who had made his name singing for MONSTER MAGNET during the days of the Glitterhouse EP and the Circuit single, created DAISYCUTTER in late 1991. | |
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He had asked Reg Hogan, who had recently been in the band FREAK THEATRE (a band that included Tom Southard, who later went on to create SOLACE, as well as Chris Timms of later BURNOUT KING fame) to help him work on a tribal drum project. |
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| Searching for a bass player who could provide some good "wandering bass-lines", the two asked Jim Hogan, who had worked in such bands as the hardcore outfit, DIRGE, as well as SLUDGETANK, the precursor to Southard's GODSPEED, to join the fold. The three began writing songs and Tim suggested bringing in a rather shy, young guitarist by the name of Ed Mundell, who worked with Tim on a project entitled 10-FOOT RIFF. Ed was a natural fit and the group expanded to a four-piece. | |
The music wasn’t quite what Tim had originally envisioned. This sound was aggressive and dischordant and made great use of weird timing,
synchopated beats, and repetitive layering.It wasn’t what anyone expected, but it was cool. It was as mean and vicious, as it was odd and disturbing. It had a heavy SCRATCH ACID / JESUS LIZARD approach and the band determined that it required a complete freak for it’s frontman. It was then that the group found Seth Fineberg. |
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Jim Hogan recalls the events:
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"One time, long after DAISYCUTTER’s demise, Ed and I were hanging out and he turn’s to me and starts laughing and says, "I still can’t believe you had the balls to call the record ‘Sh*thammer Deluxe’!" I looked him square in the eye and told him, flat-out, "It had to be done." |
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| "Seth was an amazing guy. He was this meek little guy with a lazy eye who reminded us of a sort of Johnny Rotten / David Yow hybrid. He was perfect for DAISYCUTTER. Everything was about bringing a freakshow to whatever club we were playing at, and Seth was the consumate freak. We had these industrial size strobe lights that I bought and, for the entire set, we would be basking in the glow of their oscillating light. It made people sick after the first five or ten minutes. The best part was that, while this was probably enough to qualify us for New Jersey’s greatest freakshow band, Seth was the icing on the cake." | |
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"Seth would tear the shirt off of his wiry little frame and, at least on the video tapes I saw, it looked as though he would grow twice his size and develop muscles; kind of like "Groundskeeper Willie" on The Simpsons. It was beyond strange." "So here was this 5-foot giant, flailing about; a twisted knot of spit, snot and hair, and he would be writhing on the floor screaming at the top of his lungs about God knows what; and the crowd would just be completely mesmerized. The whole thing was disgusting. No one could take their eyes off it." |
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| "The crowd was never fully prepared for Seth's shenanigans. One time we hung him upside down from the rafters in a straight jacket and he performed half of the set in that position. Another time, he painted his entire body in iodine while on stage. Sometimes, Seth would start running around the stage with scissors. It was a God | |
awful mess with all the prodding and the jabbing. His most notorious trick was to pull ground beef or pudding out of his pants and pelt the crowd with it. Man, that took some balls." "The best story was when he pulled 20-feet of sausage links out of his zipper. There was this blind guy there, and his seeing-eye dog supposedly ate them. Two weeks later the guy had a new dog. I don’t know if the sausages had anything to do with it, but you’ve got to wonder." |
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--- | "When Seth had his eye straightened, he came to the show right from the operating room. His eye was blood red and the way he was was screaming on stage, we thought it would pop out of his head. He was never worried about it, but the rest of us sure were." |
Several months later, John McBain stepped down as the guitarist for MONSTER MAGNET and Ed Mundell was asked to fill the void. "We were practicing in Cronin and Wyndorf’s basement. It was this low-ceiling, crawlspace of a basement and we would set our gear up across from Magnet’s and sit in a little circle and play. There wasn’t any room to do anything else. I bumped my head on the pipes every time I tried to stand. Eventually, the house was torn down and turned into a parking lot." "Anyway, Ed comes to practice one day, and says, "Uh…Dave…uh, asked me to join Monster Magnet. Do you think I should?" Even though we were shocked and saddened by our loss, we all unanimously shouted "Hell yes!" He would have been a fool not to. Ed was born to play ‘big rock’ and we all knew it. He left with our blessing." |
