TIGANISSI

Hem And Haw EP (Permanent) 1981
Character Traits (IRS) 1982
Don't See How (IRS) 1983
Nehemiah Blot (Homestead) 1986
I Sat/I Sing (Homestead) 1988

    Though they are now remembered, if at all, for their offstage lives,
in their day Tiganissi were one of the Midwest's most exciting exports,
and their small oeuvre has no shortage of highlights.
    In an Indianapolis suburb where Iannis Magoutis was teased for his
Mediterranean roots and Rex Meier was teased for his stutter, it was
perhaps inevitable that the two of them would discover punk rock, meet
each other, and form a band. Taking the name Tiganissi from the Dutch
seaport Magoutis's absent father often claimed to be in--a city neither
teen could locate in atlases--they borrowed gear from older kids who'd
already moved on from spiked collars to day-glo shirts and began
practicing.
    Hem And Haw captures two brooding 18-year-old in the shock of
discovering their own creative power. Having clearly absorbed Singles
Going Steady, in the space of six songs they fuse their British idols'
tunefulness to the same uniquely American strain of anxiety The
Embarrassment were working a few states away. They credit themselves as
Nehemiah Blot (Magoutis) and Ben Wall (Meier) with Magoutis's father Leo
supposedly playing drums. (Their live shows at the time featured a young
man with no visible resemblance to Magoutis behind the drum kit.)
    Even more impressive than the EP, if occasionally less urgent,
Character Traits came out a mere seven months later on then-hot label
IRS. As described in "Every", the lead track, the duo had moved to a
squat in Chicago to pursue music full-time. Despite their new home's
notoriety for violence (it was finally shut down in '87 when someone
got stabbed on the front steps during a Naked Raygun concert inside) it
seems unlikely that the lurid stories told in the rest of the songs are
autobiographical. By this time, Magoutis used the Blot pseudonym in real
life and had a habit of dropping in and out of touch with Meier. When he
showed up for scheduled performances, half the set would be devoted to
his rantings about "Blotism", a philosophy he claimed to have invented
in 1950 which was devoted to the erasure of all sign that the human race
had ever existed; when he didn't show, Meier often played his own new
songs with friend Jennifer Pern on vocals for a disappointed audience.
    The halo around Magoutis's head on the cover of Don't See How
matches his terrified expression as poorly as the album's production
meshes with his songwriting. "Persistence Of Vision", "Bore It" and the
title track were already well-known in the Chicago scene as the best
parts of Tiganissi's rare perfect concerts, but committed to vinyl they
sound dry and half-hearted. Liberal use of slapback echo makes Meier
sound like a more skilled bassist than he was, with the result that when
they don't came off as TOO mature, the band posts a few reminders of
their prior glories. One such reminder, "Red Poppy", showed some sign of
crossing over to mainstream "new wave" radio thanks to its battleship of
a chorus when, unexpectedly, Leonidas Magoutis appeared on Interpol's
"Most Wanted" list for arms smuggling. When questioned by authorities,
Iannis petulantly insisted that his father was still the band's drummer,
that the two spoke by phone daily even when Leo was out of town, and
that Blotism was no mere spoof cult of personality but a very real plan
to unleash nuclear armageddon should he ever get his hands on the
means--though not from his father, whose innocence he protested almost
as forcefully as he insisted on his own villainy.
    Meier announced the band's breakup in early 1984, tired of fielding
calls from the FBI and Rolling Stone alike. Magoutis somehow made it to
Europe, where he seems to have spent at least a year researching and
contacting arms dealers, though whether for business reasons or personal
ones is unclear. He vanished around the time his father was captured,
and was generally assumed to have gotten himself killed.
    Not long after Magoutis's disappearance, Meier reclaimed the
Tiganissi name with his own bizarre claim: that "Nehemiah Blot" was his
own invention and Magoutis a shill Meier had brought on to play a part.
Moreover, he said, Magoutis was the one with the stammer, a baffling
proposition which was however supported by the fluent vocal lines he
laid down for Nehemiah Blot in an impressive imitation of Magoutis's
style. Pern makes her recorded debut, playing drums and singing backup,
while "Idi Amin" (probably the uncredited drummer from Tiganissi's early
days, Michael Greer) handled guitar. Despite the aliases and a handful
of grotesque lyrics, the record infuriated the remaining fans of the
band, and it's not hard to see why: Meier's worship of the Buzzcocks was
masked by a superficial reliance on Byrds-like calm. Worst of all, a
much-loved unrecorded live favorite dating back to 1981, the fiery
up-yours "Nobody Likes You", appears here under the name "Nobody Like 
You" sporting affectionate lyrics and a harmonica part. Blot holds up
well alongside Robyn Hitchcock's Fegmania and early Flying Nun releases
as part of post-punk's mellowing, and beneath the treacle lie a few
lines Hitchcock or Kilgour would be proud to have written, but despite
that (and a plum spot opening for The Cure on some west-coast dates) the
revived Tiganissi were reviled by their former fans and mostly ignored
by mainstream curiosity-seekers who'd buoyed the popularity of stories
on the 'scandal'.
    In January 1988, Meier was assaulted in the apartment he shared with
Pern and left in a coma. This presented a quandary for Pern, who solved
it inelegantly, though not unpleasingly, with I Sat/I Sing, a collection
of unfinished Tiganissi songs spanning every possible referent for that
moniker. Unlistenable as an album due to inconsistent sound quality,
this is nevertheless, song-by-song, extremely worthwhile. Three songs
from Indianapolis rehearsal tapes appear for the first time here, as do
a brutal early demo of "Poppy" and two studio outtakes from Traits
missing drum tracks (intentionally?). Pern admits in the liner notes
that she has no idea where or when the rest of the material comes from,
though she has added her own voice to some which stylistically appear to
be Meier solo compositions. Her good intentions shine through what could
have been seen as self-centered tampering, and in fact the overall
impression generated by these 16 tracks is one of a versatile trio at
ease experimenting. The only real sign of Tiganissi's difficult life is
the outro to a 1980 tape dubbed "Play F*cking Loud", which breaks down
in a hail of mistakes on the third chorus. One voice shouts "You
g-g-g-goddamn failure!" and another mimics back "G-g-g-get bent." It's
impossible to tell who's mocking whom.
    Meier semi-miraculously awoke from his coma late in 1990, in time to
testify against his assailant, Boris Marlin, in his trial for aggravated
assault and attempted murder. It was revealed that Marlin had been hired
as a proxy by the jailed Leo Magoutis, who believed MEIER was a
fictional ruse and thought he was assassinating his own son. Shortly
after Marlin's conviction, the younger Magoutis astonishingly glided
onto the stage during a Meier/Pern acoustic show, wearing the robed of
an Eastern monastery where he had spent the last six years. Meier
reportedly stared at his childhood friend for several minutes without
speaking before embracing him and calling off the rest of the gig.
    Though the name Tiganissi was retired at that point, the three have
worked together in various combinations since then. Pern has also
performed with Tsunami and Rachel's, while Magoutis filled in on guitar
with Jane's Addiction briefly.
    See also Caritas, Jane's Addiction, We Three Monsters.          (am)

written for Douglas Wolk while standing up 8/20/03

I kind of figure most people won't like this one. I broke a few of my own rules, but the only significant one is that I wrote the story with its recipient in mind; the format is taken from the Trouser Press Record Guide, an excellent resource for music geeks (now on the web at trouserpress.com) which Douglas has contributed to. I did try not to make it just an in-joke, but I really don't know how it would read to someone who didn't follow 80s post-punk and hadn't spent hours poring over Trouser Press. I think TPRG were actually better about glossing references than I was -- I never made it explicit that Singles Going Steady is a Buzzcocks record and (David) Kilgour was the songwriter in an early Flying Nun band called The Clean. Actually, no, his brother Hamish wrote some of the songs, too.

A personal rule I did follow is that if someone gives me a word whose meaning I can't find (in this case, neither my OED nor on the internet), it should appear in the story as a proper noun whose referent is unknown or unclear. When I saw Douglas a week later to give him the story, I asked what 'tiganissi' was and he said it was a cooking term. (Since then, he's tracked down where he saw it: Madhur Jaffrey's "World Vegetarian". It involves garlic, lemon juice and legumes.) But that worked out okay. I felt like using "The Cure" was cheating a little, but it gave a shape to the story.

There are several sentences that could use reworking, but no interesting mistakes in that realm, I don't think.

I knew from the beginning there were going to be confused identities of some kind. The reference to 1950 in the fourth paragraph was a potential hook into having the *dad* be the one behind the entire thing, but I wasn't thrilled with that idea and threw it out quickly. You may notice some inconsistency on the subject of songwriting; I don't think I ever decided whether the band's initial material was co-written or supposedly just by Magoutis. I *also* didn't decide who actually wrote what nor who the stutterer was; while thinking about just how to fit a story into the framework of a record guide, I decided that the guide entry itself would no doubt speak authoritatively even if it was wrong or unsure.

The quoted stuttering toward the end... man, I could have picked much more convincing wording. I don't think I've ever heard anyone actually say "get bent". "Go fuck yourself" would have been better.

I don't know if there was a way to do Magoutis's disappearance better. On rereading it seems obvious that I was setting up his return. Not that I can remember if, in fact, I was; I may have been planning to have someone else masquerade as him.

It was constantly tempting to make album and song titles longer, to try and imply more about what they actually sounded like than real song titles from that period did. I'm largely proud of how that went. I also resisted the weaker temptation to write lyrics, which seems like it could easily have punctured suspension of disbelief if done poorly, without any attendant benefits for success.

The "Nobody Like You" thing was inspired by an actual erratum in Trouser Press's entry for Echobelly. (No, I didn't find it myself; they used to have errata for the print edition on the website.)

- everything is by Aaron Mandel; please ask first if you're about to steal something -

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