PicoBlog

In this second installment of my conversation with Avalon Kalin, we discuss the formation of Christopher Robin and the influence Heroin and other San Diego bands of the time had on the band. Be sure to check out the sounds Avalon is making presently over at his Bandcamp page.

Tony Rettman: How did you end up playing music in bands? 
Avalon Kalin: I was in the rhythm section of the Jazz Band in high school. I was taking lessons at the local music shop that was old and tacky. While I was waiting for my lesson there, a dude sitting next to me asked if I liked punk rock. He was a drummer and roped me into playing in a band with him. It was Andy Sells who would be the drummer in Christopher Robin. The band played punk-funk and looking back, it was either really bad or really good. Then, a dude from the suburbs of Seattle named Tony Palmasani moved to our town and that ended up being really important. We were listening to older SST Records stuff and he had new punk records. He had all the new Dischord records and the Heroin seven-inch and was in a band called Drown. 

Another person who was in Drown was Jerimiah Green, who went on to be in Modest Mouse and in a band with Tony named Red Stars Theory. So we decided to start a band with Tony. Jawbreaker’s van broke down near us on tour, so they began playing extra shows in the area. They played in a barn in a backyard. They had a picnic and a badminton net set up. At some point, Tony came up to me with Rob Booher and said he was the singer in our band. Rob was deep into Hardcore like him and they both came from the Straight Edge scene. Andy and I were game to try him out, and the more we played, the more we liked what we were doing. So, that’s how Christopher Robin started. I thought what we were doing rhythmically was not typical. We liked to string together stimulating parts and breakdowns. Our first recording was at the Arts Institute of Seattle at a nice studio where a student got credit for recording us. One of the songs from that session ended up on a compilation called Universal Choking Sign put out by a guy named Dave Larson on his label, Excursion. That compilation was a snapshot of the Seattle Hardcore scene at the time, so it was cool to get on there. Getting on that compilation and getting our demo tape out to play shows I think is the reason the Repercussion twins found out about us and ended up putting out our record. 

 Below: The Christopher Robin track from the Universal Choking Sign compilation titled, “A Reason”.

Were you shooting for a certain sound? 
We couldn’t shake the influences of Heroin and Antioch Arrow. We were always trying to push the rhythm further. Antioch Arrow was a huge influence on us and we weren’t the only ones because there are certain markers in their sound that you can hear radiate through the whole scene. The Gravity aesthetic was very influential. I read that interview you did with Matt Anderson where he brought up the look of the records. 

I spoke to someone a while back who brought up an interesting hypothetical question. What if Matt opened the gates and, instead of sticking with the bands he knew as friends, released all the bands that were influenced by his band and label? Would it have made both his label and this era more pronounced in the present day? I think the same thing about Revelation Records, too. What if they released every American Straight Edge Hardcore band in the late 80s? Would it have made that era even more prominent in the history of punk? Revelation is actually reissuing music by the bands that would have loved to be on their label in 1989, so..it’s interesting. 
There were a lot of obscure bands that were scattered around at that time like Evergreen. Bands that were jazzy and were directly impacted by the San Diego sound. It was a small, intense period of time. Now that we see how hard it is to start and keep a band and how scenes have been destroyed by technology, we begin to value the whole band phenomenon from back then more and more. Once you don’t have that hardcore element of complete pathos and over-the-top self-expression, you have to make up for it. That’s why that transition between genres is the hardest thing to appreciate now. 

Also, I want to defend us on having a record that came in a paper bag sleeve! We wanted one because we thought the Heroin seven-inch looked cool, but the Galleons Lap record came in a manilla envelope that was silk-screened and stamped. So I don’t think Heroin was the first to do something like that. I met the guys in Mohinder and they told me they were responsible for printing and stamping all our covers and records that summer, so that was cool. 

Emo slave labor! For the record, I was in a band that put out a seven-inch housed in a manilla envelope, so I can’t throw stones. I’m just observing this with some humor 30 years later. Did Christopher Robin play a lot of shows? 
We ended up playing small house shows up and down the West Coast twice. We played the Goathaus, which was really important. That’s where the Ebullition and Repercussion bands played. Angel Hair and The Make-Up played there, too. The name of the house was something silly the drummer of Christopher Robin came up with about us being Satanists, which we were not. Someone wrote “PUNK’S DEAD, YOU’RE NEXT” on the door in Sharpie and it stayed there for a year. Strangely, there weren’t a lot of all-ages shows in Seattle besides Meg at The Velvet Elvis pushing back at these draconian laws over youth gatherings. Years later, you saw how she and others helped make great opportunities for youth culture in Seattle. At the end of ‘94, Rob our singer moved to Olympia and we all got pulled into different bands. Tony started playing in Red Stars Theory with Jeremiah and I started singing in Patterns Make Sunrise. I’d love to play with all of them again, but it never happened.

 Christopher Robin photos courtesy of Avalon Kalin

ncG1vNJzZmiqlanBrq3NZ6qumqOprqS3jZympmegZK63rcuopWajkaG2r8DOp7BmqpWpwa6tzWaYZpufo8OwecRumA%3D%3D