I dont know a whole lot about self, and I want to know more, so I have some questions. is self one guy or a group? do they still play, and if I was looking for one of their cd's which one should I look for? I found Self's Brunch and Phonoluxe, and I thought they were good, and I want to hear more

best place for info is selfies.com
not sure if there's a bio on there, but that is a good resource.
there are tons of interviews and reviews of Self records on the internet if you did a few basic web searches for self and/or matt mahaffey.
their fifth record, "Ornament & Crime," is due to be released in September on DreamWorks.
also, if i remember correctly, allmusic.com had a decent little bio.

You found a copy of Brunch? You lucky bastard...

Will

unsatisfied with the Brunch mp3s

we listened to the rough mixes of Self's new album on the way to Austin... very Self-ish....

i recommend buying all their albums. you will only be able to find subliminal plastic motives and breakfast with girls ina regular record store (sometimes). but half baked serenade and gizmodgery are out of print. you can mp3's of these out of print titles. start with subliminal plastic motives first.

Brunch was a 3-song bonus disc that came with the first 1,000 copies of Breakfast With Girls. I was fortunate enough to get it, but in general, it's really really rare. Consider yourself lucky, FFF.

I feel like Self has come up so many times on this MB. The discussion usually goes like this:

1. Me and about 3 other people say that we love Self
2. 10 other people say how much Self sucks
3. Everyone else has never really heard them, and doesn't care to

So now that I've just saved us that rigmarole, let's get to the facts:

Self began as just one person: Matt Mahaffey. He was an MTSU dropout who played with many different bands in the MidTN area. He recorded an album called Subliminal Plastic Motives in about 1994 which was the flagship album for Murfreesboro's Spongebath Records. After the album was done, Self became a band when Mahaffey formed a group to play live. Self experienced a fair amount of critical and commercial success with this album, lifted Spongebath Records off of the ground, and single-handedly put the Murfreesboro music scene on the map. By the time the second Self album, The Half-Baked Serenade came out in about 1997, Spongebath had blown up and had other bands (The Features, The Fluid Ounces, etc). Half-Baked was also just Mahaffey by himself. You should know that he is a studio genius. He has always had his own studio and has produced and engineered his own work. But for 1999's Breakfast With Girls, the whole band was involved. This album was the zenith of Spongebath Records. After it, things started to fall apart. By the time 2000's Gizmodgery was released, most of the members of Self had moved to Los Angeles, and Spongebath was struggling. Not much later, Spongebath went out of business. Today, Self is signed solely to Dreamworks. They have a new album that will be coming out later this year called Ornament and Crime. Since they moved to California, they have rarely played live shows, but in the Murfreesboro days, they played live almost as often as the Features (and often with the Features). They are a band that is still waiting for their "big break." Whether you like them or not, you must acknowledge the groundwork that they laid for what has been a colorful and exciting Murfreesboro music scene the last 10 years.

Do this, FFF:
1. Buy Subliminal Plastic Motives
2. Buy Breakfast With Girls
3. If you're into what you're hearing at that point, you can begin searching for the out-of-print Half-Baked Serenade and Gizmodgery or downloading some of the mountain of b-sides and unreleased tracks that are on www.selfies.com.

A few things should also be noted:

1. ) Peacefrog, you're cruel. I'm itching for some new Self so bad I can taste it.

2. ) The closest Self has come to that "big break" would either be in '96, when KiDdiES (from Half Baked Serenade) hit radio stations and was the number one song on KROQ in Los Angeles for like a week. Half Baked Serenade didn't come out until '97, there was no record to buy that had the song on it, and so no sales or lasting fame resulted. This may have drawn the attentions of Dreamworks, however.

3. ) The other near big break was when Self's "Stay Home" was nearly used to open the Dreamworks film Shrek. At the last minute, execs pulled Stay Home and opted to open the film with Smash Mouth's "All-Star," which had already been in several kids movies and suggested a main character with high self esteem as opposed to Stay Home's shut-in suggestion. Poor artistic move to be sure. The song is still the lead-off song on the soundtrack, but in the film it is only to be found over the credits.

These two examples are proof of how close one can come and still be very very far away.

It should also be noted that MTV editors back in '95 adored Subliminal Plastic Motives. Many episodes of The Real World, Road Rules, and other MTV summer programing have songs from that record in the background.

Will

I think quite a bit of radio play was gotten for "Trunk Fulla Amps" from Gizmodgery. I believe it's their biggest seller. This was what Spongebath kept reporting after its release.

For more information on the bands in which Mahaffey played (as well as many other Murfreesboro-area musicians), I would recommend Tiny Cheese's web site.

forgive me for sounding ignorant . . .

so what is known as "the mahaffey sessions" of the features stuff, is what exactly? and did matt mahaffey produce it? or play on the tracks?

I love self so much man! they have the funkiest little sound! I can't wait to hear something new from them.. I have Breakast with the girls and Gizmodgery, and Subliminal Plastic Motives.

Matt Mahaffey produced those tracks in his home studio. He posted a thread about it a while back, but I'm too lazy to dig it up.

You and I both know TF has it ready and waiting and will share it when he reads this.

Will

Only if you don't say anything. He'll never do it now...

i love that song. i also love that movie.

I clearly remember a song called "So Low". That was Self, right?

I'm so low that I wish I was dead
With a knife to my heart (?) and a bullet in my head

I caught a song or two at Dancin in the District back in the late 90s I think.

"So Low" is indeed Self. It's "knife in my chest," though.

(Edited by YaDaDaDa at 12:41 pm on Jun. 1, 2003)

Everyone may already be privy to this info., but the expedia.com commercials are matt's voice saying "Expedia....dot commm". And I think he also recorded some Jumbone commercial that I am yet to see. But everytime I hear the expedia commercial and I'm with someone else who knows him too, we can't help but laugh! Another funny thing about an old local band is my friend Joshua (who used to be the drummer for the now defunct Katies) was an extra for awhile on The Weakest Link! Crazy, huh?!

That is crazy. But how can you be an "extra" on The Weakest Link? Isn't it a game show?

Maybe someone will know... What ever happened to the Katies? Much like Fl Oz and Self, they moved to LA and no one has really heard from them since.

Thier bass player Gary moved back here to M'boro and can be spotted out now and again. Joshua (drums) and Jason (guitar/vocals) have started a new band w/ two guys that were in God Money Sex. GMS has also had a record deal that not much came of such as the Katies did. Their new combined band is When Breathing Stops and I like the stuff better than I did the Katies. They are starting to get a following going in the LA area, mainly Orange Co. They were nominated for an Orange Co. Award and were about to win, and then it was discovered that none of the band was actally from Orange Co....and they were disqualified! BOO! Joshua will be in town in a week, so maybe you can get more out of him then.

Yeah! Isn't that funny? He would get pd. to dress in all black and sit in the audience all day long. That lady would have driven me crazy with her "Goodbye"s.

the katies were a good band.

(Edited by ghostflower at 6:07 pm on Jun. 2, 2003)

I bought their record an about hated it. I never saw them live though, so maybe that's the problem. I also couldn't dig late-Spongebather Knodel.

Will

I had such a fascination with the label, but I actually couldn't stand most of the acts, including

Call Florence Pow (the album is OK, sometimes)
the Katies (I thought their show was terrible too, Wiyum)
Fleshpaint
the New System
the C-60s
Knodel

I think I like the idea of Count Bass D better than I actually like him. There are some redeeming qualities.

-Knodel. Weren't they supposedly "from futuristic France"? Never actually heard them.
-Fleshpaint. I always thought that name was hilarious. In a bad way. Never actually heard them.
-Call Florence Pow. Liked their first album a lot. Never saw them live. Weren't they from Canada?
-the C-60s. Never actually heard them, though the fact that Mahaffey produced their album has always made me very curious. I saw their album last time I was at the Red Rose, but din't have enough cash to buy it.
-the New System. Who?
-the Katies. They had some good songs, you guys. The main detractor for me was their bass player.
-Count Bass D. Love him. Very under-rated. I still haven't heard his latest album. I need to get it.

(Edited by jamiecarroll at 12:05 pm on Jun. 4, 2003)

The only time I ever saw Count Bass D perform was at Fluid Ounces' "Justin Meyer Farewell Show" at the Boro. I actually thought that his music was pretty good, and he was almost as funny as Brian Carter.

No you didn't. It was at the debut of Elliot Currie that you saw him, Tom.

The New System was a suck band from Florida.
I never cared for any Katies songs, and their bass player ruined their live shows.
CFP was produced by Mahaffey, but it was more over-produced than any Self album or the Features' sessions.
Knodel was supposedly from future France.

(Edited by YaDaDaDa at 11:49 am on Jun. 4, 2003)

Has anyone seen the Local News section of The Tennessean today? Well Jason Rawlings is on the cover and apparently he is not happy about cleaning the cafetaria.

Lets see...

I love CFP and I love their newer release even more. I'm a big Mahaffey fan, so the Self-style overproduction never bothered me. Overproduction is only a problem, I feel, in music meant to be organic. CFP never had any pretentions of being organic.

The Katies I hated.

I loved the 2 Fleshpaint songs on the samplers.

Never heard the New System.

I own and half enjoyed the C60s record. Nothing too spectacular tho.

The Roaries and Gumption I never really heard too much of and never formed an opinion. I know Gumption was gone before the release of The Features EP, but I felt like mentioning them anyway to see if others ever heard them.

Count Bass D is some of my favorite rap. I have and love his first album and his Spongebath EP. I need to get his new album and his website-only collection of new tracks, and I'll order both when his website restocks the Dwight Spitz record.

Will

These bands never actually had releases on Spongebath, did they? I never saw either of them live, though I did see a later incarnation of the Roaries, called the Del-Roys.

The Roaries are on the Spongebath samplers, but I don't think there's any Gumption. They may have relased a 7 or 10" vinyl single on Spongebath, though.

Yes, the Roaries are on the samplers and Gumption is not. I think Gumption released a vinyl, but I'm not sure. They were set to release an album at the same time as Half-Baked Serenade, Big Notebook for Easy Piano, and The Features EP. All four albums were on a postcard I was sent. The Gumption album art was made to look like an old Milton Bradley boardgame... it was clever.

Will

I have or used to have a Gumption cassette I can't remember if I had anything from the Roaries though.