Hunting Lodge - Exhumed,tape,1983,Germany

S/M Operations was formed in March of 1982, for the purpose of publishing a small magazine. The name comes from the two creators former projects: Lon C Diehl was putting out a small publication called Smarm (magazine), and Richard Skott was releasing cassettes under the name of Screw Machine (thus the name is read—Ess Emm Operations, no "and"). In May of that year the only issue of S/M Operations was released, and the two members collaborated together musically for the first time (the result of this can be found on the WILL lp as the song "S/M Operations"). Along with another member, Karl Nordstrom – Hunting Lodge played "live" for the first time in September of ’82, at a local Hotel hall – The Harrington Ballroom. This event was recorded on a portable cassette player, and became the first release on S/M Operations – released on cassette in an edition of 150 (later reissued by the West German Datenverarbeitung). The second S/M Operations product was a promotional cassette in an edition of under 20, entitled "23 Minutes of Murder" – 23 minutes of "studio" material. In January of 1983 Karl Nordstrom left Hunting Lodge, and the remaining members began recording for their first album. In March, Datenverarbeitung released a cassette, which featured "practice sessions" and all of "23 Minutes of Murder", which was entitled "Exhumed". The lp "WILL" was released in May of 1983, in an edition of 500. In September, S/M Operations staged an event with John Wright, Shame Exposure, and Hunting Lodge at the Harrington Ballroom. Parts of this concert were released on a "live" sampler cassette shortly thereafter, called "S/M Operations". In October S/M Operations started a mail order service, which distributed a cassette by Shame Exposure as well as other S/M Operations releases. In December of ’83, S/M Operations released the Hunting Lodge 45, "Night From Night", and in April of 1984, released a cassette by John Wright which is called "John Wright and the Young Losers Welcome 1984". In July Hunting Lodge played at Composite Lodge in Detroit, doing a set of songs from the upcoming "Nomad Souls" lp. Roselle Williams (who can be heard on two songs on Nomad Souls) performed along Lon C Diehl and Richard Skott. In September of 1984 the recording of "Nomad Souls" was completed. October 23rd became the first step on the Hunting Lodge tour, which started at the Danceteria in New York and ended November 18 at the Graffiti in San Francisco. At this time, Hunting Lodge and S/M Operations made its first major personnel change with the departure of Richard Skott, who now lives in San Francisco. In December of 1984 "Nomad Souls" was finally released, in an edition of 1000. The lp will also be released in England on the Side Effekts Rekords early in 1985. A twelve-inch EP will be released in February on S/M Operations, which will contain "Tribal Warning Shot" (the vocal version which Hunting Lodge performed on tour) as well as two new tracks. Those of you who have heard John Wright’s "Hoping For Hawaii" will be pleased to learn that Mr. Wright now resides in Honolulu.______________________________________________________
HUNTING LODGE INTERVIEW [This interview was originally published in “The Other Sound” issue #7 way back in 1986.]
IN THE PAST 5 YEARS,HUNTING LODGE HAS BECOME ONE OF THE MOSTWELL-KNOWN AND RESPECTED GROUPS IN THE AMERICAN ANDINTERNATIONAL UNDERGROUND. WHAT FOLLOWS ARE EXCERPTSFROM A LENGTHY CONVERSATION BETWEEN COUP DE GRACE ANDTHE MAN BEHIND HUNTING LODGE, LON C DIEHL.THE CONVERSATION TOOK PLACE IN OCTOBER 1985. ALL THE WORDS THAT FOLLOW ARE THOSE OF LON C DIEHL.
: C H I L D H O O D : It was very normal. A very normal, somewhat suburban childhood. I lived on a lake in New Baltimore, Michigan with my mum and dad and a bunch of older brothers and sisters—very much older—thirteen years was the youngest to me. I was never extremely sociable…at least that’s what I believe…perhaps it was just that nobody liked me. I ended up spending a lot of time alone; drawing…that was my favorite pastime. There was nothing extremely traumatic or different from anybody else’s childhood. When I was 15 we moved to a small farming community up north. My father retired and I ended up spending a lot of time, about 3 years, in the woods by myself. To this day I still like my privacy a great deal, and need a minimum of 3 hours a night or else I start losing my sanity. Also when I was 15 another slight personality quirk of mine probably came into existence when I was told that I had been adopted, after living 15 years without a clue. That tends to make you not jump to conclusions as quick as other people would—not take things at face value as much. My first gig was in 1974 at the First Congregational Church in New Baltimore, Michigan where I played organ on Good Friday. : P A R E N T S : Yes, they certainly do know. I don’t think they totally comprehend it, but I never really bothered to try to convince them of its validity. My father is an engineer, so he enjoys looking at my equipment and talking about the technical side of it. The rest of my family are pretty much oblivious to it, although one holiday I came up to my parent’s house and played “WILL” for my family (it was right after that album had been released)… after the entire album was over nobody said anything for a little while and then my sister finally said “So, do people actually pay money for this?”… : F O R M A T I O N S : Directly before starting Hunting Lodge & S/M Operations with Skott, I had been doing a magazine for a number of years called “Smarm”…and then the last issue was called “S/M Operations” when Skott joined me. I was in a number of bands… when I was in college up in Central Michigan University I was lucky enough to get hooked up with a number of creative people. We were doing mostly improvisational shows of funky/jazzy/noisy kinds of things. At the end it was called “All Night Movies”, but we changed the name every time we played up until then. That ended in 1980, and then when I came to Port Huron I started playing with some ex-members of a fantastic band that used to be in the area called “Problem”, who unfortunately never released anything. But I got together with some of those people and we called ourselves “Hate/Grey”…we played one show and it just kind of fell apart after that. The formation of S/M Operations came about when I met Skott. I got a job at a record store and I met him through that. We found out we had a lot of similar interests. The first day we got together and did something musically (it’s on “WILL”—it’s called “S/M Operations”)…we just plugged in and did it. Then we listened to it back and we obviously felt we had something worth pursuing. So we solicited the help of another person, Karl Nordstrom, who was on the initial live tape and he also had bits and pieces on “WILL” and “Exhumed”.
: L I V E 1 9 8 4 T O U R : I guess you could say they were successful. Back then our shows were more of an excuse to get together and play. I would give Skott a tape of the things we would be playing over that night, and we’d each hear what the other person was doing at the show. I would say the most all-around successful show in my opinion (I was never fond of playing live) was the very first one, where Karl Nordstrom (who did the visuals on “WILL”) presented a slide show—black and white slides of material very similar to what was on the album cover. It really came together quite well that night. I suppose it went fairly well on the tour…once again it’s not something I love to do: play live and drive, and drive, and drive. But we did have a few good times on the tour. The New York show was the worst…it was the first show. We hadn’t practiced any of the material yet (but I don’t think that was a big problem), it was mostly because the P.A. was turned down to the volume level at which you’d expect someone to listen to Windham Hill or Brian Eno “ambient” records…quite a shame since that was the best P.A. I saw on the whole tour. Danceteria has a really gorgeous P.A. but we unfortunately utilized about one eighth of its potential that night…so we got hecklers over the noise and every time I’d try to turn it up the P.A. man would turn it down, farther…people heckled until “Tribal Warning Shot”, then they danced for 5 minutes, and then started heckling again. The best show all around was Denver—the P.A. was in good shape (it was extremely loud and I believe in stereo) and people waltzed. I really enjoyed that quite a bit. Also the final show in San Francisco was interesting; it was the last show .

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