There are multiple groups called The Glands out there. One of them was even signed to a record contract. We’re not them. We existed from roughly 1989 to 1994. For a brief while we were known as the best experimental band in Little Rock. For whatever that’s worth.

The Glands began as a side project of band called Homicidal Briefcase, which was itself formed from the wreckage of the famous SubGenius band Doktors 4 “Bob”. The core group was Brooks Caruthers on bassoon, vocals, and primitive guitar, Hugh Harris ..boards and trombone,   Bill Jagitsch on guitars, effects and drum machines, and Sternodox Keckhaver on bass, noise guitar, and Digital Rhythm Matrix.

The idea was always to see what sort of music would come out of this mixture of instruments and personalities. Quite a lot, as it turned out, and Bill Jagitsch had a perfect home studio to record it with. We only played live twice in 1989, but we did finish our first tape, “The Glands”, self-released, including a limited edition run of 50 individually hand painted cassettes. One song on the tape, “Bicycle Safety”, won Best Local Single in a Spectrum Entertainment Weekly music poll, even though we never officially released it as a single.

In 1990 we began to play in public more often. To help everyone remember what they were supposed to play, Brooks created “Glandsheets” that told everyone what to play on each “song”, what key to start with, and in some cases, how to tell when it was over. Inevitabley, each Glandsheet incuded instructions of a piece of music that had never been played before by anyone, including us. Thus improvisation always remained a big part of what we were doing.

In 1990 we were joined by Christa Lawrence on noise violin and began to record our second, unreleased tape, “Wa-Huh”. As 1990 went into 1991 we also picked up Homicidal Briefcase’s Dr. Gene Splice on drums and Brent Smith on Chapman Stick. By the end of the year we volunteered to create the music for a musical called THE BIG BIG CITY, produced by a fledgling theater company called Red Octopus. On New Years Day of 1992 we did a live improvisation on KABF community radio based on Christy Ward’s as yet unfinished script for the THE BIG BIG CITY.

Then Bill Jagitsch moved away and the group went into flux. For the live February performances of the now completed BIG BIG CITY, we were joined by classical and jazz guitarist Beau Bledsoe . Each night after the show we were joined in some live improvisations by Randall Lyon, from the Memphis group Band of Ones

Randall joined us for that year, singing great songs while playing the monochord and the Arp Synthesizer. But this turned out to be the last truly productive year for The Glands. Hugh, Randall and Brooks, joined by Band of Ones’s Lisa McGaughran, began to do more live radio improvisations on the KABF Sunglasses After Dark. (DJ Oleo Magneto christened us “Gland of Ones”). And, in general, everyone’s interests pulled in other directions.

In 1993, The Glands were down to a core group of Brooks Caruthers, Sterno Keckhaver, and Christa Lawrence, joined at various times by guitarist Shane Voisard, drummer Paul Schell, and guitarist Mary Horne.

I think it was in 1994 that we played our last gig. In June. So we could play “Glandscaping in June” just one more time.

That’s the myth at least. Print it.

--Brooks Caruthers