How It All Began:
In early 1998, a friend of mine played me a copy of a tape he said had been
passed to him in a bar in Cincinnati, Ohio. The guy apparently was sitting on
the stool next to my friend and asked, without even looking up from his drink,
whether he had ever heard of Swank. When my friend said no, he pulled the
tape out of his pocket, set it on the bar, and said, “This is Swank.” “Who’s
Swank?” said my friend. “I’m Swank,” the guy said, and paid for his drink and
left.
In any case, I heard the tape a week later and was absolutely blown away. It
was the grittiest, hardest, realest, funniest, cleverest stuff I had ever
heard--tastefully downscaled and eloquently carved from that jagged pink
insulation that hangs down from the attic above the garage. The stuff was,
basically, right on the nose.
My friend and I spent the next few weeks trying to track down “Swank,” but I
was bitterly disappointed with our results. Nobody had ever heard of them.
We made copies of the tape, which we now know as the album called “Mark
Your Maker” and passed them around our circle of friends. The Swank
listening base began to grow, but we couldn’t seem to find anyone else in the
world beside my friend who had any direct contact with the band.
Then things began to change. During a brief stay in Boulder, Colorado, I
randomly ran into some wild bearded guy and immediately got into a huge
discussion about music. I eventually brought up my strange Swank experience
and his eyes lit up immediately. “I heard that shit!” he yelled. “Alejandro
Hooper, right? My girlfriend’s got that shit.” By that time the bar was closing,
but the guy dragged me to his girlfriend’s place and woke her up. She
produced an identical copy of “Mark Your Maker,” and explained that a guy
passing through in June and laid it on her at the breakfast counter at Denny’s.
The actual conversation she had with Swank, as I recall it, went something like
this:
“You like hashbrowns?”
“Yeah.”
“Then you’ll like Swank.”
“Who’s Swank?”
“I’m Swank.”
And he gave her the tape. She also said the guy went on to explain that Swank was
actually he and his brother, they were Frank and Hank, though she couldn’t
remember which one this guy claimed to be, assuming--probably correctly--that
these weren’t the fellows’ actual names.
Since then, the number of people who have been “Swanked” over the past year has
steadily increased, and we have managed to touch base with many of them. This website is intended to be a hub of communication for those stricken listeners who would like to join the hunt for the truth about Swank. Though much additional information has come to us over the past weeks, which can be accessed through other links on this site, we have yet to pin down the actual identities and location of Swank. And for anyone who’s heard the album, there is no way to avoid wanting desperately to know who the hell these guys are, what their deal is, and how to get a hold of more Swank music. Happy reading, and always be sure to never forget to Mark Your Maker!
Edward H. Haskins, Indianapolis, IN
Curator, Swank Memorial Webpage