Filthy Phil

[1]Click on the 1 to get you to the updated Filthy Philharmonic page.

The Filthy Philharmonic was a band that was around the Fargo-Moorhead area from 2003-2005. It went through many name changes, initially starting out as "Dr. Claw and the MadCatz" to "Filthy Phil" to "The Filthy Philharmonic." Each name change reflected different members of the band.

"Dr. Claw and the MadCatz" got together prior to Halloween in 2003. First playing covers & originals to a limited crowd in a small basement. They developed a melding of ska/ reggae/ blues/ rock/ punk from that point on, which appears in a lot of Mike and Dan's playing on this site.

Around that time the line-up consisted of this:

Brett Wergeland (Drums) Chris Anderson (Bass) Mike Jerger (Vocals) Matt Borgen (Rhythm Guitar) Dan Kaufman (Lead Guitar)

While in the process of booking shows, Chris Anderson (Bass) moved to Montana to be a park ranger, and Filthy Phil was left with the decision to carry on or drop out :) Deciding they were onto something, Mike Jerger, who was a guitar player before he joined the band, started playing bass in this newfound group called "Filthy Phil". At first it was hard, because Mike had never played bass in a rock band prior to this, and Dan had to take the role of playing lead guitar and singing vocals instead of Mike.

Sidenote: What you hear on our album is both Mike and Dan singing on different songs, and Brett doing a vocal snippit on the "Church Camp" Chorus.

After a few months of creating songs in a single dorm room, Filthy Phil ventured out to get gigs. Their first gig was at the Elk's Lodge Open-Mic nite in north Fargo where they played their first full set of songs.

Keep in mind that the live cuts featured on this page were recorded in the early stages of the band, therefore some of it sucks and some of it's worth keeping as nostalgia.

sidenote: The point of this entire site is to provide a time-line of a musician's progression . All musicians start out with weaknesses and strengths. Some either grow into being better players or simply give up.

Around this time, Filthy Phil played with "Subrosa." Danjel Nygaard led this band and is currently in the Fargo-Moorhead group, "The Cass County Uglies." They frequently played shows together at Foxe's bar (currently Gio's Bar) with other local acts in town. Dan met Alex of the Throbbing Hotrods who was a good friend of Danjel Nygaard when he was in his junior year of college; teaching him a few guitar lessons and writing music together.

Some of these groups are listed below:

Lost For Cause Quadrophonic Tripwire Jon Wayne and the Pain (when they first started out we played songs together on open mic nite's at Foxe's) Left to Burn The Krims Ciro and His Brother Aaron Cosmic Kibosh (Dan would join in on a improv jam of theirs called "Funktified") CommonLinq

After awhile Matt Borgen "Filthy Phil," and the name then changed to "The Filthy Philharmonic." Consisting of Brett, Mike, and Dan, the group kept creating new music, played on The Dam Rock Station 104.7's Boneyard Tour, and slowly started to play less and less gigs.

The focus from this point on was directed toward writing songs with both rhythm and lead parts. So, most of the time Dan would have to work behind playing rhythm guitar and lead simultaneously as well as improvising lyrics. Thus, everything started to be more draining for the members of the band.

-See we never really wrote complete lyrics for all our songs, we simply improvised them on the spot whenever we gigged. For the real album we sat down and worked them out, but that was the night before recording and while we were actually at the studio.

Paul Tebben (Legionairres / Cosmic Kibosh) recorded and mastered this album in the winter of 2005 when both Mike and Dan were sick from a cold that was going around. The Filthy Philharmonic bought Paul a mini-keg of Heineken and some Arby's for his services and recorded everything through DP using a MOTU.

About a month or two after it's creation, Brett called Dan and said that he had joined the Krims as their new drummer. Thus, Mike and Dan tried to figure out what they were going to do with an album that didn't have a band for it.

A year went by, and they tried to form a group called "The Green Bottles" which featured "The Filthy Philharmonic" songs, and new material. However, the band played one show with Cosmic Kibosh and then faltered and died.

sidenote: Forrest came up with the name "The Green Bottles," because good alcohol comes in a green bottle.

Giving up on the idea of ever having these works available for the public, Mike and Dan formed another group in 2007 called "FuzzFaster," which ended very chaotically due to a relationship between Mike and it's drummer Meryl. This group played 2 shows; one at the Red Raven and another for the Fargo Rock Concert w/ WBPN.

After all this Dan decided to make his long-awaited solo album (available in the mp3 section) and Mike started to experiment heavily in electronica. Dan had lived with Starlach (Cosmic Kibosh's guitarist) while recording this album, and Starlach who hosts harshstar.com gave him the opportunity to create this website. After only a few months, Starlach, Dan, and Mike formed the group "Harshstar," simply because it was the name of the website and it sounded cool :) From that point on the group has been making electronica music over the internet, which is what is on the Harshstar page.

Today (1-9-09), Dan received a myspace message from Brett, and after a little conversation they found that releasing "The Filthy Philharmonic" wouldn't be a bad idea.

Here it is for the world :)

Kaufman.