File under “things I should have listened to when I was handed them.“ The Guinea Worms’ Duct Tape You is a chunk of amber, preserved and blown out to make it actually feel like the bathroom at legendary Columbus basement dive Berne’s before it imploded. (Is it still there, hidden under the dairy section of the Target that replaced it?)

Will Foster was cursing the fall of Bernie’s, or decrying its designation as a national monument, frequently around the turn of the century. His Guinea Worms were prolific after the triumphant debut of You Can’t Chump This, with a flurry of CDRs that rivals the output of any current prolific viral musician. My CD rack could attest to this fact; the bottom half was devoted to Guinea Worms EPs and two-song singles, the commodity of the times. It felt special: not like a mixtape, but as a collectible. One of those from the 2001 hot streak was Duct Tape You, a five-song EP that was pure Foster in the moment. His precision with short bursts of pop weirdness and atmosphere that read the room (counter-sleaze?) was best absorbed in these realized sketches—or at debaucherous, tightly chaotic live shows.

Duct Tape You features the best line-up Foster ever had to raw-dog his vision, with a ferocious, Nuggets-inspired performance from guitarist Bill Wagner atop the ramshackle, bruised beats of Jenny Mullins and Angela Dancey’s riotous bass battery. Oh boy, were they good when they were on. And here they are very on, as captured during a Chillicothe miracle at the Recording Workshop. Songs like “Jenny Jones” and what is perhaps Foster’s prettiest song ever, “Can’t Make Me Cry,” of course, feel of that moment in time, but for some reason, in the now, they burn just as white hot as when they were first played.

This archival release from Ohio-focused label Good Times Rock N Roll Club makes Duct Tape You a full experience by adding the “Spring Rage” b/w “Hello From Ohio” single as the finale. The latter is the instance where the Guinea Worms forged a never-forgotten legacy in Columbus and the state (they toured regularly in later iterations), not only in the chant, “Cheap rent, cheap beer, Indian mounds,” but in the edict that Columbus “is from the street.” It’s in this single that Foster is at his most feral and most catchy; it’s the one everyone has and everyone probably won’t forget. It was the moment when Foster moved from his love of The Fall (he’s still immortally smitten with Mark E. Smith), the miasma of Columbus home-recorded weirdos that came before him (Tommy Jay, Ron House, Nudge Squidfish), and the foundation he learned in Athens County mischief (his first band Clay, Appalachian Death Ride) and into something that was distinctly Columbus and distinctly Foster. Mold broken here.