My friend and favorite photographer Mark Murrmann, AKA icki to most of us, has got a killer profile up from his new gig shooting for Jim Beam. All I can say is I’m really inspired and I wish Mark all the best!
Thought about it a little today after lunch. Remember last time? Here goes:
While the Moving Sidewalks and the rest of Texas are swimming in free mushrooms and cheap acid, you start a band unlike most anything else out there during the cultural implosion of the mid-1960’s, singlehandedly giving a kick in the ass to American rock that it desperately needed to differentiate something, anything, from bands that could house frat-geeks like John Kerry under the garage/surf tag. The unorthodox instrumentation of the electrified jug sound, twin-firing Fender Howitzers, and the wildman persona of Roky Erickson get you on the Bandstand and get you noticed, prompting the amazing exchange with Dick Clark (“Who’s the head of the group?” … “We’re all heads.”) and your tunes are all smoking pieces of reverb-drenched swirling sounds that dilute your spinal fluid with liquid sunshine exploration and pump some much needed desperation into the mix through the tortured howls of a man unhinged. However, since the drummer never smiles and everyone is continually “havin’ a bad time here, maaan”, heroin steps in with its ever-widening grin and sensuous Opium War allure to isolate a true songwriting genius from his band, family, and friends. Add in mental instability exacerbated by allegedly doing every single show and recording session while tripping one’s balls off and you have a mixture rife with sensory highs and lows that are able to muddle the thinking enough to convince your singer to plead insanity to an admittedly trumped-up marijuana possession charge and get locked away at the Rusk Institute for the Criminally Insane, effectively ending the band’s career. Despite the profound creative influence you have spread throughout the world over the past thirty years, you really didn’t make any money and got to sit and watch while Roky emerged *reasonably* unscathed from schizophrenia, the wimpiest brother of all time (thanks, Mt. Washington), and the creepiest mother of all time who started all this in the first place by sending him off for electroshock for coming home tripping when she should have just given him orange slices and a Magic Eye painting to look at like any other reasonable mother would. Couple that with the fact that the songwriting credits didn’t have your name on them and you get to read blogs telling you all about RE reaping the tongue bathing of WFMU with significant spaced-out aplomb. So maybe the 60’s were fun, but you’re still selling lawn tractors at the end of the day in Odessa. Sorry ’boutcha.
2) BADFINGER
Despite having the misfortune of not only closely resembling a less-sequined/platformed Slade, but also retaining some lingering Rocky Dennis chromosomal damage facial features and further showcasing the cold hard hand of fate’s death grip on the assorted visages of the English rock community, you would think these guys were hardy enough to let nothing stop them. Unfortunately, despite BF’s penchant for pop tunesmithery so immediate and ear-bending that they were due to be placed in roughly the same spot as the Fab Four a few years earlier, including a deal with Apple Records, a big US tour, and all the trappings of being “down” with the Beatles, naturally everything went wrong. Signing a business management deal with Stan Polley effectively froze the band’s assets after he bilked them out of all mechanicals and tour earnings, prompting Jeff Ham to kill himself. After the band dissolves and members form scab groups to get by, the even uglier face of band squabbles over money prompts Tom Evans to follow suit and yoke himself up as well. So now both songwriters are dead, Stan Polley has been cursed in a suicide note and awaits his ultimate reward, which would definitely ruin one’s weekend, and you’ve never gotten any money from “Without You”, so you’re stuck insulating pipes with the rest of these terribly unlucky few. Even the bands that ripped off your riffs thirty years later like the Exploding Hearts meet their untimely demise, perpetuating the idea of Badfinger being the unluckiest band of all time. Bad scene.
3) CRO-MAGS
After scrabbling up from the harsh streets of a post-Death Wish New York City, somehow you and a group of street kids more concerned with hitting people with 2×4″s and mugging Bridge and Tunnel trash formed the scariest hardcore band of all time. With that came an influx of mind-boggling violence, drug-drenched Euro tours, shady NYC Hare Krishna vibes, and a complete lack of girls at your shows. Despite opening up for Motorhead on tour and wrecking anyone in your path, you still have to be on a tour bus with two of the world’s toughest babies and an Uptown yutz who grew out his hair and squabbled alongside the rest of you for completely imagined reasons before all three begin the development of three different “Official” Cro-Mags webpages, complete with email flame wars and just about anything else internet-related that could detract from the ferocity of this picture. With the reunion money flowing like a broken faucet, you can feel free to traipse the continents with whatever incarnation is currently pissing on your legacy that week. Soon, everyone has a solo project, a book, and in one case, a Steadi-Cam to fall back on when proto-metalcore ain’t paying the bills. You can never bring any of this up for fear of being eviscerated by Harley when he hasn’t had any ghee that morning.
4) THE JABBERS
When you hook up with these New Hampshire proto-punk slobs there is a charismatic frontman who is more than willing to roll through broken glass, grabbing comely attendees in the crowd and hoovering up rails that would make Belushi’s nose run. His name is THE GEEGE. But eventually, after cutting a few legitimately perfect snotty punk-pop singles that add up to a killer album, GG’s budding insanity causes him to ditch you for any number of other outfits to back his deranged ramblings. So while you may have a bit better name recognition than the The AIDS Brigade or Bulge, your records were out of print anyway, so no one could buy them. After he levels up and begins eating his own shit, you’re in New Hampshire getting drunk and freezing your ass off for twenty years. Flash forward to the late-90’s and you’ve regrouped, picked up a new singer with some name cache (Wimpy from the original lineup of The Queers), no one wanting to put out your record, songs called “High on Drugs” and a ten-song Queers cover set for the end of your marathon wankfest and you’re getting paid to play podunk festivals and sit around being fat and right back at the coke plate, hitting on underage Asians with impunity and trying to find out who’s got the smack in Cleveland. And for those who get a laugh out of these posts from time to time, I will stake my honor on this last recollection being 100% real and not imagined by the author. Yikes. Also, the Murder Junkies make more for being a dead guy’s backup band than you ever did. No thanks.
5) BLITZ
After being championed as the 1/2 skin, 1/2 punk band capable of pounding out relentless driving anthems for the lads and lasses in the streets, you’re selling 30,000 copies of 7″s all over the UK. All the vinyl run-ups to your first LP stand loud and proud in the UK punk lexicon, and the LP is jammed full of hits, prompting it to go to #27 on the UK Indie charts with little to no promotion. However, touring on it with GBH and Abrasive Wheels sounds the death knell for the band and you break up. Funny how sending twenty-plus nogoodniks on the road would be problematic, but that is why promoters and managers are always, always, smarter than you are and always end up with their pockets lined and yours with only a hole in them to jerk off through. The guitar player starts a wack new combo and two of the others spread your name through the mud playing and releasing records that fit the “New Romantic” pastiche of being a whiny pussy to a T. In the 90’s, you’re all fired as the guitarist resurrects your corpse to cash in on what the Casualties are selling and you play oi fests for fat guys until he gets shut down by a car while running drunk onto a Texas freeway. Dream over, but the nightmare never ends.
And this month’s winner…
Say what you will. These guys won. In addition to living rent free in San Francisco throughout the 60’s, rolling around in group gropes with free-lovin’ ladies in the sunshine in Golden Gate Park, ingesting psychedelics like wheezing hogs, and chomping on burritos all day long, you also get to go onstage every night to a pulsing surging mob of people that just want to make a connection to something through your jams. After a few years, you’re huge and rich and jamming at Woodstock and everyone wants to toss you joints and teach you yoga just because you were able to hang onto your guitar long enough to play a fifteen minute solo. You can play literally any type of rock n’ roll you would like, and once you’ve locked into a groove, you take on Sun Ra/John Coltrane interstellar exploration levels of musical travel. While every other band gets wacked out on coke or smack and breaks up in the 70’s, you can continue to do drugs and keep going. Eventually the train comes to an end in the mid-90’s when your obese, diabetic dragon-chasing de facto leader finally has enough of his intense bouts of excess and kicks the bucket, but that’s after a pretty darn long career rife with band-supported cassette tape bootlegs and a documented record of what you did almost every day of your life. So while it may take awhile to open up to it, you have to admit, this is one time where the hippies actually got something right.
This weekend I spent a lot of time either on my bike cruising throughout the city or on the 54C bus line. The 54C is one of the few cross-town buses in Pittsburgh, and when school days roll around, you can guarantee that everyone who has to come through the Oakland neighborhood for any reason will be on it gliding off to Bloomfield or the North Side or Garfield. So in between cramming next to shrieking college girls taking digital photos of their bus trips to the South Side (this is not a joke, there were flashes popping all over the handicapped seats), bums heading to a better panhandling spot, and regular folks on their way home, I get a chance to see a lot of people I know every time I ride it. One never knows who they might encounter, and generally I have OK luck and don’t run into anyone who is looking to pop me in the nose or some other nefarious plot to befall my person.
But this weekend, I ran into an ex-girlfriend from years and years ago. We had a very brief, torrid courtship, and after a few years, we had resolved any differences we may have had, which weren’t many. I run into her now and again and she asks me how my music or writing or living situation is going and never fails to gush into a swirling rendition of all the wacky plans she might be attempting. These all generally involve “appropriation art” (whatever that is), moving to Chicago, veganism, chronicaling herself in various states of undress to post videos of said half-nudity on YouTube… and now I’m wondering why we ever went out in the first place, but that answer is neither here nor there for your prying eyes and I’ll continue to smirk away while typing, but let’s move on to the point at hand. None of her spiels are ever very illuminating or even based in general rational thought, and my comment in my Anthony Bourdain entry about people my age talking with their eyes closed and everything being such a production, but this last time was different and a little sad.
I never feel the need to go into my personal details in these conversations, and by that I mean giving an annotated run-down of everything going on in my life at that particular juncture, because honestly, she doesn’t care. In a lot of ways, I don’t care that much myself, and last Saturday I’d rather just relax and listen to her talk at length and watch as the trees gain their color back in the spring sun, which lit up the bus and lifted the temperature of the smudged windows to a rate that made them comforting to lean against. So I asked questions about the very things I described at the top, expecting to receive the litany I had come to take for granted, full of youthful idealistic passion, and whether or not she accomplished anything would be immaterial, but just expected.
But since graduating from college in the last few months, she had taken a square job Downtown that seemed miles away from anything she would ever do. I can’t fault anyone for that, as I have one myself, and one that enables me to at least attempt to pursue my other outside interests at that, whether that be blogging for you readers - whomever you are, or picking up records online or reading about interesting subjects and generally getting a lot of time to think about my life and its pros and cons and failures and successes. But I suppose the point I am really trying to make is that when I asked her about these dreams she had discussed for so long, she didn’t have anything to say anymore. Well, what about you moving to Chicago like you talked about? Oh, I can’t do that, that’s crazy, I need to stick it out with this job. Oh, how is your art going? Is that on the backburner? I’m never going to make a living as an artist, that’s crazy. The list went on and on and as the distance to her apartment dwindled away, I began to feel very badly not only for her, but for anyone whose dreams pull away from them. But I thought some more about it as I turned to the window and watched the trees and houses zip by, and I thought that if you have no entanglements in life and you let your dreams die, you’re full of shit and maybe you’ve always been full of it. Out of the millions of crazy dreams I have everyday, every single one is obtainable as long as I don’t go to jail (yikes), knock someone up (good luck), or get in a horrible accident (which reminds me, I need forty dollars to buy a new helmet or you could feel free to donate your old bike helmet, please). Money? I could care less about money. I have determined that I don’t need much to live as long as there is life pulsating out there that one can grab onto and meld with. Moving? What’s keeping me here? Nothing really, aside from a certain comfort level I enjoy. I could disappear tomorrow and few, most likely my sister and mother, would notice, and there’s nothing wrong with that at all. I’m not afraid of living out any of my moronic dreams, because while I may be in the rat race like everyone else and not doing exactly what I would like to be doing at this particular second*, there’s a whole life out there we haven’t lived yet just because of the risks involved in following what truly makes the heart beat and smile turn up and brain jump to light speed. And I don’t mean to wax poetically about dreams and goals and other hippie garbage for people that come here for Lord knows what reason, but I felt for her and I hope that never happens to me.
* What I would like to be doing at this particular second is: sitting on a wooden deck in a backyard with green grass and trees; playing Neil Young ballads on an acoustic guitar; wearing an open button-down shirt with no undershirt, jeans, and no shoes (my vacationwear); drinking a beer; flipping records on back and forth on the stereo behind me with a good book waiting in the wings. Maybe a dog will run by at certain points and I would scratch it behind the ears.
Another non-informative entry, but I’d rather be writing than not writing at all, so I’m afraid you’ll have to go find an exit link if you don’t care to ponder any further. Later days.
Not exactly an informative post here, but a here’s a story from Monday that you might find interesting and that may help you with a life lesson. The lesson is: Fuck ‘em. Don’t be a wimp.
Anthony Bourdain popped into the Steel City for a lecture of sorts at the Carnegie Music Hall this week. His lecture was another in the Drue Heinz Lecture series, which means that an old biddy living in Manhattan who happened to emerge from a wealthy vulva some years ago is tossing around ketchup and mustard money in order to patronize the literary arts; and more power to her, of course. However, Ciggy and I didn’t care enough to attempt to get tickets for the lecture since it ultimately didn’t matter if we went or not anyway, nor did I want to pay twenty-five dollars to see a guy retell his book that I had already read. I don’t have cable, so I’ve never seen his TV show, but the guy says the Ramones are the best band ever and likes Fun House a lot, so I figured we may as well just show up, attempt to sneak in, and if worse came to worse, go out to dinner instead and actually eat food instead of just listening to a millionaire talking about it.
I don’t know if you’re involved in “high culture” events in your city, but I’m not involved with them here in Pittsburgh. The large looming reason in my opinion is that Pittsburgh’s city is run by the old. Despite having a mayor that may be two years older than me and a City Councilman who may be found lecherously drunk at a frou-frou retro hipster lounge like Kelly’s on any given night, those in the know about fancy happenings in the city have generally ventured so far into the old age, old money, cultured white-folk conundrum that any expectations of engaging oneself in said happenings are generally met with disdain towards no-good punks like Cig and I, despite our love of fancy-boy shenanigans. But that shouldn’t be any reason to stop us from doing what we want to do. This is America and I do believe that I have certain rights… well, maybe not rights, but opinions that a bunch of squares driving in from Fox Chapel to police our city’s cultural development can go get fucked and that I was going to do what I wanted to do since it wouldn’t hurt anything expect the pride of security guards and gallery whores anyway.
We headed to Oakland that night about a a half-hour early to case the joint. Since the lecture was being given at the Carnegie Music Hall, it would be interconnected with the Museum of Art and the Natural History Museum. I’ve exploited this chink in the Carnegie’s armor before, but this escapade would require a little more daring since there’s always organizational face to save at these events for these lecture scene kings and queens. The lobby of the music hall was jam-packed with withered-away primped and prodded pampered flesh squeezed ever so lovingly into Brooks Brothers’ and Saks’ eveningwear, and a surprisingly large amount of indie rock never-will-bes who have hopped on the foodie train in the past couple of years. This brings me to my next point in my ever-growing litany of observations towards where the youth of America are heading.
While I may write about food for 7-Inch Slam, I am not in any position to consider myself a gourmand. People who can pay off their credit card bills on time or use words that seem made up like effluvient in their scathing critiques of new restaurants trying to make a buck can call themselves something as narcissistic as “foodie”. Food is something to be loved and experienced by everyone. It’s not another excuse for you to hold yourself in higher esteem than one who hasn’t gotten to savor the opportunities that you might have. Every day you get to listen to more and more young people talk about their budding careers in the kitchen that are oh so exquisite (and they’re generally talking with their eyes closed at this point) and varied and supplied completely by those extra special authentic food chain monsters like Whole Foods that are not only selling one the products that make their buyers somehow morally superior to those who would eat fried chicken or simmered greens or a baseball park hot dog, but they’re being sold a lifestyle that’s been dictated in chillingly accurate terms terms by that site Stuffwhitepeoplelike.com. Not that I don’t enjoy about 80% of the stuff on there or the products stores like that sell, but I’ve seen enough wispy bangs and scarves and poorly-manicured beards flopping around the neighborhood for one lifetime, and the last thing I need to hear is some vegetarian talking about how much they know about crepes and how much of a philistine I am for not adding chevre on my salad.
But back to the lecture. By now ticket lines began to form at every door, each guarded by a septuagenarian or a dude in a wheelchair or nice old lady who would probably just scold you for walking before radio’ing to a member of the staff that would physically toss you out. As the queues began to dwindle, we looked around for a possible hole in the defenses, but soon we were running out of time. The chandeliers overhead flickered on and off to announce the start time. Soon the lines were frittering away to nil, and then the doors began to lock as ticket-takers stepped away. Since this was probably the end of the line, and we looked silly waiting in the middle of an enormous lobby by ourselves for nothing, I said “Alright, let’s give it a go”. After slinking down the hall past the guards towards the Art Museum, we ducked around the guards’ desk while they were turned away, and slipped through the Hall of Architecture in the dark. The museum was closing down at this point, so it was completely empty and haunted by an ethereal quality in the dark that made it so much more fun to wander through it, with a constant eye on the hallways and ever-present chance of being discovered.
The top level of the museum housed the Eskimo and Indian exhibits I remembered from my youth, and we discovered that while we were moving in the right direction, eventually we wouldn’t be able to go much further since more doors began to be locked. After heading back down to the Architecture Hall, we noticed another door in the direction of the stage area on the other side. This one opened with a creak and we slipped inside to dart through the back hallways that employees used to get around the buildings. We were a few levels up from where the stage was, and after finding a pantry-sized entrance, we were soon above the stage hopping through a clambering set of staircases and scaffolding hovering all around us. Soon we were above the dome itself of the stage and we began to laugh at how silly a turn our path had taken to avoid paying for a lecture we weren’t that vested in in the first place. But sometimes you have to stay on the bus till all the stops are gone, I suppose. The area above the dome had some pretty interesting reminders of Pittsburgh’s past, with employee scrawls on the walls dating back to the 40’s and cigarette butts cluttering up the landings from who knows when. After traversing the dome and hanging up over the stage itself, we could see AB through the light portals above him and we realized that people could think we were attempting to kill a celebrity if we were discovered, and we could hear an announcer beginning the introduction for Bourdain. Thunderous applause wafted up through the ports in the ceiling and we hurried along to complete our stupid quest before we missed anything else.
By this time we were covered in grime and dirt from the neglected facilities and sweat rained down my face from the hot lights below us. As we got down to more stable footing, we were backstage or thereabouts. Soon we found ourselves surrounded by boilers and administrative facilities, and I assumed this meant we must have been somewhere important. I found a small wooden door and opened it up. Soon I was greeted by Anthony Bourdain’s back, a large expanse of red carpet, and an enormous crowd looking directly at me. I would assume this was the case because I had opened the stage door like a fool and had exposed our existence to all in attendance who may not take it as well to know that young men were scampering around their hallowed halls. I shut it as quietly as possible and we were passed by the soundman who was taking a break and didn’t seem to care that we were hanging in his space. Finally, we ducked around one final corner and found ourselves twenty feet away from the stage on the left side. We had finally made it. I used any remaining sweat left to clean my hands and we settled into our new standing area in the wings.
The lecture itself didn’t have a discernible theme. I suppose if I had nothing to promote and no real agenda, I would just get out there and ramble myself. But AB was an engaging and energetic speaker who kept the audience laughing and reminded me more of Richard Lewis than Jacques Pépin. He breezed over topics like his extensive travels and was not much of an asshole at all, which he seemed to pride himself on in Kitchen Confidential. He curtailed his use of profanity to one utterance of “motherfucker” and told the crowd “even I’m not a big enough prick to smoke around a baby”. This kept the country club denizens from becoming too offended and merely just playfully offended. After about forty-five minutes, he cut his rap short and began to field questions from the audience with the help of a smartly-attired businesslady who commandeered the microphone and chose audience members with their hand up. This is where everything began to fall apart and I felt as bad for Anthony Bourdain as I could feel for a guy who has millions and is successful in business, literature, life, love, and travel. He had to field questions from buffoonish Pittsburgh restaurateurs who simply could not grasp the idea that he did not want to come drink in their bar or eat their cooking or get drunk on a Monday night or fuck him when he had already explained that he was getting on a plane immediately afterwards to return to his wife and newborn. Call me a jerk and all, but I was born and raised here and I’ve lived in this city most of my life, and plenty of you have been “home” here since freshman year of college and I can go right ahead and say that for a bunch of goofs dumb enough to pay twenty-five bucks for an hour of their lives they could have gotten from reading the same damn book I did, they made us look like a bunch of slobs. And I am no uptight pretty boy who cowers in shame at the idea of foolish behavior. But I think once is enough and when someone refuses another’s advances, no means no. When the painful audience interaction ended, he really did hustle off and most likely split town. If he returns again is of no consequence. He didn’t eat anything here, and that’s what everyone truly wanted: to show off our city to him. And while there is nothing wrong with that, I don’t think badgering and a sense of entitlement heavy enough to break a horse’s back are the way to go about it.
Ciggy snapped a cameraphone picture, and I was surprised I forgot to bring mine, which would have made this entry a lot more enjoyable, I bet. However, I’m sure that was more than made up for by the 1,000 other digital cameras going off at the slightest arm wave or round of applause. While Americans continue to document absolutely everything they do for someone’s benefit (?), Ciggy and I slipped out and walked over to the Union Grill. The true joy of the night came here while I feasted upon the lump crab cake sandwich with sweet potato chips and Cig housed the Rich Boy, a lovely garlic butter shrimp sandwich served on garlic bread with feta, romaine, and other assorted veggies. The crowd began to filter in from the lecture and soon the place was packed to the gills. We paid our check, glad to not overtly tax our server with ridiculous demands, and headed off into the night.
So it’s not that important in the grand scheme of things, but I guess this experience can tell you can make an adventure out of most situations if you try hard enough and are not afraid to get in trouble. But that’s my story.
So the most interesting thing I found this morning happens to be this new website called Muxtape.com. Users create an account, log in, and then begin to upload mp3’s from their own personal library to form a 12-song mixtape that anyone with a browser can click and listen to. So naturally I jumped on it and I’ve got one up now that you can check out. Nothing special or super-rare or KBD OOP for me, but considering we’re talking about mp3’s here, if anyone did get into some kind of crazy internet pissing contest over who has the best bandwidth or bitrate or customized page, I think my brain would collapse into itself and melt into a primordial sludge, rendering me unable to enjoy this fancy new non-community (which is probably my favorite feature since now I don’t have to make new internet friends like every other website makes you do these days).
Hit the link at: http://schleep.muxtape.com
Anyway, since this is so easy to do, I recommend getting out there and giving it a go. I plan to change mine every week and I’ll leave a permalink up here on Big Ole Schleep, so check back. Here’s mine for April 1st, 2008:
V-3 - Your Uncle - Live ‘97
Record Players - Don’t Go Backwards - Messthetics #1
Swell Maps - Let’s Build a Car - Let’s Build a Car 45
Beach Boys - All I Want to Do - 20/20
Tommy Jay - I Was There - Tommy Jay’s Tall Tales of Trauma LP
Gentleman Jesse - (If I Can See You) You’re Too Close to Me - Gentleman Jesse/Joseph Plunket split 45
Simply Saucer - Illegal Bodies - S/T LP
Remains - Don’t Look Back - Barry and the Remains Greatest Hits LP
A Feast of Snakes - Love Like Cancer - S/T 12″ EP
Lamps - Now That I’m Dead - Lamps 2 LP
Cheveu - Lola Langusta - S/T LP
Haunted George - Moody River - Pile O’ Meat LP
Special thanks to John K., who I ganked this from this morning. Into it! Dig!
“Hey… guy… AS a goof.”
Since I’ve been listening to music seriously, there have always been a few genres that I have never had the stomach for and made sure to provide snide and derisive comments towards without fail. Most of the time, I think I’m right on the money and that the Juggalos, fans of hot country, techno, jam bands, electroclash, and all the other genres and subgenres out there that instantly make my blood boil should be rounded up and collectively sterilized. But I don’t really see the point in that these days since there are enough bad bands from GOOD genres that render any argument I may make for the foundations of music continuing to crumble moot. Nowadays with music genre lines being slashed apart like fields of wheat and people finally deciding to admit that it’s alright to just like whatever sounds good to them, perhaps screaming at the top of one’s lungs about the bad bands is useless these days.
With the mass exodus of the unwashed hordes of easily manipulated teenagers to the ticket lines for the Cobra Starship or Say Anything show (which I rode by on my bike last night heading to yoga), it’s now a time for those who stuck it out through the dark ages when records weren’t cool again to revel in underground music’s joyous quagmire in which one can listen to the new Tommy Jay LP on Columbus Discount or hop onto the Termbo “weird punk” bandwagon (one in which most of the bands are good to great, but the nomenclature of said genre does a disservice to any of the bands making exciting music since it pigeonholes them to a spot with the rest of the Blank Dogs [blah] Myspace clones that think it is important to lay down the first musical ideas you have onto your computer and then automatically come out with a 300-press 45 that sells out and gets you on Siltbreeze… not to discount that label’s excellent contributions to our record nerd cooperative over the years), or revel in whatever rock music may be floating your boat at that particular moment. Look at the resurgence in the popularity of the Flying Nun catalog alone! I myself knew absolutely zilch about New Zealand’s prolific and, for the most part, exceptional musical history from the 70’s till now and now I’m reaping the benefits (thanks mostly in part to a wonderful mixtape I received from Terminal Boredom’s own Sprague Dawley which is most likely sitting in the tape deck in my bedroom right now) of the Chills and Verlaines and Bats and much much more, and Christ, think about the Gordons’ FUTURE SHOCK EP! Complete 70’s punk perfection filtered through the sensibilities of the Velvets’ or the Fall’s plodding with slight wave or dub tendencies? I never saw it coming from Kiwis who barely made a dent in the collector want lists until I got my head out of my ass and paid attention twenty years after the fact when I finally had the capacity to embrace the unfamiliar.
Perhaps I have been stubborn and pigheaded when it comes to music in my youth, but all I know now is that no matter what it is, if it is good and valid and real, it will be appreciated someday. With all the time we have on this earth (and I don’t know if you’ve ever stayed in on a Friday or Saturday night because you had nothing else to do, but it takes a loooooong time before those nights are over, so I can safely say we have a lot more time to live and breathe and hear records and tapes and demos and blogs before we shuffle off this mortal coil than we think), as long as you don’t turn into your boss or parents and do your best to not become a sheep, you’re going to be just fine.
What’s the point of resurrecting BOS with all this? Well, I am pleased to own Grateful Dead records now, and I don’t give a fuck about what you think. And yes, even though I may think that Ibiza-style house jams that they used to play on the E! network to show you what rich people do on vacation (answer: dance like the mental patients from the Cramps DVD, drink watered down fruity cocktails, do X, fuck, show off implants, wear J-Lo glasses, hate the poor, chastize the help) are still akin to pulling out nose hairs one by one for me, something I never thought I would like has taken a hold of me like no other.
It’s the French Underground. Or Glue Wave. Or Cold Wave. Whatever you want to call it. No disrespect to pioneers like 60’s Freakbeat master Jacques Dutronc or classic singers like Serge (definitely click that link) or Brel or garage-punk superstars Splash 4 or a killer early punk band like Private Vices or masterful French oi bands like Warrior Kids or Reich Orgasm or great new bands like Sonic Chicken 4 (who put out one of the best LP’s of 2007). But I want to focus on this meld of punk and synth and wave and cigarette smoke and slightly violent sex that permeates the surface of this subgenre while staring you in the face and calling you “pedestrian”.
France has always been a country on the cusp of trends that can make the ricehound bearded ex-”graffiti artist” DJ’s in NYC salivate and can alienate the dyed-in-the-wool “punks” with the flick of a synthesizer on switch. But a lot of the bands there playing this distinctive kind of synth-punk were relatively unknown outside their native France. Recently, a compilation came out that I sadly missed out on on vinyl called BIPPP: French Synth Wave 1979-85, artfully fitting together French minimal synth artists in a nice package. It sold out a press of 1000 (I think?) copies very quickly, though I don’t know how many actually made it to the US, and was reviewed in… get this… Entertainment Weekly. Come again? You know, I understand that yuppies liked garbage like Depeche Mode in the 80’s. I mean, Bret Easton Ellis made a career of writing about moussed-up jerks doing coke and smack and listening to awful droning repetitive faux-goth synth garbage in dance clubs. But I didn’t see that coming. But sometimes if you sort through through the chaff, there’s some wheat left to throw into the churning mill of your ears. And I believe the BIPPP comp is getting repressed, so soon you will most likely hear about me gushing at length about A Trois Dans Lens or another group whose French name I forgot the rudimentary root words to back in college.
Cheveu has stepped to the top of the heap in terms of modern French synth bands with the release of their first full length LP on S-S. Coupling this release with a short American tour (closest date was Columbus with some rather notable modern bands and I had no ride and no other means of transport) and soon these three guys are turning heads quickly. The LP itself is a wonderful document of a modern band pushing the envelope in their respective genre. And why do I like Cheveu so much? Underneath whatever pretension one may imagine emanating from this group, the songs cut you with razor sharp PUNK guitar that hisses and bleeds over the drum machine and gives you something to latch onto while you work your inward pelvic gyration up into your brain. I’ve always been rather liberal sexually in some ways, and this is finally the ultimate genre of sex music. While it will never go out of style to put on Fun House and sweat and grip and fuck or get fucked like a piston with the person/persons of your choosing, the French have always been the sexiest Euros out there in terms of their art to me. And this album drips with sexuality: a combustible sexuality that heats the body from the inside out until the listener burns up in a horny lubed-up rage. The effects and programming here keep the pace varied, and one can even feel where their influences stem outside their compatriots’ progressive synthesized stylings. Old American blues (sex music in and of itself as far back as the 20’s and 30’s) crops up, along with the aforementioned VU fuzz and sneering alleyway-fuck attitudes along with dirgey, noisier parts that give the vinyl the edge that help it rise above the dreaded techno tag that would originally enable me to shun it in the first place. And if you need more explanation of the creepy forbidden sexual vibe present, track three’s vocals are direct quotes from the Todd Solondz pedophile/misanthrope-fest Happiness. Should this make you feel like a pervert? Hopefully. All I know is “Lola Langusta” will make the corner of my mouth turn up in a sneer, pull up an eyebrow, and the rest of me engorge when I see a beautiful lady slowly gyrate to its pulsations.
Here is a music video for one of the Cheveu LP tracks that is actually quite well-done. This is “Dog”:
And Cheveu live at Gonerfest last September:
While I have waxed over Cheveu ad nauseam in this post, I am happy to provide links here to other bands who facilitate the same vibe. They just didn’t happen to put out a new LP this month and inspire me to post again.
VOLT - Lili Z., FX, and Jack are pioneers of this modern wave of French electro-punk, changing up from Jack and Lili’s tenure in Splash Four. All four of their releases (one on their own label Polly Magoo [good luck finding that one, but I got it], two on In the Red, and one on Hozac) are mandatory and you should keep your ears open for them. Jack and Lili’s taste in rock n’ roll has always been legendary and their new group is no exception. Their LP almost squeaked into my Top Ten on Terminal Boredom but their countrymen nudged them out, but I’m sure they’ll produce new recordings that top their last LP soon enough.
FRUSTRATION - Another great French synth group. Their 12″ on Born Bad sold out immediately, but through the magic of the internet and copping their single on S-S, I was able to give them a cursory listen and I must say, I need to get Paypal ready for whatever they may be ready to dish out next.
CRASH NORMAL - Another French trio who have an LP out now on S-S that made me stop and stare at the speakers for minutes while spinning it. This group is a lot more noisy and varied but they manage to exude a very similar vibe and some great songs. They should be on tour in America right now if I’m not mistaken.
BORN BAD RECORDS - The label that is pressing most of these records and more you should be aware of. They’re also running a physical store over in Paris which I am sure is a sight to behold for oddball Euro recordings.
Did I forget to mention that Brainbombs are playing Paris? If anyone knows how to get there for less than 500 dollars, please tell me now.
I felt really energized posting today. I’ll try not to slack off too much in the future. For now, head over to S-S and pick up the debut Cheveu LP like yesterday! Feel your juices flow and come back and tell me all about it. I am a voyeur.
Who would have thought that noise music was actually good for something? Not me.
My 2007 Top Ten is here at TB. I’m in some pretty righteous company, but I probably wrote way too much. I’m the last one, so give it a look and tell me what you think.
* There’s stuff up on 7-Inch Slam for the first time since May of last year. Hone and I will be running the show and bringing things up to speed.
* My Top Ten of 2007 is submitted to Terminal-Boredom and when that is posted I’ll throw some additional items on as well over here at Big Ole Schleep. Hints are probably not necessary. By trimming down the list I kept on the heavy hitters you might expect, along with live stuff that resonated more than certain records did this year.
* The London Review of Books has a well-researched article by Mark Greif on the Velvet Underground from May 2007 up on their site that has kept me entertained this morning. Fanboys/girls should give it a look.
* I’ll be appearing in a show on February 16th with my Fun-a-Day-in-PGH project for January 2008. My project was to try and obtain a new record for every day of the month, listen to it, and write about it. Not much to discuss… I’m building a multimedia presentation and running it at the art show like a dork, and you can hear about the records I purchased/traded/found while I was busy not writing on this blog. I’ve got about a week to go before it happens and I’m trying to get everything polished and ready to toss into a Powerpoint as quickly and painlessly as possible. I’m kind of excited since I can’t really draw and I’ve never been in an art show. I thought tour was going to throw me off, but I’ve morphed any problems into ignorable pant-leg tuggings that I couldn’t care less about at this point.
* I’m doing a very special Pittsburgh interview today after I get home from work. You might know what I’m talking about already, but I’m going to be posting it next week. I hope to annihilate a flock of birds with this one.
With my sojourn across the Midwest and South complete, I have returned to Pittsburgh renewed and refreshed. I’ve been on tour with the dumbest band in the world for the past ten or so days, and while the rock n’ roll business has confirmed all my suspicions as per its dwindling sustainability and shortsighted, foolish gestures by paying the most moronic of bands more money than we could spend legally before a van mishap in Memphis, it’s nice to be back at my computer instead of huddled in a freezing ball on a floor in Milwaukee, fighting off the wind slipping into my sleeping bag, and becoming physically engorged with the thought of a hot shower, plentiful and cheap fruits and vegetables instead of greasy road fare, and the ever-beckoning call of clean clothes and sheets. I took a lot of photos and saw a lot of cool things on the road, so why I don’t I catch everyone up?
Up above you can see Rot Shit with Paul of Now That’s Class. We (l-r: Count Drugula, Charles Horse, Big Schleep, and Haywood Jablowme, Paul) and unseen roadie Wild Bill look a little worse for wear at 10 AM, but after a rough night in Cleveland (despite Paul’s always welcome hospitality and a very good set by local metal stalwarts Midnight), driving to Chicago was going to be a pain, especially given the sub-zero temperatures that somehow find a way to seep through every crack of Count Drugula’s rickety van. Here’s a picture of Midnight I stole. They’re the real deal.
This is Cleveland Toilet Face:
Eventually we made it to Chicago. Chicago in January is the coldest and most uninviting place I’ve ever been to in my life. The wind chapped our lips and made us groan like dying trees as we walked down the street. We were due to play at the Town Hall Pub in Boystown (a gay neighborhood on Halsted that was extremely clean) with Daily Void from Chicago and TV Ghost from Indiana. We showed up in town around 4:30, and since we had absolutely nothing to do, we huddled outside the club in an alleyway in our van for two hours, attempting to sleep until the doors opened. When I finally could take no more and decided to walk inside, I was greeted by a sultry bartender in a low-cut shirt who bought us shots of booze. Why we had stayed in the van, I have no idea. But I kept dozing in and out of REM sleep somehow while standing up, so I asked the bartender where a gay bathhouse was so I could take a steam. She rightly informed me that I was probably not smart to enter a den of ill repute in a foreign city, especially since I’m not into guys yet into steam rooms, so I decided to take a nap in the van before the show started. I curled up in the van with my sleeping bag, two other sleeping bags, and a heavy jacket with all my winter gear and somehow caught about thirty minutes of shut-eye.
Soon, I woke up to a loud scraping noise. I noticed that the van was backing up slowly through the tiny alleyway. However, this did not compute since there was only one set of keys between us and they were in my pocket. Then I looked in the driver’s seat, saw no one, and realized the worst: the van was getting towed with me in it. Frantically I attempted to throw open the side door, but I was blocked in by the wall on the left side and an upcoming telephone pole that had the option of either ripping off our door or my leg. I screamed and waved my arms at the driver to stop. After about ten feet, he got the message and slowed to a halt. I ran out the door and attempted to get the ponytailed Mexican in coveralls to drop the van from his truck, and he obliged after screaming at me four times while I tried to pick up the keys that I dropped while wedging myself out between a van and a brick wall in ten seconds before being killed with the same methodology of the bug scene in Temple of Doom. Everyone else was inside and had no clue. Were it not for my nap, we would have been out about $400, plus have lost all our gear as well. This was probably the best thing I could have done, so I felt vindicated thereupon for the rest of the trip. Now back to the show…
The opening band Curtains hadn’t done much for me, but both of the other bands put on a live show of the highest order that I got the chance to check out back in December when Burndowns hit the road with both bands in Ohio. Daily Void, as you probably know by now, are ex-Functional Blackouts. Their new LP is out on Dead Beat now and you can expect some churning, eye-twitching punk of the wacky variety, fusing together the feel of infinite space, burned-out urban America, and the slithering creatures you’ll find leaving trails under a rock in the yard. TV Ghost are young men that seemed to have trudged out of Nowhere, Indiana, turning heads with their unpredictable, static-drenched, mind-numbingly catchy live show all over the Midwest. This night proved no exception as they battered chairs, amps, and each other over the course of thirty minutes until the carpeted floor was strewn with equipment and stools. I watched an errant punch shock one of the band members into a rage before he retaliated and was rolling in a ball on the floor with a random showgoer and yet still pounding out every note on his instrument. Sadly, this was the last night where I took no photos, so I can’t back up my account with photographic proof. However, if you’ve been coming to this website since last July, perhaps you can feel safe knowing that this evening was a righteous example of squalling guitars, hoarse vocals struggling to rip over the noise in the room, and a bar with some great spiced hot cider for the more hungover of us (me).
We picked up our new roadie/driver Kevin of Pink Reason at the show, as well:
And luckily, my lovely friend Miranda happened to show up, and she and her roommates saved us and cordially provided a large living room and multiple couches to rest on until we headed out for Minneapolis the next day. Cue the “Rest Music” from Final Fantasy VII.
I don’t know if you’ve ever been on tour or not, but if a band’s van has windows, I am quite content to look at the landscape and America’s various interstate oddities for hours when not reading my book (which I’ll get to later). However, in the Midwest in the dead of winter, here’s what you get to look at all day:
No amount of ice-scraping, sleeve-rubbing, heavy breathing, or screaming at the window in disgust will remove the frozen shell you’ve Han Solo’ed yourself into, so you get that for eight hours straight. Fun? You bet. I love looking at water stuck a foot from my face.
In Minneapolis, our show was at the Alamo House. While this place had the average dingy upstairs peppered with fliers and beer cans and the faint aroma of finally graduating community college, the downstairs housed the most incredible basement punk club I’ve ever seen. The walls were splattered with poorly done graffiti with band stickers on everything else. But the stage rivaled any club in Pittsburgh and it sounded stellar from all points in the room. Luckily, we were playing with one of our new labelmates and a current young favorite of mine, The Retainers:
These guys have ripped both times I’ve seen them. Their harsh brand of near-hardcore speed and pounding loud lo-fi punk hooks/screams are enough to drive even the most staid member of your collector nerd circle crazy, and I can’t say enough good things about them. I believe they’ve got about four singles now, so pick up whatever records you can. I started back last year with the Teenage Regrets EP on Fashionable Idiots. It should still be in print, so pick it up. After that, we crashed at our new bosses’ - Andy and Eric of Fashionable Idiots - humble abode. They’re obviously the worst, but their roommate Kim is a much more suitable person to converse with. I was quite stoked to learn about storing LP’s in shipping mode at all times and to peruse some great issues of Distort fanzine. The next night we had a show at Memory Lanes in Minneapolis, so after waking up, we literally had to do nothing until about 11 PM.
Kevin took the reigns the next day, and we trudged through the snow to go visit his friends from Wisconsin that had been transplanted north.
We met up with Lindsey, Brady, and the rest of Kevin’s gang and began pounding beers as fast as humanly possible. Here’s some pictures of us sitting around doing nothing, which in case you didn’t notice, is what you do on tour pretty much all the time.
Wild Bill says “Fuck you, Drugula!”
I walked down to the liquor store with some dudes and bought two cases of beer. It was pretty great to buy Hamm’s again since the one time I did in college. Apparently the liquor store has some sort of significance to someone, since Wild Bill pointed it out by name, but I just took a picture of it and bought my hooch.
So we eventually made our way over to the show. Much like Asbury Lanes in New Jersey where Drugula and I played in the Radio Beats years back, we were to play on a large stage overlooking the lanes. The opening band, Cortez the Killer, were one of the limpest slabs of sub-Wilco alt-country I’ve ever heard. They played for forty minutes and were ruthlessly heckled by Eric. Then after Kevin pulled new drink tickets for everyone out of the garbage and I went to go get a free fancy beer, Eric pulled me aside and said:
“Stop there for a second. When you start playing, I’m slamming a piece of pizza in Vinnie’s face.”
“Awesome. Do it, pussy.”
Then Rot Shit got onstage and he did:
Drugula also eschewed pants during every set on tour after tonight:
I discovered I had lost my wallet (AGAIN), but I luckily held onto the cash and ID I had in my pocket, so I was out one debit card, one credit card, one guest yoga pass from back home, a Carnegie Library card, and a server room key from work. All were replaceable, and I could still buy booze everywhere, so I chalked it up to a small loss. In reality, maybe it was a blessing, because once I sweated the ID compartment brown, so I think it is officially time to admit that buying anything from American Eagle in the South Side Works is a bad idea. I’ll pick up a new wallet today anyways. But let’s get back to the tour. Later that night in Minnesota, Kevin had the world’s smallest hork.
I did my best to call someone in Carbondale, Illinois for a show we could hopefully get on two days later before Memphis. Here was the message I left.
“Hey Ben, this is Steve from Rot Shit. I’m up here in Minneapolis with Fashionable Idiots and we need a show in two days, so if it’s at all possible, could you please call me back at 412-478… *SHUT THE FUCK UP, DRUGULA!!!!!*, anyway, man….”
Hence no show two days later.
From there it was onto State #2 I had never visited, the lush rolling greenery of Wisconsin. The lush rolling greenery was obscured by a foot of snow, but there’s something to be said for imagination in my book. We were playing another house show at a place called Mint Mint Chocopocalypse with Holy Shit! and the Goibbledoimbs. House shows are definitely the best way to play, in my humble opinion. There’s always a couch to hang on or a secret bedroom to disappear into in case someone bothers you. Luckily, all the WI folks I know are top-notch, so I was happy to see folks like my man Paul from Tuff Bananas:
Goibbledoimbs (billed as Goibbleshit to fit with the band names already on the bill) were really a stellar stupid punk band. I would assume their theme is their tune “I”m Stupid”, which got its hooks in me from the back of the room and drew me right up front. A great three-piece who I believe could fire off a single as stupid/life-affirming as the Sneaky Pinks EP from 2005. I definitely hope to hear more from them.
Holy Shit! was up next, and this was the second time Rot Shit played with them in our band’s duration. They keep getting better and better and their live show wasted no time in bowling me over yet again with their thrashing mad irreverent hardcore. Getting to see Eric Schultz drum in any band is always a treat, and I thoroughly believe playing a show in which sets last between six and eighteen minutes per band is always great because it leaves me plenty of time to meet new folks and run around drinking beer and yelling.
Here’s Tabman in mid-thrust:
I hung out in the kitchen for a lot of the night standing by our awful merch display.
These kids were really nice. Cute couple.
Perhaps I forgot to mention that by this point, all of us were freezing our blood in the Midwestern winter, and on top of that, our van ceased to start. After receiving five jumpstarts within a twenty-block trip, we realized that we were on a collision course with the dreaded spectre of Tour Van Problems. I was less than overjoyed by 3 AM in Milwaukee:
We woke up in Milwaukee hoping for the best, but spirits were low since we were unsure how much money we would have to drop to get our rolling pile of crap back in working order. In addition to whatever battery/starter/alternator problems we may have been having, I believe I forgot to mention that the van pulled in the other direction whenever brakes were applied, was big enough to be significantly jostled by the blaring gusts of wind on the highway, and was so dirty and covered in beer and garbage that I vowed to stop and clean the whole thing the second we got to Memphis and were no longer jerking off Old Man Winter. I actually did accomplish that, too. No thanks to anyone but me.
So after buying a battery for a hundred and forty dollars, we got back on the road to Memphis. But since we had no show in St. Louis, we spent an entire day in the van. I don’t want to discuss that. It was not fun. We reached Memphis at 4 in the morning, hoping to stay with April Novak (which had been promised to us). However, after arriving at her house, we found she was passed out drunk in her bed. After beating on the windows and waking up her cat, two neighborhood dogs, and probably creeping out her entire block, we noticed that she simply pulled the covers over her head and fell back asleep. Since it was 40 degrees in Memphis, I felt like I was walking in South Beach, until I realized I had to sit in the van even longer. I had had enough and told Drugula to text message Alicja Trout, who was so kind and generous and let us into her house to pass out on her floor. Luckily I don’t think we woke her baby up, but the next thing I remembered was staring at a hardwood floor and more glad to be stretched out than I had in my entire life. Alicja was a doll and even cooked us breakfast. You can read about that on 7-Inch Slam. I had a glass of her merlot (shut up) before we headed out to find a place to attach a new brake pad to the van. The cold weather had stuck our brake calipers in place, which we thought would at first be an easy fix for a real mechanic since we’d bought parts. We drove around with one working brake trying vainly to find a place that wouldn’t completely rip us off. No such luck. Three-hundred dollars later, the hilljacks working at Midas had earned another pickup truck payment, the biggest dope dealer in Memphis had returned to town on the news, the girl sitting next to me learned about Rot Shit, and we had drawn eleven fliers for a show we hoped to play at Kevin’s house in Columbus that never materialized. But we did draw some hilarious fliers. I’ll post a few here. If you get offended, tough shit, there’s nothing I can do.
Here’s the Drugula flier up close:
Here’s some more:
By now we’d also decided that aliens smoking pot and asking to be “taken to your dealer” was the funniest thing in the world.
You can read all about my soul food adventures with Clyde at 7-Inch Slam in a day or so. From there we headed as quickly as we could to the Goner store to sell off some records and finally see the place I’ve dumped so much money at online over the last couple years. I was not disappointed. Think about one rack in your record store being this great:
Jay Reatard walked in before us and went to conduct business with Eric O., so I didn’t meet Eric or Zac, which sucked. But luckily, my boy Joe T. from Rat Traps and TSOT was working the counter. Here’s everyone buying some stuff, I didn’t pick anything up because I had to save money, but I saw at least 75 records I would gladly buy were they to make their way up to my humble city:
After that, we headed over to Murphy’s. We met this guy when we walked into the joint. His name is Kevin and he was the nicest person I’ve ever met in my entire life.
He bought two 7″s, two CD’s, and two shirts within five minutes of meeting us. In addition, he bought us drinks, told us we were going to be in the movie he was making about a character exactly like himself (which I’ve thought of doing at least three-hundred times), and introduced us to his friends with names like COWBOY (see middle of the picture). These guys were all DUDES. And I don’t mean that they were kinda cool, nice guys. These were fuckin’ DUDES. Also, my main man Bubba from River City Tan Lines made his way there, and seeing that guy is the best thing that could have happened. No pictures (damnit), but I hope to get down there again and chill with Bubba and T-Money.
Everyone in Memphis is nice. We met babes, too. Hey babes!
The openers were Vile Nation.
These kids raged hard during their set and quickly won me over. Ripping youthful hardcore that also managed to exude a toughness that betrays the dudes’ in the band kindly excited demeanor. They were kids, and very cool ones at that. I didn’t see if they had a record available, but I’d pick one up if given the chance. We were up next, and I like to think we didn’t disappoint. April Novak took some photos of us (yes, apparently she woke up at some point), and I’ll have some more to add soon:
From there, we had to literally run out the door and drive to Columbus (no time for love, Dr. Jones). Kevin and Wild Bill held it together for the ten hour horrid night-time drive.
We ended up in Columbus the next day at Rich from Psychedelic Horseshit’s house. Rich is one of my favorite people that I’ve ever met in my life.
Kevin got some well-deserved rest:
We hung out and decided to go to the Times New Viking LP release show in a large fancy auditorium. The Feelers and Ponys were playing as well. As much as the word “fop” was tossed around on this tour, generally pertaining to me and my fancy ways, this was the most foppish crowd I’d seen in a long time. Proof that college kids still got it in the humor department:
Here’s the hallway leading up to the show. I can feel the Senior Art Show about to jump off at any minute.
The Feelers killed it right away:
We went to the backstage area because “we got it like that”. I began eating all the fancy food and drinking the bands’ beer. Here’s what you see in Fancy Town when you’re in a band:
Dudes with their ladies. Aleks from the Feelers and Megan.
Dudes being dudes. My main man Matt from P. Horseshit and one of the cats from Sword Heaven, who was very cool.
Rappers. This is Tony. He raps under the name Envelope. He was very cool and down to party, as well. Columbus is a fun town. I dig his rap style as well. Glad to hear white people can’t only make emo rap.
Dudes falling asleep. Drugula and JG from the Feelers.
More babes being fashionable and shit that won’t talk to you.
Fops killin’ it in the dressing room.
Women be hatin’. Megan and Beth from TNV.
The Ponys were up next. I went out to give them a look and they were just alright. I enjoy their records quite a bit, but live I didn’t catch any of the swirling psyche cacophony that people described their live set being comprised of. All I heard were new songs played tightly by a band that didn’t move. The singer was also wearing the world’s largest sweater. I dunno how people do it. So I can’t say I hated them, but I can’t say they made much of an impression, either. I stand by all of their vinyl output before this new LP, though. I haven’t bought it or listened to it much. Who cares?
Times New Viking closed out the festivities. They were not bad at all and definitely stepped up their live show from when they played with Clockcleaner in Pittsburgh at CMU. I heard their new LP on Matador in the van on Kevin’s iPod and I must say they’ve really honed their chops when it comes to songwriting, especially on the track “(My Head)”. As soon as my debit card returns, I’ll pick one up. All in all, I can’t complain about seeing this show. I got fed, got drunk, and got to run around like a big shot. Can’t say it was better than playing a gig, but it’s not everyday you can steal from a college. I know I’m a fan.
We headed back to Rich’s house and did not play a party with Pink Reason. Our show with the Feelers and Vegetative State at Cafe Bourbon Street was only a day away. Rich called Little John AKA Dink and he drove from Pittsburgh for some ungodly reason. Eric Courtney was not convinced so easily, so he never showed up.
Little John then drew an odd flyer for a show that had already not happened the night before.
Here’s Sister, the dog at Rich’s house, for you lames who can only look at animals on the internet.
After that, we drove to a shit mall and snuck into the new Rambo flick. Mind-numbingly brutal. I was amazed by people being cut in half with machine gun fire, but quite bored with a movie with no actual exposition, story, plot, dialogue, or resolution. Whatever, it was free and I was wasted:
Things began to get silly at the club when we got there that night. We just wanted positive vibes, maaaaan. The theme of the night was “PEACE”.
Somehow when you’re in Rot Shit, hot babes will wear your stupid hot dog buttons.
The opening band, MOTO Virus, attached a tape recorder to the ceiling. We gave it some silent love.
There’s not much more to describe. Here’s some dumb pictures of us being morons.
Vegetative State are so fun to watch. This was my second time seeing them and I keep thinking of Jerry O’Connell in Stand By Me when that guitarist gets into it. He is the shit. These kids have a record out on Death By Noise. Once they buy some new threads and new gear, they’ll be big. Mark my words.
Rot Shit was up next.
This might have been our best set all tour. We walked out to 2 Live Crew’s “Banned in the USA”.
Here is the only time I’ve ever lifted my guitar during a lead part. This one is for posterity.
We waved goodbye to the crowd to the Looney Tunes theme song, which I like to think has never been done. I’m done actually doing work on the tour now and will simply just be for the duration till I get back to sweet sweet domicile.
The Feelers were up next and they destroyed. ‘Nuff said. Some of my favorite people and one of the best punk bands in the world.
We stopped at Rich’s house to grab the last of our stuff and hit the road. I drove us home to Pittsburgh, parked at my house, grabbed my stuff and said “I’ll see you in a month. Later.” I was over it. When I came home, it turns out my mom had stopped by my apartment and my bed was made. I really couldn’t complain.
That’s it. Rot Shit’s last show ever is March 17th. Our records are both out of print on Big Neck and Fashionable Idiots. I’d like to thank everyone who helped us, fed us, got us wasted, Kevin and WB for driving us and helping out, and anyone who took pictures or helped me be just a little bit lazier. Remember, if you want to see what I ate, head over to 7-Inch Slam. I’m finished.
Peace, assholes.
Big Ole Schleep
