A Small Victory

A Small Victory has moved on.

This is all that remains, the archives are no longer accessible.

Please visit the new, improved weblog: Faster Than the World where the turtle and I will continue to blog about punk rock and fast cars and whatever else strikes us at the moment.

If you have asv linked on your blog, please update the URL to http://fasterthantheworld.com and note the name change.

See you at the new place!

[you can't leave comments here because the archives are closed, but feel free to come on over to fttw and talk to us]

Posted by me at 12:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today's selection brings you one of the greatest American music recordings ever made: The Supersuckers' Evil Powers of Rock and Roll.

"Adrenaline drips off the frets like week-old bongwater...**** (4 stars)!!" --Guitar World... ...Honestly, the Supersuckers are the greatest live band Seattle has seen sinceJimi was playing street fairs and Heart was covering Led Zeppelin I and II at the Aquarius.

Turtle goes first:

One of the first times I heard this album was right before the tour. They were selling it outside a coffee house where you could get coffee and beer and the same time. Wanna see a fucked up crowd? Sell them caffeine and alcohol. Feed them a little nicotine and you got the makings of either a fucked up crazy show or a riot of kids screaming for one more shot of espresso in their beer cause tonight is the only their parents will let them go out. And if they were gonna go out, they better break something cause tomorrow is a school day.

This album makes no excuses and makes no friends. It does what it does and walks away.

The music grabs you. They are so cock rock. A Texan band living in Seattle. They had the cards there. The music showed it. Something in there came out and said "hey dude, this is cocaine, this is wine, take a big slug cause the dope is mine."

They were new and neat and before they went all cowboy on my ass, a great band to see. This is the best Supersuckers album there is. It makes you remember what rock and roll is, balls hanging out throwing cans at your neighbors, and saying "fuck you" to the world..... Hard driving, broad finding, beer drinking, tv watching, dice throwing, card playing, rock and roll. And if you don't like it. Fuck you. This is who they were. And if you don't like it you can always go buy another album. They will be there when you come back.

Great album. Great rock. Welcome to Texas, motherfucker. Get a hat and grab a beer cause it all gets hard from here.

-T

If anyone ever tells you rock is dead, just sit them down and make them listen to Evil Powers of Rock and Roll. This is the kind of music that makes you believe there is life after nu-metal and emo and boy bands, that there is no such thing as the day the music died, that the negative aura left by every niche and novelty rock band out there can’t kill rock and roll because as long as the Supersuckers exist, rock and roll will still be around to kick ass and take names.

This is the kind of album playing in the background of a heated poker game where large, mustached men in denim vests and ten gallon hats drink moonshine and accuse each other of cheating and occasionally pull out a six shooter to make a point.

It’s a Saturday night driving up and down the main highway in town, half of it spent giving the finger to people who have nicer cars than you, the other half spent throwing empty Budweiser cans out the window and yelling drunken obscenities at the girls lingering in the Burger King parking lot.

It’s music that belongs on a half warped cassette tape that you shove into the tape deck of your 20 year old car and you sing out loud along with it as your car backfires almost in time to the songs.

It reminds you at once of the lights of Vegas, of dirt roads, of Satan and deserts and bar fights and motorcycles. It’s rock and roll, Texas style. And it’s one of the best damn albums ever put down on vinyl.

-M

Evil Powers of Rock and Roll
Kickass Life
Gone Gambling
I Want the Drugs
Fisticuffs

Posted by me at 06:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tonight, by request, we bring you the Pontiac GTO.

I’ve picked out a very specific GTO to write about: the 1969 GTO, model called The Judge.

I searched high and low for a black version of this car, and came up with only two or three. It seems most of them were done up in Sunkist Orange. Normally, I don’t do orange, but somehow the color looks hot on this car. Hell, this is the kind of car you could roll out in some hideous shade of puke green and it would still look good.

If cars were guys, the ‘69 GTO would be the guy your mother warned you about; the one you are not supposed to look at, let alone talk to, because one stare from him would turn your chastity belt to dust. Yea, if this car were a guy, I would be standing in front of it, leaning down low, wearing the lowest cut shirt I own whispering something about checking the dipstick.

Except it’s gotta be the hardtop, not the convertible. Convertibles are nice on some cars, but when you are riding a bad boy like this, soft just won’t do.

-M

If I ever rode in one of these I think I would remember. So we are gonna go with a "Turtle has never been in one of these cars" day. They happen folks. Belive it or not, there are some cars I have never been in. I researched the specs and hey hell, it must have been cool. And some of your email suggestions make me feel like I missed half of the world. The wind passed me by and I didn't stop to breathe in.

Hey, dude. It happens.

Thats a '65 Pontiac GTO. Looks pretty fucking mean if you ask me. That looks like something you drove teenagers around with in high school while seeing how loud the engine is. Trying to remember how to unhook a bra on the girl next to you while she is drunk on one beer. Cheap date and a cool car. If only you could get your dick to suck itself you wouldn't need anything else.

Sometimes you feel sad missing a car like this. But this car really looks like something that would pull the diaper of a newborn as it was just warming up and tear the baby teeth out of a 5 year old as it blew by. It looks like a car that someone would be in after they slammed a six pack and the only thing on their mind was seeing the next show. Or going to Burger King. You make the call 'cause I don't fucking know.

This is the kinda car that would move things and ask the world to watch cause it was only going around once and you better pay fucking attention cause it wasn't gonna do it again no matter how many fucking times you asked. It lived for the moment.

Hey dude, that's the feelling I get. For all I know it could have a pussy engine. But the Ramones mention it a lot so it's probably a kick ass car. So I'll just go with them and agree. Cool looking car.

-T

Keep your email suggestions coming on all cars, all songs, all records and all bands. Cause we are having fun with this and we hope you are too.

MC5 Thunder Express
Ramones - Rock and Roll High School
Iggy Pop - Lust For Life

Posted by me at 05:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Today we are going back. Back to the first exposure you had to a classic punk rock album. An album that if you dig deep enough into your record collection, you will find it. Reeking like cigarettes and beer. Something that makes you smile when you put it on. The memories when you first heard it. What was your first feeling when you heard this album? Where were you at? What were you doing? Hopefully this will become a regular feature and you guys can add your first feelings. - T

Todays album is the self titled debut of the Ramones. Have fun guys and girls cause we did.

"The Ramones. The Ramones. The Ramones! You gotta hear the Ramones! You gotta hear the Ramones!" A battle cry I heard in the backlot of some ash covered street. Someone telling me how good they were. Someone twice my age telling me they were the greatest band in the world. How punk rock was shit now and how they started it all.

Well ok. First of all fuck you and don't steal my beer, and second of all, I'll get a copy of it in the morning.

You have to understand, I was a kid. I was into early 80's California punk rock. Shit that was mean and angry and didn't really give a fuck about anything although they always tried to sound like they cared about some cause. Well, maybe they didn't but who knows. I was a kid. Californina songs were about beer and hating "Bob," who ever Bob was at moment, were pretty common. But theses songs, the ones I grew up on, the early Califonia punk songs, were fast, mean and lean. Hell, even G.B.H. was a little slow for my style. I needed shit like D.R.I. to make me breathe and bring life me into after waking up on a curb in the morning.

I went out anyway and bought the first album and put it on. My friend and I looked at each other in shock. Turned the wax up to 78 rpm cause we thought it was broken. Like they recorded too slow. Or it was a joke. Or I bought the wrong album. I sat thinking "This is what all the hype is about? This is why they are so big? This kinda sucks, dude."

Remember I was a kid. But as the years grew on I realized that without this album, no one would be where they are today.

I still have this album and cd. This is album I listen to when I just want to rock and think about nothing. What I missed then, I understand now. This album was the blueprint for punk rock.

Plus 53rd and 3rd fucking rocks.

-T

You ever get so excited about something, some new discovery, that you want to share it with everyone you know and so you do and when you shove it in their faces all wild-eyed and stammering with the sheer joy of your find, they look at you like you’ve lost your fucking mind and slowly back away from you?

That’s what happened when I discovered the Ramones. Summer, 1976 ,thank you WNEW-FM. I had been mired in KISS’s Destroyer and Blue Oyster Cult’s Agents of Fortune at that point, and I was about to embark upon a one person war against disco, using the hardest rock I could find as weaponry. No, I had no idea how I was going to wage this war, I just knew that somehow, someway, Thin Lizzy would figure into the death of Donna Summer. Someone had to kill her.

And then I heard the Ramones. And I knew. My satanic, devil worshiping heavy metal was not going to destroy disco. Joey Ramone was. From the first riff of the first Ramones song I heard (Beat on the Brat), the music hooked me in. There was something about it, something raw and exciting and...different. So different. The vocals, the chords, the energy, the sparseness of the music, the simplicity of it all. It made me want to jump around my bedroom. It made me want to play guitar. It made me want to buy a black leather jacket and cut my hair and stick a safety pin in my ear. Hey, I was 14. Leather jackets were cool and so were the Ramones.

I grabbed a handful of dollar bills out of my allowance jar. I was saving for a new stereo system, but this need, this feeling that I had to have this music in my hands needed to be appeased. So I walked the mile to Modell’s to buy the album. I spent the entire walk home cradling that album in my arms as if it was going to change my world. Maybe it did. Maybe it didn't. But it changed me. And that’s all that mattered.

I spent the next few days holed up in my bedroom spinning this record over and over again. 53rd and 3rd, Blitzkrieg Bop, holy shit, this was the most amazing thing I’d ever heard. It wasn’t great music, I recognized that. You weren’t going to get into a discussion about the complexity of time changes. You couldn’t sit around and get stoned with your friends and analyze the lyrics like we did with Pink Floyd. You just listened to it, for the sake of listening. Just enjoyed it. It gave me a feeling like there was something more out there, something beyond the layered nuances of Led Zeppelin songs that were really nothing more than Lord of the Rings fanfic. Something so simple, yet so enormous.

I fell in love with this album, fell in love with Joey Ramone, fell hard in love with punk rock. And I had to go it alone because, my friends? They sucked, man. It wasn’t until about five or six years later that they finally figured out that the Ramones weren’t some fad band, that they changed the face of music, but by then, my sorry friends had become pussified by too much Bruce Springsteen and not enough four chord rock and roll. But what can you do? We were just kids. And some kids are just stupid when it comes to good music.

-M

Beat on the Brat
Blitzkreig Bop
I Don't Wanna Go in the Basement
53rd and 3rd

[thanks to tesco for saving the day with the mp3s today]

Posted by me at 08:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

Today we decided to take a little break from classic cars, muscle cars and vans. Hey, we can do that. Dammit ,we can! Just have a little fun with you guys.

This was the vehicle that you dreaded as much as flu shots. This was the thing that shivered your bones as you sat eating cold oatmeal on a Monday. This was the thing that when you saw it coming up the street , final fleeting thoughts ran through your head about sticking your finger down your throat and pretending to have the flu.

The same one that stunk of lighter fluid and beer. Mixed with a litle exhaust, a little wood chippings and the stench of vomit from the kid who couldn't hold down his Cheerios, much less ride in a moving vehicle .

A true beast of a machine that somehow could get away with the saftey belt laws and have kids running up and down the aisles while some strung out mother who is just trying to make ends meet drives the rig, wondering why in the fuck her kid really needs braces. I mean no one's teeth are fucked up enough for this job.

So thats the fun post of the day although now that i think about it, I might go in the bathroom and cry.

Add your own nightmare bus stories, cause I'm busy having some bad flashbacks.

-T

______________

I didn't have much experience with the big yellow bus, but what I did have was pretty much unforgettable.

I walked to school from kindergarten through sixth grade. In seventh grade, our town voted against the school budget and we went into an austerity budget for many years. Eighth grade, we trudged the mile or so to school on our own two feet. From 9th to 12th grade, when I went to private school, they shuffled us there and back in regular buses, the kind old ladies with shopping bags and scary men with wandering eyes rode in the morning.

So my only year riding the yellow monster was the 1974/75 school year, in seventh grade.
We had a bus driver that just might have been the prototype for Otto. Long haired, constantly red-eyed and completely ignorant of the shit that was going on in the back of the bus. Or let's say willfully ignorant. The smoking, cursing, fighting, dry humping, drug dealing, seat kicking, hair pulling, name calling, lunch stealing, money grubbing, fighting, fighting, fighting that went on from one end of town to the other.

I sat in the middle of the bus, far enough away from the back to not be bothered by the noise (hey, I was trying to get some more sleep in) and far enough away from the front to not be called a nerd.

Otto had a cassette player that he brought on the bus. James Duncan, Electronics Freak, also had a portable cassette player. Each day would bring a duel. James played the radio, though. I think the station was 99x. Every morning he'd be blasting songs like Seasons in the Sun and Billy Don't Be a Hero and Otto would be blasting things like Lou Reed and David Bowie and every time James would turn up his radio to try to drown out Otto's music, Otto would stop the bus, turn around, call James a faggot (had way different connotations back then) and then put in his tape that played nothing but Spark's This Town Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us over and over again. I'd lean forward in my seat and concentrate on Sparks hard enough so that Hall and Oates or whatever the hell was playing on Duncan's radio would fade from my head.

And that's pretty much how I spent my one year on a school bus. Getting a contact high and learning how to drown out the crap music for the good stuff. Thanks, Otto.

-M

More muscle cars later folks. Right now we need a minute.

Dead Milkmen - Takin' Retards to the Zoo
Faith No More v. Sparks - This Town Ain't Big Enough For the Both of Us
Turbonegro - Back to Dungaree High

For past car entries, see sidebar.

Posted by me at 03:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Just a couple of notes:

• The Misfits post has been updated, so come on down there and have some fun with that.
• I've been getting a lot of suggestions for car posts, as well as album review ideas, so feel free to throw a suggestion out, they are always welcome.
• All recent content (cars, underground, reviews, lists) is now in the sidebar. Also, any songs used in entries here are available on the sidebar
• We're working our best punk albums of the 90's thing, so if you want to throw your two cents in with suggestions, feel free
• Just want to throw out a quick thank you to those who have stuck around to read this new, improved incarnation of this site. This is the most fun I've ever had blogging. And thanks to those who have thrown some links this way as we try to bring in a whole different set of readers. And thank you always to the turtle, who was the one who inspired me to get the site going again and (in my opinion) whose stories are the best part of this thing.
• You'll notice that the "a small victory" part of the title of this site is gone from both the header and the logo. We'll be moving everything over to a new URL eventually. So this site is now called Faster Than the World.

It's called moving on. And it's good.

And just because all the posts here have songs, here is one that I've been listening to on repeat all day. It's some kick ass rock and roll.

Rockety From the Crypt - Salt Future

Posted by me at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

This is the seventh in a series. It is someone else's story, told to and transcribed by me. Basically, he gave me the details and atmosphere and lot of the words and I put them together in my magic hat and pulled this out. His voice, his story, my translation..

Never Go Back

Some days you feel you have to do what you have to do. Running on empty, feeling there must be some sort of deity who is either out to get you or just bored. Just wasting time fucking with you til "Batman " reruns would come on and he could sleep on the couch. See, this is why I don't believe in god.

One night when we were just starting, we played a gig in San Francisco. The set was alright. It was a two staged set. Two totally different styles of music. One upstairs and one downstairs.

Not really caring about anything but playing, I went to sleep in the truck, carefully noting where the sun was at in the sky so I knew how long I could sleep. Crocodile Fucking Dundee. Like I knew.

When I woke up there were tons of people there. It was two bars, two sets and Saturday night.

We didn't really want to mess with anyone or make any enemies. It had already been a bad run. The last three months were spent cleaning blood off some piece of equipment, the van, or ourselves and we were getting, well, getting fucking tired of it. Waking up in the morning with your hand smelling like a penny gets old after awhile.

The bass amp was huge. We called it "The widow maker." When you say it's name you grab your balls and squeeze. That thing was a mess. A huge Fender cab that weighed probably as much as my mother when she was on her "Pork Diet." It was big and it did was it was intended to do, but it was missing two wheels. Great. Just fucking great. We had a make shift crew that consisted of a neighbor and that was it. He was the one. The one who got free ins but instead of helping, used our drink tickets. He was it. Great. Just fucking great. We had to drag this thing in every night while I kept reassuring my friends that "hey dude, it might bust your balls, but it was fucking cheap ok?"

The set goes, we finish up and and I'm walking around afterwards wondering what happened to my gear. "Widow Maker? Baby?" Finally, our "roadie" said he found our hand truck and would pull my amp out. But, wait.we didn't have a hand truck. Hm. This is the way it works folks, anytime you think "Hm" something is probably wrong. But hey, I was a young dumb kid so loaded on free beer I could barely function my fingers much less put together a sentence asking where that thing came from. "Cool," I thought as I jumped in the van. The roadie pulled the Widow Maker and "our" hand truck in and we took off for home.

Some time during the trip it occurred to me that the hand truck was not ours. It was the club's. We stole it from them. You could put together your thoughts as if this was justified, but in the back of my mind, we stole from them. Burning bridges in this business is not a good thing.

About two or three hours from home, I decided we had to go back and I took over the driving. This was not right. Fuck, everyone was sleeping anyhow Who cares. We had to take the hand truck back. You don't want to leave a club thinking that a band stole from them. I don't even know how much those fucking hand trucks are but i spent more on gas bringing it back than the fucking OPEC nations do pumping out crude.

When I got back, the guy who had stamped our hands the night before was still at the door, probably too tweaked to go home. He asked what we wanted. It was way before 6 in the morning and they weren't even open yet. I explained to him how we made a big mistake the night before and grabbed their hand truck by accident and we wanted to return it and it was an honest mistake and... The dude looks at the hand truck. Stares. Then says "You didn't have to bring that back. That's an old one."

At that exact moment when those words hit my ears, I decided I would burn every bridge like the Towering fucking Inferno.

Dag Nasty - Never Go Back
Dag Nasty - Thin Line

Posted by me at 06:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Simple question for the evening. What's your favorite Misfits song? We posed the question to ourselves and some other bloggers who will weigh in later (we'll add as we get). Feel free to play along.

Mine first. You have no idea how hard this was. I had to leave off Angelfuck and Hate Breeders. That killed me.

Where Eagles Dare - Why? Besides the awesome refrain, you get to sing a line like "an omelette of disease awaits your noontime meal." download

Halloween - My favorite holiday, my favorite time of year and this song gets the imagery just right: brown leafed vertigo, I remember Halloween. Plus you got the whole burning bodies hanging from poles thing. download

Some Kind of Hate - because only Danzig can make the lyrics "The maggots in the eye of love wont copulate" sound like a love song. download

Turtle's:

She - I liked this because if was about a girl with a machine gun. Hey dude. Tits and guns. Tits and guns dude. Guns and tits!! This song was gold before it was even put to wax. download

Devil Lock - Was this a song about their hair? I mean even though they looked stupid this song moved.download

Earth A.D. - A new venture and a new tone by the Misfits. Dumping the Goth-punk to becone Deathpunk on the first track. Pretty cool. download

Update: Tesco sends his favorites:

Misfits - All Hell Breaks Loose: I know its not all that glamorous but this tune is early hardcore at its finest. A perfect blend of simple rhythm, cut time drums and a pit sparking chorus. Perfection.

Msifits - Green Hell The best off the second real full legnth, so much so that even Metallica destroyed covered it.

Misfits - Death Comes Ripping : This is the first song that comes to my mind when someone brings up the Misfits - excellent tune. No new hard-rock, metalcore, neopunk band can even get close to this.

Scott from Strange Reaction adds his:

Night of the Living Dead - This sums up early Misfits to me. It has the obligatory "whoaoh" chorus and it's about zombies, what more can you ask from a Misfits song?

Earth A.D. - The best of their thrash period. Starts with a nice bit of feedback and then just jumps to life at a hundred miles an hour..

Bullet - Take the Kennedy assassination and mix filthy lyrics with Jackie O = winner!

Posted by me at 07:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (16)

Today's car is the much maligned, often mocked El Camino.

Turtle's story first:

Why were these cars made? They were like for someone who kinda wanted a truck and kinda wanted a lowrider? It doesn't matter. They sold. When i was a kid the only thing I remember about that car was rolling around in it with my very old uncle showing me a glass he got from "Burger King" with the Tasmanian Devil on it saying "Now. Now I am cool". Me being 12 looking at him saying "Dude, no. No you are not"

Thats the car. A 78 El Camino. A car that said "Hey, even thou I'm old I'm still cool. Really. And no matter what you say I'm still get more broads than you . Cause hey, I got an El Camino." It's a mixure of sadness and pain to see a loved one with his head so far in the clouds you could think he saw jesus. But you shake your head and push the soundtrack for "Grease" into the 8-track and watch him groove. I swear. Everytime I hear "She's the one that I Love" another piece of my heart is taken. ooh ohh ohh

Later in life the El Co became a car that we needed. One guy drove to shows. He had the car. We all pilled in the back. A shitty old one. One that made you think this was gonna be your last day alive, but you don't have a driver's license, so what the fuck? The exaust was broke so we all got a free buzz driving around. But he was the only one driving so you kinda have to take it and pray that if you die tonight, at least, if there is a god, at least you will be drunk. If I was gonna go down it had better be on the way home from the Cro-Mags show rather then on the way there.

Hey, I liked the band, ok?

It was like a free high. Kinda like huffing but without all the messy paint on your lips. Don't get me wrong. It was a cool car. But my brain cells paid a price for rolling around in the back of that thing.

Cro Mags - We Gotta Know
Franki Valli - Grease is the Word

And mine:

Come on, man. Really. What was the purpose of this car? Of all the guys I know who had one - and that was at least seven that I can think of - none of them had any use for something that was half car, half truck. One guy thought it was a party on wheels and he would throw a case of beer and a boombox in the back and everyone would pile into the back while he drove around Long Island. But where was the fun in that for him? Sure, everyone looked for Vinny on a Friday night, but he became kind of like the kid that everyone hates but hangs out with anyhow because his parents just put a pool in the backyard. So everyone was like, fuck him and let's use him and let him drive us around. Hey, hell. He had fun. A sad kind of fun but fun none the less. Me, I never went on the Vinny excursions. Even in my wild, daredevil youth, I never thought that riding around drunk in the open cab of an El Camino was a good idea and I was proven right on more than one occasion when one of my drunken friends fell out of the car.

Then there was Dino. Yea, my neighborhood was filled with Italian Stallions. The guy with the macho stance, the Italian horn on a gold chain around his neck, the slicked back hair and monosyllabic vocabulary. And the 78 El Camino. We - being the stoners that we were - didn’t care much for Dino and his wifebeaters and disco music, but he was dating one of the girls we hung out with, so we tolerated him. Sort of. It was more like we sat around watching him and Gloria swap spit and grope each other’s asses through Gloria Vanderbilt jeans, but we spent a lot of that time plotting how to kill him. Or at least destroy his El Camino. If one tear dropped out of his eyes watching that car burn, victory would have been ours.

We ruled against the Molotov cocktail thing, as that whole didn’t work out too well with Mr. Brady’s Chevy. Learn through experience, as they say. So we decided on death by liverwurst. Yes, liverwurst. This kid Bobby had heard that if you stuck something up the tailpipe of a car, it would make the car blow up when the driver tried to start it. Specifically, he heard it with a potato, but we did not have a potato handy. However, we were parked in the lot of my uncle’s deli and it would take only one second of smooth talking to my cousin to get a whole liverwurst out of the store.

So Bobby shoved the liverwurst in the El Camino’s tailpipe while Dino and Gloria were dry humping in the front seat to the beat of some Bee Gees song. When he had squished it in there good, he tapped on Dino’s fogged up window and told him we were moving the party to the park. This was gonna work, dammit. This would be the end of the El Camino and ultimately the end of the Bee Gees.

We waited. What we expected to happen was that the car would kind of backfire and smoke would come out of the tailpipe and maybe...oh, who the fuck knows? We just thought it would fuck up the car good and we’d have a good laugh at Dino’s expense and maybe he would stop coming around. We were young, stupid and stoned. And, apparently, naive. Don’t believe everything you hear, kids. Especially when it comes to blowing things up.

Dino started the El Camino and it kind of sputtered and died. We heard him curse and he turned the key again. Sputter and die. More cursing. Another try. This time he gunned the engine hard. The liverwurst came flying out of the tailpipe, a deadly trajectory of lunch meat headed straight for us. Someone yelled “Hit the floor!” and we all ducked down, trying to dodge the flying liverwurst.

It landed in a messy clump about five feet in front of us. We were rolling around the parking lot hysterical laughing at the absurdity of it all when Dino got out of his car to examine what the fuck just happened. He looked at us, at the liverwurst and back at his car.

He came at us, fists clenched, teeth bared, not at all put off my our laughter. “You fucking fucked with my fucking Camino? I’ll fuck you all up. You fuckers.” My. Such a vulgarian. In truth it really didn't surprise me that every other word out of his mouth was fuck. I mean he was driving a fucking El Camino, for fuck’s sake.

Except he didn’t fuck us up. He went back to his Camino and Gloria, got the car going and squealed out of the parking lot with some Bee Gees song blasting out the window.

Bee Gees? Jesus, dude. If you’re going to drive a cock car, at least get the music right. Maybe if he had Road to Ruin blowing out the windows instead of Night Fever, he wouldn’t have seemed so absurd.

Ramones - Mama's Boy
Bee Gees - Stayin' Alive

On a side note, here is some info on blowing up a car by sticking shit in the tailpipe.

For previous cars, please see the sidebar.

Posted by me at 11:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Speedealer originally formed in 1994 in Lubbock, TX, under the name REO Speedealer. When REO Speedwagon served the band a cease-and-desist order on their moniker, they shortened their name to Speedealer. In 1998, the band released their debut, self-titled album on Royalty Records. The following year, the hard rocking foursome -- made up of singer/guitarist Jeff Hirshberg, bassist Rodney Skelton, drummer Harden Harrison, and guitarist Eric Schmidt -- released their follow-up record, Here Comes Death, on the same label.

We each take a stab at reviewing here. Turtle takes on Here Comes Death:

What the hell was with this band? The tour for this record was my initial exposure to them. A bunch of Dallas tweaks on a semi-tour sitting in the back of a San Francisco club with me. I asked them what they sounded like. Drinking beer, the guitarist told me it was "shit that would rip your pants off." Alright tough guy. Prove it. And they did. This is something that you need a saftey belt to listen too. Pure rock and rock high on speed and full of beer. Not really caring about if anyone was watching, just wanted to get the set done as fast as possible and rock as hard as possible.

The sound on this album is amazing. The singer sounds like hasn't been asleep in weeks and the rest of the band sounds hyped as they just groove. This is dope rock if that’s even a genre. But you can tell the feeling in every song that they are rocking as hard as they can to get this thing on tape. Because they know there is a line in the back that has all their names on it. They just want to be as fast and as hard as they can to get this done in one take Because the beers are getting warm and that dope ain't gonna snort itself, now is it?

The outcome is "Here Comes Death." An awesome record that really has no method or no meaning, but if kicks ass. Really. Kicks fucking ass. If you are looking for deep lyrics, this isn't for you. But if you like high powered snarling cock rock with a twist of evil and a side of anger, crack a beer and put this fucker on.

Speedealer - Absinthe
side note from me: this is one of the greatest songs ever recorded. if you don't feel your adrenaline start pumping when that first kick hits, you are either dead or deaf.

My review is for Reo Speedealer:

Part Clutch, part Pantera, completely offensive and brazen and throw beer in your face kind of music. My kind of music. Only one song on this album clocks in over two minutes long. It’s like they want to fuck you up as quick as possible, just to leave you saying, what the fuck was that?

Remember when you used to go to hockey games to see fights and there would be a bench clearing brawl, one so big that every player was on the ice, even the guys who were dressed in street clothes and sitting in the press box, and the goalies were flinging bare fisted punches at each other and there was blood on the ice and beer flying in the stands and all you wanted to do was jump out of your seat and get in there yourself, throw a few punches, kick a few teeth in then maybe buy everyone a beer after?

That’s what this album feels like. It plays at a breakneck speed, throwing raw energy at you from start to finish, splitting your ears with vocals that make your throat ache just trying to match them. It’s not supposed to be listened in the comfort of your own home, either. Reo Speedealer was made to be listened to in a dive bar while breaking a pool cue over someone’s head. Or in a car that’s missing a muffler and coated in grey primer paint, kicking gravel from under the tires on some forgotten dirt road in the middle of nowhere, playing this so loud that the sound still feels like last nights drinking binge in your head long after the last note has ended.

Double Clutchin Finger Fuckin
Pussy

previous music from the vault:


new bomb turks - destroy oh boy
turbonegro - apocalypse dudes

Posted by me at 06:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The car of the night is....a van. We've got two van stories for you.

First, the turtle's story: The Sled

The van was old. Smelly. But it was fucking cheap. So it worked for us. Vans are a necessary evil sometimes and I'm not talking about fucking a girl when you are in High School while listening to Foghat thinking this is the greatest moment in your life, cause in all reality, if you are listening to Foghat, your greatest moment in life will probably be finding a soup kitchen while kicking crack cocaine. Doing the homeless shake. Dance for me fucker!

This was a van with a cracked suspension that barely took turns. A van that we named "The Sled" for obvious reasons. It was a van that would let you know it could take fucking anything but it sure as shit wasn't gonna make it easy or make any apologies. A van that was covered in ink marks and empty beer cans.

That fucker got us through so many states you wouldn't believe. It kept on going with the engine screaming at us. "Can we stop already? Please? All right, fuck you then. Let’s do this."

The van died one night. Not on the road. Not near home. But at home. In the driveway. A night after we got home. The van had made it. You could feel the heat and smell the smoke coming off it, scents that reminded you of the look of a bloody kid on the street who just got his ass kicked but still could say "Hey I got my ass kicked but I got through. So fuck you, assholes!"

It was like the van gave us the final finger saying it had won and we better get used to public transportation ‘cause it had done its job and just wanted to go to the great junkyard in the sky. And "Fuck you for doing this to me!!!"

I loved "the sled", god bless her.
[no, we did not drive around in a van that said free candy, that's just a random picture]

Slayer - Bitter Peace
Foghat - Slow Ride
Turbonegro - Ride With Us

Second story is mine: If the Van is Rockin'.......

The summer of ‘79 I dated this guy we’ll call Dave. It wasn’t a very deep relationship. We just enjoyed each other’s company and had some fun together, but we both knew we were just biding our time until something else came along.

We clocked a lot of hours that August driving to Jones Beach in Dave’s van. I hated the beach, but sacrificed for Dave because he had this notion that he was a surfer dude and surfer dudes belonged with the sea and sand. And he had a cool van.

Remember, this was the late 70's. Vans were cool back then.. No, not Ford Econoline vans borrowed from your father's flooring business, but custom vans, the kind with a bed and beaded curtains and a bitchin’ portrait of unicorns or some shit - maybe it was the cover of a Steve Miller album - painted on the side.

Dave loved his van as much as he loved the surf. He doted on that thing as if it were the hottest chick in the world and she was going to give him a blowjob every time he bought her something. Every Saturday morning he would go to the custom van shop and spend more money on his masterpiece; some new pinstriping, etchings on the windows, another mural, more beads and incense.

One side of his van had the unicorn shit. I think, anyhow. It might have actually been a portrait of Duane Allman. Hey, it was a long time and many tabs of mescaline ago. The other side of the van was dedicated to the beach and getting high. Tasty waves, a cool buzz, etc. Surf, sand and Columbian Gold all air brushed with exquisite precision. It was psychedelic, man. Like a car with tattoos.

The inside of the van was treated with even more reverence than the outside. Shag carpeting, a queen size mattress, a hand-crocheted blanket woven in the twenty colors of the acid-trip rainbow. Hanging beads separated the front of the van from the back, so whatever Dave's friends were doing to their skanks of the evening while Dave was driving them around remained private. There were velvet posters on the walls and a mirror on the ceiling and pink champagne on ice. No, not really. But it was gaudily decorated in a theme I like to call sex-me-up. Gauche, decadent and, when you are 17 and dating an older guy, kind of creepy.

One evening we arrive back home after a day at the beach and Dave turns around to me and says very nonchalantly:

I think we should stop seeing each other.
Excuse me?
I can't really date anyone right now.
Ok, that's cool and all, but umm...kind of out of nowhere?

Honestly, I didn’t care one way or the other. Dave and his van obsession was starting to grate on my nerves and he was pushing too hard to get me to “ride his mattress” as he put it. Yes, he used that phrase.

Anyhow, Dave explains the break up.

Well, I have my reasons. And it's not because you don't put out.
Dude, that mattress is skanky. I wouldn't lay down on that thing even if you put fifteen blankest on top of it. I’m sure I saw things crawling on it.
Yea, well, Brad’s girlfriend has crabs.
So what's the deal then? Why are you dumping me?
I just don't think it's fair to you. I'm really devoted to my van. That's what I want to spend my money on and my time with.

I giggled. I couldn’t help it.

Your van? You are dumping me for your van?
Yes, I wanted to be honest with you about it. And fair.

I got out of the van with my hand over my mouth and I think Dave thought I was heartbroken and crying but dude, I was hysterical laughing.

The next time I run into Dave is February, in the parking lot of Nassau Coliseum on the opening night of Pink Floyd’s The Wall show. He was sitting on the hood of Camaro.

Where's the van?
I sold it to Keith/
WHAT? How could you? I thought you loved that thing?
It’s this chick I’ve been seeing. She said it was either her or the van.
I’m guessing this chick rides the mattress.
Yea.

Somewhere in there is a lesson.

Fu Manchu - King of the Road
Fu Manchu - Action is Go

Check out this site: Don't Come Knockin' - lots of van stuff, plus an interview with Fu Manchu!

See also, Hoopty Rides: In Praise of Vans

See sidebar for list of previous car entries.

Posted by me at 06:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Unlike the 80's, we're going to take on the 90's year by year (and we may yet go back and revisit the 80's that way). We start, obviously, with 1990, which had a real dearth of good punk albums. Tesco will be joining us later with his picks for this year; feel free to add your own.

1990

Dwarves - Blood Guts & Pussy
Any album that kicks with a less than one minute song about getting fucked in a car has got to be good. The Dwarves were something to behold. A great album that makes you want to break things. Plus a midget covered in blood is fucking a rabbit on the cover. That's cool.

Mr. T Experience - Making Things With Light
Combines all the great things about pop music with all the perfect things about punk. It's like doing a square dance in a pit. Everyone is going to look at you like you're nuts, but eventually they'll join in the fun
MTX - Velveeta

Breeders - Pod
The intial offering of a post Pixies Kim Deal offered up a wide range of music styles. When I bought it I was surprised at the difference between her music writing and Frank Black's. But the big difference was Donelly. She had big tits. So it rated an A+ for a kid who never had seen a girl naked.





Steel Pole Bathtub - Tulip
Tulip was album that shook your teeth. In fact it kinda did mine. This album was on when I walked down the stairs and was knocked in the face by the sound. Its so raw and so "What the fuck is this?" that it deserved the attention of my front tooth that was sucked out by the power. Don't chew gum and listen to this cd at the same time.





Operation Ivy - Energy Hearing this was the least of my worries. Seeing them was the greatest. Drunk at the Gilman on a Saturday night hearing "Sound sytem gonna bring me back up!" was something that couldn't be placed on vinyl. But, they did a pretty good job transfering energy to wax.
Op Ivy - Sound System





Fugazi - 13 Songs
This album was the mold off of which every alternative record after it was shaped.. On first listen you might tilt your head and say “what the fuck is this?” but then you listen again. And again. And again. And you get it. It reaches in and grabs your gut and pulls. 16 years later, it still has a hold on me.
Fugazi - Promises




[music selections will be added this afternoon]

And that's about all we came up with for 1990; we were even stretching it by including The Breeders. Who knows, we might add one or two as the day goes on. Think we missed something? Tell us about it. For the record, both Social Distortion and Bad Religion had albums this year, but did not make the cut for either of us. Your mileage may, of course, vary.

I just noticed that RegnYouth had a post about Pod up yesterday.

Side notes: Strange Reaction has been added to the recommended reading list, and my Turbonegro post is up at 100 Records today.

Posted by me at 11:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

This is the sixth in a series. It is someone else's story, told to and transcribed by me. Basically, he gave me the details and atmosphere and lot of the words and I put them together in my magic hat and pulled this out. His voice, his story, my translation..

Sleepy in Seattle

Touring drags on you after awhile. Sometimes you wonder why you started this in the first place. All you can do is look at the dates and anticipate when the tour is ending. Calculating when the last gig will end and the time it will take you to get back in your own bed. It's a bleak feeling when you're near the end of a tour and you look at the gig dates and you come up with a 36 hour drive til you see your house. You damn well know everyone else is feeling the same way so it's gonna be a straight shot home. You'll be in that van for 36 hours and you hate even thinking of it. But it needs to be done. You need to be home. Living in a van sucks.

I was crashed out the floor of another band’s house in Seattle. The guys in that band kept kicking us to wake up, saying we were a bunch of sleeper boys. Fuck, we'd been on the road 16 hours after playing a gig in Portland then another in Seattle. All I could manage to do was stick my middle finger up from under my blanket and say "You know, you need to go fuck yourself."

We had a break that day, so we got up and went thrift store shopping. Dead tired. But something tells you that if you don't do get up and out, you are going to sleep all day and lose your ability to function in the night. See you get used to being on a "no sleep schedule" on tour. Sure you sleep, but really, how well can you sleep in a strange town on a strange floor with strange people when you don't even know what fucking time zone you are in? The local guys were all happy and fully rested and I looked at the guys in the band and saw the black circles underneath all of our eyes, which told me we were just about done. Thank fucking god this was almost over. ‘Cause we were gonna have to bury someone if this went on any longer.

We spent the morning by the wharf. That area of Seattle is full of great dive restaurants, the kind where you can eat an omelette, drink a beer and have a cigarette in your mouth at the same time. At 8am I was eating breakfast and listening to sailors tell me their stories as they drank vodka. I slammed back Budweisers as I wondered who the hell could drink vodka this early.

By noon, the whole band was dying and we had a show to play that night. We needed to sleep bad and it was up to each one of us to take care of that ourselves.

Later that day, we loaded in to the club. The sound check hadn't started yet. I got my hand stamp and drink tickets from the door. I looked at the guest list to see who it had on it then it hit me....I didn't know anyone in that fucking town . I needed to crash, bad. I had been sleeping in clubs for years. Didn't mean I liked it. I just got used to it. But it had to be done.

Right when I was just going down, I heard the thump of the bass drum. I was out of it. Not drunk, but completely exhausted. I had been awake a long time and instinct alone kept me going. I got up, walked out back with a smoke in my mouth and fell asleep outside. Right then some one kicked me up for sound check. Great just fucking great.

The band was half awake and half dead and as they walked on the stage before the check and I wondered if this gig was even gonna happen. I couldn't remember my middle name much less tune a fucking bass. Shoving back drinks, I pushed the button and I was ready. 15 minutes of this shit. Great. Just fucking great. Meanwhile a bench out back was calling me to sleep on.

But when the crowd moved in and the first band hit the stage, I had a feeling that this was gonna go. And the longer the opener played, the more I could sense that feeling coming up, that this was gonna happen tonight no matter how tired I was, these people wanted to see us and we damn well better come on stage and play.

Ramones - Touring
SNFU - Trudging

Posted by me at 09:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Compiled by both myself and my co-blogger the turtle, a list of the best punk albums of the 80's, one for each year, annotated accordingly. Your opinion may vary. In fact, we’re quite sure it does.

1980

The Dead Kennedys - Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables
The shock of the Sex Pistols had worn off and the Ramones were too likeable, so this album became the official music to shock my parents with. I really thought mom would get a kick out of Viva Las Vegas.
Viva Las Vegas (mp3)

1981

Adolescents s/t
This was a great album. Raw stupid and dumb. But songs like "I hate children" still run in the background of my head today. When you see a little kid in a store just screaming at his mom...I Hate Children automatically pops in your head.
I Hate Children (mp3)

1982

MDC s/t
Take about ten hits of speed, mix it with a gallon of anger and a pound of pissed off adrenaline and then light it all on fire and stand in the flames. That’s how this album feels.
I Remember (mp3)

1983

Minor Threat - Out Of Step
What can you say? The definition of an era. They broke a scene by building it back up. It wasn't so much the music as the lyrics that changed me. Cause aren't we all out of step with the world?
It Follows (mp3)

1984
SNFU - And No One Else Wanted To Play
Driving to a ditch to skate. Hearing "She's Not on the Menu" wondering who the fuck this band is while screwing down your trucks is something that hits you. This album is classic in all ways. Plus Chi Pig brings toys on stage! You can't fucking beat that.
She's Not on the Menu (mp3)

1985

7 Seconds - Walk Together Rock Together
Taken from the same folds as Minor Threat, the unity yells and unite calls were something a scene needed at that time. Great album with a great message - if we can't stand together, we will fall apart. Plus it fucking rocks.
Remains to be Seen (mp3)

1986

Bad Brains - I Against I
I was working in a record store and this semi-stupid guy I worked with said he was going to put on the new Bad Manners album for us to listen to and I was like, meh quirky ska, who needs it? But what he put on was this album and I remember when it was over saying it was the music listening equivalent of multiple orgasms.
I Against I (mp3)

1987

RKL - Rock and Roll Nightmare
Great dudes. Although one might say they are the Iron Maiden of punk rock. This record brought fun back into punk. Made you laugh and think which is a rarity in punk.
Beautiful Feeling (mp3)

1988

Suicidal Tendencies - How Can I Laugh Tommorow When I Can Even Smile Today
This album made me alternately feel like I wanted to kill myself or slam a random stranger in the face with the bottom of my doc marten. I never did either, but I still have plenty of time and this album on vinyl.
How Can I Laugh (mp3

1989

NoMeansNo - Wrong
Two words.....Big Dick.
Get it?
Big Dick (mp3)

No matter what you think of each album, you can't deny that it had some impact on either your life or someone else's life. 'Cause if it didn't, fuck, we wouldn't be doing it. Have fun and feel free to add your owns because we aren't perfect.

Also considered: GBH (CIty Baby's Revenge); Misfits (Walk Among Us); Descendents (Milo Goes to College); Circle Jerks (Group Sex); Fear (The Record); X (Los Angeles); Black Flag (Damaged)

Posted by me at 05:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (15)

Tonight, we talk about Cadillacs. Oh, not just any Cadillacs. See, I had one of those cars, but it was a ‘93 and, let’s face it, a ‘93 Caddy is just not the same as one of those 1970's pimp mobiles.

Back in the 70's, the “luxury” part of luxury cars meant the car was wide and long and more akin to a boat than an auto. People drove them the way they drive Hummers now. They were the equivalent of flashing a wad of hundred dollar bills in the face of your neighbors who only had fives. You know what I mean. Mr. Campo in his ‘72 gold Caddy with whitewalls driving slowly past your house like he’s in some fucking pimp parade, honking his horn (La Cucuracha) and waving smugly at you as you wash your 1967 station wagon. Mr. Campo was big pimpin'.

Tonight, my co-blogger the turtle takes the reigns on the storytelling:

Have you ever woken up in the morning and felt like life has hit you in the gut one to many times and maybe it would be better if you just stayed at home and play pool? Well, I was having one of those days. I woke up and just screwed my cue together, trying to forget the day. Hey, it happens some days.

Just as I was going for the break, my window shook. I heard a noise out side my door that was not only an engine, but a big fucking engine. Sounding like thunder or someone in the bathroom who ate at Wendy’s the night before. Either way, it was loud.

That’s a 71 Cadillac. That's a car that could probably hit a tank in WWII and still keep going. Not only going, but drive right thru it. Pure Detroit steel. That is the car all the parents want their kids to have because it was made like a brick shit house, even though they were terrified of the power under hood. It's a trade off.

I "borrowed" a ‘71 Caddy from a friend one night. It was shit white with the paint fading and the electrical system shot to shit. No light and no radio. Two bad things. No bueno, guys.

I was driving down the road with all the windows open just trying to get to a show. The car felt like a tornado inside. The wind ripped through but it was just too much fun. The cruising style of that car was like you are on an ocean. The feeling you get when you pull up next to an SUV. Them looking over at you. Wondering why you have this gas guzzling car and why you are slamming a beer at a stop light. And you are feeling so cool you can barely muster a middle finger but you do anyways just cause, well, cause you can. So fuck them, lets push and go, I don't have the time for your details.

The feeling of that car and the power of that car died one night. Everything went wrong. We tried everything to get it to live once again. But fate looked on it the wrong way. We pushed it too far too many times and it just gave up. Not for lack of trying, but from sheer exhaustion. We left it to die in the front of someone’s house and always talked about fixing it. The transmission, steering, electrical and suspension.

But we never did. Now she is screwing the cue together. She took too many to the gut.

Rancid - Time Bomb

Previous cars:
73 Duster
63 station wagon
73 Omega and 89 CRX
77 Trans Am
69 Camaro
70 Mustang Mach I
Ford Galaxie 500
74 Dodge Challenger
70 Chevelle and 72 Barracuda

Posted by me at 07:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Turbonegro: Apocalypse Dudes

Norwegian deathpunk band Turbonegro got its start in 1989 and came close to calling themselves Nazipenis until they thought better of it. Really, all you need to know about them is that lead singer Hank Von Helvete has, on stage, lit Roman candles from his ass (see photo). And all you need to know about this album is that all the huge underground bands came together to record a tribute because Apocalypse Dudes meant so much to them. Very few people heard of them til they were gone and when they did hear this album, they were so inspired that every band had a Turbonegro song in their set.

Apocalypse Dudes is the band’s 1998 offering and arguably their finest recorded moment. How to describe it? Well....

So you’re having a party. It’s going to be the kind of party where there’s so many people, they won’t fit into backyard and they will spill over into your living room and kitchen, maybe even the front yard. There will be things going on the bedroom that you only hear about in whispered rumors weeks later. There will be shattered glass, vomit on the bathroom floor, overturned chairs, tire tracks on your lawn, a turd floating in your pool and several wall holes that will need spackling. At some point there will be the sound of sirens wailing through your neighborhood. The neighbors will complain about the loud, offensive music, the foul-mouthed kids stealing their lawn jockeys, the near-comatose girl on their patio and the car parked on their rhododendrons. Someone will ride a bicycle through your house. Someone will attempt to jump from the second story bedroom window into your pool, and probably miss. The next door neighbor’s 12 year old son will sneak into the party and develop a new vocabulary as well as a drug habit. Your dog will get stoned. There will be a court appearance in your future.

Apocalypse Dudes is the only music selection you need for this party.

From the turtle:

This is a record that I heard for the first time half asleep on a sofa at someones' house who just got back from Europe. He just looked at me and said "Check this shit out, man." The intro. That slow intro. Explaining some story. It sounded so serious. Like they really were gonna go off on some apocalyptic song. Like what was next up was going to be some life altering lyrics or something and that I would need to go protest at the capitol about the next day. But, it was about pizza. And it just made me hungry. So I went and got a pizza. Hey dude, can't change the world, might as well get a double double sausage and mushroom to go.

Rendezvous With Anus
Don’t Say Motherfucker, Motherfucker
Get it On
Back to Dungaree High
Queens of the Stone Age - Back to Dungaree High (from the Turbo tribute album)

Turbojugend

Posted by me at 04:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

This is the fifth in a series. It is someone else's story, told to and transcribed by me. Basically, he gave me the details and atmosphere and lot of the words and I put them together in my magic hat and pulled this out. His voice, his story, my translation..

Can You Please Stop Throwing Beer On Me?

After that initial gig, we start picking up gigs at other party houses. Tonight's at a frat house right outside a college town.

You really don't know what to expect inside of one of these. I mean, frat guys are pretty much the exact opposite of punk rockers. So walking to the door there's a feeling of "Hey! We are gonna get free beer!" and "Hey! We are gonna get our asses kicked!"

The first time we walk in this house, the stench hits me. Beer and burning methamphetamine. That smell permeates the house. As we set up to play, we watch as ten guys bump into walls and play video games.

I roll in the drum bag, set it down and go to look for a beer. One of the wall-bumpers says that the keg won't be there for fifteen minutes, so I head for the fridge to see if there's any beer there. Something I have never seen stares back at me - a fridge with a padlock on it. Great. Just fucking great. Now what? Welcome to a frat house.

I go upstairs to find the friend who lives there who hooked this gig up for us. He's sitting in his room smoking speed. On tinfoil. Call the white trash brigade cause I have one to be picked up. His hands shake as i ask him where the beer is at. He says there is a keg downstairs. There isn't. Great. Just fucking great.

I walk back downstairs and just wait. That's something you have to get used to when you are playing gigs. Hurry up and wait. It's one of the worst parts of being in a band. You're told you need to get ready. Then you're told to wait for an hour. Hurry up and wait.

Our equipment is already set up, so we just sit around this huge house waiting for something to happen. Eventually, people start coming in the door. It's getting huge, fast. I can't believe how many people are pouring in. As they walk through the house, they give me a look like I don't belong - a contemptuous sort of a sneer. It's a look that you get used to. It's a look that says "They let you in this house? Your band better be god damn good." There's a huge crowd of people and they push everywhere. Just getting up from the keg is a challenge, much less keeping people away from the set.

I'm using a new wireless set. One of the guys in the band has a friend who lets him try out these new devices to see if we like them. Musicians like us rarely get much gear for free. We usually deal with an asshole salesman who wants to jack us like a fucking used car salesmen. But this shit is free for us to try out and we decide to test them out at this party. If we only have them for a night, we might as well drop the clutch and see how much these motherfuckers can take. So I take my bass, and as I'm playing, I go for a walk to test out this wireless thing. The guitarist is sick of getting hit with beer so he follows me. The singer takes our lead but heads out the back and we try the new equipment out in the different yards, just having fun, seeing what we can do with this party. I'm outside playing the wireless bass in a circle of kids. They are screaming at me and throwing beer on me, and I just keep going. The singer is in the back yard getting the same thing and the poor drummer has to take it all on his own in the open garage.

As the beer cups hit me and people dance around me, the only thing I think, surprisingly, is "This is fucking cool!" Still playing, I walk around the house. over to a fucked up sofa that's just sitting outside, and the crowd follows me like I am the Pied Piper of Punk. I sit on the couch and just move my fingers as girls come up and kiss me on the cheek. I keep going, just playing, listening to clues as to which song we're playing next.

The singer, still in the backyard, says something like "Ok, this is getting crazy, we lost our guitarist and our bass player and I have no idea where I'm at, but this is the next song." He yells the name of it and "1-2-3 go!" and I'm going again on the sofa with a huge circle of people around me.

I'm laughing and having the time of my life. I remember that earlier in the night I thought that being punk rockers in a frat house, we would get our asses kicked. Getting wired and drunk on free dope and beer, and the kids digging the music are things I never expected so I play my heart out for this crowd and the rest of the band does the same. We are fucking glowing. The kids feel it and edge us on as we push with everything we have to make sure we have fun. Because when the band has fun, the crowd does, too.

After the gig, someone from the frat comes up and asks us to be the house band. I think, this is a great fucking week. And it's only Tuesday.

Fear - Gimme Some Action
Rich Kids on LSD - Dead Teds
Rich Kids on LSD - Break the Camel's Back

Posted by me at 09:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I'm going to be doing some music blogging over at 100 Records. Check that site out, Tesco and friends have some great records posted there as well as a ton of mp3s.

I'm also going to be doing daily "reviews" of random CDs I pull out of this huge Rubbermaid container of music next to my desk. They aren't reviews so much as.....musings.

I'm starting out writing about Destroy Oh Boy, the 1993 debut album from New Bomb Turks.

Destroy-Oh-Boy! is the kind of full-on flamethrower album that could make the most jaded cynic believe once again in the curative powers of punk rock. On this set, the New Bomb Turks combine 1950s and 1960s roots rock at it's rawest, '70s punk at it's snottiest, and '80s hardcore at it's most intense.

People like to slap a punk label on the band, but I don't see New Bomb as punk rock so much as pure rock and roll with a twist of punk. Kind of like chasing a glass of Jack Daniels with a shot of tequila. And then eating the worm.

Fast, furious and full of high fueled energy, Destroy Oh Boy is the kind of music you listen to while imagining yourself doing 150 down a freeway with a beer between your legs and an unfiltered cigarette hanging out of your lips, mountains and exit signs turned to blurs as your hands drum the steering wheel, trying to keep up to the beat.

Or maybe you're in an oil stained garage that's been cleared out to make just enough room for your friend's band and there's a dozen people crowded in there stinking like sweat and shitty beer and the feedback is bouncing off the walls and the shirtless guys are bouncing off each other and when you step outside for a smoke you can still feel the concrete shake.

That's Destroy-Oh-Boy.

The first time I heard this album, I was in a college radio station sneaking beer in to the back cause the DJ said I couldn't bring liquor in. He put this on and I melted. This was the greatest punk rock record I had ever heard. Maybe it was the beer we snuck in or the cold ribs we were eating or maybe it was mixture of both, but when the first riff hit, I stopped and listened. "I had a friend he said he was an artist..." That grabbed me. You could tell they were having fun. And on a boring night in a boring town at a boring radio statio....this shit etched into my head. This was rock and roll.

Born Toulouse Lautrec
I Want My Baby Dead
Dragstrip Riot

Posted by me at 09:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Lagwagon - May 16

Posted by me at 09:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After the Omega Incident, I needed another car. As coincidence would have it, Aunt Jo was getting rid of her 1973 Plymouth Duster. I was hoping to trade up in years and move past a car from ten years ago, but a free car is not something to be scoffed at. I took it.

Another well built tank. Also, another car that met an unfortunate demise, this one coming at the hands of a nervous driver who slammed the brakes a bit too hard in the rain on Hempstead Turnpike. I saw in my rear view mirror him fishtailing toward me, his Dodge spinning and spitting water like a retarded kid on a Slip-n-Slide. Once again, I readied myself for impact and for the unmistakable sound of one moving piece of steel plowing into another. At the moment of impact I surprised myself by saying out loud "An object in motion stays in motion." It sure does.

Another smashed car, another accident escaped unscathed. Maybe god saw my last name, thought I was a cat and gave me nine lives. Seven accidents to go! No, six. Oh, five - I forgot about last month's undignified crash in which an old Chevy Impala had buttsex with my Mazda.

The Duster was a good car. I gathered a few friends to eulogize him when the tow truck came to retrieve the body a few days later. The truck driver stood silent with us for a few minutes as we each took turns telling a favorite memory about Dusty; listening to the Clash's Know Your Rights over and over again as we drove to the Meadowlands to see the Devils play the Islanders. Driving up and down Hempstead Turnpike the night the Islanders won the Stanley Cup, blasting Iron Maiden because we were sick of hearing We Are the Champions; driving Sweet Hollow Road with the headlights off, Chaz and Kenny almost getting into a fistfight over Chaz trying to shove the Descendents tape into the player while Kevin tried to get his Genesis tape in there, but both of them losing out when Orange Juice's Rip it Up came on WLIR and I told them if they turned the song off I was going to kick their asses out of the car and leave them right there, in the dark, next to the estate where the old lady had demented dwarves living in her animal topiary.

When we finished our tribute, I patted Dusty on the rear. The tow truck driver, who had been looking on bemusedly, took off his cap, held it across his heart and said, "I come to praise Dusty, not to bury him." We all turned to look at him. "Well fuck, " he said. "That's not right. I've come to bury him!" He got busy hitching poor, dead Dusty up and the rest of us headed to the local bar to do shots in Dusty's honor.

The Clash - Know Your Rights
Orange Juice - Rip it Up
Descendents - I'm Not a Punk

previous cars:

63 station wagon
73 Omega and 89 CRX<
77 Trans Am
69 Camaro
70 Mustang Mach I
Ford Galaxie 500
74 Dodge Challenger
70 Chevelle and 72 Barracuda

Posted by me at 07:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

This is the fourth in a series. It is the beginning of someone else's story, told to and transcribed by me. Basically, he gave me the details and atmosphere and lot of the words and I put them together in my magic hat and pulled this out. His voice, his story, my translation..

Paying the Dues

You can't get the big gigs if you don't cut your teeth on the small ones first.

It was raining when we pulled up late at night in a small college town to play one of our first parties. We drove up there in a pickup truck, with all our equipment in the cab. By the time we got there, the boards were wet, the gear was soaked. We spent the first half of the night waiting for the rain to end while using hair dryers to dry off the wires.

It was getting late and we knew we had to get out there whether the gear was dry or not and at least say something to the kids if we couldn’t play. You don’t play in the rain unless you want to die. But you walk out to the kids just to say "Hey we fucking tried, ok?"

Finally, the rain stopped dripping out of the sky. Any last hopes that we could get out of this night were dashed. It was time to start putting the gear together and dragging it outside. The last beers were downed and I started moving. By the time we set up, I had already downed a few 40s and people were filing into the backyard - mostly to get to the keg, not to see us.

Someone smiled down on us that night because the gear all turned red when we hit the button. We were a new band and we really had nothing so far as our own material. Yeah, that’s the way it works folks. Not many bands start out playing their own music. Well, they do, but basically all of the songs are subtitled "Crap i wrote When I Was Drunk." So you play a lot of covers. That night we started playing Circle Jerks "Back up Against the Wall.” If you have ever heard that song you know it is kind of mellow up till the kick. Then it goes. When that kick hit, the place exploded and things started getting out of control.

This was a party house that had three other houses connected to it. People from the other houses pushed over the fences to get to this party and the fences came crashing down. Wood that was meant to separate the yards was now just something to walk over to get to where we were playing.

The main focus of the party was the beer. In all honestly, our band wasn't that great. We were just there to entertain while the keg was being tapped. Even so, the music and the atmosphere was something you can't take lightly. When you see all the girls and guys having fun while you are ripping it up on stage, it's a bit awe inspiring, especially when it's one of your first live gigs.

My friend Jimmie had been sleeping in a bedroom that was right behind the set. There was a sliding glass door on the room that was covered with a sheet to stop the sun from shining in on him in the mornings. He thought it would be fun to turn a backlight on and dance naked as we played so everyone could see his shadow as he danced sideways and held his cock up. If Jimmie didn't get laid that night, then surely god did not exist.

So here I was, just a kid playing bass at one of my first live shows, and I had people waiting in line for beer cheering for this huge, dancing cock behind me.

The party was getting out of hand. Fences were beaten down and three separate pits started in three yards. I knew they were happening but I really didn’t care; I was experiencing the rush you get from playing in front of a crowd. You get scared of that feeling, but you get addicted to that rush, too. You want to stop to savor the moment, because every time a song ends you can feel that rush eaving you, like the last drips of your blood are escaping a cut vein and you have to hold on to the vein so you don't die. You need that feeling - you don't know why, you just do. So you towel your forehead off and wait for the lead while desperately trying to get a smoke in, to get the last drag of a cigarette into your lungs before you know you have to spit it out and move again.

A yell. A scream. A fight broke out and there’s a body on the ground. I walked over and tried to pick the kid up off of the floor while I was getting hit in the back of the head. The same time I was trying to get the kid out, some asshole walked up and nailed him with pepper spray. The fumes hit me and knocked me back. I recovered, dragged the to the front and shoved him out the gate. My night was done. I really didn't care because after driving all day, drying off the equipment, then playing all night while being sweat soaked in the cold air, you really are kind of done.

I got a towel and went inside to sit on the sofa. The people who weren’t scared off by the cops were still running around. I was out of cigarettes, so I walked back outside to find someone who was smoking. The party had broken up. The show basically ended when the police showed up. This was up in the top ten rough days for me, yet I walked out of the gate wondering why I still wanted more.

Circle Jerks - Back Up Against the Wall
Dead Kennedys - Riot
-Youth Brigade - Violence

Posted by me at 11:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

My mother drove a station wagon
it was a 63
brown, no wood panels
i remember number 2 pencils
stuffed in the seat cushions
with pennies and cookie crumbs
and my little sister in a time before car seats
tumbling around in the back
like a loose bottle of soda
all shook up and ready to explode
when she'd cry
we'd hold her head out the back window
the wind in her face would make her laugh
people would wave and we'd throw peace signs back at them

my mother drove with a lead foot
and a white kerchief on her dyed red hair
a cigarette in her mouth
virginia slims extra long
she'd curse at the old people
and the kids playing stickball
and barrel down the streets
kids out the window
groceries flying around the back
sometimes we'd get hit with a stray apple

my mother's station wagon
was like the best roller coaster
or the scariest car ride
depending if you liked holding on for life
while the wind slapped your face
or if you preferred dodge darts
driven by ladies with steady hands
who would never dye their hair or smoke cigarettes

Thanks to my turtle for the CDs for Mother's Day. That was all kinds of awesome.

Previous cars:
73 Omega and 89 CRX
77 Trans Am
69 Camaro
70 Mustang Mach I
Ford Galaxie 500
74 Dodge Challenger
70 Chevelle and 72 Barracuda

Posted by me at 08:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Songs to serenade your mother by. Or not.

Suicidal Tendencies - I Saw Your Mommy
Metallica - Am I Evil
Stephen Lynch - Mother's Day Song
Danzig - Mother
Pink Floyd - Mother
Guttermouth - Lucky Donkey
Bloodhound Gang _ Mama's Boy
South Park - Kyle's Mom is a Bitch
LL Cool J - Momma Said Knock You Out
Misfits - Mommy Can I Go Out and Kill Tonight?
Manic Hispanic - Mommy's Little Cholo
Social Distortion - Mommy's Little Monster

I apologize in advance for those who listen to the Guttermouth selection expecting a nice Mother's Day song. Though I can't say any of these are really standard Mother's Day fare.

And I just want to say thank you to my mother for giving me my passion for horror movies and Pink Floyd. My previous Mother's Day musings are here.

It's Mothers' Day. Yeah, thats right, the day you get invited to your parents house for a lunch or a dinner. Maybe a brunch. I'm not sure. But it's the day you wonder why your mom has left five messages on your voice mail. The day you wander around in Wendy's wondering why it is empty. I mean. I know tv is boring on a Sunday, but this day is out of control. Waking up to the voice of your father on the phone asking where you are and you having to ask him "why?" is kind of a shitty feeling.

This is the funny thing. When I started getting closer to my family and wanting to make them happy to have me around something happened. Something beautiful and special. You plan everything around this day to make her smile to make up for all the times you made her cry. And when the day finally comes, you find out she's on a plane to visit your brother and sister in law and their new baby. And while you are disappointed that you cant have her laugh at your jokes, you know she is making someone else very happy - a new mother.

Happy Mother's Day, mom
Happy Mother's Day, sis
And most important, Happy Mother's Day, Michele
You guys earned it.

Thank you.

Happy Mother's Day to all you mothers out there, as well as you motherfuckers, the lucky donkey included.

Posted by me at 08:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Unlike the rich friends I had in high school, I was not afforded a brand spanking new BMW upon receiving my license in 1980. No, I had to purchase my very first car on my own. It wasn't easy to save money on my four dollar an hour salary I got for slicing lunch meats at my uncle's deli, but I scrimped and saved and cut down on my drug and alcohol expenditures and soon had enough to get myself a decent used car. Yea, I had these visions of getting a used nice car, like a Chevelle or Mustang or even a souped up Nova like my neighbor had, but my dreams were crushed when I realized exactly what kind of car $800 would get you in 1980.

I became the proud owner of a 1973 Oldsmobile Omega. Maybe it wasn't sporty or fast or sexy or brand new, but let me tell you, that car was one solid piece of machinery. When I was behind the wheel of that thing, I felt invincible, like I was driving a tank.

Soon after I got the car, my younger sister started learning how to drive. She begged me daily to take her driving, but I kept blowing her off with the excuse that with her permit, she was only supposed to drive with someone over 21. Yea, like the law every stopped me from doing anything before. I just didn't want her driving my car.

One day I picked her up from school and decided to let her drive home, just to get her to stop asking. Oh, you see where this is going, don't you?

She pulled out of the parking lot, made the left at the light, did all the right things like turning on her directional and checking her side view mirror. It was going good. I relaxed a bit. She accelerated as we hit the main road and got it up to 50 before I reminded her that the speed limit was 40. But she wasn't paying attention to me. She was waving out the window to get the attention of her friend who was standing on the corner waiting to cross the street. A traffic light was approaching. That light was red. Not just turning red, not briefly red, but red as if it had been yelling "Stop, you moron!" at us for the past ten feet.

By the time I actually got the words "Step on the fucking brake!" out of my mouth it was too late. I saw the car coming at us on my side. She was barelling through the interesection at a good clip and, well, she had the green light . I'm sure she wasn't expecting to see a car zooming in front of her. I braced myself for impact. The sounds of the Clash's Brand New Cadillac coming from my cassette player gave way to the sound of metal upon metal and screeching brakes. She slammed us broadside, so hard that her license plate became embedded in my back passenger door. The Omega spun and turned and ended up on the median, a "No U Turn" sign inches from my face in front of the windshield.

When the car stopped moving, I took stock of the situation. I was alive. My sister was alive. In fact, we were both kind of sitting where we had been at moment of impact even though neither of us were wearing seat belts. The engine was hissing, the woman who had hit us was screaming something, and Brand New Cadillac was still playing. I heard voices outside the car "Holy shit, did you see how hard they got hit? They have to be dead?" "I'm afraid to look in there!" "Dude, that was sick!" There were people milling around the car. Finally, someone poked his head in the driver's window and was surprised to find two young girls, very much alive and not the least bit hurt.

I turned to my sister, trying to be a bit compassionate since she was probably very shaken up. I resolved to save my abject anger at her until later.

"Are you ok?"
"I broke my fucking nail!"

That's when I started punching her.

So the car was pretty much wrecked and we escaped unscathed. That is quite the testament to the strength and tank-like qualities of the 1973 Oldsmobile Omega. You want a car like that today, you'll have to buy yourself one of those monster SUVs that take up six parking spaces.

Another first car story, from my friend "the turtle" :

This was my first car. Stupid. Simple. Cheap. Fast. Like I was then. When you grow up in the 80's you have to get over the fact that you won't get a 70's muscle car. That was the past; something that would always be there, but always out of reach. So I bought one of these.

89 Honda CRX. That color. Blood red. That thing pretty much changed the way I felt about pocket rockets. It had the power and the speed of anything I had ever driven. Well, maybe not the power but it definitely had the speed.

I was bored one day and saw someone with a plastic Jesus on their dashboard. Dude was just smiling and thinking the was God’s gift to world and his smile and my lack of attention made me want something.

I was next to a church supply store. I had no idea what they were supplying. Maybe faith? Anyways, I bought a manger scene. All those little characters. I stopped at a linen store and bought drapery beads. I went home, took this great mess and created the manger scene on my dashboard with some superglue and creativity. I glued "dingle balls" around the interior of the car and dropped that car even lower then a CRX should go.

One night I was heading to the moutains and was stopped by Cal Trans. No going through the mountains without chains. Well, fuck. Those are 20 bucks! So i bought a can of white spray paint and painted strips on the tires and i was never stopped again.

There was only one night when those tires brought me any trouble. We came upon a DUI check point in the middle of a main street. I had a friend in the passenger seat and a girl rolling around in the back seat drinking her father's moonshine out of a jelly jar that was crawling with dead ants. Apparently, ants really like moonshine. I saw the lights at the checkpoint, tossed some beer cans and went thru real slow. The cops asked why I had snow chains on the car. I put on a fake Canadian and said "II gues itdoesn't get as cold here as the say on the tv!" He waved us through.

Looking back that was a prety stupid thing to do. But thats what you do with your first car. Stupid things for shits and giggles.

-------

He's right, you know. I could tell you some stories about what went on in my Omega that would make your hair turn white. But I'll just say instead that the power of being behind the wheel of y