For the "Townies."

Michael Corcoran wrote some garbage! Got paid for it too, I bet. What a whiny little spoiled brat! I think someone needs a diaper change...

"You Can't Stop the Spring..."

In case no one has noticed, spring has done sproinked... at least around here it has. We'll probably get one more little cold snap, but after that, we're surely gonna step on that slow train to Sizzletown. As long as there is some more rain it won't be too bad, too soon. I'm hoping for less than forty days in a row of 100-plus degree days, unlike last year. Which was a year filled with a terrible, relentless, withering heat that went on and on and on and on, until everyone was homicidal, but too heat-exhausted to do anything about it.

Ha! Weather...

"Global Pupils Radiating Interference..."

I was working at the record store one fine summer's day, when Craig the indie buyer walks up to the counter with a record in his hand.

"Here, I don't know how I was able to score this, but I did. You need it." Then he hands me the record.

"Thanks," sez I, taking the record in hand. It was kind of an eyebrow-raising moment, because the record was the Homosexuals' Record. I put it in my stack, forgot about it for a while, bought it, took it home, forgot about it for...oh, about a year (I have a large collection of records, and it got lost in the shuffle).

I remember when I finally did pull it out of the stack. "Hmm, it's time I gave this a spin."

It instantly became one of my favorite and most listened-to records ever. Craig was right, bless his little black heart.

Fast-forward fourteen years (!), and here I am watching the Homosexuals play at my friend's record store. I never thought I would see the day. And they were great! There is nothing more invigoratin' than seeing an excellent live band, even moreso if I have loved that band for so many years.

They played at SXSW last year, with some dandy coverage by the always good, always entertaining WFMU's Beware of the Blog, but I missed them, due to being at work. I figured I would never have the chance to see them. So when I found out that they were playing here again, I brought my little recording rig.

Lucky for you guys who missed them, it's pretty good. Once more, I somewhat artlessly chopped it up into separate tracks, and added all the exif data that I could, but damn if it ain't a pretty righteous document. I've been listening to it all afternoon and on into the evening. The sound quality is better than WFMU's, in my humble opinion, more raw, not as flat sounding. Grab it up and see for yourself!

Wristpocalypse Now.

Ow, it's hurty. My cast/splint came off today. Yay! The staples came out. Alright! The pin stays in for another few weeks. Fucking boo! Oh well, on the road to recovery.

My Broken Wrist Odyssey.

Today begins a new phase in my journey to wrist recovery. Later this afternoon, my forearm will be freed from its plaster bandaged prison, and the pin holding my hand in place will be removed. I am hoping that this will be my last foray into the shiny, shitty world of surgery for a while.

When I return, just for laffs, I'll post some pretty pictures of my pre-pin pulled parts. Aren't you guys lucky! See you soon!

A Steamroller of Positivity this Way Comes.

I'm bringin' the Negative Step to you this one last time. The above is a flyer that I made for their very last show, so sad! There's a story behind it (of course!), and I will tell it to you... now.

About a week before this show, Negative Step played a house party. Joolie and I showed up a few minutes late, and they were mid-song. As we walked in the front door, they stopped playing just long enough for us to get a man-hug from August, which was awesome. Imagine if every show started that way... Hmmm, that might get annoying. Forget I mentioned it.

Anyway, the band resumed playing the hardest core, and I start looking at the crowd. Pretty normal mostly, except for the naked guy (he was wearing a cowboy hat). In between songs the naked guy mentioned that he "lived there" and naked was "how he partied." Who was I to disagree?

The music was fast and August was in top form, making quips, being funny. It was great, I was having an excellent time. I thought to myself, the only thing that would make this perfect is if there were some mindless, hilarious violence happening while the Step rocked like fuck.

It turns out, I didn't have to wait too long.

The folks watching the show had made a big semi-circle, to give the band plenty of room to stretch out. This was a house party, so there wasn't a "pit" as much as there were some folks who were dancing. Time marches on, and then it was just this kind of big-boned emo kid, by himself, dancing his awkward brains out.

At this moment, an epically drunken crusty punk attacked big emo, very limply. A standing wrestling match quickly devolved into rolling around on the filthy wooden floor. It looked funny, and we were all laughing. It soon became apparent that one of the participants in this little skirmish was trying to play for keeps. Believe it or not, it was the drunk punk (I know...didn't see that coming) who was trying to make the hurting happen.

We were all about to move in on drunky, when the crowd parted, and the naked guy comes charging through to save the day. He jumped on drunky's chest, and proceeded to beat the living daylights out of him. It was over in seconds. Then the naked guy leapt to his feet, said something about how people bringing fights into his house were bullshit, and disappeared back into the crowd.

If you have ever heard the words "never knew what hit him," this was a textbook example of that. Drunky got up swinging at the air. "Who hit me!?" he was yelling, as his face started to swell up. Everyone laughed at him until he left. The band finished up, and that was that. What a fantastic night!

The next day, August asked me to make the flyer for their last show, and so I did.

Even though I made the flyer, I couldn't go to the last hurrah of one of my favorite local H/C bands. I had to go to crappy old work. Luckily, my darling Joolie was kind enough to record the show for me on a cheap cassette recorder. I have digitized the whole show and posted it for your listening pleasure, get some!

When the Going Gets Tough...

...the tough get stabby. Hmm, this isn't as uplifting as I'd originally thought. At least thematically, it works pretty well with the last few posts I've put up. Drawing dead stuff tickles my fancy.

As for today's musical interlude, let us all chuckle along with the laffy audio shenannigans of Sweden's own Brainbombs! It just seemed appropriate. The tracklist is in the comments section, because sometimes words can hurt. Feel the twisted Rock Thunder!!!

Three cheers for Mr.Gutloaf, and his murderous zombie rampage powers!

P.S. Today you are going to have a choice in downloading options. Newcomer (and right now, superfast downloader) Mediafire, or rusty, trusty Rapidshare. We'll see how it goes...

A Delicate Pastime.

Sometimes, when the mood strikes me, I make paintings. This is one I did a few years ago, you know... for fun! No happy little trees for me though, only terrified creatures and giant horrible monsters. Now where's my PBS show?

Mud Stomping Time.

Part Six in a semi-chronological compendium of my artistic works assembled for musical accompaniment. Welcome to the anti-punk, punk stylings of Austin's own Negative Step!
My friend August is a steadfast, but strange individual. Once he sinks his teeth into an idea, for good or ill, he will not be denied or dissuaded, like some great, hairy, stubborn hyena with a taste for human blood.

For instance, when he was in Negative Step, he had this whole minimalism thing going on. He wanted all of the band's releases to look sparse (success!), and maybe kind of crappy. I had zero luck in trying to talk him out of some of his choices. So there's that. He's a very consistent fellow.

Also, he had a grim reapers killing punks thing. He's the only person I know who would start a (good) hardcore punk band, just to rail against hardcore punks.

All of Negative Step's (3) releases have simple, two color covers. There is the single that I did. There is a split single with Redrum, which I don't have a link for, but its cover is also a simple black and white drawing (of a grim reaper type holding a punk rocker's spiky head). And then there is this, which I have seen heralded (in the blogs) as one of the most inept album covers in all of punkdom. It just looks unfinished. Geordie is a good artist, even. I'm pretty sure it was all August's doing. Whenever I asked him "Hey, what's up with that cover?" he would just start laughing, and then never answer me.

The above was a drawing that I made for fun. When August saw it, he immediately wanted to use it for Negative Step's next release, somehow. Since Geordie had already done the covers, he decided it would be the insert. I agreed, and history was made (again).

Here you go. You need this, today. It is tuff and good. Well produced too! Enjoy that shit!

Handsapoppin'!

My wrist is singing a song of searing soreness. My wrist is a grinding, grotty goulash of gross gristle, glistening grotesquely in golden glowing lamp light. I, myself, am on the verge of a vogueish, rogueish, Vicodin volley. Concentration is for suckers.

Mister Wrister's Broken Fist.

This is a public service announcement...without guitars!

This coming Thursday I'll be going under the knife again for my broken-down wrist. While I will have lots of time to sit around at first, I imagine I will be on some serious painkillers (and in some serious pain), so posting may be light to completely unintelligible. This is just a heads-up, in case anyone was curious. See you soon!

Sap Story.

Number five in a series cataloging the musical releases I have done artwork for over the years. This is the non-chronological edition, because we are going further back than the last time I did this.This (or something resembling this) was supposed to be the cover for the Sap side of the Sap-Coward split lp from way back in 1997. As you can see from the above picture, it is not the cover.

My friend Ben, who was in Sap, wanted me to draw a dragon for their next record's cover. I wanted to do it, so I started doing little sketches. I was stoked, it would have been my first bit of art work for a full size album. I showed him a couple of them, but they weren't quite what he had in mind. Finally, I came up with one that was pretty close to what he wanted. I remember giving him a copy of the little drawing. I was going to do one more final version to make for a classy, economical design. A small drawing, silk screened in white ink on black album cover blanks. It would have looked fucking sharp.

A couple of days later, Ben comes in to the record store I was working at with this odd look on his face.

"The covers are already made."

I was astonished. "What do you mean? I haven't even finished with the drawing yet."

"Joey just did them and... well, they're done."

Done was correct. The covers were awful. Just awful. Joey was the guy who was putting out the record, and I guess it was ultimately his call to make something so lame. But yeeesh. This is what he went with. Oh well, it's not my label.

As a consolation, someone mucked up my little dragon and stuck it, along with a logo I designed onto the label when they pressed the records.

What makes me sad is that the record is pretty good. Even after all these years it still sounds fresh and exciting. Too bad for Sap, screwed by the cover.

The cover is supposed to be the shiny thing that grabs the attention, so that people will see it and want to buy it. Sure, the fans of the band will buy it, but what about the people who think Sap comes from trees and don't know squat about some tough prog-punk paired with some very doomy sounding sludge from Coward. What about all the strangers? Who's gonna buy something if it looks like it comes packed in cooked, dessicated shit on cardboard?

You should hear this thing. Am I wrong?