ood morning weekend LiveJournalers! Last night, after a day of errand running and thrift-store rummaging I came home and promptly fell asleep on the floor in front of the fireplace by 11pm. A late-night phone call from welfy woke me enough to put a few more logs on the fire then go to bed. I woke up this morning at 9:30 am, put on a corduroy jacket to take the chill off and made a pot of coffee. I'm currently waiting on my wife June to pop through the door and ask if the starch in my shirt is okay.

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y mom has been recovering from a double knee-replacement surgery for the past couple of months. Yesterday she had a physical therapy appointment in the morning and a hair salon appointment in the afternoon. I tagged along for the day, running the afore mentioned errands and rummaging the afore mentioned thrift-stores. One of the errands was to have my income tax forms prepared and calculated. I was fortunate that there was no line at the tax preparation service of my choice, so I was done with that in about an hour.

My return looks nice. With it I shall thwart the piracy highway robbery greedy pigfuckers 30% interest being charged me for the consumer credit I obtained when purchasing my old Dell laptop a little over a year ago. The remainder of the balance shall be used to pay down my credit card, which I nearly maxed buying my current laptop.

The thrift store rummaging resulted in the purchase of a striped Brady Bunch shirt and the corduroy jacket which warmed me this morning. I had briefly tried the jacket on in the store to gauge* the cut and fit and was pleased. Upon wearing it post-purchase, I began buttoning it up and it felt weird. This was because the buttons were on the wrong side, meaning I had purchased a lady's jacket. No matter, I'll be wearing it anyway. I like's it.

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don't get terribly excited about music as I once did, but there are still things which come along that make me giddy. An album I dearly love was only released in a single print of 1000 vinyl LP's in 1992. It's so rare in fact that Allmusic makes no mention of it, despite my having submitted a Discography correction for the artist not once, but twice. I never bought the album, but became enamored with it while DJ'ing at my college radio station back in the day. An on-line friend of mine provided me with a really horrid mp3 rip a number of years ago, produced from a cassette dub of the vinyl.

Upon discovering the wonderful site Gemm last year, I added the artist to my notification list, so that if any copies of this rare album were added, I would know about it. Last week, multiple notifications began to fill my inbox. Upon following the link over to Gemm, I discovered that the album has been remastered and reissued on CD, complete with 4 bonus tracks from the era it was recorded. Sweet.

I'm not hopeful that anyone will successfully guess what album this is, and frankly, I think there's only handful of you who might be knowledgeable of the era/scene to take a stab at it. In the not so distant future, I will probably make an entry about this album in a more appropriate forum.

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ather than continue doing long posts about movies/DVDs, I'm going to start tacking one on to the end of entries or doing small ones featuring one or two movies on days when I don't have anything else to write about. Today is special, since it's about a trilogy: the so-called "Man With No Name" trilogy, which I became inspired to watch after plowing through Robert Rodriguez's own man-with-no-name trilogy. As I ventured into Sergio Leone's gritty vision of the American west, I came to the realization that I had never seen any of these films in their entirety and/or unedited for television.

These films are not a true trilogy in that there is no contiguous storyline. Clint Eastwood's lead role is a different character in all three films (and three different names, despite the informal "title" of this trilogy). This is also true of Gian Maria Volonte's "Boss" role in the first two films and Lee Van Cleef's characters in the final two films. The only constants aside from the director, composer (Ennio Morricone), and lead actor is the iconic hat, poncho, and short cigar utilized by Eastwood at some point in all three films. If you've never seen any of these movies, I highly recommend them: they are classics of cinema and the reason the term "spaghetti western" became a universal term. These films are important because they mark a shift in the way westerns were made: away from the clean-cut Rawhide/Lone Ranger TV-style western and away from the sanitized early film westerns. Leone's portrayal of the West was dirty, sweaty, and smelly. People have facial sores; are legless and hunchback. The cinematography is often breath-taking, especially in GBU.

A Fistful Of Dollars - (1964)
The one that started it all and made Eastwood a star. His name is Joe, and he comes to the dangerous town of San Miguel, a border town with a small problem: two bosses. One of them is a guns dealer, the other is an alcohol bootlegger. Joe pits them against each other working for both as a hired gun. The final sequence of this movie is one of the best showdowns ever.

For A Few Dollars More - (1965)
Eastwood returns as a hired bounty killer named Monco and Van Cleef, as Colonel Mortimer, is his rival in bringing outlaws to justice, dead or alive. When they find themselves chasing a madman convinced he can rob the invincible El Paso Bank, they decide to team-up to catch him and his gang. When Monco learns that Mortimer has a personal interest in the demise of their target, he makes sure that the final showdown is fair and honorable. Like the final sequence from the first Dollars movie is one of the best, the first four sequences of this film are about as good as any.

The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly - (1966)
Leone's masterpiece is a sprawling and epic western set against the latter months of the Civil War in frontier Texas. The themes which this presents for the film, along with more attention to the development of characters to which the audience can attach themselves, make it an achievement that outstrips anything achieved by its predecessors. Lavish sets, with an extras cast into the thousands recreate companies of soldiers in extensive battle scenes. Morricone's main theme is one of the most famous scores in cinema, second-only to Star Wars, MAYBE. The final showdown is a tense and visually gorgeous Mexican stand-off between Eastwood, Van Cleef, and the incomparable Eli Wallach. This is one of the must-see films.

* I had to add the word "gauge" to my Semagic dictionary.

spent the weekend with welfy in western Pennsylvania, as an early celebration of Valentine's Day. It was to be a short weekend, as I didn't get in until Saturday evening and would have to leave on Sunday evening. I did make it there early enough for the centerpiece of our plans, a concert. This wasn't just any concert, it was her brother, Tony Mentzer. Tony has been a fixture of the regional music scene for the past 25 years in various projects; playing live and making albums. His recent mini-tour of the region is a farewell to live performance for him, culminating in the final show in Youngstown on Saturday evening.

Tony's music is eclectic, strange, and humorous and its most obvious point of reference is Frank Zappa. Like Zappa, Tony has an acute pop-sense for melody and hook regardless of the genre he decides to plant it in. It should be noted that Tony is not afraid of any genre, moving through them and blending them deftly; country & western embellishments, rock and roll fury and bombast, latin horns and rhythms, stripped-down folk. But then he will give it completely absurd lyrics and/or do a number of things to it in the arrangement: fragment the structure, beat it to a pulp with the monotony of reptition, perform abrupt key and tempo changes, alternate between sparse and cacophony. Layered on top of it all is an array of effects on the vocals and instruments as well as the insertion of various noise effects, samples, and tape-loops. Its creator self-describes the result as "mad-scientist" music, a convenient description which is only half right. It is mad indeed, but less science and more of a feeling your way through; a pinch of this and a touch of that, served as an ephemeral witch's brew.

For the show, Tony had some hired guns on-hand to bring the music to life, comprised largely of members of another area band who opened the show. Props must be given at this time to point out that, some little known group (whose name I don't even know) has already penned the ultimate love song, so all of you wanna-be lyricists can hang-it-up. It was truly an early Valentines Day gift to hear "Touch Me Where I Pee" crooned so earnestly and heart-felt. It nearly brought a tear to my cynical eye and warmed a bitter heart to know that true love does exist. The members of this band later transformed themselves into Tony's band, dubbed the Tony Mentzer Oddball Allstars. Shrouded in a smoke-machine haze and a variety of costumes and masks, they emerged on-stage to back Tony for his swan song amidst a bar full of family, friends and local scene-rats.

( More photos )

Location: Willington, CT

Sad country songs, all night long - it's driving me insane
Well I'm drownin' my fear in cheap American beer and I'm lookin' for somebody to blame

It was fun finally getting an opportunity to see Nine Pound Hammer on Friday night.  While their music isn't the sort that would have the same influence on me as Slint, I still have very sharp and fond memories surrounding their music.  When I was in college, a friend of mine named Martin was into all sorts of Lexington bands and had all the records.  Even though I haven't heard them in years, I can still sing bits and pieces of "Yellow Cling Peaches" or "When Grandma Drives the Bus" by Government Cheese.  He was also the person who first introduced me to Nine Pound Hammer's first record The Mud, The Blood, and the Beer, which at the time, I didn't realize was a reference to Johnny Cash's "Boy Named Sue".  In particular, he played a song for me from that record called "Redneck Romance", a tongue-in-cheek look at small-town life with central Kentcuky-specific references to things like Happy Chandler, the Executive Inn, and the Brass "A" Saloon.  That must've been around '88-'89.

Billy hangs a picture of Thelma in the garage for all the boys to see
She was voted Miss Transmission, heck, way on back in '73

Later, while doing college radio, they released their second record Smokin' Taters for the respectable Crypt label in '92.  I spun that record countless times during my shows for whoever was listening at the god-awful hours I was on the air.  It was with that record that they sealed their status as one of Lexington's premiere bands and I guess in some small way, I contributed to that. 



Friday night, they played for an hour and a half!  Not a small feat for a band that does quick rock songs.  They played a balanced set from all four of their albums, including "Redneck Romance" and "Drive-In/Little Help" from their first record.  They also played the 45 second theme song they were tapped to write for an new Adult Swim cartoon airing this fall.  They didn't play my favorites from Smokin' Taters though, but I think it's because they're trying to emphasize the "cow" in their cow-punk legacy; they seemed to stick with the country & western influenced rawk that they do so well like "Stranded Outside Tater Knob", "Cadillac Inn", "Feelin' Kinda Froggy", and "Don't Get No".  I would've loved to have heard "Wrong Side Of The Road" or "Everything You Know Is Wrong", though.

It fills your life with an empty space
Ancient myths, war cliches
Keep to yourself and quietly go along
So clean your plate, do as your told
Worhsip all that's bought and sold
'Til everything you know is wrong

What was most fun about it was the homecoming atmosphere; a beloved band mingling with friends.  As the guys started to show-up in the club watching the opening bands, people came-up to them to say hi and many hugs and back-pats were given.  Even on stage, vocalist Scott in particular, interacted personally with the crowd; a crowd that knew every word to his songs and sang along with him.  One thing which was strange: being someone who has seen Blaine's "other band", Nashville Pussy, play 7 times, watching his wife Ruyter Suys reduced to the role of roadie, setting up gear and operating a video camera from the shadows rather than the whirling-dervish, kung-fu kicking mad-woman in the spotlight.

Nine Pound Hammer has a huge audience in Europe where they still have a palate for good, old-fashioned, unadulterated rock and roll.  They never really caught-on with broader American audiences, though.  They have a small following among the rawk/cow-punk crowd nationally, but not enough to warrant a full-scale U.S. tour.  I think this is due to the themes in their music.  I'm sure it translates somewhat to small-town America and the South in particular, but I don't think anyone outside of central Kentucky really gets the duality of these themes.  There are some who probably think that everything they do is poking-fun in the spirit of disdain for the redneck experience, while others probably think it is an earnest glamorization of hick culture.  The reality is that it's both and I think you have to be from central Kentucky to really understand that.  Kentucky as a whole has a national reputation as a state of shoeless hillbillies in overalls, yet central Kentucky is particularly affluent with multi-billion dollar whiskey and thoroughbred horse industries; not to mention 3 universities and about a half-dozen private colleges serving a regional populace of barely a half-million.  So we make our own pokes at the incest and illiteracy jokes, cherish our southern drawl, and take a sick pride in a region that produces Richard Hell, Les McCann, and Wendell Berry while simultaneously giving the the world the likes of Jim Varney and John Michael Montgomery.  Nine Pound Hammer is the best and worst of these things, all rolled up into a big honkin' chunk of rock and roll.

So while you're blazing across Europe boys, put the hammer down.  Remember to specify your bourbon neat or those cretins will sure as fuck put ice in it.  All of us here back home who love ya know as well as you do...

About 8 years ago, I decided to start keeping a list of shows and concerts I had attended, as my mind was becoming fuzzy and, music geek that I am, I wanted to preserve my memory of them, lest I forget.  Since then, I've been faithful about maintaing it.  I used to have it as a simple HTML page, but since Livejournal has become soopageek central, I thought I'd make an entry, save it as a memory, and update it as necessary for my own amusement.  For YOUR amusement, here it is.  There's plenty of laughable things below.  There are some I did for silly reasons (usually a girl) and some just because it was what I was into at the time (like the classic-rock/hair metal of my youth).  Feel free to be as snarky as you want.

( All the rock )

Location: Evansville, KY

Saturday night in Lexington I headed downtown to the Short Street Lounge.  Due to drummerville's location of me some months ago, I had re-established some on-line contact with his brother, my pal Josh.  Josh and I worked together many years during my stint as a manager in the restaurant business.  Sometime around '94-'95 he was putting together his first real band and needed a name.  We were talking about this one night at work and he asked for suggestions.

Naturally, as most music geeks do, I was sitting on a wealth of band name ideas - one of which was sitting at the top of this mental list.  So, naturally, I had one in mind...  my favorite at the moment.

"Screamin' Semen and the Non-oxynol Nine"

Apparently, he liked this idea and a band was born.  They even had shirts made with a sailing anchor with S.S. & No. 9 for a logo, a bit of genius if you ask me.  A couple of years later, in '96 - after the demise of SS&NN - Josh and I began scheming a band together.  He would play bass and I would provide vocals, which if you've ever heard me sing, you know this is a laughable proposition in of itself.  But, nothing special, just fast, hard punk stuff for shits and giggles.  Since Sreamin' Semen and the Non-oxynol Nine had already been used, I was fresh out of killer band name ideas.  So we spent some time thinking about it and finally settled on the idea of Skank.  Not wanting to be confused with any other band, you know, just in case - I made some internet searches, just to be sure.  Unfortunately, there was a rather prominent Brazilian rock band with this name already, so we tooled the name to Skank Revolution.

If you google the name today, our old website (as pathetic as it is) still stands at Geocities.

We recruited a drummer (Greg) he knew then set out to find a guitarist.  First there was this one dude, but after one afternoon of punk-jammin' I guess he decided it wasn't for him.  We then recruited another guy we worked with named Jason.  Jason was pretty cool and we started writing original songs.  But Jason was a bit unreliable, not to mention, he could never remember anything we had just played from the previous rehearsal and re-teaching Jason the songs every week became tedious. What is it about guys named Jason?

So, we recruited Ruel who had played guitar in the afore mentioned SS&NN.  We continued to put together songs, even dusting off a couple of the better ones from the previous band's catalogue.  We put together enough original material padded with a few cover songs to flesh out a 30-45 minute set of music and began knocking on some club doors around town.  In our brief history, we played-out twice - both clubs now defunct - once at the Wrocklage and once at the House of Heresy during the summer/fall of '97.

I'm recounting all of this for several reasons.  For one, it was for the first show at the Wrocklage when "soopageek" was born.



Indeed that is me dressed so foolishly, that photo taken just before we left our practice space and headed downtown for the Wrocklage show.  I would later adopt the moniker as my official internet nick and has remained so until this day, obviously.  I have some really cruddy recordings we did one afternoon on a boombox and some rather decent live ones from our second show.  I've flirted with the idea of putting them online here some day.  Perhaps I'll get around to it sometime.  So, now you know that story...

...so I can tell you the rest of it.

Right before I began trucking, I ran into Ruel at a guitar shop in town.  I was selling-off my Fender Duo Sound for some extra cash while I was transitioning into my new career.  I had lost touch with Josh as well as the other guys in the band and he informed me that he and Josh were starting a new band at the time, called Psycho Bitch Magnet.  Naturally there were some slight pangs of jealousy and an immediate rush of sentimentality for my brief stint in a rock band.  He gave me his cell number at the time, but I never got around to keeping in touch.  I had way too many things on my plate at the time.

Then drummerville finds me one night a couple of months ago.  I had worked with him as well at the restaurant, so it was nice catching up with him.  That night, he relayed his role as drummer for PBM for a while until he decided to leave the band.  He gave me some contact information for Josh, though, and I managed to catch up with him online.  We've been chatting back and forth now for a couple of months, but I haven't had the time to meet-up with him anywhere.  Until Saturday night.

I walked into the club and immediately saw Ruel as I was waiting to get in the door.  After getting my hand stamped I walked over and we chatted for a bit.  Ruel told me something that I kind of wish he had let be a total surprise, but since he didn't, I will save it for later in the sotry and YOU can be surprised.  They were going to be taking the stage in a matter of minutes.  I saw Josh on stage with his back turned to the room, doing some final checks on his bass equipment.  I walked onto the stage and mosied up along-side him and stood there for a minute watching him fiddle with his gear.  He finally turned and saw me and I made this loud guttural "Errraaahhh!".  We hugged, 8 years of distance dissolved in a moment as the familiarity of old friends filled the space.

( The rest of the story and photos of Psycho Bitch Magnet in action )