T-Shirt of the Day

Today's post is for my good friend Lee! My beloved UNC Tar Heels. Not much to say on this one...you either love them or hate them. You know where I fall, so you can probably guess what Lee thinks about them.

My Musical History

Today I realized that I've pretty much abandoned writing "original" content for this blog, other than my T-Shirt of the Day posts and even that is limited writing. I even changed my bio to reflect that realization. But I think I'm going to try to start writing a little bit more, while still keeping the random stuff that I find during the day (videos, links and such). One thing I want to start documenting, while my memory is still somewhat intact, is my history playing in punk rock bands. I don't know that I will post a new installment everyday, but I will try to keep up with it on a somewhat regular basis. I have many stories to tell...some are quite funny (to me and my friends anyway), while others are a little embarrassing. It won't all be chronological...my memory is not that great at this point in my life already, so a lot of it will just come as I do think about it. I will try to at least get started in a semi-chronological order and then the time-line will all fall apart. So what better place to start than the beginning...

I got my first guitar when I was in 9th grade. I never took lessons, and I really never applied myself enough to learn on my own. I would dick around with it from time to time, but other than real basic stuff (mostly bastardized versions of songs I liked), I really couldn't play that well at all. In 10th grade, one night I had my best friend over to spend the night. Sometime during the night we decided we were starting a band...a band that couldn't play. We loved punk rock and figured you really didn't need to know how to play if you were playing punk rock anyway! Our first order of business...coming up with a name (which was caught on tape...the tape that would become the first unofficial "release" by our band). Matt said that whatever we called the band, it had to be "something 'stylin''", to which I immediately shouted out "Johnny Appleseeds!", thus the Stylin' Johnny Appleseeds (or SJA as we would eventually abbreviate it) were born. We banged out "song" after "song" on the guitar and my brother's drum set, while screaming whatever "lyrics" came to mind. Mind you, this was all recorded on a small jambox...or whatever you want to call it, so the sound quality as well as the quality of the playing was bad. Very bad. Still it was fun and once we were done we made two hand-drawn covers...one for his copy and one for my copy. The title of the cassette? The Four of Us are Dying", even though there were only two of us in the band at this point.

The following Monday we told our friend Gregg about it. He actually played drums and was very good at it...a much better musician than either of us were or ever will be. We told him how much fun it was and that we were ready to record again, only this time we wanted him to play with us. We didn't stop there though...we also asked our friend Brad to play guitar because he could play very well also. At first we played mostly covers...none of the "songs" from our debut were ever played again as there really was no structure to build off of. This also left me in bad position because I couldn't play the same things Brad did. He tried to teach me a little, and I could sort of keep up if I just played one note, but it sounded terrible. When we realized we needed a bass player, I jumped at the chance to play what I was attempting to play on guitar on the instrument that it really needed to be played on. We borrowed a bass and a bass amp and I started picking it up much more quickly than I ever did on the guitar. I had found my instrument and eventually bought my own bass and bass amp, I still wasn't great, but I was learning and would eventually become much, much better (as a side note, I did eventually learn to play guitar, but I have always been a better bassist than guitarist).

If we hadn't decided to try out for our high school's talent show, it may have all ended shortly thereafter, but luckily for us the practicing paid off and the band became "real". We didn't win the talent show, though we really weren't that terrible at pulling off a half-assed version of Jane's Addiction's Mountain Song. A mishap with the snare drum, some lackluster vocals and a feedback laden ending probably hampered us from getting a trophy, not to mention the "edgy" (at the time) song choice, but it provided just enough spark to keep us going. Original material soon followed, and as basic as it was, we started garnering a few "fans" with our simple, single-track recordings...we even created our own "record" label (we never released any records though) called Flamin' Head Records. The SJA name stuck, the fun was still there and I was learning to actually play an instrument. We finally had a real band! It was punk rock and we loved it, even if we were part of a handful of people in our small town school who even knew what punk rock was. We weren't as good as our idols, but we didn't let that stop of from staging our own "shows" (attended mainly by a few friends) in Gregg's basement. We named our little basement venue "The Ankle Club" after Gregg's dad's ankle injury at the time (don't ask why, even I can't remember what exactly prompted us to name it after that particular detail).

This continued throughout high school along with several "side-projects" that we created to be our opening acts. The Oswald Factory, The Rat Snots and Guns for the Fuhrer were all "make it up as we go along" versions of SJA...the same four members, rotating to different instruments for no other reason than to torment the few friends that did show up to watch us play. Occasionally we would have "guest" members of the band and we always recorded it either on video or audio tape and usually both. One "show" even had us doing an elaborate set up with about five TV's and a few VCR's to make it a "multimedia experience". We had big ambitions and big heart to go along with them.

We finally broke down and borrowed a four-track recorder to make our first real tape and the band took off even more from there. That's a story for another post though as this one's grown long enough as it is. Up next? We graduate, move out of the basement and we help setup a successful show in our new practice space. Damn. I just realized I may have to do a little digging to get all the details I want to include. Luckily I have a box full of stuff (the Flamin' Head Archives), so I shouldn't have to dig too deep!

Destro - Get Money

Found through one of my favorite websites, Topless Robot.

Heavy Metal Tuesday

Getting caught up on some stuff around the house so I've been a slacker today when it comes to the blog. I'll post more later on when I am finished with that. For now I bring you the best in Doom/Stoner Metal, Sleep...

Dragonaut



The Druid (live)



And I won't put it here, but if you're interseted in seeing that entire show, go here.