A major problem in playing an all day festival type gig with a bunch of your friends is that you never get a chance to see or check out the other bands that are playing the damn thing! LOL That's what happened with this gig Headnoise played last weekend at the Regal Inn in Lakewood for Rob from Carpit's birthday bash. All the bands that played, they all just end up becoming droning background noise to the animated conversations and bullshit sessions carrying on outside of the venue where everyone was hanging out by the donut shop or the taco stand getting their grub on and enjoying a beautiful Southern California afternoon with cool breezes and even cooler vibes. Why do I live in Vegas again? 😀 The Punx gathering at the Regal Inn basically knew everybody else that was playing and have all shared the same stages at one time or another, so it was basically a glorified family picnic but albeit a bit more smelly and covered in punk band patches. Friendly locals only braaaaahhhh! Such a fun time. I saw none of the bands that played, I didn't even get a piece of the marijuana infused cake made by some famous marijuana cake making dude, but it didn't even matter. Headnoise played a good set, the drive back afterwards was easy and uneventful, and I'm just happy to be alive at this point in my life. Happy times indeed! 😎

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I think the less said about the Shattered Faith / Decry / Headnoise gig at the Doll Hut the better... peeeeeeeeeeeee uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu did we stink! 🤮🤮🤮 If it wasn't for Headnoise's shitty performance it would of been a near perfect weekend in California! LOL Seeing my old friend Katz was worth everything I went through though, even if that blind old bastard didn't recognize me at first! 😁 He was making the scene at the Doll Hut with a demo in his hands from his vast archives of the band 1983 that was playing that night, a demo that the band members themselves didn't even have and needed to put on a career spanning retrospective CD they were planning on doing! I tell ya, that guy is a national treasure of the Punk Rock underground!! We stopped chatting long enough to mosey over to the outside stage to see the Functional Lunatics play, 4 friends having fun playing a good assortment of catchy melodic Punk songs ala These Are The Quotes From Our Favorite 80's Movies era Bouncing Souls, punctuated by terrible Dad jokes in between songs (What do you get when you cross a pirate with a pedophile? Arrrrrrrrrrrrrr Kelly!). They were entertaining to say the least. Then the almighty Until We Die! hit the indoor stage and I stood back and watched them kill it for a few songs before venturing back outside to get set up to play our set. I dunno what happened. I'm still not sure. We started out great, then just derailed somewhere along the way and never got back on track. Immediately afterwards I told Bob to pack our shit up ASAP as we were out of there. I've played some embarrassingly bad shows in my lifetime but this one was definitely in the Top Ten of shitty gigs I've played. Man. What a disappointment. Place was packed and everything. Oh well. I headed back to the hotel room to grab some late night grub at Denny's, where I proceeded to get food poisoning and spent the entire night throwing my guts up. Ain't life grand? 😅

I recently found a bunch of old video cameras I used to use a long time ago, and after changing the batteries or charging them up, I found a treasure trove of videos of local bands I had shot on them, back when I used to care about such things and back when there was something worth documenting in this wonderful Punk Rock music scene of mine here in Las Vegas. It's not just me, is it? OK cool. 😎 So I downloaded them all to my computer, laughed as I went through the footage just trying to remember the when's and the where's of regarding when all this stuff was filmed / taken, and finally added the first one to the website, which is The Damnit Jims playing at the Skatehouse Skate Park in Sparks, NV back in May of 2016, click here to check that out, and I noticed the majority of the links on my Videodrome page were no longer working or connecting to anything, which is weird but OK, whatever. I spent a couple of days putting everything back together and re-linking everything back up and noticed there were a few things that never got posted to the website for some reason but they were posted to my YouTube page, which again, is weird but whatever, so I rectified that situation as well. Everything's updated, lots more to come, and who knows? Maybe I'll start videotaping bands again. 😀

It was literally minutes after walking off the stage at last years Navajo Nation Outreach Festival that I told everyone in Headnoise that we were going to play this event every friggin' year, even if I had to pay for it out of my own pocket! 😁 That was the year that someone fainted during our set and Robert dashed off stage to bring her back around and keep her steady until an ambulance arrived. Nothing that crazy happened during our set this year but the feeling you get from playing in front of these people who are just soooooooooo grateful that you traveled hundreds of miles on your own dime to play for them is indescribable. The festival takes place at the New Testament Indian Gospel Church in Inscription House, AZ, which is 15 minutes from Shonto if you know the area. The land out there is breathtaking and always a joy to see. The festival is basically to show the kids on the Rez that there are other options out there besides drinking and doing drugs to cope with life, like music of all types and genres, and I'm all about that. Rez life is not an easy one to live, believe me I know, and to do anything I can to help alleviate that burden is my priority. I even came bearing gifts this time, packing up all the free space in my car with jackets, shoes, clothes for the kids, all to help out those less fortunate. We all brought stuff for them. We had to. We were compelled. The hospitality extended to us by these amazing people gives me hope for the human race in general. PLUS they made me an honorary member of the Navajo Nation and gave me the official nickname of 'adoo'nííł', which means 'Thunder'. Wow. That's some humbling shit right there. Fucking Hell. Oh the frybread was plentiful, seeing all the good friends and Tribal elders we met the year before was beautiful, the drive out there was gorgeous (no snow this time), and Erika was with me the entire time, which just meant it was pretty much a perfect day. ❤ Headnoise at the Navajo Nation Outreach Festival. Can't wait to do it again next year. 

Every year it gets more pathetic and recycled, a old folks home revival con show that sells you nostalgia for nostalgia's sake, with gullible tourist type of people all trying hard to out-Punk each other in dress and attitude and willing to pay loads of cash for VIP access and a good vantage point to possibly see and hear a glimpse of their glorious Punk Rock past come to life, or to take selfies with all the "cool" people in attendance so they can boast on social media how cool they are too and how much money they "blew in Vegas" - did you see the pictures, and every year I get another handful of friends telling me that "they're over it" and "never going back again", which just makes me sigh. You shouldn't of been going for as long as you did in the first place silly. Why do you care? Shawn Stern doesn't. Shawn Stern doesn't care about Punk Rock or Punk music anymore! All you're doing is lining his pockets with cash that pays for another condo by the beach in CA for him or another one of his surfing expeditions to South Africa or wherever the fuck apathetic old fucks go to laugh at the rest of us and our daily struggle. And if you think the bands playing give a shit then you're sadly mistaken. It's just another overpaying gig to them and it's all about a free trip to Vegas and a chance to sell their merch to the sheep in attendance and give them a good fleecing before sending them back to the real world broke and drunk and clinging to cheap shitty band merch while watching the videos they shot on their phones from hundreds of feet away with the blown out sound of a song played by a band much better 30 years ago when they were sincere about playing it. As an outsider looking it I don't see the appeal in it all anymore, and I'm not sure I ever did. Punk Rock Bowling, before it became corporate Punk Rock Boring, was really fun. You should of been there. You would of loved it. 😎