Happy Halloween!!! You're all going to Hell... see ya there! :-)

Woke up yesterday afternoon to my Facebook world being all aflutter about the tragedy that befell Dave from the Mapes that morning - the tragedy being that he got his work van stolen right out of his driveway that morning and that he lost thousands of dollars worth of tools and whatnot from inside of it. They found the van, stripped of everything valuable, of course, just a few blocks away down the street, and him and his Friends are putting the word out heavy on the streets to find the scumbag that did this. Dave posted the surveillance video on his facebook page, which is pretty creepy to watch, to be quite honest. You can try to see it by clicking here, but you might have to be his Friend on there to see it or whatever. The guy looked like a tweeker, and I'm sure they're gonna catch him real soon. No one could be that lucky and stupid like this dude was in pulling this heist off. Click on that picture over there to see a composite drawing that TG Miller put together, which is pretty accurate when you read it. Channel 13 News did a story on the theft on the 11 o'clock news, so check it out by clicking here and see if you can help out with leg work, some clever ideas, or anything constructive to add to the case - just contact Metro and let them know what's up.

I gotta get ready for practice - as usual. Anyone going to Voodoo Glow Skulls tonight? I would, but it's at the LVCS, and I hate driving Downtown and the parking there, and the craptacular set of opening bands has me thinking I'm gonna pass. Have fun if you're going. What's everyone doing for Halloween? :-)

OK, I'll say it since nobody else is - Fuck Lou Reed. He was an old Queen who was more famous for who he hung around with than anything else. He wrote a few good songs - big deal. I'm not a druggie Hippie Beatnik, so I never got into the Velvet Underground, and musically, for the next 40+ years, he did absolutely nothing but sit on his laurels and play the part of the tortured Artist, the Emperor that no one wanted to tell that his clothes sucked. The only one's who still found him cutting edge and relevant were the homosexuals at Rolling Stone, who are so busy felching booger sugar out of each others asses that they've forgotten what real Rock & Roll is. Lou Reed did drugs because he was given electroshock therapy as a kid - oh, poor you! Everybody's got an excuse, everybody's got a crutch if they wanna use it. Whatever. Maybe I don't get it because I'm not some artsy-fartsy unique individual with delusions of grandeur, but again, who gives a fuck about Lou Reed. The passing of Marcia Wallace, the voice of Edna Krabappel, affects me more. More relevant, and something that directly affects my life.

Raiders over the Steelers... hahaha YES! Rapelessburger got sacked 5 times, Pryor sets a touchdown run record, and the Big D is looking better and better. The off week definitely helped our ass out. I was loving every minute of it. It was a great game to say the least. We're catching Philadelphia in the middle of a QB crisis, so we got this! Bring on the Eagles!!! hahaha GO RAIDERS!!

Sat. night's gig @ Bar 702 was so much fun! The place was packed, the bands were pretty good, and I'm sooooooo glad that I finally got to see 3D6, because they were incredible! They were just as nerdy as I expected, they played almost every song I wanted to hear, except for Stonerd, and they did it in front of a crowd of people who kind of didn't get it, and who definitely didn't appreciate it. The looks of awkward uneasiness on display from a bunch of people in the audience while the band played was priceless. 3D6 were soooooooo good! My Life is now complete. I saw 3D6 finally. I can die a happy man now. :-)

None of the other bands that played were as good as 3D6, but they were definitely worth mentioning. The Inside Outlaws were a bunch of manly men with beards, an acoustic guitar, and a stand up fiddle, playing some music that sounded like anything off of the Rick Rubin produced Johnny Cash albums. Outlaw Country Rock. The Bogtrotter's Union were OK, another group of manly men with acoustic guitars, a banjo, mandolin, and a few other instruments, who got stuck playing last to a crowd full of indifference and inattention. I left when they launched into a cover of Freebird, but in their defense, they only played the good parts... LOL For a couple of Beardcore bands, they were alright. And as for the grand debut of the Civilians? Well, if you take out the fact that Jeremy, for some reason as of yet unknown, decided to play the first 2 songs of the set completely out of tune, then I guess that it was a raging success! hahahaha We played good, people seemed to like us, everybody said we were LOUD (go figure, right?) and the Friends and Family and Girlfriends in attendance made everything all the much better. Thanx to Danielle and Ryan and everyone working with Nevermore Productions for making everything go smoothly and for putting on such a great gig. The night for me ended with a late night grub sesh with Anne at Pho Kim Long, where we saw 3D6 grubbing heavy in what I can only assume was a major munchies run. Stonerds... heh heh

I didn't hear anything good about the Life Is Shit Festival. I stopped receiving updates about it around 9 pm, because I had my own gig to attend to, so maybe it got better? I dunno. Does anybody wanna share with me how the gig went? Did anybody go? How was Dangerboner? Deadhand? Anybody? Hello? LOL I saw some congratulatory words from Jack on Facebook, some pix of War Called Home (Thanx for those MP3's, BTW!) dressed up as the game show Double Dare, and a photo of Roy from The Black Jetts playing in front of Brendan, and that's it. I saw that somebody from Beards In Vegas was there taking pictures - what? There was no cock smoking Beardcore band playing some corporate sponsored concert event going down @ the House of Booooo's to fawn over? hahaha Every time I see that that website has suckered some other band to pick up an acoustic guitar and just take the piss out of their songs I can't help but laugh. Not my thing and holds no appeal to me, but you kids enjoy perpetrating that myth. And stay off of my lawn, will ya? ;-)

Everything is updated. Lots going on these next few days. It's Halloween week bitches! Who wants to get downright Evil and Spooky with me? Somebody? Anybody? :-)

I hope this message gets to you before it's too late. I hope that They don't get to you before you have a chance to read these words and right before you tear off their implements of mass mental inoculation, remember to tell everyone you care about that this is going on. They can't possibly get everyone in attendance. They just can't.

If you're going to this weekend's Life Is Beautiful Festival, then you were given a wristband of sorts which allows you access to certain areas of the military like encampment which is currently occupying the Downtown area. Yeah, that's right - Occupying. Dress up a Government show of Force as a Hipster Festival, to be used as a test for the first step in the Psychotronic War that's forthcoming, and the sheep will congregate like moths to a flame to be slaughtered, or in this case, brainwashed and used. Yes, those wristbands that those in Control were oh so helpful and courteous and quick in giving to you, and all the free ones that are being passed around town and on Facebook, of course, those fucking wristbands are encoded with some sort of low frequency ELF waves transmitting technology that's embedded in the fabric / weave of the wristband, and which in effect makes a human antenna / transmitter of the person wearing the wristband, unbeknownst to them, of course. Now, one antenna / transmitter sending out a weak microwave ELF signal isn't powerful enough to do much damage, but a whole bunch of low powered ones combined to make one gigantic, powerful one that's capable of sending out a really powerful microwave ELF signal? Well, that's a force to be reckoned with, now isn't it? Yeah, once the thousands of sheep wearing the wristbands with the microwave emitting technology are herded into the kill zone area that is Downtown, those in Power plan to use all those human antenna / transmitters to send out one giant, massive ELF wave that will unleash some as yet unknown Horror upon the unsuspecting masses, motives unknown, which will leave the human transmitters of the madness as mindless shells of what they once were, vapid of any Integrity, Validity or Musical Sense whatsoever. Matter of fact, participation in the mindfuck has been speculated upon that it makes it's users prone to a likeness for all things bearded, but that theory is as of yet unconfirmed and unfounded. The point of all this is that if you're wearing one of those wristbands for the Life Is Beautiful Festival , rip it off, cut it off, just take it off your body and throw it down upon the ground for some other clueless automaton to fall victim to. Let them take your place in the depravity. Keep your musical integrity intact. Save yourself and others you care for. Let the others suffer the fate they've chosen and deserve. You're better than that, aren't you?

I don't know about you, but I'm wrapping my head in tinfoil, and then putting a colander adorned with wire hangers on top of it and awaiting the insanity / chaos that is sure to ensue this weekend from the Life Is Beautiful Festival. If I live to tell the tale, you will see me tomorrow night @ Bar 702 for that Civilians / 3D6 Halloween hootenanny that's going on down there.

Oh, and the reason why I'm not chatting up that 80's L.V.H.C. Punk Rock Reunion gig that's going on in the Downtown kill zone tonight, is because it's not my Scene. I have no interest in it. I came here a few times back in the days, saw a few bands like Subterfuge, 5150, F.S.P., Papsmear, thought they were all a bit more Metal / Crossover than Punk, and that was about it. I wasn't a regular, I didn't participate, I would see gigs and leave. Like I said, wasn't my scene, and I have no interest in Nostalgia for Nostalgia's sake. See Punk Rock Posing for all that shit. And I'm not a Poseur like some people in bands here in town, trying to act like I was here in the 80's, or even a good part of the 90's for that matter, and I'm not really about supporting a Scene I had nothing to do with or no interest in. It would be like me going to a 90's Las Vegas Ska Scene Reunion gig. I knew about the 90's Ska Scene, saw a few gigs, and that's about it. Not my thing, and I don't care. Plus all that Drama and bullshit that's all around that 80's L.V.H.C. Punk Rock Reunion gig  just makes me wanna stay far away from it. A celebratory gathering where all the over-40 crowd are acting like fucking high school dooshbags with their "I'm gonna kick your ass" and "Watch your back" BS is nothing I wanna be apart of. Have fun if you're going. I'm looking forward to seeing all your shitty iPhone videos of everything going on. Guess it would be too much to just be grateful that you're all still alive and well enough to even enjoy little things like this, for those of your fallen Friends and Comrades who can't or couldn't be there, instead of just turning it into this crap fest, totally taking the spotlight away from the bands who are reuniting tonight for this one time only gig. From the shining example being shown here, I'd say it's a safe bet that this is probably a pretty good example of how the 80's L.V.H.C. Punk Rock Scene was back then. But only with more Nazi's probably. :-)

Music Review from Karl Bakla on the Criminal Code 7": click here.

Pictures of S.F.T. playing @ the Dive: click here.

Music Review from Colin Oscopy on the King M'Butu LP: click here.

I know I should be more hyped about this, the Life Is Shit Festival, the antithesis of that lame Life Is Beautiful Festival that I'm ashamed to say a lot of my friends are hyped about, and if it wasn't happening on the exact same day as a gig I was playing, I would be all over this momentous event, promoting it, hyping it up, y todo, but as it is, I'm not going, and I blame that fact on the jackasses who planned this little shindig. You just had to have it on the same day that I'm playing a gig, didn't you, you pigfuckers you! lol This is an absolutely shitty day to have this little fest on, which is a shame, because I would love to be there, and there are some great bands playing - including the return of the beyond Legendary Dangerboner, who I would gladly kill to see, and Deadhand, who I pretty much feel the same about, but I'm sticking with the little gig @ Bar 702 that I agreed to play a long ass time ago, and not going to attend some hastily put together festival mired in Jealousy, Spite, Resentment and Pettiness, although that sounds just like my kind of gig... heh heh The paper gave a write up to the thing, and spoke to Jack from Dangerboner and Brendan from Deadhand about the thing, and you can click here to read it. Everybody in the article comes off bad... everybody. If the Life Is Beautiful Festival is so shitty, why are you guys pissed that your bands couldn't play it? Yeah, whatever. You can click here to check out the Facebook event page for the Life Is Shit Festival, drink a little sip of the Kool-Aid being served while you're there, and here's something to look at while you're sipping said beverage - a video promoting the event. Looks like it was put together with a Windows Movie Maker, but therein lies the charm of Punk Rock and all things in general. :-)

Like I said, if you're not coming to Bar 702 on Sat. to see the grand debut of the new and improved Civilians 2.0, along with the nerds in 3D6, well then I guess you should be at the Life Is Shit Festival. Just don't go to the Life Is Beautiful Festival. Just don't. :-)

OK, I'm finally done with it: here's the Music Review on the just released Clash box set called Sound System, which you can read by clicking here. It's a bit long, but I had a lot to say about this collection from The Only Band That Matters.

More things being posted up this week, lots of stuff going on, busy busy busy. Time for band practice... as usual.