Public Witness Program - Fugazi

I'm sooooo miffed that they moved the World Championship Taco And Salsa Festival back a month. I was looking forward to attending that thing for weeks now. I was hoping to place in the Top 3 in the taco eating contest... ha ha ha Oh well. It's not like I don't have other things to keep me occupied.

Like this - time to crow about my band The Civilians a bit. We're currently "signed" to the Crowd Control Media family, and they've been nothing but nice to us, and I personally couldn't be happier to be on their record label. I'm also very proud of the fact that we're the only Local Vegas band that's NOT signed to a Local Vegas label. ;-) Anybody can be signed to a Local label, but try getting a label from another state interested in your band, and wanting to put your stuff out for you - that's not an easy thing to do, and like I said, I'm proud to be a part of The Civilians machine that did it. Our label puts out records by bands, not Prince tribute CD's. We have the first CD out, a self-titled release which you can stream entirely for free by clicking here, and now we just finished up recording our second release, which is going to be a split LP release with The Defenders, a Punk / Oi! band from Santa Cruz, CA. Click here to check out their website and see what they're all about. I can't wait to get up there and play some gigs with them. The Civilians were supposed to play in the Bay area with The Generators in October I think, but the Promoters couldn't cover our fees to play the gigs, so that weekend fell apart, but we'll be up there for sure sometime soon. We did get the honor to be asked to play with The Generators for their annual Christmas gig in December, which was very cool of them to offer, and I'm looking forward to that gig as well, but I digress. Back to the recording of this split. We recorded the 7 songs in a matter of days, choosing from our musical arsenal a few new ones, a few old ones, some we've never even played live before, and recording and mixing was all done at Camel Hump Studios by "Magic Bag" Brown, as always, and the songs came out fucking fantastic. I can't wait for you all to hear the songs. I think you're gonna like them. :-)

Give a monkey a video camera and he will capture some of the magic, which is what I did with Bob while we're were at Camel Hump recording the tunes. I edited the footage together and this is what I came up with. It could of easily been another 5 minutes longer... lol Thanks to Trueland for designing the Ins and Outs cards for the video. :-) The name of the video is The Jack In The Box Sessions, Pt. 1. I don't know if there will ever be a Part 2... 

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In other Civilians news, we're appearing on WBKE Vegas Radio tonight, on the Lost N' Found In Las Vegas show, hosted by Tim and Evan, where we will be drinking lots of Guinness and eating tacos and being chatted up about this and that and whatever. We're gonna talk about the new / old album, the upcoming new / new release, and I think the gals in the band are even going to play some Beardcore acoustic versions of some of our songs, which should be interesting to hear. Jeremy is convinced that this is the end of the world and The Civilians with this Beardcore acoustic guitar Punk rock shit, and he's right to be mad, because this is only a short step away from the gheyness that is Beards In Vegas and what they do over there, but whatever. The Civilians do what they want, just like the little boys in beards do, but the difference is that the Civilians aren't trying to make a career out of being Beardcore, like the other bandwagon jumpers in bands here in town. Nope, The Civilians are just playing some songs acoustically on a radio show, albeit an Internet radio show, but a radio show nonetheless, and that's when you're supposed to play acoustically, on the radio, and not in a Punk club full of people wanting to get drunk and high and rock the fuck out, so yeah. If you're bored at Home early tonight, trying to figure out the root note of songs you're going to cover, then take a break and give the Lost N' Found In Las Vegas show on WBKE Vegas Radio a listen tonight. You'll actually get to hear a good Local bands music, which is better than that 'other' Local Internet radio show going on tonight, which only plays the bands of the Local label which pay for advertising on said show. Lame, but whatever. Pay to Play only works in Vegas. I don't know why.

Everything is pretty much updated, but I don't really know or even care right now. The number of 'Likes' on Facebook just keep going up, and the number of hits for the website just keep getting higher and higher, and I really don't give a fuck. I mean, I'm thankful and all that, but it's inconsequential, ya know? There's too much going on to be concerned with such trivial things, like all the Drama and mudslinging going on about that Sasha Perry Army Of Kids documentary on the Las Vegas "Punk" scene circa 2002. Click here to watch it if you haven't already. Yeah, I can't be bothered to comment on what a crock of shit that video is. Looks more like a Jock / Emo convention to me. Sorry.

After you're done checking out The Civilians on the Internet Radio show tonight, head on down to the Double Clown for the old guys convention celebrating the release of the We're Loud compilation, put together by ex-Vegas compatriot Jamie Lamb, from The Dirty Babies, and if you don't know about that Legendary band, then just go kill yourself now. I have no time to explain to you how great they are/were, and I haven't the stomach to tell you what you missed out on by not being into the band or seeing them perform live all the numerous times they did. I'm sure if they were allowed to play the big Punk Rock Posing festival you'd all be up into them and proclaim them one of your favorite bands ever, but that would only be because the corporate Punk gods told you to. Yup.

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