1/05/06

So, for those who asked what happened at our show last weekend..here's the scoop. Our pal Jason spent a good deal of the night spewing blood about the club. No big deal in itself..he was having fun. It's FUN to bleed.

When Elvis surprise walloped me and Mark with a bottle, it wound up opening up Mark up so bad that blood was squirting from a vein between his eyes. It pooled very fast. I was bleeding so bad myself that my bass was soaked in about 30 seconds..but Mark wound up in a trough of blood. It was sick. Elvis felt bad about it...but Jeff Clayton assures me that if he had been there he would've done the same thing. Trouble follws us.

Marla glanced across the big stage and calmly thought to herself...hmmmmm...I didn't know the stage was painted red. Well, it was painted by his skull juice. This wasn't a crimson mask, it was deep and slick everywhere.

Deep enough that I remember seeing Texas Stud and Bobo posing for a photo with the stud laying down in it. As club workers strapped on Michael Jackson masks and biohazard spill suits to sop it up more people snapped photos.

We'll go to hell for sure now.

The night before we had a very drunken party at our house. General Lee Drunk wound up 1) falling off a high tree limb branching out over our treehouse 2) falling off our porch back first with a guitar and 3) pitching over while eating a plate of brisket...he was helped up still shoveling brisket into his maw. When he and his bandmates returned to their motel they got even wilder and wound up taking more spills and spray painting pubic hair and other such revelry.

After our show Jason wound up being counseled by some of our friendly local police. They were considerate enough to turn him over into the sober hands of the Hammercocks boys at the motel...who eventually wound up causing a scene at Whattaburger!

While Mark getting patched up elsewhere we had another small gathering...enough shots were consumed that a veteran drinker from California wound up talking in sentences like: "heemie mamma gaga wa wa..."

The next day the Before I Hang guys wound up being pulled over by State troopers in Mississippi 5 miles from home. When the cops learned they had been traveling on the infamous primary drug route of the Southern U.S. (I-10) they handcuffed a couple of 'em and searched their van with a drug sniffing dog. They were shocked when they found the bloody p.a. monitor we wound up paying for. Finally, they managed to explain to the confused John Law's the fact that a band they played with used wrestling schtick. They were set free.

So, no one was arrested (that I know of) although several came close.

Instead of revamping our horrible, shocking, unbookable band of louts into a typical band like everybody elses....I had the idea we could start up a non-denomenational troop of minstrels that could preach the word of god at South and central Texas Sunday school meetings. I envisioned Bobo learning to twist balloons into animal shapes..Mark learning a few Sunday school appropriate magic tricks..and Marla, Texas Stud and I softly crooning tunes like "kumbiya" whilst taking turns repenting of our evil pasts for the kids. Hey I figured..we won't offend ANYBODY that way, will we??

Then I realized that YES we would offend all the Muslims, Jews, atheists and agnostics in town (a small number for sure...but HEY..) and denominations that don't tolerate magic and balloons and freaky looking "saved" former losers talking to their kids. We don't have enough minorities or womyn in the band to please others.

Maybe we should take the D.J. route....how could people be offended by one of us playing taped music while the others spin and scratch records and assume menacing looking poses....

Well, no....that's too "black" for San Marcos....and the country fans would hate it.

We could sit in the park in the town square and play classic rock and folk tunes on accoustic guitars...but, no...there's city ordinances against that.

HHmmmmm...how to not offend in San Marcos....this is gonna take some thought. Back to the drawing board.

1/02/05

Hey, I just had a great idea for our 25 year old band...after fighting against the current and shocking and upsetting people...what if we just took a few steps to ensure that shows never got out of hand again.

Maybe it's time for Marla and I to "act our age". We could start by acting friendly towards all the other bands right here in our own town and in places like Austin. If we offer to open shows for them for maybe $25-$50 or so and maybe a chance to go to their after show party's we'd likely wind up with a lot of them liking us. We could start taking up all the offers from people in other cities who want us to play their towns in exchange for floor sleeping space. Why hell, we could organize entire tours of the nation if we simply switched to eating peanut butter and cut out drinking beer. Also, I bet if we revamped some of those offensive and threatening songs into positive politcal songs that people WANT to hear people wouldn't be shocked and disgusted by us.

We could change some of those old songs that confuse folks saluting old retired and forgotten wrestlers into positive politcal statements.

How about changing Beauregarde's "testify" into a plea to stop the exploitation of animals?? Maybe "nature boy" could be reworked into some sort of save the whales anthem? We could re-vamp and re-work "loser leave town" into an anti-Bush or Tom DeLay song; well, we might have to change the words again when somebody else is elected in 2008...but we'd be embracing a cause by doing so.....and therefore receive more invitations to send people free cd's and records in the mail...and more chances to open shows for other bands in far away cities.

Of course the other guys in the band will need makeovers.

Mark needs to start traveling about town on his old skateboard. The Texas stud will need to start behaving in a peaceful, non-threatening and non-sexist manner. Bobo will have to shrink a half foot or so and stop looking so mean...HEY..we don't want him to frighten anybody, do we?

Marla can be a valuable resource for the band by joining a few womens groups and blaming all her problems on me; I of course won't resist. I'll take every bit of advice to heart directed towards me by her new "Sisters".

I'll have to give up the booze of course...it's distilled in racist Southern states after all..but I won't look at it as a loss of a lifelong passtime...I'll try to turn my talents into positive channels. In other words, I can devote the rest of my life to making amends for all the crude, offensive thoughts I've expressed in magazines.

I can probably get one of my fellow columnists to wisen me up on all the latest causes and become topical for the FIRST TIME.

TOPICAL AT LAST, TOPICAL AT LAST!!!

If neccessary I can read some of those other guys columns and sort of..yunno..change the words around a little. Hey, it'll all be "for a good cause"...and that's what we're going to be into...ALL THE RIGHT CAUSES.

All those offensive rebel flag and Texas and international-death brewery patches will have to go. Stickers we've gotten from most of our old "offensive" band friends will have to be peeled off. Hey, some of their bands members may be racist or sexist or species-ist. It's impossible that any members of the more popular crop of modern punk rock bands could be. We'll align ourselves with them. We can study the patches on some other peoples jackest and skateboards and at little or no cost to ourselves write to some bands whose names we see often for some free stickers. If we plaster them all over our equipment and leathers and wear them about town we'll likely double requests for free shows in other cool places and tape exchanges of our music.

Oh course.....we've got to make some changes there too.

We'll listen to the cd's our new friends own and pattern ourselves after them.

We can re-write "hostile city usa" into a scathing rebuke of the warmongers in Washington D.C.

We can we-write "say you love satan" in "say you love vegan".

We can re-work "sucker punch" into a song about warmly embracing all the enlightened people.

"deeds of the damned" will be directed towards enemies of the environment.

And maybe...just maybe...after we've given ourselves a makeover we can play in front of a local San Marcos audience without offending ANYBODY.

That'll be our new goal just like all our new band friends...DON'T OFFEND ANYBODY.....and we'll be doing whats right.

Maybe, FINALLY after a quarter century we can be POPULAR!!!! That's what it's all about, right???

1/01/06

25 FUCKING YEARS.

I'm damned glad it's 2006....I don't see how it can be any worse than 2005 for one helluva lot of us.

We had our anniversary show last night; I'm happy with the overall attendance on a night where there's so much competition...and I thank especially all the people from out of State (and of course our pal from Australia) who made the trip.

Of course all the bands played just fine..and the first 99% of the show went smoothly. Of course, as you know trouble and fate has a way of following us. The show got a bit out of hand right at the end....and we had to buy some sound equipment. We didn't plan to destroy anything...things got carried away.

The club cooperated with us all night..and I thank them for that. It's pretty obvious we won't be playing there again...and I seriously doubt anywhere else in this city for anytime in the foreseeable future.

It's a shame....but honestly, we've held back quite a bit everywhere we've played here in San Marcos..but no matter what we do it's plain that even a mild version of what we do is enough to be out of line. This is just too small a damn town for wild rock and roll acts. I have to live here...and I don't need to create enemies I have to see all the time.

Even local businesses I patronize all the time such as bars and stores whom you might expect would welcome trade from out of State were totally freaked out by 25-30 year old people with out of State I.D.!

In spite of my intentions to play in my home town (and I repeat...everytime we've played here including last night we've really toned things down) this towns not ready for it. The much vaunted annual chili cookoff and oldtime Western swing convention and special olympics are about as wild affairs as you'll see here.

That's fine; I understand perfectly now. We'll just have to travel to wild burg's like S.F. and Tucson and Philly and Charlotte (I hear Oklahoma city's great) to showcase our offensive rock and roll. The groundwork has been layed over the years in those places for extreme RNR.

Of course the denizens and cheerful staff of the local punk rock club here (where we also "held back" but shocked the fuck out of them anyway) like to think of themselves as wild, crazy, uninhibited people......but then...so do people in the same age group who listen to synth-drum/pop country. Within THEIR world they are uninhibited bohemians. FINE. They don't need us...they exist in their own world...and we'll continue on happily in ours.

We live here...but we aren't a "LOCAL" band.

I've heard that years ago Jimmy Carl Black from the Mothers and Arthur ("FIRE") Brown painted houses here...but they weren't local bands either.

Wes from the mighty Bulemics lives here now...but they sure as hell aren't a "local" band. Their fans are concentrated partially in Austin but even more so all over the country in the same sick cities our fans live in. They're a "national" act shall we say..and so are we.

Want a literary reference? I feel a bit like the charachter in Sinclair Lewis's "Main street"(Carol?) who made attempts to introduce modern ways and aesthetic pleasures to clodhoppers and rubes in her newly adopted home town of Kansas in the early 1900's.

It didn't work for her...just like old "Red" Lewis had to leave Sauke center Minnesota to reach people capable of appreciating his "offensive" (to some) books. Lewis was hung in effigy in his home town. I don't need to keep pushing things here until they do the same to either me or a bloated hay stuffed likeness of me.

I'm glad some long term friends from all over the country got to see our home town and I hope they come back for more visits. It's still a great place to live. Playing in a goddamned band is only one facet of whatever the hell it is I do. We'll take it elsewhere to more understanding, less easily offended cities in the future.

Of course, we'll do whatever we do on our own terms....not because anybody's told us what to do.

I'm not going to tone things down any more than we already have.

Yes, we shocked and disgusted the poor staff and owners of that club...but we tried our best to be good. I can't blame them for thinking we're offensive freaks...because we are by local standards.

I might add though, that other lively forms of entertainment such as hardcore wrestling and nude dancing and threatening urban type rap and hip hop aren't seen here either.

We're "adult" entertainment....uninhibited; and that's a plate of food that's too spicy for this town.

Once more to the club, thanks. You fulfilled your end of things. Believe it or not, we tried to make it work. I'm not about to tone things down any further. We won't bother any of you bookers in this town again.

I'll go into more detail about the show at another time. I still have to make sure that a few people down there last night are safe, not incarcerated and patched up before I come back here and relate a longer winded version of the night.

I'm overall pleased though. 25 FUCKING YEARS....2005 is OVER. Here's a tip of the bottle to it all.