A non-music post, mostly for Sean, but…

Somewhat of a response to Sean’s recent post on the Plow United blog, i’ve also wanted to document and share some of this stuff for a while. These are some additions or changes to my bike that i’ve made that hopefully enhance the safety, security, comfort, or style.

There was a time when I rode to and from work (24 miles round trip) 4 or 5 days a week. The addition of a child made it more difficult, as that meant two hours a day of transit time. It became even more of a luxury with the addition of the second one.

Now that i’m taking care of the kids full time, my commute in the morning is about 23 feet from my bed to theirs. While i don’t log as many miles as i once did, the Chariot allows me to take the kids pretty much wherever we need to go. We recently rode 20 miles round trip to a thrift store, on a uncharacteristically warm, non-windy day, which was AWESOME. Wish i had pictures of that ride.

Without further ado, here’s some bike hack porn:

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I got tired of scratching my hands, arms, and legs on my open bar ends, so i plugged them with some 12 gauge shotgun shells. I got these from a gun store in town for free. Asked one of the employees, and he said they do reloads, and had a box i could have. There are a number of gauges, so it took 3 or 4 tries before i found some that had the right OD for my bars’ ID. When they first went in, i could slip a fingernail between the bar and the flange on the shell, but the bike has fallen over and scraped things enough that now they’re securely in place.
I prefer not having bar tape, because i’ve never seen any on a bike that gets ridden that looks decent and stays in place.

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See if you can guess what this one’s for before i tell you. Here’s another picture of it, unrolled, and off the bike:

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Any guesses? It’s just a piece of webbing about 12″ long, with hook and loop stuff stitched to it. The hooks are on one side, and the loops are on the opposite side and the opposite end.

Ready for the answer? Here you go:

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While it can serve as a leg strap when i need one on the off chance i’m riding my bike while wearing long pants, (this mostly only happens when it’s raining, snowing, or very cold out) it normally lives right there on the top tube, and its main use is as a front wheel “parking lock” to keep it from turning left or right when the bike is parked and leaning against something. This prevents MUCH frustration while i’m loading or unloading panniers, or putting the kids in/out of the bike seat or trailer.

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I used to have an old dead inner tube tied to my rear rack, in a specific configuration that i figured out over several years, that was tied to the rack at both ends, but still allowed me to unhook and strap something down quickly and easily if i needed to. The rear-rack-based kid seat that we have doesn’t allow the tube to live there anymore. So, i moved it to my seat tube.
One end is tied to the right seat stay. The inner tube is then wrapped around the seat tube, and tied off to itself. If/when i find i’ve got cargo that’s big or weird and won’t fit into a pannier/messenger bag/trunk of the trailer, i can unwrap this and tie the cargo to the rack. The seat stay is both out of the way enough and close to the rack enough that i can leave that end tied all the time.
You can also see in this picture where the rear rack attaches to the seat stays. the clips that came with the rack were meant for larger stays, so i padded them with some old inner tubes, taped into place. this inner tube also protects the paint. You can see where the previous rack was without the inner tubes, slightly below the clips, where the paint is all but gone.

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This one isn’t so much a hack, but it lives on my bike, and i love seeing how different bicycle trailer attach to bike frames, so i’m including it for the other fans of the same. The hitch arm on the trailer has a hard plastic ball that slides into place on this hitch, and then a cotter pin goes into the holes, keeping it in place. The hard plastic is flexible, and with the ball joint, the bike/trailer is hinged on three axes:
I did modify our Burley brand trailer to fit with this hitch. (Burley and Chariot each make their own hitch design, neither of which is compatible with the other.) Before i modded the Burley trailer, if i needed to switch trailers, i had to also change hitches. No more. This hitch just lives on my bike all the time, and when it’s trailer time, i can slot it in and go.

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Sorry this one’s not very sexy. I took the picture after it was downloaded. It’s a length of bike chain, threaded through a section of innertube, and then looped around the seat stay and the seat rail on my Brooks saddle. It won’t stop a pair of bolt cutters, but  it will stop someone with an allen wrench from making off with my saddle. The inner tube serves to protect the paint and saddle rails, keep the chain from rattling and driving me crazy while i’m riding, and it obscures the chain from would-be saddle rustlers. Unless they happen to be 1000 Yesterdays readers, they don’t know what’s in there, although this is a fairly common hack in some circles.

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A while back, i went looking for this stuff, but didn’t know what it was called or even where to look. I mentioned my quest to someone at a paint store, and he said to find the sign shop for the county. I did, and it turns out they make road signs. Not the common ones like Stop and Yield and the ones marking Pedestrian crossings, but they do make locally specific ones like “No right turn on Arapahoe during construction” or detour signs with specific streets outlined.
The material they use to make the signs reflective comes on a huge roll (have you ever seen a road sign up close? they’re ginormous!) and they make the signs to fit. It’s HIGHLY reflective, and adhesive on the back. The best part is it’s also UV resistant/proof, and weather proof. It’s what road signs are made of, dontcha know?
When they’re making up signs, and they come to the end of a rolls, there is usually a piece left over that isn’t big enough to make a new sign, and those bits get thrown away. I asked for some scraps, and was given a big stack of pieces cut into 4×5 rectangles, as well as some long strips about 12″ x 36″. At the time, i was teaching a kids’ bicycle class, and the kids loved the stuff. We cut them out into little pieces and stuck them all over the kids’ bikes.
Somewhere where you live, there’s a place that’s making signs. It could be a city, county or state shop. Or even a private highway construction company. They’ve got cutoffs of this stuff. And it comes in all the colors you see road signs. Red, white, safety orange, yellow, blue, green, brown, purple…

Which brings us to the above photo. I made a spoke card out of two of the pieces, with the corners folder over some spokes and stuck to itself, so it won’t move. This stuff is so much more reflective than a normal bike reflector:

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It’s so reflective, in fact, that when i’m riding in the dark, and a car is approaching from behind me, i can see the front wheel light up before the car even gets close.
I have plans to put some more of the stuff in select spots that would be conspicuous in the dark, but not glaringly tacky when it’s light out. Places like the front and back surfaces of both cranks and small pieces spaced apart on the inner wall of the wheels. These are moving parts, obviously, and the moving reflection will hopefully be eyecatching as a result. I’m especially curious how the crank will look from ahead/behind, since the reflective strip on the crank would (i assume) appear to get longer and shorter as the cranks rotate.
Anything out of the ordinary to catch a driver’s eye…

Welcome to Colorado. Now get out.

the Descendents and Hot Water Music are playing at the Fillmore Auditorium in Denver tomorrow night and a bunch of (including some as yet unmet) friends are coming in from out of town to see them. a few have asked me what there is to do here. so, i compiled a list. here’s that list.

i’m sure i’ll add to this, but i would like to take a moment and encourage all three of you reading this to consider doing something similar for where you live. how awesome would it be to have such a map like this when you go visit somewhere? there’s certainly something to be said for exploring a new place and finding things on your own, but sometimes i don’t have time for that, or just want to go eat/shop for records without doing a ton of research first.

google maps makes it INCREDIBLY easy to creat a map and add places to it, complete with little descriptions (“don’t miss this dish”, or “be sure to ask about the box of records they keep behind the counter”) for each one. i’ve included the one i created for Front Range Vegan, but i plan on making a “Things to do in Denver” one soon.

Wax Trax is not to be missed. if you have time, dig out the used 7″ boxes along the back wall. there’s shit in there that’s been in there for years. be sure to go through the tiny “new arrivals used punk” section when you first walk in the door. it’s the entirety of their used LP section, because it gets so picked over, and it remains at about 40 records constantly.

i can never seem to leave Black and Read in Arvada without something great. bit of a drive from Denver, tho.

Justine mentioned the bowling party tonight at 5. that’s near my house in Lafayette, and anyone reading this is welcome to join us. google Coal Creek Sports Center. 5 PM. bit of a drive from downtown, but most of the people coming tonight are going to the show Justine mentioned at Illegal Pete’s. i’ll have my two kids with me, one’s almost 3 and the other is 9 months old.

speaking of Pete’s, be sure to save some room for their Big Potato Burrito if you’re headed to that show.

Twist and Shout Records on east Colfax is decent, they tend more towards the new than the used, and it tends to get picked over more frequently, but still worth checking out.
that’s right next door to one of the Tattered Cover Bookstores. not the best Tattered Cover, but a decent bookstore.

go further east, and there’s a bunch of thrift stores right on Colfax. Goodwill, ARC, and more. all of the ARC Thrift Stores on the Front Range (Denver to Fort Collins, basically) sell all their stuff except for brand new arrivals for 50% off every Saturday, so if you’re up and looking for something to do, go thrifting.

someone mentioned 1up Bar. never been there myself, but want to some day. everything i’ve heard sounds rad.

Sweet Action Ice Cream is down near the 3 Kings Bar, which is awesome and has great art on the walls. kind of in a hipster part of downtown, but not yet fully gentrified…those are both across the street from Sputnik, which is a diner next door to the Hi-Dive venue, and has great pub-type food like sweet potato fries. there’s also a decent sized Goodwill very close to these. if you don’t see it while looking for parking, just ask a local. it’s right there. and don’t forget the downstairs of that place. it’s bigger than it first looks from outside.

not too far/maybe next door? from the Fillmore is Independent Records. i’ve spent a good couple hours in there while a friend was at a lame show at the Fillmore, and came away with one or two good records. i think it’s the kind of place that stocks some good stuff, but it doesn’t get picked over very much, so you can find deals on good records as a result.

as for places to eat, i’ve been collecting a list of vegan/friendly places to eat, and have compiled them handily here:

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=200567187894947613615.0004b6c8a6f4ff874e9ef&msa=0

Watercourse Foods is within walking distance from the Fillmore, and it’s got a ton of veg*n options.

Analog music storage

After 25 years of buying and collecting music, I’ve got quite a few flat round things with music on them. Some have music on one side, some have music on both sides. Storing all these discs has always been something that was kind of secondary to the collecting of CDs and records, but I’m at a point now where I’m tired of not having things in order, and there’s just so much of it that keeping it as tight and small as possible is vital. Getting rid of some of them isn’t an option right no.

LP’s have been around the longest of any of the formats I’ve got, and there are plenty of record collectors out there who’ve tackled this problem. The easiest/best looking way to keep LPs that I’ve found is to use the Expedit shelf system from Ikea. They come in a number of sizes/formations, and are the perfect size for LP’s. They even have doors you can buy for each little cube, if you prefer a cleaner look:

Mostly LPs, with some 10" records in the top right cube. (This is about 500 records.)

We also have a pretty swanky old-school record cabinet that we got from an awesome local furniture restorer. This one is fancy so it can live in the living room next to the stereo and it might be my favorite piece of furniture that we own…

pay no attention to the plunger.

Cats in this image may be larger than they appear. (About 125 records here.)

Like I said, LP storage was never a problem. Worst case scenario, I had milk crates galore to use for that.

7″s have always been a little more difficult to keep in good shape. I think this is mostly due to the format being relegated to singles outside of the punk and independent music scenes. They haven’t been as collectible to mainstream music audiences as LP’s, so there doesn’t exist a TON of furniture or storage units devoted to this format.

That said, they’re my absolute favorite format for records, so i have quite a few. Somehow, somewhere, i lucked into some milk crates that are a different size than the normal American milk crate. It’s almost as if they were designed to hold records. They’ll hold LP’s upright and square in one direction, and 2 rows of 7″s in the other direction.

Two of these are commercially available, and one was apparently liberated from a Dutch dairy somewhere in Europe. I have no recollection of this, but the inside of the box is the same size as the two red ones:

this is about 550 7"s.

And then I pilfered this raisin crate from my dad’s collection of random stuff (it’s from South Africa, circa 1954!):

this one holds about 50 records

And that concludes the vinyl portion of this post. We’ll now be moving on to the Compact Disc portion of music storage.

For several years, I’ve kept my CD’s in a few of the classic large Case Logic CD wallets. I never was a huge fan of those, for a number of reasons, but kept them around because they were the best way to keep CD’s that I could find.

1. They don’t allow for easy alphabetizing or other organizing. Once you load them up, if you need to insert one in the middle somewhere, everything after it has to be shifted by one space. And if you come home with several new CD’s, forget it.
2. They tend to be redesigned every year or even more often than that, so once you have two or three big wallets, each one works slightly differently, or looks different.
3. They’re not that visually pleasing to look at, either open or closed. Closed, they look like a Trapper Keeper for someone who wears a suit to the office, and open they remind me a lot of bad jukeboxes from bad bars.
4. At this point in my life/CD collecting, I’m no longer interested in schlepping a pile of 500 CD’s around with me. I don’t need a portable solution.

So, how to store all these CD’s? Well, you should know that I DESPISE jewel boxes. Can’t stand them. They take up space that’s unnecessary. They break. They’re horrible plastic bits of crap that are bad for the planet. They’re the reason i moved as much as I could into wallets in the first place.

So, I’ve been looking for a solution to how to store my CD’s in a way that i really like. I asked around, and everyone seemed to have a method of storing their CD’s that worked sort of, but nothing that would work for me.

Here are some parameters for my ideal CD storage solution:

1. Easily expandible as time progresses and I own more.
2. Easily alphabetized, and easy to keep in order once new CD’s arrive.
3. Looks somewhat visually pleasing. I don’t need to get an erection when I see it, but I also don’t want it to be ugly.
4. Must accommodate 100% of my CD collection. It’s not huge, by any means, but I do have a number of demo CD’s that came in a paper/cardstock/no sleeve at all, discs that came in a cardboard+plastic digipack, and any other assortment of cardboard digipack sleeves or folded cases.
5. Must accommodate liner note booklet, CD itself, AND tray card. I hate having the tray cards in a separate box. I know CD’s aren’t favored for their artwork, but sometimes bands will opt to include the tracklisting on the tray card and not the CD or liner notes, so finding a song or song title is a pain if the tray cards are all boxed up separate from the CD’s.
6. Must not cost more than the collection of CD’s themselves.
7. Must be fairly simple, and robust. I’m looking for the ultimate CD storage system here, so that I don’t have to go through this again in 5 years.

I looked all over for some kind of audiophile solution, but none seemed to exist. There were plenty of jewelbox-laden wall unit sized monstrosities made of wood and costing $999 or more. No thanks.

I found a couple of DJ storage/portable briefcase/suitcase looking options that held up to 1000 CD’s, but those didn’t allow for the tray card. Nope, Chuck Testa.

There was one system I found that held 600 discs in this odd looking tower device, and each disc was in it’s own sleeve, with 100 of them per drawer, but again, this didn’t hold the tray cards.  It was also pretty ugly and had a huge footprint for being so tall. Very close, but no cigar.

A number of CD storage products looked like they had been designed by NASA engineers, and built by Hasbro. Lots of moving parts, hinges, spinning bits, all made from injection molded plastic. Nein, danke.

While in San Diego for Awesomefest, I stayed at a friend of a friend’s house, and HIS roommate had a ton of records, CD’s, and even a few laserdiscs.

CD's on the left, DVD's on the right. Floor to ceiling, custom built-in shelves. Sorry it's so dark. I shot this with my built in laptop webcam, and it was dark...obviously.

In case it’s not clear, he’s got them all in jewel boxes. Well, most of them in jewel boxes. On the bottom shelf were a few wire mesh baskets holding CD’s in clear plastic sleeves. I’m guessing these were demos and other non-jewel boxed CD’s that didn’t work on the upper part of the shelf.

These mesh wire bins stuck in my brain. I went to bagsunlimited.com, and checked out their different options for plastic bag/sleeves. These are the thin poly bags that 7″s and some LP’s come in. Not shrink wrap. The company sells an amazing assortment of products for storying all kinds of music and printed ephemera. Bags and boxes for records, comic books, Little Golden Books, and many other random collectible things.

One of their products is called the “Big Little Book” bag, and is 5 1/4 x 7″:

Bags Unlimited's SBLB25 2.5 mil poly bag

This size bag is a little big for CD’s with tray cards, but since it also fits comfortably digipacks, and those slightly oversized cardboard sleeves, it will handle all the CD’s I currently have, plus hopefully any others I come across.

I emailed my friend in San Diego whose house we stayed at, and asked him to ask his roommate where those wire mesh bins came from. Turns out there are a ton of companies that make something similar, but the problem with most of them is that they’re very unattractive first, and too small second. Some of them were made from fabric. Some of them were made from wicker. Some of them were made from fabric AND wicker. ugh. Most of them are designed to hold CD’s with the spine facing up, so as to be readable in storage mode. Not compatible with wider tray cards oriented with the spine on the side, the way records are stored.

The Container Store sells a wire basket for storing DVD’s which is where this whole plan comes together:

Silver Mesh DVD Bin from the Container Store

They’re 13 bucks, and they’re 8 inches wide. (Which, incidentally, means they’ll also hold 7″s comfortably.) And at 6 inches tall, they’re stackable when loaded with CDs. (Math majors will note that there are not stackable when filled with 7″s).

So, I’ve put these two together, and this is the result. CD’s go with liner note booklet and tray card into the Big Little Bag, and then the bag goes into the wire mesh bin:

This is about 450-500 CDs, with liner notes and tray cards.

This way, you can flip through the CDs as if they’re 7″s or LP’s. They are VERY space efficient, as you can see, the bins look nice, adding new CD’s to the middle doesn’t disrupt the alphabetizing, the bins aren’t going out of production anytime soon (per the CSR at the Container Store when I grilled him), the bins are stackable if they need to take up less space, they hold CD+liner notes+tray card easily, and finally, they fit previously-jewel-boxed discs as well as digipacks and cardboard sleeved albums all the same.

Special note for anyone still reading: you can click on most of the above images to see a much larger image, in which you can make out a number of records and/or CD’s in the photo. Have fun browsing my collection.

Plan A Project: Use Your Head ep

I went through a phase in the mid-late 90′s where I did a LOT of mailorder from the back of MRR and Punk Planet, and then when those records would arrive, I’d dig through the catalog from the label/distro, and order more.

This was when I lived on a military base in Germany, and so would check my mail at the base post office. I worked about 2 blocks away. Checking the mail was the highlight of many, many days during those years. I remember weeks at a time when I would get at least one music package in the mail every day. Life was good.

I’m pretty sure this record came in one of those packages. I’ve always described their sound as sort of like a more-bouncy-but-still-punk Rancid, if Rancid were a little more tight, and a little more street. Almost like a cross between Operation Ivy and Rancid, as odd (is it really?) as that sounds.

Anyway, I got this record in the mail, and very soon after ordered their follow up, 532 Seconds of oppressed anger, individuality, insecurity, uncompromising moral commodity, and a kid who got sold short 7 inch.

They also put out a self titled 10″, and later a couple of CD’s, one of which includes a cover of Confrontation 101, the Plow United song, which they actually do pretty good justice.

 

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Tracklist:

Full Blown Vet
Plan A
Catalytic Agent
Anthems

Anthems was later rerecorded for one of their full lengths, but I’ve always preferred this version. It’s a little more sloppy and less polished.

One thing that really resonated with me is the sense of activism that they sung about. Yeah, Op Ivy and tons of others sang about unity, and all that, but something about these guys seemed a lot more direct action oriented than the punk bands I was used to. Maybe it was pictures of them playing in ABC No Rio or some mention in the liner notes about Food Not Bombs or something; I have no idea. But the songs very much inspired me to get off my ass, out of my house, and do something positive, creative, and difference making. Unlike most other bands I was into at the time, or have been into since.

I really wish I knew what these guys were up to today, even if it’s not Plan A.

Get it.

POP PUNK Fans MUST board never pull them out!

In the summer of 1996, I lived on a military base in Germany with my parents. Here’s the house I lived in. Because I lived with my parents, and had a job, I had lots of disposable income. I ordered lots and lots of records from labels and distributors back in the states. At some point, I came across Polyvinyl Records. I sent them some money for something, and they were out of whatever it was I wanted. (Come to think of it, it was likely this, which I later found elsewhere.) They sent me a credit slip, and I checked out their catalog. I wasn’t interested in any of the stuff they were carrying (it was too emo for me. I was into the pop punk stuff, then and now.) so I told them “just send me whatever random pop punk stuff you have lying around that gets sent to you.”

So they did. A few weeks later, I got what I’ve come to think of as the best surprise mail order experience I’ve ever had.

This tape was but one of the many many awesome things that were in that box. The only other thing I’m 100% sure that Polyvinyl sent me at the same time was The Blue Meanies picture disc of Pave The World, which I may get around to posting someday.

So. Fun Fun Attitude.

Here’s what I know about them:

1. They’re from Japan.
2. They put out a demo tape that somehow wound up at the Polyvinyl office.
3. They’ve been on some compilations.*
4. They sound like a Japanese mix of The Bananas, the Weird Love Makers and Screeching Weasel.
5. They sing in English.**

Here’s the J-Card:

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Tracklist:

Teenage Summer
Midnight
Don’t Let Me Down
Crazy Years
Light of Youth
I Don’t Mind
I Love You Anyway

This website has a bunch of releases with tracklistings and cover art but no info about how to order them, if they’re even available, so far as this gaijin can tell.

This website has the Soda Days CD for sale, but it’s in Japanese, and I’m not quite ready to shell out shipping from Japan for a single CD yet. Perhaps someday I can schlep the family over there for a massive record shopping trip vacation. They also have what they claim is Fun Fun Attitude’s complete discography listed, which includes way more albums and singles than you would think an obscure Japanese band like this should have, especially as good as they are. Their obscurity just doesn’t jive with their output of great songs. Why haven’t more people heard of these dudes?

I did get a kick out of this description, brought to you by Google Translate:

It was long out of print predecessor SEE HER FUN FUN band of four EP + DEMO TRACK + COMP offers a collection of songs and finally relapse ALMOST COMPLETE DISCOGRAPHY CD! ! Increase the number of all 25 songs from Original Music! ! Melodic mid 90 / POP PUNK Fans MUST board never pull them out! Youth POP PUNK!!

Which makes a lot more sense once you’ve heard the band. It’s the exuberance with which they sing in English, with full on accents, and don’t quite get the grammar 100% correct, but it doesn’t really matter when you’re dancing this hard, right?

*Two of which I found on ebay in a lot of Japanese pop punk CD’s, and will eventually post here.
**I Think. The vocals are so frenetic and accented that it’s often hard to understand. I usually can’t stand non-native English speakers singing in English, as I find the accent very distracting, but for some reason, I find this vocalist really charming.

Youth POP PUNK indeed.

Get it.

Update: I was about to publish this post as complete, when I got an email response from a fellow in Japan whose website I linked to above. Here’s what he said:

Hi Josh, thank you for e-mailing me!
Yes, I have some copies of compilation CD “Soda Days 1995-1997″ for distribution.
I’m glad to hear from you even you’re living oversea!!

Fun Fun Attitude re-named to See Her Tonite since 1998.
I run the small record label named Fixing A Hole.
And my first release was See Her Tonite album CD!!
Please visit my site and download sample MP3.
They’re really great, I’m proud of releasing it!!
http://fixingahole.jpn.org/

And I’m very surprised that you have “Teenage Summer” demo!!
It’s very rare and hard to find in Japan.

Tell me what you want and I will try to make it.

All The Best
Kei

So, they’re still together, and playing as “See Her Tonite”, with a cd available at that there link. I’ve not had a chance to download any sample mp3′s, but if they’re anything like EVERY OTHER JAPANESE POP PUNK BAND I’VE EVER HEARD, they’re all gonna kill me with catchy, sloppy amazingness.

Note: Between me starting this post and right now, Kei sent me a sweet sweet package of Japanese goodness that included Fun Fun Attitude’s Soda Days CD, which has more songs than I even knew about. Also included in the package was a stack of See Her Tonite CD’s. See Her Tonite being the band that Fun Fun Attitude turned into in about 2000. All of the songs from the Soda Days demo tape are on there except for “Crazy Days”, so these songs come from the CD. Crazy days comes from the tape itself, hence the wonky audio quality. Sorry for that, but it’s the best I could do with what I have. The actual tape went from Japan originally, to Polyvinyl in , to me in Germany, to me around the US, to where it now lives in my music closet. Yes, I have a closet for my music.

And finally, to Kei at Fixing a Hole Records in Hiroshima, どうもありがとうございました。多分いつの日か私が恩返しをすることができます。

Get it.

I peed on your car last night.

Dateline: Tombstone, AZ, 1998.

I had just come back from Germany. My first real “away from the parents” experience. For a whole summer. I was staying with my friend Chris, at his parent’s house in–yes, THAT ONE–Tombstone, AZ. We were bored, we were hot, and so we decided what better way to spend the day than starting a band? Tony A from San Jose was in town for the week, and we figured out that between the three of us, we had enough instruments and energy to make a band.

Yeah, this is gonna be one of those posts where it’s all about me and the band I’m in.

We had been playing croquet a lot. In fact, we even had a croquet gang, complete with tshirts and backpatches:

You’d be amazed how many crusty kids would come up, look at the patch, and want to talk about CRASS. “It’s not that CRASS, dude. Look at it again.”

So, the only thing left was to create a band. What kind of music should we play? Cochise County Croquet Core, what the fuck else?

Drums didn’t need to be mic’ed, and we had a guitar amp. We didn’t have a bass amp, but we did have a tape deck with a microphone jack. A trip to radio shack for an adaptor later, and we had a bass amp:

(not our actual bass amp, shown here only for dramatic effect.)

We had been hanging out for the week, and every random encounter we had that made us laugh became a song title.

“Food is my bitch” is about how i was such a good cook that, well, you get it.
“It’s not beer” was a quote from a homeless man with bottle in a paper bag outside Wal-Mart.

and so on.

We wrote the songs one day. Went over to our friend Scott’s house (Scott had a sweet ass recording studio in his house. I wish I could remember the name of the place…I’m guessing he’s still there. If anyone reading this needs recording studio time in Sierra Vista, AZ, get in touch and I’ll track him down.) the next day to record them and write lyrics.

We recorded the last 6 songs in this collection that day. We then switched up instruments and became the Crppld Strpprs. (That’s ” Crippled Strippers” with no vowels, get it?)

The following day, I forgot all my bass parts.

A year or two later, Chris, Tony and I crossed paths in San Jose, CA, so we recorded some songs at Nothing Studios in San Jose. Those tracks became the first 7 songs on this collection. Again, the same method of writing songs one day, recording the next, and coming up with song titles based on wacky hijinks.

Some time after that, Chris was in the studio with Ray and some other people, I think, and recorded the songs in the middle of the collection. I don’t know who played what, but there was a lot of “musical instruments” (pun intended) happening, where everyone played every instrument at some point.

In case anyone’s still reading this and wondering what we sounded like, it’s pretty rocking punk. Skate punk, street punk, it’s all in there. I never really got it when bands would avoid talking about what their music sounded like. Now I get it.

If you listen to only one of these songs, Nick Fitt might be the best song we ever wrote. It’s dedicated to and about that MRR columnist who we all loved to hate.

Track List:

Blessing McAnus    0:46
Mom Sex Dad’s A Real Sex Machine    1:06
It’s Not Sex, It’s Worms    0:43
Slags & Bastards    0:35
Rock and Roll Asshole    0:54
Phillip Oliver Hole    0:37
Nazi Santa, Fuck Off!    0:27
Banned From the Mall    1:11
I Gotta Pee    1:00
Art Major, Fuck You    1:16
Gonna Start A Drug Habit    1:49
U Think I Suck    1:47
Die Fucked    1:28
Social Fucker    1:08
Yr Society My Ass    0:58
Eat My Vegan Fuk    0:50
Food is My Bitch    0:46
(I Hate) Parentheses    0:21
Emo in My Pants    0:57
It’s Not Beer!    0:49
Nick Fitt    0:39

21 songs in 20 minutes? How can you go wrong?

The Shitty Wikkets went on a national tour in around 2002, I think, with Emo Summer, the Four Letter Words, and maybe one other band. They came through Denver, and I got to sing with them again at the punkest show I’ve ever been to. But I’ve said enough already.

Get it.

Everready – Live in Japan

I really wish that this recording could see a proper release. I’m afraid that the fact that no one seems to have heard of this band unless they were actually in it would mean that releasing such a thing would be a risky financial endeavor at best, and as a result will likely never happen. It’s too bad.

This is seriously one of the best bands on the planet.

I don’t know anything about this recording other than:

1. It was recorded in Japan.
2. The CD says “2-15-00″, which is likely the date it was recorded.
3. It was supposed to be released on Cool Guy records,  but never was.
4. Despite #2, it did show up on a CD database at the record store where I used to work.
5. This is ripped from the only copy of the CD master in existence.
6. Davey Tiltwheel gave it to me, with permission to release it into the wild.
7. We’re getting ahead of ourselves.

I worked at a music store in Houston in the summer of 2000. I took full advantage while I was there of browsing their catalog and their music database. I think it was some kind of hella expensive subscription thing that only record stores could buy, or rent that had all kinds of release info about every record ever or something in it.

Anyway, Everready is one of the bands that I used to look for first thing at any record store I visited. I checked this online catalog, and there was a listing for “Everready: Live in Japan” which I had never heard of nor seen ads for or anything. This was right before the internet blew up, so I hadn’t really even looked for them online yet.

Not that it would have mattered. Good luck finding a website or anything. I think Brian set up a myspace page for them a couple of years ago, but I can’t find it now. No, its not the HCHC band from Japan, and it’s not the Everready Gospel Choir from Norfolk, either.

So, I suspected that this Live in Japan album existed but still had no proof.

At some point, I got in touch with Davey Tiltwheel, who played on the last few Everready albums. I emailed him all kinds of questions about this or that Everready release. Eventually, I remembered the Live in Japan record that I’d heard of once but never again.

He told me that they’d recorded it, and Danny Cool Guy had announced it and likely released the matrix number to the CD database company, but it never got pressed.

Eventually, I heard about a Tiltwheel tour that included a Denver Date.

I emailed Davey, and begged him to bring a copy of the Live in Japan CD with him, so that I could hear it.

Months passed. I rode the bus down to Denver–long story that involved my car’s license plates expiring–with my skateboard, and met up with the band before their show. (Denverites will join me in fondly remembering the 15th St Tavern…) Davey told me early in the evening that he had, in fact, brought the CD with him, and it was in the van. “Remind me after the show, and I’ll hook me up,” he said.

That night, there was some kind of political party banquet happening at a big fancy hotel lobby across the street, and I guess the bands had checked it out, and somehow crashed the party and scored some free buffet food, and were encouraging everyone to go check it out and get some middle eastern food. “Just tell them you’re with Titwheel.” Between just about every song, Davey was extolling the virtues of this buffet, no joke.
They finished their set, and Davey disappeared. I was nervously watching the clock, cos to miss the last bus meant I was skateboarding the 30 miles home, or trying to find a place to stay in Denver, where I didn’t know anyone at the time.
Someone in the band suggested I run across the street and see if he’s at the buffet. I go over there, can’t find him, and get busted by some security gourd for having a skateboard and punky clothes. I’m clearly crashing the place and have to leave. I get back to the bar, and there’s Davey.
I remind him that I’ve gotta catch a bus, and can I have that CD now. He drops what he’s doing, and rustles through his bag in th van, and can’t find it. Ugh. Eventually, he finds it–”Oh yeah, it’s here in my journal, where I put it so I wouldn’t lose it. Now, josh, this is the only copy of this CD in the world. It’s the CD master. Do whatever you want with it, release it, copy and give it away, bootleg it, whatever. Just don’t lose it.“

I skate back through downtown Denver, catch the bus, make it home, and also HOLY CRAP I HAVE THE ONLY COPY OF AN UNRELEASED EVERREADY RECORD. The bus ride home is spent by me wondering how much it would cost to put this out myself as a CD release or as a vinyl record.

There’s no cover art for this, since all I got was a CDR. For authenticity’s sake, you’ll have to make your own cover if you want one. (If anyone feels so moved, please do post a link to any covers you come up with for this in the comments.)

Tracklist:

Intro    0:08
Karma Who?    2:19
Eat the Peanuts Out Of My Shit, Mr President    3:40
At The Che    2:58
Don’t Be a Soldier    2:31
My Girlfriend’s In The FBI    2:56
Maricela’s Song    3:02
I Hate You    3:12
Kalifornia    3:33
Stuck    2:20
5 Words In My Mind    2:23
Bleach Banquet Bingo    2:15
Dum-E    2:04
I Hate You 2    2:21
Wasting My Time Time    2:16
County Transit System    2:10
I Never Will    1:42
Look On The Bright Side    2:07
Never Walk Away    3:53

There’s something from all 4 of their albums, and one unreleased (so far as I’ve been able to tell, and I’ve been stalking this band for years.) song, “My Girlfriend’s in the FBI.”

I can’t even begin to tell you how stoked I am to get to see these guys in September at Awesome Fest.

I still can’t believe Davey gave this to me. I really am honored to be in possession of it, and to be able to share it with you guys.

Thanks, Davey.

Get it.