October 5, 2002

It is just after 10:00 p.m. I am sitting in my office. I have been working all day, minus the hour that I ran and a couple of hours of "Saturday Night Live" reruns, on finishing the collecting all my writing from my twenties (1991 to 2001) project that I started in April that I have been BLOGGING up for all to enjoy. I am done. Everything that I a did not throw out for sucking is all on computer disc now and safe for when I am gone. Everything that I ever published in the "Cauldron" or "U. S. Rocker" or "Punk Planet" or "Free Times" or "Hand of Doom" is compiled, dated and archived. Every not so embarassing journal entry and not completely half assed poem is now safe - until the next time I read through the 125,000 words and decide that it, after the additional passage of time, now sucks. I am wiped out. I don't even want to think about the failed books that I am sitting on, which is another massive project all together.

I think I am going to go home to bed and not think about this stuff for a while. Good night.
posted by Thea at 10:18 PM

October 4, 2002

I spent the evening working in the basement and listening the Misfits box set. The Misfits box set rules. It has twenty different versions of every Misfits’ song on it. You will still not know the lyrics after you listen to the whole thing a couple of times. And it has a lyric book.

The Misfits were the second punk rock band that I got into after the Sex Pistols thanks to Metallica covering “Green Death” and “Last Caress” on the “Garage Days Re-revisited” ep. I bought “Earth A.D.” because it had “Green Hell” on it. I immediately had a religious experience or peed my pants. I remember walking around Garfield Hts. listening to “Evillive” and imaging what it would be like to go to a real punk rock concert. The portrait of the artist as a young dork. I met Glenn Danzig once at Chris’ Warped Records. He was real punk rock and real short.

I spent the winter of early 1999 doing the Big Billy Pork Chop the Rock and Roll Fat Man Show on WCSB 89.3 – home to the Assholier than Thou Good Times Happy Friends Monday Morning Radio Show and preparing for the Revelers to release their second album on spinART Records. I also went on the yam diet where you role around on the floor with a basketball with my wife. I fell in love with her on that diet.

What follows is the press release for “Day In, Day Out”:

The formation of the Revelers was completed in the fall of 1989 with the addition of drumming wonder Tommy Fox. He had just spent a year playing in a reggae group after the unfortunate break - up of his previous band, the Mice (featuring fellow spinART recording artist and older brother Bill Fox), in 1988. Tommy, a veteran of several van propelled mini tours and years of one - night stands, was still a teenager.

The singing/guitar slinging nucleus of the Revelers, Andrej Cuturic and Joel Kaufman, and original bassist Ricky Brom were a high school band with a revolving cast of drummers and an exclusive engagement in the Brom family basement. It clicked with Tommy. The Brom family was pleased to hear something other than noise blasting from the cellar and thrilled when the Revelers started taking the show on the road.

This line - up of the Revelers recorded two eps trimmed to singles and an unreleased debut album from 1989 - 1994. An unmixed version of the album caught the attention of Shimmy Disc's Kramer. He convinced the band to record that second ep with him at Noise New Jersey and then released the second single on Shimmy Disc. Ricky quit before the single was in the stores.

The Revelers marched on with the addition of seventeen – year old whiz kid bassist Matt Charboneau. This prolific version of the Revelers recorded two LPs, “On Top” (Inbred, 1995) and “Better Get Hit in Your Soul!” (Inbred, 1996), four eps, a completely scrapped album produced by Kramer and began tracking what would turn into their spinART debut. The Revelers' sound morphed slightly during this period from a Replacements/punk CCR type of American roots rock to the explosive R&B inspired ultra modern maximum rock – n - roll that has earned the band their notice.

Matt was replaced by current bass ace George Frank in late 1996. The Revelers relocated to a Brooklyn, NY efficiency in April of 1997 with the notion of "making it" in the big city. They were able to leave New York after just two months of sleeping on the floor. Success.

“Hard Times, Sunday Spirits” was released in March of 1998. The Revelers got in the van and rocked. “Day in Day Out” was released in March of 1999. More van. More rock.

The Revelers are rock - n - roll. They are not a watered down modern facsimile of what was once consider rock or misguided retro copyists who try to live each day as if it were yesterday. The Revelers are the embodiment of the true spirit of rock - n - roll in a modern context. I have seen the look of amazement in the eyes of the audience at a Reveler show. Their set is so powerful it literally leaves the unexpecting stunned.

In circles of rockers in the know across the world, the naive the Revelers is said with reverence.

(1999)

posted by Thea at 10:11 PM

October 3, 2002

Instead of focusing on the breakdown that I am suffering through at work even though the job is slowly killing me and picking up the pace all of the time, I thought I would bring the interested reader up to speed what is going on with all of the crap I have been BLOGGING for the last few months. Here’s a little historical perspective to bring you up to speed.

What you are about to read is the first stuff from 1999 AKA the biggest year of my life. It was a year of change. And I lived through it. 1999 was the year that Thea and I started the Assholier than Thou Good Times Happy Friends Monday Morning Radio Show, so you know it has got to be a big ass year. I am not going to do the whole year that was right now and blow it for the next couple of weeks of BLOGS. I would rather walk each of you with little baby steps of what happened that year.

I started doing the Big Billy Pork Chop the Rock and Roll Fat Man Show in January of 1999. And I loved it. I loved being on the radio. I loved doing my own Monday morning radio show. I played some rock but mostly I played jazz and many raps. Thea hated the show because of the raps but it still ruled.

I wanted to do comedy on the radio too and these two bits are crap that I read on the air early on as a joke. What is up with me using the word foxy? At all?

Sometimes for fun, I write secret messages on paper money. I pass the money along, letting sail free in the sea of humanity like I used to let paper boats go in the creek that ran through the backyard of my Grandma's house in Independence, OH as a young boy. When I have a free moment, I imagine where these dollars are. Did any of them get as far away from as China? I wonder... If anybody in the listening audience has a five dollar bill with "I am wearing a black turtle neck under a white button down dress shirt and I am feeling foxy" written on it. Give me a call at 687-3515. We need to talk.

(1999)

I have some great lines for picking up chicks. Here's one. There are a half dozen people in the world that I would gladly kill if I was given the chance and I knew I could get away with it. Five of them are in this room tonight. Use that one in a crowded single's bar and wait for your phone to ring off the hook with calls from foxy ladies.

(1999)

posted by Thea at 7:56 PM

October 2, 2002

“No more music by the suckers.”

I would like to take this opportunity to talk shit about the now defunct “Free Times” but why bother.

I interviewed at the “Free Times” and they did not hire me. I wrote freelance music reviews for the “Free Times” and my house got broken into the night after I was covering a Disengage show for “Free Times” - when I should have been writing the review. Coincidence? The break-in caused me to have a nervous breakdown that resulted in me threatening certain “Free Times” staffers with an old school beat down for no apparent reason. And don’t even get me started on that guy who I openly admitted to stealing material from and called him out on the Assholier than Thou Good Times Happy Friends Monday Morning Radio Show as a genius but this same dude would not even send Thea and I a thank you card when he repeatedly ripped off the radio show for jokes. Do I have to mention Nunslaughter? Do I? And the "Free Times" never gave a single line on page 17 to the Assholier than Thou Good Times Happy Friends Monday Morning Radio Show unlike the "Cleveland Scene" which gave the program a bunch of lines. What? Doesn't the "Free Times" have any love for the Assholier than Thou Good Times Happy Friends Monday Morning Radio Show?

The truth is that I have been a loyal reader of the “Free Times” for ten years and would have wrote for them again and considered myself blessed for the opportunity. I have had a few friends and many respected acquaintances who have worked at the “Free Times” over the years and the world is a better place for all of their hard work. This is truly a sad day. The “Free Times” will be missed.

posted by Thea at 8:12 PM

October 1, 2002

Owning an old house is like going to work or having the flu. It always sucks. I spent my evening working in the basement. I could work on the basement every day for a year and it still won’t be done. And what about the rest of the rooms in the house? Shit. That is a joke. The projects will never end.

I am enthusiastic about every job that I tackle around the house. I get pumped up. I read the book. I buy the supplies. I eat dinner thinking that I am Bob Vila, Norm Abram and the Sinner all rolled into one. I fool myself into thinking that I am going to a totally pro job. And then the comedy of errors begins. The reality is I am Dorf on home repair. I end up finishing the job say things like “that is the best I can do because I have no skills” and “it does not look that bad” and “if she wanted it to look good she…”. It is not quite a disaster but pretty damn close. That is why I live by the belief that you really won’t notice it after it is painted.

posted by Thea at 9:49 PM

September 29, 2002

Every day of my life that I don’t listen to “Sticky Fingers” by the Rolling Stones, my life gets a little bit worse until I listen to that album again and it all seems better.

Sandwiched between “Let it Bleed” and “Exile on Main Street”, “Sticky Fingers” is my favorite album of the three greatest albums in a row by a single band. Try to come up with three in a row better and you will fail. And I am not even a Rolling Stones guy. I am a Beatles guy. I always have been and I always will be. It will answer a lot of questions about yourself if you can answer, honestly, if you are a Beatles guy or a Rolling Stones guy. Most guys are Beatles guys – even those who claim to be Rolling Stones guys because the Rolling Stones are cooler. But me being a Beatles guy does not take away from the fact that “Let it Bleed”, “Sticky Fingers” and “Exile on Main Street” are better, back to back, than “Rubber Soul”, “Revolver” and “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”.

So my life was getting gradually worse every day having not listened to “Sticky Fingers” for a while. I was breaking my ass around the house on yet another Sunday of breaking my ass around the house and I put “Sticky Fingers”, almost cried a couple of times, and then it all got miraculously better and the rest of the day was fine – even amidst the horror of the big box home repair place, the mall and the super market.

The Rolling Stones’ “Sticky Fingers” is my church on Sunday.

posted by Thea at 8:51 PM