2018: March 16th 8:25 PM

Somehow I stumbled back into Urge Overkill yesterday after having not even thought of them for quite some time. This probably has something to do with the fact that in preparation for the move, I am going through my CDs and slimming down the collection. Not a hard thing with Apple Music, although there is still a part of me that will always feel better having some things in a tactile form. That cloud goes down or my phone dies and I can't access The Birthday Party's Prayers on Fire or Bowie's Reality at the exact moment I want to hear them and I'm gonna flip. But, not everything needs to stay tactile, and a lot of what does can be trimmed by tossing the cases. It's funny, similar to how Amazon completely changed the way we shop for records - because I for one never thought I'd be into shopping for music online instead of walking stoned through a record store - Apple Music seems to be the service that has redefined my musical paradigm. And I love it, although I still don't like thinking of music as a 'service'. Gas is a service. Power's a service.

I ordered a Boskine 100-space CD wallet and will be tossing the cases on a lot of albums, slipping the discs and liner notes into far less ostentatious space. Doing the same with some DVDs too, another aspect of the collection that took a hit. I was able to pack up and send 14.83 lbs of movies to a good friend whose collection was pillaged a few years back - and his collection was awe-inspiring and an inspiration for my own - so I'm happy to do something to help a friend and clear up my clutter a bit. I just don't need Simpsons, Family Guy, or Aqua Teen Hunger Force seasons on disc when they're all so ubiquitous streaming anyway. Well, I did keep Simpsons seasons 5 and 6. Cape Fear, Clown College and several other of the best, Conan O'Brien-era episodes that remain among the funniest things I've ever seen. That has to be at my beck and call. Always. But there are limits to what I will purge movie wise as there is no comprehensive service for those and The Burbs, Dog Soldiers, May, and at least 100 other movies must remain in my possession, not to mention all the Twin Peaks sets I've amassed over the years... and the other lynch, and the Kubrick, and the...

You get the point. The other thing there's no compromise on is books. I've built a healthy collection, I re-read often, and one day I want Gatsby's library, complete with Owl Eyes. So aside from a few left over peculiarities from my previous roommate, everything stays.

Playlist from 3/15:

The Ocean - Anthropocentric
Odonis Odonis - Post Plague
NIN - Not the Actual Events
Say Sue Me - Eponymous
Urge Overkill - Saturation
Goblin - Dawn of the Dead OST (Waxwork vinyl)

Card of the day:

Second or third time this one's come up in a week and I've figured it out. My journey is this purge. It's something else. And if sweet, sweet detritus like Urge Overkill floats to the surface for the first time in a while, all the better.

2018: March 15th 9:18 AM

Two years since Tom died. Remember that fucking Death card yesterday? How does this shit sneak up on me? I mean, I was anticipating the anniversary, but I didn't see it coming. I know that doesn't make sense, it's not even what I mean to say, it's just the only way I can think to say it. Tom, I miss You my friend. A lot.

Playlist from yesterday:
Blut Aus Nord - Memorium
Blut Aus Nord - MORT
Judas Priest - Painkiller
Faith No More - Angel Dust
The Birthday Party -
Bohren & Der Club of Gore - Gore Motel
The Cure - Collector's Curiosities Vol. 2 (Carnage Visors and Rarities)

New Drinking, Fighting, F*&king, and Crying is up HERE on Joup.

Card for the day:

From the Grimoire: "Enlightenment. Joy, Revelation; Dance: The Triumph of the Spirit."

2018: March 14th 8:17 AM

Happy Birthday Jeremy Musica, wherever you are. Great bass work on this one mate! You are missed.



Playlist from yesterday:

Still going through that same mix from the 00s
Pallbearer - Foundations of Burden
Deftones - Gore
Eagulls - Eponymous
Monolord - Rust
Soul Coughing - El Oso

Card of the day:

Well, now that's interesting. For the record, sometimes I've already pulled my card of the day by the time I sit down to write these entries, but not today. You can see then why, even though this card is more about Change than it is Death, there's an eerie correlation with the way I began the post. Per the grimoire, "A necessary change of state, needed in order to advance." Again, I can't help but juxtapose that with the encroaching move of residence.

2018: March 13th 7:16 AM

Have already lost what was in my head upon waking, so here's something I found on an old mix disc from the mid-00's, another time period I'm working to recontextualize into my modern mindset.



I don't think I love the video - although I'm posting it, I still haven't actually watched it. If you can, maybe throw on headphones, close your eyes and just listen instead of watching. This really is a wonderful song, everything about it, from the lyrics, delivery and production right down to the restraint shown with the guitar.

Playlist from yesterday:

The aforementioned Mix disc, which contains a lot of 2007-2009 stuff I might list later.
Genghis Tron - Board Up the House (prompted by finding the track Arms on the disc)
Casket Lottery - Survival is for Cowards
The Antlers - Familiars
Monolord - Rust
Teenage Wrist - Chrome Neon Jesus
Windhand - Split (their side of the 7" with Satan's Satyrs)
Goblin - George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead OST (Waxwork edition - so cool!)

Here's the track that reminded me how much I love Genghis Tron:



Card of the day:

I feel like continually drawing such a great card is a beacon assuring me I am on the correct path. Every man and every woman, and all that. Thanks Aleister.

2018: March 12th 3:51 AM

It was kind of a restless night; we were woken up repeatedly by people in the courtyard/parking area just outside the bedroom window. I'm not going to complain, as this is obvious karmic penance for the old-school weed circle some of my guests on Saturday had going off and on until 3 or 4 in the morning. Usually, I pride myself on being a good neighbor (unless it's to women named Dorothy), but Saturday just veered out of my control. I think there's footage of me doing my DIO impersonation at, like, 11:00 PM. My DIO impression is LOUD. Sorry neighbors. I'm gone in under two weeks, and there's a lot of pent-up stress the alcohol released, so that's what happened. In the give-and-take of communal living, everyone gets a chance to be a dick, and everyone gets a chance at making amends. I'll have been here one month shy of 12 years, and in that time I've pretty much been good enough to have pre-mended anything bad I do, which is good because next Saturday is St. Paddy's. This is commonly a quieter affair: I make corned beef, drink Guinness and Bushmills, and we watch the best damn Irish mob movie ever, State of Grace. This time it just might go off with a little more gusto, because there's a bunch of people, myself included, that want to say goodbye to this place.

I keep referring to parties here, but that's not exactly true. What I host are movie nights. It's generally the same cast of characters every time: Ray, Kenta and Maddy, Robert, Alex, Shailesh, Jesus, Joe, with a few now-and-thens like Keller who attend as well. Generally, everyone arrives between 8 and 9, I cook or we order out, and then we commiserate for a bit, watch a movie, commiserate a bit, watch another movie. These are not parties, per se. Peppered throughout these I'll have a  party here and there, usually in honor of someone's birthday. I think the last rager I had was my divorce party (earned, believe me). This past Saturday though, on the surface a birthday party for Ray and Maddy, was part of a two-step goodbye. We'll all still be able to hang, just not at my place and specifically, not at this place, where I've hosted going on seven years. It's been special, and I think a lot of my attendees - many who are in their twenties and early thirties now - see this place as their first communal, hang-out place. So we have to send it off right.

Playlist from yesterday was super small. Spent a lot of great time with Keller working on out writing project, so music would have been a distraction to two of us so geared toward it.

Etta James - Eponymous
Monolord - Rust
Paul Zaza - My Bloody Valentine OST (Waxwork vinyl)

My copy of Waxwork's reissue of Goblin's score for George A. Romero's original Dawn of the Dead should arrive today. SO psyched. I didn't do the Waxwork subscription this year, as this is the only release of the five I HAD to have, and I bought my boss a copy as well because he just got a record player and loves old horror, so I thought it was an appropriate 'record player warming' gesture.

Card of the day:

I've always been interested in the reflection in this card. It may simply be a scaling issue, wanting to devote as much of the card's area to the image and thus compressing its mirror image, but it seems more to me like there's a distortion here. This is the watery aspect of water, so we're talking emotions on top of emotion. That can blur things a bit. Also, there's a lot of lunar influence in this card, the Ibis, the crayfish and of course the big ol' moon behind the queen, and moon affects the flow of water, i.e., the tide. It also affects our brains, i.e., lunatic. And being that either the time change, the cumulative stress of work and the encroaching move, and/or my sarcoidosis medication may or may not be disrupting my sleep (hence why I'm up at three something AM on a Monday before work writing this), I feel a bit loony of late.

2018: March 11th 11:34 AM

Waking up gently after a full-on rager last night. One party left; next week it's Guinness, Whiskey, Corned Beef in the Croc Pot and my annual State of Grace viewing.

Three folks who are near and dear to me have birthdays today. Happy Birthday.

Playlist yesterday was immense; I'll try to get it all but at some point it devolves into a song here and a song there:

NIN - The Downward Spiral
NIN - With Teeth
Screaming Females - All At Once
Dead Milkmen - Big Lizard in my Backyard
Violent Femmes - Eponymous
The Animals - Retrospective
Windhand/Satan's Satyrs - Split
Suburban Living - Video Love
Alabama Shakes - Sound and Color
ACDC - Highway to Hell
Dio - Holy Diver
Proto Radio Playlist (Phil Collins early stuff, Golden Earring, Red Rider, Don Henley)
David Bowie - Scary Monsters (and Super Freaks)
Teenage Wrist - Chrome Neon Jesus
King Woman -Created in the Image of Suffering
King Woman - I Wanna Be Adored
Slayer - Seasons in the Abyss
Grimes - Art Angels
Drab Majesty - The Demonstration

Card for the day:

So I'm going on a journey, eh? A journey to... Redondo Beach!

2018: March 10th 11:05 AM

Starting today with Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral because Katie did it for the Joup Friday Album last night and I didn't get a chance to listen to it then.




Filming for Drinking w/ Comics #40 went fantastic - our little comic book reading session at Mike's the night before helped facilitate a show where for an hour and some chance we actually spent pretty much the entire time talking about comics! Should be up in about a week.

Playlist from yesterday:

Teenage Wrist - Chrome Neon Jesus
The Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers
The Horrors - Primary Colours
Darkness Brings the Cold - Devil Swank, Vol. 1

Second to last party ever in my pad will happen tonight as I host a birthday party for two dear friends. Next week is my annual St. Paddy's, week after I turn 42 and move for the first time in 11 years and 11 months (remind me to tell you about my 111/1111 thing sometime).

Card for the day:

Strength, stability. Stable material balance. All good signs of things to come based on the outcome from our endeavors (K's more than mine - she really busted her ass on getting us the new place). 

2018: March 9th 7:37 AM

Wonderful night last night. After our move, we will live extremely close to both Mike and Chris from DwC, and in celebration of that we implemented a new, Night Before the show Reading Circle. Mike had us all over for a wonderful dinner and then we sat around and traded off the comics we were itching to talk about on tonight's show. This is a first and Mike gets full credit for the idea  - we always bring a bunch of disparate books to the table and that helps lead the discussions astray. Hopefully this will put us all on the same page. We'll be live on the Drinking with Comics facebook page tonight at 9:00 PM PST, so if you're not doing anything, drop by. One of the books we'll be discussing is a last minute edition to the stack and in two days turned into my most eagerly anticipated book so far this year:

From Image Comics.com:

"The lives of a reclusive young man obsessed with a conspiracy in the city's trash, and a washed-up Catholic priest arriving in a small town full of dark secrets become intertwined around the mysterious legend of The Black Barn, an otherworldly building that is alleged to have appeared in both the city and the small town, throughout history, bringing death and madness in its wake. Rural mystery and urban horror collide in this character-driven meditation on obsession, mental illness, and faith." From Image Comics.com



Sounds very "weird fiction" and that's my current wheelhouse, so I'm very much in.


Playlist from yesterday:

Converge - The Dusk in Us
Monolord - Rust
Teenage Wrist - Chrome Neon Jesus
Queens of the Stone Age - Villains
Ludwig van Beethoven - King Stephen Overture OP 117
Joseph Haydn - Violin Concerto #4 in G

Card for the day:

"The Path to Enlightenment is about to become easier." - hanging out in my new neighborhood last night gave both K and I an enormous sense of happiness. There will now be time for so much more, Art, Love, and definitely Enlightenment. Another card tapping me on the shoulder, letting me know I'm on the right path. Accordingly, I can't help but also draw the juxtaposition with Crowley's maxim: "Every Man and Every Woman is a Star." Crowley had his more than fair share of BS, but he was a prophet to some degree, a human who communed with great, cosmic truths (when, to paraphrase a quote by Peter J. Carroll, he wasn't trying for your arse and your wallet) and that, well, that's one of his most important sentiments.

2018: March 8th 8:35 AM

New Ministry. I don't know how much I like it yet, but kudos to Uncle Al for doing something sonically different. Also, the mouth harp reminds me of their Lay Lady Lay cover, which I'm a big fan of.

Playlist from yesterday:

Shrinebuilder - Eponymous
Simple Minds - Life in a Day
Nevermen - Eponymous
Monolord - Rust
Afghan Whigs - In Spades
Deee-lite - Dewdrops in the Garden

New Drinking, Fighting, F*&king, and Crying is up HERE, on Joup.

Card of the day:

Now that the big question is resolved, it's time to get back to the ART.

2018: March 7th 10:55 AM

Playlist from yesterday:

Godflesh - In All Languages (disc 2)
Monolord - Rust
The Mutants - Your Desert My Mind
The Rolling Stones - Beggar's Banquet
The Jesus Lizard - Goat
The Birthday Party - Mutiny/The Bad Seed

Card of the day:

"A Positive Result dependent on the actions taken by the Querent." Fitting. We got the place!

Zeal and Ardor Off The Road Sessions

I almost forgot how much I love this band. WHEN NEW MUSIC????

2018: March 6th 4:34 AM

On repeat, in my head, all night long. Awesome song, and more than a little weird when you arrive at Eric Burdon doing that creepy falsetto thing:



Playlist from yesterday:

Godflesh - In All Languages (disc #2)
The Smiths - Strangeways, Here We Come
The Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers
Cream - Disraeli Gears
The Rolling Stones - Beggars Banquet
Faith No More - Angel Dust
Budos Band - Burnt Offerings
Somnium Nox - Apocrypha
Seedna - Forlorn

I was interested to receive a notification from Apple Music yesterday that the new Teenage Wrist, Chrome Neon Jesus (damn, isn't that just a fantastic title?) dropped yesterday. I like that they did it on Tuesday, the day music used to drop. Now, I'm not certain if that's an industry-wide thing, as in the digital still utilizes Tuesdays as the release date and the physical media uses Friday, but ever since albums began to be released on Fridays I became a little sad. I always liked having Tuesdays as a free-floating island for new album releases, just to give an otherwise deadlocked day in the midst of the five-day quagmire something to shine for. Then again, how often is it possible I go out on any day to pick up new music these days, what with so few record stores left? (Mental note - I really need to get back down to Fingerprints in Long Beach soon).

Card of the day:

From the Grimoire: "Indicates you are in charge of the way your life is unfolding. Striking the harmonic resonance that sees events occur as we would like them to. Planning; thoughtfulness; mojo."

At this point I'm finding it hard to make anything useful; there's one big question on my mind, "Will we get the new place," and as the delay in the answer seems to drag on it causes these daily correspondences to seem pointless. That said, it occurs to me now they have all been positive, except for last Friday, March 2nd's Five of Swords: Defeat, which seen in the current context was probably my portent that I would be suffering through this delay. In keeping with the otherwise positive string of cards, they're actually comforting to me now, as I work this out while I write this and realize the cards have all been breadcrumbs leading to good news we will hopefully receive early today.

2018: March 5th 7:37 AM

Haunted by this song the last two days. It feels amazing to have something like this happen in the age of Apple Music, everything available right now, all the time. Bear with me a bit and I'll explain.



Saturday was a long work day in the midst of 12 days of work in a row. I did about 10 hours and then drove home. We made dinner and then watched Veronica on Netflix. Not bad. Reticent to forfeit the opportunity for a late night I pushed on to another flick, even as K fell asleep on the couch beside me. I'd been trying to watch the Silent Hill adaptation for a few weeks but never finding the time, so I figured this was perfect. I had a pretty good buzz and felt fatigue move through my muscles, so I popped the top on another can of Sierra Nevada and attempted to follow the characters down the rabbit hole into a creepy West Virginia mining town...

I made it through about half the flick and then woke up just as the ending credits began to roll. the Song above immediately caught my ear; at first I thought it was simply because it has that almost ineffable, defeated sound that a lot of songs in the 00's had - a sort of sonic malaise that I believe rolled in on the tide of the first wave of popular musicians and producers raised on prescription 'mood' altering drugs. I sat up and used shazm to identify it, then realized that there was another, stronger and more direct connection to the song. See, back in the early 00s I was still a bartender in Chicago, and every Wednesday night my friend's Brown and Chris would come up and hang out at the bar until I got off. At about 1:30 AM I'd head over to Chris's and we'd continue drinking, Brown would normally start in on some making some food (the man is a divine chef) and Chris and I would usually spend an hour or two playing Dance Dance Revolution. I know - it's weird that in my late 20s, as a Southside of Chicago musician in a metal band, I spent at least one night a week, every week, playing DDR. What can I say? I loved it.

A lot of the music on the game is poppy J- or Euro Dance. Not really my thing, but I could always find some songs that I liked on each of the games. Sitting there on the couch Saturday night, hearing this song for the first time in well over ten years I was immediately thrown back to the way that I felt in the 00s - which probably not through coincidence was my own tired, malaise. I've since tried to locate this one on Apple Music, but despite there being several Silent Hill Soundtracks, this song is vacant.

So it's haunting me. Where normally when I become stuck on/obsessed with a song I just listen to it over and over for a few days, with this I can only listen to it on youtube, so it's creating scarcity, and that scarcity is making the song an event.

It's nice; nostalgic in a way, a throw-back to the days when music was not as easy to come by, when I had to save up the money to go out and buy the album, then listen to it when I had the Tape/CD player available.

Playlist from yesterday:

Shrinebuilder - eponymous
High On Fire - Luminiferous
Deee-Lite - Dewdrops in the Garden
Godflesh - In All Language (disc 2)

Card of the day:

Ace of Cups: Good news later today? I'll let you know.

Drinking w/ Comics: Nick Cave Mercy on Me by Reinhard Kleist

A short clip (that was all I could cull from the massive cluster of the previous DwC, short clips. If you're curious why, follow us on facebook, scroll down a few posts from the present and see how much of the 3 hour feed from that night you can get through. Hint: Shit gets really bizarre about an hour and seven minutes in. Just saying.) wherein I talk about Reinhard Kleist's BRILLIANT Nick Cave Graphic Novel Biography, Mercy on Me:



New episode coming this Friday, March 9th at 9:00 PM PST. Topics I'm going to attempt to discuss:

2018: March 4th 8:01 PM

No idea what was in my head when I woke up this morning, if anything. This is rounding out the night though:

Long work weekend. Came home a little while ago - it was a nice drive in Los Angeles. Let me say that again, just to savor the feeling of typing eight words that almost never appear together:

It. Was. A. Nice. Drive. In. Los. Angeles.

Low traffic and I was able to mellow into several iterations of my favorite Godflesh song:

Drove slow, absorbing the night. Yeah, I copped a little buzz from my one hitter before hitting the street, it helped ease me into what I'd hoped, a nice, fluid drive; a near hypnagogic state. I can't go there too often these days. It conflicts with the writing. Nice to revisit it from time to time, need to try to do so once a week or so.

Playlist from yesterday:

Shrinebuilder - Eponymous

The Soft Moon - Criminal

David Bowie - Hunky Dory

David Bowie - Heroes

David Lynch - The Big Dream

Dave Brubeck - Time Out

Ghost - Infestissumam

Alabama Shakes - Sound & Color

Sade - iTunes Essentials

No card today.

2018: March 3rd 6:38 AM

Woke up with this dirge by Windhand in my head:



Playlist from yesterday:

Sleep - Dopesmoker*
Monolord - Vaenir
High on Fire - Blessed Black Wings
Monolord - Rust

*On my iPod; trying to fill in the holes only knowing it on vinyl has left me with.

Card of the day:

See, with one big question in my life right now, one big change that is pending and taking a very long time to play out for answers, it has become extremely frustrating to do these pulls everyday. Yeah, I know Change is coming, I just need it to arrive already.