I've been meaning to post this for a couple weeks now. MAN! When you're a musician there's nothing like the love and joy that can come from being in a band. You sling it out with three or four other guys, saddle all your hopes and dreams together and try to shoot an arrow into the side of the world that actually sticks. It's hard; it takes a level of commitment and determination that is not easy and can drive some folks apart. But other folks, well, it makes you bond as strong or stronger than family. That's always been the case with the guys I slung it out with my former bands in Chicago. I've known Sonny Vee since forever. He was in
Wink Lombardi and the Constellations with me ("which one'a youse guys is Wink?") on through the short-lived
Second Attention, he slung it out for a while in
Infinite Vision and that's where we met and added Joe Grez to the cabal of maniacs - which included Mr. Brown and Monsieur Viderstrom - who ended up forming
Schlitz Family Robinson. Anyway, that was a long time ago. More recently, and I use that word loosely here for sure, Joe and Sonny and I were in The Yellow House. We came pretty close to... something. But the industry was kicking and screaming as the internet, MP3s and Napster all took over and in just a little over a year and a half (fact check Joe - I'm bad at quantifying the passage of time) that slipped away too. But not before we recorded and self-released one full length and two e.p., all of which I am still enormously proud of. Anyway, Joe and Sonny are back in a new band,
The Walk Slow and hearing them, seeing this video, it makes me so incredibly happy that I just can barely even think straight. These guys are the real deal - back in '01 Grez used to say, "next to no one in music knows how to be cool anymore" and sometimes I feel like that too. But when I hear something like this, well, I know that's just the scarred side of the otherwise brilliant coin.
