tour

Doktor Ross SewageLeave a comment

Did I mention I’m on tour?

Not much computer access, and thank God. Did you know there’s life outside of this place? Fuck man, and it’s a’ight. Pretty sweet revelation!

OMG i h4v3 2 ge7 b2ck to 1t!!!!!1

I’m not watching porn for two weeks. My eyeballs are already starting to stop burning.

Hugs to my peeps, whether they want it or not.

I’m being yelled at to get back in the van now. I think Sean wants to cuddle… again. God, he’s such a queer.

zom-bees for my dead honey

Doktor Ross SewageLeave a comment

I been working hard. I love it. My supervisor was gone from work Friday so I had to take care of stuff. I find some kind of orgasmic property in work-induced stress. Perhaps I channel the unprovable orgone energy into my occular cavities by way of squinting at sheets of data.

bad date

I called my friend Rosemarie on Friday. She is way cool. There are few people I am agog to talk with on the phone, so much so, I had to aglog about it. She told me about the zombie shoot. Actually, she just said the word “zombie film” and I blurted out, “I’m there!! Where? When?” I like zombies. Can you tell? If there is one way to be, it’s to zom-be.

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Rockin’ the Jack

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So, a few months ago, Aesop, the drummer from Ludicra (the black metal band I also play in) asked me and our guitar player to help him with a project. His four year old son, Ezra, had made up a band and he wanted to make it a reality. Thus was born Rock Jack.

So one night we made up and recorded a veritable crapload of songs, and Aesop’s kid put lyrics about poo and Darth Vader over them. It’s rapidly becoming a local phenomenon. The CDs are selling, and now one of the major alt-weekly publications has done a feature article on Ezra.


Ridiculous.

The story is sweet, though. I’m glad they didn’t mention the whole story, where I got blackout drunk during recording, and the guitarist and I went to the East Bay Rats Fight Party, and I found out three days later I’d tried to drive myself home, puked through my nose, and tried to make out with my friend who then squealed about it to her friend, my ex, who apparently got offended, and I looked like a complete ass and had to call my friend I’d tried to make out with (probably with puke breath) and apologize.

We work hard and we live hard in Rock Jack.

resigned to suck ass

Doktor Ross SewageLeave a comment

Impaled is not going on tour. We were scheduled to go out for six weeks, but after a few months of not seeing one tour date, having the booker continually break promises to at least see a few, and the other bands not even having it mentioned on their website, we told the booker we were walking.


What a difference a day makes. The next day, he’d sent me a partial list of dates. About half. 

This is two weeks before we’re supposed to leave, mind you, and only half the tour is booked.

This booker than calls our label tattling on us. Our label hardly acknowldedged we were even going on tour. At first, a couple people there supported us telling the booker to shove it, but now “word around the office” is that our CD is not doing as well as expected, and that if we don’t do this tour and turn it around, we risk getting dropped. Of course, we tell them we’re going to lose lots of money, and they say they don’t wanna give us tour support. So, I guess we’re just expected to lose money for them.

The band votes not to go. We are looking for someone else to do our booking, and then maybe we can just hit the road like a real band and stop dealing with the typical death metal industry’s bull. The label might drop us… oh well. They’ve been itching for an excuse to get rid of us since the beginning when they screwed up the contract in our favor. Woops! We’ve had (up until a week ago) an A&R; guy who was perpetually on ludes and didn’t give two craps about us. With those kind of people working for you, who needs enemies?

Essentially, I’m coming to grips with the fact that all our hard work to “get big” is for naught with people screwing us all the time. Other bands seem to do really well and not get what we see as abuse. Maybe it’s something we do, something we screw up for ourselves. That is a distinct possibility. I’m going to look into that while I have fun with my friends making music we like.

Impaled show last night

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Forget Judas Priest. Seriously… some people must’ve forgot Judas Priest was playing, because people actually came to our show last night. I’ve bagged on the Bay Area lots of times for the over-21-crowd’s apparently lackluster interest in death metal, especially when I’ve set up show for bands I really dig. Scott Alcoholocaust had to go and prove me wrong. He apparently can book and properly promote a show, whereas I cannot. The two best Bay Area headlining shows for us ever have been with Scott Alcoholocaust, so I’ve got to give the man some major props. The show was at the El Rio, a nice bar that has a patio, ensuring people can smoke and still get loaded. Yay.

Some of the drunk metal regulars weren’t around, which is always a bummer, but I know they were rocking out at the Amphitheater to such great hits as “Turbo Lover.” That makes it all better. Then there was the other death / rock show at Studio Z with 100 Suns. Then there was the crust BBQ show at the Hazmart Warehouse. Then there was another crust BBQ at Nate and Kelly’s in Oakland. Then there was the 625 “Thrash” fest at Gilman with Iron Lung. Jeepers creepers, if you were bored in the Bay Area last night, you weren’t paying attention. 
So, Scott not only got a crap load of heads out to our show in the El Rio, but he put together a kiler line-up. The Mass kicked off the evening, and they are one of my favorite locals. The best way I could describe them is avante-thrash… a lot of times I don’t take to bands with goofy time signatures, “gimmick” instruments, or jazz parts, but these guys just know how to put it all together and still rock. They just recently had a feature done on them in Metal Maniacs, if anyone wants to check it out. They started off with some new uber-heavy chunky metal, with their unique front-man / saxophonist wailing out death screams that must’ve made Paul Bailoff turn over in his grave. Their bassist has this insane stage presence, screaming into the air LOUDER than the music is playing and looking like he’s having an aneurysm. Then comes out the sax, which should suck, but goddamn if it doesn’t just rock. It doesn’t just play on quiet parts, but also hits some extremely classic metal harmonies with the guitar. Ack! It’s just too hard to descibe. Check ’em out on the web or something. 

Then Fall of the Bastards played. This is a killer black metal band from Portland / Seattle, and this was the last show of their tour, so again, I wasn’t so glad that people showed up for Impaled, I was glad people came out to support a touring band. I hate trying to be the anchor for a touring band and having an utterly disappointing crowd. Fall of the Bastards got what they deserved as the blew the doors off with some blistering black metal and got the crowd chanting and got them to do an encore. A nice end for their tour. 

So Impaled got onstage for our usual brand of nonsense, and lo and behold, people were singing along, bangin’ away, and generally having a good god damn time, which is great to see. Hey man, we’re entertainers, we want to entertain. Then, surprise of surprises, a mosh pit broke out, and kept breaking out. Normally, this is like two drunk dudes from the Central Valley who piss off everyone at a 21 and over show, but last night, I saw lots of people slam dancing and just having a good time together. Metal heads, some punks, and some guy who had earlobes stretched out so far I thought they were saucers from his mom’s plate collection. 
Tangent: when are all these body mod freaks going to get serious and start putting in lip plates? What about those gold rings to stretch chicks necks out? I mean, I have a couple tats, a couple piercings… but I wanna see the people REALLY into it getting REALLY into it. Bring on the freaks!

So by the end of the night, Fall of the Bastards was looking for a place to stay, and I said they could crash at my house. I like to have an open house for bands on the road, because that’s what we’re ALWAYS looking for when Impaled is on the road. Well, apparently word got out that they were heading to my place, so what was supposed to be a crash pad turned into a party pad (not the first time this has happened). Lucky my roommates were outta town! I had to jam home because there were people sitting on my front porch. People brought beer, my only stipulation for their entrance, so all was good! Christy from Ludicra came and started the eighties dance party in my living room, while Donny from FotB was entranced with a radio-controlled robot my brother owns. Aaron, who does our shirts at Hangar 19, came over and got obliterated and was slaying everyone in sight with his razor-sharp wit. I made tots for everyone (Napoleon, gimme some of yer tots!). I ended up crashing out before anyone, and when I woke up, everyone who’d gotten too drunk or just spent the night was gone. Perfect!

Time for more coffee and cigarettes.

Good Wednesday

Doktor Ross SewageLeave a comment

Skarp liked the album cover Eric and I did for them. Woo hoo. Now onto the layout… which is due in a week or so, and we have no lyrics, recording info, song order, or even song titles. Way to go! Ludicra show last night went very well. Good times, good sound, lots of genuine music lovers came out to appreciate Wolves in the Throne Room and Bloodhag, too. Well, booklovers came for Bloodhag. You get the point. Christy and I did lots of leaning back-to-back like Maiden. We’re hams… and I love it. Jello came out and I got to chat with him a bit. He finally saw us have a good show with good sound. He didn’t even know I was doing art for his label. Well… that happens. He’s busy hating Tipper Gore or something.


 

I probably need to stop blogging

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My blog before last… how whiny. Oh well. To wit, more whine… the little Impaled / Engorged / Lord Gore mini-tour was fun, no doubt. The guys in Engorged are the funniest people on the planet, and I got a lot of love and respect for Lord Gore. We played some killer shows in LA and Phoenix. In the Bay Area however… well, death metal just isn’t worth it. That is, not for the 21 and up crowd.

I see no reason for us to be playing around here for adults who just aren’t gonna go see a show we’re playing. No amount of press helps, no amount of flyers… Impaled is playing what we love, and the people who also love it are about 10 years younger than us. If we can play for them, awesome. A good gig with a huge band? I’d consider it. In the meantime… no more headlining 21 and up gigs. Don’t even ask about us doing benefits. If it’s not a solid all-ages package, we’ll pass. I don’t feel like I’m too old for death metal, just too old to not be smart about it.

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