Ludicra “tour”

Yes, tour in quotes, as Ludicra doesn’t really play that many shows. This little jaunt has only lasted four days. San Francisco went really well, like, really really well… apart from the drum monitor catching fire and me having to save Aesop’s life by dousing the fire with my bottled water. Yes, bottled water… go to hell, I’m no yuppy. We played with Keen of the Crow (ex-Morgion), Aldebaran (members of Splatterhouse) and Grey (ex-Baba Yaga) and had an awesome time.


In L.A., we played with Intronaut, Leon del Muerte’s band, which was cool as hell. I hadn’t seen them live yet and enjoyed them immensely. Well… I enjoyed everything but Leon’s farts. Those brought back memories, but not good ones. We had some technical difficulties, but being only our second LA show in 5 years, it went pretty well.

Then we played Phoenix, AZ. That show was at Metal Devastation 2, and was a lot of fun. The major bummer of the evening was finding out that some metal-core straight edge kids had been involved in a stabbing the night before, beat up the owner of the all ages venue, and spit on his daughter. Fucking idiots. You shouldn’t shit in your own backyard, assholes. The venue was maybe going to close down, but now they’ll just not be having punk or metalcore shows. Good. Stew in your own shit and enjoy the nights you have nothing left to do except be pissed off not drinking beer and eventually becoming giant meth-heads.

Jesus Christ, I fucked my hand up but good beating the hell out of my bass during our set. Like… bleeding bad.

We went to a bar later that evening with all the bands. I couldn’t get a god damned beer to save my life, so I gave up and headed over to karaoke. After a rousing rendition of “King of the Road” everybody seemed to start having a damn good time. Christy sang “Heartbreaker,” I followed up with “The Humpty Dance” and the whole damn place was in an uproar. I found out, according to Aesop, that apparently I can break dance pretty well. I had no idea, really. Well, it was a crap load of fun.

Today we played a house party in Flagstaff, AZ. There was a crap load of people loaded in a 15×15 room rocking out and even crowd surfing. We played over our set, until the cops showed up. Oh well. But man, what fun… and yeesh, punks can cook some amazing food.
Right, and they also have wireless. Punks have wireless connections, and metal heads have… more beer? Fuck all this shit though, I’m drunk and going to bed. I got a 13-14 hour drive ahead of me and then straight back to work. Bleah.

fire

I just got home from the Impaled tour and I’m out for a few days with Ludicra.

I don’t want to come home. At least… rather, I don’t want to go back to work and watch porn.

Some incredible stuff has / is / will be happening.

At the Ludicra show tonight, Aesop’s drum monitor caught fire. Quite literally, flames began leaping from the speaker. Aesop kinda stood there and I threw my bass down and threw water into it and put out the fire. I’m a god damned fucking hero. Look for my name in the paper tomorrow. The headline will read “Great White Again? Nope, Thanks to Great Ross!”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vmjVbZRle0]

fart knockers

Houston went a-okay, pretty much. Some fight broke out during Disgorge because this kid moshed into a girl… keep in mind, this girl was throwing elbows and had just knocked over Billy from Blessing the Hogs. But her thuggish compatriots decided her violence in the pit should be greeted by flowers and pastries. Ridiculous… the whole thing interrupted what was a killer vibe.

Here’s a tip… don’t wanna get hit at a show? Don’t pit.

Anyway, our set went well, we had a great time. Damn… we’ve been having a lot of great times.
San Antonio was cancelled, which ended up okay, as we went to see our friend Jamie (ex-Hammers of Misfortune) and Brian (ex-Garuda) who are living on a killer ranch outside of Dallas. I’m totally stoked for them, and can’t wait to meet the little bean that’s gonna come out of her belly.

Today we played the Oklahoma metal fest, which was a lot of fun. Our old friend Tara was their with her boy, (Brian also, go figure) and we had a really good time hanging out and eventually playing. Us, headlining a fest? Ridiculous, but it seemed to go well.

Oklahoma has some dumb laws. Like… I went to get beer. I could buy normal beer, but only warm. Cold beer is all 3.1 percent alcohol or lower. Now here’s the thing… they liquor store sold me the warm beer, and then chilled it in a super freezing water cooler. Apparently, that’s legal, so I left with cold beer anyway!!??! What the hell was the point of that? And as if some alcoholic is not going to drink warm beer. Hell, they’ll drink windowpane if it gets ’em drunk!

Stupid bible belt. Isn’t this the state that elected a senator who said abortion doctors should all get the death penalty? Crap… I’m afraid to admit half my family comes from here. Weird.

From on the road

Crap. My S is broken. on of a bitch. thi uck.


Well, anyway, last night was shaping up to be a disaster in Austin. It was the first club we played on our first tour ever, and we reminiced about how drunk and horrible we played and puked all over the place. Let’s do it again, boys!

It was looking very bad. Blessing the Hogs hadn’t shown up and the local cancelled, and their was two people in attendance.

We pushed things back, and a lot more people showed up. Well, not a lot, but a crowd whose enthusiasm would fill the place up. I mean, we didn’t think we could pack a 900 capacity club anyway, so these kids were a treat. We rocked out, had a great show to a great response. From then on, it was nothing but people buying us shots, buying tee shirts, and when we thought we would have no place to stay the night, all of a sudden we had offers coming out our ears.

We ended up staying at our friend Walker’s place, with whom we stayed with years ago. Blessing the Hogs came to hang out with us. There was no beer left to be had, so Walker’s wonderful notion? Let’s go to a titty bar. YAY!!!

At least I was enthusiastic… I had just had to pass up the chance to go hang out with two beautiful women who wanted to kidnap me for drinking so I could load equipment. The one told me to leave it to my bandmates. Sorry, bros before hoes! Instead, I got some beers later at the titty bar and asked a lovely little lady for a lapdance. Typically for me, we ended up talking about bass guitar and Japanese vending machines instead of just letting her get to it.

When she finally started dancing, I asked her “Are you Scottish or Irish?” And she says “Irish, why?” “I noticed the freckles on your shoulders…” I reply, to which she says “You’re looking at my shoulders?” Wow, I felt dumb. Sweet!

tour

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

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.

Continue reading “zom-bees for my dead honey”

Rockin’ the Jack

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

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.