ANOTHER WRITE UP THAT WILL PROBABLY UPSET SOMEONE.

On the day that me and Carole were burying our late lamented one hundred and twenty pound dog in our backyard, I got a phone call and did a interview, and here it is:

http://www.101distribution.com/article/Brian-Walsby

I am pretty sure that I will never ever be able to get Dischord Records on my side but I do appreciate the back up from Charles and Dale Crover.

OH MAN..DID THIS MAKE ME LAUGH.

this is just pure comic gold/genius.

ONE PAGE ARTICLE IN THE NEW ISSUE OF DECIBEL MAGAZINE.

This came out really nice! Thanks for the great opening statement..that makes me feel pretty darned good.

david yow kicking J. Mascis in the nuts.

RALEIGH'S RIGHTEOUS FOOL: FUN AND GOOD.

Righteous Fool from Mann's World on Vimeo.

FILMED BY KAREN A MANN.

It did my head and heart a lot of good to see Righteous Fool play last night at the Dive Bar here in Raleigh. As some people might know, Righteous Fool are a new band, a trio that features both Reed Mullin and Mike Dean, the drums and bass duo of..you guessed it, Corrosion Of Conformity. Playing guitar for the band is Jason Browning, a fellow who also played with Bad Brains vocalist HR in some of his solo projects.

So played they did, and I was impressed. I sighed with relief! Not only that, given the fact that there is so much history flying around the air with Mike and Reed, the idea of them doing a new band RIGHT NOW with Jason is really cool. It sure sounds like that these guys are doing exactly what they should be doing at this point in time. A lot of the songs are good. Some of them are pretty tricky to boot. Jason is a more then capable guitarist, even wearing a Shudder To Think shirt (a favorite band of mine)to seal that deal. A "Peter Green, Not Eye For An Eye" version of "Green Manalishi" cemented everything. I was smiling ear to ear while kneeling in front of Reed's kit next to Andy Freeburn and thinking how cool this was. Watching Reed and Mike jam in the year 2009. Wow. Cool.

If anything, Mike is a better bass player now then ever, and Reed certainly hasn't lost anything. Naysayers will poo-poo the band because it isn't the second coming of "Rabid Dogs" but anyone else who likes good heavy music EVEN IF IT HAS A GROOVE TO IT should have no problem enjoying Righteous Fool. I sure did.

Before I left I went up to Reed and gave him a goodbye hug and my compliments and he said in response, "I'm having fun."

"..but it is also good!", I replied.

And he just added, "yeah..but I am having fun!"

So there you go. Righteous Fool. Both good and fun.

PUNK ROCK WALL MURALS!

I have a lot of rolled up good paper..give me three days and three nights and you can own something like this.

ERECTUS MONOTONE REFORMS.

Erectus Monotone are re-forming to play a few upcoming shows. So let me see if I can get through a testimonial without pissing someone off in the process. I am even going to proof read this afterwards just to make sure. I think I can do this:
They put out probably the best local music of their era, the early singles were neat and their swan song “Close Up” was real good but their middle release “Erector Set” (strangely the only one that their label Merge never out out) was REALLY GOOD, a short and to the point recording of some of the most frantic energetic and fractured music to ever come out of Raleigh, a nine song blast of girl/guy vocals, two guitar players welding together the most perfect D.Boon/Andy Gill flutter backed by a dependable bass and drums combo. There were a lot of good bands around back then but Erectus Monotone to this day remain sort of a closely kept secret and I wonder what people will think when they play. Will anyone care? Will young kids not even five years old when the band broke up suddenly bum rush the front of the Cats Cradle stage crying and throwing flowers at these four people when they play their hits a couple Saturdays from now?
They should. Starting out with the humblest of beginnings, Kevin Collins and Andrew Freeburn decided to start playing together way back in the days when EVERYBODY had super long hair, so yeah it was a long time ago. Eventually after a few false starts they enlisted Jennifer Walker and Will “Casper” Lee to join. They became a band. ..unfortunately as I remembered it, they really stunk at first. I mean..really.
All of a sudden they recorded at Jerry Kee’s and people were astonished; bare bones simple yet catchy beyond belief, the band no doubt stood out greatly on account of Kevin and his singing. He already had done time in earlier bands like Subculture or Days Of.. so people knew he had the goods. Suddenly they started to play better shows, the singles started to come out and the saga begun.
Soon, there was trouble in paradise as the drummer spot changed. Casper was out and Andy’s childhood Chicago pal Mike Meadows was in. I played with Meadows in Shiny Beast; he was an incredible musician for sure. I wonder if he really whipped the band in shape by the sheer pushy force of his personality, cause “Erector Set” sure kicks all kind of ass, with not a trace of metal or even hard rock in sight. I am not sure you can find a more perfect little gem of the time then “Erector Set”. It still holds up.
Then eventually I got my chance to play with them for awhile. We had fun. These guys and girl sure didn’t write anything! Soon I left. Then Brian Quast stepped in.
As some of you know, Brian is the other drummer band slut in town. Name a good band, chances are he has played in it for at least a little while. The catchy and bizarre “Glider/Soul Taker” seven inch came out.
After a little while, the band gelled with Quast quite well. Shiny Beast toured with them during this period and they were peaking. “Close Up” came out. Great things afterwards were promised but soon personality quirks and Kevin’s decision to do adult things ended the band suddenly. The end.
So now they are reforming for the Merge Records blowout. Another local show in Raleigh at a later time is also in the works. I will post the date when I know it.
You should go, man. It will be good.

AWESOME NEWS.

As it was told to me today by my publisher, The distribution company that distributes his labels product LUMBERJACK MORDAM is shutting down their operations. Here is a cute li’l e-mail sent out all over the internet by the head honcho Dirk Hemsath , who doubt is hiding out somewhere trying to not get killed:

"At this point LMMG will not be able to continue to provide distribution services for labels. We had hopes for the last several months that we'd be able to find a way to move forward but the triple hits of an expensive merger, a dying business and a bad economy have made it impossible. We are hoping to be able to get some money to labels, but I'm not sure how much or when as we have to try and collect money from customers."

Here is an even more awesome little blurb that I found while trying to figure out what this actually means. It sort of caught my eye:

“A number of the labels were left with $30,000 - $50,000 in unpaid invoices, an amount that can be devastating for a small label.”

Then luckily, I discovered that Charles wrote something himself on Punknews.org..so for what it is worth:

I run a label that has worked with Lumberjack for more than 10 years. Needless to say, we're still in shock over this mess and we were pretty blindsided by the entire disaster. It has taken us over a month just to get the digital issues resolved and we're out of a ton in unpaid digital/ physical sales. It's a huge, heartbreaking mess for all the labels and tons of artists who were involved with LMMG.

For what it's worth: Lumberjack (up until around 3 months ago) has always been very good to us. They always paid us and they even fronted us money to get the label going in 1998. Once Dawn Marshman left (around 16 months ago) things started to change a bit. By May 2009 they were down to only a few employees and we finally got the call that they were going to "stop distributing physical product". We didn't know they were going to stop sending us checks for products they had already sold. This is a real bummer considering we just put out book/cd release for Brian Walsby and the Melvins that cost us a ton of money to produce. We definitely feel betrayed and a bit disheartened that someone we've worked with since the late '90s would keep us so in the dark about their financial downfall while encouraging us to work with them on a huge title like this. I'm sure this whole thing will be quite entertaining to watch from the outside as lawsuits start to pile up and the rumor mill starts churning. I hope this provides a bit of insight into what we're dealing with on the inside.

Thanks,
Sorry,
Beers.

Charles Cardello
www.bifocalmedia.com

Hmmm. I really didn’t need any of that money anyways! No one I am sure does! None of us did anything anyways. It’s cool, bra!

Stay tuned for (probably) more details.

You can’t download a comic book,
Brian Walsby

MORE STUFF TO LOOK AT.

HERE ARE SOME VARIOUS THINGS TO LOOK AT..SOME ARE OLD, SOME ARE VERY NEW.

NICE REVIEW FROM LEFT OF THE DIAL WEBSITE.

Thanks, David. I appreciate it.


July 2, 2009Manchild 4/by Brian Walsby: Bifocal Media
Filed under: Reviews — leftofthedialmag @ 8:45 am

Senor Walsby is back to the front with his newest collection of black and white pandemonium, which revisits familiar territory, so expect his usual bucket loads of sly and sardonic wickedry, no-bullshit scene slicing antics, and insistent leveling of all icons and “punk stars.” Though he has been busy as the skin pounder behind the better-late-than-never 40-something year old thrashcore soldiers Double Negative, who charge through replica formats of early Corrosion of Conformity meets Discharge meets Void, he also has time to be tour dude/comrade/fellow traveler to the Melvins, and even has a diary in this issue to document the ups and downs of being on the road in the Ipod era. In other segments, he pokes holes in the lame history of Emo, creates fictitious girl superheroes like Jailbait Girl for those bald men with sweltering adolescent fantasies, details the origins of his early bands, such as fresh-from-the garage Zombie Clergy and posicore pioneers Scared Straight, takes side-swapping stabs at faux punk “reunions” – Minor Threat babbling about Saabs and SUVs — and takes time to relish reaming pop culture figures from Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin to Jessica Simpson and Bono. No one is off limits, and no elements within the scene escape him either, from the never-ending punk house parties with a million cookie cutter bands, or the scene politics that stymie dissent as ‘uncool’ and pump up “uniform thought” – lame codes that make punk seem extra enclosed and hermetic. Sure, not everyone cares about these trails and tales, but for those of us raised on punk fanzine gossip, in-fighting, and territorialism, not to mention the comic work of Jaime Hernandez and Shawn Kerri, Walsby’s confessionalism, wit, and down-to-earth raps will be as engrossing as ever. PS This comes with a free monster mash CD of Melvins music as well!