ANTI RECORD LABEL CARTOON.

SO I GUESS I WAS THINKING THAT IT WOULD BE FUNNY IF THERE WAS A ANTI RECORD LABEL, SOMEONE WITH A LOT OF MONEY WHO COULD PAY PEOPLE TO NEVER RECORD MUSIC AGAIN. SO CLICK ON AND READ.

YOU WANNA START SOME SHEE-IT??!!

THIS CARTOON IS A PERFECT ENDING FOR THE LIKE GOLD DOWN A SEWER PROJECT. IT IS BASED ON SOME TRUE EVENTS THAT HAPPENED AT THE FIRST HOUSE I LIVED AT IN RALEIGH, ON ASHE AVENUE. SOME REDNECKS NEXT DOOR TRIED TO FIGHT US. YES, IT IS TRUE. WE WERE ALL PUSSIES. KEVIN (AS IN KEVIN COLLINS) INSTIGATED THE WHOLE THING WITH HIS PENIS JOKE.
I DREW IT IN 1986. HMMMMM..MAYBE I SHOULD RE-DRAW IT NOW? CRUDE AS IT IS, I GUESS IT DOES HAVE ITS CHARM. SO YEAH..CLICK ON THE DRAWING TO SEE A BIG VERSION OF IT THAT YOU CAN SEE.

RECENT MUSIC THAT I HAVE HEARD..

KATATONIA: "SAY WHATEVER YOU WANT ABOUT OUR GROWING CONFIDENCE, YOU CAN'T DENY THAT THIS IS BY FAR ONE OF THE BEST PROMO PICTURES EVER!" WELL, SHIT..NO, I CAN'T!

Well, let's see...

The new Nick Cave ABATTOIR BLUES cd/dvd combo is pretty decent and all but really just for die hard fans. I liked the last studio album but just wasn't as blown away as everyone else seemed to be, and most of these tracks are from that last record. Not to sound like a critic, but on some of these songs, his voice sounds really..well, let's just say I am surprised he let this one get out. He probably doesn't give a shit, and why should he? He's Nick Cave! There is a live version of "Christina the Astonishing" on here, though. It sounds as bleak and depressing as ever. Maybe that is my problem. I like Nick and company when he's all bummed out and shit, and these days, he's...well, pretty happy! Good for him, not so good for me. I'll survive, though. I'd get something else if you wanted to be introduced to this man and his music.

And I bought another dvd/cd combo by the Swedish band Katatonia called LIVE CONSTERNATION. I've liked this band for years and all of their releases are good, and stay good. Unlike their buddies OPETH, I haven't seemed to have lost interest in this band and their pounding gloomy dark pseudo metal music. I am surprised that they haven't caught on more in the states. However, when I listened to and watched this band on this release, I noticed that they appear to be a whole lot more seasoned and confident onstage. They even sort of pose a bit and get into it! They could break big, they are poised to. The problem I seemed to have though, is that based on previous footage I've seen, the band seemed almost timid and kind of reserved. And I liked it better that way! Now, lead singer Jonas is all "ALL RIGHT!!!" and stuff like that. However, the playing is good and there is some good selections on here, but this is just like the Nick Cave release; you don't need this unless you are a big fan and even then it would be pushing it.

I really liked the Robert Plant/Alison Krauss combo record, Raising Sand. I will give it my vote for best "adult" record of the year, it doesn't sound ANYTHING like what you would think it would, kind of ghostly at times and very understated. All of the songs are covers picked by the two singers with some help from producer T-Bone Burnett, who based on his work on the Autolux cd, is someone anyone in a band could make a damn good record with. They cover all kinds of cool songs, from Gene Clark to Tom Waits. Hell, Tom Wait's guitarist Mark Ribot plays on here, too. There are a couple of misfires for me personally but all in all, a cool cd. You could do a whole lot worse, and probably already have.

Everything else I have heard recently is old music I have already loved for years or old music that someone else has turned me on to.

DOUBLE NEGATIVE INTERVIEW FROM HERPES MAGAZINE PART ONE!

WHEN WE WENT ON TOUR AND WERE STUCK IN CLEVELAND FOR TWO DAYS, I REALIZED THAT THE LAST COOL THING TO COME OUT OF THAT TOWN WAS PETER LAUGHNER, AND HE'S BEEN DEAD FOR YEARS. LUCKILY WE WERE ABLE TO DO AN INTERVIEW FOR THE FINE FINE MAGAZINE CALLED (GET READY) HERPES. IT IS A HUGE INTERVIEW THAT I AM GOING TO RE-TYPE BECAUSE IT CAME OUT REALLY GOOD AND I CAN'T THINK OF A BETTER EXAMPLE OF THE FOUR PERSONALITIES INVOLVED BEING PRESENTED SO GLARINGLY..OR IS IT LOVINGLY?

WE DID IT MONTHS AGO IN OUR RENTED VAN BEHIND A CLUB IN CLEVELAND. HERE IS THE FIRST PART..THE SECOND ONE WILL COME LATER. ENJOY, KIDS!!



These dudes are old enough to have sired some of you. They love to talk just as much as they love to play rib-cracking hardcore, which made this interview a pleasure.

Herpes: Brian, you're in the band and you've drawn classic punk/hardcore covers. Why didn't you design the cover of the album?
Justin and Scott: We wouldn't let him.
Herpes: You wouldn't let him?
Justin: He's got one job and he can barely do that one!
Brian: I'm just the drummer. I thought it would be better..once these guys started showing me some of the ideas that they had, I never really wanted to do it. I never wanted to be part of that part of the band. What came out for the cover is so much better than me doing something because I could or because I played drums for the band. I just didn't want to be part of it.
Scott: You did our new shirt, though.
Brian: I drew a gun.
Herpes: You drew a gun? On whom?
Brian: On the t-shirt.
Scott: He drew it the wrong way and we had to reverse it. (laughter)
Brian: I was on PCP on the time, so...
Kevin: We're still trying to figure out if we should do any cross marketing. If Brian's career is going to help us a little bit or if we should hide it.
Brian: I wanna keep myself..I wanna keep that part out of it. I consciously..I mean the gun is the first thing that I drew that had anything to do with the band.
Justin: I'm sure if Brian made some plea about how he really wanted to do it, we wouldn't stop him, but I really don't think that...
Kevin: If he gets on Good Morning America, he'll draw our next cover.
Justin: It depends on how successful he becomes in the next year.
Brian: That's the solemn vow. So that is the answer to that question, I guess..
Herpes: Who designed the cover, then? It looks like, I don't know...
Scott: A Swans cover mixed with the "GI" Germs l.p.?
Herpes: I can see Swans elements, definitely.
Justin: Here's the whole process: Scott designed the logo and then we had done stickers right off. We were gonna modify that for the album cover because the stickers were the same symbol, but with a red background. Kevin was feeling iffy about the red background.
Brian: Being Jewish. (laughter)
Kevin: Not me, but..
Justin: Scott said the only way he'd change it is if we did it gold or silver. We did the gold, it worked and Brandon took it and ran with it.
Kevin: Yeah, Brandon's the one that really made it happen.
Scott: We would give Brandon the idea and he would formulate it into a picture and we'd say yes or no.
Justin: He didn't want to keep it as simple as we did, but I think once he finally saw it in final, with the raised letters, and extremely simplistic - we wanted something that when you're looking through something in a hurry, it stands out.
Kevin: Like a big stop sign.
Scott: Exactly, exactly.
Brian: It didn't have the giant mohawked skull that we were going to put on the cover initially. (laughter)
Justin: We made a compromise.
Brian: Or some kid screaming into a mic with thirty kids around him.
Herpes: What is so "wonderful and frightening" about your worlds?
Scott: Well, the Fall weren't using that album title anymore..(laughter)
Brian: That's it.
Scott: Our next record is going to be called "Daydream Nation".
Justin: Hey, you got a scoop!
Kevin: There's your scoop.
Herpes: That's got a simple cover, too.
Scott: All of the covers are simple. All of the covers are going to look the same.
Justin: We're gonna change the gold to silver.
Herpes: (laughing) So the second album is going to be worse then, because it's silver? Shit!
Justin: Then it's gonna be a brown paper bag sleeve.
Kevin: That's what bands do, right? They get worse.
Brian: We have to follow the tradition; we have to get worse and worse as time goes on.
Scott: There's no photograph that can picture what the band means except for that symbol.
Justin: Exactly.
Scott: It's easy for kids to recognize, scratch into their desks at school, or spray paint onto a wall.
Herpes: Scratch it into their arms.
Brian: If they are cutters, yeah. It's simple..
Justin: That is our target audience: cutters.
Kevin: We want to appeal to not just punks, but cutters, everybody.
Scott: Social retards, freaks, everybody.
Brian: Mentally retarded people.
Justin: Everybody's involved! Ninety year olds, grandparents..
Scott: Not them, they suck.
Kevin: Jewish people.
Brian: Okay, scratch that.
Herpes: The name of the band..is that to piss off grammatically-minded people such as myself?
Kevin: Why does it piss you off?
Herpes: I'm an editor and I deal with grammar all day. I see "Double Negative" and grammar is the first thing I think about.
Justin: We wanted the most positive name you could possibly have.
Brian: In reverse.
Scott: Yeah, two negatives are a positive, so Double Negative is positive. It has a negative connotation, but in reality...
Kevin: It's positive.
Herpes: So it's like that "double plus good" Orwell shit?
Kevin: (laughing) yeah!
Justin: It rolls off the tongue.
Brian: The Exploited was already taken!
Scott: I think, except for Kevin, we were all at pretty negative places in our lives when we started this band, so we were going from bad to good.
Kevin: Oh, I was coming from a negative place. I was trapped in a shitty corporate job going nowhere and this band was very liberating.
Scott: I brought them together.
Kevin: It was like karma.
Scott: I called..I hadn't talked to Kevin in like ten years and I called him up and said, "hey, come check out this show" and he said, "let's play in a band" and it started that night.
Herpes: Damn!
Brian: We basically put the band together to play a house party in Raleigh. That was the inspiration.
Kevin: We didn't do that.
Scott: It was at the Thrashitorium, it was this really high energy thing and it was the whole reason I got into music to begin with. We're like c'mon let's do this. We've all been in bands before.
Brian: We've all been with each other in bands within a twenty year period because we have known each other that long.
Kevin: There was more energy in that one Thrashitorium show than in the previous ten years of fucking indie rock shows. (laughter)
Scott: It was a whole new group of kids and they were totally outside the general alternative rock scene in our town. They were doing it and were bringing in bands from all over the world to play in a living room. We were like fuck yeah, this is what it's about - everybody having fun. In Raleigh, there's never any fights. It's young kids with smiling faces.
Kevin: They are happy to be there.
Scott: It really is. It's fun, total fun.
Herpes: That's awesome you guys were like teenagers again. Just like every thirteen year old does when they first see a punk show and says, "I can do this, too." That's fucking cool! Since you guys have been around for awhile, do you think there are any unsung bands form your area in the past that need to be given respect?
Brian: A lot, but you know, every town has that.
Justin: Do you mean existing right now?
Herpes: When you guys were coming up or whatever.
Justin: Every band we were in that didn't make us millionaires.
Brian: Aside from every band that we did that no one noticed, there's no one else.
Kevin: It's not important.
Scott: Corrosion of Conformity from like 1982 to 1985 were a monster machine, hands down. Whatever they're doing now, it's not my trip, but they're cool guys.
Justin: There's a lot of cool stuff in Raleigh, but it's the same problem that most young bands have is that it's very hard to keep things together. I mean, you gotta make a mistake so the next band you are in doesn't make the same mistakes. When there's four nineteen year old kids playing together, most likely that's not going to be the last band they play in.
Scott: I feel like when I was younger playing in hardcore and punk bands, I was thinking, "I've got all of the time in the world." But now, I'm forty-three and I don't have that much time left; I'm fucking going for it as hard as I can.
Herpes: Fuck yeah!
Scott: I didn't think that I was going to be alive when I turned thirty, so I was very surprised! (laughter)
Scott: I had to re-think everything. This band has actually been a very positive experience for all of us. It's been really fun, we've made a lot of friends, we put out a record. Most of the bands we've been in had posthumous records. Or we had demos and we were lucky to play in another town or another state. Thanks to the Internet and all of that crap, things have picked up quick. It's been a rewarding experience. It has its ups and downs, but nothing really bad.
Brian: We generally learned from our past mistakes.
Justin: Exactly. We know what we can and cannot do. We try to do every single thing we can do and don't sweat it when we can't.
Scott: This band isn't just one person. If we all don't agree, we don't do it. We all have full time jobs.
Brian: Except for the drummer.
Justin: I'm constantly being told that I'm "this close" to being replaced. (laughter)
Scott: But really it was Brandon and Lauren from No Way Records. They totally helped us out.
Justn: Hank, the guy roadieing for us..we've got a lot of help from really cool people that really wanted things to happen for us, which was not the usual experience for a long time.
Scott: We're really appreciative and really thankful that these kids are into it. We love doing our shit. We love playing out, regardless of what the reaction is.
Justin: It makes it a lot easier when people go apeshit.
Brian: It kinda seemed like when the record came out, we were all really happy with how it turned out. Speaking for me, I wasn't even expecting it to come out as well as it did.
Justin: Or at all, possibly. We've all been in bands where people have said, "oh your record will be out in six months!" Six months later, you call and it's like, "this number has been disconnected." (laughter)
Brian: We've all had experiences like that. This is the first time that we've been on a record while we're in existence. It's also been pretty educational for me at least, getting back into this world after all of these years and just catching up a bit. It's been awhile.
Kevin: I'm totally humble an I feel like every show we play is special because I never thought I'd ever...I mean I knew I'd sometime come around and be in some music stuff, but I never thought I'd be in a band that was touring and stuff.
Brian: If you had told all of us two years ago that we'd be doing this band, much less doing an interview with someone that wanted to talk to us, we would have laughed at you..but here we are.
Herpes: I have a question about the lyrics to "Redshift". Do you have a fantasy about being jettisoned into outer space?
Kevin: Oh, absolutely.
All: Oh, who doesn't? Of course!
Scott: I gotta say this..Outer space is such a limited area. All of the action is happening under the sea. Nobody knows what's going on under there. In the depths, there's some really cool shit.
Kevin: There's not five hundred telescopes pointed at the bottom of the ocean.
Brian: For me, I really appreciate what Kevin writes. I had no idea what he was singing about and I didn't want to know. It was only after we recorded our record that he typed everything out. When I read along, I was pleased. Everything was phrased real weird, He puts stuff in weird spots. That was the icing on the cake, for me at least.
Scott: I couldn't imagine anyone else singing for the band. I like Kevin's voice. It's not a real macho thing. I don't wanna play in some dude band.
Justin: We're not eighteen years old, we don't have the same problems. The songs aren't going to be about the same things. It's not, "hey dad..I gotta borrow the car" it's "fuck I gotta pay a mortgage."
Kevin: Fuck, I gotta lend my kids the car! (laughter)
Brian: Different problems.
Scott: The problems can be way more intense. I dunno, they seem more intense.
Brian: They're more real.
Scott: They were real before, too.
Justin: We've got more ways to make them go away.
Kevin: Hardcore really is more relative to when you're older, but people our age don't understand. We thought when people used to be into hardcore when they were younger and all about it.
Brian: Having real responsibilities and making real adult decisions. People would have more of a reason to be into "arghh!" kind of stuff as time goes on.
Justin: That is why we are trying to appeal to the AARP crowd now. (laughter)


PART TWO COMING LATER, KIDS!!!

NO WAY RECORDS DESIGN!! "THE ROUGH CUT".

So yeah, this was adorned on t-shirts and posters for the NO WAY RECORDS festival not too long ago. I got to draw every "Brian Walsby" hardcore cliche in the book (like you know..everyone smiling and having fun, stuff like that) and I got paid for it as well, which was nice. This drawing also has me ripping off what I drew on that SCARED STRAIGHT seven inch i drew in..lets see..1985. Some 22 years ago (egads!),like those "monsters" on the cover. The end result? Everyone liked it, and a few people I know think they are in it. That is fine with me.

SAD MONSTER.

I DON'T KNOW, I LIKED THIS ONE. IT HAS A LITTLE BIT OF A CHILDRENS BOOK FEEL TO IT.

HEY BRIAN..WHERE IS THAT INFAMOUS JOHN PEEL SANDY DENNY DRAWING I HAVE HEARD SO MUCH ABOUT?!

So many of you have been e-mailing me and pleading with me along the lines of "Hey man! Where the fuck is that goddamn drawing you did of the late John Peel hanging out with the equally late Sandy Denny of the Fairport Convention?! I keep hearing about it! It is way more famous then that damn "Nardcore" drawing you did for that album! Put up or shut up, dude!"

Okay okay sheesh..here it is. You can all stop now! Click on the picture to see a bigger version, okay?