Entry date: 7-14-2024 – Goin’ Down South – Letters to My Friends

Dear Friends,

This morning, we head south to celebrate TQ’s graduation. She wanted to go to Boston to celebrate her accomplishment, so to Boston, we head. I’m not sure where we will end up on our way down, but fun is on the horizon.

*****

Yesterday was a nice day. We were pretty mellow, but got a lot of stuff done. We reorganized the storage in our part of the house to maximize our space. It felt good to do that work.

*****

Getting high on my own supply part 4, I suppose.

In 1998, Hillbilly Devilspeak imploded. The Great Ciarlino wasn’t having fun anymore and Mr. Smith (aka Trent) was busy doing other things, namely starting the excellent band, Burn Victim. EJ and I soldiered on for the band’s first out of town shows opening for the infamous Fang with Casey Brooks on guitar.

EJ decided he wanted to do something else, as well, so we played a Halloween show at Hollywood Alley in 1998 and after that, Casey quit, too. EJ and I got really drunk as I was going to be his last show and we were not very good at all. Casey wasn’t down with that, even though we had EJ’s replacement lined up already.

Shane Ocell, who just had a birthday, was set to join the band on drums and we were going to proceed as a three-piece with Casey, but alas, we only had one jam with that lineup. Enter Steve “PaPaPill” Landos into the picture.

The three of us hit it off pretty well. Steve brought a huge amount of guitar talent and backing vocals to the band and Shane was fired up to be in a band. What he lacked in skill, he made up for in enthusiasm and always being up for shows. I don’t think we missed much of a beat and in some ways, our music got more accessible to the average punk rock audience.

We played a lot of shows and worked on a new set of songs for those first few years. We all wanted to do a CD with the lineup and started planning it out around our frequent trips to California for shows. We had a ton of fun together, too.

Steve knew a guy that worked in a studio in Phoenix over by 24th Street and Thomas. I don’t remember his name, and that’s probably a good thing, because for whatever reason, he grew to dislike me strongly over time. I’m not sure what I ever did to the guy, but that’s neither here nor there. I don’t have anything nice to say, I suppose.

We started tracking songs with him, though, and got the drums done, if I remember correctly at a couple of different studios Steve’s buddy worked at during that time. I may have tracked some bass, too, but we also did a lot of recording for what became Kiss The Brown Star at Steve’s house.

Steve fancied himself to be something of a recording engineer. He knew more than me, but looking back, we probably should have just waited until we had the money to do a really proper recording somewhere. Piecing it together was a bad idea, but we were impatient.

I thought Kiss The Brown Star was clever, but we messed up the art, too. I kind of rushed Jeff to put something together but the colors ended up being weird. That was also on us. The cover of the CD didn’t end up with a brown star, per se, but more of a baby shit/mustard-ish color. Ther was a cool insert, though, and the back looked great.

The songs were solid, too, even if the recording didn’t do them a lot of favors. It’s more like a demo than a proper record compared to the other Hillbilly releases. More than once, I have thought about re-recording it.

“Blend Right In’ kicks things off and it is still the shortest Hillbilly song ever. We play it in our set, too. It’s a proper punk rock song about the shooting at Columbine.

“So much for reason, I can’t talk, I just get pissed/I wear a trench coat so act like I don’t exist/Branded a loser by self-righteous yuppie scum/can’t get no attention ‘til I go and kill someone.”

After the chorus of “How many people must die? And, oh how the people will cry/What’s wrong with the children today? What’s wrong with the children, what’s wrong with the children today?” comes verse two:

“Would life be better if I could blend right in/be just like you and try to fit in again/Maybe it’s worth it to be the forgotten son/The war with myself is not over, it’s just begun.”

There is another chorus, too, where I switch the word “children” with the word “People” and that’s that. 58 seconds of punk rock fury.

After that, you get “Courtney” which is kind of an open letter to Courtney Love about how she killed Kurt Cobain. This song brought us some attention from people. I guess it was deservedly so, too. It was a fun song to play and one that Steve and I collaborated on.

He put a really funny little clip of her talking at the beginning and end of the song that made the recording turn out to be pretty cool. We had a guy who told us he played the song for Madonna and she wanted to sign us to Hollywood Records, but nothing ever came of that. It’s fun to look back and laugh at, though.

We still play the next song, “Paparrazi Smashi” live, too. It’s one of my all-time favorites. Just heavy and fun. It’s about Princess Diana’s car crash and how Prince, errr, King Charles probably orchestrated it because he is the anti-Christ. David Yow commented on it when we played with the Jesus Lizard once, too, so I put that in the lyrics at the end.

After “Paparazzi” we re-recorded “Revenge of the Micronauts.” It’s a decent version, for sure, but maybe it was unnecessary. I think the logic was that it was not available on CD and people like that song. We didn’t change it too much.

“Farrah’s Nipples” comes next. It is pretty self-explanatory. It was one of the holdover songs from the previous era that we did live a lot. It’s very simple and I have the line, “the hardest working nipples in show business” in there.

“Packaged For The Public” was kind of about the lamp factory where we practiced the most during our time as a band. My ex-wife’s parents were kind enough to let me use their showroom to practice in for several years. There are lyrical nods to it in the song, but it’s mostly about conformity.

“Second Time Around” is about domestic violence and abuse. I worked for Casa during the years the record was created, so it was only natural that I would sing about my work. “Shelley Winters” is about the problem of obesity in the United States. I once had to talk two very large boys out of killing me in the back of Hollywood Alley. They thought I was making fun of them.

I suppose I was, but I managed to come out of that without a scratch. It it a really heavy song and when we came up with the riff, I think we were calling it the “heavy” one. Sometimes I just need a little push and the lyrics come right out.

“Shed” is about a news story I read in the paper where a woman burned her children alive, killing herself and her daughter, but her son survived. It happened near where my mom used to live in Central Phoenix, so it stuck with me. It’s another really heavy and serious one.

After a New Times showcase we played, a young woman came up to me and told me she was the nurse of the boy and that he knew about the song and loved it. That was one of the coolest things to happen with that batch of songs.

The last song is “Tug of War” and we just dusted that one off when we played with CNTS in June. It’s a fun one to play about how my dad taught me to “never start fights” but to “finish them” instead. I make a little fun of this notion because fighting is just dumb.

When the record came out, it got some decent reviews. We bought way too many of them and I’ve probably thrown away a few hundred over the years and still have a lot left. I’ve gotten some nice feedback about it but in my head, it is not what it could have been. If I have any regrets about music I’ve put out there, it’s one of the two or three biggest ones.

Kiss The Brown Star could have been a lot better if we had just known what I know now. Isn’t that the case with a lot of things, though?

*****

See you tomorrow.

Don't look too closely at the brown star, AI.