Added To The Sidebar

Drum roll please: these fine sites have all been added to my sidebar:

Listen Missy,Here Comes Trouble, Gawker, Bill Hobbs, and Todd Anderson's Popshot.

dislocated Part 5

The fifth and final installment of my first band’s story is here. We’d sacked our drummer and gotten a new one at the end of Part 4. We spent some time with Rob learning all of our material. Our first gig with him behind the skins was a gig at B & L Pizza with the Red Jelly Mambos and See 7 States. We would debut all of new material we had been working on with Tim including our acoustic song sarcastically dubbed “Hippie Bus” that I wrote with Mark. “Our hair’s blowing out the window as we drive across the land. Safe inside the hippie bus everybody join hands and sing along.” The show started off with some promise as we opened with the thrash of “Whatcha’ Thinkin’” and a bunch of kids started slamming, but the fun was cut short when the sound guy not affiliated with us, Mark Praytor, told the kids to watch the monitors. They thought he meant “no slamming” so for the rest of our set they just stood against the back wall which really brought our enthusiasm down a notch. We still put on a good show playing more originals and just a few covers. Shrub was awesome on bass in his first live show with us so it was a shame that the ride was almost over. We must have played another show at B & L because Shrub swears we did, but I don’t remember it. We kept rehearsing, but things weren’t the same without Tim in the band. Mike had acquired a steady girlfriend by then so he started missing practices. Mark had starting dating his future wife so his free time for the band was getting slimmer and slimmer. We started playing over at Rob’s house and the family feeling the group used to have lost. In retrospect, I should have taken charge of the group, but I was clueless to any power I had. I was just the guy who had barged my way into a band and I never considered the group truly mine even when they were doing covers I suggested, when I was writing the lyrics, or when I even came up with the name of the band. We were definitely ahead of our time for 1988-89 doing the Descendents covers and writing pop punk – metal originals. The group drifted through a few months of fruitless rehearsal – I remember painfully trying to pull off a cover version of Tommy Tutone’s “Jenny, Jenny (8675309)” over several afternoons without Mike there – until somebody pulled the plug. I don’t specifically recall how it went down, but the Dislocated just quietly expired one day. So what happened to us? Tim married Darlene who had taken him away from us, but later got a divorce and came back to music. He has played in a string of Murfreesboro cover acts and has also played with the famous Cajun Manuel family who I knew from the days back when my father ran Jimmy C. Newman’s ranch (two of the Manuels played in his band Cajun Country). Mark Taylor married Jenny and now has two children. He still plays music every now and then (including one show with one of my future bands), but he’s developed a greater love for computer technology - http://markeydave.stumbleupon.com/ - which has become his career. Mike Taylor also played one show with my band Michael Landon’s Ghost/Pipebomb before joining up with Brian Hickman in the Reverbians - http://www.angelfire.com/clone/thereverbians/ - a few years ago. He left them before they split up and I don’t know what’s he up to music wise, but I hope I catch him playing on stage again as he really is one of the most talented guitarists I’ve ever heard. Once the group disbanded I lost touch with Rob. Shrub moved to Texas where he started playing in a band called Cool Fork that was full on Green Day sounding pop punk. The guitarist and singer Jaret has since gone on to mega one hit wonder fame after his group, Bowling For Soup, hit it big last year with “1985”. Shrub could have become a superstar, but he went on to play in the more challenging artistic act Wiring Prank - http://www.qualityparkrecords.com/artists/wp.html - http://www.pyramid-scheme.com/merchandise2.html - http://www.hipinion.com/review.php?aid=99 - who were inspired by acts like Slint and Tortoise. After that ended he started his own website devoted to horror www.goblinhaus.com which is always fun to visit. I went on to form full on punk band Michael Landon’s Ghost/Pipebomb and after that came garage act Dragula - http://www.goblinhaus.com/dragula.htm - which I’ve documented before. Currently I’m busy with a wife and two kids of my own with another one on the way. I record songs to a four track and hope to one day play in front of an audience again, knowing that I’ll have a blast, but that nothing can ever top that first nervous show at Jabbs with the Dislocated. There’s no discography for the Dislocated since we only recorded our songs on a boom box. But here’s the list of our originals: Work Sucks written by Mike and Wally, This One’s For Paul written by The Dislocated, Mosh and Slam written by The Dislocated, Complications written by Mike and Wally, Perfect Girl written by Mike and Wally, 3 Groovy Chix written by The Dislocated, Whatcha’ Thinkin’ written by Mark and Wally, Same Circumstance written by Mark and Wally, What Do You Want From Me written by Wally, and Hippie Bus written by Mark and Wally.

 

 

God Did It - The Atheists Say

I was flipping through the channels the other night and I caught some of that new show, Tsunami, on MSNBC and they had some atheist lady on saying that the tsunami demonstrates there is no God. Her argument was how could a person believe in a God that would allow 150,000 plus people to just be killed with no discrimination. So the believer is left with worshipping a mean God. It's obvious the lady had never read the Book Of Job. What always gets me (and I'm agnostic if I'm anything) is how atheists go out of their way to try to disprove something that cannot be disproved in order to make themselves feel better about their own non-belief which is in itself a belief. If I truly felt there was nothing beyond this mortal coil I really don't think I'd care what others thought as long as they weren't forcing me to attend a church or face a stake burning, yet atheists are always going on about their rights to a God free existence being violated. If something like God doesn't exist, then how can it violate anything?
I think that within every atheist is a tiny seed of doubt and they're all scared that it will grow into some sort of spiritual awareness. Keep in mind I'm not referring to the unbelievers that just say they don't know about what comes after death, but just to the hardcore group of people that say once we're dead that's it.
My friend DD sent me a link to this Michael Novak column on the whole atheist/tsunami issue and it's much more enlightening than I could ever be. Jeff Jacoby also has a commentary at Jewish World Review on the God and tsunami issue, but with a different take.

False Alarm Baby

I've been out of the office for most of the day since my soon to be born son decided to scare his mother into thinking he was ready to come. It turned out to be a false alarm, but he's head down and pointed in the right direction so it could be any day now. Then again it could still be a month away. I think I annoyed my wife's nurse since I read a book through the examination. The number one rule of any doctor visit is to bring a book because you know you're likely to sit in a little room for an hour at least before anybody sticks their head in the door and this is after sitting in the waiting room for a bit.

Local Radio Poll On College Football

Man, was that game embarrassing last night for the Sooners or what? The Trojans flat out whooped their asses. Of course, being a Southern boy I can't help but wonder how Auburn vs USC would have turned out. It seems the local populace is all for a college playoff. It's bound to happen as soon as the money is right since that's all major college athletics are about. I'd like the see the schools pay the players and really stick it to the big leagues.

dislocated 4

After the Dislocated played our first couple of shows at Jabbs and at Riverdale High we went back to Tim Baird’s den and started working on material to unveil at a battle of the bands. Mike wrote some music and I added some lyrics and we had two new original songs; “Complications” and “Perfect Girl”. “Complications” was a good three chord hardcore punk song, while “Perfect Girl” was tuneful pop punk of the kind that would later propel acts like Green Day and Blink-182 into the stratosphere. We were just ahead of the curve back in 1989. We played a couple more shows at Jabbs in the meantime, including one where I ceremoniously smashed my first guitar – an old acoustic child’s model with a busted tuning key. The battle of the bands featured us, the Red Jelly Mambo’s, Gotham City, and Cruel Blue. Cruel Blue was an awesome alternative band with all original material. The Red Jelly Mambo’s band was made up all high school kids playing original low key indie rock. Gotham City was an incredibly tight cover band with professional chops. We weren’t the best act, but maybe wearing a t-shirt by local Nashville rock legends The White Animals brought us some luck. The battle was judged solely on audience response and the audience was ours. We made sure the ZUD crew was out in force slam dancing through the night. I didn’t know it at the time, but one of the audience members was a guy from Riverdale’s rival high school, Oakland, who would soon become the Dislocated’s bass player. This person was the legendary skate punk with the deep bass voice and long hippie hair; Greg “Shrub” Rountree who now runs www.goblinhaus.com back in Texas. He’s seen briefly in the video we made of the show. After the show we spent the rest of the night doing power slides on our boards at an abandoned shopping center mixing it up with a local wino named Tommy and the local Murfreesboro police who came by to check up on him. They didn’t care about us skating at all.

 

Jabbs announced they were going to close for good so an event was arranged called Jabbstock and we were lucky to be included in the all star line up of bands that played that show. We didn’t even have to close the show, but somehow we did manage to play the last complete set ever performed there. Jack was scheduled the close the chapter on Jabbs, but just a few songs into their set the owner of Jabbs pulled the plug. I’m probably the one to blame as an offhand comment I made about really wanting the St. Paulie Girl beer light got taken seriously by one of our overzealous fans. I was hanging around by the open side door watching jack play when the fan brought the light to me. Once he did that, the dam had burst as patrons everywhere were yanking stuff off the walls. The whole club might have been cleaned out if the owner hadn’t finally realized what was going on and kicked everyone out. I truly am sorry for me and my big mouth.

 

 We knew we needed a full time bassist as it was just silly for Mark and Mike to keep switching off between bass and guitar like they had been doing. I don’t recall how Shrub joined up with us. We were probably out skating and asked him to join – it’s all so hazy now. But he quickly signed up and we were on our way. We added more new songs: “3 Groovy Chix”, “Whatcha’ Thinkin’”, “Same Circumstance”, “What Do You Want From Me” and an acoustic track titled “Hippie Bus”. Our days of doing cover songs would soon be a thing of the past at the rate we were going.  A dark cloud named Darlene was coming along to wreck our rock and roll dreams. She was Tim’s girlfriend and she didn’t like him spending time practicing. He missed some practices. Keep in mind the practices were held at his house so things were getting uncomfortable. Finally we decided to sack him. It seems incredibly stupid now and I wish it never happened but we gave him the pink slip. I think he even heard about it second hand. Now we needed a new drummer and a new practice space. Practice space was easy; we just set up shop in the Taylor’s carport when the weather was nice and the laundry room when the weather was bad. Finding a drummer though was not an easy task. We’d placed fliers up at MTSU and had tryouts. but so many people were just weak. We had been truly lucky to have Tim playing with us. There surely wasn’t a better drummer in Murfreesboro at the time. Finally we landed a guy named Rob Marble who was a veteran of some cover bands and we were ready to enter the final stage of The Dislocated.

The fifth and final part will chronicle the decline and massive fall of Murfreesboro’s first pop punk act.

 

 

 

Dislocated Clothing

Naah, it's got nothing to do with my old band, The Dislocated, but it's still sort of neat. Check out Dislocated Clothing. Part 4 of The Dislocated story should hit today and then I'll finish up the history of my first band by the end of the week with Part 5.

Floating Logo's Project

I found this originally at Wiley Wiggins blog and this stuff is dreamlike and sort of eerie in a way.

Man, I Used To Like Mark Cuban

Until I heard about his idea to cancel the Presidential inauguration festivities. Rexblog has the details.

dislocated tres

When last we left my old band, The Dislocated, we were preparing to play our first gig – we now join the story in progress:

It was with lots of relief that our first show wasn’t going to be in front of the entire Riverdale student body (probably around 2,000 kids), but instead at local dive bar Jabbs. Jabbs was located right next to MTSU and it catered to the college crowd with one dollar keg nights and live music. It made a big splash when it initially opened, but by the time we played there it was on the downhill slide. That was great for us – the punks were taking over. We got asked to play on a bill featuring Speed Metal Mania and jack (who’ve since become Murfreesboro legends). We figured we’d open the show, but we found out we were to be the last band to play since most of the young crowd would undoubtedly have left. Markey Dave and I waited outside with Tim’s father who had brought a case of beer. We would step in to check out Speed Metal Mania and jack occasionally, but mainly we just slammed back the brew nervously waiting for our turn to take the stage. Finally after the jack show disintegrated into their usual scuffle, it was our turn. Our friend Toby urged the crowd to stick around. The band didn’t match my complete vision, but it was all I had so we launched into show opener “Desperate People” just hoping that the audience wouldn’t take us for just another run of the mill cover band. I was literally shaking with fear as I started singing the tune. I figured my shaking was visible, but I guess it went unnoticed. We made it through that one and then launched into Black Flag’s “Jealous Again”. My fear vanished and the slam dancing on the floor began with poor old Toby getting mauled. We ran through punk classics by D.O.A. and the Descendents and then tore through some speed metal covers of Megadeth and S.O.D. before heading back toward the classic rock that Mark preferred. The crowd started to thin out, but when we hit the heavy, heavy “Hand of Doom” the people who had been heading toward the door came back to front of the stage. I was running around stage barefoot since two girls had untied my shoelaces of my Chuck Taylor’s early in the show. We hit our peak on a cover of Danzig’s “Mother” with the slamming getting out of control. One of the members of local act Word Uprising jumped up on stage to sing along and the kids in the crowd were all rushing the stage looking to shake my hand as I flashed the metal sign. We did our first original, “Work Sucks”, and the show was over around 2 AM, but the rush lasted for hours. I drove home with my head through the clouds and into other planets’ orbits. The only thing I could compare it to at that time was to when I got my first kiss at a junior high basketball game and afterwards rode home on my bicycle and it felt like I was flying. I later wrote a song called “Rock And Roll World” and one of the lines says “in love with rock and roll ever since I could dream” (it sound cheesy, but the songs actually great power pop) and that first gig at Jabbs will always be one of the biggest moments in my life, beyond incredible and into some pure adrenalin epiphany of noise, motion, and feel. Now with that show behind us and all of us considering it a big success, it was time for the show at Riverdale High.

 

We knew we couldn’t play many of our punk faves, so we fell back on many of Mark’s picks – imagine having to sing old ZZ Top songs, but still we included “Jealous Again”, “Silly Girl”, and “Mother”. Years later I would run into kids that had seen that show and the Danzig cover would always be remembered. My only regret about that show is that I dressed like a complete dork for the show with cutoff fatigues, a tie-dyed JFA shirt, and a Chicago Cubs hat. I had seen many groups play center court at Riverdale and here I was doing it – it wasn’t surreal, it was some kind of hyper reality; we even did a football huddle before the gig with a big “let’s go!” to psyche ourselves up as the crowd started cheering. 2,000 kids can make a lot of noise in a gym. The show itself was a blur with so many faces in front of us. Everybody was in the bleachers or in the seats above them, except for a group of about twenty kids who were all a member of something I had helped inspire: ZUD. The ZUD story goes way back to when Mark worked at the Giant Food store in Murfreesboro. He was stocking the shelves one day and the industrial cleaner Zud just leaped out at him as being funny. After he got an old no name bass guitar at a pawn shop, it was dubbed Zud. Years went by and I started hanging around Mark and his brother Mike again. One day Mike was talking about the local high school fraternities and how they were such jerks, so I suggested he should form an alternative fraternity and call it Zeta Upsilon Delta – ZUD. Darn if he didn’t take my advice and make it a reality. Soon, ZUD was creating a sensation at the school. The best ZUD story Mike told me was when a rival fraternity member asked Mike how ZUD was raising money – were they doing things like a car wash? – and Mike gave the classic deadpan reply – we’re stealing car radios (no truth to that of course) – and the rival believed him. All of the members of ZUD were waiting for our last song which would be an instrumental trash tune titled “Mosh and Slam” which began with the Riverdale High Marching Band cowbell tune. Once we cranked that baby up, those kids went absolutely nuts; the teachers had to have thought a riot had broken out. I was whirling around and I could see this huge mosh pit forming. I whirled again and when I saw the pit again somebody was completely upside down in the middle of it only a pair of legs visible above the kids. We were having the show videotaped and later I got to see the guy run the length of the court and dive into the pit, plus there was footage of another small guy getting his shirt just shredded. The teachers got the kids to disperse and that was it. Oddly we never heard anything about the incident from the folks at Riverdale. I guess the show raised lots of money for the band so the slam dancing was forgiven. We spent the rest of the day over at Tim’s house skateboarding. A week later we were back to practicing because our next big show was going to be a battle of the bands. That’s where we’ll meet bassist extraordinaire and all-around great guy Shrub in The Dislocated Part Four.

 

 

More Dislocated Stories Later Today

But until then, here's a link to one of our old posters. It's just too big to post here.

Book Review Time At Blogcritics

Well, I wrote a book review at blogcritics.org. It's on the William Faulkner bio One Matchless Time. It hit me halfway through the writing that I didn't have a clue about reviewing books. It was total amateur hour for me. Yet, I still want people to read it. I must be a sadist.

No Jive In 2005

Happy New Year! Soulfish Stew is finally back after an extended hiatus for the holidays. I’d like to thank all of my readers especially mo28, zoomga, shrub, hugs, ddblank, spacefink, mosquitohead, bmarkey, the duke, markeydave, and kp. There ain’t no jive in 2005! I am feeling stoked about this year. I’ve started a morning regimen to get each day going right and my energy levels are starting to respond. Plus it’s just awesome to be jogging around the neighborhood before sunrise. Everything’s quiet except for a few morning songbirds and lowing cows from the pasture behind my home all anticipating the lifting of the darkness. Before I head in for some breakfast a half an hour later the sun has broken the horizon’s plane and the sky is as light as my heart.

I didn’t do much over the holidays, which is possibly why I’m in such good spirits. I really took some time to just relax and act like a poet from Springsteen’s “Thunder Road”. I read some Faulkner books: The Unvanquished and Go Down, Moses. I listened to some jazz CD’s from the kind folks at Fantasy Records: Benny Carter, Bobby Timmons, Nat Adderly, and Art Pepper. Expect some reviews of these soon at blogcritics. Mainly I just hung out and enjoyed the fun and fighting that is family life.

I had the house to my self yesterday afternoon so I watched some movies I normally can’t view when the kids are around. First I dug out the video of Trust by Hal Hartley. Man, when this first came out I was obsessed with it. I even made an audio tape of the dialogue. A quick summary for those who have never seen it: A high school girl tells her family she is pregnant. The father keels over dead with a heart attack. A twenty something guy (brilliantly played by Martin Donovan) walks off his computer assembly job after putting his supervisor’s head in a vice. He meets the girl and they build a relationship based on respect, admiration, and trust. Her mother is psycho as is his father. He carries around a hand grenade “just in case”, won’t watch television as “it gives you cancer”, and makes the local bar play Beethoven. The black humor of the movie used to really amuse me, but I’m finding it does so less with each passing year. After that I watched Ghost World on IFC. Steve Buscemi is just great as Seymour. I knew guys like him from the days when I worked at the record store – those totally obsessive collector types are such oddballs they make me look totally conformist. Thora Birch is also fantastic as the aimless and disenchanted Enid. I don’t know if I buy the theories I’ve read at IMDB that getting on the bus at the end is a way of committing suicide, but it is a way of imparting a deeper meaning for a film based on a comic book. Like so many indie films there are lots of keen observations on society and conformity included, but much of it comes across as mere “playa hatin” with no solutions offered.

Seymour’s blues collecting did make me wonder how much of the old public domain blues recording were available on the web. I haven’t made any in depth searching, but I did find this one decent site right off the bat so go check it out if you want to hear some incredible sides. I’ve also wanted to hear some old Cajun music of late – I was exposed to Cajun styles when I lived on Grand Ol’ Opry star Jimmy C. Newman’s farm back in the 80’s – so I found this awesome site too. I can’t attest that all of this material is public domain, but it’s probably safe to check out.