I’ve gotten an increased number of interview requests lately, and I’ve decided to start doing a little press – here’s one, from iHorror.com.
* The insane story of Boston Corbett, the self-castrated hatmaker who killed John Wilkes Booth
* Since it began production in 1951 as a state-owned company called Gramofonove Zavody Loděnice, supplying vinyl records and record players to neighboring Soviet bloc nations, GZ Media has gradually become the world’s biggest manufacturer of vinyl records
* The miracle of The B-52s
* “I was a baby, I didn’t know any different. I just thought everyone lived in a funeral home“
* Ringo is the most important and influential rock drummer ever
* The miraculous Polaroid, a divine message written in a code of distorted light
* Bespoke pressing service will make you a 7″ picture disc for about $12
* Across China, nail houses have become powerful symbols of resistance against the world’s fastest-growing major economy
I’m really getting stir-crazy now, especially when my friends tell me about their adventures.
I’m reading this very entertaining book in an attempt to understand why my interactions with French people are almost always overwhelmingly negative. The slightly haughty Frenchman, the openly contemptuous Frenchman, the Frenchman who is straight-up ENRAGED at my very existence – I’ve dealt with the entire range. I know, too, that it’s not me ( hey, I LIKE French stuff! ), and that it’s not because I’m an American, because this has come up in conversation with Peruvians, Swedes .. even Australians, the jolliest, friendliest people on Earth, will usually have a story about a disagreeable Gallic encounter.
Chapters include “The French are uncommonly rude”, “Paris is the European Capitol of canine excreta, The French are uniquely tolerant of Adultery”, and of course, “The archetypical Frenchman wears a beret and striped shirt and rides a bicycle festooned with onions”.
I posted these on Instagram a couple of weeks ago, thought I’d park them here since everyone’s talking about Astro-Creep today.
” This is the 1994 Ibanez IC500 Iceman that I used for the rhythm parts on the track, and also in the music video ( it used to be covered in stickers, including large ones that read, “RIGHT ON!” and “DROP DEAD” ). It’s a rare Japanese factory model ( with a set-neck and binding ),and it’s pretty much stock, except for a pair of Seymour Duncan humbuckers, with coil taps — these are screwed directly into the guitar’s body, instead of being mounted in pickup rings. Want more info? Here. ”
” Here’s a guitar of mine you’ve never seen before, but you have definitely heard it. I needed to set up a guitar with higher action than normal to record the slide parts on the track; this one, a custom black Robin Machete with star fret inlays, had just arrived from Texas. We tuned it up, it sounded great in the song, and after a very long day ( I was quite hard on myself during the making of ‘Astro-creep 2000’, and I never signed off on a performance or sound I didn’t think was perfect ), I put it back in its case and didn’t look at it again for years. In fact, it still has the strings from that recording session on it. “
A couple of pretty in-depth articles, in Entertainment Weekly and Metal Hammer.
* Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten : Cambodia’s lost rock n’ roll
* The strange history of the most famous street on the Lower East Side
* About “-core”
* Andy Warhol : the complete album covers
* All about Astro-Creep : 2000
* How Hollywood’s Whisky a Go Go was saved by punk rock and new wave
* A German device from the late 1950s that’s like vinyl and 8-track combined
* Punk and rebellion in 1980s Siberia