Pumpkin Head and Santa Claus

These photographs are new, since I haven't posted in some time due to a crashed hard-drive. The fall was very good, especially the time before and after Halloween when it was nice and warm. Spencer got really excited about Halloween this year, especially over pumpkins. He ran around the house for three months, yelling "Pumpkin head" certainly inspired by this scary looking pumpkin head above from his school field trip to the pumpkin patch.

When Christmas came around, everything was Pumpkin head, but also with Santa Claus. Spencer seems to blend them together, so Santa is kind of a frightening guy that comes down your chimney when you say trick or treat.

Now that my computer is fixed, I'll get to the summer photographs sometime in February, when it's -20 degrees and I'm sufferning vitamin B deficiency.

January during the melt!

One of the "Pumpkin heads."

Spencer scored this baloon at our friend's Christmas day party. More fun than toys, really....

Spencer got a harmonica, so maybe he'll dig Tom Waits, too.

With our new dog, Sam (estimated to be 70-130lbs!).

Hanging out at the train depot.

Waitng for the California Zephyr.

Russian Flats badlands.

State Capitol, known as the _enis of the Prairie.

Towing the Pharaoh.

BN&SF.

Pumpkin mania.

Sam, the puppy (estimated to be 70-130 lbs!).

Spencer and Abe bro-down.

Homeboys of the south Flats.

Return to 1970s education, ride the Magic Bus...

Flower power is the best! Like dig it.

Speaking to the pumpkins, while the pumpkins speak back.

Invert the State

I hope that all my family and friends who visit the blog to see what we are doing had a good New Year. Since finally having a break from the demands of book publishing and travel, it's been great to be at home and play guitar and listen to music (between urban jaunts with Spencer). These three albums by Lungfish and Bardo Pond are my favorite guitar-based psychedelia albums; Lungfish is closer to the sonic simplicity of the Byrds, 13th Floor Elevators, and 60s psychedelia, while Bardo Pond is closer to a melodic Crass or Flipper, or the UK psyche bands like Flying Saucer Attack, My Bloody Valentine, Spaceman 3, and that scene. These albums are worth checking out, a whole new approach to playing the guitar.

Neat Neat Neat

I've been listening to alot of my old records from the late 70s and early 80s lately, and two of the best are The Damned and the Code of Honor/Sick Pleasure split L.P. Both bands were kind of beyond their peers in wildness and sheer song writing ability/live performance antics. For me, Captain Sensible and Michael Fox were guitar players to look up to, unpredictable and without any rock cliches. If you haven't heard these albums, ask Santa Claus for them next year.

Written Word

This year I had two little writings published, one in a major exhibition catalog and the other a foreword to my good friend Brad Hayes' new book of paintings and skate philosophy, But I Did. I was very gratified to be asked by both the National Building Museum and by Brad to contribute to their publications.

If I had to choose between the two as my favorite, I have to choose the foreword to somebody else's book, which is always a real honor among writers. Both were killer, do not get me wrong, but to write the foreword to your best bro's work is the ultimate writing gig, that is, it's really hard to write about your best friend's artwork! The essay on the NMB catalog is scholarship, which I consider kind of like work and the result of years of scholarly training. You can purchase either publication on my link list, Yale University Press for Designing Tomorrow and Sharklahoma for But I Did.

End of a Year

The record release party for Wartime Sugar was awesome last Saturday night at the Opolis. The best thing about playing a gig is seeing all your friends before and afterward, with the performance itself a weird interlude of Bergsonian intensity. These photos are courtesy of Brad Hayes and Chuck Ivey.

Wartime Sugar

After three years playing guitar in my garage rock group, Zombie vs. Shark, we will release our first recording, Wartime Sugar. It's a 12-song L.P. we recorded with Trent Bell at his studio in Norman, Oklahoma called Bell Labs in January of this past year. The tunes are straight up garage punk. Trent did an awesome job engineering and mixing the album, as well as his easy demeanor to have us try some new approaches to our songs. It was very fun and we will do a 4-song, 7" vinyl single at his studio again sometime in the early summer.



You can purchase Wartime Sugar online in digital form by song or the whole album at Bandcamp on my link list to the right. You can also buy at physical copy of the CD from our label, Modern Peasant Records through the Bandcamp portal. It is $5.00 for the album with $2.00 in shipping. We may press a 12" vinyl edition sometime next summer in 180 gram colored vinyl, so stayed tuned!

Our friend Tara Malone's friend Aaron took these photos below from our gig with Debris' and John Wayne's Bitches at The Opolis in Norman on July 10, 2010. We will have our record release party on December 11, 2010 at The Opolis with those same bands. Hopefully we'll see everyone there!

Zombie vs. Shark, The Hi-Lo Club in April 2009.

The Whole Day

This album by Roy Montgomery and Flying Saucer Attack, "Goodbye/and Goodbye/The Whole Day Song" has been a soundtrack for my life the last 3 years. Montgomery, a great New Zealand experimental psych guitar player, and Flying Saucer Attack created this amazing compositional and instrumental guitar album, a beautiful maelstrom of melody and guitar feedback some time ago. It is probably as significant, compositionally, as Igor Stravinksy's The Rite of Spring.

While I travel, I have my iPod loaded with Flying Saucer Attack tunes, since I miss Spencer, my kid, when I'm away. The Whole Day Song is etched in my mind with memories of the walks and explorations that Spencer and I take around Lincoln's badlands and railyards, finding weird stuff and the strange corners of the city. Its pretty, desolate sound evokes the barren western landscape of the Plains, and impresses our solitary treks on the edge of the urban fringe in my mind so I can recall them while I'm away from him. For us it is always the whole day.

This album is worth having in your record collection, one of the great compositions ever written for a traditional four-piece rock formation.