Been sort of out of it lately dealing with my own brand of armchair insanity without losing it. I always make it through but for the most part I don't deal with stress well and prefer a much more laid back existence. Even other peoples's problems bother me and unless they are willing to honestly approach things in a solution oriented way, I don't want to hear about it. For the most part been feeling unmotivated in such a way that I could do absolutely nothing about it. The old lady will be the first to testify on my behalf or is it against me about that, but she manages to make sure I don't get too far out there. I can't even imagine what it would be like without the meds. The landlord made a trip up which was kind of a source of stress around here but I took it out on a particularly nasty tall stretch of grass and weeds with the push mower (the riding mower is still in the shop). Not very punk rock mowing the lawn but I have about an acre and half to knock down so that we don't have snakes right up next to the house. I hate ticks but the old lady hates and is terrorized by snakes. Well the landlord was pretty stoked on how we were keeping things and was talking about doing some upkeep so the stress was unnecessary and short lived. We also had a chance to have supper with a friend of ours from work who's house sits on about 240 acres, so we did some hiking around the creeks on his property after a properly home cooked meal. Pictures will come next time we go out and I remember the camera. Okay now that I've bored you with that.
My Grandfather at 80 has discovered the internet and enjoys passing on all those emails we tend to have gotten a hundred times from all sorts of people but every once in a while he comes through. The latest came with a picture of an old guy sitting in a comfortable chair (not the above image) and read, "I've often been asked, 'What do you old folks do now that you're retired? Well..I'm fortunate to have a chemical engineering background, and one of the things I enjoy most is turning beer, wine, Scotch, and margaritas into urine." Funny I don't think my Grandfather knows that for several years in my life I was an uncontrollable alcoholic, part time addict and probably spent another 15 years working up to that honary position. Well I found humor in what he sent me for a couple of reasons. My grandfather is a very healthy 80 years old because he drank very little and didn't spend a whole lot of time beating the shit out of his body. The other thing is that for a period in my life that was what I did 24/7, was turn liqour into urine. A miracle.
Oh yeah after that Johnny Cash post that I got such a good response to I had some thoughts. You guys seemed to have liked the flick Outlaw Josey Wales, do you have any other favorites? Billy mentioned Dances With Wolves which is an obvious classic/epic. One of the things that made it so awesome as with any western involving Native Americans is that they embraced the native community with language, actors and so on. And I know we're talking mainstream Hollywood here which is just as faulty as any big business ventures, but if you can look beyond that like we do the rest of the evil going on in this world (sometimes), maybe we can pick a few others. Little Big Man (a true classic)? Windtalker (all native language)? The Unforgiven? 3:10 To Yuma? Any favorites you guys? Also from that last post my bros Match and Boner had a couple of Johnny Cash tunes that they really liked, so I went and found those two killer tunes.
Well all that babbling up there has got me babbled out, now that we've gotten to the band that this post is about. I got this first one when it first came out in about 1983 when I was going through my Crass/Rudimentary Peni faze and I was getting anything on the Crass or Corpus Christi labels. Funny because my two favorite bands at the time were Crass and Slayer. The Used Abused Unamused 7" is hands down my favorite and subjectively the best of the lot. The other two I think were one of those things where I borrowed them (from Kevin A.) and never gave them back. If you're reading this dude I can mail them back to you :-) I put them under my hardcore category but what Icons Of Filth really is, is kind of a punky crust meld between the vocals and the music. Start off with the tunes Used, Abused, Unamused or Asking too Much.
One of my many things I do in working with people with disabilities is coming up with picture lists of job tasks for people who can't read. So for instance if someone had to clean a toilet as part of a daily routine I might take pictures of toilet bowl cleaner, a toilet brush, a toilet and put them together indicating how and what was needed to get that particular job done. That's a very simple example but you get the point. When it comes time to do that I search around clip art sites to get images to match the jobs that are needing picture lists. So, long story short I was looking for a clip art image of stairs and found this one, and in my subdued insanity I busted out laughing. Sadistic laughing, finding humor in this cartoon woman's misfortune. The shoe off, the hands out, the hair back and the look of fearful terror, still makes me laugh. Needless to say I did not use this image for the picture list I was working on because the woman who needed that list would have been deathly afraid that was what was going to happen to her.
Hands down my favorite western is Outlaw Josey Wales. Clint Eastwood at his very best, with two of the best Native American actors in 
This is sort of a logical follow up, in my sometimes not so linear mind, to the last post. From Henpecker to Johnny Cash just works in my mind. I will never be accused of being any kind of country fan especially when you consider the pop country that is popular today. The wife and I did see this one big guy with a deep voice who's playing these days that I really liked and I think she has a crush on but I can't remember his name (we have satellite and get hundreds of useless channels that once in a while have something good on them). EDIT: Trace Adkins is the guys name, good stuff. There's a few exceptions I guess but if I had to pick country it would be older stuff like Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson (+ J.C. = The Highwaymen), Patsy Kline and going back a little further Hank Williams. Hell I've seen Willie Nelson, Hank Williams Jr., Kris Kristofferson and on the folk end of it the Weavers, in concert. I guess that's the direction I head in is that more folk kind of country. A while back our good friend Erich over at GoodBadMusic did an awesome Johnny Cash post and since then I've been thinking about posting this one. His was a much rarer vinyl thing and this is just a CD but musically what you get is early, raw JC. Here in the not too distant future I will be posting some 7"s of his from the 70's that I got just recently for a $1 a piece. On top of that I will be posting a thing he did with Rick Rubin on Def Jam that blew me away, but this is the stuff I always come back to, classic.
EDIT: Needless to say, if you were looking for a rip of this bad boy it's long gone copyright and all that, people profit from dead artists...hahahah. You can get this thing on CD at Discogs for a couple bucks and album for maybe $13. Anyway, one of my faves by the man, which is not on the album...
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mf-BIZumaA]
The Dalton Gang whose hideout museum is a couple hours south of here in Kansas that I went to way back when I was a kid. Definately Mustard Relics.
Haven't hit you with anything from my NorCal brothers in a little while so here's some recent-Humboldt-California-ish stuff. This one features some heavy hitters in terms of guys that have played in a zillion Humboldt bands. James who didn't remember me from way back when I was up there but who has since been a welcome addition to friends of Mustard Relics sent this to me a while back. My old bro and bandmate Jeff is featured here on drums. I'm not going to bore you with my limited knowledge of the band because they have a killer site with all kinds of info and links so that you can get to know