RF7
Weight of The World
Label: Smoke Seven
Released: 1982
Produced: Felix Alanis

Bass, Vocals – Robert Armstrong
Drums, Vocals – Walt Phelan
Guitar, Vocals – Nick Lamagna
Vocals, Producer – Felix Alanis

1. Kiss Ass
2. Violence
3. Government Science Fiction
4. God of God
5. Timebomb
6. Scientific Race/Perfect World
7. Mission Of Mercy
8. Satan’s Son
9. Low Class Girl
10. Weight Of The World
11. World Of Hate
12. Jesus Loves You

I loved Felix Alanis’ growling vocals from the first time I put on the Public Service compilation, and Nick Lamagna’s soaring hybrid metal/punk riffs have always been first class.

This album shows why RF7 is a first class band, and they are amongst the best that is still performing today.

If you get the chance to get a copy of this, go get it.

Rating: ** * two out of three stars

On to the story . . .

Have you ever in you life had a moment that was so pivotal that you remember every single detail? What you were wearing, where you were standing, who was around you, everything?

In the first week of November I was on the phone with my dad. We were talking about doing a Thanksgiving together the weekend after the actual Thanksgiving. He knew how hard I had always tried to coordinate the holidays since I got married.

My wife and I would stop by my mom’s for an hour or so, then my dad’s and lastly my in-laws. No family ever got as much time as they wanted, and we were running ragged. So, more times than not, I rarely enjoyed any of it. Wake up, get ready and start getting all the crap together for each stop. Ultimately, my in-laws would have preferred that my wife stop in earlier in the day to help with the prep work, but it didn’t always work out.

So, back to the original topic, my dad was living way the hell out in Lake Elizabeth, and had a new recipe for deep-frying the turkey and wanted to show off his cooking. Long gone was the tying up and driving nails into the bird. I liked the idea of celebrating it a week later. We bullshitted a bit about music and said “Goodbye.”

A week after that phone call I walk in the door from work, my wife is in the kitchen, my son, Lucas, who is one year old at this point, is scooting around on the floor.

I walked towards the living room. The phone rings my wife answers, looks pale and hands it to me.

I reluctantly take the phone. It’s my dad’s oldest daughter, my half-sister. She had been crying. She starts in by saying that dad’s missing. I say no big deal; he takes off all the time. One morning he decided he wanted to see the Green Bay packers play, so he drove to Oakland. He did these things.

She does this big gulp, and says they found him this morning . . . at the bottom of a ravine, dead.

My legs give out, I fall on the couch. My son crawls over to me, pulls myself onto my lap. I’m trying to keep it together, and not cry or anything, I don’t want to scare my son.

Then in the typical character of my half-sisters, she goes down the list of people that she thinks I should call and tell. I am in zombie-mode so I nod and write down phone numbers.

Over the course of the next three weeks until my father’s memorial, my two half sisters take my dad’s ATM cards and clear out his bank accounts. Take his car (Chrysler 300) that is paid automatically through his checking account, and drive the shit out of it until it’s repossessed.

My brother starts wondering about what is happening with my father’s estate, so he calls our older half-sister and they agree to meet at my dad’s place in Lake Elizabeth. They get there and our half-sister is acting weird. Everywhere my brother goes in the house, she goes somewhere else. The first thing he notices is that anything of value is gone, most electronics, my dad’s gun collection, movies, books, you name it.

Finally after following her around a while he opens a drawer and finds a deed to a house, not the one my dad lived in, but house that my half-sister lives in.

Turns out my dad bought a house for my half-sister to live in. It might not seem like a big deal, but my brother and I, his first two kids, were asked to pay for half of our own Christmas gifts a few years earlier when he decided to give us black boxes for our cable system. A bit of a kick in the nuts.

We go to my father’s memorial. I give my eulogy. My half sisters pick a half a dozen stupid songs to play, saying dad would’ve liked them. One sticks out, Basket Case by Warren Zevon. They said that was my dad’s song to their mom. WTF does that have to do with this service?

Needless to say our half-sister didn’t want us to know about this. She secured a lawyer very quickly. We go to court a few times, and my brother and I request that he becomes co-executor of my father’s estate, thinking that it might stop them from bleeding every once of what’s left of my dad’s belongings.

The judge assigns my brother as co-executor, but a few weeks later my half-sister and the lawyer go to my dad’s house with a u-haul and put everything in storage. The place is gutted.

Once my dad’s insurance and pensions are cashed out, my brother and I receive, before taxes, a thousand bucks each, his two daughters receive somewhere in the neighborhood of fifteen to twenty thousand each.

While my brother and I are trying to deal with the grief and now the confusion of being left out of his will of sorts. The coroner takes over six months to make a ruling. On the scene of the accident there was another car and a motorcycle, when the officers on the scene were asked about the other car they became angry and said, “Who told you about another car?!” OK . . .

After the coroner finally ruled that it was death by accident, it was too late to file a wrongful death suit against the city. The coroner was, for the first five months, leading us to believe that is was suicide.

A week or two before my dad passed his beloved bulldog got cancer, and months before he told my brother if anything ever happened to his dog he’d go with her. We think he was joking.

The worst part of losing someone is not knowing what happened. Did he kill himself or was there an accident with another car and motorcycle? If the other vehicles were involved, why did the cops cover it up?

I’ll probably never get a straight, truthful answer. In the big scheme of things . . . I guess knowing won’t change shit.

LAST ONE TO DIE is officially out: You can order at: https://www.createspace.com/3669330.

Bad Religion
New Maps Of Hell
Label: Epitaph Records
Released: 2007
Produced: Joe Barresi

Greg Graffin vocals
Brett Gurewitz guitar, background vocals
Greg Hetson guitar
Jay Bentley bass, background vocals
Brian Baker guitar
Brooks Wackerman drums

1. 52 Seconds
2. Heroes & Martyrs
3. Germs of Perfection
4. New Dark Ages
5. Requiem for Dissent
6. Before You Die
7. Honest Goodbye
8. Dearly Beloved
9. Grains of Wrath
10. Murder
11. Scrutiny
12. Prodigal Son
13. The Grand Delusion
14. Lost Pilgrim
15. Submission Complete
16. Fields of Mars

This by far their best album since How Could Hell Be Any Worse? Over the years they seem to have lost a bit of their grit.

It happens when you become better musicians. But I have always been a fan of their old sound, and this touches on it.

It was kind of like bumping into an old friend you haven’t seen in thirty years, things are different, but they jog certain memories.

If you get the chance to get a copy of this, go get it.

Rating: ** * two out of three stars

On to the story . . .

When I turned forty-three I started thinking allot about getting older. Then one day my brother suggested I sign-up with Facebook. I’ve always resisted all these social websites, doing graphic design; I’m already on the computer far more than I want to be. But my brother’s point was I could communicate with my daughter, who is out of state, more often. And reconnect with people I went to school with. I thought cool, more contact with my kid, but do I want to see people from my past?

My brother runs me through the sign-up, and asks me to find a picture for my profile, etc. In less than a week, I’ve had twenty people ask to be my “friend.” And various people started uploading pictures of me from different occasions over the last handful of years. So, I guess I’m a pretty popular dude.

The weird part of this site is when you log in you’re bombarded with everybody’s headlines (your “friends”) on your landing page. And I swear everybody is fat and sick. I page down, and here we are in our forties and everybody talks like they’re ninety. Hospital visits, colds, temperatures. It’s terrible.

The one interesting thing about Facebook is when someone comes on as your friend you can look at their pictures on their page. This one girl wrote me and asked to be my friend, she was in my homeroom back in high school, and I confirmed her and I was browsing through her photos and found a couple of recent pictures of a girl a I “went with” in ninth grade. We split when I got into punk. Well, what a freaking let down, she looks like a Mack truck hit her, then was forced to live on the streets. I was about 150 pounds then, and now I hover around 200, otherwise I look pretty much the same, but some of these people just gave up.

What do I know? They could be online looking at my pictures and quoting my dad’s favorite saying: “He looks like barbequed bear shit.”

LAST ONE TO DIE is officially out: You can order at: https://www.createspace.com/3669330.идея за подарък

Continental
Death of a Garage Band
Released: 2010
Label: Old Shoe Records

Rick Barton- Guitar/Vocals
Stephen Barton- Bass
Dave DePrest- Guitar
Tommy Mazalewski- Drums

1. One Long Hard Broken Dream
2. Wrecking Ball
3. Monday Morning
4. No Reservations
5. Great Big Sun
6. Truth
7. Stay With Me

Rick Barton (formerly of Dropkick Murphys, and Everybody Out!) is back with a good honest to god rock band.

I saw these guys live about a year ago, and the coolest thing about their songs was that there is a feeling that even after only hearing these songs once you feel that they are old classics that you’ve been listening to for years.

The running theme seems to be heartbreak and disappointment, in other words . . . don’t play when out on a first date.

If you get the chance to get a copy of this, go get it.

Rating: *** three out of three stars

On to the review . . .

Way back in the mid-eighties, I was working at a record shop in the mall. Out towards Canoga Park/Woodland Hills area.

At this point of my wonderful record shop career I was considered a “third-key.” When the manager and assistant manager are not in the shop, I was the manager, when they were there I was the head grunt.

All together I worked for this company for about three years, made it to assistant manager, and was transferred to their Thousand Oaks location.

But while I was still in the Canoga Park/Woodland Hills area, the mall security came by one day with a memo letting all mall employees know that for the next week or so no one would be allowed to park in the back side of the mall, as the circus was coming to town.

I don’t know if there was a hidden hillbilly in me or what, but as soon as I heard this I wanted to be involved somehow.

So, that night I come home and tell my brother, “Tomorrow we are going to work for the circus!”

He looks at me like I’m crazy, and maybe it was a nutty idea, but what the hell, right?

We show up at the site at 8:00 am, just as the carny’s are stumbling out of their trucks. I walk up and say, “My brother and I are here to work with you guys.” The guy looks us over, and I’m average build, and my brother at the time was only a bit smaller than Tony Mandarich. So, the head carny shakes his head and takes us to the center of the parking lot, hands us a rope, and says pull. Inside of fifteen minutes we erected the main tent.

Then the HC tells us he will pay us six bucks an hour, but we have to be hustling the whole time. Best two workers will be allowed to travel to the next city. As he said this more and more circus zombies were staggering in looking for work.

I my brother and I were the only “volunteers” that had teeth.

After about three hours this guy comes up to us, he smelled of ass and bad tequila. He starts saying it’s a dream of his work for Circus Vargas, and something about my brother and I being his strongest competition.

As hour four approached we decided that traveling with the circus isn’t quite as glamorous and exciting as we thought. So, we decided at hour four we would cash out and go on home.

The boss man seemed a little upset that two of the strongest and, probably only disease free workers, were leaving him. He asked if we were sure that we wanted to leave, and paid us out in cash.

Just as we were approaching the car ass breath ran over to us, shook our hands, said goodbye, and asked us to wish him luck in getting a permanent job with the circus. We did and he scuttled back.

It was fun, but you have to have a completely different lifestyle to travel with a carnival or circus. After those four hours, I realized it wasn’t my life.

LAST ONE TO DIE is officially out: A discount code was added, when you order at: https://www.createspace.com/3669330 type in FGACJX53 and receive 10% off.

The Dickies
The Incredible Shrinking Dickies
Label: A&M Records
Released: 1979
Produced: John Hewlett

Leonard – vocals
Stan – guitar
Chuck – keyboards
Billy – bass
Karlos – drums

01. Give It Back
02. Poodle Party
03. Paranoid
04. She
05. Shadow Man
06. Mental Ward
07. Eve Of Destruction
08. You Drive Me Ape (You Big Gorilla)
09. Waterslide
10. Walk Like An Egg
11. Curb Job
12. Shake And Bake
13. Rondo (The Midgets Revenge)

This is a really good album, a definite punk meets rock feel to it. Their cover of Paranoid is great, it’s too cool. This is the best Dickies album I have ever heard!

If you get the chance to get a copy of this, go get it.

Rating: *** three out of three stars

On to the review . . .

Punk rock, like any other genre of music means something different to every person. My wife for example, was not into punk growing up but she knows most of the key figures, and bands. She has always pointed out a snobbishness that exists amongst people that have stayed into punk their whole lives. She always points this out whenever we see Henry Rollins on TV. He will give his commentary about music or politics, and you start to see a bit of this condescending tone emerge, as if you don’t quite understand the world unless you were a punk. I never noticed this until I met my wife.

I don’t think it’s just punks that feel this way, I think anyone who has had the misfortune of being on the wrong of a cop’s Billy-club, or in the wrong end of a cop car, knows that things aren’t always what they seem, in other words, peel off a couple more layers off of this onion and get a better look at the core of this.

Friday, December 17, 1982, Long Beach: Once we got to the Galaxy Roller Rink, there were huge lines to get into the place. The Long Beach police were frisking everybody, and waving handheld metal detectors over everyone in line. They didn’t have female officers for the girls, same group of male cops for everybody. And standing to the side were a couple of officers holding back German Sheppard’s on leashes. Finally after fifteen or twenty minutes I got waved forward, immediately the metal detector goes off as the officer waved the metal detector over my leather jacket. The cop gets this look on his face, and my eyes bug, because I have no idea what set it off. One cop comes over to check my pockets as the other holds my shoulder. The officer pulls out a pocketknife with a razor blade tucked into the blade. I almost crapped. I became the very stereotype these cops were fighting. The other officer was now holding both of my shoulders. The first thing that came to mind was that I was going to be arrested and have to call my mom, and have her drive an hour to get me, and this was going to be all bad. So, I decided to bargain with them. I said, “Would you like to keep the knife, I don’t need it.” The officers look at each other for a minute, and told me to get moving. Whew, I was safe! Would you believe these items were part of an art project? I was supposed to draw the knife and blade and have it turned in after Christmas break.

March 15, 1984, two days after my 18th birthday: I cut school with a friend of mine named Doug. Doug invites me to breakfast. He says he missed his bus from Inglewood and says his Dad’s girlfriend loaned him her Mazda RX7. We pull out of the parking lot, turn left on Balboa, right of Vanowen. Doug runs the red light, and instantly sirens blare. A cop runs to my side of the car and pulls me out and slams me to the ground, pulls out my Velcro wallet to check ID. I hear the other cop, who was on Doug’s side ask him to tell him the name on the auto registration, Doug hem’s and haw’s, and can’t identify her. I’m lost, I can’t figure out why he won’t say her name. A second cop car arrives; they pop the hatch or the RX7 and start pulling out car stereos. I end up blurting out “Doug, tell them your Dad’s girlfriends name!” The cop closest to me yells “shut up!” and draws his gun. I’m thinking this is all pretty heavy for a red light ticket.

Doug is thrown into the back of one car, and I’m thrown into another. I’m taken to the Van Nuys station, with two pairs of cuffs I’m fastened to a bench for four hours, a revolving line of detectives I’m questioned about stealing

Finally I am released. Doug was seventeen; he did a year in YA. Turned out his friend stole the car, but where Doug grew-up you never snitch.

LAST ONE TO DIE is officially out: A discount code was added, when you order at: https://www.createspace.com/3669330 type in FGACJX53 and receive 10% off.