Black Orphan Players
Demo
Label: D- Spite My Height Records
Released: 2010

Joe Guerrilla – guitar, vocals, bass, keyboards, percussion, programming.
Zoie Shagwell –vocals

1. Death Rattle
2. Half- Holiday
3. INtermission- Drudgery and Fascination
4. Evil Annie’s Preyer
5. Outro (contains EVP)

When I first received this demo/EP I had no clue what to expect. Band member Joe Guerrilla had “friended” me (or me him) on Facebook. And one day we’re chatting about music and somehow his band pops up, so I say, “Send me some stuff, I’ll review it.” Then, almost, immediately I say, “Oh shit, what did I do?” Several friendships have been ruined because of this. They send it, I hate it, they tell me to fuck off, I tell them that their moms are like bowling balls, and then we’re not friends anymore.

So, I am sent a download code for this demo (how cool is that?) and the front and back cover and a press release. It’s nerve-wracking, but I double-click the first track, Death Rattle, and you know what? It’s pretty damn good. So I quickly go to the next track, Half- Holiday, same thing pretty cool.

When I saw the cover with the keyboards I was a little nervous, keyboards have never been my thing. My dad took me to see Edgar Winter in the early eighties and I’m still not over it.

Anyway, after listening to the whole demo, I was scratching my head as to how to describe them. It’s as if Gary Numan started a hardcore band and asked Ric Ocasek to write a couple of the songs. Make sense? Didn’t think so.

All in all Joe and his band mate put out some pretty original stuff, and people should give them a listen.

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

Rating: ** * two out of three stars

On to the story . . .

Back in late 1997 my wife, who was still my girlfriend at this time, got into X-Files for about six months.

I was running some errands one day and I stop into a video shop (remember them?) and they had the first season of X-Files on video for something like $4.99. I grabbed it. I had never watched an episode, but it looked interesting.

Called my girlfriend and said, “Come on by and we can watch this.”

So, two or three episodes in a row, we watched the first season, and then found a copy of the pilot, then tracked down season two, until we watched everything, and, unfortunately bought into every conspiracy known to man.

We slowly thought everything wrong in the world had something to do with the smoking man. Then one night I’m walking my future wife to her car parked across the street when we stopped. There was this weird feeling that we were being watched. We look around and the whole neighborhood is silent. It’s about midnight, everybody is dead asleep nothing is stirring, we look up and down the street and nothing is around. Finally, we look up and there it is . . . a white, neon letter “M” with an extended line coming out of it, giving it the look of a giant heartbeat. We look at each other with our mouths open with a silent “Oh shit.” We look back up and the thing jets off at over 100 miles per hour and disappears into some trees.

We started and stopped ten different conversations. “What was that?” “Check the time, make sure we weren’t abducted!” “Call me the second you get home!”

I searched the web the next day for news of weird sightings, and there was a picture of something similar to what we saw, but it was in England.

In all those years we’ve only talked about it once or twice since, it seems like bullshit because it happened right as we were on this X-Files kick. Whatever it was, I’m pretty sure it didn’t give me an anal probe.

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