Million Kids – LA Is Gonna Make You Breathe
Nov


Million Kids
LA Is Gonna Make You Breathe
Released April 15, 2009
Producer Josh Casper
BC Caldwell – Guitar, Vocals
Kim Masters – Bass, Vocals
Matt Irwin – Drums, Vocals
Josh Casper – Guitar
1. LA IS Gonna Make You Breathe
2. Los Angeles (X cover)
3. Raw
4. Transmit Radio
After years of listening hundreds of albums, and writing hundreds of reviews of bands trying to out-scream each other, it is very refreshing to come across a band that is playing honest to god punk rock. No Cookie Monster vocals, and no fingernails on a chalkboard guitar solos. Just honest music.
If you haven’t given Million Kids a listen yet, check out their Facebook or Reverb Nation pages for a load of good music. And in a business full of egomaniacs, it’s refreshing to go to a show and hang out with a band as cool as Million Kids. Great bunch of people.
If you get the chance, give it a listen.
Rating: *** three out of three stars
On to the story . . .
PART FIVE
The next morning after breakfast I find a way to sneak out of the barrack and head to the barbershop. I explain to the sheriff running the shop that I am a licensed barber and should be working here (at eighteen I went to barber school, graduated, but never worked in a shop). He said that the head barber was being released; I could clean the shop until then.
So, I go back to the fire barrack and wait to be transferred to another barrack. The head of the white car and one of the southsiders come stumbling into the barrack. Apparently they were injured during a fire drill, and the southsider wanted to trade bunks as his ankle swelling up and he didn’t want to climb into bed. The debated for a few minutes then the southsider yells, “Fuck you wood, it’s on!” Before I could figure it out one southsider had tied the door closed and every Hispanic in the place was running up and down the barrack punching white people. At one point there were thirteen guys pounding on the head of the white car. I get slammed against the wall, I start to head to the middle of the barrack, but two white guys pin me back and basically say, “Do you want to die for this asshole?” Food for thought.
Later that evening, once the sheriffs calm the barrack down, they move me to what was called the working dorm. Everybody in this barrack did something, shoeshine, typing, barbers, you name it. We were jumping.
That next morning I start cutting hair. Let me re-word that, I start cutting white people’s hair. Once I started cutting, it turns out I wasn’t all that rusty. I was doing pretty well. I ended up doing a lot of cuts for the Hispanics, and if Bull (the black barber) was busy, I’d cut an occasional black guy.
It was a week or two into my stay that I met a black guy named Roosevelt. When he was first processed through, he was a wreck. He had been a crack-addict for years.
Because of the way he looked, there was no way to gauge Roosevelt’s age. Maybe sixty, maybe twenty-five. Who knows? The weird thing is, everybody knew him and I mean everybody. But no one knew his whole name, just Roosevelt, I never heard if that was his first name or last, just Roosevelt.
Within a couple of days, the black barber at the time snuck Roosevelt into the barbershop and gave him an “Extreme Makeover.” Trimmed the beard, cut his hair and all the barber shops had nail clippers, which you couldn’t have in general population. So, as Roosevelt got his hair cut, he trimmed all his dragon-like finger and toenails.
By the time he walked out of there, he looked like an attorney visiting an inmate, not the inmate.
The one hundred days that I spent with Roosevelt was always entertaining, because Roosevelt didn’t have access to crack, he developed a horrid addiction to caffeine. And because he was picked-up off of the streets he had no money on his books. So, he was always looking for some coffee from somebody. Coffee was bought from the machines or the once a week store. But it wasn’t like we buy coffee; it was purchased as tea bags, for twenty-five cents each. I have always been a major coffee fiend, drinking it heavily since high school, so I would stock up, buying five dollars worth at a time. Then I would kick down a bag a day to Roosevelt.
One day, one of the guys in my barrack needed a haircut (I was the “white” barber) because he was going to get a visit from his fiancée, he wanted to look sharp. I cut his hair and shaved him with the edger; he didn’t have any money on his books. No worries, just pay it forward, he said he’d “hook me up, tomorrow.” The next day, during his shift in the office he nabbed a half a pound of coffee grounds from the sheriff’s stash. This was like gold.
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