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While researching strategies to dissuade neighborhood squirrels from continuing their residency in my attic, I happened upon the Squirrel Bait family tree , once again, which then led me to this Bitch Magnet footage from 1989. None of this has solved my problem, but the squirrels do shut up when I play Bitch Magnet loud.

You’ve all probably seen these by now, but I’ve been in the studio the last two weekends, which makes them all the more punishingly funny. The most surreal and artfully decomposed mock-ups of all time perhaps. This is the Maiden one, the Metallica is also curl up on the floor funny. Wired put them up because Youtube took them down. This almost erases the pain of un-super Tuesday.

That was all very high-brow. But like Nietzsche said, the “very great philosophy so far has been…the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir.”

So here’s a low-brow guilty pleasure of mine, POD. Well, this one song. Takes you back to like…’02 or somethin’!

End times, baby. As we’ve been pondering and predicting and hoping for years, the paradigm shift in the music “industry” seems to be finally upon us. In an effort to topple pathetically desperate Big Music, who have taken to suing fans and consumers that they overcharged for years, it seems a flurry of your favorite kewl bands like the Radioheads, are dumping their labels and shunning the evil recording industry once and for all, opting for more direct online sales type openness. Hands together, world, you can doooo it (with the interwebs of course.) Keep Radiohead rich without their square suited benefactors! The music industry never suited music in the first place. This is a natural break.

Irony aside, the real shocker isn’t that Radiohead, or Nine Inch Nails, has gone utterly idealistic, but fucking Madonna? Although she is really just shifting from Warner to some other huge-ass promotional company, it is still a huge departure.

The only real question now is how fast will the music industry model come tumbling down. When Radiohead led the way in offering their music directly to fans many predicted that the move was the beginning of the end; Madonna may well be the tipping point from where we will now see a flood of recording artists dumping record labels and where todays model will shortly become a footnote in Wikipedia.

Let the apocalypse begin. I predict that in 5 years every band will be selling songs off their website directly to hungry consumers. Or maybe just giving them away for free in hopes that some really good music blog or mag gives you glowing reviews so that people will come to your shows and buy a t-shirt and your limited number of vinyl pressings.

The best thing about travel, besides enjoying the unique cultural and mulleted wonders offered by the location in question, would have to be discovering a new form of music or art. Or snack food. Holland didn’t disappoint, and on Saturday at Waterpop, a large free festival adorned gratuitously with sunflowers and traditional windmill in the distance, I discovered jumpstyle, the apparently preferred dance-step of young people throughout BeNeLux. It was a surreal moment, as I discovered a new favorite euro-cheese dance hit at the same time, “Me So Horny” by DJ Porny. A dance instructor with a boom box blasting the song, was illustrating the kick-crazy steps to a group of young pre-teen girls, all the while the lyrics carrying on, “DJ Porny, me so horny, come on get the vibe.” Perhaps too much irony. And I was confused, like when I heard Kid Rock for the first time and wondered, “is this a joke?” Please just watch the DJ Porny video for a proper education on all these matters.

By the way, I did spot a new mullet that I don’t think i’ve seen before: the dreds mullet. It’s short hair all around except for a few straggly dreads in the back. It’s these little bits of cultural arcana that you wouldn’t have otherwise been exposed to that make travel so necessary for me.

So Saturday was the double header, with us playing Waterpop and THEN jetting across the border to Petrol (club) in Antwerp. That’s two shows in one day in two different countries. I like that. Reminds me of mountains where you can see into different countries simultaneously from some vantage point. Petrol is a very cool club in an old shipyard warehouse type place by the river. There are many different rooms and scenes in the club, and a big black curtain that they draw only when the band is ready to play, which was totally weird. Best show to date, and we are finally in a pretty solid groove. Touring will do that. Saturday night brought much needed sleep and Sunday was the final festival in the little city of Ell. Tough sell, err, to the kids in Ell. But I think they liked our t-shirts.

So, to backtrack, other than the abandoned hospital complex, Berlin was pretty typical travel. I walked many miles, saw the sites to see, took the photos. I did stumble upon a crazy beer festival on Karl Marx Allee, complete with uniformed nuses serving beer to completely *wasted* dudes dancing in silly mock-country mode to “Ring of Fire.” Serious bratwurst n’ beer represented in this hood. I also made it to uber-hip Friedrichshain, visited the wall at the east side gallery, but just couldn’t stay out for any nocturnal adventures.

Met with the band tuesday in Hamburg and the show at the Molotow (off the infamous Reeperbahn) went well, much better than anticipated. The audience was very giving and attentive. Makes all the difference.

Wednesday brought us into Friesland for a free show at cozy little Cafe de Stam in Joure. Frieslanders have their own language much like the Basques in Spain, although I don’t get the impression they are fighting for their independence anytime soon. Douwe Egberts originated in Joure for you coffee, tea, and tobacco aficionados. Our hosts (Jan and Douwe) were quite gracious, show went well and was well attended, and I drank beers purchased for me until 4am or so without putting up a fight. Good people, good times.

Thursday brought us into Belgium, and the rain, to Zichem. Stayed at a very old world, twin peaksy hotel, filled with musty antique furniture, bizzare Flemish ornaments, childrens paintings. Just what were those wooden alligators on the table for? Creepy. But memorable. The show at the very cool Den Hemel club was sold out and except for a few minor screw-ups went very well. We were told the sound wasn’t very good though.

Next was Fonnefeesten festival in Lokeren. Inside the town center all done up fun fair style with waffle stands, round n’ round rides, and a plethora of stuffed animals. I believe this is the last of the 8 day festival, the smaller one, Pink having played the bigger one. Playing the show (first festival) I remembered how different the festivals are. Huge stage, spacious sound, sometimes difficult to follow what is going on. You also feel very under the microscope with all the lights. Despite a power loss due to the energy sucking projection screen, it went alright. Being a free festival in the middle of town, there were some tough customers not necessarily interested in Magnapop, but we made it.

Well, that’d be cool wouldn’t it? If I was heading off on some intergalactic adventure. Fantasies aside, I’m headed to Europe, with Magnapop, for a couple of weeks. If you’re nearby…yo- check it!

Tuesday August 7
HAMBURG, DE
Molotow club

Wednesday August 8
JOURE, NL
Café de Stam club
Free show !

Thursday August 9
ZICHEM, BE
Den Hemel club

Friday August 10
LOKEREN, BE
Fonnefeesten festival

Saturday, August 11th
WATERINGEN, NL
Waterpop festival

AND…

ANTWERPEN, BE
Petrol ‘Summer Night City’

Sunday, August 12
ELL, NL
Ell Nino festival

Get your corndog on. Come see all the best Atlanta bands in three days. Start tonight with Bad Magic Number / Magnapop / Luigi, beginning at 8pm. New Bad Magic Number interview just hit the streets! BMN is the second band I’ve been in that I have named. Give a drummer some credit…

Brother Billy’s back, freshly caped, with some kind of creefy (that’s goofy and creepy combined) Jim Jones in Pepperland thing going on. This song rules though, without a doubt.

I think it would have been really funny though if he had replaced D’Arcy and James with true look-a-likes, instead of just female/male partial-simulacrum. Or just cardboards cut-outs. Or real doll versions.

Holy blast from the past. I guess nothing goes unrecorded…even as far back as random hardcore shows in the 80s. I went to the same (Barrington) High School as Joe, vox/bass of Life Sentence, a popular Chicago HC band in the mid 80s.