Iska Dhaaf - General Malaise

Tommy from the ever diligent Heaven is an Incubator posted an amazing piece about SXSW today over on Joup. In it he covers a full week of SXSW happenings in the way that only someone who lives in Austin and has been attending the, ahem*, "festival" for a long time can. You won't see any "It" band blow jobs here; Tommy covers everything equally, spending as much time in the less publicized venues with the less hyped bands as he does with the hype monsters that deserve it.

Case in point: Iska Dhaaf. I'd never heard of them before. As I began going through the names of bands he lists and checking into them for myself I really hit a very particular frequency with these guys. This song is one of the reasons why. They're on bricklanerecords and are very much worth looking into, as this track is only the tip of the iceberg based on my research thus far.

Thanks Tommy!

*Sorry, haven't been, always wanted to go but about six months ago when, while applying for a place playing there I found I had to write an essay about what it would mean to me to play there, SXSW quickly became as eye rolling as Coachella to me. I've never been to either and although there's no way I'll ever do Coachella I would absolutely do SXSW - despite the "essay" thing - if I could hang out with Tommy.

Faith No More/Mr. Bungle Comic Book!

Mike Wellman, my good friend and co-host on Drinking with Comics, along with artist extraordinaire Matt Jacobs have a Faith No More/Mr. Bungle comic coming out in June. It's the history of the bands written from a "fan's eye view" and from what I've seen so far, this is a must for any Patton fan!

Birthday Music

Today is my birthday and because of that I took the day off work and am spending the day surrounded by my lovely wife and our three cats and MUSIC!

There are a couple albums that really say "Birthday" to me, not in a general, "Oh this is good to play on someone's birthday" way but in the way that for one reason or another they mean something to me about my day of reiteration.

Ween's Chocolate and Cheese:



Frank Blank and the Catholic's Pistolero:



Frank Black's self-titled post-Pixies debut:



And the sad one, well, the song I choose to represent it here, Ween's GOD WEEN SATAN Birthday Boy. I had to do a live one for this song. Had to:

Richard Adam Reynolds's Henchmen

Another great short by Richard Adam Reynolds and Waking Dream Studios, the fine folks who gave us the awesome Hellblazer fan film Soul Play.

Beneath the Panels: Nameless Issue #2

The second issue of Grant Morrison, Chris Burnham and Nathan Fairbairn's Nameless came out two weeks ago and I spent a pretty large amount of time going through it. There's not nearly as much material to "decode" in this one as Morrison comes clean with a lot, however as is always the case when researching anything with Occult ties, there are so many rabbit holes you end up falling through that, well, I think this installment of Beneath the Panels will add an extra sense of what is going on in the book. You can read it right now over on Joup.

Anticipation: Tales of Halloween

I realize I'm jumping the gun a bit, after all it is only March. However, after just now stumbling upon this impending release I find myself chomping at the bit for October! Lucky McKee? Neil Marshall? Joe Begos? Darren Lynn Bousman? And the topper - Mike Mendez? Auteur of The Convent, my all-time favorite indie horror flick and one of my favorite movies ever, period? SOLD! And when you consider that, holy crap, it's already March and the first three months of 2015 have already flown by, well then, I guess it's just as good as June then too. And if it's just as good as June, then we might as well call it September, and if it's September, October's right around the corner! Depressing that time flies that fast yes, but at least now we have something to salivate for in the meantime as life hits warp speed on another year. And while I didn't find anything cinches October as the month of release, chances are it's a safe bet.

Big Man Plans...

... the new collaboration between Eric Powell (The Goon) and Tim Wiesch, is the topic of discussion in this week's edition of Thee Comic Column, over on Joup. It's vertically challenged, nice and violent exploitation and, accordingly, a whole lotta fun!