Been sort of out of it lately dealing with my own brand of armchair insanity without losing it. I always make it through but for the most part I don’t deal with stress well and prefer a much more laid back existence. Even other peoples’s problems bother me and unless they are willing to honestly approach things in a solution oriented way, I don’t want to hear about it. For the most part been feeling unmotivated in such a way that I could do absolutely nothing about it. The old lady will be the first to testify on my behalf or is it against me about that, but she manages to make sure I don’t get too far out there. I can’t even imagine what it would be like without the meds. The landlord made a trip up which was kind of a source of stress around here but I took it out on a particularly nasty tall stretch of grass and weeds with the push mower (the riding mower is still in the shop). Not very punk rock mowing the lawn but I have about an acre and half to knock down so that we don’t have snakes right up next to the house. I hate ticks but the old lady hates and is terrorized by snakes. Well the landlord was pretty stoked on how we were keeping things and was talking about doing some upkeep so the stress was unnecessary and short lived. We also had a chance to have supper with a friend of ours from work who’s house sits on about 240 acres, so we did some hiking around the creeks on his property after a properly home cooked meal. Pictures will come next time we go out and I remember the camera. Okay now that I’ve bored you with that.
My Grandfather at 80 has discovered the internet and enjoys passing on all those emails we tend to have gotten a hundred times from all sorts of people but every once in a while he comes through. The latest came with a picture of an old guy sitting in a comfortable chair (not the above image) and read, “I’ve often been asked, ‘What do you old folks do now that you’re retired? Well..I’m fortunate to have a chemical engineering background, and one of the things I enjoy most is turning beer, wine, Scotch, and margaritas into urine.” Funny I don’t think my Grandfather knows that for several years in my life I was an uncontrollable alcoholic, part time addict and probably spent another 15 years working up to that honary position. Well I found humor in what he sent me for a couple of reasons. My grandfather is a very healthy 80 years old because he drank very little and didn’t spend a whole lot of time beating the shit out of his body. The other thing is that for a period in my life that was what I did 24/7, was turn liqour into urine. A miracle.
Oh yeah after that Johnny Cash post that I got such a good response to I had some thoughts. You guys seemed to have liked the flick Outlaw Josey Wales, do you have any other favorites? Billy mentioned Dances With Wolves which is an obvious classic/epic. One of the things that made it so awesome as with any western involving Native Americans is that they embraced the native community with language, actors and so on. And I know we’re talking mainstream Hollywood here which is just as faulty as any big business ventures, but if you can look beyond that like we do the rest of the evil going on in this world (sometimes), maybe we can pick a few others. Little Big Man (a true classic)? Windtalker (all native language)? The Unforgiven? 3:10 To Yuma? Any favorites you guys? Also from that last post my bros Match and Boner had a couple of Johnny Cash tunes that they really liked, so I went and found those two killer tunes.
Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down
Cocaine Blues
Cocaine Blues (live)
Well all that babbling up there has got me babbled out, now that we’ve gotten to the band that this post is about. I got this first one when it first came out in about 1983 when I was going through my Crass/Rudimentary Peni faze and I was getting anything on the Crass or Corpus Christi labels. Funny because my two favorite bands at the time were Crass and Slayer. The Used Abused Unamused 7″ is hands down my favorite and subjectively the best of the lot. The other two I think were one of those things where I borrowed them (from Kevin A.) and never gave them back. If you’re reading this dude I can mail them back to you 🙂 I put them under my hardcore category but what Icons Of Filth really is, is kind of a punky crust meld between the vocals and the music. Start off with the tunes Used, Abused, Unamused or Asking too Much.
Used, Abused, Unamused
A Measure Of Insecurity
Asking Too Much
Virus
Enough Is Enough
Brain Death
Success On A Plate (For Who?)
Sunk Rock
Evilspeak/Vivisector