Thursday, May 30, 2013

I Saw a UFO and Fuck You, It Was Real

There is no way to ease into this subject.... yes, I have seen a UFO and yes, they do in fact exist. No, I'm not claiming to have seen "little green men" nor am I suggesting that this was some sort of alien life-form  I AM claiming to have seen a UFO in the most traditional of senses, an "Unidentified Flying Object". Now, I lived about a 45 minute drive from Wright-Patterson Airforce Base, where they are infamous for having off-the-book experimental aircraft and I suspect that it was just that, some still-not-yet released aircraft that was in some sort of development phase.... BUT nonetheless, this happened, and it was real.

It was in late 2001, I was 16 and my buddy Brian was spending the night when we snuck out onto my roof to smoke a cigarette. Brian had just turned 18 and we were enjoying the comfort that comes with having readily-available access to cigarettes  So once my Mom fell asleep, we crawled out of the window to my room around midnight, STONE SOBER, (no beer, no weed, no anything). After about 10 minutes of quietly chain-smoking, we notice a light far off, pointing in our general direction. We began to discuss it and how strange it was to see a light of that type at midnight out in the country-side.

As it gradually got closer we realize that the light is unmistakably pointed directly at us. Not only that, but it IS actually some sort of spotlight,. We literally turned and looked behind us, and could see our shadows silhouetted onto the woods behind my house. "Must be some kind of police-helicopter" I said.... "should we put out our cigerettes?" "No" he responded, "Fuck 'em, I'm over 18 now anyway". Not thinking what that meant to myself being underage, I agreed with him immediately.

As it got closer, we could tell that it had a triangle/dart-like shape unlike anything I'd ever seen outside of the X-Files. It's bright-blue lights vividly outlined its edges, and the spotlight (unmistakeably directed at us alone) originated from the dead center of it. It was quickly approaching us and the house seemed to shake with the tremendous noise that it made, yet my mother's light in her room never turned on... as a matter of fact, no ones lights seemed to go on in the neighborhood. "How can anyone NOT hear this?" I asked myself. Brian and I turned to look at each other, his face seemed bewildered and I'm sure that my face reflected the deep fear that was coursing through my body at the moment.

By the time it approached us at 100 or so feet away, it stopped and paused in mid-air, it was still deafeningly loud, but it somehow just peacefully paused there hanging motionless in the sky. Was I about to be abducted? Dissected? One thing was for sure, I was scared shitless. I turn to Brian in an effort to see what sense he can make of the situation.... as I do, he stands up, pulls his pants down and flashes his beaming white ass at the object. I just sat there in a stupefied-awe as he began to slap his ass and scream "Come on motherfucker!" (To this day, I have not seen a weirder, more ballsy move when confronted by potential danger.)

As I watched this mad, mad scene, I again looked behind us at the tree-line in disbelief, watching the silhouette of my friend provokingly slapping his ass while screaming belligerence at the object. After about 5 seconds of this spectacle, the pilot of the vessel must have either got bored or had "bigger fish-to-fry" as it started to move again. At this point it was directly above us, and my friend finally had the good sense to pull his pants back up as he too watched it in awe. As it loomed directly above us, the whole house was shaking with the insane noise that no one but us seemed to notice. Then the main spot-light went off and suddenly all noise stopped... not metaphorically... literally. There was no noise. There was no sound of crickets. No sound coming from my trying mouth, just dead, dead silence.

Then it quickly took off, vanishing behind the woods at a speed of which I could only make out the blinding light trail of it. Ive never seen anything go so fast in my life, as if it went from 0-300 miles per hour, and as it did, sound seemed to return. As soon as I could collect my rattled thoughts, I struck him several times in the shoulder with my fist and asked him what the hell he was fucking thinking. He then informed me "If I was going to be abducted, they weren't going to take me begging on my knees". He actually said this as if presenting his ass was a better option of some sort.

So that's it. I saw every bit of that and I remember it quite vividly... every terrifying fucking second of it. Alien? Maybe, but more than likely not. More than likely it was just some secret government aircraft that is as of yet unclassified and was being tested at Wright-Patt. But honestly? I hope it was some lifeform trolling the galaxy for signs of higher learning... and as it descended for the first time to experience life on this obviously industrialized planet, it saw Brian's ass and hightailed it back home, warning it's kind to never, ever visit again.

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

AntiCurrent Archive Volume 1: Lux Interior: The Purple Knif Show

From 2005-2007 I lived in Fullerton California and worked at Black Hole Records, owned by local punk-rock legend (don't tell him he is though, don't want to over-inflate that ego of his) Bill Evans. During that time I was a broke as shit college student who basically worked for him in return for store credit, something that I am eternally grateful for and led to alot of the amazing records in my collection today.

But working for $15 an hour store credit soon was not enough to fulfill my musical obsession, so I struck a deal with him: I'll research, locate, create artwork, and print you one copy of the rarest of rare bootlegs for $40 a piece store credit (he would then reproduce the album and sell it to consumers). He agreed and I got to work. During this time I pulled demos from bands such as Rancid, Street Dogs, compilations such as the nearly impossible to find "The Bat Cave, Young Limbs & Numb Hymns", live and deleted albums, etc.

So what I'm doing here is the first in a series of hard to find recordings I am titling "The AntiCurrent Archive", in it I will post a series of the rare records that I tracked down back in my days at Black Hole. Now, some of these recordings are able to be found on other websites, but most of the time the encoding is shit, or the artwork sucks, or even worse, the website is old and the link is broken. I will post THE best version of the recording and artwork I can find, and feel free to contact me if a better one is available and I will be happy to replace it.

So without further ado, the first release up is the AMAZING "The Purple Knif Show" by Lux Interior. 

This was a one off radio show by half of The Cramps recorded in Hollywood in 1984. In it, Lux DJ's 24 of his favorite 45's for the listener while providing Horror-Host style commentary. The show play's like and old episode of Cleveland TV's famous Ghoulardi show. Even the name "Knif" is a tribute to the late TV horror host, in Ghoulardi's show's he would refer to his legion of fan's as Knif's (Knif being the backwards spelling of Fink"). This show is arguably the BIGGEST non-musical source of inspiration for The Cramps, seeing as how Lux grew up near Cleveland watching Ghoulardi in his youth. 

This compilation is the best, most strange, and epically genius piece of live radio I have ever came across. It perfectly showcases Lux's amazing and strange taste in rock and roll, music, theatricality, and radio all at once. These are definitely NOT the highest quality recordings of the songs available, this was played from Lux's personal 45's, broadcast over the airwaves, taped on cassette, and finally digitally encoded, but it's worth dealing with the quality degradation to experience this as Lux intended it, with his genius intro/outros and insightful commentary. For a great, high quality example of songs The Cramps drew on for inspiration, research the compilation "Songs The Cramps Taught Us", or the 11 disc set "Lux and Ivy's Favorites".

Download The Entire Album and Cover Art Here:

The tracklist is:
  1. One Way Streets, The - Jack the Ripper
  2. Swamp Rats, The - Louie Louie
  3. J.J. Jackson - Oma Liddy
  4. Trashmen, The - Bird '65
  5. Sparkles, The - Oh, Girls, Girls
  6. Link Wray - The Fuss
  7. Bill Carter And The Rovin' Gamblers - Baby Brother
  8. Tides - Midnight Limbo
  9. Earl Hagan & The Interns - New Interns Watusi
10. Mad Mike And The Maniacs - The Hunch
11. Billy Strange - 007 Theme
12. Ted Weems & His Orchestra - Heartaches
13. Ray Anthony - Dragnet
14. Grady O'Neal & The Bellatones - Turkey Neck Stretch
15. Enchanters - Cafe Bohemian
16. Jam Space & The Cadets - Take Me To Your Leader Chachacha
17. Archie Bleyer - Fernandos Hideaway
18. Spark Plugs - Chicken
19. Frantics - The Whip
20. 5 Blobs - The Blob
21. Unknown Artist - Miller Beer Commercial
22. Ward Darby And The Raves - Safari
23. Cozy Cole - Topsy Pt. II
24. Deadly Ones - It's Monster Surfing Time

Saturday, May 18, 2013

A Dispatch To My Unactualized Progeny...

Dearest lads,

You've came so long, and you fought so hard, but alas, our time has come to pass.

I'm proud of the promise, strength, and resolve encapsulated in each one of you, but unfortunately, you were not destined to see your potential fruition.

You left your warm, comfortable world surmising that you would be welcomed into the balmy pursuit of life, but unknowingly, you were destined to be cast aside as so many of your kind have been before.

Life is unfair, life is cruel, and you truly deserved more than experiencing one other drown in whirlpool shortly after being propelled into achromatic absorption. For that, I apologize.

But fear not my banished once-potential stock, this is a trek that many of your kind have endured before, and as assuredly as your time alive has ceased, a new aggregation of you is perpetually forming, and with luck, one day, one of them will actually cross the finish line that is life.

Thinking of you,
Josh

Monday, May 13, 2013

"Damn Eye-Twitch Has Reappeared" or "My Time In Juevy"

Recently I have been working ungodly hours. No, really. We're talking 20 hour days at work for 5 days straight taking only 4 hours a night to myself to crash underneath my desk on-top of two sleeping bags and using my leather jacket as a blanket kind of rough.... for 5 weeks straight. Yeah, see?

I'm proud to think that there are few people on this earth that could undertake such a fool-hearty endeavor, at least for the five weeks straight that I have done it. Unfortunately, this is beginning to take a hell of a tole on me. In an attempt to balance these 4 hour nights and to save as much money as possible during this process, I have been fueling my body on leftover bagels, powdered soup, bathing in the company bathroom with hand-soap, and consuming around 60 OZs of coffee per day... but the side-effects of this life are beginning to shine through.... enter the eye twitch.

Unfortunately this isn't the first time that my eye has been subjected to this phenomenon, and this feeling takes me directly back to a story that I would like to subject you to.... and boy oh boy is this a long story.

The last time I felt my eye doing this I was 16 years old at Madison High School in Middletown Ohio, as I was being violently pushed against a wall and handcuffed by an over-zealous pig of a cop (who I will address in here as deputy Dick-Weed) and aggressively escorted into his patrol car. What were the charges you ask? Hacking. Hacking the school mainframe, changing grades, changing roster-sheets, and eventually deleting a teachers computer logs.

Let me first begin this section by saying, yeah, I did it. I hacked my asshole teachers computer, and after getting bored changing my grades and continually reversing his screen, talking to him, and restarting his computer from the next room (which was HILARIOUS to listen to), I ended up going a step further. See, I was in a class in which the idea was to teach you an instrument you had not yet learned, a class of which I was SUPER excited to attend, but alas, the cocksucker did not teach the entire 4 people that took the class anything, he instead turned us into his servants. We carried stuff from his car, we took stock of the inventory of instruments, we sold candy in his class to younger students (which was supposed to be going toward the band, and it was NOT) in short, he was using us, using the system, and not performing the one task he was getting paid to do.

This is all dealable until you factor in that the guy was an ENORMOUS dick to us. On good days he was short and shitty, on bad days he would spit-fire and slam doors. Now, I had an eye and an ear on the schools mainframe for a while, but after one particular day of the guy going off on me about how I didn't assemble a fucking gong stand right, I logged into his computer as he was using it, clicked on the C drive, and drug it into the trashcan and clicked "delete". You know why? Fuck him, that's why.

To give you a bit of backstory on the situation, I'm not by nature a hacker. A few friends of mine who fancied themselves as "hackers" discovered a back-door trojan program entitled Sub-7. Using this program, it allowed you complete and total control of another computer as long as you had installed the "back door" which was CAKE to do. There was a group of 6 kids (not including myself) who were doing this at the time, I was the LEAST offensive user of this program. I used this program aggressively just once to exact revenge on one fucker who was a cock-sucker.

Eventually, as I eventually came to learn as a result of this story, you should never trust anyone... ever. One of the kids in this group was trusted by teachers and was asked to consult about the possibility of this being a hack (of which there was NO evidence). Instead of being smart and dismissing such a notion, he then agreed with them and began to ask ALOT of questions to this group... of which I had trusted two of them with my story. Unfortunately those two told the group of 6, and every single one of them rolled on me immediately and without hesitation. For a group of "hackers", they were VERY frightened of authority... pussies.

So the whole damn thing got investigated and the full and frightening extent of the records that the group had altered and had access to was revealed by proper cops, and due to the fact that everyone of them ratted on me, I was made to be the example of why crime doesn't pay... even though I hadn't done 10% of the crimes that were put on my shoulders.

So I was arrested, booked, and released. Charged with conspiracy to deface federal property and a host of other bullshit charges that were not even close to the reality of the crime I had committed. I was trying to explain this to the judge when he told me "if you are so sure you haven't commited these hosts of crimes, take a polygraph test and prove it". I GLADLY agreed to as I had nothing to hide and was being forthcoming about my actions (even though I refused to rat on those fuckers who turned on me).

Enter the polygraph. I sit down, meet the guy who was to administer it, and we get along well. I tell him the whole story and he actually seems sympathetic as he had a kid my age. It was at this time he asked me off the books if I did it to which I responded "yes, I did parts of it, but not what they are accusing me of, nor to the extent they are accusing me of it". He then explained to me how it would be impossible to polygraph me with the fact that I would effectively be admitting guilt while simultaneously describing the intricacies of what I did, and did not do to the system. So the guy did a noble thing, he stepped up to the bat and called Deputy Dick-Weed and asked him if we could reach an agreement. Deputy Dick-Weed told him that if I would confess on record RIGHT THEN to what I had done, he would not push for me to serve time in Juevy, only fines and public service would be a result. I agreed. Quickly.

Here's the problem though, I gave my statement in writing based off of the word of a crooked cop that promised he would not fuck me. He spoke to my father on the phone and assured him thrice that no time would be spent in corrections, I know because he was on speaker. I even got my lawyer on the phone and after HE talked to the cop, he agreed to this course of action. Here's the moral of the story boys and girls: Don't trust anyone, and if you are backed into a position where you must trust someone, get it in fucking writing. I showed up to court, the charges hadn't been lessened, and now the prosecutors were unwilling to meet my attorney ANYWHERE in the middle. They wanted a hard-core example to the community, and now they had a confession in writing.In short, they threw the book at me and the judge was about to sentence me to 3 weeks in Juvenile Detention.

Unfortunately for me, as I soon came to realize, my attorney happened to be a crooked son of a bitch and was on a first name basis with the cop. Furthermore, he was a member of a family that had there roots based in both the police (2 brothers were lawyers) and the cops (the third brother eventually replaced Deputy Dick-Weed as the cop on our school grounds... two years later that cop would knock up a 16 year old girl... you can't make this shit up). So my lawyer reapproaches me and tells me he has came to an agreement for a plea of guilty that would land me three weeks in juevy... thankfully for me I am smarter than anyone else in the damn room and I immediately begin to beg them, informing them that this will force me to lose my job.... what I neglected to tell them is that my job was working for my father and there was not a snowballs chance in hell I would lose it.

So the powers that be, which evidentally all had a vendetta toward me settled on me spending the unsual amount of time of 4 weekends in juevy. Now, my eye had been sporadically twitching as this situation began to get worse and worse from the time of my being collared, but now it was in full Michael J Fox twitch mode as they cuffed me and drug me to jail, no passing go, no collecting $200.

Whilst in there, I encountered a group of skinny, dirty, skinhead racists. They immediatly approached me and asked me to joing their little click so we could go and "beat some niggers" as they put it. I laughed in their faces, picked up my pack of cards, and walked over to the much bigger and scarier group of African-americans and asked if they'd like to play some poker. While playing they all told me of why they were in there, some battery, some larceny, all scary, all dangerous. So eventually the topic came around to me and the head of the gang inquired "I like you little white boy, what'd you do to get in here?". This was sink or swim as I needed protection in there and wasn't lowering myself to the racist cocksuckers. Either I lie and make a big grand story, or I play it straight and deal with laughter. So I told them.... hacking. I went with honesty. Their responce? "No way!!!! Can you teach me how to do that too????" Whew... close one, so I informed them and gave them my contact info, telling them Id be happy to instruct them anytime, anywhere.

Now, in retrospect I'm not sure whether I impressed them with my technical knowledge, or I genuinely frightened the group of big, angry black men with my non-caring, direct presence and my twitching eye... either way, I'm totally fine with the outcome and i endured a minimum amount of violence save for having to punch my neighboring cellmate for attacking me because I accidentally woke him up while having the guard deliver my inhaler one night while he was sleeping. But fuck him, he deserved the black eye i gave him and it furthered my reputation in there.

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Tom Waits & The Rolling Stones- Red Rooster Live 5/5/13

Hey everybody,

Here with a present today. I was SO upset that I missed a Tom Waits gig  (which has not happened in more than 5 years) that I was desperate to see and hear the best version of the performance possible. So being an audio and video nerd of the highest caliber, I downloaded every source available, combined, mixed, and edited them, overlayed a thick grain to make it feel more cohesive and uploaded the video.

Cheers everyone, ENJOY!!!

VIDEO:


AUDIO:
Tom Waits & The Rolling Stones
(Right Click, Save As)