The Monolators' cd release party is tonight at The Echo. The show starts at 8:30pm and is only $5 if you bring this flyer. I'm excited to see them, we played with them earlier this month at Mr T's Bowl and it was an incredible time. It's so nice to see a band on stage that's completely sincere and loving every minute of what they are doing; completely devoid of pretense. I love them dearly.


In an attempt to grease up the wheels and iron out any wrinkles prior to our September 30th show at The Scene, The Front will be practicing a shit ton this week. We debuted a brand new song entitled "Neo-Con" at Mr. T's earlier this month and we'll be debuting another new one on Sunday. Two songs managed to make it past our stringent filtering process this month; quite an accomplishment for us. Hope to see you all out tonight at The Echo and at The Scene on Sunday.


mb

Letters Always Get Burned

here at front headquarters we thought we would share with you the music in our hearts over the past 24 hours. stay bitch and don't do anything you wouldn't do if you were sober.











i love. therefore i won't be throwing myself on interstate 5.

mb

There is No I in Threesome

Jesus Christ this song is great considering the circumstances.
Interpol- There is No I in Threesome

If Only Those Compton Kids Had Taser Guns Instead

So there's a video circulating the "Internets" right now showing a University of Florida student being physically removed from a town hall style event with Massachusetts Senator John Kerry. The student is carried out of the university theatre by a number of police officers, eventually dragged to the floor and tasered after he clearly pleads "What did I do? Don't taser me bro. Don't taser me."





First, I'd like to state upfront, that kid was fucking annoying. No one likes a know-it-all or smug sarcasm so why present yourself in that fashion? The whole "You won the election! Isn't that great?" comment was unnecessary, distracting from the question at hand and ultimately ineffective in getting his question asked and answered. Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern shows in the video below how to confront a government thug in a tasteful, effective, stern and intelligent manner. McGovern was short, direct, forceful and understood that instead of prefacing questions and then asking 3 separate questions, all at the same time, he'd just fire off one firecracker at a time, allow speech to transfer back and forth and actually get a dialogue established, eventually pinning his opponent into a debate where he was unable to squirm out of.





Back to the university student incident, isn't it illegal to assault someone for being annoying? Those campus cops were pathetic. There were at least 6 campus cops(in the shot of the camera, who knows how many outside of the camera's viewpoint) and they had to taser one guy for being annoying and asking too many questions. I'd like to taser most people that sit behind me in movie theatres and kick the back of my seat the whole show, but I don't because it's illegal. Hopefully the dipshit campus cops get fired and charged with assault. The thing I can't get over is that there were six of them. One, two, three, four, five, six. Six cops couldn't turn one guy on his stomach and handcuff him without the taser? I think they just wanted to test out the taser to make sure it was working. I keep reading on several news sites that the student "didn't receive any lasting injury". I think that's irrelevant. I'm guessing that none of those campus cops know what it's like to be tasered and if it is so harmless, before any campus cop gets a taser gun, he or she should be shot with it so they can know exactly how it feels and be less hesistant to use it on someone else, especially when you have 5 of your dunkin donut buddies standing by your side. At Truman State (the college I went to in Missouri), our campus police organization was called DPS, initials for Department of Public Safety. The Truman students and I knew the initials to stand for something else, "Dumb Pieces of Shit". Glad to see that the situation is as similar in Florida as it was at Truman.


The Front had practice last night. We were all pretty exhausted but gave a little more definition to the new songs. One of the new ones is called "Johnny Super Cop 5000", it's a song that serves as a training manual for becoming a police officer in this great police state we live in. We all went to The Happy Hollows last night at The Echo. It was the third time I've seen them this month, the best time I've seen them thus far. The crowds have grown week by week, word is getting around the neighborhood nicely.





More practice for The Front tonight. I'll keep you all up to date on exactly how many beers were drank, what we fought over and how many times I sighed in a very Napoleon Dynamite-like manner. Keep on rocking in the free world....... before your ass gets tasered because you're annoying the shit out of someone.

I'm Tired Today

Whew....No sleep for the wicked.


I was skimming youtube today and found a video that strangely displayed (at about the 6 second mark) exactly how I felt getting out of bed today. The past two nights have been rough on sleep and I'm pretty much "checked out".






Bruce Springsteen has a new record coming out. I know it's entirely uncool, especially in California, but I dig this middle class hero. I have the kind of respect for Bruce that Peter, Paul, Luke and John had for Jesus. In all honesty, if Bruce showed up at my door later tonight with a couple guns and told me that we had to go to Chechnya and join the rebel cause, I'd sell everything I owned and go with him, no questions asked. Where Bruce goes, I go. They don't call him the fucking Boss for nothing. He earned that title, putting out records like Born to Run and Nebraska while I was still learning how to play an A chord and crying myself to sleep like a baby. Here's to you Bruce, I hope you're around for another 40 years to keep us all in line.





Practice tonight for The Front followed up with The Happy Hollows at The Echo. The Happy Hollows are one of the best, if not the best band in Los Angeles. You should do yourself a favor and get to their show tonight or next Monday. Over and out.

There's a Rat in My Ceiling

Well I guess I'm officially a blogger. We'll see how long this lasts; I figure, "you got nothin' to lose".

Last night I woke up at 6am to the sound of a rodent scratching its way along my drywall ceiling. It's a fairly disconcerting noise to wake up to. I determined that whatever it was, (rat, squirrel, bird, lizard, evil demonic zombie child) it was having a great time running from my bedroom ceiling to my bathroom ceiling, fidgetting about, and going back and forth.... and back and forth. I initially laid paralyzed with fear in my bed, clutching my pillow, envisioning that at any moment the minature beast would plunge through the drywall ceiling, land squarely on my chest, and make me pee uncontrollably with fright, but after seeing a few rays of sunshine peak through the sides of my maroon velvet curtains, I decided to strap on some shoes, walk around my back patio area and check for holes in my roof.

I didn't find anything, other than that someone wrote "faggot" with their finger through the dust on my barbeque pit. I decided that whatever this critter was, it was it's world too and I was just as much an invader as he/she/it so I went back inside, took solace in the thought that I was probably at least 20 times the size of the body mass of my new imposing roommate and went to sleep. I killed a spider before I went to sleep though. He was on the wrong side of the drywall.

I get the feeling that this blog will be 50% Michael's ramblings and 50% Front news. Let's continue a little more with ramblings. I rented "The Confederate States of America" today from the local Silverlake Video. I recognize that I rent a ton of videos and spend way more than I would if I just signed up for Netflix but the owners of Silverlake Video are so nice, normal, aspiring that I'm consciously willing to pay an extra $15 per month to support them over Netflix. It's nice to support the local community, help out small businesses vs. just being another lowest price seeking U.S. consumer. As for the movie, I thought it sucked. I was expecting a more artsy type of psuedo-documentary but instead it was a comedy that revolved around how using the taboo word "nigger" makes teenagers and immature adults giggle. That's a pretty brash assessment, it was okay, I was just expecting something more and I was bored frequently.

As for Front news........




We are playing a couple shows in the Los Angeles area in the next couple weeks. September 30th at The Scene, our good friends from San Diego, Oaks, are coming up to play. They recently opened for Big Business at Spaceland a few Fridays back and they killed it. Oaks have a sound reminiscent of the Northwest US (Olympia, Seattle, etc..) in the mid 90's, gritty rock from skilled players. Justin on the drums has impeccable timing while Marc precisely plucks a fretless bass and manages to walk a thin line that few can by providing sincere yet "big rock" vocals. The show should be rad and we encourage all of you to come.


We've been working very hard on new music over the past month. We have about 4 new songs in the works right now, 2 completely finished, 2 with well defined blueprints. We are excited to play them for you. I think we haven't been realizing it until the past week or so but we're writing a new album. All the songs are coming out slightly different but there's a true coherence to the topics we are touching on and it's rewarding and fascinating to see how things just fall into place one day after you've felt so stagnant for a good chunk of time. As for what I've been listening to lately:


1. Bruce Springsteen- Born To Run
2. Elliott Smith- New Moon
3. The Happy Hollows- EP
4. Qui- Love's Miracle
5. The Beatles- Let it Be
6. Interpol- Pioneer to the Falls (just that single track)


I need to get better at this blog thing. It's sort of like reading reality tv. Some dude, completely concerned with himself, writing journals, blah, blah, blah. I'll get better, I promise.