HEAVY METAL

We're getting the band(s) back together, dudes!

If you haven't heard—and you should have, because you're on the Internet all the time and pay very close attention to the hardcore scene, right?—both Tamerlane and Cherem are playing the annual Sub For Santa show that a few of our friends put on every year. You know, the one I wrote about for SLUG? It's at Club Sound on December 8, which is this weekend. Which is weird because it's already December and that means that 2012 is just about over. Crazy.

This one is actually the second of two shows this weekend. The first one is on Friday night with a few other local bands, so check that one out too, if you're interested.

This is probably it for Tamerlane. We never officially broke up and we probably never officially will, but it gets kind of old dragging out the same six songs once a year or so and it gets harder and harder to get everyone together, too. So this might be it, but never say never. We convinced Daryl, the bass player that played with us the longest, to take a break from studying cadavers and reading horribly boring med school text books to play again this year, so it should be pretty good. If you've never seen this band, and you're at all curious, you should come watch us.

Cherem, on the other hand, might be back together for real. Or at least as real as it can get for a bunch of dudes in their 30's. We've got both this weekend's Sub for Santa show and another one lined up on December 21. Bill moved back from NYC at the beginning of September and his first order of business was getting the band back together. Cherem hasn't played a show with Bill singing since July of 2007. We played a couple of shows that fall with a fill in vocalist, because the shows were already booked and Bill had to cancel his trip home at the last minute, but that was it. He recruited a couple of new guys to round out the lineup and we're pretty close to being ready to play live again.

I poured a good portion of my early and mid-20s into this band, so it'll be fun to shake the rust off and seen if it's still as much fun as it used to be.

Not quite sure how things play out after these couple of shows, but for now we're just going to have fun play some songs that nobody's heard live for 5 or 6 years. Should be a good time.

There's a couple of videos below. Unfortunately, I don't have time to get the beard back in time. Too bad.

Tamerlane - "Descend"

This was right after we wrote this song, back in 2008. Probably my favorite of the Tamerlane songs, too. We don't play it very well in this video (we play it much better now), but it's the best video we have of it.




Cherem - "Retribution"

This was the tail end of our only extended tour. It was recorded at one of my all-time favorite venues, the Showcase Theater in Corona, CA. That place was always like our home away from home.

XREFLECTX - LAST SHOW MINI-DOC

A few friends of mine were in a really, really good band called xReflectx. They broke up last year and I shot some interviews with the dudes in the band (with a little help from Brook and Sias). It took me a year to get around to putting this together, but I finally did.

Check it out. I miss this band.

CITY TO CITY

A couple of years back, my friends band was recording and I decided to tag along with the video camera. This is the 'teaser' for the in-studio documentary. Not bad, if I do say so myself.

WORLDBREAKER

Once upon a time I did a podcast for my other website (the recently put on hiatus GrudgeCityActivities). Casey, Dan and I had been talking about the Guinness Book of World Records wondering if there were any that would be easy enough to break. Casey had seen the Jalapeno Record attempt a few days before on the internet and it seemed like one that would work. We had our friend Travis come in and give it a shot, filmed it and threw it up on the Internet—exactly where ridiculous stuff like this belongs.

*Edited to Add* Upon re-watching this video I noticed something. Around the 2:50 mark, a little balloon pops up saying that the world record was set with pickled jalapenos and that we were mistaken. I edited this video originally and I didn't put that in. Someone from YouTube went through, saw this video and took it upon themselves to point out a mistake, even though we pretty much came to that conclusion ourselves after Travis couldn't swallow the fresh jalapenos. In summation: Fuck off, YouTube. Let us do our thing.

COLLAPSE 1-SHOW TOUR VIDEO

CALIFORNIA DREAMIN'

I always take my video camera with me when I go out of town. Or I at least try to. That doesn't mean I use the entire time I'm gone, though. I took it with me every time Cherem went on tour, but it would spend 90% of the trip in the camera bag under the second bench. I would be all about it for the first day or two, but then I'd get sick of carrying it.

Last June, we went to California to see a band called Disembodied play a reunion show (The album pictured to the left is on my Top 10 records of all time list, by the way). There were about 10 of us on one flight and nearly two dozen more that drove down separately. I tried to take as much video as I could, but didn't get much. When I got back home, I immediately transferred all the footage to my computer and forgot about it soon after. I started cleaning up my hard drive this weekend and found it, so I threw it all together and released it to the Internets.

There wasn't a whole lot to work with, but I think it turned out reasonably well. And it will be fun for me to look back at in a few years. Probably won't be as much fun for anyone that isn't in the video.

I shot the first hour or so we were there on Friday, didn't shoot anything on Saturday and I ran out of tape at Disneyland on Sunday. This is what I was able to get out of that. Enjoy!

COMIC CON VIDEO

I'm no Marty Scorsese, but I pretend...