REMEMBER ME?

Hi. Do you even remember me? You might not. That's okay. It's been a while.

It's me—Trevor Hale. I'm the guy that runs this blog. Or ran this blog. Or rambled in mildly coherent sentences into the vast nothingness that is the Internet.

It's one of those things. That's not important now. What is important is that I'm back—for a minute at least. There's a whole other post that could be written about how "lifestyle" and "fashion" blogs kind of ruined my desire to write anything, but more than that, I just haven't felt like writing in a while.

That last line is the most depressing part for me. Sure, there were people that checked this site regularly, there were others that stumbled across it, and there were even more that had no idea it even existed. I never felt like I was doing anything worth sharing and I hadn't been that plugged in to the side of the Internet that used to make this site fun. There was nothing for me to tell you about, and even less for you to hear from me.

Maybe that will change. I don't know. We'll see.

What I do know is that Craft Lake City was this past weekend and that's the real reason I'm posting. Before you get too excited, I'll admit that I didn't make anything new this year. I still had a bunch of HP Tank Tops, Long Live Sloan t-shirts, and copies of Tulip, but I didn't have the time to put my energy into a new project this summer.

But I did find some time to throw together a couple of smaller things.

Hilarious jokes and personal stamp of approval

I made some mixtapes. Actual mixtapes. I bought blank cassettes, sat in front of a stereo, and curated two 90-minute playlists that maybe 8 people will enjoy—really staying true to the spirit of everything else that I do.

The first mix is called Alternative Nation. It's basically the same as the playlist I wrote about in The Secret History of Trevor Hale, with a few minor changes. The theme of that tape was to showcase all the songs that I would have recorded off the radio when I was in junior high/early high school around 1995. There are a few key omissions there, because 15-year-old me would have most definitely had Blues Traveler and Hootie & The Blowfish on there, but 34-year-old me is trying to stay cool and keep a little street cred. My only huge regret here is that I forgot to include Alice In Chains in favor of a few much less important bands. That's the thing about a cassette tape though—once you're out of space, you're out of space.

The second tape is Teenage Wasteland, and it's a collection of all the punk songs I got into a little bit later. I ran into the same problem here, too. I have several bands twice (like Millencolin!) a Dwarves song and Wizo, but completely forgot NOFX. It's been eating at me for days.

I made 5 copies of each tape, wrote out the tracklist on the insert and wrapped them in an appropriate cover. I didn't let anyone see what was on the tape before they bought it, and I think that made it more fun. I only sold a couple of each of them, because no one actually owns a cassette player anymore.

But I worked hard on these tapes and a few people mentioned that I should make them into Spotify playlists, so I did just that. I've embedded them below, or you can follow them on there if you want to.

That's really about it. Maybe I'll be back sooner than later with more stuff, but no promises. If you miss me, I'm all over the rest of the Internet, with a really boring username (that stays true and strengthens my personal brand, though) . Come find me, say hi, favorite some stuff, like some things, send me cool DM's, do what you want. It's the Internet. There aren't any rules, so act out.

Until next time...

Twitter - @trevorhale
Instagram - @trevorhale
Facebook
LinkedIn - Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. (I actually do have one, but it's for professional shorties only).

Teenage Wasteland


Alternative Nation

TOP 5 ALBUMS OF 2014

I wrote a little bit for SLUG Magazine again this year, which means I got to be a part of their annual Top 5 Albums issue (on news stands right now!) that they do every December. The main problem with this, as I laid out last year, is that since it's a monthly publication and they have so many freelancers, is that you have to submit your list super early. I think this was due right around the beginning of October, which means that there were a couple of albums released afterwards that I definitely would have added instead.

There were also a few that I just hadn't listened to

My Top 5 for this year (according to SLUG) were:

St. Vincent - S/T
Against Me! - Transgender Dysphoria Blues
Pallbearer - Foundations of Burden
Mobb Deep - The Infamous Mobb Deep
Patton Oswalt - Tragedy Plus Comedy Equals Time

The first two are still on there, 100%. St. Vincent is my favorite record of this year by far, and it doesn't hurt that I have a little crush on Annie Clark—especially after her performance with Nirvana.



Against Me!, even though I'm still mad at their tour manager for being a complete dick to me in 2004 when I booked a show for them, put out a great punk/rock record that I listen to regularly as well.

The other three, I could go either way on.

Since then I've been really into the new Death From Above 1979 album, "The Physical World", and seeing them live a few weeks ago only increased my love of it. Same goes for the new Run The Jewels record—who I actually saw live three days before DFA. That was a good week. I'd probably put both of those on there, and take two of the bottom three off.



Hell, I may just remove the bottom three altogether and give Run the Jewels two spots. But I'm not sure. There's still 3 weeks left in the year.

Also, holy shit, there's only three weeks left in the year.

CRAFT LAKE CITY - 2014 EDITION

I was prepared this year.

Let's back up a bit. I was prepared before I got to the show, at least. Usually I'm still putting stuff together while I get set up and hope that no one actually comes by my table for the first hour so that I can get everything together.

This year, I spent the whole day holed up in my house folding mini-comics, making labels and painting my display rack. It's going to be good.

If you're coming down to the Gallivan Center any time today (Friday 8/8) or Saturday (8/9) stop by and see me. Instead of a table, this year I'm sharing a booth with my friend Lauren (@snackmastercandyblaster). She makes cat crafts and cool little trinkets. We're going to have fun

Our booth is under Old News Records and/or Lauren Mack. We're set up in one of the white tents that's actually on Gallivan Avenue, so come by and see us. We'll be there all weekend.

Feel free to bring treats for me and boxed wine for Lauren. You might have to sneak the wine in though.

HEY THERE, STRANGER

I know. I know. You don't even have to say it. I already know.

Look, the thing is that I've been busy. I've been working on things that I just haven't been able to share with you yet. Lots of behind the scenes things.

Also, laziness. That's also a thing. Laziness in regards to this blog, anyway. I've been getting outside, enjoying the summer, taking pictures with animals, trail running, going to bbq's and gardening with a two-year-old, playing PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN with a six-year-old, eating dinner on patios, going on nighttime walks to coffee shops. I've been doing all the things that you're supposed to do when the weather gets nice. you should be doing that stuff as well.

There has been a lot of stuff going on in the background though, I promise. Work has been... weird. There's been a lot of drastic changes to the company that I work for and I'm just kind of rolling with it. But enough about that. Let's talk about fun stuff!

• We've been going strong on the soccer podcast for 33 straight weeks now. It's been a lot of fun and if you like soccer and jokes you should check it out. There is a lot of soccer talk though. I won't lie, sometimes even I tune out for 10-15 minutes each time. And I'm in the room! http://www.wearethereserves.com
• I got accepted to Craft Lake City again this summer. I'm sharing a booth with my friend Lauren, who makes cat crafts. It's going to be a lot of fun, but now I have to buckle down and start actually getting my shit together. There will be another issue of FILLER, maybe some buttons and maybe some more shirts. I don't know yet. Depends how much I can get done in the next two months.
• SLUG Magazine and Craft Lake City are presenting some workshops this summer and they asked me to teach one. I'll be teaching a bunch of junior high kids how to make zines, which I'm pretty excited about. The biggest problem is going to be explaining what a zine actually is and that it has nothing to do with a computer. That might be tricky.
• I started reviewing comics again for SLUG. They gave me the first seven volumes of The Sixth Gun from Oni Press, so I worked my way through that and sent in a fairly long review earlier this week. It should be up soon. I've got two more comics I've got to read and a documentary about the early years of the California hardcore/punk scene to review next.
• Casey and I have actually been working on that children's book we concocted two years ago. We've been meeting regularly and pretty much have the whole thing hammered out. Then it moves into the scripting stage, then we need to find an artist. We're hoping to have it done and ready to go sometime next year. We're not exactly sure how that will happen, but it will. Casey's already trying to figure out how it'll be turned into a ride at Disneyland, how much control we'll have over the film rights and what kind of sequel potential it has. I'm trying to figure out how we're going to get it actually finished in the first place.
• I'm 52 pages into the rewrite of the Until My Heart Stops book. It's pretty much like starting over because I'm going back to posts that I wrote in 2004-2005 and seeing how bad they are. I've basically been re-reading each post, trying to get back in the mindset of that specific day and starting fresh. It's been easier and harder than I thought it would be all at once. I'm leaning towards renaming it "Tin Foil Basements and the Junkyard Next to the Women's Prison" but I'm not 100%. There are a few other ideas that I'm kicking around, too. I really like that one, though. We'll see. I want a second draft finished by the end of the summer so I can start playing with the layout.
• Tulip went back to print and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Now I'm just trying to figure out how to get it in stores. I knew it would be hard, but there are a lot of hoops that I have to jump through and a lot of bookstores (even the local ones) won't take anything unless they can get it through a vendor. I managed to get it into a local record store, but that's about it so far. Baby steps, you know?

See? I've been getting stuff done, it just hasn't been in the form of blog posts for you to read. I want to change that, but there's also a bunch of other stuff I want to accomplish, too. 

But I love you for still checking in with me. I really will try to update more often. I've got about 20 loose story ideas in my drafts folder. It's just a matter of getting to them.

INTERVIEW OUTTAKES: RYAN OTTLEY

There's a lot of stuff that gets left on the cutting room floor when you do an interview. A lot of it is for good reason, though. Most of the time it's because it just doesn't fit with the narrative.

Ryan Ottley, Utah native and artist of the comic book Invincible, and I sat outside Nobrow Coffee one evening this past summer and talked about a lot of things. The crux of the article was Salt Lake Comic Con, but we barely got into that. I was more interested in everything else he was up to - mainly since he was only going to be at SLCC for the first day.

We talked about how he got into the business, why he doesn't jump ship for Marvel or DC and about that art burning party that he had with Derek Hunter that set comic book message boards on fire.

Very little of that made it in to the actual article, but he still gave some great quotes. Figured it was high time you got to see them.

You can check out the original article that I wrote for SLUG's August issue first, then come back here for the stuff that didn't make the cut.

You can keep up with him at his own site, the art blog he does with his friend James Harren called The Bog, and of course you should be reading the fantastic Invincible published by Image Comics.

Enjoy the stuff that didn't make it!

On Becoming a Full-Time Comic Artist:

I didn’t do any school or anything. I used to work at a warehouse and I’d always had that dream of being a comic book artist since I was 14. I was working at the warehouse and I got fired from that, and I thought ‘sweet, I’ll just live off these unemployment checks and try to get in to my dream job.’

That’s what I did and it worked, I think. It took about a year and a half of just doing short stories for DigitalWebbing.com - they had an anthology back then. I was doing it for free. I would just find a writer that I liked and I would say ‘send me this and if I like it, I’ll draw it and if I don’t... sorry.’ I’m not going to draw something for free that I don’t like.

On Working for The Big Two:

Mostly at conventions people will come up and give me cards. I’ve had offers to do stories at Marvel and I’ve turned them down. Marvel was the most recent thing and I said, 'I’ll do this as long as I get to do my own covers. And they said no to that.’

I think that’s really weird. They’re really picky about that. I think if I’m going to draw the interior, I’m going to draw the cover, too. That’s just the way I roll. I don’t mind some covers here and there by other artists. Every once in a while Invincible will have guest artists, but most of the time it’s me doing the covers.

When I go into a comic shop, sure I see these beautiful Marvel covers everywhere, then you open up to the inside, and I’m not saying the inside is terrible, but it’s different. It’s like different actors and I hate that.

Sometimes it feels like the interiors are more for the story and the cover is more for the art and I don’t like that. All of it needs to be about the art and the story.

My favorite artist isn’t just the kind of artist that’s a great storyteller. It’s gotta be a good story, but it’s also got to have that really good artistic thing that's good enough to be a cover. You can do interesting things all over the place instead of just telling stories.

There’s a bunch of artists that are mainly just there to tell the story. They’re not flashy, they’re not over the top.

On Burning Old Art:

I don’t do that anymore. That was really Derek and I having a burn party. I burned 10 pages. 10 terrible pages that I just wanted to get off the planet. It’s funny, I guess I shouldn’t have shared it. It’s fine to do it, just don’t share it. I got called the worst names and people told me I should have given it to charity. Why would I give shitty art to charity? That’s kind of a dick move right there. ‘You won’t make any money off this, but here you go.’

If I wanted charity to make money, I’d send them the good things I’ve done. Which I have! Do I need to go out and shout 'here are the good things I’ve done and here are the burned things I’ve done?'

TOP 5 ALBUMS

Occasionally I write things for SLUG Magazine. I don't do a lot of work for them, but a few times a year I'll put together a long-ish piece about something or someone that's important to Salt Lake City.

That means that I'm a contributor and my name and choices get included in the magazine's annual year-end Top 5. It's not as cool as my own Top 5 Anythings list that I do over here, but it's pretty cool. The SLUG list is mostly centered on music or comedy. Albums really.

I'm really bad at keeping up on new music (as documented many times on this site), but after Esther asked me to write up my list, I tried really hard. I spent the next few weeks listening only to records that came out this year and avoided depending too much on old stand-by's.

I had to send my list in on October 28. There were still two months of new releases to come! How dare Esther Merono try to get things in a timely fashion to have ready at the beginning of December! How dare she, I say!

But really, with over 50 contributors to corral, it's totally understandable that she'd want my list that early. It's also 100% my fault that I spent way more time perfecting my 90's punk and Ludacris guest-spot playlists than listening to new stuff.

This is what it looked like when I sent it to her.

1) Nine Inch Nails - Hesitation Marks
2) Yeah, Yeah, Yeah's - Mosquito
3) The Bronx - IV
4) Ghostface Killah - 12 Reasons to Die
5) Low - The Invisible Way

I still stand by a few of those. Nine Inch Nails and Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs are safe. I question my own judgement on the other three. I haven't listened to the Ghostface Killah record a single time since I added it to the list- the same goes for Low. I think that means they should both be taken off.

I have, however, listened to Pure Heroine by Lorde half a dozen times since then. What that says about me, I'm not entirely sure. It's a good album. Now, anyway. In three years I might think differently.

This is all a pretty roundabout way of saying that I have no idea what the best 5 albums that came out this year should be.

Do you?

What were your favorite records of 2013? Tell me what I should be listening to.

CRAFT LAKE CITY - POSTGAME

Salt Lake, I love you.

Craft Lake City was this past weekend and it was awesome. Long hours and a lot of work went into it, but it was totally worth it. I set up shop around 1 pm on Friday and when the doors finally opened a few hours later, Gallivan Center was packed for the rest of the night. Saturday was no different, just a lot longer and a lot hotter.

Old News Records is kind of a boutique thing and has never been very serious for me, but it's always been fun to do. I put out a couple of CD's right before CD's became a thing that nobody actually wanted. It's been pretty quiet since then.

Last year, when I published a zine called Filler, my friend Mike gave me an excerpt from a novel he'd been working on called Tulip. We talked a little bit about it, but not much. A few months later when we were doing the Top 5, he mentioned it was hard for a first-time writer to gain any sort of traction. I told him I'd be applying for Craft Lake City, and if I got in I'd just turn ONR into a publishing company and put it out for him.

Cut to May when they announced the vendors for the 2013 festival, I was sitting on my couch and got the news via Twitter that Old News Records was in. I sent a text to Mike and told him to get it ready because we were doing it. He was nervous and excited all at once. I threw together some ideas for other projects, like another zine and a few mini-comics, but Mike's book was the main thing I wanted to get finished. Everything else could be done or not and I wouldn't really care, but Tulip needed to be ready.

It was. And it looks fantastic.

Huge thanks to Mike Farfel for writing a great book and letting me be a part of it. Tulip is truly a fun read and I'm honored to be a part of something like this. And at some point this week I'll have it available in the Old News Records shop.

And now, everyone else that helped make Craft Lake City as amazing as it was:

First and foremost, Angela Brown and Karamea Puriri for working long hours and putting together a great event. To the dedicated SLUG staff who was there early every morning to late into the night - Alexander Ortega, Esther Merono, Nate Ryan and the rest.

The the amazing people at Molding Box - Ian, Matt & Lauren - for helping me get everything printed in time.

Everyone that had any part of making Filler what it was - Makenna, Chris, Candace, Danielle, Danny, John, The Big Dogg and the duck that I named Alan just now. Austin for bringing me a sandwich from Bud's, my parents for bringing me cookies, chips and some Arnold Palmer's and then letting me steal their patio umbrella all day Saturday. Also, thanks to all the dudes that turned my table into a hardcore hangout for a few hours both days and made it look like something really cool was going on so more people wandered over.

Thanks to the rest of the people in my quiet, shady area, too - Robin Banks (Design Flaw!), Audrey Patten (Midwest Meets West) and her trusty sidekick Casey, Carrie Wakefield and her Metalhead Jewelry Design. We partied all weekend and it was awesome.

I also want to say thanks to everyone that came by my table and picked something up or even just stopped to check things out (even if you were only admiring my early-70's NBA team tablecloth that I stole from Scott Whittaker). You're all fantastic and I wouldn't have had as much fun without you.

It was a hell of a weekend that made it incredibly hard to come back and sit in an office all day on Monday. I just want to be able to do things like CLC and make enough money to live off of. Is that too much to ask?

Luckily for me, Salt Lake Comic Con is only a month away.

Thanks again, everyone. I really mean it.

RYAN OTTLEY: DRAW LIFE

I like Ryan Ottley. He's an awesome dude and a really great artist. I might have a slightly biased opinion, because INVINCIBLE is a great comic and one that I love reading. When Esther (SLUG Mag managing editor) gave me a list of options to interview about SL Comic Con and he was on it, I didn't even let her finish the list.

He and I met up at the Draw Night thing he does with his artist friends, sat outside and chatted for a bit. It was a good time and we talked about a lot of stuff - including a good chunk that I couldn't even get close to fitting in to the space I had. Luckily for you, that's what the Interview Outtakes feature is for. I'll throw that up later this month, but until then, feast your eyes on Ryan Ottley's Draw Life.

SLUG Mag -- When Rob Liefeld, Jim Lee and Todd McFarlane (among others) founded Image Comics, they revolutionized the comic book industry. The artists were treated like—and acted like—rock stars everywhere they went. It was that attitude that put the creator-owned mindset of Image on equal footing with Marvel and DC.

Twenty years later, Image Comics is still a force led by some of the most famous creators working today. Its continued success is thanks, in large part, to books like Invincible—illustrated by local artist Ryan Ottley. Ottley may not have the bombastic, rock star personality of some of his Image peers, but he is every bit as talented. His line work is some of the cleanest and most detailed in the industry, and the level of gore he reaches at times is a stark contrast to the personality of the mild-mannered Utah resident.

Read the rest.

CRAFT LAKE CITY REDUX

Craft Lake City is less than two weeks away, and I'm in the process of getting everything ready for my table. It's two days this year, which will be fun.

Like usual, things that I had high hopes for early in the going didn't pan out as I'd hoped, but them's the breaks. I'll have another issue of my zine, Filler, and the Long Live Sloan t-shirts, but no comics.

My original plan was to write 4 mini-comics and have a few different friends draw them, then put them all together in a cool package. Didn't quite work out that way. I got two of the four written and none of the two were drawn. I can't be mad about it though (and I'm not) because drawing is way harder and more time-consuming than writing. All the artists have other stuff going on and they've got better things to do than draw fight scenes for free so I can sell something. Maybe I'll have them for next year, but I won't get my hopes up.

What I do have though, is the first Old News Records novel. My friend Mike wrote this really cool book called Tulip and he's letting me publish it. So, I'm taking ONR from one dying medium (cd's) to another. It's at the printer right now and I'm really excited about it.

Make sure you stop by the ONR/trevohale.com table sometime on August 9 or 10 and say hi. I'll be hanging out looking for some company.

Things might be kind of quiet around here until then. I need to get all my ducks in a row for the weekend, but there may be a stray post or two between now and then. You never know.

Also, if you feel like being a volunteer for the festival, I'm sure they'd love to have you. They need all the help they can get. Go here and sign up. Tell them I sent you.

INTERVIEW OUTTAKES - INSIGHT

Good news, guys! I'm starting a new irregular feature on this site - very similar to the My Friends Over You feature that barely ever gets used anymore. Exciting, right?

I've done a few really fun interviews within the past few months and recorded all of them. Mostly they've been for SLUG Magazine stories, and while I really liked how they turned out, there still wasn't enough room to fit everything in. No matter how many words I have to play with, it's never enough to get through everything we talk about during our conversation. I have to find a way to tighten everything up and sometimes the structure or focus of what the article ends up being about eliminates a huge chunk of the interview.

No matter how long we talk for, and no matter how long the piece is, the interviews still all get transcribed. I spend anywhere from half an hour to two or three typing out everything that was said and it seems like a shame to let some of that go to waste. That's where this new feature comes in.

Every once in a while, I'm going to take a portion of an interview and put it up here. I didn't do all that work for nothing, god damn it.

We'll start with the Insight piece. The actual article had almost nothing from Chubba, the drummer, but that's not because he didn't say anything. He talked a lot, but it was mostly during a portion where we discussed hardcore, straight edge, music and the state of all three back in the early 90's. There wasn't room for any of that stuff when the article started taking shape, though. It would have had to go in a much different direction and would have been hard to get back to the original focus.

But we still talked about some good stuff, so now, for your reading pleasure, INTERVIEW OUTTAKES episode 1, starring INSIGHT!

You can read the proper article at SlugMag.com, but here's the stuff from the cutting room floor.

Me: You guys were kind of the first straight edge band in Salt Lake. What was that like and what do you remember about it?

Jeremy Chatalain: I knew you were going to ask this question. I found straight edge accidentally. Andy, that was just here, he was an obsessive record collector like me. We would go to Raunch every week and buy first pressings of everything we could get. I met him at a skate shop and he asked me if I’d heard of all these bands like Justice League, Minor Threat, 7 Seconds. I went over to his house to borrow records and he drew big X’s on my hands. I was like ‘what is that?’ He just said ‘straight edge’. I said, ‘I don’t know what that is’ and he explained it to me and that was just who I was anyway. I was a skateboarder, I was Mormon growing up, and it fit my lifestyle 100%. I could get behind that. For me, straight edge was all about the music that came with it. The energy was totally addictive. One by one, as we put the band together, James and Doug, James you were into hardcore.

James Holder: Yeah, I was in to hardcore. It was more the skate rock stuff. I grew up in Heber, so Gentry (Densley) and I grew up together and he knew these guys. We were always listening to metal or a lot of skate rock stuff. Then I got in to straight edge.

Jeremy Chatalain: Mark and I had some conversations because we had been in bands before Insight, and that was kind of the thing that brought us together on the same plain. Then we were like, ‘this is what we want to do: thrashy hardcore, that’s fast and kind of metal.’ Then Mark felt like he had some things to say, and there was this platform, so not only was it about straight edge, but at the time all of us were vegetarian, there was anti-racism, everything that we thought were positive stances to take. Nobody around here was doing it and it wasn’t what it turned into eventually. The only people that were straight edge were people that we knew. When bands would come through town that were straight edge, we’d hang out with them and go skating or take them to raging waters. That was the extent of it. There wasn’t any tough mentality about it at all.

Me: There weren’t any other straight edge bands in Salt Lake at the time, right?

Jeremy Chatalain: Better Way, Gentry’s straight edge band, started pretty soon after.

Chubba: As much as straight edge it was the unity, the positive kind of thing. Everyone was friends. We played shows just about every weekend at Speedway or The Word. It was just a close community of friends.

Jeremy Chatalain: Insight shows in the late 80s were like kids from all of our high schools, sxe kids, hardcore kids, punk rockers, hippies and just a lot of energy. It started off where we’d play shows and you’d know everyone in the crowd. You’d play The Word and there’d be 35 people and you’d know all of them. Then suddenly new people that we didn’t know were showing up in Uniform Choice shirts, and more hardcore people popping out of the woodwork. Eventually we could pretty much fill up the Speedway.

Photo by Steve Midgley

Me: What have you noticed about the evolution of hardcore?

Jeremy Chatalain: Jamie and I played in other bands, but I did almost a complete 180 afterwards because I discovered Led Zeppelin. I feel like I was the same exact person, but my musical tastes just ballooned. The rest of these guys got into jazz, but I never really caught that bug. We all tried to do something different. I wasn’t involved in the scene too much after Iceburn. I had a serious thirst for music and that’s what I wanted to do—so much so that the bigger picture wasn’t really on my mind.

Chubba: Iceburn was kind of all over. We had quite the evolution and it still had a little bit of hardcore roots to it, a little bit metal, but the songs were more complicated. Once Jeremy and Doug moved on and James moved on, we kind of evolved through all these different genres but there was always a jazz influence and a classical influence. Gentry has a million ideas in his head always. There was a time when we were part of the scene, but there’d be maybe 10 people at the show.

Jeremy Chatalain: I feel like whenever I’d come home and go to an Iceburn show, it was like they’d kind of created their own scene. They were definitely a unique band.

Chubba: The hardcore scene for me kind of ended when everyone moved on and Iceburn slimmed down and went a different direction we kind of got out of the hardcore scene. We played a lot of different shows with different bands.

James Holder: With Insight we weren’t deliberately trying for it, we just played music and ended up as part of the scene. It was just part of the chemistry of it.

Jeremy Chatalain: More than any of the beliefs, I was into the music and I think these guys felt the same way. I think that’s why sometimes Insight was so intense. I also think that the flow and how things ended up – I think hardcore is a young man’s game. It takes youthful energy to have a scene and have these intense shows and I know they happen now. I work with kids that go to hardcore shows and go to house shows and do sing alongs. It happens, I know it, but it just seems the natural order of things for people to drop off and new people come up. When you’re young you can be so hyper focused on one thing and you have all this time for it and all this energy for it. At the time in 1988, I was all about hardcore. When you’re 17, 18 19 you follow this band and your belief system fits right in with theirs and suddenly they go a different direction, you’re like ‘you betrayed me.’ I’ve had these intense conversations with people over the years and they say things like, ‘I loved the first Jets To Brazil album, Orange Rhyming Dictionary, but what the fuck happened with your second record?’ And I would always have to remind them, ‘Do you realize how offensive that is?’ We’d just worked on that record for two years and if a band doesn’t evolve, they’re going to be bored shitless. If a band makes the same record over and over again they’re going to become bored and if someone is just a fan, but doesn’t play music, it’s really difficult to explain that to them.

HANDSOME

A few months ago, I sat down with the dudes from Insight to talk to them about a reunion show they were playing. We talked mostly about hardcore, reunions and stuff like that and a lot of the best stuff made its way in to the article I wrote about them.

As the interview was winding down and we had covered all the questions I'd planned, we continued talking. Mostly it was just bullshitting about one thing or another and basically me listening in as they reminisced about old tours. I didn't think we'd be talking about anything worthwhile, so I turned off the recorder.

That was a stupid thing to do.

I've never had any formal journalism training, so I continue to sort of make it up and learn as I go, so I'm still not sure what the proper protocol is when you're done asking 'official' questions but still talking. I figured I'd be out of there in a matter of minutes. Well, we talked for about 15 more minutes because I asked Jeremy about one of his other long-dead projects, Handsome.

Jeremy told me he was working on obtaining the rights to the one record they put out so he could find someone to reissue it on vinyl, but was having a hard time getting through to anyone at Sony.

Looks like he made it work, because last week 6131 records announced that they're releasing it this September.

Even though I have no use for vinyl, this is still pretty cool and I'll probably pick one up. I love this band.

INSIGHT

If you don't know much about the early days of the Salt Lake City Hardcore scene, this probably won't interest you very much, but you should read it anyway.

I wrote it for SLUG Magazine and I'm really happy with how it turned out. A lot of fun to write.

SLUG Magazine -- It’s a rainy Sunday afternoon, and Jeremy Chatelain, Chad “Chubba” Smith and James Holder are sitting around a table, drinking coffee and swapping stories. The three of them are in full youth-revival mode, trying to remember details of things that happened nearly a quarter of a century ago.

“I Googled ‘Insight’ and ‘straight edge’ the other day,” says Chatelain. “There’s some old hardcore fanzine entry that comes up called ‘straight edgers are dicks.’ It goes on to list all these bands and the reasons why they’re dicks––and we’re on there.”

Read the rest at SlugMag.com

FEEDING THE ART MONSTER

A few months ago, SLUG Magazine called me up to pitch a story idea. They wanted to do a feature on Anthony Lucero. The editor that called me, Esther, started telling me all about him, his art and the band that he played in, Gaza. I heard her out, then when she was done, and I had accepted the assignment, I let it slip that I actually knew Anthony already and was excited to be writing a story about him.

He and I go back a ways. We were never great friends, but we always got along really well, had a lot of mutual friends and almost played in a band together more than once. His old band Compilate played shows with Cherem and Tamerlane a whole bunch of times and they were really good.

He and I met up one afternoon and talked for nearly an hour about all kinds of things. He's an awesome guy and great artist and I was glad I got the chance to write about him.

Head over to the SLUG Magazine website to read the whole thing, or pick up an actual physical copy when you're out and about. February is a short month, so it'll only be on the stands for about another week and a half. Make sure you grab one. Anthony drew the cover art too, and it looks fantastic.

SLUG Magazine -- When the last bell rang at Valley Christian School in Kearns, 8-year-old Anthony Lucero gathered his things just like the rest of the students. Only instead of heading for the door to be free until the next morning, Lucero headed to another part of the building. 

Valley Christian School was a K-12 institution with around 60 students total. Lucero’s mom was an English teacher for the junior high– and high school–age kids, and was often stuck after hours grading papers and finalizing lesson plans—which meant that he would be stuck there, too. Lucero and his friend Garritt Tucker, whose mom was also a teacher at the school, needed a way to pass the time each day. The two of them would unfold sheets of computer paper—the kind that was attached together with feed strips down each side—lay them out and just draw. 

“We’d have contests to draw sharks and other creatures and just make them as long as we could,” says Lucero. “Every kid gets showered with praise for whatever they do, but that’s the earliest encouragement that I can remember.”

Read the rest of the article at SLUG

THE GHOSTS OF HARDCORE PAST

I wrote this for SLUG MAGAZINE this month. Head over to the website to read the whole thing, or better yet, grab an issue while you're out and about. It's free. You can't beat that price.

They also reviewed my zine FILLER. They point out the obvious shortcomings, like Candace Jean's page being too light and Candace Christensen's website being out-of-date, but other than that, it's a pretty good review.

The too light page from Candace Jean looked okay in the original, but lost a lot once it was reproduced. I was pretty bummed, but it was also midnight the night before Craft Lake City and everything was already printed. Candace Christensen's website went offline when Apple suspended the me.com sites and was supposed to be back up within the first few weeks of getting it published. Didn't quite work out that way, but oh well. I'm learning as I go.

Anyway, on to the feature story.

SLUG Magazine -- In 2004, hardcore blew up. Killswitch Engage released what would eventually become a gold record, Hatebreed was nominated for a Grammy and everything changed—again.

Before that, hardcore and metal were the genres of the underground and the bands were kind of like members of a secret society. They weren’t afforded any mainstream recognition, and if you met someone who had also heard of an obscure start-up band like Terror, Every Time I Die or Bleeding Through, you immediately knew you shared a bond. Then, all of a sudden, there were TV shows like “Battle for Ozzfest” and Jamey Jasta was the new host of a revived Headbanger’s Ball.

Local hardcore shows, which had been topping out at 100 people on a good night, were suddenly drawing upward of 400-500 people. Things were good again for Salt Lake City hardcore, the way they hadn’t been since the heyday when Clear and Triphammer were playing shows in the late ’90s. Nationally recognized bands were coming through town all the time and there were so many shows that local openers were starting to get the opportunity to play in front of crowds they’d never seen before...

Read the rest at the SLUG website

Tamerlane - 2008

CRAFT LAKE CITY

Hi.

It's been a minute, hasn't it?

Sorry about that, but I've been a little busy over here. I went to Mexico for a bit (for which I'll share some pictures with you next week) at the end of June and I've been too busy putting things together for real, physical consumption since then.

Why, you ask?

Well because it's Craft Lake City this weekend.

Remember back in January when I wrote out a list of goals for 2012? One of those goals was to get in to Craft Lake City with some comics and zines that I was going to make this year. Well, I got in. I have a trevorhale.com table all squared away and now I'm on a mad dash to finish everything in time to actually have stuff to put on said table.

The comics turned out to be a lot more work than we anticipated and we're running a little behind on the full product. We've pushed the release date to Spring 2013, but they are in the works. Gardner and I are pretty far along with our space adventure, MISSION, but didn't want to rush it just for the sake of having it. So instead, we put together a little mini-comic that acts as kind of a teaser-trailer to the real thing. We'll have it at the table and just give it away to anyone that wants one. All that's left to do is fold about 200 of them between tonight and Saturday. Gardner also built some custom frames that he was going to use to hold the pages at our comic show last month (you know, the one that didn't happen because we were in over our head making these in the first place), so he'll have a few of those with him at the table, too.

I couldn't get GRUDGE CITY to work the way I wanted. It's back on the drawing board and will hopefully be ready for our spring 2013 goal. That's probably a relief for Candace (http://www.candacejean.com) because she's probably stressed out enough worrying about her own booth. It's one less thing she has to worry about this week—but I'm still going to make sure she gets it done by next year.

I've also added another book to the pile since we've got some more lead time. My good friend Sias and I will be putting together a weird sci-fi/horror hybrid, too. He's getting married in a few weeks, so once the craziness of that is behind him, we'll get to work.

The zine is a little trickier. I think I can have it done, but I'm still working away trying to get it all put together. I think I have enough content, but might not. This one will come down to the wire, too.

I'll still have a few of the LONG LIVE SLOAN shirts to sell and I had some buttons made up just for fun. If anyone wants to wear around a button of little kid me standing next to Thurl Bailey, you know where to come.

I'm keeping everything out of sight until the show (except for maybe a teaser or two on Instagram or Twitter) but next week I'll post everything I had and if you live out of state and want something, well, we can work something out.

But you should all come down to the Gallivan Center this Saturday, August 11 from noon to ten pm. I'll be there all day hanging out and slinging goods.

Hope to see you then.