While in Los Angeles last week…i found myself at some strange soiree…David Lynch red rich ghost warm lights…soft slow dancing shadows…and i heard music coming from inside the house…i followed the tiny sound…like i was again walking through the hall of my Great Grandma Henning’s House towards the record playing room…a crackling Sears and Roebuck AM/FM radio…on a grey tornado warning Saturday…dog asleep on it’s blanket…Grandpa Henning long gone and dead…his black leather lazy boy recliner…cracked, worn and sorrowful…the shades in the window dusty, with a dead little fly in the corner of the window sill…the smell of glass green coca cola bottles…and motor oil…old photographs from the Korean war…black slush ice…an accident…a car gone off the bridge after a terrible collision…a stranger…a young man dead…another scarred for life…and the sad bars sweeping up at closing time far away down the street…walking me now through the ghost hall…towards the door…Johnny Cash…Elvis Presley…Dick Curless at the truck driving gear jammer’s wheeling jamboree…Porter Wagoner…Patsy Cline…The Carter Family…some strange hurt scarecrow calling my name…Jesus bleeding in the guest bedroom..this strange earthly alcohol driven sad soul swollen music with a hair raising madness…like snakes drinking from your parlor…i give you RT n’ the 44s*

Location El Sereno, CA Gender Plural (mixed) Personal information Michael “Swimmy” Webb- Washboard/Vocals RT Valine- Wood n’ Wire/Vocals Brendan Willard- BanjoBass/Vocals

rtnthe44s.com

it seems that no matter how much i plan a trip
or play it loose from the hip, not by the book but play it by ear…something always gets swirlish…as in this trip.

Just prior to my flight, i had gone to great lengths, to cut my hair, shave, shower and scrub my fracas into a clean well groomed gent and even that backfired.  I had actually over groomed and cleaned myself so fair that when my own Mother stood next to me, she told me that i stank.  Yes…that i stank.
My natural scent unlike other brutes, is one of denim, leather, tobacco, pilsner and raja roses…and now i reeked of a brand new xerox machine…and when my little dog came to me for a squeeze and a back scratchin’…she growled at me and pee peed on mah boot.  So now i am back to my old way, my old ethic, my authentic self, my BRMC don’t shower on tour (just kidding) self and once again the phone is ringing off it’s imaginary hook for me to endorse their products.

SHIT KICKER BOOTS R US
GRAVEYARD SOIL INC.
BOB’S LOW PRICE LIQUOR
THEM JEANS IS FUCKUN USED JEANS, U.S.A.
and other assorted high volume dirt merchant traders…oh and
SUFI JOE’S DEAD ROSES SHOPPE, U.K.

What some people don’t realize is that each state has it’s own speed and i’m not speaking in drug tongue…but rather city people M.P.H.
and in the midwest, a sun up can last for hours…in Los Angeles, the sun goes up and the people charge out like race horses…and within a few hours, the sun has gone down and somebody has overdosed, somebody has sold a mansion, somebody has fucked the sweet leaf sour, while in the meantime back in the midwest…the sun is almost fully up and a donkey is still trying to remember if he is a donkey or an ass.

During the flight to L.A. some bozo to my left is giving a blowjob to a hotdog he brought in a zip lock bag and the fellow to my right is reading a book on the history of disasters…and they won’t take my cash for booze because now american currency is considered suspicious activity…so i just sit there…calm, cool, eyes bright and white, white knuckled, with a very white smile that might give off the impression that i am in fact the cheshire cat…if he was a fuckun’ TWEEKER!

I get off the plane in L.A.  like a bat out of jail and hit the bar.  I meet an old couple from Jazz city, we share some niceties and a few bargain basement drinks at 13 dollars a pop…pabst…the beer of royalty and street goofs.  It’s now 3:31 pm and i race for the exit…My man Robert Been is cool as ever and we take off out of there at 3:33.  No Doy!
Robert isn’t fond of my pallor.

At the airport i slammed the rest of a very large can of beer and put it in my bag and forgot to throw it away…i lugged it onto the screening belt and when i used the restroom on the way towards my flight…i went in my bag and found it…so much for the TSA.

Another battle won in my BRMC boots ( Thank You R.L.B.)
The new album will be out when it is finished and only then…more than well worth the wait.

Big Chief Thanx to the City of Lost Angels and all you mad beautiful sorts that make it shine like it does…
signed
the raja rose
the jack legged sufi
the swirling dervish
iAN reporting here @BRMC headquarters…erm…bootcamp/ G force training facility ***333

Forgiving yourself, your past mended and laid to Rest in order to open a door of light on a new day while not thinking about the past, working inside of Today so that Tomorrow, should it arrive, may be just as kind as today.
There is nothing easy about coming to terms with the past and especially if it is one you have no desire to ever relive again…sick nights of shady company, situations sharper than knives held by crazy eyes, hospitals, arguments, days burning into weeks, burning into months, sick as shit with melted mind, half standing between the black light of nowhere and no place, a purgatorio alleyway of obituaries, mangled dreams and charred debris…and it takes a long, long time to stop doing it wrong, it takes a long time to change your thinking, it takes a long time to learn how to say No, it takes courage just to begin to be good to yourself for a change…instead of sabotaging yourself at every turn.
From Other Worlds and into the Buzz Factory and onto Anesthesia, down into oblivion to arrive inside of a winding sheet…now boxed up for the funeral. Tomorrow is a new day and night…but we’re gonna have to make Today
count
first*

Be your own best friend
not your worst enemy*
Merci*
iAN

Heartfelt thanx to Mr. R.L.B. & Mr. Mark Lanegan for their time, hospitality, generosity and Music* bless yer Hearts*

John Trudell (born February 15, 1946) is a Native American-Mexican author, poet, actor, musician, and former political activist. He was the spokesperson for the United Indians of All Tribes’ takeover of Alcatraz beginning in 1969, broadcasting as Radio Free Alcatraz. During most of the 1970s, he served as the chairman of the American Indian Movement, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

After his pregnant wife, three children and mother-in-law were killed in 1979 in a fire at the home of his parents-in-law on the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes Duck Valley Indian Reservation in Nevada, Trudell turned to writing, music and film as a second career. He acted in three films in the 1990s. The documentary Trudell (2005) was made about him and his life as an activist and artist.

The Cult’s Mr. IAN ASTBURY has for many years been one of my favorite teachers, wise men, thinkers, writers, philosophers, singers and all out agent of generosity.  I think that Mr. Astbury and his views and vision are more poignant and important Today than ever before.  Cheers to Pa Wolfchild*

BIG CHIEF THANX TO Mr. Matthew Perpetua / Rolling Stone Magazine

The Cult are set to release Choice of Weapon, their ninth studio album, on May 22nd. The record is their first full-length work in five years, though the band has kept active by putting out “capsules” of new songs and live recordings in recent years. Co-produced by Chris Goss (Queens of the Stone Age, U.N.K.L.E.) and longtime collaborator Bob Rock (Metallica, Aerosmith), Choice of Weapon was made in several studios, including the band’s own Witch Mountain as well as spots in New York City, Los Angeles and the California desert. (You can preview “Lucifer,” a highlight from Choice of Weapon, above.) Rolling Stone caught up with frontman Ian Astbury to talk about his inspiration for the new album, which addresses the many things he believes are poisoning contemporary culture.

Are you still working on this new record? I know it has a release date, but I got the impression that you were still tinkering with it.
Let’s put it this way – the paint’s still wet. We’re breaking it to you guys first. I think we missed our initial release date, partially due to the way that we ended up finishing the record. We began with Chris Goss, who is a very close friend and somebody I’ve been friends with for over 20 years. And we always talked about doing a Cult record together. Chris did all the refinement, helping us find the material, craft it, and I think we’ve been at it for quite a while. It just became attrition. Everyone was getting kind of exhausted. Kind of wearing each other out in the studio.

When did you start the process of making the album? It’s been about five years since your previous record.
You know, there’s no really clear beginning or end date, really, with the creative process. I think it’s ongoing. It’s almost like you’re always working with different ingredients, different influences. Things can change. I mean, I personally like to take things right up to the wire, so that things are as relevant and as fresh as they can be. Like, I’m still changing some song titles right now, based upon different vibrations I’m picking up on, either from myself or within my group or from an outside source.

The cover for Choice of Weapon appears to be an image of a shaman or something. What does the cover mean to you?

This image has been with me for many years, since I was about 11 years old. I grew up in Hamilton, Ontario. I immigrated there when I was a kid. I was exposed to Native American culture very early on. And that kind of peaked my interest in indigenous cultures. It had a quite profound effect on me. With this particular image, it had been hovering around me for quite a while. And it’s almost like I had to manifest this image within myself. I wanted to have an image that in some way reflected the sentiment of not only the record, of the deepest sentiment of the record, but also the sentiment of what’s going on in society. I mean, the fact that the shaman figure has a veiled face, there’s a face mask pulled over, it’s almost reminiscent of images we’ve seen from Libya and Egypt and also from things like the Occupy movement or the riots we had in the U.K.

The title of the record reflects the fact that here we are, we have a choice to make right now. We can choose different modalities. We can either choose literal weapons, which, many people have picked up weapons in Libya, Egypt, Syria. Or picking up weapons and overtaking systems, physically, by force. In a more metaphorical sense, a weapon can be a camera, a weapon can be a pen, a weapon can be a statement, a verbal statement, a weapon can be an article of clothing. Tantric weapons are symbols they use in tantric rituals, like the dorje, which is an object that the shamanic figure is actually holding. The dorje being representative of a thunderbolt enlightenment, that moment of awakening, where you go, “Aha!”

Time magazine said this year the Person of the Year was the demonstrator, the image of the woman with the veil. So this is an icon that we’re seeing more and more in our culture. It’s almost like people don’t want to come out and show their faces and say something. Because they’re almost afraid of . . . I don’t know. There’s a lot of intellectual bullying going on. People are very quick to jump on someone if they say something that’s maybe different. They’re certainly not part of the status quo, of a moving force. Everyone’s kind of pointing at it, but nobody’s really saying it, what really needs to be said. So in some ways, this shamanic figure, the look in the eyes is almost like a wild animal, which I connect to nature.

So what needs to be said?
I think what needs to be said is that we have to start looking inward. Our spiritual lives are almost bankrupt. The material systems are not going to fix where we are. Moving the furniture around, metaphorically moving the furniture around – getting a new president, or putting a new, fresh coat of paint on something – isn’t necessarily going to change the root causes. We’re human beings, we’re organic, we’re dependent upon the environment, we’re dependent upon this living planet. It’s a fact. And it’s a fact that we cannot fight. But all our fighting is more about semantics, political systems, languages, structures, charts, graphs. It’s almost like we want to be right, but we don’t want to win.

I saw this wonderful interview with Karl Lagerfeld and he was talking on Charlie Rose, and Charlie Rose says to him, “So what do you do, you’re a fashion designer. So what is that?” And he said, “Well, my job isn’t to so much determine what society is. My job is to kind of reflect it.” And I really identified with that. You know, the idea of reflecting what we see and feel. I don’t think I’m in a position, as an artist, to tell people how they should behave. But I’m certainly in a position to reflect what I feel and what I see. I think that’s one of the things right now, that a lot of artists are maybe scared to say how they really feel.

I’ve noticed that some young bands can be very reticent to talk openly about what they are saying in their music.
I think everyone’s afraid of maybe upsetting someone at Pitchfork Media, getting that hate. This is the interesting thing, because with the internet and social networks, blogging, everyone has an opinion. But what we don’t see, and what we don’t get, is their credentials. Now I think if people were fair, when they make their opinion, they have to make their credentials available. If you’re critiquing something, if you’re a critic, you have to make your credentials available.

What do you mean by credentials?
Your life experiences. Not your education, not just like, “I went to this college or traveled.” What have you experienced? What were the major events of your life that give you this kind of unique perspective? Give us some insight into who is sharing this critique with us. It’d be more likely to see an authenticity in that critique.

For example, the Lou Reed-Metallica record, that was something I’ve argued with many people about. You know, everyone’s saying “Oh, it’s disgusting, it’s an abomination.” You know the amount of hate they got for that record. Hate! I think Pitchfork gave it like 1, or 0. Lou Reed, he’s a 67-year-old man. His body of work is stellar, he is one of our greatest laureates. If you know anything about Lou Reed, he’s not well right now. He’s deteriorating, his body’s sick, he’s getting frail and fragile. He’s chosen Metallica to be his muscle, to be his armor, so he can come out one more time and make a statement of what’s happening in his internal life, and he’s using this Weimar Republic play, Lulu, to put himself over. If you actually listen to the record, there’s some phenomenal moments on it, by anybody’s standards. “Junior Dad,” for example, I think is a fucking brilliant piece of music.

Again, I go back to this shamanic figure, because in many ways he represents an energy that hasn’t been nurtured. He’s appearing on the culture, and he’s looking at us. And he’s offering us a choice. We take the knife, we take the dorje. And if we take the knife, we will probably slit our own throats with it. And we’re doing it constantly. Look at the culture we live in. It’s vulgar. We celebrate narrow concerns, we celebrate the veneer. Within the culture, I am seeing that this isn’t just me, I’m seeing it represented from other artists. Like, for example, Grinderman. They have a wolf on their cover. I think Nick Cave is intimating a certain energy. Bands like Wolves in the Throne Room, even bands like Salem. The whole kind of witch house and drag scene, like Balam Acab, White Ring – the noise that they’re making isn’t a cute noise. Meanwhile, we’re celebrating all the veneer pop acts, and [people are] like, “Oh wow, they’re edgy,” but really it’s veneer. It’s a leather jacket, it’s a crazy hairdo, it’s a wacky moment.

Even Feist’s Metals record intimates what I’m talking about, and PJ Harvey’s record. I think they intimate something not quite right in the zeitgeist, and it’s not in a material place, it’s in a spiritual place. And the word spiritual has almost become almost tired. You think Barnes and Noble, books on the Dalai Lama and crystals. It’s become hokey. And I think that that again is a smear campaign from those who want to perpetuate this ego-driven, “I am right, I am right, I’m first, I’m right, look at me, here I am, I know everything, I’ve got all the knowledge, I know everything about krautrock, I know everything about obscure art forms, it’s me, I’m the one, put me on, flog me, here I am.” We’re lost.

Cause it’s the singers and the guitar pickers and all around music makers

that help us make it through this little life of ours…thru the days…the thick and the fuckun’ thin…

They help us Move Mountains, mend our hearts, and restore our faith and protect us from thrown stones
and from the fuckun’ fray…

Sometimes the answers come in the shape of a question…and so it is.

Anybody can sing
but not every singer has something worth while to relay…
Not every battle is just…and like some singers…they come in vain doses…

Not mine…i choose my battles and my singers wisely…

i shield myself and by doing so…protect the singer inside
that bleeds the song
of my

fucked Up

Crazy
Heart*

KICK AGAINST THE PRICKS*

Last Election i predicted who would win.
I also predicted more of the same.
There were no lesser of two evils so i did not vote, I just predicted the winner.
This election is not a lesser of two evils
it is Good v.s. 4 evils
it’s cut and dry
a no brainer
you should be big enough now to know the difference between
a glass of ice water and four dixie cups of poison
you should be big enough now to know the difference between a hundred dollar bill
and a square of bog roll
This is the last chance boat in the storm
you had better get ON board

I don’t wanna say i told you so….Again.

*The view and opinion i express is in no way associated or affiliated with BRMC
i just want to stand my ground because i love people and want the best for us ALL.

We had better get it right this time…or like Pilate i will wash my hands, because when the people get it wrong
those who did not get it wrong, still suffer what ignorance has selected.*

The tattoo on my chest reads “the new seers” not “stupid dickhead”. Cheers*

http://youtu.be/bljZvRlySjk

This is the new law that is trying to be passed through congress right now…

It is big brother x1000.

Scary shit…
R.L.B.

Nick Cave and Warren Ellis have written the score for a documentary exploring the trial of the West Memphis Three, three men found guilty of murdering three 8 year old children in 1994. After 18 years in prison, the men were freed last year. The documentary charts the campaign to release the three men and points the finger a little closer to home, to one of the children’s stepfathers. The film is premiering at The Sundance Film Festival and is released later this year. Watch the trailer below.

Thanx to PSYCH

America’s own Benji Franklin once said that fish and family company stink after 3 days…well he also had buried bodies under his crib, fucked around a lot with lightning and kites, he wrote some books about some shit and had the worst skull since the the crypt keeper….and i tell you that he is wrong about the company of family….some family you can’t get too ’nuff of…

Check out my cousin Kurt and the band he is IN

Overcasters

they’re SHIT HOT MAN.

Genre
Post Space Blues Noise Pop
Members
Kurt Ottaway

Erin Tidwell

John Nichols

Todd Spriggs

Record label
Weather Center Sensory Media
About
Curses//Prayers
Description
Music to get bitten to.
Biography
Post-Space Blues-Noise Pop
Overcasters had to have written a lot of its music on rainy days and in the gloom of winter. But that’s what you do when you’re in a band in a land with over three hundred days of sunshine a year. You grasp around you at whatever is outside the mundane of everyday existence and if that means working under the cloak of clouds and cold weather, so be it. However, this group isn’t a bunch of mope-rockers who came late to the Manchester scene plunder party only to shy away from the precipice of Ian Curtis’ tortured psyche on the way to the dance club. The melancholy you’ll hear in the music isn’t born of anguish and despair. Rather, it is the expression of a preference for deep emotional experiences even if they leave you shaken to the core. Beyond the indigo atmospherics, Overcasters are a rock and roll band. Its defiant spirit and sonic exuberance can be heard across the entirety of its latest album, The Whole Sea is Raging. At turns electrifying, hypnotic and transporting, that record is a great argument for why guitar-based rock isn’t dead. Not when it possesses the power to inspire by inviting you into a world more exciting than your everyday life. Not when it is so seething with vitality it brings a quaver to singer Kurt Ottaway’s voice. Overcasters make triumphant music for an era when many people feel like the downtrodden underdog and we’re all the better for it. – Tom Murphy

Current Location
Denver
Artists we also like
Black Angels, Echo and the Bunnymen, Ride, Catherine Wheel, The Soft Moon, Moon Duo, The Raveonettes, The Dead Weather, Black rebel Motorcycle Club, 13th Floor Elevators,
Influences
Motorcycles,
Coffee,
Guitars,
Band interests
Gear,Guitars, Motorcycles,Noise
Website

http://www.overcasters.com

http://www.myspace.com/theovercasters

http://www.reverbnation.com/overcasters

Press contact
overcasters@gmail.com