BRIAN WALSBY/MELVINS T-SHIRTS ARE READY TO ORDER!

Up now at the Bifocal Media site. Two hundred of these. Available in small, medium, large and xtra large. Place your order today!

here again, is the link:

http://www.bifocalmedia.com/index.php

MANCHILD 5 PARTY AT KINGS IN RALEIGH JANUARY 8TH!

Yes, you have heard it first. There will be food, books and bands.

The bands will be THE KICK ASS and (you guessed it) DOUBLE NEGATIVE.

I will have more concrete details in a few days, but did I tell you all that I am a brand new father? Yes I am.




This here is Sean Willow Pierce Walsby. I just call her Willow. She is a week old and boy are we tired.

NEW BRIAN WALSBY/MELVINS T-SHIRT COMING SOON.

STOLEN FROM THE MELVINS FANSITE MESSAGE BOARD COURTESY OF CHARLES:

Not sure if anyone here gives a rat turd or not but everyones favorite rock art dude (Brian Walsby) is doing a series of limited (300 of each) band shirts. They're all legit and the bands all get a chunk of the booty. It may be of no surprise that the first one is for the Melvins. In true Walsby fashion, he's already posted the unfinished design on his blog for the Melvins shirt. It's a parody of Queen's "News of the World" album art and it's pretty bad ass. Make that 299 shirts up for grabs as I'll be grabbing one of them for myself. MANCHILD 5 comes out January 25. More soon.

Yes, this is true. the link will go up soon at the Bifocal Media site. First come, first serve. There will be some other t-shirts in the future too, and you can probably already guess what a few of them are..in the meantime, here is the link to Bifocal Media:

http://www.bifocalmedia.com/

BLACK FLAG CHANGED MY LIFE.

HERE IT IS, THAT PHOTO! TAKEN BY THE INFAMOUS GLEN E. FRIEDMAN.


Black Flag changed my life. And yours too, I bet


From the start of me hearing about punk rock, they seemed to be it. I bought Damaged at the start of 1982 and was so riveted by the first side that I didn’t even get to the second side until a week later. The second side was even better. That record seemed to articulate everything I was feeling, and to some extent, it still does. It is a pretty timeless recording by a timeless band.



I grew up a couple of hours away from the epicenter of all of this raging stuff in Ventura County. A few months later that same year there was some sort of write up on Black Flag in the Los Angeles Times, the big paper across all five counties in Southern California. There was this picture of them that I couldn’t get out of my mind. All five of the then existing members seemed like distinct and separate individuals, all unique characters thrown together to form a tight five fingered fist that continually smashed your face in with its presence. I didn’t know much but I soon figured that theirs was a presence to be reckoned with and twenty five or whatever years later they still are. I reckon that no one has come close. Even to this day.



I admit I was duped momentarily about punk rock. I thought that there were rules. I didn’t realize that getting the music was enough, or that enjoying this music that seemed to come from another planet was all you needed to participate. I didn’t have a uniform and didn’t see the point in having one. I wasn’t tough; I was just a dork who didn’t fit in. These five men seemed to celebrate not fitting in just by their existence and the strength of their music. They also shattered my illusions of punk rock: You didn’t have to fit in, you didn’t have to adhere to a uniform, you just had to “get it”. Back then, getting it in itself was like going through a portal. Not a lot of people did and those who did go through seemed to be connected to each other somehow. It was all so small. But with time, all legends seem to grow and take on a separate life of their own.



That picture:



The first thing that seemed to stand out to me big time was Dez Cadena. Instead of some dude with a Mohawk or Sid Vicious haircut, here is this dude in a leather jacket that basically looks like Jesus: Long hair and a beard. Was this allowed? I guess it was. In fact, Greg Ginn and Chuck Biscuits also looked pretty..well, normal. Chuck Dukowski was bald. Henry Rollins was sort of off in a corner and looked like someone you didn’t really want to mess with at all. It was just five guys but that pic spoke volumes to me.



At this time, the only thing that was ever recorded by the short lived Chuck Biscuits lineup (that was released mind you) was the live track on the first RAT MUSIC FOR RAT PEOPLE record called “Scream”. I listened to that song over and over, its slow trudge like screaming two guitar squall paved the way for Henry to more or less howl like an animal in pain throughout. There didn’t even seem to be a lyrical idea to get behind, it was just one long (well four minutes) tortured dirge that made most people cringe and you know what, I think it still would. The feeling of the song seemed to be universal: pent up feelings followed by cathartic release. What was there not to love?



Since then, I bought every single thing that this band released. I loved just about all of what was released..even towards the end. I loved the previous three singers, I thought they were all distinct and great. I loved Side Two of “My War” and think that you could almost write a book about the polarizing effect that record had when it came out. I loved the Bill Stevenson/Kira Roessler lineup of the band and the “Slip It In” record. Basically, I seemed to be able to continually “get it” when it came to Black Flag. And then they seemed to lose their grip a bit. So they broke up, and it was almost in time. After they broke up, the legend started and continued to grow and grow.



These days you have people from every walk of life professing their admiration of Black Flag and what these people did and how it continues to affect them. I don’t know any of those people involved, and it was much to my naiveté to realize that after having the experience of being a part of this comet, most of the people involved have scattered far and wide. Put in this way, there is no twenty year high school reunion for those who had served. It hardly matters. In their day, Black Flag changed the world. They certainly changed mine.



And yours too, I bet.

THE RECENT FRUITS OF MY LABORS.

There will be an announcement very soon about pre-orders for MANCHILD 5: RABID PACK WITH SIRENS HOWLING. There will also be a pre release show happenening in early January. I will have more details for that soon as well.

In the meantime, here is some recent artwork done as sort of a launchpoint for another project that I will announce as soon as the details are ironed out. It'll be good, though.

here you go:

the cover of MANCHILD number five.

NEW ARTWORK FOR SOON TO BE CLASSIC FLYER.

A RELEASE DATE...

Here is some actual real news straight from Charles Cardello on his Bifocal Media website:


Manchild 5
Hello Folks! First and foremost I'd like to let you know that Brian Walsby's MANCHILD 5 (book) will be out on Bifocal on January 25, 2011. This one documents the 1980s punk/ hardcore scene in Raleigh, NC. Along with tons of photos and Brian's infamous comic art; this one is also packed with interviews and stories about events that went down in Raleigh from 1982 up to around 1990. If you are/ were into bands like COC, Bad Brains, No Labels, Days of..., Honor Role, etc, then there's a story here for you. This is an amazing documentation of how the underground worked in the 1980s. Think bands, fans, punk houses, traveling, scene drama and DIY mentality at its pure, unadulterated peak. Remember life before the internet? Remember when you discovered punk rock? Remember when the only videos on MTV were from bands like Winger and the Bullet boys? If so, this book may be for you. If you don't, here's your opportunity to immerse yourself in another universe. This was our generation's version of a viable counterculture filled with timeless music and a tireless DIY ethic that lives to this day.

Lumberjack/ Mordam distribution went under in 2009. This cost us and a bunch of other great labels and artists a ton of time, money and grief. We were lucky enough to have been picked up by Redeye Distribution and they've done a wonderful job getting our goods to the people who want them. And the beat goes on...

posted by Cardello on Dec 31 1969, 04:12pm.


http://www.bifocalmedia.com/index.php

G-MART COMICS PODCAST IN CHICAGO!

When I was in Chicago I got a chance to run my mouth about myself in a very nice comic store and I think I rose to the occasion..here is the link:


http://www.g-martcomiccast.com/?p=53

a nice review of daydreamnation.....

heads will swell:

STILL SINGLE

September 13, 2010 Double Negative – Daydreamnation LP (Sorry State)


-/- is a Carolina hardcore supergroup, staffed by Raleigh scene vets from Erectus Monotone, Snakenation, Shiny Beast, Patty Duke Syndrome, Polvo, and a handful of others. While their earlier LP clung too hard to convention, and the follow-up single swung away at abstract aggression almost to a fault, they have hit the proverbial sweet spot some years into a career that’s running exactly the way they want it to. Daydreamnation (they have a hard-on for name appropriation) rips so goddamned hard I can barely believe it, the band having grown into a sound that blends Flag, C.O.C., and all manners of loud, heavy music both inside and out of fast-paced punk into the smoothie of death, made of puke, lead paint, celery hearts and Pepto-Bismol. Mechanized wehrmacht, driven by Brian Walsby’s double- and triple-time drumming shifts, runs amok all over this new batch of songs, miles away from their beginnings and even their roots, as guitarist Scott Williams smears twisted, reckless riffage all over the place, bassist Justin Gray locks down in between, and vocalist Kevin Collins busts a lung with seriously upset-sounding rage. For once, the confusion within a band such as this actually works to their favor, a blur of sound with so many screws and bolts sticking out of it that it can’t help but leave an impression on you, maybe even in you as these thirteen songs detonate all over the place. Easily trumps the methodical HC-for-the-non-HC of Fucked Up as one of thee most important bands of its kind in action today, and since they rarely tour, you pretty much have to go to the mountain to see ‘em. Double Neg will be kept a secret for as long as these guys wish to stay down, and it’s your loss to ignore. Absolute fury in a beautifully embossed, metallic sleeve. First 286 copies on pink vinyl with numbered obi strip, long gone. Regular press is good enough for you.

(Doug Mosurock)

http://still-single.tumblr.com/post/1118992967/double-negative-daydreamnation-lp-sorry-state

DOUBLE NEGATIVE INTERVIEW OVER AT DOUBLE CROSS BLOG!

The freindly folks over at DOUBLE CROSS blogspot have printed the first part of a massive DOUBLE NEGATIVE interview. Here is the link if you want to check it out:

http://doublecrosswebzine.blogspot.com/2010/09/double-negative.html

NEW INTERVIEW WITH ME OVER AT STRANGE REACTION.

Read me running my mouth as usual but with some nice different questions for a change.


http://strangereaction.com/2010/09/03/interview-with-brian-walsby/