Putting the 'Trek' in Voorttrekkers

As a consultant, I've worn many different hats over the past couple of years. One of the more interesting assignments I was given was to put together a brief history of Africa. The overriding goal was to make Africa sound like it might be some place that you'd want to visit. What follows is my absolute best efforts at making the history of this continent seem palatable.


A Brief History of South Africa

While primitive rock art suggest that the southern tip of Africa was inhabited as early as 40,000 years ago, it was not until the Portuguese passed by in 1487 that its recorded history begins. Searching for a sea route to India, Bartholomew Dias dubbed the southern tip “Cabo da Boa Esperanca”, or The Cape of Good Hope. By the time Vasco De Gama followed the same route around the cape ten years later, the settlement of the continent had begun. As the 16th century was drawing to a close, the English and Dutch began to express interest in the area, after seeing the benefits the Portuguese had gained from their time in the Mozambican coast. The defining moment in the settlement of South Africa came in 1647 when a Dutch vessel met its untimely end in what is now Cape Towns Table Bay. The crew built a fort nearby and waited an entire year for rescue. During that year, their letters home spoke of the ideal conditions they had found. As a result of these letters, the Dutch East India Company decided to establish a permanent settlement there.

The Dutch presence expanded northward, building strength as Germans and French joined the rapidly growing farming communities that provided materiel for the Dutch settlements. This expansion lead to numerous and frequent clashes with the indigenous population. As with many such expansions, the local populations were significantly impacted by the new diseases, weapons and technology. The rapid growth lead to a new breed of resident known as the Boers. These wandering burgher farmers were courageous individualists whose only knowledge often came from the bible.

Near the beginning of the 19th century, the British seized the cape as their own. At the time of their arrival, institutionalized racism was already in place. Power was in the hands of the whites, despite being an underwhelming minority of the population. Relations between the various parties grew more stressful when the British abolished slavery, a notion regarded by the Boers as the God given order.

What followed over the next hundred years was a series of battles between the British and the Boers. For each new find the Voortrekkers (wandering Boers) stumbled onto in the continent, the British would seize it in the name of the empire. The friction caused by these tactics often lead to bloodshed.

Early in the 20th century, as Africa was producing enormous bounty for the occupying countries, the “Union of South Africa” was brought together by the British. With this came a reinforced version of the institutionalized racism seen earlier. Only whites could vote and hold office. These policies reached their ultimate conclusion when Boer extremists, under the banner of the “National Party” launched Apartheid in 1948. 13 years later, the Republic of South Africa came into existence.

As the reign of apartheid continued, resistance groups cropped up frequently. The most well known involved a young man named Nelson Mandela who was imprisoned for crusading against white domination. White dominated South Africa tumbled deeper and deeper into separation and brutality until the late 80’s. This overshadowed the rampant spread of AIDS that was blazing across the continent at unprecedented speed.

Finally, in 1990, Apartheid was abolished and after 27 years in prison, Nelson Mandela was freed. Though significant problems have been surpassed, South Africa is still in desperate times.

Though this is in NO WAY related to anything stickmen, I thought it might make an interesting read to our blog subscribers.

This is Spinal Tap

I don't know how they scooped us like this, but band Nemesii Erin Barton and Rachael Varner managed to find themselves as extras in the Spinal Tap Reunion movie. Go figure. As part of my recent video conversion craze, I capped the scene that includes the two.



Briefly after uploading this vid to youtube, I realized that I have the Spinal Tap reunion on DVD, and could have just ripped it from there. Still, in this format, it retains some of its original charm

FOOOOOM!

I've actually forgotten if this was already a headline. Even if it was, it's certainly worth repeating, as it has proven to be such a powerful hammer of humility over the years.

Foom was the brain child of me, natch. It was first seen as a feature on www.webrus.com, typically referred to was "wee-brus". Note: it was meant to be pronounced "web are us", but who cares. So Foom was a format for ball bustin'. The general notion was that I would take band photos, scan them, then add in my own comic book style voice bubbles that would have the person in the photo saying something. The something that they said was usually insulting to themselves, or someone else in the band that wasn't me. But after some time, i found it funny to also let the hammer fall my way occasionally.

For a more detailed historical perspective, I'll give some more information. This'll probably be totally new news to anyone other than me. The word "foom" was not originally mine, though it's meaning was instantly understandable. Well, to bill it was. I remember asking him what he thought "foom" meant. He said "that's the sound you hear as the fist is rushing towards you" or something like that. And yeah, that's the basic idea. It's that ominomininniapia, or whatever it's called. I got it from a comic book. Specifically, it was said by Stan Lee of Marvel Comics in a column he was writing. I first saw it used as an acronym. F.O.O.M., stood for "Friends of ol' Marvel". I then saw it later in an issue of the Fantastic Four, where The Thing was clapping his hands together to create a sonic boom to thwart the baddies. The sound it made was "Foom"! History lesson over.

Over the years, foom has been updated. it started out using pictures online, and now is the latest iteration. Video Foom. Though these don't feature comic book style word bubbles, it is the videos themselves that hurt.

So for my first submission, I present to you a very old video. Gravity, with Dr. Hoojimajaba.



I think this marks the first time a video has been embedded in a blog entry, by the way. That's me: always pushing the envelope.

Red-Nosed Stickmen

Honestly, this weblog was not intended to degenerate into a morbid "this day in history" funeral toll ("it's been five years ... it's been TEN years ... it's been FIFTEEN ..." well, you get the point).

However, I can't resist, because today is ten years after the infamous "Operation Mexicali" episode, resulting in four hangovers plus a bumper crop of superlatives: the band's second-most-concealed bootleg video, it's least flattering potrait of me, and, to boot (whatever that means), more than one damaged relationship. Oh, and songwriting: an entire album's worth of supressed obscene song material - all in the course of a single evening in Santa Barbara.

What's lesser known, even to most band members, is that Operation Mexicali ALSO saw an actual recording session by inebriated band members.

Which is remarkable in its own way, because The Stickmen/My New Invention never did the boozing and smoking thing that sidetracks so many bands. We maybe consumed a lot of caffeine at practice sessions, but that was it. Well, except for Don, at a few early concerts, but that was just stage fright. Not that we were teetotalers (whatever that means! Okay, vocabulary break. Hmm, let's see ... "reduplicated form of 'total,' coined by R. Turner, of Preston, England, in 1833, in a speech advocating total abstinence from alcoholic drinks" ... so says Random House!) Yeah, where was I? Right, no teetotalers, but we seemed to have an unspoken rule that we never mixed drink with musicianship. Maybe because it was in such short supply. Both.

So, yes, there is a unique TASCAM recording of several non-obscene songs performed by various subsets of the red-nosed band on odd combinations of instruments, and so far I am the only human being who has heard the tapes. I only remember "Nothing Special" and "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer," but there were at least a half dozen tracks, and damn, they are funny.

These tapes sorely need to be aired, if for no other reason than to blow off the gin-stink. Well, I guess the time may come soon, seeing as Matt has announced 2008 as the "Year of the Digital Conversion" (oops, hope I didn't blow a Munson headline).

This Day in Stickmen History

December 20, 1995 - After a spur of the moment performance by Matt and Victor at Signmasters, (where Matt now works) The band gathers at the Youth Center for a practice in preparation for a New Year’s Eve show. Victor unveils his newest Stickmen tee shirt “in style.” Don also has an item for show and tell: One Element’s new demo tape, “Hurry Up And Wait” featuring DV on bass. Bill, Matt, and Victor then round out the evening at “Live Bait,” a Long Beach club that has become Matt’s favorite haunt. Finally, Bill boards a 5:30 a.m. flight to Kansas City for xmas with the future in-laws.

Sometimes You Eat The Bear...

And sometimes the bear eats you.

Why do I mention this? Not just because it's a great line from "The Big Lebowsky", though that's reason enough. No, the idea is that sometimes, there's danger in places that seem the safest. Case in point: memory lane.

It seems that lately, there's been a higher than usual fascination with memory lane. You could easily take that to mean that it's doubled, seeing as how Bill Fischer has a permanent residence there, and it's only been recently that Matt Munson has been swinging by on weeknights to reminisce. That aside, there's been a lot of time and effort put in to the re-awakening of old memories via photographs, slides, videos, and even blogs.

So where's the danger? For me, it's in the video. As regular readers will know, I've been spending great amounts of time getting my old videos converted to DVDs. I'm beginning to think that some fo those videos were best left forgotten. Case in point: Vic and Matt's Muffin Cap Mayhem. Of course, that's not the actual title of the video, but it may as well be. It's basically an hour of Vic and I running around Mission Viejo with a video camera, under the mistaken impression that we were cool. Emphasis there on "mistaken impression that we were cool". Because as exhibit A will establish for the jury, we were indeed NOT cool. I guess it's all relative, because I'm sure at the time we thought we were pretty hot Dohens. But upon viewing, it's hard to figure out how we ever thought that.

Despite the fact that I'm a huge fan of self depricating humor (not to be confused with self deffocating humor), this video is almost unwatchably embarassing. Many parts are actually not watchable. I have to fast forward through them. I can't do it. Almost all of the rest of the tape is just plain painful, though I can struggle through it. For the parts of the video that I'm not in, I'm embarassed for the people that are.

Oh well. Maybe I'm just getting old. Maybe those videos are just getting old. But the truth is, there's danger in probing the past. It just might turn out that the past holds little to be proud of.

However, because my lust for thorough documentation trumps my personal shame and embarassment, I will continue to convert and make available to the fans (read: bill fischer) the entire stickmen library of video footage. Have no fear.

And just to prove that I'm not alone in this, feast your eyes on this early Fischer gem. Looks like I'm not the only one who had a childhood fascination with axes.

Because You Demanded It.

And by "you", I mean Bill Fischer, of course.

This post is dedicated to one of the most recognizeable landmarks in the greater Los Angeles area. No, I don't mean the "Hollywood" sign, nor do I mean Mann's Chinese Theater. Nossir! I'm not talkin' 'bout the Capitol Records building, the Hollywood Walk of Fame or the Venice boardwalk. You can forget about the Santa Monica Pier, Third Street Promenade and the Sunset Strip.

I am, of course, referring to Randy's Donuts.



To be honest, I don't remember how it all started. And I'm not talking about how Randy started his donut shack. I'm talking about how the use of this term, and the various derivatives thereof, got introduced into the Stickmen Lexicon. I'll speculate. I remember a long time ago, possibly in a video or audio tape, Bill said "Shut your gob". I think that lead to a discussion about shutting your pie-hole, or cake-hole, which is of course a reference to your mouth. I mean, where else would you put pie or cake???

Flash forward to a Harvey Mudd party where Bill instructs me to either shut my donut, or stuff my donut. I was confused by this, as I couldn't figure out what anatomical object the donut finger was pointing to. So I asked. In typical Socratic fashion, Bill replied with a simple question: What do you and a donut have in common?? Naturally, the answer was "a hole". That's pronounced "uh hole", not to be confused with "ey-hole", which is a much more specific reference to a rear facing orafice.

And so, donut terminology weasled its way into street speak. To make matters worse, I was working in Inglewood at the time, just two blocks down from the famous Randy's Donuts. It was already famous, so it's not like it was my discovery. But the combination of the word "randy" with our newly minted meaning for "donut" was simply too incredible to resist. I don't want to spell it out for our less sophisticated readers, but basically, to refer to your donut as randy is pretty funny. And I don't mean the NAME Randy. See, it wouldn't be funny if you said you had a Michael Donut, or a Susan Donut. The fact that Randy has a meaning all its own outside of a persons name is what makes it so comical. See???

If not, you'll probably never make it as a member of the Stickmen, so best to just hang up your hat now and go back to your day job. You wanna run with these bulls?? Then shed your bell.


I don't know if this is the offical website, but it smells like it.
http://randys-donuts.com/. There's lots of good historical information on there, including a list of appearances.
l

Two Sh!ts and a Fizzy.

If I recall correctly, this was to be the name of a chain of restaurants (perhaps franchise opportunities??) helmed by Don Varner and partner Bill Fischer. The theme of the restaurant was Chili. In fact, EVERY dish would contain a portion of gut bursting chili. Or was it that the integral ingredient of each dish was chili? I forget. Oh, and there was soda too. Or was it beer? That's where the "fizzy" part of the restaurant name came from. Obviously, the first half of the name is the direct and tangible result of the chili laden main dish. Duh.

There was a restaurant in Los Angeles called "Mo' Better Meaty Meat Burgers" that closed down a few years ago. But when I lived there, I would drive by it all the time. (Not to be confused with "drive-by", which usually involves a shotgun). Anyhow, every time I would pass this place, I would think of 2Sh!ts, and imagine that this is what it would look like should it ever come to pass.

The Lost Tapes

With all the recent attention on the lost version of "Above You," I dug up a quick summary of the band's missing tapes:

1. Matt and Vic running amok (8mm video) – circa March 1991. Master tape believed to reside with Matt.
   
2. Question 81 Fire Hazard Christmas tape – almost certainly residing with Rich Amtower. The band’s first serious attempt at recording, Thanksgiving 1991.
   
3. The Irrigation Song tape – Little is known about the contents of this tape, but it probably contained more than one first recording of the new songs from Victor’s garage in early 1992: Probably Not, possibly Gin, and others. One theory is that the tape might have been given to Ben George to practice along to, and never returned.
   
4. “Yay” for the Stickmen (apparently lost by Bill in late 1990s) – fragmentary copies survive. This tape chronicled the band’s first six months, and contained snapshots of Bill’s songs as they developed.
   
5. The Hunger That Feeds On Mankind operation sequence (8 mm video) – taped over by Bill’s dad. A fragment survives from an unfinished dub of the Gravity Video.
   
6. 10/31/92 8mm video – master in hands of Debbie – VHS copy survives. A second handheld camera from the band’s first concert, supplementing the still camera deployed by Bill.
   
7. Four-Track: Above You (lost prior to late 1990s) – mixdowns survive. One of the best early four-track demos, undoubtedly with other interesting four-track contents from Autumn 1992.
   
8. Four-Track: You’ve Got the Look (lost in late 1992). A goofy four-track original recorded as a prank. Would be interesting for novelty value, and to see what else might have been on the tape, though probably nothing.
   
9. The Gravity Video VHS – Bill and Don’s final dub, with a lost few seconds of Don beating on Fischer couch cushions, Spring 1993. Possibly lost by Don.
   
10. 10/29/94 Betacam – master presumably in hands of Rich’s ex-girlfriend. The highest quality video format ever known to be taken of the band, which coincided with their worst ever performance.
    
11. Ed’s New Year’s 12/30/95 SVHS – Hi-8 copy survives – the master is believed to reside either with Ed Zybel or his friend.
    
12. Ed-a-Palooza 1996 SVHS – Hi-8 copy survives – the master is believed to reside either with Ed Zybel or his friend.
    
13. Antiradio Soundboard tape, 12/23/98 – possibly still residing with Antiradio? One of the band’s most important shows, because of historical significance (being played on the radio) and quality of performance. Recovery of this tape, in combination with the two existing videos, would almost certainly result in a live CD or DVD.
    

The above list was draft 20 Dec 2005. Since that time, astute readers will note that some of these tapes have been definitively located.

More Classic?

I think the important question to ask of yourself today, dear reader, is this: could it get any MORE classic than this...



Doubtful.

This is a photo that I recently unearthed. I was excavating the Well of Souls, a dig in Tunisia, when the mother lode of all photos surfaced. My mom delivered to me two white boxes filled to the gills with photos. Hundreds of photos, possibly a thousand or more. I've been going through them as fast as I can, just to get them all loaded into cache. In my brain, that is. I'm going to organize them, scan them, and then do something with them. At a minimum, this will make for duplicate copies of everything.

There exist three or four photos that I've been searching for for the better part of 20 years. So far, I have found ALL of them. This was one of them, as it establishes a long standing historical precedent for rock and roll in the Munson family. Various pictures also demonstrate that Bill Fischer was not the first to pioneer the Bill Fischer Style Haircut, but I'll leave that for another entry.

Heavy Duty Rock 'n' Roll

Figure 1. Don Varner keeps it real with My New Invention, taped live at Hogue Barmichael's, Christmas Eve 1998, for later broadcast on The Poorman's AM radio station, Antiradio.

After this night, two different band members' sisters had been hit on by separate disgraced KROQ disc jockeys.

VideoDrome II: The Sequel

Last night I had a break through. I successfully created a DVD compliant movie from a VHS tape. It was a 35 minute electronic press kit from Spider-Man. The first one. Because of all the filters I ran on the source video, and the quirky encoding settings I chose, it took about 7 hours to encode it. But MAN does it look good. I dare say the picture looks better than the source material. The filters that developers have put out are really incredible, and I'm impressed. The next step is for me to author a DVD and burn it.

If I can get that done by the end of the day, this will mark the beginning of a new era in Stik history. Though there have been DVDs made before, they were always of questionable quality. They seemed decent at the time, but now that I know more about things like de-interlacing, chroma shift, and YUY2 conversion, I'm much more able to discern good from bad. So as the dated song says: Something tells me I'm in for something good.

Videodrome

Though not a very well respected, accepted, or interesting Debbie Harry movie, this flic sure did have a cool title. And believe me, here at ClassicStickme, we're all about flash over substance. So I can relate.

But what will be harder to relate is the title of this post to it's content. See the theme?? Though there is a connection, it's tenuous at best.

This week has been a week of video induced psychosis for me. Inverse narcolepsy, I call it. I'm so jazzed and focused on a single goal that I simply cannot fall asleep. No matter how hard I try. For the past few days, I've been getting about four hours of sleep for every 24 hours awake. I roll home and fall into bed for a couple of hours, rise, then work until about five in the morning. Then I go down for a couple more hours, wake up and go to work. Repeat.

Surely, dear reader, by now your curiosity is piqued. Read on.

The thing I'm trying to do is perfect a method for converting VHS and Digital8 tapes to DVD. Worth noting at this point that I'm a PC user. Legions of Mac users will be quick to point out that this operation on a Mac is pretty simple. Well, too bad. I love my PC!! The other factor here is that I will not settle for anything less than top quality. So while I agree that there are a few near one-button solutions for the mac, they do not deliver in the quality department. Please Mac users, do not take this as a call to launch an email campaign convincing me of my shortsightedness when it comes to computer selection. I ain't budgin'.

I have attempted this effort before, a few years ago. I spent WEEKS and a few bucks on capture cards trying to get it to work. After extensive head scratching, hair pulling, and fist pounding, I simply decided that the techmology (sic) was not at a point where desktop DVD production was feasable. So I went into vHibernation. ('v' for video, natch).

Flash forward a few years, when I return from journeys abroad to find my interest in all things Stik rekindled. I have a decent speed laptop, and all the firewire cables you could ever need. I decided it was time to sit back down and see if technology had caught up with my dreams.

Like before, it's a slow and labor intensive process. There's also a steep learning curve for every piece of the puzzle. I tried a few one-button solutions, but was left unsatisfied. I resigned myself to the fact that in order to get this done, and get it done RIGHT, i was going to have to learn how to use all these Open Source tools that home video enthusiasts are using. It was, and is, a daunting task. I have assembled a quiver of no less than 10 tools, each of which is integral to the process of making this conversion a reality. There is one tool to capture the video. A scripting language is needed to edit and clean up the movie once captured. The scripting engine requires a different plug in for any effect you might want to do, and has it's own methods to call in the script. Want to reduce chroma shift? You have to find the DLL, install it properly, learn the scripting interface, debug it, get the settings right, then view your movie before it's time to move on. You need to acquire a robust set of codecs, each of which will produce different results that you can control. Learning about the capabilities of the codecs is important, as they respond differently to different inputs.

Once you've finally got your clip edited and filtered, you have to encode it. but to encode it, you need to decide if you're going to output it as a giant AVI file (again recruiting your newfound knowledge of compression/codecs) or if you're going to frameserve to an encoder. Frameserving is another application and another hurdle. Youv'e also got to choose an encoder. There's three big players out there, each with different strengths and weaknesses. Many have a trial version, though a fully functional version must be "acquired" using other means. You choose an encoder, and then have to wade through the pages and pages of options you have to encode each file. HUNDREDS of different settings. Which ones are best for you?? Depends on the nature of your input and output. is it anime? Is it CGI? Is it a VHS transfer, or a DVD rip? Is there lots of motion, or many colors?? tons of things. Enough to make you crazy... or lose sleep.

Once you get the video encoded, you need to re-visit the audio. turns out that the good video encoding products don't do a good job of encoding audio. So you need to strip out (or "de-mux") your audio from your source edit. It usually comes out in wav format, which you need to convert to ac3, or one of the other formats that will work on a DVD. There's a couple of good programs to convert wav to ac3, but because they're these open source, public domain programs, they look like wacky developer tools. many are command line. Say what you will about microsoft products, but the thing they are good at is presenting a common interface. GNU tools: not so much. So the learning curve on all these tools is again pretty sharp. But once you finally convert the audio, you then need a tool to merge (or "mux") the audio back together with the video.

if you happen to have sync problems, you'll need a separate tool to fix that.

Head spinning yet??

And lets say you finally get a DVD compliant video together, then you need to author the DVD. You know, make the menus and stuff. That's a whole 'nuther ball of wax. Again, multiple tools available, with multiple versions. Though I quickly narrowed in on my favorite tool, it has different versions, each of which does different things better than the other. Earlier versions handle some things well, later versions handle different things better. So depending on your needs, you choose an author.

Once authored, you then burn it to DVD. Another tool.

The real tragedy is that ANYWHERE in this process, things can go pear-shaped, or just stop working for no apparent reason. This is the part that makes me crazy. You might get all the way to the burning process, only to notice upon sticking the DVD in your set top player that the audio sync is out. It worked when you authored it! Whuh happun???

All of this is what has been keeping me up at night. Literally. I love problem solving, and when I sink my teeth into something that's this important to me, I don't let go. I literally cannot stop thinking about this challenge. I lie in bed, eyes closed, contemplating better encoding settings. Coming up with solutions to sync problems, thinking of new tweaks to make to my compression algorithms. I can be dead tired, eyes watering from fatigue, yet unable to fall asleep.

But as of this writing, I'm ALMOST there. Last night, I JUST ABOUT HAD IT LICKED, but at the very last encoding pass, the video got speed problems. NO idea how that got introduced, but that's where it stands. It's one of those things where I'll be working away, thinking it's about one in the morning. Then when I look at the clock, its acually four thirty.

I'll just sleep on weekends.

Stickmen Day

Begin railway metaphor. Over a seven-year run, the band rolled through several make-or-break junctures that could easily have derailed the Stickmen Express. Of course, the train did ultimately collapse the trestle bridge and plunge into the cold river of public indifference. But early on, with a cantankerous locomotive coupled to hopper cars spilling over with the bituminous coal of our fragile egos, we picked up a big head of steam coming out of the first few whistle stops. Okay, enough with the clickety-clack.

Today is the fifteenth anniversary of the most seminal of those backyard shows. The date was December 5, 1992. All these years later, to my thinking, it doesn’t get any more “classic stickmen” than “December 5.”

Our first concert with Don had gone down five weeks earlier – to enthusiastic cheers – in Victor’s living room (let’s not split hairs, but Don was actually in the bedroom). I’ve said before that if that Halloween Show had been booed or laughed at, we’d have slunk back to the garage permanently. Well, actually, we were laughed at, but in a good way: we had played mostly comedic material.

For the followup, we dared to take the stage with our “real” songs. Segments of the audience were clearly expecting a repeat of Halloween, and kept shouting out requests like “Evil Old Man with One Eye,” but by and large, our more serious fare got a warm welcome.

I particularly remember one listener expressing astonishment at the sheer number of “real” songs played, and the honest-to-goodness guitar solos that went with them. To all of which I could only reply, “Thanks, Mom!”

Of course, amongst weighty debuts like “Better Off Alone,” “Trials and Tribulations,” and first-ever REM cover “It’s The End of the World as We Know it” (my personal favorite version), there were still plenty of laughs, especially between songs, with numerous puzzling stories from Matt, and a brief Christmas skit by the whole band.

Toward the end, as we began to run out material, we dusted off a few comedy numbers (including the first-ever live performance of “Fire Hazard Christmas”) which also went down well. We played until our hands were freezing and we were almost out of songs, but the audience kept shouting for more. Finally it started to rain, and Victor and I unplugged our guitars and literally ran away.

Good Livers

One of the great things about the internet is that it gives members of the Stickmen (meaning me and Bill) our very own public forum in which to air all of our dirty laundry... and our reflections.

One thing that I've NEVER had the chance to clear up, or even make sense of, is something I said in an interview many years ago. (cue bill fischer scrambling for his video archive suitcases) It was taken in the Fischer Fambly kitchen, and it was the one where I was talking about what the community wants, which is "good livers".

What was no doubt lost on the audience and band members, was the fact that I was being ironic. Well, maybe I was just trying to be funny, but I was riffing on the anglacization of the phrase 'bon vivant'. Just in case you don't think I'm smart enough to make this stuff up, here's a link to its definition:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/bon%20vivant

As you'll notice from the website, it's someone who basically "lives large", in the parlance of our times. And if there were ever a collection of folks who do just that, it for sure was the Stickmen. Right???

As someone who speaks French pretty well, I can tell you that stuff doesn't always translate perfectly. So while dictionary.com list the definition of "bon vivant" one way, the literal translation is "good liver". Of course, that doesn't mean "liver", as in the organ that processes booze. It means "liver", as in "liver of life". Though I suppose a transplant recipient could very well utter that phrase in reference to said aforementioned internal organ, but I digress.

Fact is, I knew exactly what I was saying.

Consider the record now set straight.

Above You Anniversary

This is one of my absolute favorite Stickmen bootlegs. Matt and I recorded the song, with overdubs, on the first night of December, in my dorm room at Harvey Mudd College. Matt drove out from Santa Monica with his TASCAM four-track, and I scrambled to get my song finished.

Matt really acted as our producer on most of the early recordings, even before he bought the four-track. He would drive the agenda. Not that he would issue instructions, but he would keep us focused on our song arrangements, and when it was time to record one, he would usually be operating the equipment. So Matt was both producer and engineer. And, of course, performer.

For Above You, we were up at Harvey Mudd (Third Floor Atwood), so it was just Matt and me. Matt deployed the microphone while I sat at my desk and strummed the rhythm track on my old Gibson acoustic. We overdubbed electric guitar using my Fender Squier. I don’t recall whether I amplified it with my brand-new Peavey, or used the “crunch” setting on the R.A.D. amp. Probably the R.A.D, because the Peavey was a tube amp with a cooling fan that made a high-pitched noise.

We did vocals together, with Matt inventing the high harmony. At some point, Matt added tambourine and bongo drums, including the three extra bongo taps at the end – an improvised flourish that immediately became a permanant part of the arrangement. All of this would have been done through Matt’s stage microphone.

Why do I have such affection for this recording? First off, it’s a foot tapper that doesn’t sound forced, with some faintly clever turns of phrase, and only a couple of “cringe” lines. As a Beatles pop-single devotee, I liked its brevity (90 seconds). It was also the first song I ever wrote that made the transition to tape in anything like a final form.

Moreover, it was a song I had struggled with for weeks, and had actually abandoned for a while. But then all of a sudden, like a bolt out of the blue, I got a middle-eight that I loved, and (presto!) there was Matt with the four-track. The immediacy of the task at hand forced me to complete the lyrical editing.

Within a couple of days, Matt played the tape in-store at The Wherehouse, to strong positive feedback from his coworkers. This was a welcome change from past experience, playing demo tapes of “Nothing Special” to decidedly mixed reviews at Comic Quest. Also, I think Matt was ethused by the song, because I remember him phoning me with his interpretation of the title phrase. Something about holding the moral high ground, but “I’m not immune to your barbs.” Victor liked the bit about standing in your shoes. It was nineteen months before he wrote a bassline that perfectly suited the song.

Alas, the master tape has been lost, and only a few mixdowns remain from the dorm-room session. Perhaps absence has made the heart grow fonder. Don’t get me wrong – I like the version on the CD with the full band arrangment, but the demo version has a certain elusive charm that only happens when you’re not even trying.

MNI2k: The Album That Never Was

Unfortunately, the task of reconstructing an album that was never recorded is one that French Philosophe and notable bettin’ man Blaise Pascal might have described as impossible (that’s “impossible” for those of you in Upper Canada). There are just too many unknowns, not least among them Don Varner.

But here is an interesting starting point: on the day before my 28th birthday – which is the traditional rock-and-roll retirement age – I drafted a list of songs under the heading “Second CD.” For each song, I included REM/Life's-Rich-Pageant-style taglines, featuring first-draft lyrics, inscrutable explanations, or other tangential quips:

Hurricane Days Girl #134 On The Road Second Time Around Two Miles Underground Big Tin Truck Friend That I Once Knew My Horizon Like You If I Don’t Come Back Sleepwalk

red underwater memories linger. the hand that slaps. beacon in the night. ice age size disaster. subterranean homespun blues. wide-load brain. thanks, Mom. release the hounds. take that. twenty-one years; it’s gone. tarnished armor.

Coincidentally, this imaginary tracklist dates one week prior to our very last concert, at LA Chiropractic College. As fate would have it, Don could not make it to the show, and the “classic” lineup was never to be reassembled.

Dommage.

That’s French for “Oh well, at least we can analyze it to death on the internet!”

Here goes:

Matt and I had recorded a bunch of these in acoustic demo form during the “Black and Blue Sessions” of July-August 1998. A couple others from this list turned up later in the one live performance by Ten Dollar Helmet, in 2002. As for the rest, Vic’s song, “Like You,” is a caustic rock-and-roll gem that has never been aired. The last track, “Sleepwalk” was my own pet project, an instrumental postlude to Matt’s anthemic ballad, “Knight in Dullard Armor.” I probably had in mind closing the album with "Dullard Armor" followed immediately by this instrumental continuation of the music.

I'll Bring Your Mom

That was one of the earliest signs that Don was going to prove to be a randy sort when it came to band interaction on stage. Those immortal words, right up there with "I play what I want" were first uttered on December 5th.

Which brings me to my point. That was A LONG time ago. A SCARY amount of time has passed since then. Not only do I not know the exact year, but I'm actually quite scared to hear it. I'm thinking it might be somewhere in the league of fifteen years ago.

Time marches on, and we get older. I just watched "Rocky Balboa" last night, and Stallone looked terrible. He looks great for a guy in his sixties, but overall, he looks like two miles of bad road. Will the Stickmen take the same path?

Hot Cheese... With Dishes!

It's probably about time that someone brought up Harbor House, the defacto eatery of choice for the Stickmen, and later My New Invention. HH is a dingy little cafe style eatery in Dana Point. It's not really that it's got good food, and it doesn't really have much ambiance to speak of. But what it does have is doors that are open 24 hours, and that's really all it took to get us interested.

It became tradition to go there after local gigs, usually to debrief, and complain about what we thought went wrong. Of course, this was mainly during the early years, when we were all sort of getting along. The last time I recall going was after Edapalooza II. Was that the one with Nicole Riley? I mean Sarah?? That's the one I'm thinking of. I recall going there after that gig. Wait, we also went after Tea Time At Eds, now that I think about it, as I remember that was one of the first times my then girlfriend Wendy hung out with the band. I seem to recall her flirting with Don. But then again, who doesn't???

But this is all just preamble to the real reason behind this posting, and that's to discuss our quasi-successful attempt to fabricate slang, and introduce it into the common language. We were driving down the 5, and were just about to take the exit to harbor house when the idea when into full swing. I saw a sign that said "Doheney", and I thought "dough-hen" would be a good, cruel sounding name to call someone. That was my first suggestion. Somehow, "Scooch Cooch" came up later that night, though I don't remember the etimology of it. I may be wrong on this, but I think this may have also been the night that the term "Hot cheese, with dishes" was introduced. Maybe it was the existence of that term that spawned the purpose of the evening. I'm not sure. I think the hot cheese thing came from one of my personal favorite dishes at Harbor House, the chili cheese fries. I'd always get them with diced onions on top, and a nice big side of ranch to help wash them down. Healty treat!!!

I also remember someone out in the parking lot asking us what the heck a "Scooch Cooch" was. I thought that was pretty cool. They were so perplexed by our citi-speak that they had to inquire. That's when you know you're making progress.

Though some would claim that a guitar welt on the chest is a sure sign that you're making progress, I disagree.

That's a riff on an introduction to the Guitar Players Handbook, which I believe was penned by Ted Nugent. A quick google search unearthed the entire quote: "Practice, practice, practice. Practice until you get a guitar welt on your chest..if it makes you feel good, don't stop until you see the blood from your fingers. THEN you'll know you're onto something!" Ted Nugent

Amen brother. Amen.

The Irrigation Song

The other day I was thinking about the song “Probably Not,” which was the first real song I wrote with Victor.... I am sure that Victor and I were both subconciously drawing on sources we haven’t acknowledged to this day. There is an acoustic ballad by Jane’s Addiction, titled “Jane Says,” that must have been one of those subconscious guides. The other day I made the connection to another important source for “Probably Not:” the bassline in Donovan’s “Season of the Witch.”

The lyrics are another story. I don’t know how we got the idea to write “The Irrigation Song,” which was the original mission plan. Victor might remember.

The “Irrigation Song” concept probably got us as far as “all the oceans and the seas.” The rest of the song is a pure encapsulation of Victor and I springboarding off each others’ phrases. One of us starts a line, intending to finish it as a coherent thought, and the other frequently heads him off at the pass with word association and attempted mindreading. Then we laugh at the result, tweak it slightly, and use that as the starting point for the next line.

[Originally written 13 Apr 2007].

[Abridged to reduce pomposity 30 Nov 2007].

Starbucks / Scojo

Man, where to start with this one:



Not sure of the exact time frame of this one, but I'm sure a quick flip through the video archives would help nail it down. It was during my time at Unsys, which puts it somewhere around "The Millenium".

With the bright afterglow of My New Invention fading in to the background, I took it upon myself to re-invigorate my music career. I partnered with co-worker Mike Walton in an attempt to re-capture Starbucks as a focal point for musical expression. He was handling bass chores and backup vocals, while I took center stage. Duh.

We practiced a lot, put together a 3 hour set, and then performed.


Wait.


Strike that.


Strike ALL of that. I've gone and gotten myself confused.


The flyer above was for a string of SOLO gigs I did at the Starbucks on the corner of Alicia and Jeronimo in Mission Viejo. This was before I worked at Unisys, now that I think of it. I think this was during my WareNet days. I believe there were some contemporary gigs at a local Diedrich's Coffee, and a place over in Rancho Santa Margarita. Oh, I'm so confused.

Anyhow, this is a flyer for one of my shows. I'm off to take my Alzeimers medication.

Munson Thin Again

Here's a picture of the lead singer and full time heart-throb of the Stickmen, AKA My New Invention, AKA Finger Bouquet, AKA Question 81, AKA Imperial Probe Droid.



I post this here for a number of reasons. The main one is because I love to post pictures of myself, ESPECIALLY when I'm lookin' this good. But the other reason is because it's probably worth mentioning that one of the contants of the band during our 33 year run was my constantly fluctuating weight. I'd say my weight was anywhere from 158 to 225 during the course of the band, if you include Black and Blue. I know Fischer had some fluctuations also, and possibly just as extreme, though he never ended up on the doughnut side of the equation. He would catch some kind of disease, and then wither away to nothing. Often in the high sierras. Then he'd have some protien/creatine super shake immuno boost, and gain some weight back. A year or so ago, he entered what he called a "Fat Elvis" phase, where he porked up to unprecedented levels. Not quite Matt Munson highs, but pretty high for bill. I guess that's just part of getting old. And believe me, I should know, as I'm older than him. So ha!!

But anyhow, I am back in shape as of right now. I got up to 220 a few months ago. I had a string of bad luck that had me bed ridden for way longer than I should have been. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't the act of lying (laying?) in bed that made me gain weight. It was eating all the ice cream and nachos while laying in bed!! I caught a really bad flu that knocked me out for a while, then I had a back injury that had me knocked down for like a month! It was rough!!! Long story, I porked. But once I got up and running again, I dropped 40 pounds in about 90 days. Now I'm in the throes of the never ending "Buff and Bronze" quest that the Stickmen are famous for. This incarnation being "Buff & Bronze '07", or "BNB 07" for the initiated.

But enough rambling. Oh wait, that's what blogs are for. Good thing none of us are teens any more, or we could sit around and write about teen angst.

I'd really like to see a post about Bill's long term plans to repopulated the band with the next generation of Fischers.

Backyard Circuit: Cousins Held Captive

Here's a classic "please listen to our music" scene from the Fischers' backyard, March 10, 1996, shortly after recording the "Borders Acoustic Demo" in the den. Note my close relatives gamely waiting us out.

SDSU

Here's a classic from the vaults:



This is a flyer from a gig we played down at San Diego State University. It was in an off campus house. Totally fun gig, though for a number of reasons, it almost didn't happen. I seem to recall Bill's parents station wagon having some kind of tet-nickle difficulties on the way down.

But it all worked out great, and we were shut down by the cops after just a few songs. Still, there exists some great video from that show, some of which may be on youtube at this very moment. But I forget.

I think one of my favorite memories about this show was not the show itself, nor the fact that it was our first official closure by the local constabulary. What was fun was all the pictures and video we took AFTER the show. I still consider some of those pictures some of my all time favorites. It was a big "audience interaction" play, where we basically had a half a dozen (or was it a dozen) "fans" posing in photos with us. That was cool. The video of the gig is good also, but the part where Victor says the memorable phrase "this is over... this is over" is gold. There's also a trip into "the Dungeon" in the video, which doesn't last long.

I also recall that Bill and Don had a VERY brief exchange explaining to the camera what I am doing with the audience at that moment. Turns out, I was talking to a girl, while Bill and Don were making predictions about the outcome of said talking. What is most amusing, and is probably unknown to all band members save myself, is that this very video ended up biting me in the botox years later when Janet Fischer saw the tape, and was traumatically upset by this exchange.

Just goes to show you that Stickmen videos are like nuclear waste. It doesnt' matter how deep in the desert you bury it: it's gonna hurt someone eventually.

This was also the first gig that I can think of where someone other than a band member handled the promotion of the event.

P-Pearl It Squirtbird

Next month it will be TEN YEARS since Operation Mexicali, a pile of Gin Fizz (?), and all the still-languishing songs originally slated for The Obscene Album.

Don Varner recently found this rebus graphic, from the Lucky Lager bottlecap that inspired one of the best-remembered Operation Mexicali singalongs.

I guess he was still conscious at that point.

StickMemories

Excellent idea Bill Fischer. I had no idea that you could open up a blog to more than one user! And it comes at a good time for you, as I was JUST about to open a competing stickmen themed blog, tentatively entitled stickmenmemories. So good work.

For my first post, I'd like to share something I stumbled upon last night. Now that I've got a scanner, it's pretty much open season on archival elements.



This was to be my opening salvo on my stickmen blog, but I think it's much better here. Serves a wider audience and all.

This is something I must have picked up along the way when we were playing "The Sports Page" bar in Lake Forest. Ah, the good old days. The bar has changed hands half a dozen times since that gig, maybe more. I'm sure it's just as awesome inside. Then again, maybe not. My favorite memory about playing the Sports Page was the guy who was the bouncer. I don't even know if he was the bouncer, but he was the huge dude who took your money. Which might explain in a number of ways why so few people showed up for our shows. Not only did it cost money to get in, but there was always this really intimidating dude standing at the door asking for four bucks.

The bouncer always reminds me of this dude, though we lovingly referred to him as "Solomon".

The Tit Drum

Okay, so now that the shopping season is underway, here's a blast from the Ghost of Christmases Past. I'm pretty sure this dates from 1995-6, but it might as well go with the December 1993 Allen Studios version of Fire Hazard Christmas - the one with the same personnel shown here and a rare guitar solo from Don.

Classic.

The band-authored side of the Classic Stickmen archive is now open for business. Let's hope it gets new postings more often than the band used to get gigs.