The days of Percocets and popsicles are over. After two weeks of sitting around my house in sweatpants, pulling inch-long chunks of dried blood from my nose, I am back to sitting on my computer all day, pretending I’m a recording “professional.” Hopefully all the pain and sacrifice will mean better sleep, as the procedures I underwent were solutions to my horrible sleep apnea (now you don’t have to ask “what did you get done?”)

I’ll be at the SS Records 10th Anniversary shows this weekend if you wanna say “hi” or make arrangements to buy some records and not have to pay for shipping. I’ll be the bald guy with a spotty blonde beard doing nerdy crap like taking pictures or annoying the guys from the A-Frames.

This week’s recording is from a young band of punk rockers from Memphis known as Cheap Time. If you haven’t picked up their albums on In The Red, get the hell off this site right now.

I was pretty excited about this set: though I’m not a Cheap Time superfan/completist or whatever, songwriter Jeffrey Novak impresses the hell out of me. He’s not only a prolific songwriter who rarely pens a “miss,” he tries out different genres and influences, and nails that sound he’s so obviously going for, every time.

I’m sad to say I was unable to catch the band’s encore that night at the Hemlock back in March. As you can hear, the band was smoking that night and sadly my hard drive was maxed out by the time they took the stage again.

Still, enjoy, and keep coming back. Also, buy a record for fuck’s sake!

Though I have plenty of reasons to feel “blessed,” being a music fan that lived in Seattle around the turn of the 21st century is right up there at the top.

I will be the first to admit that the music from Seattle in the early ’00s wasn’t earth-shattering — I can count the number of really great bands to come from that time on one hand. But those bands were the first steps to expanding my musical taste and teaching me that your favorite bands are typically not the flavor of the day.

Looking back, I bet I wasn’t alone. I swear within two years, the Seattle scene went from pretty much ALL New Bomb Turks and Heartbreakers rip-offs to every other type of band. Phrases like “Killed By Death” and “No Wave” seemed to have become common vernacular within a year.

Though bands like the Spits, Blow Up and the Cripples helped bridge this gap by playing shows with generic rock ‘n roll bands, people like me had to specifically find an A-Frames show to attend. After hearing constant buzz from friends, I finally caught a set of theirs at the Sunset in Ballard. Couldn’t tell you who the other bands were, but I remember their set like it was yesterday.

I couldn’t fully appreciate their sound at the time, which my friend Cody would always imitate by going *BRap BRap BRap,* but in the middle of the set, singer/guitarist Erin asked the audience, “Do you want to hear a slow one?”

To this day, “Surveillance” is one of my favorite songs, and from that moment on I was a dedicated A-Frames fan. (And I’m not alone in my conversion by “Surveillance.”)

Seeing them at the Hemlock brought me back to those days when every song they played was a hit, especially the ones that appeared on a cassette they released back then: “Crutches,” “Complications” and “Membrane.” It was so good, I made sure to go to the Stork show 2 weeks later, where they not only played those songs again, they busted out “Surveillance” too. (Sadly, I didn’t record it, but the band probably got a recording of the set from the Stork’s board…)

All those early recordings, including a bunch of demo tracks, have been compiled on 3-Lp set called “3″ released on SS Records. Do yourself a favor and pick it up.