So this post is a little late and a little rushed because I leave for the Dry-Shitties tomorrow. Still, I finally finished these goddamn demos and everybody should download them, distribute them, do whatever. They’re just demos, right?

But before I get to the songs, I have to show off/brag about my newly obtained Mark Mothersbaugh autograph. My wife’s aunt came over from Philadelphia to visit my in-laws for a few weeks and brought me a present — no, not the autograph, but a Men Without Hats “Safety Dance” 45.

Obviously it was a present she found while cleaning out her closet. (It had a note inside from her sister talking about how great a some record by the Police was.) Still, it was super nice of her, especially since I had probably only saw her 3-4 times before then.

My father-in-law has a record player hooked up in his dining room, so we put the record on. I think only my wife and I knew the Safety Dance before that moment, so of course I had to demonstrate it for them. By doing so I confirmed the fact that it was a stupid dance.

We flipped over the record to listen to the B-side, an upbeat synth rocker that could have only been written in the ’80s called “Living In China,” (which is also, by the way, is kinda racist.)

“This sounds like Devo.”

“Oh, you’ve actually heard of Devo?” asked Joan.

“Yeah. I’m such a big fan I actually bought a DVD of theirs.”

“You want a Devo autograph?”

Whadda ya mean do I want an autograph? Hell yeah, I want a Devo anything, especially an autograph. Watching “the Untold Story of Devo” turned into a two-week long Devo-listening jag where I craved listening to Devo records, especially songs like “The Day My Baby Gave Me a Surprise” and “Snowball.” Her offer came during the middle of those two weeks.

So there it is up above, a piece of cardboard signed “We’re All Devo, Mark” by Mark Mothersbaugh back around 1980 (“Freedom of Choice”(Hell yeah!)), in all its glory.

Now to the tracks:

A few quick notes:

1. I used a PreSonus Firepod with Logic on my 15″ Macbook to record this. I also miked the living hell out of the drums and recorded the guitars direct.

2. Pilot’s Handbook — I’m gonna change the lyrics some time soon. For this recording I half-assed sang some scribblings I made on an early BART train about a guy crashing his car. (I don’t know why I said “Joe” in the first bridge but I really regret not re-recording it during the 2-hour frame of time I had to record the vocals at my practice space.

3. Under A Mountain — This is the first song I wrote for the band and no, I wasn’t listening to Queens of the Stone Age at the time; I was listening to KARP (Self-titled of course.) I had those first two lines for a long time, but usually just made noises throughout the rest of the song. The rest of the song is now filled with obnoxious comments about a guy I hate. Really not going for a Pulitzer here. (Also notice the stupidest/most hilarious/most awesome Pussy Galore lyric squeezed in at the second verse.)

4. Criminals (look like this) — Gavin Toler’s post-Pud band name that I loved. Thinking about the title made me think about Bernie Madoff and Kenneth Lay, so I wrote a bunch of phrases that those guys might have said.

UPDATE: We’re now called Steeples and we have a new singer, a guy named Dustin who sang for the band Suicide Bomb.