As if life wanted to send me a message it knew I would ignore, I’m sad to report that my recording equipment has blown up.

My 16-track set up bit the dust during the Friday night of Budget Rock 10, so not only am I temporarily unable to use it, the last bands I attempted to record with it were Personal & the Pizzas, the re-united Statics, and the almighty Rip Offs, who played one of the most amazing sets I’ve ever witnessed. Yet none of what I captured will ever see the light of day because it all sounds like complete shit, and not the good kind (AKA “lo-fi”), but digital garbage.

It looks my equipment is repairable but it’s going to take awhile and require money I don’t have, now that I have a baby on the way as well as two new releases out Lemon Session (Von Zippers and Zulus). So, if you’ve been holding out on buying records from me but come to this site for the free downloads, please consider buying some records. You won’t be sorry if you do since they’re all rad.

Now onto what this post was supposed to be about: my recent recordings (pre-blow up) of Raw Nite.

Raw Nite is the newest project to feature the vocal-stylings of Rob Vertigo, the Bay Area’s favorite record store employee. Providing the musical platform for him are two dudes from Vertigo’s other bands: John Laux from Tractor Sex Fatality on guitar and Kyle Runyon from Butcher Cover on drums. As you can tell from the tracks, the band takes the aesthetic of Butcher Cover’s simplified, lo-fi hardcore and applies to ’90s’ noise rock a la Pussy Galore and Soul Crusher-era White Zombie. Yes, it’s that good.

Provided for your enjoyment is a mix of studio and live tracks. The live tracks were from their second show ever, which was at the Stork, and consists of a board recording melded with what was captured on my shitty handheld recorder. The studio tracks come from a recent recording I produced in my garage before it was gutted, where I used a Tascam 388 for the basic tracks and a 6-track cassette recorder for mixdown and overdubs.

Get ready to have your face melted off.

It’s the week after my 31st birthday, so it’s time to get off my ass and start doing something responsible and doesn’t pay.

Though I’ve been side-tracked by big projects at work and baby-making at home, I have finished mixes on the recordings from the SS10 shows. Sadly, I can’t tell you what’s going to happen with them as I’m still in the dark, but you’ll be seeing some posted here soon.

I recently grabbed a decent recording of Raw Nite, which features members of Tractor Sex Fatality and the Lemon Session “Bromeos” known as Butcher Cover. The shit is pretty much ready-to-go, so you should be seeing some songs from their set at the Stork Club up here sooner than later.

The big news? It looks like I’ll be recording the Budget Rock shows, once all the bands give me the okay. Keep your fingers crossed for that.

That being said, those waiting for the next two releases on Lemon Session should be happy to know that they will be arriving at my house in the next day or two.*

Click on the pictures on the right to order the singles. Thanks, and please tell your friends to buy some goddamn records.

*They arrived today, 9/30/2011, just after I posted this.

After their original drummer Joe left, I auditioned for the band Battleship. I hadn’t played drums for a band since the Popular Shapes, which I left in 2003; this was three years later. By that point I had been dying to play in a band and Battleship were one of the only bands in the Bay Area I actually liked.

It had been months since I spent any time behind a kit. Though I still brimmed over with natural talent (ha!), when it came to playing the parts Joe wrote for their songs, I stumbled and apologized more than I played proficiently.

Suffice to say, I didn’t get the job — it went to a much faster, talented drummer named Drew. Instead, Battleship’s singer/battery (that guy is “go, go go!” all the time) Aleks offered to start a side project with me.

It was after that conversation that led to the birth of Red Nurse, a band that shamelessly exploited its members’ previous bands’ fame. We couldn’t help it; really, each of our bands had minimal success in the underground (our singer’s old band, Tractor Sex Fatality, was probably the best of the bunch) and we didn’t think twice about advertising that fact when played our first show. (We headlined, so it was necessary.)

The funniest part about this band was the fact that the most talented member, Mike the bass player, was the only one who hadn’t been in a band before this. I helped him buy a bass and amp just for this band. He would become the main songwriter for the band, though many of our songs were compiled from spontaneous jams during practice.

We played a few shows, were offered a few record deals and yet we let it peter our when Alecks left for New York in 2007.

Here is the COMPLETE recording of a show we played at the Stork club in 2007 — we opened for the Wooden Shjips (who I also recorded) and Pink Reason. Enjoy.