I give the shit 8/10. I liked it a lot. I’m a gore guy, and there was a bit of that, almost to the point where I had to look away, which is awesome.

Being an avid true crime reader, I find real life pretty fuckin’ scary, so it’s good that this movie provided me with some jolts and scares, and plenty of blood to boot. I think we all know that movie reviewers are pretty asshole-y, and that’s a shame. Go see it. If you don’t like it, You’re dumb.

So last night, spent Easter at the in laws (food, beer, comedians on youtube, and laughter). My guts were fucked for a bit so i napped. But it was good, Alex got to have a really good conversation with her folks.

Alex is currently hanging with some friends in Fitzroy, and I’m here, in my undies. on the couch. Ipad is cranking Ted Bundy confession tapes as I type away. I hate that I am obsessed with such an asshole. He has a daughter, you know. I wonder if she knows who her daddy is. She’s be in her to late 20′s by this point.

I’m thinking of making some small vids playing to some Anthrax songs. Looks like the need a touring guitarist. I know the have Ron and Paul and John, but all those guys seem very busy. I on the other hand, not so much, ha ha. But my guts feel semi fucked, so maybe another day.

So tomorrow I work, have a few lessons from home. Thursday I have an audition/rehearsal with Rockstaroke (Karaoke with an actual band), and all the other shit I do.

I think that’s it for now.

Johnny

Casse Walker and I interviewed about 15-18 bands yesterday at SOUNDWAVE for HEAVY Magazine’s HEAVY TV.

All I can say is, it was great!! The bands were diggin’ it, huge crowds (the event gets bigger each year), and everyone had a blast.

So, top photo is myself and Kerry King (photobombing courtesy of Sheri Vengeanza), middle pic is Cassie Walker with Sandy from Fucked Up, and this pic just above us is Josh Middleton from UK Trash Motherfuckers Sylosis. My friend Mick Somerton is Stage Manager for those guys, which was cool. Small world. And when Alarum toured in Europe our friend/driver Zdenek played the shit out of those guys, so it was nice to say, “Josh, I’ve heard your albums like 400 times..” Ha ha ha. He’s singer AND rippin’ guitarist.

All in all, great day/night. Unless you’re ill.

Now, I was going to take a cab, but Scotty from Levitation Hex said I could go with him and his lovely girlfriend and they’d drop me home. This was  Thursday October 25  (2012) at 2:45 in the morning, mind you. I gladly accepted.

We get to my joint, Scotty open the trunk, I grab my backpack, and my Ibanez (in the Hiscox case) was under his guitar. I grab the handle, pull with semi manly force, and viola!! Out comes the guitar.

Now, just as the guitar was at about face height, the handle broke off and the guitar hit the concrete face down, with a kick ass SPLAT!!! Ha ha, I wasn’t worried about the guitar at all, I knew that bad boy was fine. I was more worried about showing up to future gigs cradling a no handled guitar case looking like a douche.

After the jet lag, a gig in Perth that very weekend we got back, and a bit of downtime, I decided I’d email Hiscox and see if I could buy another handle. I have two of their cases as well as my Ibanez J Craft moulded case, so I’m not totally helpless, ya know? I’ll use one of those for the time being.

Now, what you don’t know is that this particular guitar case had been overseas two times prior to the 3 week tour I went on. I lent it to someone and he’d taken it for a good two months. I’ve had both cases for roughly 6 years with no issues. Ever.

Anyways, I email Hiscox from their site: Hola, I’m Doug, I want to buy a handle, bla bla bla. Hit send.

I don’t hear anything from them for about a week. I mentally keep a note of that, but life gets in the way….

On a Monday after work I pull up just outside our gates and go to my mailbox. Ah, a package, nice!! I see who the sender is: HISCOX!!!

They sent me the handle, screws, all the shit I need to put the new handle on. I am floored!! Here I was, happy to buy another handle and these dudes give me one!! Turned my semi shit day totally upside down! The spring in my step returned. They also included good, solid directions on how to install that bad boy. Which I’ll need because I’m fairly dumb when it comes to building shit.

Later that day I told my wife what had happened and she gently reminded me (because she bought both cases for me as gifts) that those cases come with a lifetime warranty. WHOAAAAA!!! I had no idea!!!

Yo, Hiscox: I LOOOVE YOUR CASES. They are very lightweight and sturdy protective sonsa bitches. Thanks so much. I’m speechless and I encourage any serious travelling musician to purchase the case you need.

I am elated, a billion thanks.

Doug

I have two of  THESE. (STD-EF, the top one)

So, we played Saturday night (singer’s 40th bday), and we played to a pretty decent crowd of 83-116 people. It looked pretty fuckin’ packed in my view, which was awesome.

Soundcheck

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Since it was Trusty’s bday, we all came out wearing suits. Suits+mask= hell, but it’s gotta be done. So half the set was suits, then we had “Gimpermission”, and someone was giving away prizes on ‘The Wheel of Meat”. We came back out, rocked out some more, then we finished, had beers, mingled,and fucked off. Here’s some pics.

v

May 6. Our friend Tash hired out the Eltham Roller Rink to celebrate her bday for 2 and a half hours. This is what I wore. That’s Maria Ashton on the left, and me woif with the glasses. her name be Alex.

So I worked, took a train into the city, met up with Alex, took a nice nap, and went to Prince.

Now, I knew that shit was gonna rock, and it did. The first 20 minutes were mind-blowing, a total assault on all my senses. Prince and everybody start jammin’ out, they got people in the audience onto the stage to dance, lots of guitar solos by Prince, lots of audience participation. Out of a 3 hour gig, I didn’t know MAYBE two or three songs. How nuts is that?

A buddy on Facebook asked, “How was it? I’ve heard mixed reviews.” Mixed reviews? There ain’t no topping damn near perfection. What was to fault, one of the dancers wasn’t hot enough? Not enough bass in the bass? Look, in a nutshell, the shit was off tap!! Flava Flave and Chuck D came out and jammed, Prince got on bass..I dunno, I liked it wholeheartedly and will definitely pay big money to see that shit up close, but that’s just me. I loved it. He nailed everything live, even all the high high vocal shit.

he did encores, even fooled some of the audience and came out after 15-20 minutes. It was awesome. I told my wife, “Until I see them start taking away amps and shit, we stayin’..”

Wednesday 

So Wednesday we had a lovely breakfast at this one joint who makes KILLER food. We then went to a bookstore and bought a couple of books (Alex got Double Dexter, I got Tina Fey’s autobiography), and then we went down Hosier Lane and of course, took some pics.

FIN

Anyway, fast forward a few months. I was living in Melbourne (Greensborough, to be exact) Australia, I had just acquired my first free email account (sadsab69@hotmail.com), and I was teaching guitar and doing Ibanez clinics for Australis, who was (and still is) the importer for Ibanez out here in Oz.

Marten from Meshuggah talks about the Ibanez 8 string

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Pic of myself around the time I was trying to help the guys, that Jem right there was a loner. Bummer!!

By this stage I had emailed Marten (Meshuggah rhythm guitarist) a few times to kiss his ass (as well as the band’s), and I figured since I’m doing Ibanez clinics and they’re playing the Ibanez 7 strings, why not try to get them an endorsement? Surely it can’t be that hard.

Through Marten I received Fredrik’s email address and started contacting him. I also emailed him questions for a website I used to run called killuglytv.com, and asked him some technical questions about the production of DEI. I told him I was doing Ibanez clinics and I was going to try and get them an endorsement, but that I needed CD’s of all their material to give to Ibanez. I think I said I wanted two copies of each album, ha ha; one for myself, one for Ibanez. I think that’s pretty fair. Fredrik gave me the email address to his manager, and I emailed him. (Note: at this time I was known to these guys as John Sanders; I hadn’t done radio yet. That’s a whole other blog)

Meshuggah

And then, nothing happened. At least that’s where the momentum stopped, pretty much completely. I can’t remember why I couldn’t get the CD’s. I was fairly annoyed, because finding a complete Meshuggah catalogue in a cd store was not an easy thing. Well, it was easier at JB Hi Fi , but I don’t think I knew that then.

In the end I thought, what’s more important, getting free CD’s from my favourite band, or trying to help starving musicians maybe get a break on some guitars? So I emailed Ibanez . I don’t remember exactly what I wrote, but it was to the effect of, “Hey, I do clinics for you guys out here in Oz, and there’s a metal band out of Sweden that pretty much kick the shit out of everyone, and if you want to do the right thing (and you should, because they’re already using the 7 strings), you had best snap them up.” Or something like that. Probably a lot shorter and a lot nicer, ha ha.

A few weeks later, I got a call insanely early in the morning (Australia’s 17 hours ahead of the US). It was Rob Nishida from Ibanez, who was running the custom shop at the time. He wanted Fredrik’s phone number, which I had. We did small talk, I told him Ibanez were stupid for not mass producing the BSB Jem as a 7 string. The conversation was roughly no more than two minutes.

Ibanez BSB Jem: shoulda been a 7

So that’s it. I stopped emailing both Marten and Fredrik. I figured they were busy and they probably had lots of people befriending them, etc etc. I wasn’t gonna be a thorn in their sides. I was happy to listen to the music, buy the CD’s and shirts, and support my favourite band. I mean, I sure wouldn’t have turned down a 7 string BSB Jem as a thank you from both the band and Ibanez, but that’s fucking fantasyland style shit. Ha ha, still, one can dream.

And yeah, I sent an email to Ibanez and a dude from there called me and I gave him another dude’s phone number, I’m not stupid; Meshuggah were gonna get a guitar endorsement regardless. I just facilitated the speed a touch.

Never dismiss the power of an email. I emailed Line 6 regarding Meshuggah with the same Spiel. Twice, bitch, twice!! (And the funny thing is I ended up doing clinics for those guys as well. Another blog, yeah?)

Now that I’m in a signed band, I should probably hit Ibanez up.