WillChatham.com

I’m gonna start something ambitious here, and feature a Song Of The Week. The songs I’m picking will likely be from way off the beaten path, but are songs that I think need to be heard for one reason or another.

The first song I am going to feature is by a band called The Didjits (more at Wikipedia), who were a Chicago-based trio from the late 80’s to the early 90’s. I was way into their first two albums, Fizzjob and Hey Judester. My first exposure to The Didjits was when the band I was playing in at the time, Cerebellum, opened up for them and Squirrel Bait on new years eve, 1988.

This tune pretty much summarizes their almost rock-a-billy, but still punk-ish, and a wee bit surf-ish, style of insanity. Whatever the case, they were all about rocking. I had the pleasure of seeing them two more times, once in Louisville when I was asked to come up and sing a song on stage with them, and once in Lexington, Ky. Wish these guys were still around.

King Carp - from the album “Hey, Judester” (1988)
Right-click and “Save As” to download, or press blue arrow to stream it.

Lyrics:

Pull my line, pull my line
I dive the deepest, I’m King Carp
And you know I really dig your sexy legs

Yeah I’m the fish with the bad drug problem
I’m the fish with the brand new car
It’s a 1964 ‘Cuda, I think

I am the king of the fish King Carp, King Carp
I am the baddest dude, King Carp
And you know what my fins can do
I’m driving just for you

On my way back to land and I have to reach out my hand
To cushion my fall as I hit the fine, warm sand
(something something) baboon
And a fish joins in on basoon
And he sports a stylish hairdo, like Vidal Sasoon

I am the king of the fish King Carp, King Carp
I am the baddest dude, King Carp
And you know what my fins can do
I’m driving just for you

Big bad fish goin down to the bottom
(repeat first verse, chorus)

I was updating Wordpress tonight to the latest patch and ran into some troubles with my custom layout, so I threw up this prefab one until I have time to fix the problems. Something in the menu was causing an error. I’ll get it sorted out sooner or later.

In the mean time, I’ve been anxiously awaiting the arrival of my iPod, which seemed to have gotten a little too close to a high-powered magnet, which the hard drive seemed to disagree with. Luckily I had the 3 year protection plan on it, so I am waiting for it to come back from Apple. I am secretly hoping they decide it will be easier to send me a new one, in which case I may end up with a newer model. We will see what happens.

It’s been a couple of weeks without the iPod, and I am missing it sorely. Woe is me.

I had one of those strange series of coincidences today. This woman from AFLAC was at work today and was taking my information for some insurance crap I was enrolling for (the one where they pay you like $5000 for each finger you lose…hmmm). She was asking me my birthday, and I told her when it was. She said that was her father’s birthday too. A moment later, she asked my address, and she said, “Wow, my mom and dad live on your street”. So the next thing that made it all really weird was when I looked at my watch to see what the date was, and I noticed it as 2:22 on 2/22. Far out, d00d.

Aside from those types of things happening, I went and saw Mastodon at the Orange Peel the other night. I was mostly excited to go out and see a show in the first place, but these guys rocked the jams, which made it even better. I’m not usually into metal, but it was great nonetheless. The only downside was that the sound was not mixed very well at all, and often, it was really hard to distinguish what was going on.

That brings me to my next coincidence, which happened when I first got to the show and was mingling through the crowd trying to find a good spot to stand before the band started. This guy walked up to me and stopped, pointing at me. My first thought was it was someone I knew from Louisville back in the day, but I didn’t think that was very likely, so I dismissed it. I was like, “Dude, who are you?”

It turned out my first impression was correct. It was Andy Tinsley from Louisville, a guy that was part of the Bardstown Road crowd back in the day. I asked him what the heck he was doing there, and it turns out he was the sound engineer for Mastodon. Go figure.

I promise I won’t wait for more strange coincidences to happen before I do some more writing here. I’ve been slack, I know.

Circuit City finally got a new shipment of the Ion USB turntables, so I ran and snatched one up before someone else did. The first thing I did was convert the Bastro single of “Nothing Special” that Mr. Jeter hooked me up with to a nice rich MP3 encoding. Hopefully this won’t piss off David Grubbs too much (hey, we did go to the same church as kids), but here it is for your listening pleasure:

Bastro - Nothing Special

I was so stoked to hear this song again after about 15 years. Good, isn’t it?

I’m trying to find a permanent place to set this thing up to enable quick conversions of all my old vinyl, and when I do, I will be posting a lot of good stuff that needs to be heard, so stay tuned!

Please don’t send me Microsoft Word Documents. ‘Nuff said.

The Origami Boulder Company sells finely crafted works of art.

The 419 Eater details a hilarious scamming of the scammer in this effort to fight back against infamous Nigerian Scams (419’s).

Me and Jeremy getting mad props for Channel 18 on Mefi Music

Another Chatham family right-time-right-place newspaper appearance.

On those Interwebs, you have to know how to ask questions the smart way.

Sometimes, it’s useful to know how to snatch an expiring domain.

Another useful thing is A List of Every Website Statistic Publicly Available.

Sit back and laugh as you make your best friend talk to his/her ex boyfriend/girlfriend on the phone.

Joey’s history of bands in Louisville is good. That’s pretty much how I remember it too.

Back in August I was in Louisville and got to record some tunes in an airplane hangar with Jeremy. It was too much fun. Check out the free tunes to hear them. Jeremy provides the guitar and bass, while I do the drums and other banging of things. Listen closely on one of the tracks for the jet plane taking off, which cleverly disguises an error in the song we made.

On another note, Jeter completely rocked my world this week by sending me the previously mentioned 7″ recording of Bastro doing My Dad Is Dead’s Nothing Special, a song which is very important to me because of its awesome drumming. Not to mention the fact that it’s just an awesome song, and I have been dying to hear it since 1992. I couldn’t believe it when it showed up in my mail, and my wife and kids looked at me funny when I shouted with glee and jumped onto the coffee table. Thank you, Mr. Jeter. I owe you one. Or 100.

Now, I must go buy a turntable. This 7″ has pushed me into deciding to delve in and get the Ion iTTUSB, which will allow me to start converting my 400+ vinyl albums to digital format. This will take a while to do, but there is so much vinyl I have that never came out on CD that it will be worth it.

Lastly, I’ve decided to start a new band. I’m going to put an ad out soon seeking one guitarist and one bass player to form the power trio from hell. If it doesn’t leave my ears ringing and my knuckles bloody, then I will have to try again. So, who wants to play?