ABSU

Absu totally rules. I am somewhat obsessed with them at this time. I remember first hearing about them in the mid/ late nineties and the first story I heard about them I'm sure is totally false. I knew it was untrue at the time but I chose to believe it anyway because it was just so amusing. I heard that they were so metal that they would walk around in full black metal/ pagan getup.. spikes and makeup all day in their hometown in Texas. Even when they went grocery shopping. Although I knew it was total bullshit, the image of them in the check-out line at Wal-Mart in full corpse paint buying toilet paper was so awesome in my mind's eye. I don't remember who it was exactly that told me that lie, but I do owe them a thank you for all the times that mental picture brought a smile to my face. They actually played in North Little Rock once at that little metal place ran by the old guitarist of crankbait, a place called The Closet. Some of you might remember the joint. Not sure why, but I missed the show, and regret it terribly.  The first time I actually heard their music is when I took a chance and ordered a bunch of stuff I had never heard of from the Relapse catalog (remember those days?). I got 'The Third Storm Of Cythraul" in the mail and I totally loved it. Do the elder gods a favor and download their discography here , and check out their Myspace here.   

What Have I Become? What I Have Become.

Folks, I had the good life. A haze of badly rolled joints, shit food, warm free beer, and tons of strangers who already knew who I was. A crazy life for a teenager. All those years ago, my band Mutha's Day Out was touring constantly, usually with bands that, unlike us, knew exactly what they wanted to do musically, and had been perfecting their crafts for years. Some of them had been playing music as long as I had been alive. Yet there we were together in metal clubs and dive bars all over the country. Touring with bands like King's X (download their latest release below please), Sugartooth, Godspeed, and playing random shows with bands like Macabre, Jackyl, Pride And Glory... it was great as I look back, but at the time it was quite awkward for me, mainly because I knew our music was as naive as we were. Really though, I learned more in those years on tour than I would have ever learned in a classroom. More importantly, I learned about things that really matter in this world, like how to read people, how to treat strangers, and how to be a friend to everyone. But like all things, Mutha's Day Out had to end. It just had to. Internal conflict, maturing minds, drug and bible addictions. We had to end it. 

Once it was over there were a few years of insane body-destroying drug abuse for me and in those times it became clear that music was more than just my fate. It was my fate to share. Not only could I hear what I wanted to play, I could hear it through the world's ears. It's importance was unfathomable at the time. I struggled with these apocalyptic visions and end-time soundtracks that dominated whatever buzz I had at the time. Actually, some of the music I wrote then, already have, and still do re-surface from time to-time in new material. 

It wasn't until I hooked up with the Little Rock people that the paths I am on now really opened up. Meeting Bobby Redd, Chris Terry, Clay Latch, and Jay Lytle, was one of the best things that ever happened to me. We all knew great music was to come. It was already there in Sickshine, Crankbait, and Shredded Corpse. The first real project that came from my relocation was Copsopdomy. I really enjoyed getting away from the bass for a change. Plus playing music with Bobby Redd and Chuck on drums was the power I knew I needed. Our first show at Vino's was pure fucking magic. We had the entire crowd in our fists, and like I said at Bobby's funeral, it was really like we could just pick the whole crowd up off the floor and the crush them back down to the ground with the sludge. Total power. Then by living in the jam house, I had time to work on my drumming, which I had been attempting my whole life. One night when Sunny Daze's drummer couldn't make it to practice, I sat in with them and that was the beginning of what now is Rwake. Throughout the next couple months, Sunny Daze needed a drummer more and more, and we actually wrote a couple tunes so we formed Wake. We just got stoned as hell and jammed for like a year or so, played some shows, then after a serious speed/ DM/ acid binge I had a revelation. I remember we were having trouble with our bass player, trying to incorporate our new 2nd guitar player, Chris Newman, who was one of the best things that ever happened to us, and we were all gathered in the house we were living in an I remember we were trying to change the name due to the million other bands named Wake, and something snapped in my brain and I told the rest of the band that I could no longer play music to just have a good time and just be in some party party stoner rock band. If I was going to keep playing music in Wake, we would have to do something cosmically relevant. We had the talent and the abilities. I knew it was time to open the spiritual gates.  I don't really remember everyone's reaction that night but that was the end of Wake and when we added the R and became Rwake. Also a very relevant part of my life. Rwake start was slow and rough. Alot of really poverty-filled years that although they where hard, it was never enough to change my focus. The music was becoming so spiritually rewarding, it was O.K. to live off of pizza crusts and stolen frozen burritos from Kroger. It was in these times that we had an endless party in our house and a Levy girl named Brittany started coming to the drunken drugfests. It didnt take long at all for the hands of fate to put us together, as we still are, almost 11 years later. Rwake continued to do better and better with the new cosmic drug nightmare sound and things got better and better. The next couple of years were killer, for the first time I was absolutely proud of what I was doing musically. I had a couple of other bands that I was really excited about. 4 Way Anger, Hellhawk, and Copsodomy were at their best point musically, although at the bands were to be short lived. Then about five years ago the inevitable reality of middle-age showed it's ugly head and my life started to change quite dramatically. Children were being born, people were working more and more to pay to live alone instead of everyone living in two or three houses. We just started to grow up, as crazy and inconceivable as it sounds. Music, always in the forefront of all of our lives was harder to do on a bigger professional scale. In reality though, being able to step back away from the band for a minute and see it from a distance has been crucial in the writing of our best material. The last two Rwake albums are light-years ahead of our older stuff. But life was just changing in alot of ways. B became pregnant right before the "If You Walk Before You Crawl.." studio session and gave birth to Charlie not long after we got off tour with Alabama Thunderpussy. Shortly after he was born he was diagnosed with Rubenstein-Taybe Syndrome, a genetic disorder that means that he'll have special needs and require extra attention throughout his life. At first the news of this was obviously soul-shattering, mainly because the more I read about kids with RTS, the more I realized that there is extremely different levels of it and there's no way to tell how severe a kid is affected by it until he or she gets older. Luckily, Charlie is more mildly affected than alot of kids and although he will have special needs, he is really not that far behind kids his age. I often say and I truly mean that if I could go back and change him genetically to make him normal, there is no way in the world I would do it. I am inspired and even envious of his levels of purity and simplicity. I have always loved the things in people that make them unique, so Charlie is a dream come true kid for me. Raising Charlie is a little tough for us because we have a house in the hills of Northern Arkansas and his therapy is in Little Rock, which means that he and B spend their weeks there so he can get therapy and so she can run her tattoo studio. I have returned to life on a forklift working nights at the Wal-Mart distribution center also known as "The Stomach Of Satan" because that is where all the shit in the world is received and shipped to the Wal-Mart stores or "The Assholes Of Satan". Life has changed dramatically from the days of waking up in the van, not knowing what state I was in, what day it was, or really even who I was. I now know that I am a total heavy metal, burnt-out, apocalypse obsessed, raging, screaming, half deaf lunatic and I'm cool with that. As long as I'm eating ramen noodles because I want to, instead of because I have to.   

downloads:

King's X - XV (2008)

Sugartooth - S/T (torrent)

Figgerin this dang thing out.

Greetings all! Here we go. For awhile now I've been planning on doing something like this. With so much of my life already committed to creating countless other projects, I've been too busy to do something that is based on really what's most important to me. My beautiful family, and our highly abnormal daily lives. I feel as crazy as our home lives are, this might even rival the entertainment value of any of the bands I've been in anyway. 

 

So lets start by introducing the main characters of this story. First and foremost is my son Charlie. Full name Charles Michael Morgan, born October 25th, 2004. Almost a Halloween baby... we tried.  Thats a story by itself. Well come back to that later. 

Next we have my wife of 11 years and my best friend, we call her B. She is a true warrior, and she lives to do everything possible for Charlie. I've never seen anyone love someone as much as she loves Charlie. You'll be reading many insane stories about her as well. 

 

And then there's me. Without these other two people, I would not be the person I am today. 

 

Ha! Thats right. I told you we're not a normal family. 

So, stay tuned. I promise you plenty of highly entertaining tales. 

R.I.P. George Carlin

To say George Carlin was just a comedian is a terrible misrepresentation of how brilliant he really was. He was a true wordsmith of the highest level. His mastery of the English language and uses of rhythm set him way ahead of other entertainers, especially in his later years. I was lucky enough to see him on the "You Are All Diseased" tour here in Little Rock in 1999. It was so incredible because that night an f-4 or f-5 tornado (can't remember exactly) hit downtown Little Rock during the show, 5 blocks away from where we were inside the auditorium with George. He totally killed that night. For those of you familiar with the "You Are All Diseased" show, while he was saying "There is no such thing as God... never was... never will be", the tornado sirens were going off outside! Then he said " If there is a such thing as God, may he strike this audience dead right now", then as the crowd sat quiet in horror, all you could hear were the sirens wailing and the firetrucks, police cars, and ambulances responding to the destroyed gas station, Pizza Hut, and Waffle House, six blocks away. Still though, people were so offended by his Atheist jokes, they were leaving like crazy... INTO THE STORM!!! Only in the Bible Belt would people rather risk getting killed by a tornado than risk going to Hell for sitting through a George Carlin show!  

I've watched everything he's ever done. Even to the point of B begging me to turn the channel after sitting through "Doin It In New Jersey" for the 28th time. I've admired his brilliance. I've tried to learn and take influence from his mastery of the language. He is one of my favorite souls and I will truly miss his wisdom. Thank you for living, George. You changed my life. 

R.I.P. George Carlin

You Brilliant Old Fuck

                                                                             

Willie Nelson

                                                           

When I was younger, I had very little respect for my elders, as I'm sure most of you didn't as well. Alot of great things really fell by the wayside in those times simply because my parents or other older, more experienced people told me something was cool. Being young and full of hate, I refused to even consider giving respect to alot of things that later in life I've totally grown to appreciate. To be more specific, although my parents were serious music lovers and opened the gates of my mind to Kiss, ZZ Top, Alice Cooper, AC/DC, and countless other bands, I always refused to give in to the temptations of country music. I had lots of reasons, most of which make little sense now, but the main one that sticks out in my memory is that I was seriously on a mission. A serious supremely dedicated die-hard mission to find the heaviest, fastest, most hell spawned evil bands that ever burdened the earth. At that time Country music was exactly the opposite of what I needed to find, and in time I did find exactly what I was looking for. By going through the now all-to-familiar channels... Kiss-Ozzy-Metallica-Anthrax-Slayer- next thing you know, Im there. Filling my head with "Sacrificial Suicide" by Deicide or "Desecrator" by Exhorder, or even "History Of Hell" by Burning Witch. The list became almost infinite of blasphemous grind and satanic doom. 

It wasn't until much later, at the end of the 90's, that by living with one of my best friends and fellow Rwake member, Reid, that I started to learn the scale of how much I had really missed while blindly hunting the most evil of metals. Reid has always been one of the most dedicated music lovers I know and through his extensive collection of classic country and through many bottles of whiskey, I realized that alot of the heaviness and some of the evil I was looking for was not just in the savage metal bands I had found, but in alot of the earlier Hank, Waylon, Merle, George, and Willie records.  One of the most intense records I heard back then has to be "Red-Headed Stranger" by Willie Nelson. The movie is brilliant too, but the songs still stand out in my opinion as some of my favorite classic country tunes. The album has become a staple in our home, favored by B and I. 

 While on tour, we stopped at the Charlie Daniels Museum in Nashville and I bought a Willie Nelson doll for Charlie. At the time I was scrutinized because B thought it would be unappreciated by Charlie and at the time it was. But now, years later, it has become a very important part of his "going bye-bye" ritual. I pick him up and we hold Willie together and Wille and I sing "Angel Flying Too Close To The Ground"  to him and he genuinely loves it, making him the newest Willie fan in the family. If only I was as open-minded as he is when I was younger.   

Here is a killer live Willie Nelson album from Roadhouse 

Feb. 1975 - Fort Worth, TX

CD1:
01 Whiskey River
02 Stay All Night
03 Well, Hello There
04 Crazy / Night Life
05 Bloody Mary Morning
06 Pine Top's Boogie Woogie
07 Up Against The Wall Redneck Mother
08 Me And Paul
09 Truck Drivin Man
10 Goin Fishin
11 Okie From Muskogee
12 Shotgun Willie
13 Mr. Record Man
14 Hello Walls
15 One Day At A Time
16 Touch Me
17 Medley
18 Song For You
19 Big Balls In Cowtown
20 Sad Songs And Waltzes
21 After The Fire Is Gone
22 Will The Circle Be Unbroken

CD2:
01 Proud Mary
02 Pick Up The Tempo
03 Good Hearted Woman In Love With A Good Timin Man
04 The Last Letter
05 Half A Man
06 Remember Me
07 Bandera
08 Devil In A Sleeping Bag
09 Whiskey River
10 That's Where My House Lives
11 I Never Cared For You
12 Milk Cow Blues
13 Bubbles In My Beer
14 Stay All Night
15 When The Roll Is Called Up Yonder
16 Jambalaya
17 Rollin In My Sweet Baby's Arms
18 Don't Say Love or Nothin
19 Can I Sleep In Your Arms Tonight Lady
20 The Party's Over
21 What'd I Say
22 Mountain Dew
23 Pretty Paper
24 Will The Circle Be Unbroken

replace the x's with t's when cutting and pasting the links into your address bar:

hxxp://rapidshare.com/files/122849859/Willie_Nelson_022675_pt1.zip
hxxp://rapidshare.com/files/122849815/Willie_Nelson_022675_pt2.zip
hxxp://rapidshare.com/files/122849833/Willie_Nelson_022675_pt3.zip
hxxp://rapidshare.com/files/122849878/Willie_Nelson_022675_pt4.zip

A better way to get the new Rambo DVD

                                                                            
                                    
I must say, the new Rambo movie is one of the best sequels I've ever seen. We first saw the trailer while we were on our last west coast tour over a year ago. Unable to believe how graphically intense and just plain bloody it was, we watched it over and over I know at least 25 times in a row... in slow motion... frame by frame... for real. Every member of Rwake is a true action movie junkie. We all love low-budget, high body count, multi rocket launcher flicks so it seemed like Stallone made this one just for us. At that time it was still called "John Rambo" and didn't even have a release date yet.
Needless to say when it was finally released in theaters it immediately became priority #1. In the theater it was absolutely triumphant. The volume, the flying blood and meat. A dream come true. Well people, it is now available on DVD, and I demand you all go and get it. Instead of buying it normally, I suggest putting on a pair of stone washed blue jeans, an old green army jacket, and hitchhiking to the nearest retail store. Don't forget to conceal a full-size survival knife inside your jacket... just in case. If you do make it to

the store without killing the whole state and local police force after a discriminatory arrest leads to a violent escape and full-scale manhunt, then just politely buy the DVD, leave the store quietly, and use the survival knife to cut open that really challenging shrinkwrap and to make yourself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich when you get back to your momma's house... you'll never be as cool as Rambo.

                             

Woven Hand

To be one of these people who say "Rarely does a band come along..." would not do justice to the power of what this band has done to me. Hailing from Elktooth,  Colorado, it is David Eugene Edwards,  who used to be in a band called 16 Horsepower. You may or may not remember them. I remember seeing their tour posters years ago while playing the same dives they were playing. Unlike the pop-ish, indie-ishness of 16 Horsepower, Woven Hand is an almost indescribable metaphysical experience. Layers and overlapped musical textures with David's haunting vibrato-laden voice carrying you through dream-like planes. The choices of the various instruments used to compliment Davids brilliant multi-talented musicianship are perfect. At first the tone itself of his voice when he sings in the middle ranges was a little off-setting to me, but over several listens I have grown to really enjoy all the vocals. Please do yourself a favor and download "Consider The Birds" into your Itunes using the link below. It is my favorite album overall, but all 4 albums I have are full of pure spiritual voyages. Visit their Myspace for all details.  http://www.myspace.com/wovenhand.

    

Consider The Birds 

01. Sparrow Falls
02. Bleary Eyed Duty
03. To Make A Ring
04. Off The Cuff
05. Chest Of Drawers
06. Oil On Panel
07. The Speaking Hands
08. Down In Yon Forest
09. Tin Finger