i was recording with my old punk band for our 12" ep. the studio had a 2" tape machine so we were all v excited to be working totally old school. upon arrival it was found that one of the channels was dead. luckily the engineer knew someone capable of repairing it. the guy shows up & is working on the machine. he hears me make a joke about GW Bush waving at stevie wonder & asks "son do you even know who stevie wonder is?" i didnt respond out of respect for my elders. later he revealed himself to be one of the designers of the very machine he was fixing. "this machine has done it all. ever hear a little song called 'Layla?'"

dave cloud was playing the springwater. my roommate was putting together a trio to open the gig. i was asked to join & happily agreed. at our first meeting as a band i asked if anyone had ideas for a name.
the guitarist quickly said “i already gave them our name.”
“oh” i replied “what are we called?”
“horse cock”
“horse cock?”
“yeah i figured people will see the flyer and think ‘woah horse cock whats that like?’”

long story short i did not perform at that gig.

i'd had some acid sitting in my freezer for what seemed like years. i had gotten some from my significant other's childhood best friend. it was on sugar cubes (something i had not seen in real life up to that point) and was purported to be from a group that called themselves "the grateful dead." i'm sure you're rolling your eyes at that one, but these folks were some LSD fanatics. their initiation into the group consists of forming a small bowl with ones hand and filling this makeshift vessel with pure liquid 'cid. if the initiate comes out of it after a week or so, they're in. flash forward to last weekend. i'd just gotten some reissues in the mail (coma detox, genocide organ, mauthausen orchestra etc etc) and an old friend had a sound system worth more than a used cars. so we drop the shit and drop the needle.

now my friends roomate had ordered some darts off wish.com for like $1. they said he would get 3 but they only sent 1. it took 3 months to arrive. he's throwing the dart into the dart board outside and offers a throw to my old friend. old friend takes like 5 steps back and chucks the dart into the woods. when asked why he did that he replied "the return address was wuhan china"

well, the roommate started laughing so hard he got a nose bleed which resulted in my old friend vomiting with laughter. i was doubled over myself, although in hindsight i wonder how much the drugs were contributing.

::this post is lovingly dedicated to John Russell Murphy who passed away all too soon::

i had this friend who got accused of some pretty fucked up stuff. an entire private facebook group dedicated to his ass in typical call out culture fashion. their ire eventually turned elsewhere, but thats not what this is about. we were musicians, so what were we to do? we assembled a cracking band within the week. immediately we had an offer to play a VFW hall. we named the band Three Hundred Dollars (this was the bare minimum we played for. five guys in the act means five noses to feed.) we wrote a couple of originals in the style of 13 floor elevators but heavy with some kraut and southern heat. perhaps our best was a ditty called "snake in the grass" inspired both by recent events prior mentioned as well as houston rapper willie d in his seminal classic homie don't play that. our drummer mentioned he always wanted to cover smoke on the water. i changed the lyrics to that of inagaddadavida. i also added an old school "rap" about people needing friction to make a spark of the loins and from this the fire of all life will be reborn. the busch & lite flowed. for our big finale we covered one of my favorite songs to this day, my cocks on fire (long version) by WHiTEHOUSE. the fateful day arrived and a competing show advertised itself as such. "don't go to that show. come to this one." we didn't care. we could taste the three bills we had been promised. attendance was so poor we only made $150. i spent my $30 on beer that night alone. my friend moved across the country not too long after. we never got to perform another gig as that act.

edit: recently got my hands on the mp3s of our rehearsals & i forgot we also covered the theme to "welcome back kotter" as well as "M.A.S.H." & "taxi."