Musicality of the Mundane: A Screeching Weasel Ballad

Paul Russel, the creator of the Screeching Weasel logo did this cover art for my article about my condensed history of Screeching Weasel through the eyes of a flower delivery man.  Check it out!
Musicality of the Mundane: A Screeching Weasel Ballad


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I Wanna Be Naked

Image
Before our Screeching Weasel song I Wanna Be A Homosexual helped us to amazingly help others to break down, and become aware of, the division of heterosexual and homosexual in the punk scene (LGBTQ), we had a song that was most popular to play at our live shows. It was I Wanna Be Naked. After a few times of playing it live back in the late 80s, people in the audience started to strip down to their skivvies, at first provoked by Ben himself getting naked, but soon audience m embers would beat him to it. Eventually at our first “last show” at McGregor’s in the suburbs of Chicago, a group of punks we called the Polish Punks, stood in the middle of the mosh pit and stripped down to their previously prepared decorated undies. They each had a different animal covering their penises. The one I remember, of course, was an elephant and its trunk, which is obvious since the trunk so easily becomes the penis. At this show we had many more naked people (men and women) than we had had before, and ...
Read more

The Westone Guitar with the smiley faces and Benetton sticker

Image
I haven't done one of these Screeching Weasel remembrances in awhile. But my friend David just asked me a question, and this came up. It is more about the nuts and bolts and really has no emotional content. The photo is from the contact sheet I have of the House of Blues shows that took place in 2000 and 2001. I am not sure which show this is from. David: Hey John, you may have addressed this  in your album videos, but did you use the same guitar for most of the Weasel recordings? John: Up until Bark Like a Dog I used basically the same guitar, a cheap 100 dollar Westone I bought in a record store. I used that for 10 years, till it nearly fell apart. That guitar is in a personal museum at Jeff Spreitzer's house. I had a back up guitar that was a strange Gibson Telecaster, but I never used it. I eventually gave it to Andrea from The Manges. His guitar cracked on the plane ride over from Italy to Chicago. I gave it to him and it still had the setlist from the Anthem tour tape...
Read more

Vigilance and love in the face of what we hate

Image
VIGILANCE AND LOVE IN THE FACE OF WHAT WE HATE As a product of a community of punk that we all have helped to create, we sometimes have to look back to when we were young. We saw the world from the perspective of outcasts, of oddballs, of lost souls from an island of misfit toys, of people that felt they had to rebel, but at times we may not have known what we were rebelling against. And now that I am older I am here to say, “My friends, this thoughtful struggle never ends.” We must always be vigilant. We must always strive to prevent ourselves from becoming what we hate. And what we hate changes over time. We must be aware of what new hates come from experience and which ones come from surrender. Recently I went through a punk existential dilemma questioning my place in this scene. I want to thank my friends for helping me to see the perspectives needed to make my own decisions to continue this fight to be a positive force, my rebellion to face adversity with kindness an...
Read more