And so convention season begins! From March 12 – 14, 2010 Andrew and I will be at MegaCon in Orlando, Florida. We’re assigned to table “Orange 1″ so if you’re a BORDER CROSSINGS reader in the area, stop by and say hello. We have printed copies of the entire first issue available now, as well as a few copies of the prelude story “Diaspora.” Come buy a copy and see how great this story looks in print!

Andrew will be doing sketches, either in the inside back cover of your BC comic or on a separate page if you wish. His sketch work is amazing and last year at Heroes Con one of his pieces (“Astronaut vs. Octopus”) sold for over a hundred dollars in their art auction. He sells table sketches for much less than that and they’re of excellent quality. I happen to know he draws a mean Beta Ray Bill.

See you soon Constant Reader.

I’ve had an interest in Medications since 2/3 of them played in Faraquet. I remember seeing their guitarist/singer Devin Ocampo in 1999 at Portsmouth’s Elvis Room with my friend & roommate Tim (himself a fantastic musician). We were the only ones in the audience besides a family member who lived in the area. Ocampo played guitar and sang in Faraquet and the played drums for headliner Smart Went Crazy. We were stunned by the guy’s prowess at both instruments and went home fans of both bands. In Faraquet, when he really ripped on the guitar he would stomp out a little one legged dance similar to the one Dave Matthews does in music videos. I saw them another time at Boston University in a student ballroom filled with kids. That night I stood behind a gaggle of girls, swooning over Ocampo and how “cute” he was. I was transfixed on his guitar playing trying to figure out how he did half of it. He’s one of those guys people refer to as a “musician’s musician.”

Years later, I found out his new band was playing at East Atlanta’s 529 Club in March. I wanted an opportunity to see Ocampo conquer that guitar again. Edie Sedgwick, another Dischord musician was going to open and I poked around the internet to find out what his music was like, beyond his fabled transgendered performances. That’s when I discovered his videos for “Sigourney Weaver” and “Martin Sheen.” I found dance music stapled onto a pop culture fixation that was really a diversion for lyrics about serious issues. This promised to be a fun night out.

It was. My girlfriend and I got there early, bought tea from the local independent coffee shop (a rarity in Atlanta) and sat in the back during the first band while Justin Moyer donned his sequined dress, a wig and some make-up to become Edie Sedgwick. He had a new album and crooned through even better songs like “Angelina Jolie” and “Anthony Perkins” (included on this mix). Medications performed as his back-up band and then took the stage themselves, switching around instruments almost every song. They performed a much simpler rock than Faraquet, but there is a serene honesty to their songs that still drew me in. They even played Faraquet’s “Study In Complacency.” We both had a great time, bought some albums and Sedgwick has become a fixture for long drives in the car. Both bands make me smile.

You can find Edie Sedgwick’s “Anthony Perkins here. You can find Medications “This Is the Part We Laugh About” here.

Edie Sedgwick’s “Anthony Perkins” is the sixth track on my 2009 Retrospective Mix on 8tracks.com. Medication’s “This Is the Part We Laugh About” is the seventh.

This track was a fast growing internet meme in February of 2009, after Christian Bale’s rant was leaked from the set of Terminator: Salvation. There was something about his tirade that I was fixated on, probably the obnoxiousness of a person in a position of “power,” lording his ego over those beneath him.

My girlfriend loves web hijinks like this and began playing Revolucian’s “Bale Out” dance mix of the tantrum around the house repeatedly. I was resistant at first, but it eventually grew like a worm in my brain and through the day I would find myself just mumbling, “What don’t you fucking understand?” for no reason at all. Still today, almost a year later I’ll occasionally turn to her and tell her, “Seriously man… you and me? We’re fucking done professionally.” Best joke ever with your eight-year partner.

We did not go see the movie and from the reports, I’m glad we didn’t. I do however hope that cinematographer Shane Hurlbut got some kind of absolution out of Bale’s behavior going public, making him the laughing stock of the internet for months on end. No one deserves to be treated like that.

You can listen to RevoLucian’s “Bale Out” remix on youtube here.

“Bale Out” is the fifth song on my 2009 Retrospective mix on 8tracks.com.

Boris seems to be the soundtrack that has accompanied me since moving to Atlanta, GA in 2006. I moved here to start graduate school but there were 3 months where I temped as a production artist before I began classes. At the first job, I worked with a great guy named Jason, who brought me to Atlanta’s art/music studio Eyedrum. He also burned a disc of Boris’ Akuma No Uta for me, introducing me to their unique brand of heavy metal.

Since then, I’ve seen them live here a few times (including at the Scion Fest I mentioned in the last song post) and they’re always stunning. “Floorshaker” is a song that I discovered after I started my current job (with grad school now behind me). For the first few months of working there in 2009, I would listen to last.fm in the afternoons, particularly the Boris “station” they generated. This song stood out immediately. Its almost poppy song structure feels different from their usual style, almost like surf rock, but it is still recognizably Boris. The last thirty seconds of feedback and thumping drums are especially familiar.

After checking, I found it was the second song on their Statement EP. There were afternoons where I just listened to “Floorshaker” repeatedly, finding design inspiration in Boris’ unique album covers and gig posters. I couldn’t find a digital version of it then. So, when last.fm took away their users ability to listen to a song more than once, I stopped using the site. I just wanted “Floorshaker” twenty-four-seven and they wouldn’t offer it to me. Either the company changed its business plan, or record labels pressured them into a less appealing model. Thankfully, the EP is now available online and I was able to finally buy a copy.

There is a YouTube file of “Floorshaker” here.

“Floorshaker” is the fourth track on my 2009 Retrospective mix on 8tracks.com.

In February, Atlanta hosted a free, all day, Toyota-funded metal festival at The Masquerade called the “Scion Fest.” My usual companion in metal (the eminent Doctor Jones) and I attended, showing up bright eyed at 11:00 am. I was excited because a number of my favorite bands were playing: Converge, Coalesce, Wolves In The Throne Room, Boris etc. I think it was Lewis Black that I recently heard say that anticipated moments are rarely as good as the anticipation itself. Scion Fest exemplified his philosophy. I remember a few things about that day:

1. It was disgustingly muddy.
2. Someone in line made fun of me by yelling, “Nice muscle shirt!” and I think he might have been right.
3. By 3:00 pm I wanted to go home and take a nap. This made me feel old.
4. During Mastodon’s closing set, it seemed from afar as if Toyota had hired actors to stand on the side of the stage, pretending to love Mastodon. One of these maybe-actors kept “raising the roof” during their set, then turned to someone calling to her off-stage and then returned to the stage with new dance moves more apropos to heavy metal. Large camera cranes loomed above the crowd as Mastodon played their new songs from Crack The Skye. Maybe they were filming a metal car commercial?
5. Vice magazine must have co-sponsored the event because they had volunteers handing out free copies of their Guide to Atlanta. This mini-magazine capitalized on Atlanta’s industrial blight, a photo of an indie girl pretending to give oral sex to a shotgun, ads for strip clubs and cheap beer, a prose style that attempted to be ironic but actually came across as boorish, and several listings of “cool” places to hang out in Atlanta that were listed in the incorrect neighborhoods. In other words, it seemed like someone from New York had written a guide to living in Atlanta for hipsters. I read an article later that summarized Vice’s involvement as the following. Their editorial staff believed Atlanta to be the next urban musical Mecca, but because of this city’s disjointed network of musicians, they took it upon themselves to cultivate their own profitable “scene” here.
6. Krallice were awesome.

A few weeks before, I had purchased Krallice’s self-titled EP. I’ve been a fan of Mick Barr’s guitar work since Crom-Tech and had the opportunity to see Orthrelm play at Mass Art in Boston back in the early 2000s. One New Year’s Eve in Maine, I remember driving around with friends, trying to listen to the entirety of Orthrelm’s OV without stopping. This album is described on wikipedia as, “a single, 45-minute track based on extremely intense repetition.” I personally find that it actually starts to physically hurt to listen to OV after about ten minutes.

Krallice works on an entirely different level than those bands. Live it was stunning. The speed of the band gelled into one sonic wall that actually seemed almost ambient rather than black metal. It is amazing to me that a band can play so fast that the waves of music actually feel like they’re slowing down… as if there was some temporal shift happening. If ever there was phonomancy at work, this is it. Krallice’s set was the highlight of the day, a moment when my anticipation was truly surpassed.

I can’t find an online mp3 of “Cnestorial” but it is the third track on my 2009 Retrospective mix on 8tracks.com.