10.27.2008

Recommended Reading...

Crooked Little Vein - Warren Ellis

(Paperback ISBN: 978-0-06-125205-1)

This is the first novel by Warren Ellis, best-known for his top-notch comics writing (Transmetropolitan, Global Frequency, Planetary and The Authority, to name a few), and it does not disappoint! Crooked Little Vein is a post-modern hardboiled detective novel; a 21st-Century beatnik road novel, though neither description quite does it justice...

Without giving away too much, down-and-out P.I. Mike McGill is hired by the White House Chief of Staff to find a very important book. Sounds simple + straightforward, but instead, McGill is dragged through disturbing + eye-opening spins on the American Dream... sliding deeper + deeper into depravity on his way to finishing this freaky job.

Ellis' clever story + dialogue are spot-on, somehow creating real characters from some very surreal circumstances. (And McGill at one point refers to his balls as his "dadpaste factory" - which might be the most disturbing and hilarious thing I've read in months...)

Absolutely recommended!

10.20.2008

Skeleton Crew is now on iTunes!

Woo-hoo!!!

Skeleton Crew "...And We'll See All of History Again." (2008) is now available on iTunes... and CDBaby... and directly from the band...

18 tracks from 1989-1993, finally collected on disc!

Includes 11 unreleased recordings from 1991-93, as well as 6 tracks (including Starkville radio hit + crappy-quality college mixtape classic U.V.A.) from the 7-song Rage EP (1990); excluded is When I Grow Down, which is instead represented here off of the Parallax Records comp The Sound and the Fury, Vol. 1: Mississippi's Best Unsigned Rock (1991).

Here's the track listing, including four tracks to check out:
(left-click=listen/right-click=download)
  • when i grow down
  • u.v.a.
  • paging dr. mengele
  • something completely different
  • amy as a stimulant
  • bowhead
  • prime mover
  • circus
  • rader, fish + kermode
  • veritas
  • what ryan said...
  • speaker implies, listener infers
  • study break
  • ointment
  • apocalypso
  • quiet
  • innard yank
  • blister my soul

For more info, check out the band's myspace page: myspace.com/skeletoncrewsouth