Continuing to astound in his fifth column for The Obelisk, Chris “Woody High” MacDermott of Mighty High pays homage to The Ramones‘ 1984 album, Too Tough to Die and shares a few NYC memories along the way. Awesome. Please enjoy:

My first “Spine of Overkill” column about Venom‘s Welcome to Hell was inspired by a frigid night waiting for the subway. This month’s column was inspired by the intense heat wave we just had on the East Coast. Waiting for the F train at the Broadway-Lafayette station in hot weather is literally hell. I tend to listen to The Ramones a lot in the summer but when it gets downright hot ‘n’ nasty, their 1984 album Too Tough to Die is my soundtrack to sweating. It was released in Rocktober, 1984, which means it has been pumping into my ears via Sony Walkman, iPod and now fancy new iPhone for 28 consecutive summers in New York City. I used to have a cassette with Too Tough to Die on one side and Live at Max’s Kansas City by The Heartbreakers on the other side that I would blast constantly. Listening to these lowlifes somehow made the fact that my sneakers were melting into the pavement a little more tolerable.

Too Tough to Die was a major improvement over their previous album Subterranean Jungle, which found The Ramones working with people who had hit records for Joan Jett. Not long after that in 1983, Johnny Ramone got his head beat in during an argument with some creep and was hospitalized. While he was recuperating, Dee Dee wrote a bunch of great songs and then wrote more with Johnny once he recovered. The result was a hard-hitting kick ass rock ‘n’ roll album in step with their classic first four. Marky Ramone got the boot for being too drunk and was replaced by the excellent Richie Ramone, also a songwriter. Joey Ramone contributed some great songs to the album but it’s really a Dee Dee and Johnny record. Another reason why this album is so good is because it reunited The Ramones with the winning production team of T. Erdelyi (aka original drummer Tommy Ramone) and Ed Stasium.

Side one kicks off with the kick ass “Mama’s Boy.” Johnny‘s guitar blasts a chord and Dee Dee counts the band in. A slower than usual grinding riff announced to everyone that The Ramones were back in full force. Joey‘s voice sounds huge and Elvis-like. Maybe even a little like Jim Morrison without all the annoying poetry crap. Jim could never write great lyrics like “I don’t wanna work in a hot dog stand, be a busboy, messenger or a door man/It’s an abstract world, you’re an abstract man/Abstract city don’t give a damn.” The song speeds up for the chorus, which will forever be altered in my universe because a friend thought they were yelling “Mama mama mama mama mama’s bald!” Following up that song with the slow, moody “I’m Not Afraid of Life” and the fast title-track is a killer one-two-three combo that’s hard to beat. Joey takes a breather while the band kicks out their only instrumental song “Durango 95.”  Wikipedia says that “Durango 95” is the name of the car driven by Alex in A Clockwork Orange, but there also used to be a restaurant named Durango next to Joey‘s apartment in the East Village. It was #95. Drinking beer on the sidewalk across from Joey‘s place was a favorite summertime activity of mine. I’d always have my friends meet me there and we often get to say hi to the great man and, occasionally, get a glimpse of his OCD in full effect as he’d try to kick gum off the sidewalk or go in and out of his lobby repeatedly.

Getting back to the album, Dee Dee takes over the mic on the short and fast “Wart Hog.” The original album’s lyric sheet just put a big question mark under the song title. I guess they felt his lyrics about “junkies,” “fags” and “commies” were a little too over the top. Didn’t matter. Everyone knew the words and loved screaming along at the live shows. “Danger Zone” starts off with some hilarious in-studio dialogue with Joey asking “What song are we doing? ‘Danger Zone.’ OK, ready?” before another two-minute blast of real New York punk takes off. Side one wraps up with Joey‘s “Chasing the Night,” featuring a possible James Gang lyrical reference of being up all night and asleep all day.

“Howling at the Moon” starts off side two and sounds like a Joey song but was in fact written by Dee Dee. It’s the most commercial song on the album and was produced by Dave Stewart of The Eurythmics. The record label was looking for a hit and the band said they’d do a radio friendly song if they left them alone on the rest of the album. I’ve always liked the song and they keyboards don’t bother me too much. I don’t think it ever got too much radio play for them. “Daytime Dilemma” is another more pop-oriented song written by Joey with guitarist Daniel Rey, who probably plays on it, too. Things get faster and louder on Dee Dee‘s “Planet Earth 1988” which features overtly political lyrics. Johnny Ramone probably hated this song. Richie‘s song “Humankind” is a good Ramones song and his writing debut for the band. Dee Dee gets another lead vocal on “Endless Vacation,” a great song that alternates between slow and heavy and fast and hard. Side two ends with the great rockabilly influenced song “No Go.”

There were also some cool B-sides that went along with the album. The import 12″ for “Howling at the Moon” had a good version of the Rolling Stones song “Street Fighting Man” and a great original called “Smash You.” In 1985 another 12″ single came out for a song called “Bonzo Goes to Bitburg” that was later retitled “My Brain is Hanging Upside Down” to appease Ronald Reagan lover Johnny Ramone. The B-side of that single contained a song called “Go Home Ann.” The credits for that song read “produced by Ed Stasium, mix by Lemmy.” I pretty much pissed, jizzed and crapped my pants the first time I saw that. Motörhead and The Ramones have always been two of my favorite bands, but back then I was convinced they WERE the same band. I would tell everyone that some day they would announce a Motörhead/Ramones tour and then the world would self-destruct. I got to ask Joey several times about touring with Motörhead and he always loved the idea. I got to ask Johnny about it, too. Businessman that he is, Johnny said that it wouldn’t make sense since they shared such a common audience. His eyes did light up and had a big smile when I told him to think about how loud it would be.

Speaking of loud, I had the great pleasure of seeing The Ramones many times during the Richie Ramone era starting with Too Tough to Die through Marky‘s return in 1987. They were always great and always really fucking loud. When hardcore punk had its inevitable collision with metal, a lot of punk bands started using bigger amps but The Ramones always had triple stacks on stage. I can verify that most of them were turned on and not just for show. But when they would play L’Amours in Brooklyn things would get even louder than usual. I have no idea if this is true or not but I was told that The Ramones used to bring in some of their touring P.A. to supplement the already deafening house sound system at the club. It wouldn’t surprise me if they did. I was at a few shows at L’Amours and there were definitely some metal regulars who were skeptical about The Ramones. By the end of the night they were converted by sheer volume alone. The loudest concerts I’ve ever seen were at L’Amours — Motörhead, Twisted Sister, Overkill — but I think The Ramones might have beat them all by a few db’s. Joey, Dee Dee and Johnny are all sadly deceased but they live on in my tinnitus.

Sure, you might know Mighty High guitarist/vocalist Chris “Woody High” MacDermott from the periodic “Spine of Overkill” columns he writes for this site, or maybe from his posts on the forum (he’s Woody, duh), but here’s something you probably didn’t know about him. He is a man with a very specific ability. Where some are engineers and others painters and still others painting engineers, our friend Woody has a unique gift. He can turn anything you say – literally anything – into a pun about weed. Now, that might not sound that impressive, but imagine how far away some of the shit you say on a daily basis is from being about weed. Phrases like, “I have to get my oil changed,” and, “Have you seen that shipping invoice?” are just as subject to his individual skillset as something like, “Do you have any cookie dough because I’m bombed off my ass?” might be. Not only is he a master of the weedy pun, but he’s actually clever about it. Aside from being funny because they’re about weed and because he makes them so quickly and so constantly, they’re good puns. And I like puns whether they’re good or bad, so good ones are like a bonus.

Mighty High’s Legalize Tre Bags plays out like the wholesale embodiment of this ethic: Take your life, make it about weed. Joining Woody in his mission are drummer Jesse D’Stills, bassist Matt “Labatts” Santoro and guitarist Kevin Overdose, the latter two having come aboard following the release of the band’s last full-length, …In Drug City (review here). The album is a joint issue (get it?) between Ripple Music and the band’s own Mint Deluxe Tapes (“tapes” being another sort of running gag Woody has going), and basically what you’re getting when you pop it on either in download, CD or gorgeous deluxe gatefold vinyl form is 33 minutes of stoner punk charm. The band offers no quarter for their influences – Motörhead, The Stooges, Black Flag, Black Sabbath, Slayer, etc. – and right from the start of the 1:16 opener “I Don’t Wanna Listen to Yes,” they are a striking reminder of just how far the rest of the world has its head up its own ass and how everyone else who claims to not take themselves too seriously still does. If they didn’t, they’d be Mighty High, ripping through the 11 tracks of Legalize Tre Bags (think a dime bag, but smaller) like the salve to soothe an infection of self-indulgent hipster Brooklones.

They show their native borough some love in “Come on! I’m Holdin’,” and cuts like “Mooche,” “Cheap Beer, Dirt Weed,” “Tokin’ and Strokin’” and “Loaded Loaded” all deal with the various sides of drug culture – mostly the side that likes to get fucked up. “Drug War” manipulates samples of Ronald Reagan à la Ministry to make it seem like the former president is calling out George Bush for smoking pot, and album highlight “Chemical Warpigs” is not only the best pun on the record, but the kind of innate genius that has you wondering why no one before was able to put those two ideas together – the references seem obvious, but I’ll say anyway it’s Slayer’s “Chemical Warfare” and Sabbath’s “War Pigs,” and the song takes musical parts from both like an organic mashup that, unlike every mashup I’ve ever heard, doesn’t suck. At a ranging 4:16, “Chemical Warpigs” is the longest song on Legalize Tre Bags, but Mighty High offer no letup on charm, which is pretty much what lets them get away with this level of musical shenanigans without completely falling on their face.

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In his third “Spine of Overkill” column, Chris MacDermott of Mighty High recalls forgotten Long Island metallers Frigid Bich and nights spent throwing garbage on rich people’s lawns. What could go better with classic metal than that?

If you haven’t heard it yet, Mighty High‘s new album, Legalize Tre Bags is available now on Ripple Music. More info at the band’s Thee Facebooks page.

Please enjoy:

Long Island had some really obscure bands with offensive names back in the 1980s. There was Mangled Clit, who at one time included superstar drummer Mike Portnoy, or the legendary Satan’s Penis, an early death metal band that went undocumented. But my favorite of all remains Frigid Bich. I have no idea why they spelled it “bich” and not “bitch,” but in most of the photos that remain of their reign, at least one band member is playing a BC Rich guitar. Or maybe they thought they’d have problems getting their records stocked in chain stores. Who knows? This is a band that I’ve been really into ever since hearing their incredible song “We Rule the Night” on the NY Metal ‘84 compilation, but have always had trouble finding out more about them.

Not much has changed since then. There’s very little info on Frigid Bich on the internet right now, but the equally obscure label Stormbringer Records released a compilation, Tyrants of a Generation, in Zeptember 2011 that I have not been able to find anywhere. Formed in 1980, Frigid Bich were intent on playing fast, loud and being as obnoxious as possible. Early song titles “Savage Lust,” “Reign of Steel” and “Teenage Rebels” need no explanation. By 1984, the lineup had changed and the band became even more over the top. “We Rule the Night” was by far the crudest sounding song on NY Metal ‘84 and I was hooked. What’s not to like about a song that rips off the intro to Metallica‘s “Hit the Lights” before blasting into a rewrite of Venom‘s “Raise the Dead?”

My favorite fanzine, KICK*ASS, was a big supporter of Frigid Bich, and just about anything they liked, I wound up liking, too. At some point I got a dub of a dub of a demo recorded in 1984 that included “We Rule the Night” and four other killer songs. That tape is long gone, but it looks like all of it is on side one of Tyrants of a Generation, plus a song called “Louder than Loud” I’d never heard before. Thankfully someone has posted most of these songs to YouTube and it’s great to be reacquainted with the incredible “Metal on Denim on Leather.” Taking Saxon‘s “Denim and Leather” to the extreme, this song borrows heavily from Metallica‘s “Metal Militia.” Their No Life til Leather demo was pretty crude but Frigid‘s tape makes it sound like it was produced by Bob Ezrin. I have fuzzy memories of blasting “Metal on Denim on Leather” and “We Rule the Night” in a friend’s car at the end of the night. We’d save up our empty Bud tall cans and McDonald’s wrappers to throw on rich people’s lawns in Pelham, NY. Always a good idea. “The Kids are Gonna Fight” and “Tyrants of s Generation” are basically about terrorizing old people that try to get in the way of rampaging metal youth. Never a good idea.

Side two of this album looks incredible, with live covers of Motörhead’s “Overkill” and “The Hammer,” Anvil‘s “Metal on Metal,” “Crank it Up” by The Rods and “Wild in the Streets” by Circle Jerks (yes, I know Garland Jeffreys wrote it, but I doubt Frigid Bich did at the time). It must have been inspiring to have seen these guys in action blasting out these jams at some Long Island dump. I imagine about 30 demented youths banging their heads frantically while the onlookers gasp in dismay. In 1984, the really heavy shit was just starting to catch on and it was important to show the new people how it’s done.

Hopefully I’ll be able to track down a copy of this album. It comes with a 20-page booklet with killer photos and a full band history. I had completely forgotten that Frigid vocalist Joe Leonard went on to be a bigwig at Combat Records. Too bad Combat never released an album from them, it would be considered a thrash classic now. There’s a new tribute page on Facebook and a fanzine called Chips & Beer has done an interview with Joe that will be coming out next month. Maybe the time is right for a Frigid Bich to rule the night again.

Friday night, man. Traditionally you’re supposed to go out after work, get fucked up, party your ass off and all the rest of it. All I want to do on a Friday night is sleep. And usually, that’s how it goes. But when Cortez is making the trip down from Boston and hooking up with Mighty High for a show in Brooklyn that’s not even in the middle of hang-yourself Williamsburg, well, showing up is the thing to do. So it’s the thing I did.

Last time I was at Hank’s Saloon was just over a year ago, to see Black Thai (which boasts two members of Cortez in its ranks) hit up a gig with Thinning the Herd, and as low key as that was, I knew that with Mighty High on the bill, good times were bound to be had. When I rolled in, there was what had previously been described to me as an “alt country” act on the stage. It was a little white girl, soul-singing like little white girls do, accompanied by some dude who seems to have found Les Claypool‘s tailor on guitar. Striped pants, silly hat, and — inevitably, predictably, excruciatingly — a kazoo. Hell, it was bound to happen, but they were about half done when I got there, so it could’ve been worse. They covered Spinal Tap‘s “Gimme Some Money,” and that was a fun reference.

They’d been put on the bill by the venue, which as I understand it, is for sale. Bar-ownership being something of a long-term fantasy of mine, as Cortez set up their gear on the small stage, I looked up at the ceiling beams, down at the dirty floor, over at the walls full of pictures and stickers and post-its with cabbie phone numbers. I inhaled the smell of mold and thought to myself, “Yeah, I could do this.” The Patient Mrs., joining me for the night on the town, seemed less thrilled at the notion.

Cortez frontman Matt Harrington would soon blow out the Hank’s P.A., but as soon as they got going, they were on the ball. They hit up a few songs from their forthcoming self-titled (vinyl master is on the way, reportedly), including highlights “Monolith,” “Johnny” and the catchy “Until We Die,” with bassist Jay Furlo adding backups to Harrington‘s melodies while Scott O’Dowd, aka Scotty Fuse, let fly carefully constructed riffs and drummer Jeremy Hemond (also of Roadsaw and Black Thai) managed to do some equipment damage of his own. I can’t remember ever seeing him play that he didn’t require a new snare at some point in the set, and Hank’s was no exception.

They rocked in spite of any and all technical difficulties, and much as I’d hoped, the night played out as sans-bullshit as possible. All I wanted was a rock show with some good bands, good people, decently-priced beer and no Friday night fashion show, and that’s basically what I got. Mighty High‘s boogiethrash blend of Slayer, Black Flag, Motörhead, Sabbath and any number of ’70s obscurities I’m not qualified to name was the perfect finale. Decked out in a Foghat Live t-shirt, guitarist/vocalist Chris “Woody High” MacDermott introduced the native Brooklynite act by saying, “We’re The James Gang from Ohio,” and it only got better from there.

The thing about Mighty High, though, is that as much as songs like “Chemical Warpigs” (a highlight) “I Don’t Wanna Listen to Yes” (another highlight) and “Breakin’ Shit” (always a highlight) are about getting high and having fun, they’re also maddeningly good. Mighty High hit like a megaphone yelling at stoner rock to get its head out of its ass, but they have the chops musically to back it up. I’m not going to say they were perfect up there, but even where they stumbled, they did it right, guitarist Kevin Overdose, drummer Jesse D’Stills and bassist Labatts Santoro seeming to take the instruction to heart as Woody led the way through the opening cover of “Kick out the Jams.”

When they were done, I walked out with the “Hands Up!” chorus still in my head, where it stayed for much of the weekend, and — now that I’m thinking about it again — remains. The Patient Mrs. had already filled her rock quota for the evening and retired to the car, so I said some quick goodnights and we headed back to Jersey, where I happily checked off the first of three shows in a row and fulfilled my Friday destiny by crashing out as quickly as possible. Good fun.

Extra pics after the jump.

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Congratulations to Ripple Music on their one-year anniversary. The label is home to the likes of Mighty High, Poobah and Stone Axe, and in celebration of their solar revolution (hopefully the first of many), they’ve made an exclusive digital compilation available for free download from their Bandcamp page. That’s cool enough, but the compilation also features new music from Iron Claw and Grifter, who’ll both have new albums out before the end of the year.

Here’s the news from the label, followed by the audio stream of the comp:

Now, as Ripple Music moves into its second year, founders John Rancik and Todd Severin want to celebrate the enthusiasm of their music lovers with some anniversary specials. As a thank you to their fans and supporters who’ve allowed Ripple to strike out and bring independent music to the world, Ripple is releasing it’s first ever free digital compilation album.

Featuring every band that has made the first year of Ripple Music such a success, Ripple‘s anniversary album kicks off with Stone Axe, before heading down the Ripple highway of Poobah, JPT Scare Band, Fen, and more. And as a special bonus, The anniversary album features the world’s first sneak peeks at two new Ripple releases; Grifter‘s self-titled debut album, and the eagerly anticipated A Different Game, from underground legends, Scotland’s Iron Claw. But the free compilation album may be available for only a limited time, so get over there quickly to get yours!

But wait, there’s more. Over at the Ripple Store, everything is still 15% off until July 4, and every waverider who places an order will get their name placed into a drawing for a very special, last-one-of-a-kind surprise test pressing!

This isn’t the first charity auction that Ripple Music founders John Rancik and Todd Severin have put together. In the past, they’ve auctioned off test pressings for Stone Axe and The JPT Scare Band for the BP oil spill and the Japanese earthquake/tsunami disasters, and as the planet continues to show us just how badly it wants us off of it, Ripple Music is once again stepping forward to help out the tornado victims of Joplin, Missouri.

The PR wire has the details. Help out if you can:

Continuing with the company tradition of giving back to the community, Ripple Music will auction an extremely rare original test pressing of Heavy Ripples: Vol. 1, featuring Stone Axe, Sun Gods in Exile, Grifter and Mighty High, with proceeds going to benefit Joplin tornado victims.  The auction will take place on eBay at the Ripple store, starting Tuesday, May 31, and run for seven days only.

Only five of these test pressings exist, and this is the only one made available to the public.  You can jump into the auction, win a cool heavy rock collectible and benefit disaster relief at the Ripple Music Ebay Store.

Hard to know where a split ends and a compilation begins, but in the case of Heavy Ripples Vol. 1 (Ripple Music), I’m inclined towards the former, if only because the release’s format makes you pay specific attention to each of the bands involved, rather than bludgeoning you with track after track from disparate acts. Everyone here is pretty like-minded, and there’s only four of them, so it’s not too much to handle, and the double-7” release ensures that you’re going to be really working to listen – the longest side is just about seven minutes – so Heavy Ripples isn’t something you can put on and forget about. Not that you’d want to with the likes of Stone Axe, Sun Gods in Exile, Grifter and Mighty High around anyway, but at just under 20 minutes total runtime, Heavy Ripples is an efficiently drawn beeline to the rock. Each of the bands contributes something unique to the whole, and for something you could feasibly listen to three times in an hour, Ripple’s latest split packs more memorable songs than most full-length albums. Like I say, efficient.

Stone Axe open with “Nightwolf.” The track finds the Port Orchard, Washington, revivalists in their core duo form of vocalist Dru Brinkerhoff and multi-instrumentalist/vocalist/producer T. Dallas Reed, but as usual with them, nothing in personality is lost for the lack of personnel. Brinkerhoff has enough swagger in his delivery for three bands, and I can’t think of any more appropriate way to kickoff Heavy Ripples than a non-ironic song with “night” in the title. If you know Stone Axe, you know what they’re about, and “Nightwolf” is right in line both in terms of style and quality with the bulk of their work. And excellently complemented on side B by Maine upstarts Sun Gods in Exile, whose “Over My Broken Bones” is set to appear (re-recorded) on their second Small Stone full-length later this year. Sun Gods in Exile’s Black Light White Lines was a solo-enthusiast’s wet dream, and “Over My Broken Bones” follows suit, but as was the case with that record, the guitar histrionics is backed by solid songwriting and isn’t showy just for showiness’ sake. Two strong modern classic rockers with a little over nine minutes between them, kicking out righteous jams that, even had Ripple chosen to release this as a one-disc affair, would still be worth investigating.

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If you’ve never been, the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn is to hipsters what the Ent forest is to orcs. They seem to just spring up out of the ground. It’s a nonstop fashion show of apathy, misdirected misogynist irony, and expensive beer. Good sushi, but you pay for it in more than just dollars. It’s like a theme park. Hipster Disneyland.

Nonetheless, for Mighty High, Cortez and The Crimson Electric, I’d gladly hoist my fat ass off the couch to brave such unwelcoming climes. Some band no one ever heard of opened the show at The Charleston, to which I’d only been once prior, to see Kings Destroy. It was now as it was a couple months ago: a basement with surprisingly good sound. Kind of like Lit Lounge in that way, but if dank and moist isn’t your thing, you probably weren’t going to the show anyway.

Mighty High gave the Stooges a stoner boot to the ass, debuting their new lineup, vocalist/guitarist Woody High and drummer Jesse D’Stills joined by new guitarist Kevin Overdose and bass player Labatts Santoro. The foursome ran through probably twice as many songs as anyone else played that night, hitting high marks with “Cable TV Eye,” “Breakin’ Shit” and the “prog rock epic,” “Yes Sucks.” It was the first time I’d ever seen them, and they didn’t disappoint in the slightest. Their music and their presentation is completely without pretense. They don’t dress up, don’t bullshit around, just play their songs and have a good time. Amazing that in a borough so full of assholes, there’s any room on the other end of the spectrum for Mighty High.

Loud in that basement, too. Kevin Overdose and Woody High split some vocal duties, but for the most part it was straight-ahead motion the whole time. And there was some motion. They had the best crowd of the night (being the hometown heroes) and you just can’t watch them and not enjoy yourself if you have anything even close to a sense of humor. This won’t be the last set of theirs I catch.

It had been a while since I’d seen Boston‘s Cortez — long enough for drummer Jeremy Hemond (also of Roadsaw) to get a haircut, anyway — and as always, it was a pleasure. Not only are they some of the nicest guys on earth, but they riff with an energy and crispness that makes me think of what it must have been like to see stoner rock when stoner rock was young. Their sound and style is more solid than ever, and as they said a new album was in the works, I can’t wait to hear it. I wonder who’s going to put it out…

They put a couple older songs in the mix, among them “Stone the Bastards” from the 2007 Thunder in a Forgotten Town EP, which I managed to capture for the video you can see below. It was kind of dark, but I think you can still get the idea. Scotty Fuse‘s riffs, Hemond‘s giant cymbals, Matt Harrington‘s vocals and Jay‘s bass all managed to balance out pretty well down there (though admittedly, there’s an awful lot of cymbal on that video), and their set, as always, was a highlight of the night.

The Crimson Electric were down a bass player as of about two weeks ago, and they struggled some because of it. Their solution to the issue was to run one of the guitars through a bass and guitar cabinet both to fill out the low end, and it actually worked pretty well to thicken the sound, but there were some technical issues that took some momentum out of their set. I don’t doubt they did the best they could with what they had, and they still rocked, so I’m certainly not about to complain.

That said, being the last band on stage at a show like that has one distinct disadvantage: you’ve already done a full night’s drinking when you start, and you still have to get through the material. There was some shit-talking from the stage and it very nearly crossed the fine line between friendly joshing and dickery, but everyone in the crowd, myself included, knew the deal, and at the end of the show, The Crimson Electric still sounded killer. I remembered how great they were at last year’s Stoner Hands of Doom in Maryland, and I’m sure once they get their lineup nailed down again they’ll have no trouble getting back there.

I got back to my humble river valley shortly after three and was up for maybe another hour. I’d managed (somehow) to stay sober, though I’d swear I saw some dudes taking beers out of their socks at the club. A little recession-special espionage. You do what you have to, I guess.

Good people, good tunes, good times. It’s nights like this, when the “scene” and the inherent politics thereof stay at the bar upstairs, that remind me why I love this music so much.