San Clemente Archives

Friday Full-Length: Fu Manchu, King of the Road

Posted in Bootleg Theater on February 27th, 2026 by JJ Koczan

“King of the road says you move too slow,” on repeat, in my head, until I die. There are far worse ways to go.

Fu Manchu released King of the Road (previously discussed here) on Feb. 15. 2000. It was their third full-length to be issued via Mammoth Records behind 1997’s The Action is Go (discussed here) and 1996’s In Search Of… (discussed here), and with those it forms a holy trinity of sorts among longtime fans. It was the second LP to have been made with the lineup of Scott Hill (guitar/vocals), Bob Balch (guitar), Brad Davis (bass) and Brant Bjork (drums), and it is further distinguished by the production of Joe Barresi, who recorded the band at Studio Monkey Studios in Palm Desert, California.

It is even further distinguished by its songs, which are just about unstoppable across the 11 tracks and 45 minutes — prime for the then-already-declining CD era, but also still able to fit on a single 12″ — and make for one of the strongest A sides in any branch of heavy rock and roll from any generation you’d like to put it up against. That succession of tracks, with “Hell on Wheels” opening, “Over the Edge,” “Boogie Van,” “King of the Road” and “No Dice” closing with the ride-that-groove-into-the-fade “Blue Tile Fever” plays out almost like a concept record about custom van culture, both heralding the grainy still photos of the ’70s with shag carpet and plush radness and the more gentrified generational interpretation thereof in #vanlife, which became the Adventurous Millennial™ answer to never being able to afford a home.

The kick-on shove of “Grasschopper,” the nod of “Weird Beard,” “Breathing Fire,” which is a bit reminiscent of their earlier, shreddier output, the slowdown roll in “Hotdoggin'” and the concluding cover of Devo‘s “Freedom of Choice” do nothing to make King of the Road less of a classic. Admittedly, the second half of the record doesn’t quite hit the listener over the head with hooks the way side A frontloads singles, but they flesh out the album in important ways, and you have to understand, they’re still catchy as hell. Fu Manchu went into their first LP, 1994’s No One Rides for Free (discussed here), a ragtag bunch of punks finding their footing in a new sound, and every subsequent outing to this point refined their processes. The songwriting got tighter. The tones got fuzzier. The groove got funkier. As this lineup solidified, it all seemed to click into place and the sonic and aesthetic identities of the band were hammered out. Obviously touring plays a huge role in this — it’s where that work is really done and a band discovers who they are, provided they survive — but each album serves as a landmark along the way, and few landmarks could hope to capture a well hit stride like King of the Road. Even coming off In Search Of… and The Action is Go — two of ’90s-era heavy rock’s most essential offerings — the songs on King of the Road are at another level.

And that’s really the story of the album: the songs. Everybody’s got their favorite records and Fu Manchu have both been around long enough and been widely enough heard that genuine fans will inevitably align to specific eras in their discography, but I don’t know how you hear “Boogie Van” and don’t get down. These are songs that go beyond infectious, beyond earworm. They are sharply delivered, efficiently structured, nigh on perfect even in their imperfections, identifiable to the band’s core sound and still distinct from the rest of their work. Joe Barresi‘s recording sets a balance in the mix that never removes the riff, but compresses the guitars and pushes them forward, so the fuzz comes through next to Hill‘s vocals, which make every chorus ready for an audience to sing along. I don’t know if Fu Manchu were writing for the stage at this point, but they sure sound like it, and King of the Road speaks to the listener from a more confident, more established place than either of the two aforementioned landmarks that preceded it. I’m not going to pick a favorite, but King of the Road is the Fu Manchu record I return to most, and the songs are why.

Across its span, the band harness such a specifically West Coast kind of cool. I don’t know if a record like King of the Road could have been written from a place that didn’t have nice weather all the time. It is sun-coated, shorts-wearing, outside. As much as it’s riding around in a van, those windows are down to let the wind in — also there’s no AC, because that’s how those coast-to-coast Chevys maintain that musty ’70s odor amid the wood paneling — it’s also skating, surfing, moving. It’s not that this is a radical departure from what Fu Manchu were otherwise doing at the time. In part it emphasizes the effect a given producer could have on their sound, which has been a consistent element in bringing variety to their catalog all along and will continue to be from here, but also it’s just that they were getting better at the thing they deemed theirs through practice.

It had been 10 years already since Fu Manchu‘s 1990 self-titled EP (discussed here), and the band had been through multiple changes along the way between losing its original rhythm section of Mark Abshire and Ruben Romano and saying goodbye to guitarist Eddie Glass. The Hill/Balch/Davis/Bjork incarnation may have peaked here, however, and for that alone it stands among their most pivotal full-lengths. They — and I do think it was Hill largely driving the band stylistically as the remaining founder and conjuror of riffs, but the record stands testament to the fact that everyone’s contributions to the material made it what it is — knew what they wanted and knew how to make it happen, and then they did, and the swagger of “No Dice,” or “Boogie Van,” or “Hotdoggin'” or “Weird Beard” is all the more palpable for that.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading

—

I don’t have a ton to say. Cool week, bro. Neat to see an active DOJ cover up bigger than Watergate because lives were ended revealed and zero consequences. Really lets you know where we’re at. In incompetent-autocracy hell, in case you were wondering.

The Patient Mrs.’ mother is traveling and has left her dog with us for two weeks. I think I mentioned this last week. Well, we’re about halfway through this puppysitting now and though she hasn’t peed on the floor in four or five days, when she goes I won’t miss getting up at 5AM to take her out, give her breakfast, then take her out again, usually for a walk around the block. This morning there was someone else out there. It wasn’t even light yet. Fuck that was awkward. Are you gonna murder me? No? Well I’m not gonna murder you either. We’re just walking our dogs. Okay. I’m going to proceed now. Thanks. I actually said “have a good day.” I’m too weird to exist so I guess it’s a good thing that mostly I don’t.

Had a lovely lunch yesterday with a friend from college and after whom I’d not seen in at least a decade. The Patient Mrs. and I went, which was cool beause I really shouldn’t be on my own in public at this point, and me trying to hold a conversation is the surest way everybody gets back to work before lucnhbreak is over. But it was nice.

I had three Hungarian classes this week and a bunch of homework between them, and didn’t have time to play Zelda, so no update for that. I’m still in The Minish Cap. I’ve got a bunch more homework (and a teszt) for next week to do over the weekend, so yeah. I’m not in a rush anyhow, I guess. It’ll still be there.

Have a great and safe weekend. Hydrate. Fuck the fascist protectors of sexual predators, corrupt traitors and all the rest of the pieces of shit who make everything cost too much and are killing the world for sport. Hang pedophiles and war criminals. Abolish Ice. End genocide. And when you’re done with that, I guess maybe we’ll all go grab a coffee or something. I’ll be over here, doing jack shit and thinking about riffs in the meantime. What privilege?

FRM.

https://www.fu-manchu.com/
https://fumanchuband.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/fumanchuband
https://www.facebook.com/FuManchuBand

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Fu Manchu Announce Summer European Tour

Posted in Whathaveyou on February 26th, 2026 by JJ Koczan

I don’t know if anybody’s been keeping up at all, but for the last eight Friday closeouts, I’ve been embroiled in a Fu Manchu catalog series. Why did I decide to take a front-to-back look at one of West Coast heavy rock’s most crucial bands, suddenly, more than 35 years into their career? Because I’ve never listened to a Fu Manchu record and been bummed on the other side of it. Simple as that.

But just because I’m about a quarter-century behind the band at this point doesn’t necessarily mean I can’t keep up with current events. As the San Clemente generational fuzz kingpins continue to support their 2024 full-length, The Return of Tomorrow (review here), they’ll embark this summer on a European run that mostly goes from festival to festival but also features a few choice club dates tying it all together. Rock im Wald, Krach am Bach and Blue Moon Festival back-to-back-to-back is one hell of a weekend (actually it’s the start of that week), but even that’s just part of the proeedings here.

I’m curious what Fu Manchu‘s plans for this Fall will be. They did East and West Coast US tours last year, so if they’ll be back in Europe to do the Fall circuit, I wouldn’t necessarily be surprised, but oddly enough, listening to them at a steady pace for the last two months-plus has made me want to see them again, so if they happened through (scenic) Parsippany, New Jersey, or some major urban center nearby, that wouldn’t be the worst. We shall see.

Dates came from socials:

Stoked for our European tour dates July & August 2026!

Some festivals are already moving fast, and tickets to our Headline shows will be available Wednesday, February 25th on our website. See you on the road!

FU MANCHU – 2026 European Tour
27/07 Brasov Romania Rockstadt Extreme Fest
29/07 Vienna Austria Arena
31/07 Michelau Germany Rock im Wald Festival
01/08 Beelen Germany Krach am Bach Festival
02/08 Cottbus Germany Blue Moon Festival
04/08 Poznan Poland Tama
06/08 Jaromer Czech Republic Brutal Assault Festival
08/08 Rome Italy Roma Stone Fest Villa Ada Flow
11/08 Munich Germany Technikum
12/08 Stuttgart Germany IM Wizemann
14/08 Cudrefin Switzerland Rock the Lakes Festival

Fu Manchu are:
Scott Hill – vocals guitar
Bob Balch – Lead guitar / backing vocals
Brad Davis – Bass – Backing vocals
Scott Reeder – Drums / Backing Vocals

Fu Manchu, The Return of Tomorrow (2024)

<a href="https://fumanchuband.bandcamp.com/album/the-return-of-tomorrow">The Return Of Tomorrow by Fu Manchu</a>

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Friday Full-Length: Fu Manchu, Godzilla’s Eatin’ Dust

Posted in Bootleg Theater on February 20th, 2026 by JJ Koczan

<a href="https://fumanchuband.bandcamp.com/album/godzillas-eatin-dust-4">Godzilla’s / Eatin’ Dust + 4 by fu manchu</a>

As of this writing, the Fu Manchu catalog boasts 13 full-lengths, and Godzilla’s Eatin’ Dust might be the most amorphous of them. Even the way the title is written is different between the releases; sometimes it’s (Godzilla’s) Eatin’ Dust, or just Eatin’ Dust, or Godzilla’s / Eatin’ Dust, which is how the band themselves put it for the Godzilla’s / Eatin’ Dust +4 re-release in 2022 above, the last four tracks of which come from the band’s first time in the studio with Brant Bjork (late of Kyuss) drumming. The compiled nature of the release — the Dave Catching/Fred Drake-engineered, Josh Homme-produced, three-song Godzilla EP came out in 1997 on Man’s Ruin Records and the Eatin’ Dust EP followed with Steve Feldman recording in 1999; they merged that same year, with striking variations between the art for the CD and LP of course handled by Man’s Ruin founder Frank Kozik — has made it such that, whereas ‘proper’ albums like 1997’s The Action is Go (discussed here) or 1996’s In Search Of… (discussed here) happened all at once, Godzilla’s Eatin’ Dust was put together over a longer timeline.

For the ease of reading it how I think it’s supposed to be read, I’m calling it Godzilla’s Eatin’ Dust. As a title, this implies that, indeed, the giant monster lizard born of nuclear fallout destroying Tokyo in what for Fu Manchu became a landmark, perfectly-paced-for-max-groove Blue Öyster Cult cover, is the one eating the dust; presumably it’s the dust of a just-destroyed skyrise, though I suppose if your head goes elsewhere with the implied story, that’s fair enough. Maybe he’s on PCP and doing it wrong. In any case, Man’s Ruin put out Godzilla’s Eatin’ Dust in 1999 with eight songs included; the four from Eatin’ Dust, three from Godzilla two years earlier, and “Pigeon Toe,” which based on sound I group with the first four tracks but wasn’t on the Eatin’ Dust 10″, between. As a full-length, the eight-songer is short at 34 minutes compared to other outings, but Godzilla’s Eatin’ Dust has persisted. It is less broadly known or celebrated than concurrent works like those linked above or King of the Road, which would follow in early 2000, but therefore makes a rousing discovery piece for new fans digging deeper or those who go back to the era often in listening but want a change.

That’s not, however, the limit of its value. While it’s not really fair to regard it as a studio album rather than a compilation, seeing it as the latter offers something nothing else the San Clemente heavy rockers in their Mammoth Records era (1996-2002) could in terms of directly showcasing the progression of their sound. The tracklisting varies depending on which release you get. The 2004 Elastic Records CD is the first instance I can find of “Eatin’ Dust” leading off and “Godzilla” closing, which the band’s 2010 not-with-four-additional-tracks-yet release on their At the Dojo Records imprint kept, and since that’s the order streaming above, it’s what I’m going with.

Highlights include “Eatin’ Dust” and “Pigeon Toe,” either of which might’ve opened a live set last year, and the characteristic start-stop nod of “Orbiter,” the blowout “Shift Kicker,” the hooky “Mongoose,” “Godzilla” and, for the warmth of their fuzz, “Module Overload” and “Living Legend,” and if you’re counting, you’ll understand that’s all eight songs of the ‘original’ release, and perhaps see why the thing keeps getting put out over time. The songs carry it, and even as “Pigeon Toe” gives over to “Module Overload” — not where the side splits happen on the vinyl, but a perceived divide nonetheless between the Feldman– and the Drake-tracked material — there is a flow maintained perhaps just as a byproduct of all the groove surrounding; a feeling like, ‘okay, now we’re really digging in.’ And so they do.

The thing is, there’s really no way to go wrong here. In an essential era of the band — Bob Balch‘s arrival on lead guitar and the aforementioned Brant Bjork taking over on drums had happened circa ’97, where bassist Brad Davis had come aboard for In Search Of…, making guitarist/vocalist Scott Hill already the lone remaining original member; Mike Coopersmith played guitar on Godzilla — Godzilla’s Eatin’ Dust becomes a crucial piece of the catalog, demonstrating the emergent intentionality and self-awareness in their sound. In “Orbiter,” they feel kin to what East Coasters Clutch were doing at the time, but the cowbell and fuzzblast of “Mongoose” are all their own, distinct from the desert rock that Kyuss had fostered a few years earlier and not as aggressively weird as the likes of Monster Magnet, but adding something to the pastiche of what was then just lumped all together as an emergent movement of ‘stoner rock’ that those other bands never could. Further, not only did Fu Manchu stand out from these peers shaping the American heavy underground in their collective image, but they did so with a momentum that was no less their own than their aesthetic. That is to say, they were doing the thing, doing it well, and doing it often.

That ethic alone — how they hit it — is one of the most important aspects of understanding what’s special about Fu Manchu, and the persistent lack of pretense around their songwriting is likewise on display throughout Godzilla’s Eatin’ Dust. You don’t need trickery when you have a cut like “Module Overload,” and Fu Manchu are accordingly direct in their delivery. The natural manner in which they arrive at ‘it couldn’t be any other way and still be what it is’ is so much their own that, listening, you don’t even think about it.

Instead, you think ‘damn that’s a good song.’ Eight times in a row for about 34 minutes, if uninterrupted. What Godzilla’s Eatin’ Dust documents and reinforces goes beyond how their approach had come to embrace fuller and clearer production; it stands testament to the fact that the band knew what they were doing and why, and just how solid the identity of their work was at this point. Even when they weren’t ‘making a record,’ they could still make a pretty killer record. One that can stand up to multiple releases, multiple orderings and multiple decades. Turns out when you have the songs, you have everything.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

—

Another week in the time of horrors.

My mother had a cancerous mole taken off her ear yesterday morning. Not her first time at the dance of the big-C, though I’d certainly be cool with it being her last, not the least for the low-drama nature of it (unless you count that car crash after her last biopsy). Last night I went up the hill to the house where I grew up and changed her bandage. She bled a bit because the gauze was stuck to the wound, but I did what the instructions said, wiped up the blood and it was fine. She needs to do that for a week. I’m sure at some point the bleeding stops.

Meanwhile, The Patient Mrs. had two uncomfortable in-your-40s medical procedures yesterday. Her mother came down from CT to take her so I could still bring The Pecan to school and have her morning be pretty close to the routine. The Patient Mrs.’ mom is traveling the next two weeks, so she left us with her 10-month-old corgi puppy, who even she is willing to admit at this point is a roiling pain in the ass. Yesterday certainly bore that out. We’ve got two weeks with this dog and our dog — who of course is no help — so I guess I’ll look forward to when I get to California Crossing in this shh-don’t-tell-anybody Fu Manchu catalog series I’m doing.

That it’s raining right now is a bummer for making it less likely I’ll take the dog for a walk that she so desperately needs, but I will do my damnedest to umbrella-up and make it happen later on, and maybe I’ll get a break in the weather. Worth keeping an eye. I took the dog around the block twice yesterday and once up the big hill and she slept through the night, so I take that as a win. My prevailing philosophy about puppies is the more they’re exhausted the better life is. For everybody. Also go-outs happen like every 90 minutes (45-60 for the first few months) until they start asking on their own to go pee. With Tilly, that was about a year and a half. It’s very much like having a baby in the house, except different this-is-awesome chemicals being released from your brain, and in the case of someone else’s dog, fewer.

But, family. I lived eight years rent-free at this woman’s house. She birthed my wife. I can put up with her pain-in-the-ass dog for two weeks, and probably more if it came to it. But The Patient Mrs. and I are going to wait to put that new rug out in the living room for sure.

Zelda update? Yeah, what the hell. I beat Link’s Awakening on the Switch. It’s pretty short, and I knew that going in because I’ve played it before, and I consider that a feature rather than a bug. I don’t like minigames, and there aren’t a ton in it because the original was a GameBoy game from 1993, the controls are simple and the chibi style of the Switch remake is charming, so it was fun. I’ve not gone back for the Wind Waker second quest yet and probably won’t for a while. Instead, I started a new playthrough of The Minish Cap on my laptop, which like Link’s Awakening is also short, fun, bright and 2D. I also found a mod for Tears of the Kingdom called ‘The One Ring’ that makes you invisible and has a bunch of other Lord of the Rings weapons in it that I might put on that game just to enjoy a thing. At bedtime, we’ve been reading Tolkien; just finished Fellowship after doing The Hobbit, which The Pecan loved. I thought she might enjoy seeing ‘The One Ring’ in Zelda, especially since just last night she asked me what would happen if Link fought Sauron.

What’s up next week? Fair question. Monday a Pegzilla premiere. Wednesday (maybe?) a Froglord premiere? Somewhere in there also a Lamp of the Universe review. It’s been frustrating, as there are records I’ve wanted to review that I haven’t had time for, but I’m doing my best to fit everything in. The next Quarterly Review starts March 16 and will go at least five days, though it might be six or seven by the time we get there.

I woke up a little before 5AM, got most of this written before school dropoff. The dog was part but not all of what had me up early. I used to wake up at 4AM every day for Obelisk stuff, but that’s no way to live and waking life requires more of me now. Ebbs and flows to balances, such as they are. I’m not sure where I’m going with this, but 17 years on, I’m glad for where this site is, glad I’ve never taken on a staff or taken ads or done advertorial, glad that I write about what I want to when I want. Next week I have more Hungarian class than I had this week, so time will be tighter, but that’s okay too. We’ll get through.

If you can read these words, fuck fascism. If that offends you, then fuck you too, fascist.

Other countries arrest princes. We protect the scum of the earth because they have money. They should all hang and it should be streamed live. Hell, make it really American and let it be pay-per-view.

I’ll leave it there. Have a great and safe weekend. Hydrate, stay focused, watch your back because the assholes are everywhere. Still free Palestine. Free all of us from under the yoke of aligned, white-supremacist state and oligarchic interests.

FRM.

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Friday Full-Length: Fu Manchu, The Action is Go

Posted in Bootleg Theater on February 13th, 2026 by JJ Koczan

The truth of the matter is I could sit here and pile up words until I’m blue in the fingertips and it still wouldn’t necessarily come close to capturing the effect The Action is Go (previously discussed here) has had — continues to have — on heavy rock and roll and the lives of its devotees. Released Oct. 7, 1997, as the San Clemente, California, four-piece’s second full-length for Mammoth Records (under the Atlantic umbrella for a while, later bought by Disney, who I guess still own it?), the 14-song/55-minute offering is for sure of its era in structure and the crunch of its production, but it set a standard for fuzz that looked beyond the accomplishments of, say, Kyuss, Clutch and Monster Magnet, pushing toward a future for the genre and actively shaping it. Many listners will know or will have been exposed to The Action is Go simply because opening track “Evil Eye” was on the soundtrack for Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 in 2000. Others will have come to it later, either through osmosis or having chased through Fu Manchu‘s catalog to get there, but it’s an album people cite as a favorite, and it is no less a generational landmark for the casual cool with which it unfolds.

One lesson The Action is Go teaches is that where strides Brant Bjork, groove follows. You might recall that the then-Kyuss drummer produced 1994’s No One Rides for Free (discussed here), Fu Manchu‘s first album. He would stay with the band through 2001’s California Crossing, while in the meantime launching his solo career in 1999 and releasing Ché‘s Sounds of Liberation (review here) in 2000. That he and still-in-the-band lead guitarist Bob Balch both made their first Fu full-length appearances on The Action is Go can be heard in the personality of the record. Up to that point, the shred had been handled by Eddie Glass — who after parting from Fu Manchu formed Nebula with fellow ex-members Ruben Romano (drums; now of The Freeks) and Mark Abshire (bass) — but Balch was and is a different kind of player, and as Fu Manchu began to expand on the shove that was 1996’s In Search Of… (review here), the malleability of his style let him adapt to what a given song needed. Thus the wah howl at the start of “Evil Eye” finds natural complement in the ending of “Urethane,” which follows, even though the two songs are working toward markedly different goals.

And that in itself is an important distinction. The first two tracks of The Action is Go set up a back and forth in tempo that runs throughout the tracklisting. The title-track is a shove, and “Burning Road” trades that for a slick, funky verse opening into a bigger sounding hook. It’s not all so black and white as they dig in, but the brashness of “Unknown World” and the outright funk of “Laserbl’ast” still apply, and the nascent heavy psych of “Saturn III” and punk thrust in 75-second finale “Nothing Done” (an SSD cover) perhaps make the statement most dramatically at the album’s conclusion. Fu Manchu were growing, had already grown much from their hardcore origins as founding guitarist Scott Hill already was the lone remaining founding member of the band — bassist Brad Davis had joined for 1995’s Daredevil (discussed here), locking in an essential piece of the puzzle — and in Bjork, they broadened their sound further with mid-tempo cuts like the start-stop nodder “Anodizer” and its bluesy complement “Trackside Hoax,” sounding aware of themselves in the doing in a way that speaks to maturity without actually being mature. That is to say, what they were chasing was still new at the time, to them and to the audience, and The Action is Go carries forward the urgency of its title regardless of a given track’s meter.

Balch gets something of a showcase in “Laserbl’ast,” but is right there with Hill tonally for the central riff of “Hogwash,” more patiently holding back for the solo to come. Even that choice, to momentarily hold back — don’t worry, there’s plenty of shred for everybody — is a shift in personality from where Fu Manchu had been to that point. “Hogwash,” “Grendel, Snowman” and “Strolling Astronomer” separate “Laserbl’ast” and “Saturn III.” The latter two are still featured in setlists, the three others not so much, but “Grendel, Snowman” brings a thicker, broader-sounding riff and “Strolling Astronomer” ignites at its start with an energy that is, well, about as classic Fu as you get; a skater/slacker vision of cool that rock and roll never managed to successfully replace. The flow these songs create between them, as a subsection of that of the album as a whole, isn’t to be understated, and it’s all the more crucial with “Saturn III” tucked away for the record’s apex of outreach.

I would put “Saturn III” in league with songs like Clutch‘s “Spacegrass” or Kyuss‘ “Whitewater” — a cosmic-toned jam that, for Fu Manchu, who came from punk and continue to foster a strong sense of structure in their work, was a departure in more than just its long fadeout. It brims with purpose on The Action is Go. It is a willful jam, included specifically to be a jam, and to be the grand ending ahead of the epilogue cover (again, that contrast, purposeful); it lets loose in a way Fu Manchu weren’t always willing to do. A special moment, preceded by a slew of shifts in character throughout the material, built toward and executed with vitality that remains satisfying 29 years after the fact. You could say the same of the whole record, I guess, and that’s a big part of what’s given it its staying power.

Because at least for heavy rock, The Action is Go doesn’t sound dated. It sounds quintessential. Exemplar. It is a record people are still finding — if you’ve never heard, please leave a comment, I’d love to know — and learning from, and it’s one that unmistakably helped set the path Fu Manchu would walk subsequent to it. Every accolade you’ve ever seen for it was earned.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

—

I’m really glad I reviewed that Abronia record. Next week, Summer of Hate (which is late, I know; welcome to The Obelisk), and premieres for Craneium, L’Ira del Baccano (full album) and Sun Voyager. That’s right. Pretty killer. Things have picked back up a bit after the January lull. I don’t know that I’m ready for it, but I kind of never am, so whatever. It’ll be fun.

Yesterday was The Patient Mrs.’ birthday. She didn’t have to go to campus, which was nice, but we ended up working most of the day anyhow and she had a school board meeting at night. The Pecan and I went shopping after school on Wednesday to get her a couple ridiculous little things — a floating jellyfish lamp that The Pecan subsequently tried to adopt, then yesterday forgot about; the fleeting joys of an ADHD childhood — and this morning I came with her to work just to hang out for the commute and run some errands when she’s done in class. A little shake to my own routine, which isn’t the worst thing in the world.

I think the president (and a slew of cohorts humanity ironically refers to as “elites”) raping children might be the worst thing in the world. At least this week. Surely some fresh new horror is on the way.

What’s the point of anything, I wonder. If there was a party that was “burn it all down” that wasn’t also terrible and racist, they’d have my vote. Was thinking I might run for office on a guillotine ticket, but I’ve shared too many of my actual opinions publically to be electable. Also I know nothing, but that doesn’t seem to stop others from governing. Not sure why it would hold me back, especially as a white dude in 2026.

A Zelda update: I beat Wind Waker again. Not really an accomplishment, but fun. I modded the game to get things like a fast sail and to negate having to chase down heart pieces across the Great Sea, put in cheat codes for infinite arrows and bombs, so it wasn’t like a ‘clean playthrough,’ but I was just trying to have a good time and did. I don’t know that I’ll do the Second Quest anytime soon, but I started playing it again because I lost the other game I had, so might do it eventually. In the meantime, I started a game of Link’s Awakening on the OLED Switch, since The Pecan isn’t interested in it in the moment and it’s relatively short and, unlike the open-air games (Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom), not such a commitment of time or emotional labor. And I really like the style, the chibi Link and environment. I played A Link Between Worlds and I still want them to remake A Link to the Past with that aesthetic. It lags on the Switch, but so does everything.

I didn’t watch this week’s Starfleet Academy yet. It’s over an hour long, just the one episode, so when I loaded it up last night after bedtime (which is when The Patient Mrs. and I, also going to bed, will often put on a Star Trek together before actually going to sleep), I decided it was too much. I ended up conking out during Deep Space Nine‘s tribble episode — it was the lady’s birthday, after all; special occasion warrants special absurdity — and didn’t at all feel like that was a loss. I’ll get there either tonight or tomorrow.

Probably tonight, since tomorrow Nine Inch Nails are playing New Jersey and The Patient Mrs. and I were planning to go to that. I wasn’t going to review. I’ve seen NIN twice over the years, once for The Fragile (my favorite album) and once after that during the With Teeth era. Both times kinda sucked. I approach this show with a bit of trepidation, but I’ve seen the sets are focused around The Downward Spiral and such, and of course that record’s a classic, so we’ll roll the dice again.

The Pecan’s off from school Monday and I’ve got a boatload of homework for Hungarian class(es), but I’ll do my best to write as much as I can blah blah. Until Monday, then, have a great and safe weekend, unless you’re a bootlicker, in which case (1:) go away, you’re not welcome here and (2:) you can fuck yourself off the side of a cliff for all I care.

The rest of you, remain wonderful.

FRM.

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Friday Full-Length: Fu Manchu, In Search Of…

Posted in Bootleg Theater on February 6th, 2026 by JJ Koczan

With clarion fuzz that continues to resonate, Fu Manchu‘s third album, In Search Of…, was released Feb. 27, 1996, just about 30 years ago. Produced by the band — it was the last go for the lineup of guitarist/vocalist Scott Hill, bassist Brad Davis, lead guitarist Eddie Glass and drummer Ruben Romano — with Brian Jenkins, who also mixed (Eddy Schreyer at Future Disc Systems mastered), it remains a standard to which bands aspire, and songs like “Regal Begal,” “Asphalt Risin’,” “Redline,” “The Falcon Has Landed,” “Cyclone Launch” and others might still show up in a live set. It is a landmark and not the San Clemente, California, four-piece’s last.

It runs 12 tracks and 40 minutes and burns just about from start to finish. The band, while not having abandoned their punkish beginnings, had taken creative steps across their first two full-lengths, 1994’s No One Rides for Free (discussed here) and 1995’s Daredevil (review here), that not only placed them at the forefront of a post-grunge stoner rock push at the time — their sound was different from the desert hues of Kyuss or the concurrent self-titled-era Clutch, or the tripped out weirdoism of Monster Magnet, but these acts were lumped together as kin just the same — but remains a blueprint of inimitable tone and presence. Hill‘s vocals, pushed down in the mix, enhance the impact of the riffs he’s following, and his, Glass‘ and Davis‘ tones throughout are like Gossamer from Looney Tunes in the amount of hair on them.

A boogie cut like “Redline,” or a swirling shove like “Seahag,” a roller like “Cyclone Launch” or the nailed-the-tempo nod of “Missing Link,” could do different things, but tone and groove unites the material across In Search Of…, and despite being nothing if not straightforward in its intentions toward riffs, hooks and liberally strewn shred, the album’s overarching atmosphere is one of its most enduring strengths. It is definitively SoCal, but with a new generational interpretation. If you believe place can inform art — and I very much do, because duh — then there’s no removing the sun and warmth of Southern California from Fu Manchu.

They weren’t the first, of course, to speak to where they were coming from. From The Beach Boys to Black Flag to various pop takes throughout the prior three/four decades, Fu Manchu were on well-trod ground, but their angle of approach was their own, definitely on the first two records as well, but more here. The crunch that emerges in “Neptune’s Convoy” may have come out of Hill‘s early days in hardcore punk, but the trippy comedown and volume trades, the ensuing nod, and the vibe were definitively something else; not grunge, not metal, not hard rock or punk, but pulling from all of them in its making. Beyond surf rock, Fu Manchu surfed. Beyond skate punk, Fu Manchu were ready when the second Tony Hawk game came calling a couple years later. In ways that would inform the work they’ve done across the three decades since, In Search Of…‘s radness was as much a part of its makeup as the wah is in “Strato-Streak.”

It was somewhere else skaters, surfers, slackers and stoners could go, and as much as it can feel frontloaded with “Regal Begal,” “Missing Link” and “Asphalt Risin'” coming in hot ahead of the slowdown in “Neptune’s Convoy,” that song and the penultimate, two-and-a-half-minute Sabbath-blues riffer “The Bargain” speak to just how cool the Fu could play it when they weren’t aiming for charge. A song like “Solid Hex,” also on the shorter end, could revel in noise and conjure a wash of distortion — without losing the album’s sense of momentum, mind you — but “The Bargain” spoke to ’70s and ’80s rock like few in the 1990s were willing to do. Maybe that’s true of Glass‘ soloing throughout, or the cowbell on “Cyclone Launch,” or “Redline” with its push to the finish, but there too, Fu Manchu brought a new creative voice and point-of-view to what had been done before.

Part of that is a sense of freedom. Maybe that sounds corny, and I’ll readily agree that the word has been coopted by generations of assholes, particularly in this country but others as well, to mean any number of things from the repression of women to being a crypto-marketing buzzword. But the freedom I’m talking about is both nothing so grand and far more encompassing. It’s doing what you want without giving in to the bullshit around you. It’s not only finding your voice, but broadcasting it. It’s about identity in a way, but about holding the self against notions of what’s expected of you, of conforming to some notion. Fu Manchu were never going to be metal, and they were never going to be punk any more than they were going to be surf rock or ’70s heavy, but they found a way to appeal to all sides by refusing to compromise on who they were as artists.

In Search Of… doesn’t come off as immediately ambitious in this or really any other regard. Its outward face is, again, straightforward. Verses, choruses, solo. It’s not experimentalism, and yet for being so undeniably itself, it refuses to fit into easy classification enough that it’s part of the reason ‘stoner rock,’ as a genre, took shape at all during these years. It was an alternative to the mainstream beyond the mainstream-approved ‘alternative rock’ that was all over the radio and MTV circa ’96, and it was both a party and substantial unto itself. Heavy rock and roll, laid out in a manner characteristically void of pretense and yet seemingly in defiance of so much that was happening around it. There’s no easy, direct line that leads to Fu Manchu in terms of influences. Even Black Sabbath — the grandaddy of them all — only partially apply as an influence. In the parlance of our times, what Fu Manchu accomplished here was low-key amazing. Except if you count all the volume and movement, it’s not really low-key at all.

And maybe that’s why bands are still learning from it 30 years later. As always, I hope you enjoy.

Thanks for reading.

—

Hey, thanks for reading.

A lot of this week was spent catching up from being away at the end of last week and over the weekend. That Hashtronaut news post today, for example, and others throughout the week. I wanted to review a compilation (I know, comp reviews…) this week but didn’t get to, so it’ll have to be next week, although I’ve already got a Stonus premiere lined up for Monday and I also want to review the new one from Finland’s Mount Palatine, which is cosmic and huge and awesome.

Then you get to stuff like the new All Them Witches single out today, a DVNE live record I haven’t even mentioned, Crippled Black Phoenix’s new album, Bong Voyage signing to Ripple and more tours and fest announcements besides and yeah, I’m pretty behind. That’s life. I’ll catch up on as much as I can.

In about an hour, The Patient Mrs. and I have yet another meeting at The Pecan’s school, this one with her teacher about what work she’s doing in class, as we’re still pretty in the dark on how her IEP is being implemented, and while we get updates on her compliance during a given day — that is, how much shit she’s talking about having to do whatever she’s being asked to do; usually plenty; from 9:58AM: “During our reading block, [The Pecan] was disrespectful towards another student while they were reading.”; never what happened or more about a situation, just ‘your kid was a problem in this way hindering our operational convenience’; I have come to care less and less about said convenience over the last three years — we generally have no idea as regards any academic work she might actually be doing. She tells us very little, and she’s eight, so grain of salt applies. She likes the iPad she plays on when she gets all her compliance points, and they use that to coerce her into doing shit. I do the same thing at home. The difference is I’m a shitty dad and these are professionals. That there isn’t some better system to implement that might — gasp — actually engage a child in a positive way rather than be reactive in a negative one is disappointing to say the least.

That’s stress, but so is everything.

I didn’t get a lot of time to play Zelda this week — I had Wind Waker going for like five minutes the other day but that’s it — but I did play my own Tears of the Kingdom game (as opposed to the one on the modded Switch or the one on the Switch 2 that was the family’s save file) for a while on the planes to and from Las Vegas last week/Monday and that was a fun visit. I did the circuit of lynels, picked hearty raddishes, slaughtered bokoblins in not-terribly-creative ways and had a good time chasing down materials and weapons just basically to do it. The story and such on that file are done, but I’ll keep it going anyway just for the inventory and a bit of fun. A different appeal than the modded game.

I’ve been watching Starfleet Academy with The Patient Mrs., and that’s alright. They managed to get some DS9 lore in there this week and that was cool, and some of the characters are engaging. The references feel like fan-service, which, yes, they absolutely are, and like other shows of its ‘generation’ — that is, like other Star Trek incarnations under the direction of Alex Kurtzman — like Discovery or Picard or Strange New Worlds, it’s heavy-handed emotionally. Part of that too in this case is the show’s intended Y.A. style, but I have a hard time imagining ‘the kids’ hanging around getting suddenly interested in the mystery of what happened to Captain Benjamin Sisko. I, on the other hand, liked it a lot, despite not being the intended audience.

Let’s leave it there since it’s just about time for me to get ready to head out. Gotta put together The Pecan’s lunch ahead of that meeting because I won’t get back in time otherwise to do so. Have a great, safe, hydrated and unhindered-by-assholes weekend. I’ll be back Monday with that Stonus premiere and we’re on from there.

FRM.

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Friday Full-Length: Fu Manchu, Daredevil

Posted in Bootleg Theater on January 23rd, 2026 by JJ Koczan

The level to which Fu Manchu had ‘figured it out’ by 1995 remains striking in hindsight. Daredevil (also discussed here) came out on Bong Load Records — the band did a 2015 re-release through their label At the Dojo; mostly that’s what’s featured above, but it’s a jumble — and it was recorded with label heads/studio founders Rob Schnapf and Tom Rothrock. The latter mixed, and just a year and a bassist after releasing their Brant Bjork-produced debut, 1994’s No One Rides for Free (discussed here), they sound both radio- and road-ready, with many of the defining aspects of their sound nailed down, set to roll. Listening to it 31 years later, it is not some lost historical document rife with lore and secrets. It sounds like Fu Manchu. They’re maybe less sure of where they’re heading than maturity would make them in a few more years, but for sure they’re underway and down for the going.

Perhaps an element of what makes Daredevil feel so Fu-ndational (you’re welcome) is the result of increased confidence in the execution. You don’t have ot go far to hear it, either. Opener “Trapeze Freak” has its roots in the band’s 1990 7″ Kept Between Trees (discussed here), but here, it feels like a quintessential example of who Fu Manchu were at this stage, and it’s by no means the only one on the record, with “Tilt” right behind it delivering the title line, the ’90s-stonerized watery vocals and slower fuzz nod of album-centerpiece “Sleestak” and the boogie-born twists of “Space Farm,” the shred throughout “Gathering Speed,” and so on. The subject matter had lightened up somewhat since their days as Virulence, and no doubt a lineup that by then had already completely turned over around founding guitarist Scott Hill was part of that.

Notably, Daredevil is the first appearance on a Fu Manchu LP of bassist Brad Davis, who in taking the place of Mark Abshire, staked a claim on low end that remains firm today. He slots into these songs fluidly, is able to keep his bounce under the swing and scorch of “Coyote Duster,” and brings density to the fuzz of Hill and Eddie Glass‘ guitars on “Lug” enough to give it a fervent sense of shove as drummer Ruben Romano holds steady beneath. Songs like “Travel Agent” feel more straightforward than they are, and that nothing-too-fancy sensibility has also permeated their work since as a lack of pretense in terms of presentation; t-shirts and shorts and surfer vibes and shred met with a clear idea of what a heavy rock song should and can do. The longest cut here is “Space Farm,” which references the prior album in its lyrics, and runs five and a half minutes. That gives them room to jam, a little like “Snakebellies” from the year before, but they remain directed all the while, with vocals over the (partial) mellowing in the second half of the track before they bring back the lead riff one more time and finish quieter. The songs have a defined structure, and like the best of verse/chorus anything, they seem to challenge the listener by asking what else you could ever need.

Fair question. I’m not about to cheapen the growth in songwriting or the shifts in production and style that have taken place throughout Fu Manchu‘s career, but they sound like a band on the precipice, and they came of age at the right time. Clutch‘s self-titled released in 1995. Monster Magnet teased commercial success with Dopes to Infinity. The Melvins, ahead of just about everybody, were soon to wrap up their major label era. Kyuss had their last album out. If you want to look for a generational nexus year for heavy rock and roll in the US, that might be it, and though Fu Manchu were about to embark on a succession of stone-cold genre classics — records that have continued to inspire others to start riffing in the first place, let alone the statement they made about Fu Manchu in terms of identity and craft — their first two albums already found them keeping company among the foremost purveyors while retaining a persona distinct even from the desert shove of Kyuss. Fu Manchu were doing something else. In Daredevil, their approach is codified.

And that might be the principal achievement of this material outside the broader narrative. The atmosphere is a bit brighter than No One Rides for Free, and as much as the cover photo here is grainy, it’s also clear what you’re looking at, where the debut was a bit first-glance obscured by the fish-eye lens utilized. As much as you’re hearing it, you’re also seeing Fu Manchu develop their aesthetic, a style that lives actively, channeling the disaffection of grunge not into songs about being checked out, but into conveying physical movement enough that underground heavy rock became a crucial part of skate culture; the sound of something that hadn’t existed before. Fu Manchu‘s style is inseparable in this way from the Southern California region that birthed it, and indeed, I can’t listen to “Tilt,” “Lug,” “Egor” or the sleek-grooving finisher “Push Button Magic” without thinking it sounds like it comes from a place with nice weather. It’s like they made the sunshine part of the songs.

Fu Manchu were about to make the jump to Mammoth Records, and that would bring with it forward steps like their first European touring, soon more lineup changes, and a booming fanbase. I tend to think of Daredevil as not only a step on the way to where they were going, but an end to the beginning of the band. Bringing Davis in seemed to gel them just right, and these songs still sound poised for a breakthrough all these years later. In classic second-album fashion, they learned from the work they did the year before to bang out a collection that’s still raw but forward in thought and motion just the same and utterly their own in ways that continue to define their work more than three decades later. It was starting to become clear just how special Fu Manchu were going to be.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

—

Next week, I’m flying to Las Vegas for Planet Desert Rock Weekend VI. I’m very much looking forward to it. Things — shit with the school, horrors, etc. — have been weighing on me a lot, have been on my mind a lot, and it’s sort of knocked me out of my head in terms of writing. What’s the point of putting together another album review when I should be buying a gun for when masked paramilitaries come barging through my door? Indeed, what’s the point of anything? Stoner rock feels pretty lightweight in comparison, however hefty the tone of a given release might be.

But while I swim in that, hopefully not for the rest of my life, I hope to recover some verve by spending a few days standing in front of a stage with volume blasting out. Good shows, good bands, friends and times. I knew I wanted to go back since I landed in Jersey after PDRW a year ago. If this trip is half as much fun, it’ll be a win.

Kind are playing that fest. Monday I’m premiering a new song from them. And later in the week I have reviews and streams from DUNDDW, Indica Blues and Hot Ram, so as ‘light’ as this week was, I’m not finished writing reviews. Just reeling and angry and perennially disappointed at my countrymen and government representatives. Nothing actually new for having come of age as George Bush launched the War on Terror, but the threats are real now and the culture is poison.

A brief Zelda update: The Pecan’s been roped into Animal Crossing on the Switch 2, so I’ve been playing the modded Tears of the Kingdom game with the randomizer on it, and also a bit of a lazy play of The Wind Waker on my laptop. It doesn’t run well, but it runs. The Switch lags too. It’s part of the thing. TOTK is still the best game I’ve ever played. I haven’t played every game, and I haven’t played a lot, but yeah. Using those controls feels like the way it should be.

We’re supposed to get a big snowstorm this weekend into next week. Sunday I think it starts. We’ve had more snow already than any past winter since we moved back down from Massachusetts to New Jersey (that’s 2019), and apparently there’s more to come. Fine. Cancel school. Fine. I don’t really care. I might even be able to bring myself to take The Pecan sledding if I can get over the vision of last winter when she split her forehead open and I could look in and see her skull. Yeah, maybe.

Whatever you’re up to, have a great and safe weekend. Hydrate, stay alert, don’t let the fuckers win. They’re out there. Your joy hurts them, so try to have as much of that as possible and maybe everything will get a little easier for everyone.

FRM.

Friday Full-Length: Fu Manchu, No One Rides for Free

Posted in Bootleg Theater on January 16th, 2026 by JJ Koczan

By 1994, although the music industry at large was still embroiled in grunge’s post-breakout records, with follow-ups from Soundgarden, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and others, it was clear that the magic of 1991-’92 was on the wane, and if the collective machine had its collective head in anything other than a collective pile of cocaine, somebody might’ve been looking for the next thing. Actually that’s not fair, because I’ve known plenty of folks who tried to break heavy rock commercially, both from within the ‘bigs’ and without, and only about half of them were on cocaine.

But the beginning of the decline of what was then a stable radio rock environment hardly sounds like a concern to Fu Manchu on No One Rides for Free (vinyl reissue here). The San Clemente, California, four-piece had spent a few years getting together their lineup and sound, and as the four-piece of guitarist/vocalist Scott Hill, guitarist Eddie Glass, bassist Mark Abshire and drummer Ruben Romano, they made their full-length debut through Bong Load Records. The band had already existed in some form or other for about nine years, beginning as Virulence (discussed here) circa 1985 and hammering themselves into Fu Manchu therefrom in terms of personnel as well as the songs.

And that work can be heard throughout No One Rides for Free, from the immediacy of “Time to Fly” starting in its verse — no intro on your debut album; the creation of a punker urgency that’s underlied Fu Manchu‘s cool-dude groove all the while, because they were punks playing a new kind of punk, daring to grow up a bit — to the cowbell there and in “Mega-Bumpers,” the beach atmosphere and rolling waves behind the drippy strum and noodling of “Summer Girls (Free and Easy),” conveying a bit of Southern Californian sunshine in the atmosphere for a suitable interlude, and the thickened nod of “Shine it On,” which becomes a teachable moment in terms of heft, the album is only 27 minutes long, but it basically lays out a genre template. Not for stoner rock, which by then would’ve barely existed by name — Kyuss released Welcome to Sky Valley (discussed here) in ’94 (their then-drummer Brant Bjork co-produced here, would take his place in the band soon enough), and Monster Magnet and Clutch were both making killer records on the cusp of gaining wider audience attention, as others like Orange Goblin and Electric Wizard began to take shape — but for a different vision of skater/slackerism, ultra-West Coast in the overarching laid back vibe as they gave their first-and-not-last hints of affiliation with van culture in the title and cover photo (credited to Von Lidd) and nonetheless hit it hard.

The longest song is “Snakebellies,” which closes the eight-tracker a bit under five minutes and brings together the fluidity of prior riffing. The semi-spoken vocal delivery of Hill that might’ve felt jarring at the start of “Time to Fly” is by the end of the album a guiding factor through it, and Hill rests well in the fuller mix of the finale while he and Glass — whose shred is distinctive and in a few years would go on to found Nebula with Romano (we’ll get there) — tear it up while managing to blend funk and ’70s boogie rock with the force and immediacy of the punk and late ’80s noise rock from whence Fu Manchu had emerged. On “Snakebellies,” the solo becomes a jam, acoustics and percussion are layered in, and though it seems to go far out, it never actually touches the five-minute mark. This kind of efficiency, which actually begins to show itself in “Time to Fly” and is what makes “Summer Girls (Free and Easy)” sound like the ocean breeze it’s conveying, is rare and essential to understanding who the band would become musically.

Also rare, the chemistry. No One Rides for Free, though celebrated, isn’t often held up among peak Fu Manchu albums. It’s a personal favorite, but I’ll acknowledge too that I tend to reach for later records more. What it shows, however, is that even 32 years ago, this band were on their way to knowing who they were, and that the time they spent leading to their first album was not wasted. In addition to the outright filthy distortion of “Show and Shine,” the lead flourish as the riffs twist around to cycle through again, the shove rampant throughout, the on-point coherence of Fu Manchu even at this still-formative stage is striking. On some level, they’d found the fuzz that would become an essential aspect of their work, and with this lineup that would barely last two more years, executed a first phase that in many ways laid out elements of their sound they’ve continued to refine and revel in all the while.

It’s easy now to look back on it and appreciate “Superbird” or “Ojo Rojo” as precursors to what would come from the band over the next few years/LPs, but put yourself in the position of someone who’d spent the last couple years having grunge shoved down your throat by corporate record labels — anybody remember when selling out was a thing?; I can’t help but think the world might be a better place if people were still held to a standard of their own proffered ideals — and here come Fu Manchu strutting in telling you it’s ‘Time to Fly” with an irresistible nod and start-stop groove that, if you’d never done a stoner softshoe before, just might be enough to get you moving. Something different. Something new. Something else.

A different look from a different underground. An active sound, as if you could put all your surfing and skating into a roll and have it come back as “Mega-Bumpers.” If stoner rock had never learned from another band (and it did), Fu Manchu would’ve been a viable blueprint, but as broad as their influence has been, they’ve remained unto themselves. Hill, Glass, Abshire and Romano were a powerhouse lineup — they wouldn’t be the band’s last — and No One Rides for Free resonates still as a declaration of self on the part of the four-piece. It’s almost too naive to be as arrogant as it should be for as good as it is. What they set in motion here is still going.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

—

Another week, huh? Terrors persist unabated. I hope I live long enough to see these people hang or die in prison.

At the end of next week, The Patient Mrs. begins her new semester, which is always a bummer. I don’t know her schedule yet. I’ve been trying to write as much as I can these last couple weeks, while also trying to hang out — we’re going to Costco in a bit; this is togetherness in your 40s — and it’s always a difficult balance. I also haven’t been feeling super-inspired on reviews and a lot’s been filed for the next QR, which I guess will probably be before the end of February. I’m hopeful that the trip to Las Vegas in a couple weeks for Planet Desert Rock Weekend VI will put me back into it a little bit. We shall see.

Let me actually look at my notes to see what’s coming up next week other then the four Hungarian classes I’ll be doing. News catchup on Monday and likely not much more than that Monday and Tuesday since The Pecan is off from school for MLK Day. I’d like to do something fun with that day, but it occurs to me I’m not fun and don’t actually like doing things. That makes it more difficult sometimes, plus she has OT in the afternoon (I think), so that’s another barrier. Because surely if one thing is slated for later one cannot occupy the hours beforehand with anything other than mounting anxiety about whether or not this is the time she rolls over a kid in the little cart they let her ride around the OT place in.

But I’ll do what I can. It’s not that nothing’s hitting me, necessarily, so much as it’s all out in March and people get mad when you review records like two months before they come out.

Anybody dying for a Zelda update? I know. Too bad. I woke up yesterday at like 5:30, used the morning to bang out most of what’s been posted today, and then took the rest of the day and fucked all the way off, playing a new game in Tears of the Kingdom with Waikuteru’s Randomizer mod on it that, because of some other mod I’ve loaded on there I’m not even sure which one, has no monsters. None. There’s no fighting, no stalkoblins rising out of the ground, nothing in the Depths. I’ve looked just about everywhere. Eventually I’ll want to go back into the files and sort that out so that combat can happen, but for now it’s kind of cool to just get resources, activate towers, shrines, lightroots, and let the Randomizer bounce me from place to place for that. I’ve got an item duplication mod (I think that’s what got rid of the monsters; that’s my theory) that also lets you get more than 999 of most items, and it’s fun to just stand there with the turbo button on and then know that I won’t need to get more big hearty truffles probably for the duration of however long this save file lasts. The last one went for a while.

I also did the Forsaken Fortess in The Wind Waker last night, again on a modded game that has quality-of-life improvements like a faster sail and whatever. I did the part on the pirate ship where you have to jump the platforms; I’ve gotten better since I first started playing the game. Which I never wanted to play, mind you. 20-odd years ago, I was like, “That looks dumb as hell,” and went back to Final Fantasy on PlayStation. Nobody told me it didn’t have to be one or the other, and that’s not something I’ve ever really ever been able to figure out on my own.

I beat A Link Between Worlds though, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Added to the list, that’s The Wind Waker (which I’ve played through twice already), Twilight Princess, Link’s Awakening (remake), Tears of the Kingdom (a bunch), Echoes of Wisdom, The Minish Cap, A Link to the Past, A Link Between Worlds, and Ocarina of Time 3D that I’ve played through since starting this delve. I haven’t gone back to Breath of the Wild, in part because I think I’m spoiled by Tears of the Kingdom‘s easier-to-use menus and more gamebreaking abilities — what even am I without a rocket attached to my shield? — but Majora’s Mask 3D aside, it’s been a roundly positive experience. Good games, some more leaning into being a pain in the ass than others. Tears of the Kingdom might be my favorite of the bunch, though.

Alright, that’s enough out of me. I hope you’re safe and not surrounded by fascist assholes. I look forward to a day when these people are ostracized from everyday society and made to feel the shame they should be feeling now. Until then, stay safe, stay alert, stay hydrated. Back here on Monday for more shenanigans. Have a great weekend.

FRM.