miseryXchord.com

Viva Hate performing @ The Brass Annex Lounge in Las Vegas, NV on 01.19.2008

My color shots from this show are here: Viva Hate @ The Brass Annex Lounge, Las Vegas 01.19.2008

All photographs ©2008 MiseryXchord
Rights Reserved

Viva Hate Psychobilly? Hard Rock? Punk? The sound of Viva Hate could be described as all (or none) of the above. Drawing on influences such as American country music, 70s arena rock, early-80s skate punk and death rock, modern psychobilly, and more, Viva Hate has come to rise above the trends of cookie-cutter pop and retro rehash. By distilling the ingredients of their influences, rather than watering them down, Viva Hate are prepared to carve out their own niche in the ever-growing musical underground.

Tiger Army performing @ SOMA in San Diego on 01.18.2008

Also on the bill were The Dear & Departed and Revolution Mother. This was the third show after stand up bassist Geoff Kresge rejoined the band, embarking on a world wide tour through the U.S.A., Canada, Europe, Japan and Australia.

Geoff's band, Viva Hate, played the following night in Las Vegas using a stand in on bass, as Tiger Army's tour prevented Geoff from performing with them.

All photos ©2008 MiseryXchord

Long Beach's Revolution Mother delivered a powerful set of hard rock @ SOMA in San Diego on 01.18.2008 while opening for Tiger Army at the start of their 2008 headlining world tour. Also on the bill were The Dear & Departed.

Photographs ©2008 MiseryXchord
Rights Reserved

Photo Gallery: The Dear & Departed @ SOMA San Diego

The Dear & Departed performing @ SOMA in San Diego on 01.18.2008, opening for the start of Tiger Army's headlining world tour. Following D&D on the bill was Revolution Mother.


All photographs ©2008 MiseryXchord
Rights Reserved

I got randomly signed out of Buzznet @ Midnight and couldn't get back in for several hours, and wrote my first Myspace blog in a LONGGGG time while sleep eluded me (and still does, although I intend to correct that problem shortly...) Since most of my friends are on Buzznet, I'm reposting it now that I'm back in...

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Current mood: in danger of becoming nebulous
Category: Art and Photography


First my keyboard has a fatal meltdown and decides to have a stroke mid-Holiday season, causing my Mac to crash with the ever popular kernal trap error, then reboot with the ability to only type lower case "a" no matter which key is depressed... then mondo-expensive replacement keyboard finally arrives and I discover the keyboard shorted out my mouse with it's last dying gasps, and FUCK you can't use a Mac without a working mouse, so I'm still limping along with a mouse that randomly shuts off every other minute... and I'm too broke to order a new one after the San Diego-Vegas photo trip... so everyone thinks I hate them, and I had to borrow someone's graphic-tablet just to write a blog in the middle of the night to let people know I'm alive...

Tiger Army @ SOMA in San Diego on 01.18.2008
The Dear & Departed @ SOMA in San Diego on 01.18.2008
Viva Hate @ The Brass Annex Lounge, Las Vegas 01.19.2008
Revolution Mother @ SOMA in San Diego on 01.18.2008



Tiger Army, The Dear & Departed, Revolution Mother (a pleasant surprise), Throw Rag, Viva Hate...

I'd probably feel better about that if Buzznet had posted the galleries yet... but I'm still waiting. They were supposed to be featured last week (I think Tiger Army is going into one of the new "Featured Galleries" that pull down on EVERY PAGE OF THE SITE (Hell Yeah!!!) (note: They just did it!!! EEEEE!!!!!!!))...  and I'm pretty sure they'll run the Dear & Departed photos for the music page because Pretty Emo(ish) Boys are much loved on that site...



...but I will absolutely be dancing if they put up the Viva Hate ones. I'm still disgusted my Viva Hate article got bumped off the music page on Halloween by Panic! @ the Disco, A7X and Brittany Spears "news". Seriously. They featured an A7X gallery last week by the extremely talented Shiona, so maybe that's what's holding things up? I was totally jazzed that my "press release" post about Geoff Kresge rejoining Tiger Army made lead story on the music page and was still anchored at the top spot after two days when I left for the concert... (I thought it had bumped PaTD, but apparently it knocked out Radiohead. Awesome) I need to go add a few of the new photos to it...

Anyway, I came home sick with the sniffles that turned into a sore throat that turned into the hacking lung-crud of DOOM and was knocked out on generic Nyquil for nearly the whole two weeks and have barely begun to edit the photos. I have most of the very good Viva Hate Vegas ones up... man, I love that band...



The room was too small and I'm too short to use my Nikon so I shot most of the good stuff with my beloved crappypointandshoot while crouched on the lip of the stage basically under Wedge (don't over analyse that :P), although I was back behind it somewhere trying to photograph Greg Utter (which I utterly failed at all night. ha) and glanced away for a second, looked back, and MATT WAS GONE!!! I could still hear him, but it seems some ladies got a little carried away during his performance and decided he needed to get closer to the audience.... by grabbing him around the legs and... relocating him. He got back to the stage seemingly unscathed, and considering what they did to Captain Doe of Throw Rag during their set later one, he was probably very lucky.


This is Wedge, knawing on someone's soul...

Throw Rag sounded great, but unfortunately, they had red red stage lighting their entire set and if you haven't heard me rant about red stage lights and digital cameras before...THEY SUCK. I can pull a decent shot out of a completely black frame if I have to, but red light does something that robs the image of any definition and depth whatsoever, even if it's well lit, close on and in focus, I get red BLOB. Throw Rag basically came out like a lot of red blobs... so I started shooting video clips of them. Granted, it still looks like red blobs, just moving red blobs... with crappy sound. Although the footage of Sean bare ass naked after the audience pantsed him, so he finished the song, retrieved his pants, and finished up by wearing his underwear over his head, is still priceless. I'm reasonable sure neither Buzznet nor Myspace would appreciate me posting it, although he said he didn't mind. If I had decent video editing software I'd paste an anchor over the questionable body part, but iMovie is being lame.



I just got word that my Buzznet video/camera phone has arrived at their offices and I should be getting it soon (basically, I won a Buzznet contest to get one of the primo Nokia camera phones and a year's worth free streaming media service to post my content on Buzznet and "Getz Interwebz Famez!" (okay, not really, but yeah). I am reasonable sure I can do better than the mindless dreck the Candy-Colored Scene-People have been posting from theirs.... I think one recent video had a 15 year old "Scene-Queen" demonstrating how she sucks spit trails back into her mouth when she's bored. (This is not to say that Buzznet is lame, shallow and vapid... I love Buzznet, some of my dearest friends on Earth populate that site (and despise the invasion of shallow Scene-content as much as I do... but a free server has to pay it's bills to make it possible for the rest of us to post, if not groundbreaking, earth-shattering quality content, at least something that more than counters the dreck the Pop-Culture "MySpacey" portion of the site revels in.)

You have no idea how much I wished I had that phone in Vegas... I did get about 40 minutes of footage on the crappypointandshhot over the weekend (mainly, Tiger Army, Viva Hate, and a whole lot of "artistic" hey-lets film a lot of empty desert from the bus window shots. Oh... and barely clothed punk-Burlesque girls from Switchblade Stiletto and a fully naked Captain Doe... but who wants to see that streamed live onto the Internet, anyway? 15 year old ho-bags with bad hair, too much makeup, and the imagination of a goldfish are, like, TOTALLY more interestinger!)



If Buzznet features my videos on the front page (like phlegm-girl and the Myspace-boy who's very voice fills me with the urge to kill)... will I end up with droves of mindless fans fawning over every idiotic thing I publish as if it's the third coming of Star Wars? Probably not, I've had 5 or 6 featured videos on the video page, and I think maybe 3 people actually watched the most recent (see above). But, since I won that contest I've been getting some odd people dropping by my media. I posted a grainy undefined snapshot of me taken in the SOMA restroom mirror... tired, cold, straight off the bus, meant to illustrate that I was tired and looking forward to recuperating from the weekend, and someone told me I looked so "hot!!!" (comment deleted, others retained. Just. Too. Weird). Holy Hell, what was she thinking? (and why do only girls, and strange old dudes with Tila Tequila banners on their Internet profiles, think I'm "hot!!!"?). I look like shit on concert trips! Granted, it's part of the Greyhound anti-rape uniform... and there will always be incredibly drunk guys who hit on me no matter how rough I come off the bus... but...sheesh. Gadzooks. Yougottabekiddingme...


Yezzzz,  IR Soooooo Hawt!!! LOLZ!

If I do gain shallow fan adulation, I should probably think of declaring myself a "Fashion Designer" (ie: sell overpriced t-shirts and badly conceived graphic hoodies, maybe with declarations of affiliations with trendy social causes on them... ie., "Hunger iz BAD" or "Homophobia is Totally Gay" or "Hot Smexy Vegan"), or, like, I should back a Presidential candidate. Or both. Because having a huge friend list and complete strangers who lick my boot soles means that my opinion is one that matters even more than any rational informed voice, because people will follow it blindly (to their DOOM! Mwahahahaha...er, yeah).

This will probably make no sense whatsoever if you haven't been exposed to a glot of kids who think Internet-fame is the pinnacle of existence and spam you with their demands for comments and viral software that mass adds you to their friend list even after you've blocked them.... which enables them to spam your messages directly. Newflash, E-Fame and $1.35 will get you a cup of coffee @ JiTB, and it won't get you an entry in Wikipedia, so DO SOMETHING REAL WITH YOUR LIFE. Man, the things I'd do if I was young again, with the whole world layed out in front of me the way it never was when I was their age... and it *probably* wouldn't include dying my hair to resemble cotton-candy and leaking topless jailbait photos from my Myspace account in a desperate bid for more attention than the anorexic chick with the semi-pornographic Stickam broadcast.

...and saying that I remember that my early career was marked by an awful lot of artistic nudity, but that was basically because I could model for myself for free and it wasn't until later after I did all those paintings that other people wanted to pose for me... but I defy anyone to rationally compare one of my pieces to a bad webcam shot of someone whose only facial expression is best described as "zombie hooker".


and I can't post anything else because Myspace deletes anything with nipples. Srsly... and I'm not Photoshopping them out, so you'll have to ask to see my portfolio in person until I get them back up on my domain

So, okay, maybe after mixing Nyquil and 6 cups of coffee with enough sugar to feed a giant radioactive anthill living in the L.A. storm drain system isn't the most coherent time to write a blog... but if not now, when...?


...so kisses, fuzzy kittens, straight razors & machetes... I'm still alive (if not quite well)  and fighting off the zombie hordes... I miss you and love you and you and especially YOU....

~Misery