Tag Archive for 'Dirty Weekend'

Culturology #83 - Fuck Yeah!

A SPECIAL CULTUROLOGICAL REPORT!!!

I fell into a kind of stupor entering 2011, and one of my apparent New Year's resolutions was to allow Culturology to slip into an unannounced hiatus. But we're back, because of developments on the scene of nasty novelty rock that we here at AudioShocker just shouldn't let go unnoticed.

Back in the Fall of 2006, having spent the previous two years living in Boston, I found myself back in Pittsburgh for four months. Nick and I took full advantage of my time there, not only getting Dirty Weekend back together for an epic reunion show at the 31st Street Pub and recording fine demos of two new songs, we also recorded a handful of new tunes under our The Frank Sanchez Band moniker. When the ghost of Frank Sanchez occupies our bodies, Nick and I can sing some pretty filthy things. But I should touch on one other thing...

Going to college in the first years of the millennium, certain cultural experiences were pretty standard for the course, and two that I associate pretty closely are 1) Watching CKY videos (CKY2K coming out just in time for my and Nick's freshman year of college) and 2) Listening to songs by Boston's cock-metal favorites, Anal Cunt. Maybe because there was an AxCx song in CKY2K. Anyway, it was mostly for their track titles, which were super-offensive, but occasionally, one--looking back--must admit, made one chuckle. "I Got Athlete's Foot Showering at Mike's" is a classic. I don't think I watched CKY stuff very often, or ever listened to these songs very much, but they were out there.

So, when you come to record vulgar variety songs of your own, you tend to be aware of your influences. My biggest influence was Nick (I think my own song-writing was safely of the lonely nerd novelty genre, until he coached me along the Way of the Dirt), and his influences were... I'm not even sure... 2 Live Crew, certainly... and, Rod Stewart, I guess. Bill Cosby? But never did we say to ourselves "Let's record songs like the kind Anal Cunt makes."

Fast forward to 2010. Those 2K6/7 Frank Sanchez songs have been up at MySpace for nearly half a decade already--and listened to about twice a year. And Anal Cunt has just put out a new album. Anal Cunt, presumably, still has the strong following of shock-giggling teenagers that they've had since making the scene back in the late 80s. The Frank Sanchez Band, thankfully, goes mostly unnoticed there on the ol' internet. So, without further ado, I present two you two exhibits:

EXHIBIT A: The Frank Sanchez Band - "Fuck Yeah" (2006)

Find more artists like Frank Sanchez at Myspace Music

EXHIBIT B: Anal Cunt - "Fuck Yeah" (2010)

Listen to it here.

As much as I want to take some kind of credit for this--that one of the 49 listens of "Fuck Yeah" on MySpace was by Anal Cunt, and they were like "great idea,"--the moral is, mostly, that there are only so many ideas to be had out there in the world of offensive rock music. But we got to this one first. And then, thankfully, retired. (Like Frank Zappa would say, "they're just words," but after a while, I think most of us get tired of them...)

The Top 9 Reasons to Go to Pittsburgh's Small Press Festival Expo

If you live in Pittsburgh, then you should be at the Small Press Festival (SPF) Expo this weekend. It's that easy.

I'm going to be there on Saturday from 12 PM to 6 PM at the table labeled AudioShocker (and/or Nick Marino). I won't be there on Sunday but my awesome table-mate, Shawn Atkins of Workshop13.net (comic creator of Gello Apocalypse and Explorers of the Unknown), will be there holding it down and still selling my merch.

But if all that's not enough for you, here are the Top 9 reasons you should get your ass over to the Regina Gouger Miller Gallery on the Carnegie Mellon University campus this weekend for the FREE SPF Expo:

9. It may be called the Small Press Festival, but everyone knows that size doesn't matter. Unless you're talking about penises. Then size definitely matters.

8. I'll be there with my laptop and my brand new copy of Street Fighter IV, so come kick my ass in public and humiliate me before I get really good at it.

7. Be one of the first eight lucky humans on Earth to go home with a copy of Patio 1.5, the remastered and (sort of) remixed version of the classic Unlicensed Attorneys at Law track, Patio. This song is unreleased and awesome, so come snag a copy of it on the Original Recipe CD.

6. Buy a copy of Apartment 307 and revel in the ensuing insanity.

5. Get Zombie Palin! in ashcan form. Sarah is all the rage right now since she quit being an officially recognized politician to go on a fishing trip and wear goofy fishing overalls, so don't miss this printed representation of our lovable webcomic.

4. Get your copy of The Fur Bucket EP, a Frank Sanchez / Dirty Weekend split EP packed with 9 tracks of excellence. This is the first time these songs have been out as anything other than streaming files, with the exception of the few tracks that ran as Beatcasts here on the AudioShocker.

3. Catch a sneak peak of my upcoming comic book release, Time Log! It's written by Culturology's Pete and I, penciled by Shawn, and inked by yours truly. If you get out to SPF, then you'll see me inking it at the expo when there's some downtime.

2. Pick up a copy of Cracked: Rejected, an SPF-exclusive 20 page zine by myself and Pete that details our failed pitches to Cracked Magazine (now Cracked.com). If you don't pick this up, you're going to be really confused when you listen to next week's AudioShocker Podcast #89.

1. Yeah, it's the Pittsburgh Small Press Festival, but everyone knows that big things come in small packages... unless you're talking about penises, of course. Then small things are REALLY small and big things are REALLY big. But this is a Small Press Festival - not a penis - so it's gonna be all good.

More: The Top 9 Ways the Economic Recession Has Affected the AudioShocker

Why the Top 9? Because 10 is too many and 9 is better. 3 X 3 = Awesome. Now that’s what I call math.

Beatcast #11 - Muffdive by Dirty Weekend

Muffdive, a rude rock masterpiece by Dirty Weekend. This song rounds out our Dirty Weekend beatcast triple-play for September (see Scallions and Oh Wait for more). You can also check out video of a live acoustic performance of Muffdive on YouTube.

Click here to visit the AudioShocker Store!

Beatcast #10 - Oh Wait by Dirty Weekend

Oh Wait, another raw rock tune by Dirty Weekend. This lurid DW tale is also known as "I Dreamt That I Slept With Your Mom Last Night (Oh Wait, That Was Real)."

Beatcast #9 - Scallions by Dirty Weekend

Scallions, an instrumental rock song by Dirty Weekend. This jam was recorded as a demo in 2002 and remastered about 15 minutes ago for your listening pleasure.

New Contributors and Remastered Podcast Interviews

Over the weekend, Neal updated our version of WordPress for the AudioShocker blog, and everything went to hell. Neal got it fixed within a few hours. The only thing we lost was 1 gig worth of podcasts that we've recorded since October of 2007 (well, more like "deleted from our webspace" than "lost").

It took me from Saturday to Monday to get the old podcasts back up, but I was glad. Why? Along with making some minor file naming changes, I was able to remaster two of our favorite comic book creator interviews in the process:

  • Our 2-plus-hour talk with Ross Campbell, creator of Wet Moon and Water Baby, has been remastered. Ross is finishing up Wet Moon 4 as we speak, and we should have him back on our show very soon.
  • I also remastered our chat with Brandon Thomas, creator of Miranda Mercury and writer of Ambidextrous. This episode was originally a bit rough in terms of levels, but that's all been fixed.

But I'm not just writing this post about tech issues and old episodes. I'm also here to let you know about two new regular contributors who have joined the AudioShocker:

  • First up is Shannon, our new books expert, who has already written two fantastic posts for the blog.
  • Next up is Conrad, who is currently podcasting with me about the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies list. The next episode of this series will be up on Friday, July 18, 2008.

Finally, I'm going to be rolling out a new feature on the AudioShocker starting this Sunday, July 20, 2008. It's basically going to be the "AudioShocker Song of the Week." Everything we post will be originally music by artists like Nik Furious, the Unlicensed Attorneys at Law (UAL), Dirty Weekend, Nutsack Supernova, and more. This Sunday will debut a new Nik Furious beat for the upcoming UAL album.