Higher Learning

Long Term Subscription

A friend of mine uncovered an old issue of Surfer Magazine from the 70s, right around the Magic Sam era. There were some pretty good pictures, a couple interesting articles (surfers' favorite vegetarian recipes and a piece on Mike Doyle), but perhaps the best part was the poetry section. That's right...poetry. There can be good poetry and bad poetry, but this stuff was in a class by itself, only born of the "stay psychedelic" era:

Five Finger Headache

It is no secret that I am big fan of all of Sean McCabe's projects. Ink & Dagger made their debut when I was in high school and from there I worked my way back into his other stuff too. Found Mandela Strikeforce and Crud is a Cult and eventually even xOn Pointx. I have the Crud seven inch in my collection, but didn't know that it had two different covers until about a week ago after seeing it up on eBay.

Being a completist for the more important bands in my collection, I was dead set on scoring the alternate cover and being the fact that the auction ended at 8 in the morning on a Friday, I thought my chances were pretty strong. No one had bid on the record up until the night before either, so I really felt confident. I awoke the next morning to find the price up to $18 bucks, which was a bummer. I had in my mind what I thought the record was worth based on what I had paid for it a few years ago, and it seemed to me that someone had put down a huge bid in an attempt to score the record without having to be around for the end of the auction.

Our school has a ridiculously rigid and overbearing internet policy. Case in point, one of my students were limited in going on a math skills building site because sKILLs has the word kill in it. Completely Draconian. Without getting too off point, I was going to have to use my phone to bid. I ended up waiting until right before the auction to bid, only to be outbid with a few seconds remaining. Poor judgment getting the better of me I decided to increase my bid, in the hopes of cracking whoever put up their ridiculously high bid, only to have a error occur on my phone as the last few seconds slipped away.

Truth be told, I have a feeling even if there had not been an error on my phone, I would have still not cracked the mystery bid, but it kills me not to know if it would have worked. I doubt I will be seeing the Funeral cover show up on eBay in the next few years and it is pretty sad that I get this worked up over records. I've been listening to the Crud seven inch this week along with my burnt copies of the demo and the mysterious 2nd EP in honor of the Cult and decided to make the alternate cover you see below. I feel it is T-Shirt worthy, although most guys who surf have no idea who Crud is.

We Locked Our Keys in the Van

Like a lot of hardcore kids who grew up in the Northeast during the 90s, I'm a member of the cult of McCabe. I got into Ink & Dagger right around their start, only to discover Sean McCabe's earlier projects were equally as good. Tracking down those records can be a real bitch a) because of the smaller press runs and b) no one wants to get rid of them. Luckily I had found a copy of the Crud seven inch on eBay years ago, but the Mandela Strikeforce still eluded me until I was lucky enough to score the lot of records you see below last week:

I am beyond stoked to finally have these records in my collection and was flipping out when the box arrived in the mail yesterday.