Tags Matching: Screeching Weasel

I looked at all my one of a kind items, actually, put them all in front of me, and asked myself which one of these stays with me forever? I decided I would limit myself to only keeping one. I have three silkscreens, two are up for sale now, one is to come. I have my torn up Bright Yellow Jughead shirt which I used to wear to all our early concerts for the first two years, before we were even Screeching Weasel. When we were All Night Garage Sale. This shirt is why I got the name Jughead. I never read Archie comics, could barely give two shits about those comics or naming any project referencing these comic books. I was more fascinated by the fact that the word “Jughead” is actually in the dictionary. “Jughead. Slang. A stupid or foolish person. (1925 -1939).” The dictionary I had then and still have now, that word is in the corner of the page for “J”. That meant infinitely more to me, that my name helped people find words like, judicative an jugulate. And the fact that I have always considered myself, a clown, a fool (and a juggler), gave this moniker more meaning than anyone could ever know. This is why I still keep the name around now. (The shirt I might auction off, just don’t know if anyone wants a bright yellow rag) In front of me was also my Westone Guitar, with Benneton sticker and pen caps for a bridge. I am pretty sure I am the only Weasel member that still has their original guitar. I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure Vapid and Ben auctioned theirs off. This guitar was played at every show and on every record up until Bark Like a Dog, when it stopped working and I bought two Gibson sgs (One which I gloriously destroyed on the House Of Blue’s Stage, even dented the floor with that “rock”.) with the Fat Wreck Chords advance we received to record the aforementioned record. (50 Thousand Dollars). In the mean time I had a back up guitar, a Les Paul, I gave this to Andrea from the Manges. Anyway this guitar means alot to me. Ben’s guitar had Mr. Yuck stickers and mine had Yellow Smiley Faces. Perfect. This is the one I must keep. All memories attached to SW can be generated by this single item. It is all I need to keep all else that has followed comfortably in my thoughts. So to make a long story even longer. The item, here, is one I can barely fathom selling, yet it makes sense. It is a playable part of our history and neither am I a player of vinyl nor a collector of band memorabilia. So it must go.

THIS ITEM: This may be the only one in existence, I am confident that if that is not so, then it is one of two in existence. After our first record, self titled, we became good friends with the Ozfish Experience and decided to put out a split 7 inch with them. Warren did much of the work. We recorded at Solid Sounds studio August 1987, both bands in there together. We cranked this thing out in one day. (Or probably overnight since that was usually all we could afford.) Both bands put in 500 bucks. Ben worked at the Gas Station and I worked at Randhurst Movie Theater. Every cent we made went into this. The plan was to have a record release and Dirty Nellies, where Matt Nelson helped us book punk shows bringing in bands like Operation Ivy, Mr. T, Crimpshrine and Greenday to Illinois for the first time. A few days before the show, we got two test pressings, one went to me and one went to Warren. We okayed the pressing. We made up 500 black and white covers and got them already for the arrival of the vinyl. The day of the show the vinyl still hadn’t shown up. As we were getting close to opening the doors for the night, Warren tells me and Ben that the pressing plant burned down. “What!” It burned down, melted all our vinyl and took the master recordings with it. I put the test pressing in one of the envelopes and said something like, “Instant collectors item.” (Joking really, having no idea that we would amount to a band that people would actually go out of their way to collect our items.) We through the rest of the jackets in the garbage. Some of these songs, I think showed up on other Sw collections, all taken from me putting the record on the turntable, recording it with a cassette and sending them to the person putting together the compilation. I think the only song re-recorded was I Hate Led Zeppelin… maybe American Suicide. These are the original versions. The 7inch has been played, but not much. It was in my milk crate of rare items that got caught in the flood, but this one was sitting on top and was completely untouched. That is the story, behind this item. Even this story, I contemplated cutting and pasting into a document for me to keep, since I have never put the history of this ep to paper. But even this belongs to the moment and the ether. And so there it goes. I am putting a high price on this item, because in reality it is worth one thousand dollars, but I would never pay that for this piece of valuable crap.

1. I hate Led Zeppelin
2. American Suicide
3. A Political Song For Screeching Weasel to Sing
4. Twinkie Warfare.

***All I ask is that the buyer record these onto a cd for me.

Other info: I have no secretary, I have no personal driver, I own a house, but actually didn’t even use Weasel money for that down payment, I worked at Crown Books for that money. All money I have ever made goes right back into creating art. Even the sales of these items are going to be used to keep me afloat till September, so that I can concentrate on my new book and my probably last Neo Prime Time show, The Ladder. If I can make it to September I will send these creative pursuits out into the world and then get a job, until then, for awhile, like from the beginning, I will live hand-to-mouth, and that’s kind of cool.