Something 4 The Weekend # 247

Hank Mohaski:  Revolution & Pleasure:  "A Star For Everyone"  [mp3]

Did you know I'm a songwriter and musician?  I am, though I'm a bit more idle these days because arthritis has started rearing it's ugly head in my fretting hand.  I started playing guitar around 1982 - barre chords, or "Sabbath chords", as my gang called 'em.  Brick, Smoothy and I had a primitive punk-metal band called The Nadz.  I don't remember much except that we thought we ruled when in fact we half-sucked.  Our songs were pretty solid, if simple, and they were often funny and gross, and sometimes scathing and political, but fuck if we could play our instruments or sing.  I remember a few song titles - "Free Cheese", "Your Dad Is A Fat Asshole, Kyle", "Night Of A Thousand Hobosexuals", and our theme song and title of our one and only album, recorded on a boombox in Brick's basement, "Go, Nadz, Go!"  We played about four house parties in our year+ of existence, and then fizzled out because we half-sucked and only about two people liked us.  I wish I had a copy of our that Go, Nadz, Go! tape, but maybe it's best that I don't.

Skip ahead, past Mumniti (another band for another post, perhaps), to 1994, and I'm living above a sandwich shop in downtown Grafton with two friends and our girlfriends.  It's an enormous 3 bedroom flat, with a living room that's about 20' x 35', and half of it is a 4-track recording space I've set up.  This was the DowntownLivingroomRecorder, from 1988 to 1997.

Revolution & Pleasure was a tape I released in 1995.  "A Star For Everyone" is the last song on the album, and in fact was the last song recorded for the album, around Thanksgiving of '94, as I recall.  I guess this is a pretty typical kind of song for me back then - heavy guitars, basic beats on a busted drum machine, and non-traditional (and often badly sung) vocals.  It might be worth noting that in this particular song, the solo you hear in the middle section is not a guitar, but me vocalizing through a wahwah pedal, trying to sound like a guitar.  I think it works.

Anyways, if you're interested in hearing more of my music, stuff that spans 1988 to 2004, check out this month's EVERYTHINGATHON! podcast, which is all about me and my songs.  18 songs, as a matter of fact.  Something for everyone, perhaps.

http://www.everythingathon.com/podcast.htm

Enjoy!

Hotcha!  Hank