<>Dad says, “It’s time you know.”
“One more bad tattoo,”
“and streets will run with blood.”
He’s gonna “kill both of you.”

“Speaking of cars, don’t go on-board
That god-damned contraption, that pink Cadillac
It gives your poor father a heart attack
And we both know very well we don’t want that.”

“Whatever you heard, whatever you learned,
from that soul-sapping, toe-tapping blue jukebox,
You should consider that your mind is littered,
You should ignore that no-good jock.”

“Damn t.v., it don’t know, it only shows
apocalypse, the end times, civil unrest
every bit there, I tell you, it’s all unclean.
Don’t listen to that. Please listen to me.”

Dad says, “It’s time you know.
One more bad tattoo,
and streets will run with blood.”
He’s gonna “kill both of you.”

I’d rather have fun than be wholesome, but father know’s best
I’ll come by, on a loud bike, you’ll wear a dress.
My bike likes Ike. I like Ike. I’m jumping the shark.
Dance Watusi and the hand jive. Batsui in the dark.

It’s an impossible mission that we’re on.
We’ll have espionage just like James Bond.
Baby hold on, hold on, we’ll both self-destruct.
Let’s get away with disorderly conduct.

We can beat the A team, steal all their cash,
Spend it on black clothes, dress up like the clash.
Empty out the bottles and fill up the flask,
and we’ll both help out when Mars attacks.

Dad says, “It’s time you know.
One more bad tattoo,
and streets will run with blood.”
He’s gonna “kill both of you.”

A friend and fellow resident of the CopyCat Building has released her first album, under the name Talitha’s Dream. The title of the album isThe Album That Will Never Be even though, finally, it is!

Download the entire album,The Album That Will Never Be.

Here’s a sample song from the album. There’s More.
Download the entire album,The Album That Will Never Be.

For months now, all the talk in my neighborhood has been about the Round Robin Tour. Something like a dozen Baltimore bands have been on tour together. What’s special about it is the format of the show. The show starts, and one band plays one song. Immediately after that, another band plays another song, and so on until all the bands have played a song. Then, they do it again, and again. It’s great! For anyone who gets sick of listening to sound checks between each and every band, this is a dream come true. It’s a wonderful idea, and Baltimore is very proud to have these bands draw huge crowds nationwide – no kidding, huge crowds! The show’s almost over, but there’s one performance left, and you can download the compilation from the tour!

Tonight, the Round Robin tour celebrated its homecoming at Sonar, here in Baltimore, by kicking off a two-night series of round robin performances. The first night was called “eyes night” and it featured nearly as much performance art as music. Many of the acts were accompanied by video projections, and the overall vibe was mellower. Tomorrow, feet night, will be more raucous.

Baltimore Round Robin 2008.

Another interesting thing about this tour is that the tour bus they used is powered by vegetable oil.

This whole thing was concocted by the same talented crew who brought an event called Whartscape as an answer to Baltimore’s Artscape. The group’s called Wham City.

Here’s a rundown of the many and diverse performances to be seen and heard in the Round Robin Tour.

In the web unit where I work, we have been locked in a fierce battle. The contest: to determine once and for all which song is the worst song ever made. Our main criteria were that a song must be the kind of song that sticks in your head for any reason, and of course, it must be the kind of song that sucks. The list of bad songs keeps growing. First, there was Rick Astley’s “never gonna give you up” then the content manager suggested the “achy breaky heart song”. I suggested that “you are the wind beneath my wings song”. Not to be outdone, the graphic designer came to us with the song that vanilla ice wrote for one of the ninja turtles movies, “Ninja Rap” with its annoyingly catchy “go ninja, go ninja go!” The flash developer’s wife even chimed in remotely with “We Built This City on Rock and Roll”. We’ve decided to open the floor to any and all songs, to determine which song really is the worst song ever made.

Here is a list of some really bad songs. Got any more?

• “Mister Jones” by Counting Crows
• “Who Let the Dogs Out?” by Baha Men
• “Rico suave” by Gerardo Mejía
• “Make Em Say Uhh” by Master P
• “Straight Playin’” by Shaquille O’Neal
• “Ballad of Bilbo Baggins” by none other than Leonard Nimoy
• “God Bless The USA” by Lee Greenwood
• “The Super Bowl Shuffle”
• “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” by Tiny Tim

… and the current owner of the title of the worst song in the world is …
Barney’s song

An honorable mention goes out to the song with the worst chorus ever: “Sometimes When We Touch” by Dan Hill. The chorus goes like so (gag!):

And sometimes when we touch
The honesty’s too much
And I have to close my eyes and hide
I wanna hold you til I die
Til we both break down and cry
I wanna hold you till the fear in me subsides

Download audio file (lizz-king.mp3)

Baltimore’s City paper awarded the title of Best Singer/Songwriter to Lizz King. Lizz is my friend, longtime neighbor and a fellow West Virginian. Congrats, Lizz. Here’s what the City Paper had to say about her.

Wham City might be best known for giddy, hyperactive noisemakers such as Dan Deacon and the Santa Dads. But the collective’s best-kept secret, Lizz King, defies her crew’s prevailing aesthetic with bluesy vamps wherein she wraps her throaty voice around a single instrument

Cheers Lizz, defying a prevailing aesthetic like that.

I got up on stage last night to do a spoken word performance, and I think the crowd liked it! Normally, when I do something between musical acts, the audience is thin. People go to the bathroom or the bar between bands, and they expect anything they hear coming from the microphone to be a mike check, or silly stuff about how the band’s CDs are for sale.

I went up after Lizz King, Vox Populi, and before the N.U.R.B.S., and I was armed to the teeth. I’ve spent the better part of the last week digging through a pile of everything I’ve ever written.
My recent move to Baltimore has given me an opportunity to have everything I own in one place, for the first time in almost ten years. With all my notebooks and boxes of papers together again, I could spread them out on my floor, and sort them. Honestly, I threw most of those papers away. Many of them were redundant copies, obsolete drafts, notes, etc. Many more of those papers were bad teenage poems.

My best friend Luke called me last night to say that he’d been reading over an old issue of Apocalypse Playground. He was laughing, right at me, when he called. He has a point, though. In retrospect, a lot of that stuff is laughably bad. What was it we liked about that stuff again?

I managed to find a fair number of surprises in that pile of paper, though. I took them to the stage last night, and aired them out.

I’m going to the beach this Thanksgiving, but while I’m gone No Categories will faithfully publish a collection of poems that I have rewritten and salvaged from that enormous pile of paper.

What should I do with the bad ones?

Last Friday, with friends and neighbors, I attended a wonderful gathering at the True Vine record shop in Baltimore. In the back room, there was space enough to pack all of three bands and us for an evening of good music, good company, and laughter.

First on the line-up was Gemmel, a performance I was unfortunately unable to photograph, but a masterful show nonetheless. The guitar work was inflected, emotional, and very nimbly played.

Next, came Santadads: two guys, neighbors of mine, dressed as a bear and a tiger. The name of their mike-check tune seemed to be “We’re going to kill you!“, which was what they chanted. They ended their set with a very operatic rendition of the YMCA song. There wasn’t a dry eye or an un-split belly in the place.

Last, but not least came the new kid on the block, Lizz King. She’s a native of my hometown, Shepherdstown West Virginia, and played the show to announce the release of her first recording, entitled “All Songs Go To Heaven”.

For your listening pleasure, you loyal readers of No Categories, I have procured copies of the three songs on that recording. Please enjoy the songs: “Bigger, Better, Stronger, Faster” a song about a ridiculous work ethic. Next up, we have “Proletariat Delinquent” (whose title is difficult to spell), a delightful and somewhat eerie song. Lastly, there’s a song called “When the Curtain Rises“, which is a sultry song about disappointing things.

A good time was had by all, of course.

The rest of the pictures I took are posted in the photo album.

I’ve made my plans for the weekend… I’m going to go see a show by a band called My life with the thrill kill kult. For more info about the band, and some links, check out the wikipedia page about the thrill kill kult