Having a cup o' Joe.... with Joe!

The best part about living in College Point back in the day was the fact that at one time Joe and I lived just a few blocks from each other and we'd often meet up for breakfast. There's something really nice about that - and Joe, no matter where he lived, was always great at parlaying his interests in monster movie nostalgia into great communal gatherings of people with like interests! Whether it was at his home, showing movies on a giant inflatable screen - or welcoming curious onlookers into his barn-turned-museum, which he called the Haunted Barn - he was always doing something in remembrance and celebration of a very special place within our collective childhoods.

Today, Joe continues with that tradition, in part, with his "Monster Kids Club" breakfast meetings! He had one just this past weekend, and here he is... mmm, those waffles look good!!

Hope to meet up with you one day soon, Joe - I do miss you all!! Now if I can just figure out how to fit my life-size wolfman into my trunk...

For more info check out The Haunted Barn Movie Museum/Movies to Go Facebook Page

The French Restaurant Skit

I debated with myself for a little while about ever revealing this silliness to the masses... the improvisational comedy Lloyd and I would commit to cassette tape whenever we got together - I mean when we weren't immersed in our OTHER habitual pastimes like making movies, recording music or drawing comics. But eventually you reach a point where you think, well, WE enjoyed it - perhaps even if you don't get some of the in-jokes - perhaps others can TOO? Well - that's yet to be seen - as apart from a clip or two and that time I posted our Abbott & Costello stuff - I'm ASSUMING SOME PEOPLE may be listening and enjoying it... it's a little difficult to discern. Surely the blog traffic increases every time something like this gets posted - but WHO'S really listening and what the hell could they be thinking? Heh heh heh..... I dunno.....

Anywho - - been too busy to give these clips any permanent home on the OOB site, but I'll get to it eventually, I guess. In the meantime, here's a little improv skit Lloyd and I recorded that we titled "The French Restaurant Skit"... You can kinda see where it's going!!... enjoy?

Click here to listen: The French Restaurant Skit

Dan Banic shines bright in Beautiful Sun!

I love this tune... and what a great discovery to find Dan's live jam rendition of it while going through the Out Of Bodies archives for the website! Here's to wishing everybody, including of course my Out Of Bodies brothers Dan, Joe, Lloyd and Mark, Happy Holidays and all the best in the New Year!!!

My Way Home

Still trying to teach myself a little video editing, and not doing half as good as I'd like to (imagine, they sell this software WITHOUT instruction booklets!)... but I managed THIS (and that's not too bad, eh?) Dug deep into the Out Of Bodies archives and found this little "wheezer" track that Lloyd and I patched together. The guitars sound a little out of tune, but that may just be collateral damage caused by the cruder than crude way we recorded it... rotating cassettes in a double deck "boom box" recorder, adding chintzy overdubs via a mix microphone. Yeah, I know, ludicrous... but it was all we had. I'd like to think that if someone like George Martin saw what we were doing that he'd at least give us an "E" for effort... I mean, BEFORE he threw us out on our asses...

Anyway, this is Lloyd singing - and I think we were both playing guitars - influenced by Bob Seger's "Night Moves"? Hmm... maybe at the one part when Lloyd goes... eh, you'll hear it... ENJOY!!

Bed Time Story

Another impromptu comedy skit from the twisted minds of Lloyd & Donald... is ANYBODY out there LISTENING to this crap?...

Click here to hear the "Bed Time Story" skit

One Game Leads To Another

Was talking with a friend the other day about the good old days of the video game arcades. This instantly brought up memories of playing at one of the most bizarre places on Earth, Adventurer's Inn - which is now just a faint whisper in the wind blowing down the road on Linden Place, just off the Whitestone Expressway in Flushing, NY. Then, ironically (almost magically) I came across a recording that my buddy Lloyd had made while I was digging through my cassette archives tonight - an ode to those glorious days, and our #1 biggest arcade game obsession - Popeye!

Lloyd took the Fixx song "One Thing Leads To Another" and turned it into a song about our inability to walk away from the Popeye arcade game and called it "One Game Leads To Another"... anyone who remembers being as fixated with that one-eyed freak as much as we were will find themselves humming this song when they least expect it... enjoy!!

One Game Leads To Another - an Ode to The POPEYE arcade game

Grampa Chews Gum

You've all been asking about it, so here's a little sneak peek (or sneak LISTEN) to what's coming to our website when we launch our new Out Of The Archives segment! Aside from a seemingly endless pit of musical surprises we've also unearthed some rare COMEDY, from the somewhat twisted minds of two young fellas I recognize...

 

Click HERE to listen to: Grampa Chews Gum

Something rare, well done...

Something rare I found while digging through the Out Of Bodies Archives today - a theater of the mind commercial Lloyd and I recorded promoting a comic story I had just completed at the time called Yummy Yummy Yummy I Got Jimmy In My Tummy! I totally forgot we had done this!!...

You can LISTEN to the commercial here!

and then, if you dare... READ the comic here!

More Surprises to come from out of the archives!

My cassette to MP3 converter arrived earlier than expected this week, so I'm happy to announce that I gave it a try and it worked fairly easily... (and lately I'm not used to things working out easily) - - so the real news here is that I'll be cracking open the Out Of Bodies archives and uploading never-before-heard SUPER RARE recordings, long forgotten jam sessions and comedy bits for the "Sides" section of our website!!

Just to test out the equipment I grabbed the first cassette I could see (which was unlabeled) and did a quick transfer without fussing with any of the settings - just "boom" - whatever's on there, here it is!! It turned out to be Dan doing an impromptu, live jam version of "Runaway", and I know he's going to cringe - but hey... it's still fun hearing this after all these years! Rough takes, mistakes, uncontrollable laughter - I plan on revealing it all! You want clean, organized, antiseptic crap? Well, there's too much of that stuff out there already... don't you think?

Honestly, I really don't know what to expect when I go through these tapes - there's going to be LOTS of stuff in those archives I haven't heard since the day we recorded it... so for me, this is going to be like taking a ride in one of those theme parks where you haven't been in years - a surprise every turn, and perhaps a few displaced invertebrate!!

I'll be announcing these new additions as I get 'em done - - soooo...

Stay tuned!!