data

March '08

We in The Blizzard of 78 have some sad news to report, after a long fight against an illness, dub master Mikey Dread, our collaborator on our cover of The Clash's Silicone On Sapphire has passed away. Please give a listen to the tune and think of him for a moment. It would be even better of you could go to Itunes and download a copy from The Sandinista Project version of the song as those proceeds go to charity. Also please go over to Mikey's Myspace and feel the solidarity. http://www.myspace.com/datc

Here is a copy of the blog I posted on the Killing Floor Records myspace: http://www.myspace.com/killingfloorrecords

Mikey's Phone is Off The Hook
I just sent out a short bulletin about the unfortunate passing of Reggae/Dub pioneer Mikey Dread this past weekend. Many of you probably don't know who he was. As many of you know I am a huge Clash fan. One of my fave songs by them is "Bankrobber" Mikey produced that song convincing Joe to turn it from a rocker to a haunting reggae groover. Mikey also added his voice, some effects and keyboards to the track,. Watch this:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=7t_JLkZ5AVE

When we heard about a Sandintista! (The Sandinista Project) cover compilation was in the works, I was fired up. However we got in late to the game, so no "Police On My Back", "Magnificent 7", "Charlie Don't Surf", "Washington Bullets" all the big songs were gone. What we got to was cover an instrumental dub style version of "Silicone On Sapphire" and try to make it to stand out on the compilation..it was a daunting task to say the least (though, not as tough as The Hyphens got) So we recorded the tune. Pip actually called in his vocal take via mobile phone! Our manager Larry had a great idea of sending it to Mikey to see what he'd come up with. We did that clueless to what he'd do. In about 2 weeks I received the package. I loaded up the tracks and was floored, I could not get the smile off. His dub plate style lyrics were perfect! Ok they may seem a bit light at times, but that is what is so wonderful, so uplifting. Pip, Nate and I worked up the follow up lyrics "from the Mesclaros to the 101'rs..........") Maybe it's a song that only it's fathers could love..but listen again and feel the spirit.

The Christmas after recording the song, Mikey played out on Martha's Vinyard so I took my wife to see him. It was a wonderful weekend and Mikey's show was stellar entertainment. Sure, he was more of an MC than pure singer, but that does not take away from the wonderful vibes he gave us that night. We had hoped to tour with Mikey or at least do a few shows together, alas it will never come to be. A few months ago, after hearing he was ill, I tried to call him to see how he was and his phone had been disconnected. I knew this meant things were serious. This morning going through my contacts in my cell phone I stopped on his number, I think I'll leave it there as sort of a link. It is so strange to think that perhaps his last recorded words were "gotta go!" Please just listen to the end of our song, you'll know what I mean.

Right now I pray that Mikey is sharing The Chalice with Joe Strummer and Joseph Hill, creating some great sounds somewhere in the Negril of eternity.

February '08

Wow man, I have not written in a long time. Blizzard headquarters is a buzz with activity, and I still have not much time to chat so I'll give you a quick update. Keyboard man Brian Syrge is now the proud father of a lovely baby girl. Nate and I have been working hard on the last few mixes for the new CD. Pip is working on the cover art. We are not performing live untill it is done, however we have started planning the next one! It's the anniversary of The Blizzard of 78. We are praying for Mikey Dread health. We are nearing the end of the W era. Supergrass has a new CD coming out soon, and I can't wait. Stay out of trouble, I'll try to do the same.

January '07

Tonight I revieved some tragic news, John Johnson the great upright bass player passed away the other day. John played bass on Nate Gibson's new record which was recorded here by me over the last year or so. He also played with local favorites Lenny and The Piss Poor Boys. Right now I don't know what else to say as I am looking at the spot in my studio where he stood while recording. It's almost like there is a void there now. I really don't want anyone to assume I knew him well as I did not, but musicians do connect on a level that goes beyond the normal social settings. We will all miss him and his playing. I hope he is hanging out with Sneaky Pete right now.

Early Fall '06

Howdy Y'all
Just a quick note to let you know what the hell we've been up to and what
we will be doing in the near future.
First off, coming up we have some live shows we are really looking forward
to:
one playing Boston's NEMO festival, at Harper's Ferry with Seattle's
The Long Winters. Besides the winter references, we are separated by two
degrees from The Long Winters: Paul Myers and I just recently worked as a
rhythm section on a recording project produced by Ken Stringfellow (The
Posies, Big Star, REM), Ken was at one time playing with The Long Winters
and also produced some of their recordings.
We are also proud to be providing some of the entertainment for an
opening party at the DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) Arts
Festival in Brooklyn, This festival is quite extensive and takes place
around a 30 block radius. We will be at At 99 Front Street, and the featured
exhibition here is Katrina Remembered ­ The Coast Is Not Clear. It is a
presentation of new works by six Mississippi artists as well as a pictorial
essay of the hurricane's devastation by Brooklyn photojournalist, Radhi
Chakasani. This will be a splendid evening for just the art
alone, but we are also happy to say that The Blizzard will once again be
collaborating with a great reggae musician, Culture guitarist Robin
Armstrong, who will sit in with us for a few tunes. Also, 2 of the guys
from MRNORTH will be doing an acoustic set to start things off. No one
in NYC should miss this one.
Also, coming back home to Jake's in Providence we have a Halloween bash
in store. If any of you have heard of the legendary exploits of Delta Clutch
at the One Up Halloween parties in the past, then you know this one will be
a
good time.

As I have stated before, we have been doing a lot of pre production for the
follow up to "Where All Life Hangs" which we have tentatively titled but
I'll keep that a secret for now. This recording will be featuring a group of
brand new songs, but we have also resurrected and hopefully perfected a
couple of older ones that were never completed to our satisfaction.
We'll keep you posted.
Cheers,

Summer Update

The Guster show was great. Guster themselves, their crew, our crew and everyone from WBRU were all splendid, but a special thanks must go out to Guster driver for he and his Kenworth deserve a Michellen Star for his preperation of native Walleye.

Due to time constiants, it looks like we will not be doing a set of covers at the Boston CD release party after all. We have chosen the 11:00pm slot and this would interfear with Auto Interiors set. We certainly would not want to do that. I hope to have more info on that show later on today.

Adios

Summer 2006

Ahh, A lovely glass of cheap Sauvignon Plonk is perfect for kicking off the first writing I have done in a while, Hold on let me crack a bottle. The French do know some things about grapes (amongst many other things we may have some delicious French vodka there for you to enjoy on the house, more on this later). Anyway, I'll get on with it. Right now, the band is gearing up for our CD release show at The Paradise Lounge in Boston. Plans are in the works for another Blizzard and Friends set of covers, This would be in addition to our set of tunes from the new CD as well as some brand new ones. People who came out to the Providence version of this show would attest to what fun it was. Sharing the bill with us is a very cool band The Russians, which happens to be fronted by Scott Janovitz as well as a cool band called Auto Interiors.

Anyone who has even driven through the Southern MA, Providence area and
had WBRU 95.5 FM tuned in, is probably aware that we are supporting Guster at
one of their great summer concert events. The show is Thursday June 22nd
and is a rare daylight (5pm sharp) performance for us. All the details of
this show are over at the live section of this website. The cool thing is
that tickets for this show are only $9.95 and right now the Boston area
Guster show is 38 bucks. WBRU have been great supporters of The Blizzard
of 78, so definitely we hope you can make it to the show and help support
them. We will be on WBRU for a few live interviews coming up, Monday June 19th after Midnight, and Thursday the day of the show at around 2pm.

Speaking of great supporters, Jake’s on Richmond Street in Providence has been
our favorite place to play recently and their annual Birthday Bash is
coming up on July 9th. This will be our third appearance and we hope to have
something special worked up for the occasion.

We are working on some shows with Mikey Dread in August to celebrate our concoction of “Silicone On Saphire” which will be released on The Sandinista Project soon. Should be fun to mix it up live with Mikey.

We will also be getting back to working on our follow-up to "Where All
Life Hangs" very shortly.

In the mean time I'm gonna drink up and listen to some Guitarzan.

Spring 2006
It is a busy time for us here at "78" headquarters. The new CD,
"Where All Life Hangs," is completed, packaged, shrink-wrapped...in other words, DONE! To celebrate, we're having a blowout release party at Jakes in Providence. It's on Thursday, April 27 at 10pm. Special guests Mark Cutler, Eric Fontana, Eric Barao (The Cautions), Ted Rao and Terry Linehan (Waterdog) will join us for an end of the night cover song set. Superchief Trio will kickoff the night at 10. Of course, we'll have the new CD for sale, as well as T-shirts and other TBO78 paraphernalia!

Here's what Bob Gulla of the Providence Phoenix had to say about the new CD:
"Where All Life Hangs is a dozen emotionally resonant tunes, delicately and tastefully assembled a la Coldplay or Damien Rice, with flourishes of
Badfinger."

We've been back in the studio recently (do we ever leave?) to record The
Clash's "Silicone on Sapphire." The track is for The Sandinista Project,
a tribute CD to The Clash. http://sandinista.guterman.com/ Other bands
contributing songs include The Smithereens, Camper Van Beethoven, Jason Ringenberg and many more. Special thanks to The Hyphens (who are recording their Clash cover as well as a new EP at Appleman Studio) for making us aware of this project. Speaking of the recording studio....we've already started laying down tracks for 8 new numbers. These are most likely the start of the follow up to "Where All Life Hangs" I don't want to give too much away now...but it sounds great.

That's it for now.....Hope to see you out at some shows!

February 06           

For months now we have been telling you the CD is almost done. We certainly don’t want to sound like the boys who cried wolf. However the CD really is close to done. I would estimate an early spring release. The title of the CD is “Where All Life Hangs”. Our friend Liz Robertson has taken our cover design concept to a new level. It really looks splendid. So, we will let you know when where and how to get your copy. In the mean time we have been in our studio all winter cooking up some songs for another CD. I don’t want to let an cats out of any bags just yet, But I can tell you this one is a bit more like the end of one of our live shows. Anyway, I have to get ready for a session here. I would like to let you know one more thing; The Delta Clutch and Anastasia Screamed catalogs should be ready for download at Apple I Tunes very soon they are currently available at www.napster.com. I ask you to send out some good thoughts for a speedy recovery for dummer Paul's friend Jason, who was injured in a hiking accident last week.

September 05
Cujo here reporting to you live from Blizzard Central. Once again, the
leaves are starting to whisper with that dry sound of impending death. You
may think things have been quiet over here, as we have been lying low all
summer. Not at all. We have been working hard on some new songs, tightening up the arrangements, trying out new ideas. We have recorded a special treat for you: a certain favorite from our live set. We should roll it to you as soon as Nate and I mix it. On October 1st, We shall come out of our self imposed exile as well as part of the NEMO music conference. We'll bring out another special treat for that show. The details are listed on the live
page. I sound like a broken record, but the new CD is done, we are still
awaiting the completion of the cover art. Speaking of art, our singer Pip
has a show coming up soon, also you can see my wife Lis Pip's work hanging
at James's Gate in Jamaica Plain, Boston. She will also be part of an
upcoming group show. I'll post details as I get 'em. You can see her work at bluepeppermint.com

I personally send my prayers and love to all of you with ties to Louisiana
and Mississippi. For any of you who wonder how Chick is doing, he is OK. He
moved out of there a few years back.

June 05
Summer is here and for some strange reason I feel the time is right for dancing in the street. I'm not sure the neighbors would agree though.
It also means our practice space is damp, the perfect climate to grow some mold and some new songs. We are almost ready to power up the mainframe here at Appleman HQ and record another record. So far the new songs are called Mercy, Just A Lullaby and Blood On The Road. Not that the tiles give much away anyway. We have started playing these out, so if you want to hear what we are up to, please come out to one of our next shows. Tonight while sitting on the porch, I have just shown the band what may be the heaviest thing I have written in a long while. Time will tell if it is crap or not. I play it on an old Dan Electro guitar that my former band mate in The Soul Shakedown, Danny Carney gave me in trade. We have about 10 others that may make their way on to this disc. So we shall commence recording at the new improved Appleman studio in July. In the mean time the latest CD is done. We hope to get it out to you by late August or early September. Ok, it is summer, please look both ways and look in the mirror before you open the door, that may be Larry Wallach or me hurtling along on that bike. Keep cool and ride a bike to work if you can.

January 05
This one is from me!
Welcome to 2005. It has been a while since I have written to you. the Red Sox finally did it, GWB beat us again, The endangered species act is under attack, the Iraq War continues, a new species of tiny human like creatures were discovered, an incredible wave of mutilation has taken the lives of thousands of people and altered the lives of countless more, hundreds died at a rock concert in Argentena, Murakami has a new book out, giant squid are washing up dead on the shore, Prince Harrry wore a nazi costume, the exploration of Titan conitnues, New England got another great snowfall, Johnny Carson died, biking season is almost around the corner The Patriots are in The Superbowl again and our new CD is just about done.

We have been focusing on finishing our latest CD here at our own shabby road studio: Appleman for a while. It is pretty much wrapped up. The title has been been chosen. What we are working on now is the sequence and CD artwork. Strangely, with the dawn of MP3 players and random shuffle and the diminishing size of all standard audio mediums these things are most definitely less important than they were in the glory days of AOR. The new shuffle pod takes that to a whole new level. Of course we want our songs on your MP3 players as well. Still, we hope that people will listen to the CD in it's entirety at some point. Similarly, over time and in direct relation to the size of the audio medium, record covers have also diminished in importance. 12 inch record albums were cool. I did nearly cry when I found my sweetest little cat using my collection as a scratching post. I aint no rock and roll ludite! Anyway, I am rabbiting on again. We hope this CD will be out by spring however, I fear I may have said this last year and the one prior to that!

Of course we still like to get out of the dungeon once in a while. We will be playing in the Boston area on Saturday Feb 5 at The Midway in JP. Not only will we be celebrating the anniversary of The Blizzard of 78, the show will also be a benefit for tsunami victim relief. Later in the month we return to our favorite RI haunt, Jakes with our step brothers The Collisions. Step brothers you ask? Well let me explain. I am an occasional stunt double for the Collisions lead singer Bo in another project which he plays bass for called Caged Heat. Nate has also filled in with CH on guitar. The current drummer in Caged Heat is none other than our own Bonham/Moon/Heddon and very occasional Levon Helm, Paul Myers. One day, I will finally write the family tree for this band.
yours truly and almost but not quite entirely a rock and roll Ludite,
Cujo

September 2004
Well, the summer has flown by. The sunlight is hitting the trees in that special way that means winter is coming. It is beautiful in New England this time of year, defo.

This last month has been pretty busy for us. It started with me doing sound on the road for Tanya Donelly and her shows were a treat to listen to every night. Her opening act Rachel Goswell, http://www.rachelgoswell.com, who some of you may know from
Mojave 3, was also fabulous and such a pleasure to be around. It is refreshing to see mellow acoustic music played to such a receptive audience. There wasn't an unexciting moment during either enchanting set. The truth is both of these women are unpretentious and real, which is far too rare these days. Please go out and by their CD's on Beggars Banquet.

The Friday I got back, Nate and I had to put on Caged Heat alter egos.
The band could not do a Middle East show so Chilly Kurtz asked us to fill in. Nate took lead, I thumped the bass (by the way the bass looks great now, thanks Angus from Providence) With only one short practice and with more than a little trepidation on Chilly's part, the show went off with out a hitch. It was nice to let loose on someone else's songs. It reminded me a bit of when we played as Chick Graning's back up band.

Amongst other shows this month, we did support the bands Snow Patrol and Eisley in RI last weekend. This show was great, it was 110 degrees on stage, our amps were almost burning up. Notorious lounge lizards we are, It is unusual for us to play in front of an all ages audience. I guess I know how Jimi Hendrix felt opening for The Monkees.(I'm not equating us with Hendrix or S P with The Monkees) Eisley were really good, and decent people to boot, as were the crews of both bands.

Next up, we hit The Paradise Rock Club in Boston on Oct 2nd as part of a NEMO showcase. We only play Boston a few times a year so it would be great to see you out there in full support nice and early, We go on at 9:00, of course it is hard to get rowdy that early but we hope you can do it. Then we head back down to RI to Jake's our #1 one haunt, where you can easily drink a beer without anyone giving it another thought. The food is great there as is the hospitable staff and it's that far from Boston.

Has anyone noticed how many dead squirrels are on the road this year?

August 2004
Hello again Boys and Girls.
I'm here back at the hideout for a few minutes. Just enough time to fill you in on some details. It seems as if the band just can't get enough of The Big Apple. A couple of weeks ago we had a splendid time pub crawling through NYC. The night kicked off with us playing a set at Luna Lounge and after that we slid down the street to a few more delightful watering holes, this time with some of the audience showing us around their favorite spots. Eventually we landed at Manitoba's where we drank Handsome Dick's beer till we coulddrink no more. The night was so much fun NYC just begged to get us back.

This week I'll be there doing sound while on a tour with Tanya Donelly.
There is an early and a late show Friday August 13th at Joe's Pub. She isalso doing shows on Wednesday the 11th at The Paradise in Boston and Thursday the 12th at The Iron Horse in Northampton see the shows, buy her new CD!.

After that we'll be back in NYC Wednesday August 25th at 8 PM sharp at Sin-e. See the live page for details. They have a great PA there which will be perfect for introducing a song called Stowaway. Stowaway may be the climactic finish for our new CD.

Anyway, don't forget to eat your veggies, change your knickers, wash behindyour ears, look out for cyclists, and vote for the Senator from our home state.
Cujo out.