Not much to say about this picture if only because I know nothing about Batillus.
I was walking back to my car after the OFF! show and was encouraged to pop into Reservoir to catch a set from Caltrop.
These guys were on stage. I wish I could explain them. You can toss around words like metal and doom but they were so much more and so much less than those two genres. Prog metal? Who knows.
One thing for sure - the band was tight and the dude could holler.
I had just bought a new car. Okay, not new, but used, and was on the Interstate. The windows were up and the radio was off.
In the silence I listened for sounds.
The sound of mechanical problems, the sounds of an airplane chasing you, pretty much any sound.
And smells too. Like oil, transmission fluid, all that good stuff.
Buying a ten year old car can be nerve-racking to say the least but making sure it is up to snuff is a must. My brother thinks I'm delusional and paranoid. But I invested in a AAA card none the less. It's been a few weeks now and the Subaru Forester is doing just fine. It survived a five hour trek to Maryland and is slated for another lengthy haul to South Carolina next weekend. On the way to Maryland, the boys watched a DVD for the better part of the drive... so I drove in silence once again.
The return trip had them sleeping for a a better part of it, and again, I drove in silence.
My dad used to drive in silence. And it used to drive me bat shit crazy. "Turn on the radio at least," I'd think to myself. "Talk radio even," I'd think. Just give me some static to counterbalance all the quietness that enveloped the car. These were the days before Walkman and iPod my friends.
I remember feeling liberated when I got my first Walkman because it meant silence-free road trips, even if it was only a radio version and I had to scan for local rock stations in central Pennsylvania or the Jersey Shore when all I really wanted was some Minor Threat.
I was channeling surfing when I came upon the Dr. Drew-hosted trainwreck that is Celebrity Rehab and - like a car crash - I felt the need to crane my neck at take a peak.
And much to my surprise, the gaggle of washed-up stars were in group therapy moderated by Dr. Drew and...
Bob fucking Forrest!
Bob was in a seminal late-'80s LA band called Thelonious Monster. The Monster featured ex-Weirdo Dix Denney on guitar. Over the course of the band's existence, they would get by with a little help from friends like John Doe (X) and Flea and John Frusciante (Red Hot Chili Peppers). The band was once championed as possibly being the next best thing out of Los Angeles but Bob's sporadic, drug-addled behavior eventually railroaded the band.
They were an odd duck for my musical tastes at the time which consisted of a strict diet of hardcore and metal but being a avid skateboarder at the time, I was well exposed to plenty of alternative music (Chili Peppers, Jane's Addiction etc.) that I would soemtimes listen to as a break from all the bar chord noise going on in my head. Something about Thelonious Monster spoke to me whether it was Bob's lyrics or their drunk punk attitude (close cousins to the Replacements) and somehow they managed to secure a lifelong spot in my collection.
Several years ago, Bob Forrest came through Chapel Hill on some triple-bill of songwriters and played an acoustic show at the sandwhich shop/used book store called Skylight Exchange. Not having heard from him since the demise of Thelonious Monster (nobody ever informed me about the post-Monster outfit Bicycle Thief) I felt pulled to go see him.
As I browsed the books during one of the opening acts playing (that I can't remember) I bumped into Bob - dressed in customary suit and hat despite it being the middle of the summer in the southeast - and struck up a conversation with him. It was far from the fanboy type as I had learned over the course of my music journalism days that that kind of conversation gets you nowhere, and more on a level of book geekdom.
He left to buy some books and then put them in his car. As he was walking down the alley back to the club he noticed me walking out with a book in hand.
"Whaddya get?" he asked.
"Howl" I said. I was in the midst of a City Lights Pocket Poetry chapbook collecting spree and it was a pleasant surprise to stumble upon this Ginsberg classic in this ramshackled location.
"Nice!" he said. "I was thinking to myself that if it was still there after my set I was going to buy it!"
Bob played barefoot.
It was good, not great.
He appeared sober.
And that was the last I'd heard of Bob until spotting him on the show.
So this one's for Bob Forrest...well and my sister (who's not born-again by the way).
Not much to say about this picture if only because I know nothing about Batillus. 
