GETTING VERY FIRED UP: With all this catalog action going down, I keep forgetting that, a week from now, I’ll be on English soil. Shit’s been too nuts. Can’t think straight these last three weeks. Anyhoo, I have always loved Swervedriver and went on a bad kick with them today. Through all the albums and back to Raise again. It’s been awhile. Raise is one of my favorite albums of all fuckin’ time. All the way back to 1992. The wild, soaring fuzz and feedback. The best.

I remember driving down to Detroit…one my first times on my own…and jamming that record down I-75 as loud as I could. In a navy blue 1985 Buick Skyhawk, no less….ha! “The Hawk.” That two-door dream machine was a real gem. Got me all the way out West, too. Then it started acting funny, and I tried to fix it, and suddenly Central Oregon had another mystery on its hands. Something about air intake and who-knows-what-else? The handful of halfwit mechanics were stumped. That sucked, cuz it cost a bunch of loot each time I’d get it checked out.

It would just stop running, at the most random times. Like, while driving and shit. So I tried to fix it, kinda gave up, and then my housemate Rob from Reno said he wanted to buy it. I cautioned him, with full disclosure about the big mystery. But the insisted and insisted on the purchase and I sold him the Hawk for 600 bucks. Or something close to that.

A month later, back in Michigan after my first winter out west, I got a call from Rob’s step dad. The guy was pissed. “You sold him a lemon” he said. Rob knew what a mess that thing was! Sorry, Reno. The guy insisted on how “He knew a guy who knew a guy who could fix it” and all that.

Shady deals. Shady ways. Ah, the memories of my half-ass youth. Sorry, Rob.