Dread the dreads

Life was peachy, but my head was itchy. I was highly regretting doing my hair in dreadlocks, and now I found myself wishing I hadn't. I loved my long hair, and now it was ruined. The longer I went with the dreads, the more I despised them. I think I lasted maybe a month or two before finally deciding to chop them off. With my hair being as straight and lifeless as it was, the dreads were just not taking properly. When the fateful day finally arrived, I was somewhat excited to see them go.

Jerry came by to help me cut them out, and then shave my head for me. I decided to keep one solitary dreadlock, the one growing from my crown at the top/back of my head. I had always been fascinated with the Hari Krishna culture, due to New York crossover kings The Cro-Mags, so I rolled with that. Later on I took an elastic and bound it tight at the root of the lone dread. Over time it actually turned into a real dreadlock since I had bound it at the base. Had I known this before I could have tied every dread at the root and in turn had some kick ass dreadlocks, but it was too late for that now.

Self portrait entitled "Fucking Hostile" chronicling my new found love for Pantera, my disappointment of not being with Georgina, and my hatred of my dreadlocks. Summer 1992.

Summer had arrived and excitement was in the air. Grasshopper had secured our studio time with Pete & Dummy, and we were ready to get busy and lay some tracks down. All three of us were quit excited to be recording in a legit, professional studio for our first time. Meanwhile 3 n' Pass was still going strong, and we decided to make a music video for our song "The Immigrant Rhyme" I mentioned many posts ago how Mike Myre had a camcorder that allowed you to record audio and video separately, so we recorded the song into the cam, then we began punching in and shooting footage.

We spent a fun filled day in Myra's (Mike's girlfriend) backyard. It was quite large and sprawling and it boasted some rather old and large beautiful trees. The video shoot was so much fun. It was challenging trying to punch in and sync our lips to the music, but we did our best and had a barrel of laughs. As cheesy as it was, it felt quite rewarding to sit down and watch the finished product. We were all quite happy with it and we could not wait to show our friends. The whole process was a trial and error experiment, and with the techniques we learned that day it was safe to say our videos would only improve in the future...

SIDENOTE: I've been trying to acquire these homemade music videos from Mike Myre for some time now but he has not made good with the goods. Hopefully in the future I will get my hands on these and will be able to share them in the story for all to see. I do have them on VHS somewhere but I don't have the ability to transfer them to my computer. Perhaps we can start a petition for Mike to release the footage....ha! Cheers - K