The Mix Tape

It seemed as soon as the Beastie Boys showed up on the music scene everyone noticed them and everyone was talking about them. They were in constant rotation on the radio and their music video was getting played on what seemed like an hourly basis. A lot of the "cooler" boys were becoming fans, but it seemed myself and two of my best friends at the time (sanjai & jay) were the biggest fans in the school.

Jay was a kid who came to Williams pkwy sometime in grade 7 if I remember correctly. Right from the get go him and Sanjai hit it off and became very close friends, plus they were in the same class together which meant they spent a lot of time together. Jay was just like Sanjai, very small in stature and a very comical person in general. I remember him always wearing funny shirts, like the one with holes burnt in it and the caption "Who Farted?" another fave of mine he wore had a bunch of people in line picking their noses and it said "Pickit Line" Jay also had a huge scar on his abdomen from some childhood surgery that he told all the kids was the result of a shark attack, and of course all the naive students ate the story up in awe.

The three of us were hanging out whenever I wasn't hanging out with Jerry & Craig. Sanjai ended up getting a cassette tape from his friend who went to a different school. This friends older brother was into rap and had made what was essentially the first "mix tape" I ever heard and dubbed. The tape allegedly contained a bunch of Beastie Boys songs and we were super stoked to hear them! Being as big into music that I was, it didn't take me long to figure out these weren't all Beastie Boys songs. What I first thought was DJ Hurricane rapping on a few cuts ended up actually being "2LiveCrew" and we had our minds blown and corrupted by a song called "Hey we want some pussy" There was another rapper on there who clearly wasn't a Beastie, and we learned what time it was when we heard the track "Gucci Time" and quickly figured out that his name was "Schoolly D"

The actual Beastie Boys songs on the mix tape were songs we'd never heard before and it was like we had discovered the lost ark. There were 3 songs, the first was "Cookie Puss" which didn't even have any rapping in the song, it was just one of the Boys making phone calls to Carvel Ice Cream locations trying to get Cookie Puss' number. Cookie Puss was actually an ice cream cake that Carvel sold, I even remember seeing ghetto commercials for it on WUTV Buffalo 29. I felt like I was apart of something as I got the joke they were making. The song was actually cut into two parts and we thought it was 2 different songs. It wasn't until I bought the 12" vinyl in 1990 or so that I realized it.

The second song was called "The Beastie Groove" which we easily figured out as it was a hook at the end of each verse. This was more like the stuff I had heard so far, Cookie Puss was cool and I loved it but this track had way more substance. It also had a slamming beat and contained some Led Zeppelin samples. The beat was so loud and dirty I felt that it made the song very heavy even though there wasn't much guitar in the tune. It was incredible discovering this stuff with two of my best buds who loved the band as dearly as I did but it was even more incredible thinking that other Beasties songs i didn't know about existed out there somewhere...



Vacation Update

Happy holidays to me! In today's brief post my intentions are to inform everyone that I am officially on holidays for the next two weeks. I won't be working my day job, I won't be tattooing, and I more than likely will not be doing any work on 73'. 

This also means that for the next 2 weeks I may not have constant access to the Internet, which in turn will limit my ability to post a new blog entry every other day as well as updating "kabal bites" on a daily basis. I will however be writing new blog posts on my iPod so that when the chance to get on line presents itself I will have new material for all of my faithful readers.

In the meantime I will be with my son for the next 10 days which means I'm going to be busy playing with toys and video games, watching lots of movies and YouTube videos, going on excursions to the park, the city, and wherever else our adventures take us. 

Next weekend we are going to my sister's trailer up on Rice Lake for our second year in a row which we are super excited for, and after that we are off to visit my parents once they return from Alaska... Oh and I will also be attending to my fatherly duties as well! Lots of good times ahead and I hope everyone is enjoying their summer as much as Gabe and I are about too!

Birth of the B Boy

One day during grade 8 I was watching music videos on television, my trusty VCR remote in hand ready to capture anything that caught my attention. A video came on with 2 parents getting ready to go out for a night on the town, they were instructing their two sons not to get in any trouble. The two sons reminded me of "Louis" and "Gilbert" the two main characters from my favorite movie at the time "Revenge Of The Nerds" so I decided to hit record on the VCR. Little did I know I was about to be introduced to what would become my all time favorite band. 

The two "nerds" decided to have a party. They declared they would invite all their friends and have punch and pie with the hopes that no bad people would show up. The guests arrived and the quiet, pop and chip party was suddenly interrupted by a loud guitar, accompanied by the front door breaking down. Three white guys walked in, looking like a cross between rappers and metal heads respectively. After them, a barrage of unruly guests entered the party. They ranged from punks to metal heads to b boys. 

The song itself kicked in at the same time that the front door was, and it sounded like a pretty heavy rock song, until the singing started. It wasn't really singing persay, it was rapping, on a heavy beat with heavy guitars. My mind was instantly blown at this new crossover sound, but what blew my mind even more was the fact that three white boys were rapping. This was a huge change from the Grandmaster Flash, Kool Mo Dee, Fat Boys, and RUN D.M.C. that I was used to and knew as rap music. The video was quite comical, these 3 whiteys rapping away, making out with girls & completely trashing the house. The band was called "Beastie Boys" and the song title was "Fight For Your Right To Party" What a great song title I thought to myself, and an even greater band name, plus one of the best music videos I had seen to date!

At one point in the video, one of the "Beasties" who's name I'd later learn was "Mike D" pulled a huge bottle of Spanish fly out of his jacket and dumped it's contents into a punch bowl. Later on he encounters a rather large sized lady drinking the entire bowl, as soon as she spots Mike D she begins chasing him around. I had seen "Spanish fly" in several 80s movies prior to this and I was always trying to track some down to get my hands on, but now I was determined to track something else down to get my hands on...this Beastie Boys record!

We Hate The Snow

Grade 8 is very similar to grade 7 in the fact that I don't have a lot of memories from that year, in fact I pretty much summed up the majority of the year in one post. Life was all about wrestling, porn, commodore 64, skateboarding and parties. I hung out with quite a few different circles of friends depending on my activity of choice. Although I had a few different groups of friends I knew where my loyalties were, which was with what I considered my "band" mainly Craig and Jerry. 

Even though I had known Craig since kindergarten, Jerry and him were forming more of a best friend bond, perhaps because I had quit smoking and they were still smokers. I could find them on the roof of the french school down the street from me puffing on cigs most evenings. Why the roof? So their parents wouldn't find them and bust them for smoking! Duh!

Jerry had caught wind of the jam session Craig and I had recently experimented with and he was curious to see what we were up to. I can't recall if he had his guitar yet, or if he used one of Craig's, or if he just sat in and spectated on the jam, but he was there regardless and he was instrumental in co writing our very first song with us "We hate the snow"

The song was spawned from us walking everywhere and having to deal with the cold, Canadian elements. The lyrics were a collaboration between the 3 of us and went something like this:

(verse)
I hate the fucking snow, I see it everywhere I go/
When I'm walking down the street, And I get cold feet/
When I'm walking down the block, And I'm freezing my cock/
When I'm walking up my drive, So cold I shouldn't be alive/

(chorus)
We hate the fucking snow! (x4)

There were more verses but that is all I can remember. Looking back at this I still find it hilarious as when we first wrote it, and amazingly we wrote the song in somewhat of a speed metal/ thrash/ hardcore vain. The verses were sang over a faster, chugging riff and the chorus over a slow, crushing breakdown, each word accenting the music. We even wrote a second song "We hate the rain" which was essentially the exact same song but with the lyrics altered to describe walking in the rain instead of the snow. 

The three of us had actually made these songs up when we were walking in the snow or the rain, and now here we were in Craig's bedroom putting music to our words. It felt good, it felt real, and it felt like we actually had the potential to become a real band...

The Cabal Cut

Once again I apologize for being a day late on my blog post. I've been trying to keep up an every other day routine for the summer but it's tough sometimes with my busy life. Today's post will be regarding current events.

On Thursday, July 19th, I attended a one night only screening of "Nightbreed:The Cabal Cut" in Toronto at the TIFF bell lightbox theatre with my best friend Jerry and my old roommate and coworker Matt. For those of you who don't know, Nightbreed is a movie and novel by Clive Barker,the man most famous for bringing Hellraiser to life. Nightbreed has been one of my favorite movies since I first saw it at age 17, and it was also the inspiration behind my alias that I rap under "Kabal"

3 years ago some friends of Clive Barker discovered some old VHS tapes with tons of unused footage that ended up on the cutting room floor. The duo began restoring it as best as they could and edited the footage with the film that was released in theatres. Three years later the cabal cut was complete and they are now screening it around the world. I've been following this process for the last two years and was thrilled to finally get to view it.

The cabal cut is not Nightbreed. Morgan creek butchered the film adaptation of the novel which resulted in poor box office sales, but the film went on to reach cult status regardless. This new cut was true to the book and altered the story significantly. The film is now 55 minutes longer with more depth to the story, people dying who didn't die in the original, people surviving who died in the original, new unseen breed and a few other surprises. The new footage was pretty rough, it resembled a late 70s/early 80s VHS movie, but it didn't bother me one bit. I was on the edge of my seat the entire time and constantly excited to see what would happen next.

The men responsible for the cut are currently trying to raise money and awareness to properly restore the footage and release a DVD/blue ray for public purchase. There is a petition online which I encourage everyone to sign, and I've also posted links to a Facebook group for support of the film, and videos of the film's introduction and the Q&A session that took place after the film. I'd personally like to thank everyone responsible for making this happen as it has been a dream come true for this fan.

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/nightbreed/

http://www.facebook.com/groups/occupymidian/

Welcome to Grade 8

Grade 8 was a huge year for me. I was the top of the pecking order, the king shit if you will. My parents were finally letting me grow my hair and I had a sweet mullet in training. In the past I was more open to all types of metal, now I found myself weaning out the poisons and cinderellas in search of more motorheads and venoms. 

BMX had been a big fad in the past, but now skateboarding was coming back. I had a banana board in the 70's but this was completely different, and I loved it! I didn't care that I had a k-mart brand skateboard, it was em blazed with what looked like one of the four horsemen. 

I was also into wrestling more than ever and spent the majority of class talking about it and the majority of my lunches partaking in it with my friends. We even started our own fed, the BWF (Brampton Wrestling Federation) One of my new skating buddies had a trampoline in his backyard so we started having matches there after school and dubbed our events "Tramplemania" I was also collecting wrestling magazines religiously as well as videotaping matches each week and even making my own comics. 

Miami Vice was a big hit on television and all the kids started rocking the Don Johnson look at the school dances and parties. I was invited to all the popular kids parties which I found strange as I didn't really hang out with them. I think they found me wild, unpredictable and entertaining, which in turn made me either a like able person or some form of novelty or party trick, unknowingly performing for their amusement. 

Rocking the Miami Vice suit & mullet, circa 1986.

I got in quite a lot of trouble that year as well, it seemed like I was in the office once a week on average. Every time I heard the p.a. system come on I would slink in my seat with dread, fearing that I would hear my name beckoned down to impending doom. 

I was really big into the commodore 64 as well by this point and when I wasn't pile driving kids on lunch I would be in the computer room playing video games with my secret alliance of nerd friends who gained my protection in exchange for floppy disks with the newest games. 

Another lunchtime activity was going to friends houses who lived close to the school so we could watch porno movies they had found in their father's closets. It seemed each day the group got bigger as word spread of our activity. A few times some girls even came over and watched them with us, which was awkward yet exciting. 

There were a lot of influential factors going on at this point on my life and I was embracing them all, but the biggest one was right under my nose...

Make-a-wish Foundation

On Saturday afternoon my son was playing with his new "monster fighters" Egyptian Lego set when he blurted out "I wish I was The Mummy" I chuckled and paused for a few seconds before saying "Why would you want to be him? He's already dead, just an old dried up skeletal corpse wrapped in bandages. You are still young and alive and have a whole life of possibilities ahead of you"

This got me thinking about my childhood and all of the "I wish" ideas that went on in my head. I remember every time I wished for something out loud my dad would always immediately respond with "Don't wish your life away" As a child I don't ever recall wishing to be someone or something else as I already clearly knew what I wished to be when I grew up, a famous musician. It didn't quite work out that way but that's why we refer to them as "dreams" and as we all know dreams don't always come true.

I was quite happy being me that I didn't feel the need to wish to be someone else. I did however use to wish that my situation in life, and my families situation was better. I've mentioned before that we were well off but we were definitely far from rich. My folks raised us very independently and it was instilled at a young age that we had to pay our own way in life. When all the other kids parents were paying for their school trips to Quebec and instruments for band class, I was using my own money which I had been saving since birth. Money that was accumulated through bonds built with the cash I had received throughout my years at Christmas, on birthdays, and my weekly allowances.

Sometimes i used to wonder what it would be like if one or both of my parents were rich and famous. My mother a glamorous movie star instead of a teller at the bank, or my dad Hulk Hogan instead of a Bell service worker who climbed down manholes all day. My pops would certainly be able to afford the corvette or satellite dish that he always wanted. These wishes definitely had some self serving values when reading between the lines. Like the fact I wouldn't have to go to school as there would be no need for me to work if my family was rich, and I could also do anything I wanted and have anything I desired. 

As I sat in class daydreaming and wishing about my famous family, deep down inside I knew it wasn't a reality. I was just a selfish as any other kid at that age (11-14) but I also had good intentions towards the people I loved in my life as it is a part of my generous nature. Wanting to be a Rockstar was my own dream but I didn't want all of the money and fame for myself. I wanted to be able to buy my dad his dream car and send my mom on luxurious vacations. I even had plans on building a dream home for the family, complete with blueprints I had designed on graph paper. None of these ideas ever materialized. I never got to buy my dad his corvette although it is a dream that still burns inside of me to this very day.

Sure I never gained huge fame, nor am I independently wealthy, but I did pursue my dreams and live my life the way I wanted to. I've gained hundreds of friends, played in numerous bands, and hopefully moved or inspired a few people along the way. I was fortunate enough to be apart of the wrestling business and even more fortunate to earn a living off of my artwork through tattooing for the last 14 years. 

In closing I think I've made a bit of a mark in life for myself, more so than the average blue collared working class dad, and I will continue to leave my mark in this world. My son doesn't have a world famous wealthy father, but he will have countless hours of memories and enjoyment through the music, art, photos, websites, and writings I'll have left for him once I'm passed and gone...and that is priceless!

Craig's axe

I apologize to all my readers for the lack of post this weekend. I've been hanging out with my son Gabriel. When I'm with Gabe I tend to lose track of my regular routine as I give him %110 of my time and attention.

As I had mentioned in the previous post, I've been having difficulties recalling memories from grade 7. At least musically related memories. I could tell endless hours worth of stories involving bad  behaviour or hanging out with my friends, but that would kind of stray away from the task at hand. 

My good friend Craig had started taking guitar lessons at the royal conservatory of music in downtown Brampton, if I remember correctly it was around grade 5 or so when he first started attending. By the time we hit grade 8 I believe, Craig was lucky enough to receive an actual real electric guitar from his parents. I can't recall the make or model of the guitar but it was a bright candy apple red and it looked very metalicious! The brand name B.C. Rich keeps coming to mind but I don't think that's what it was, but more so Craig's favorite type of guitar....the warlock if I remember correctly. 

Regardless Craig was stoked about his new guitar and I was just as easily stoked that one of my best friends had a guitar! We quickly made arrangements for our first official "jam". Craig lived on a small dead end street that was encased by the crescent that I lived on, so it was only a few mere minutes to walk to one another's house. I went to his house since he was the one with the guitar and amp. I brought my trusted drum machine with me and it was go time. 

Neither of us really had the true knack of song writing mastered this early on in life so we did what any other band would do, we emulated other people's music. In particular the Venom song "die hard" which we bastardized pretty good, even add libbing our own lyrics like "Die hard! People's balls chopped off! Die Hard! People's heads crushed by bulldozers!" I'm laughing my ass of as I write this and recall these lyrics, yet I'm overcome with a feeling of warmth as this was truly the pre cursor to what would be our first band...

Puppet booths & thrash roots

I don't really have many memories from grade seven coming back to mind that are musically related. I do recall having to make puppets in groups of 3-5 and perform a puppet show in front of the class. I came up with the idea for my group and we did a parody of an old kids show "the friendly giant", only our performance was titled "the un friendly giant". We made puppets of the characters but in punk rock form, and pulled off some witty material, which was essentially doing everything opposite that the friendly giant did.

Our group even recreated the set of the show but it also was in punk form, the furniture used and broken & the room was trashed & covered with grafitti. All in all we pulled off quite an enjoyable and laughable puppet show despite all the negative undertones it consisted towards society and mankind. All concocted by yours truly of course who always seemed to take charge of group projects at school, generally when there was 5 minutes left of class and the group had sat there in silence, only speaking when terrible ideas had been muttered. I'd pull gold out of my ass! 

The breakdance styles were changing to more of a "grey cargo pants and matching vest with a burgandy turtle neck" type look, which I was digging a bit more than all the nut hugging parachute pants. These pants lead me to eventually wearing them with my "Exciter" shirt a lo,t which in turn had me on my moms back to find me cargo or army type pants. I was also getting shoe conscious now too, as kids love to tease you for being broke. My mother had always got me fairly cool looking no name shoes from the BuyWay or Bargain Harold's, but now Adidas was my shoe of choice as that's what my dad was wearing. Unknowingly that would benefit me a year down the road when I discovered RUN DMC and the Beastie Boys, who wore the same shoes as me, which would be one less item to find so I could emulate my influences.

I also now remember looking through heavy metals magazines such as Hit Parader, and seeing ads for t-shirts. These adds we're usually full page and each t-shirt design was no bigger than a postage stamp. The bands in these adds we're generally alphabetized or displayed by genre. Alongside the new bands I'd discovered like "Exciter", "Venom", "Celtic Frost" & "Motörhead", I was seeing names like "Metallica", "Overkill", "Anthrax", & "Slayer" riddled amongst other speed metal, punk and hardcore bands like "Misfits", "Sex Pistols", "Exploited" & "D.R.I." The t-shirt designs that accompanied these heavy sounding names were quite intense looking. 

My curiosity was peaked yet I had never seen these bands on television, nor had I heard them on the radio, nor had I seen their records or cassettes for sale in any of my local record stores. I suppose growing up apart of the "MTV" generation made me a bit skeptical of bands like this. I figured if they weren't in the media they weren't any good at what they did, or perhaps they were just too extreme for the masses....I'd learn later it was either or, depending on what side of the fence you were looking at it from, even a combination of the two at times, but realistically I would eventually learn it was just like myself....misunderstood.

Quebec (part 3)

Now we stood accused of alcohol consumption. All the guys were scared speechless due to the screaming accusations being hurled around the room by the teachers. I finally stood up and proclaimed the empty beer bottles were not ours and that they must have been left from the rooms' previous occupants. They didn't buy it, as housecleaning had prepared the rooms between guests. I commented on how this could have easily been overlooked by half ass cleaners in such a shit box of a hotel. They still didn't buy it.

None of my "roomies" we're backing me up either, they all just stood around frozen like deer in headlights. At this point in my life I had never been drunk before, hell I hadn't even drank ONE beer yet, asides from the sips my dad gave me as a kid. I was NOT going down for this and wasn't going to let my friends go down for it either, as we were all innocent. As my frustration grew so did my anger and my volume. I suggested that the teachers themselves planted the evidence since we had witnessed them stumbling back to their rooms drunk on a nightly basis. That was it, they went ballistic.

The two phys ed teachers got up in my grill like angered drill sergeants. I basically challenged them both to a fight. I was begging for one of them to hit me. I don't know if it was my conviction or my brass balls, but they all left the room without further conflict. For the rest of the trip I was kept on a very short leash. When we went on an outing I had a teacher attached to my hip. We went to a dance on a cruise ship and my roomies and I were forced to sit out on the sidelines on benches. Every once in awhile the teachers would come by asking if we'd learned our lesson. The guys quickly kissed ass so they could finally go mingle. I proceeded to be belligerent each time, as I was not going to bow down and admit defeat for a crime I didn't commit. I spent nearly the entire night sitting on that bench even though I was longing to meet some hottie to slow dance with.

On one of, or maybe even our last day there, we were given the freedom to explore the city and shop. As fun as this was the language barrier made it difficult, as the majority of people in Quebec spoke French. Trying to order lunch at McDonalds that day was a task in itself. I wandered the streets in search of English speaking folk, my only question being "is there a head shop around here?" After hours of endless searching I finally found someone local who spoke English AND knew the whereabouts of a head shop. Our time was running out so I ran off to find the place.

Once I got there I was in heavy metal bliss. There was all kinds of cool swag I had never seen at any flea market in Brampton. I quickly found some arm studs and leather wristbands unlike any I had previously owned. I wanted to get a kick-ass shirt but everything was quite typical, AC/DC, Maiden, Priest, Ozzy, etc. With the clock ticking I rummaged through racks of shirts until one caught my eye....Exciter, "Long Live The Loud".....jackpot! I made my purchases and ran blocks and blocks back to meet up with my friends who were too scared to venture off as far as I did into the "forbidden zone".

I had finally gotten what I had been looking for the entire trip. Overcome  with a feeling of satisfaction,  I was ready to go home. Quebec had finally proved itself useful and had dealt me a winning hand after a week of hard luck.

Quebec (part 2)

When we finally got to the hotel we were bamboozled once again. They actually split us up into two different hotels and basically segregated the girls from the boys. I was pissed! Once again my plans for panty raids and late night  antics were foiled. The little ghetto hotel we stayed in was right beside the "Chateau Frontenac" which was a sight to behold in itself. I went in the lobby to buy cigarettes and have a quick gander, it was magnificent. I found it ironic and comical that the best hotel and the worst hotel in all of Quebec were side by side.

Our room was on the ground floor with a big window facing out into the street. We goofed around in our room until the wee hours of the night, me rocking my AC/DC cassette the whole while. Somewhere between 1 and 3 a.m. we heard a ruckus and looked out the window to discover all of our teachers/chaperones stumbling down the block, drunk and carrying on.It was a rough morning trying to get the 6 guys in our room ready for the days excursions and we ended up making everyone wait for us, in fact we were so late that they almost left without us. We got in shit. We quickly started spreading word of the teachers drunken antics from the previous night, which like a bad game of telephone gone wrong, made it to the teachers ears, with fingers pointing back to us. We got in shit again.

After a day in hot water and sight seeing we returned back to the hotel. The next thing I knew we had teachers at our door due to the fact that the hotel housekeepers had mentioned to them what a disaster our room was. We had suitcases and clothes and pillows and sheets scattered all over the room. Our personal belongings and things we had bought were littered about, as well as our garbage. We also had wet towels all over the place and the last guy to shower that dawn neglected to tell anyone he had over flowed the toilet dropping his morning deuce. The teachers were furious, they were yelling, throwing our stuff about, and searching the room for incriminating evidence....and wouldn't you know it they found some. Whoever had the room before our arrival had stashed a bunch of empty beer bottles under the bed. It was just our luck...

Quebec (part 1)

As the school year of grade seven was winding down, it was once again time for the big week long school trip, which for the grade seven students would be a trip to Quebec. After being denied the grade six trip the previous year, I tried to keep on the straight and narrow path in grade seven. Realistically I was still getting in shit for the same old stuff, just not to the same extent as I was in grade 6. 

I clearly remember being big on the AC/DC album "Highway To Hell" that year and it was the only cassettes I brought with me to listen to on my Walkman during the long bus ride, which was roughly 7-8 hours. When we finally arrived the first stop we made was at some novelty store before heading to our hotel. They told us we had 10 minutes or so to use the washroom and buy anything we liked.

The store was dark and dingy with all kinds of cool gags and weapons. I quickly grabbed an aerosol can of "fart spray" and a butterfly knife (as I was big into ninja movies) which ran me about 10 bucks. A few of my pals came up to me all giddy telling me I had to come see something! At the back of the store behind a beaded curtain there was an adult section containing pornography and toys. The guys were all laughing at a rubber dildo about the size of my arm. The creepy clerk took it out from the display case and asked "Do you like?" Needless to say we got the fuck out of there in a flash.

All my friends were into ninja movies at the time so naturally they all bought knives, throwing stars and other assorted weapons. When we exited the store I was shocked and appalled to see that two male gym teachers who had volunteered to chaperone on the trip, were examining the contents of our bags from the store we had just been in. Anyone who bought a weapon had it confiscated immediately and was told when we got back our parents would be contacted to see if we were allowed to posses said weapons. To me the whole thing felt like a scam, a big set up if you will. If this was any indication as to how this trip was going to play out we were in for a long, bumpy ride...

73' Update

Happy Canada day weekend to all my fellow people! I hope everyone enjoyed the beautiful weather and got to spend quality time with their families and loved ones. While you all were celebrating our countries birthday, I was cooped up in my necropolis working on songs for my latest upcoming full length 73'.

 It was a very productive weekend to say the least, as I managed to complete 3 new songs. The first is "outbreak" a Dolemite-esq intro with some powerful music sampled from Black Sabbath's "Breakout", the second song is a cover song of slept on rap legend Schoolly D's "Signifying Rapper" which in itself is a take on Rudy Ray Moore's "Signifying Monkey". The third song was the one I made last week with my best friend Jerry's helpful input, the track is chock full of samples from The Beatles album "Let it be" After an easy mixdown yesterday I wrote and recorded vocals in record time.

 All in all the record is coming together nicely and realistically it is very close to completion. As it stands I have 2 songs I need to record my vocals on, 1 song that is completed musically but requires lyrics to be written and recorded, and an outro that I've yet to create. I was also going over my completed tracks and adding samples from the film "Nightbreed" as well as beginning my mixing notes.

 The cd layout is also near completion and I managed to find time to work on this as well over the course of my long weekend. I'm seriously considering having this record manufactured as opposed to it strictly being a digital download. If I do decide to go this course with 73' then I would only find it suiting to have a cd release party and possibly a live performance at said listening party. I will keep everyone updated on the status of this project over the next 5 months as its scheduled to release on December 12th, 2012. In the meantime feel free to enjoy the new songs...

http://kabal.bandcamp.com/track/outbreak

http://kabal.bandcamp.com/track/signifying-rapper-schoolly-d-cover

http://kabal.bandcamp.com/track/i-me-my