Drop Dead Beats: Random Thoughts

Much to our chagrin, Chris VonKarloff has decided to leave the band. I think maybe the easiest thing to say is that he outgrew the band. Outlaw Zombie Love Songs aren't for everybody. It is definitely an end of an era. The former hit man and hired assassin was one of the back bones of the DropDeadBeats. He was Jimmy Lugosi's right hand man and he recruited me, Anthony Munster and Grim Jim Crowley to come mess around with Jimmy's crazy yet true to life songs. When we had no faith in the band going anywhere Chris had a vision. When things got bad Chris was the glue that held us together. The buzz saw sound of his big old red Gretsch geetar became the distinct sound of the DropDeadBeats. Drawing on his influences of metal, punk and blue grass gospel he shaped our sound like a master sculptor. He was the man the myth the legend The Baron Chris VonKarloff. We will always have a void in the spirit of the DropDeadBeats, but we love that guy and I'm sure we haven't seen the last of Chris VonKarloff. -"The King of the Cowbell" Anthony Munster

May 12th, 2009 marks 3 years.
Three years of Death, Sex and Booze!
FUCK ME!!!
This has been the best damn three years of my life!
There's been good shows, bad shows
and somewhere in between there's been mother fucking AMAZING shows.
And I owe it all to Chris VonKarloff, Grimm Jim Crowley, and Anthony Munster.
These 3 silly sons of bitches have stood behind me through it all,
and nobody could ask for a better band than this.

J.Lugosi

and I am sad.....
It's no secret that I am a fan of the Cramps.
In fact, I've pretty much ripped off everything from the Cramps.
No, really.
Anyhow losing Lux feels a lot like losing Cash.
I know a lot of people would argue Lux's influence on the world of music
versus that of Mr. Cash.
But I'm talking about on a personal level.
The music I write is goofy and whacky and dark and twisted,
something that was taught to me by the Cramps.
Other bands wrote dark spooky shit,
really trying to convince you that they crawled out of the depths of Hell
and were bound to kill you at any moment.........
what’s the fun in that?
I grew up watching people get beat in the streets
and wondering when the sound of gunshots would stop.
There's no fun in real violence.
But listening to the Cramps was like watching a bad horror flick,
the music swells, and you know what’s coming but you jump anyway.
This is why you bought your ticket.
And the Cramps never seemed to disappoint my ridiculous need for camp-horror in rock n' roll.
Without the Cramps there would be no Drop Dead Beats.
"Just what you need when you're down in the dumps, one half hillbilly and one half punk........ do you understand?"
J.Lugosi

It's been a long time since we have posted anything on here so I, Anthony Munster, decided to write a little sumpin. When it comes to the DropDeadBeats you can think of balls to the wall straight up out of control madness heading right towards you. We all put our mind, heart, body and soul into the shows we play. It may be to 2 people or 500. That’s just the way we do. We have some exciting new for all of you who give a rat’s ass. We are going in to record some new material and we will see how it turns out. If it is really good we will pass it on to you but if it sucks ass well you will probably find it at the bottom of a dumpster somewhere. We have the whole month of October booked up so if you get a chance come on down and listen to some tunes drink a few brews and just plain out have a good time. You won't regret it. -Anthony Munster

Parking is tough out here, when you add in street-sweeping it gets even worse. So I decided to park my wife's car and mine on the street (yes I have a wife)there was a sign that said "no parking 7am to 6pm" It was well after 6pm and I figured I'd have the cars out before 7. The next morning at about 7:45 I went to go move the cars. I knew I was running late but I hoped I hadn't inconvenienced anyone that much. When I get to the cars I find them both blocked in by a truck double parked with its hazards on. I figured they were probably loading or unloading something and I would only get in the way more if I tried to move out now. So I went back to my place for about 15 minutes and come back. When I return I find the truck still double parked. I decide to go into the building being worked on and asked very politely if someone could move the truck. Now I don’t want to sound prejudice towards foreigners, my family are all immigrants. But I'm a proud American and I have a problem with people that come here and don’t understand the simple rights afforded to us as Americans. The more foreigners I come across it seems to me that there are a great many countries where "the biggest asshole always wins" Anyhow this fella was from one of those countries.
The conversation went like this:
"Excuse me, I'm sorry but could I get someone to move this truck?"
"You park here?!" "Yeah, I'm really sorry; I'll go ahead and move my car out of your way"
"No! I call the tow truck" "Ok, but I'm here already, I'm sorry about the trouble, but I was hoping to get the cars out earlier."
"Don’t hope! It will cost you 300 dollar to get your car out"
"This is your car?" "Yeah the two of these."
"Good! It will cost you 600" "You can't just move the truck?"
"No, the person who have this truck went to home depot, he no be back for 2 hours when tow truck come to tow your car" "So you're not gonna move the truck?"
"No! You are going to miss work? Good!" "Ok"
So the very angry older foreign fellow went back inside and I called the cops.
The cops come down, I told them
"I know I fucked up, but he can’t hold my car hostage right"
The cops go into the building and come back out with the man.
"This gentleman would like to move his cars out; can you move this truck please?"
"He should not have park here, I have sign!" "I understand that sir, I'm asking you if you can please move your work truck, you're obstructing traffic and you can't be double parked."
"I have to move the trash." At this point another officer showed up.
"Couldn't you just park in the alley besides the building?"
"There are people walking all day up the alley" "THERES CARS DRIVING UP THE STREET ALL DAY!!"
"It cost me 30 dollar call tow truck" "Sir, you can’t tow the mans car when he's trying to move it, if he wasn’t here then you could tow it away, but not like this."
"I have a sign!" "Do you have the keys to this truck?"
"Yes" "Move the truck out of the way sir"
So he gets into the truck and starts the engine, at this point he's looking straight at me trying to eye-fuck me, he puts the car in reverse and runs right into the police car that’s parked behind him.
"GET OUT OF THE CAR!"
"I'm sorry" "GET OUT OF THE CAR AND PUT YOUR HANDS ON YOUR HEAD!!"
They take the guy, put him down on his knees and start patting him down.
"Have you been drinking today?"
"No, I was just nervous" "How long have you been driving?"
"I'm very sorry" The first cop, whose car got hit steps into the cab of the truck and shuts the door. He looks into all the mirrors and says
"Ya know, I can clearly see a police car behind me"
"I was..." "Can I ask you something? Where were you going?"
"I was going to pull back around the corner" "IT’S A ONE WAY STREET!"
Then the officer pulled the truck ahead and told me to go ahead and move my car.
"Thank you very much officer" (not all cops are this cool, so I learned early in life to be extra-polite to the police)
So I get into car #1 and drive up the street. I don’t know what happened between that time and when I got back to car #2 but it couldn't have been more than a minute or so.
I come back and open the door to car #2
"HE HAVE TWO CARS PARKED HERE!" "THAT’S HIS RIGHT TO PARK WHEREVER HE WANTS; IT IS NOT YOUR RIGHT TO HOLD PEOPLE HOSTAGE!!!"
"BUT I HAVE SIGN!" "ENOUGH!!!! You were trying to be mean today and I'm not gonna have it! I could take you in right now and have your truck impounded"
At this point I got into car #2 and took off.
I'm not sure that there is a moral to this story other than as we already know, assholes suck, and signs along with unnecessary traffic cones are bullshit. Now I know what you're thinking, it was kind of an asshole thing of me to do parking there. But you have to remember that I had every intention of moving the cars before the time written on the sign, and I acknowledged that I had fucked up and apologized. So really I wasn't trying to be an asshole, not like that fucking guy. Though I may be an asshole for coming back later and removing all his signs. But either way, god bless America. -Jimmy Lugosi

When you consider that there's only 52 weeks in a year.......
that's a lot of fucking shows. -DropDeadBeats

Wednesday, Friday, Sunday
It’s been a long week
Wednesday night we played with a bunch of Metal bands at Hoagie's,
and made the debut of our new T-shirts.
Fucking great, rocked the shit out of the place.
Friday we were at Spike's with even more Metal bands,
not as good a response but still I wouldn't call it a bad show.
And Sunday found us at the world famous Blue Cafe
playing with various rockabilly-ish bands
and damn it we sound good on their system.
I'm thinking this must be what it's like to be a real musician
playing gig after gig.
Bleeding on my guitar.....
Now it's Monday
and I'm fucking exhausted
but ya know
I can’t fucking wait till Saturday -Jimmy Lugosi

Insomnia's a bitch. Nothing to do so gather 'round kids and I’ll tell you a story. A story of how this abomination we've come to know as the DropDeadBeats was given life. Well, at least this guitar slinger's side of the story.
I've played the guitar for years. Longer than than I haven't. I've also known Grimm Jim and Anthony Munster for about the same amount of time. We played together off and on since the days before real jobs, bills, and responsibility, but we never really did anything of note.
A few years ago I met Jimmy Lugosi. We had a few mutual acquaintances and he needed some help with his 1950 Buick (which is in my driveway now, thanks Jimmy). So I hopped in my trusty Ford truck and flew on over to his pad one afternoon. That afternoon we didn't really get a damn thing done on the car, but we did get to talking about music.
Jimmy told me about how he wanted to start a band and I told him I could play a song or two on the guitar so he said, 'hey, let's start a band.'
Sure. I'll get rite on that. You see I’ve been playing guitar a long time and a lot of people say they want to start a band, but there's a long way between wanting to start a band and actually climbing up on the stage of your local dive. So I agreed to his plans and went on my way not expecting anything. I'd heard many fools talk of big plans but never was there any follow thru.
But not so with Jimmy Lugosi.
Lugosi had an idea.
Jimmy showed up at my place not too long after that with a guitar in one hand and a stack of songs he had written in the other.
Hmmm, that's weird. This guy actually came thru and already has some songs written.
Lugosi had a talent.
We sat and played thru his songs. Most of which none of you will ever hear, but they were good songs none the less. Brutally honest songs of desperation and self destruction that can only be written by those who have truly experienced life and the pain it can bring. These were damn good songs. But what to do with them?
Lugosi had a plan.
Now Jimmy brought with him a true appreciation for the roots of all things rock and roll, from Robert Johnson to Johnny Cash, and while I had and still have a great fondness for these geniuses of days gone by I was more influenced by the later styling of punk and metal. I had however been introduced to the brilliance of one Jim Heath (a man with his own talent for blending genres) a few years prior to this and all of this together made sense. Johnny Cash was the blue collar, working man's punk rock of his day. Robert Johnson knew what hard times were about. It all worked together perfectly. The sound of the DropDeadBeats was beginning to take shape. But where would it go?
Lugosi had a vision.
All too often people want to make music for the wrong reasons. They want to be famous, to be a rock star. We had no delusions of grandeur. The needs and desires of Mr. Lugosi were far more practical. As has been previously noted, after the death of the Legendary Johnny Cash Jimmy Lugosi began the arduous task of drinking himself to death. However, for those of you who may not know, this can be an expensive undertaking, but when you're in a band, you don't pay for drinks. Necessity is the mother of invention. We settled on three goals for this project:
Get free drinks
Pick up chicks
And most importantly, have a damn good time.
No fooling ourselves here. We weren't out to sign a big record contract. We weren't looking to crowd the walls of our homes with gold records. And while our scope may have broadened as time went on the bottom line is that we still play because its fun. It’s so fun in fact it’s almost narcotic. Refer to Jimmy Lugosi's post. Playing is a high, and the lack of playing is a comedown you don't want to know. I'm getting off topic, but the point is we continue playing because we're addicted to the fun..
So now we had some songs, we had a singer, and we had a lead guitar player. I believe by this point we had even settled on the name (mite be wrong on that one, it’s late and my memory doesn't serve me well these days).
The DropDeadBeats had a foundation.
One could begin to see the monster forming. But pieces were still missing. So like Igor and the good doctor, we set off to find the parts needed to give this creation life...Part 2 to follow.

-Chris VonKarloff

That's rite. I didn't stutter. 30,000. Thirty thousand. Let me back up a bit.

I am a guitar player, and as a guitar player I’m always looking for new equipment, even though I can never afford it. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing really wrong with the stuff I’ve got. It's just a disease of sorts. Girls have shoes. Boys have toys. So late one night I’m surfing this wondrous cesspool we call the World Wide Web and I stumble across Sam Ash's website. There on the front page is a limited edition Brian Setzer tribute guitar. Nice looking guitar to be sure. So I click on the picture of it to find out a lil bit about it. Then I see the price. This thing retails for 30,000 dollars, but thanks to a special Sam Ash deal it can be yours for only 24,000. Wow, what a deal! I'm going to head down there first thing tomorrow and make sure I get one.

WTF

Now I’m not getting down on Brian Setzer. One could make a pretty sound argument that he is in a large way responsible for the revival of rockabilly. He was also a better guitar player 30 years ago then I may ever be.
I don't want to get down on Gretsch either for releasing this thing. What am I going to do? Start boycotting Gretsch guitars? Yea. Rite. Like there's any other choice if you're looking for a good hollow body. Besides, I love my Gretsch (big thanks to Stella Von DD for that).
But come on, 30k for a guitar? Do they really expect to sell even one of these? For that kinda money it ought to come with a free car or something. I understand that the nature of business is to capitalize on anything you can when you can, so I guess there's not really anyone to blame except us, the music fans. Big music companies see us lining up to fork over 50 dollars to see Social D again. They see every kid with a quiff or pomp saving every penny (or spending their parents' pennies) to buy a hollow body or a stand up bass. They hear Tiger Army on the radio so I guess we're all to blame. Have we made rocka/psychobilly mainstream? Maybe, or maybe it’s just more of a niche that a few people are trying to capitalize on. If it were mainstream you would have already seen me on cribs, showing off my cars and big screen. Last I checked alls I gots to my name are a beat up pick up and a broken down Buick.
Maybe this catering to our niche isn't really bad. The growth of our beloved 'underground' scene means more venues, which means more chances for me and the rest of the DropDeadBeats to share our songs of desperation and death with more tortured souls.
There are also a lot more products out there for us to use. A lot more products means companies competing for our hard earned scratch. This, in theory, should bring prices down. Maybe this 30k dollar joke is just a fluke.
The record companies successfully raped us music fans for years for the cost of a record because they had no competition. Then we were blessed with Napster. After which came all the others, Morpheus, Limewire, Ares, etc. We showed we would only take so much, so we fought back and we won (seen a tower records lately?).
So what's my point? What do we do now? I have a feeling capitalism will prevail, no one will buy this guitar and it will just go down as a marketing failure. But the question remains. Look at our 'scene.' Look at where it’s come from since its revival. From the early neo forefathers of Setzer, Alvin and others, to the influence it’s received from punk, death rock and everything else. Did any of these people along the way realize what they were doing or were they just playing the music they loved, blending it with their own touch. Is it possible that someday you will be writing a nonsensical blog at 3 in the morning about the new 30k dollar limited edition Chris VonKarloff Gretsch guitar? Not likely, but hey, you never know...

-Chris VonKarlof

The other day I was driving. I stopped at a stop sign and noticed one of those little ticket cars. You know like when the street sweeper comes by. Anyhow the door to the car opens up and out steps a cute little rocker chick, bleached hair, heavy eyeliner, doc martins, but she's wearing the ticket uniform and ticketing people. Suddenly I felt all that is rock n roll in my soul get filled with disgust. I started to roll down my window; I was going to yell something along the lines of "bitch, that ain't punk rock!" But I stopped myself because I realized that that’s kind of an asshole thing to do, after all the girl is just doing her job.
This really troubled me, I was left wondering am I truly still punk rock? And where does punk rock fit into the Church of Jim? For those of you who don't know, there’s a certain level of rebellion and angst that is necessary in punk rock. I meditated on this for a long time, even going so far as to knock over a trash can just to see if I was still punk, I am. But I began to wonder if perhaps I'd been wrong on this "church of Jim" thing had I found a hole in my philosophy? How could it be that I was so tempted to be an asshole to this girl? But I'm glad to say after 3 days of pondering I have the answer!
I FUCKED UP!!!
I should have yelled at her! I should have gotten my point across to this poor soul! Rock n roll is one of the fundamentals of the COJ! And this poor doomed girl is obviously fighting her true will and forcing herself into this bullshit job (though I'm sure it pays really well) this bullshit conformist job that is everything that punk rock is not! I'm not an asshole for wanting to yell at her, I'm an asshole for not yelling at her. It's very possible that my yelling at her would have been the last straw, this would have finally awoken her to the lie she's living, and maybe she would have finally found the courage within herself to quit her crappy job and get back to what’s important in life; booze, art and music. But I fucked up.
I guess the point is, don't expect to have all the answers right away. We're all gonna make mistakes. The important thing is that at least you tried. -Jimmy Lugosi

P.S. - If anybody sees this girl, set her straight.

Nothing goes better together than Dominguez pizza and practice!!! Back in the day Chris VonKarloff, Grim Jim Crowley and Anthony Munster started a band in a garage in Long Beach. In the three years we were together as a band we only had two gigs. We had more practice than anything else and at those practices we had a good old time making music, hanging out and eating pizza. Now some ten years later we were at the same garage in Long Beach making music, hanging out and eating pizza. It was kind of weird in a way. The only differences were we are all ten years older, we have Jimmy at the reins leading us all to hell and the music we make now is 150% better than what we were playing all those years ago. It was good to reminisce and actually see that we have gotten better as musicians. Some might argue with the latter but I say screw ‘em!!!! –The King of the Cowbell Anthony Munster

So,
It’s no secret that I've battled depression most of my life
(I imagine I was alright as a baby but really who knows)
It seems I've developed a new vice
Yet another thing to become dependent on to make me forget my pain
It’s all this damn Rock n Roll
Playing music I seem to be ok,
So much so that I probably over book us with like 2 gigs a week
Playing silly shows that nobody ever comes to.
But when I figure we're all in need of some rest I'll give us like a week or 3 off.
And this leads to the come-down.
The first week is great, get to sleep and watch movies and shit
But by about the middle of week 2 I start to feel ill
Illness turns to laziness (even more lazy than usual)
Laziness turns to lethargy
And lethargy turns to hatred, contempt and disgust for the world at large.
Eventually I turn on myself and think "this is all your fault"
And then proceed to pick apart all the failures in my life
(This tends to take quite awhile)
Anyhow, I think moral of the story is
Play more music
And drink more beer -Jimmy Lugosi