Video - 2 Songs By Kontacthi

I thought it would be fun to post a video or some other "non writing" blog post for the fourth post of every month (only 4 blog posts a month so next week is off for me! So leave me alone you cheap bastards.)

This month it's two videos from an acoustic band I played in with my friend Donnie called "Kontacthi" (pronounced either "contact high" or "con-tatchee" depending on if you were a narc) when I was about 18 years old. This was a few years before I knew about AJJ or any folk punk in general, so I'd say we were more influenced by the Smothers Brothers then anything from the punk world.

This is the first band that I did song-writing/front man duties in, and it was also my first experience with the bitter realization that would come to define a lot of my band experiences throughout my 20s - nobody actually gave a shit. See, I'd absorbed a myth, from the boomers I guess, that starting a rock n roll band was a fast track to, if not fame and riches then at least some modicum of popularity and probably a girlfriend or two. None of which remotely manifested. The lowest point, for me, was playing a house party in Portland and every single person at the party went out on the front porch for the duration of our set. I was not a happy camper about that.

Now that I am old and wise (I'm 36) and have been playing music for much of that time, and am still not popular (I have had several girlfriends, but I had to get them the old fashioned way - by showing off my Super Mario skills), I realize that you just have to take the lows with the highs. Sometimes you play a good set and a few people dig it. And sometimes you chase a couple dozen people onto the porch for a smoke break. It's just part of the band deal.

Both these videos are from a punk rock birthday party that we were invited to play at in Boise. One of the recurring problems with Kontacthi was that I wrote all these pretty crude songs, but then we kept getting booked at little local fairs and other family friendly events, so I was happy that we at least got to say dirty words at this one.

Donnie wrote most of his own rap for this, though I'm pretty sure that the "pocket full of thizz line" came from me. My verse is pretty heavily inspired by the band Sublime.

"Angel" is my contribution to the respectable canon of extremely sexual songs written by people who had never actually had sex (see also that one Eve 6 song). People seemed to like this one, but we never recorded it, so here is the first time it's every been "released" in any sort of capacity. You're welcome!