Gay Baptists On Heroin

The news that Snoop Dogg was just inducted into the songwriters Hall of Fame gave me hope. Back in the summer of '78 we toured our band, GBOH, through what I later learned was known as the "Bible Belt." We were not well recieved. Which was a pity. We had lyrics that could match anything Snoop has ever done. Alas, I suspect that due to the band's name, we were victims of homophobia. That's ironic. While a couple of bandmates may have dabbled in hard drugs, as far as I know, nobody was either gay or Baptist. We were literally appropriating a gay Baptist identity, which must have pissed off actual gay Baptists something fierce. Anyway, the Gay Baptists on Heroin have been lost in the mists of time, while Snoop Dogg is forever memorialized in the songwriters Hall of Fame. Life just ain't fair.

Junior's musical journey

My son Jake decided at age 12 he was gonna be a rock star. I found him a big old electric bass and an amp in the classifieds and figured he was off to the races.

Not so. False alarm. That musical career waned faster than it blew in. He'd come up to my place for weekends, maybe spend twenty minutes fooling with that instrument, but leave it there when he went home. That's what originally led me to pick it up, which is another story (see Gay Baptists on Heroin World Tour 2002).

Six months later something had changed. He was into it. Not only was he playing that bass, he soon branched off into drums, guitar, and saxophone. By the time he was 15 he was all about two things; smoking weed and making music... three actually; he was determined to read everything that Eric Arthur Blair ever wrote in his life.

All of which probably explains the absence of any credits on his high-school transcript.

But he did have his moments during his high school career.



Here he is with my Charvel. He's always had a nasty habit of "borrowing" my shit and forgetting to bring it back. Like my first edition Nevermind the Bullocks pressing...

As his talents developed he had a very Waitesian thing going on, which I quite enjoyed. He was also messing around with putting found video to music he created. I think his Nicotine Run is fucking brilliant!

Alas, and I don't know where I went wrong as a parent, but somehow he fell in with the wrong crowd and started making something called "electronic music." There's a couple of thousand different sub-genres of this so-called electronic music, and Jake could explain every one of them to you. Not only that, but he's probably made several examples of every genre that are out there on the Eternal Web of Shame that will haunt him for the rest of his life.

But he seems to be coming out of this dark period. All he wanted for Christmas this year was a Glenn Gould disc... WTF?

But I got him one, and a couple of days later I get Jake's latest music.

HALLELUJAH!!!

The "electronic music" phase is over!

GAY BAPTISTS ON HEROIN announce Bible Belt tour

Regular readers will know that GBOH is a side project for Junior and me, when he's not too busy creating electronic "music" that nobody listens to anyway.

The tour is in the final stages of negotiation with Live Nation and will be hitting college campuses from Kentucky to Louisiana this August, God willing.

We're touring to back up our latest CD, "Sheila is a Bible Humper." While the riffs are largely ripped off from the Ramones catalog, you'll find that the lyrics are completely original.

Final word on tour dates will be available shortly.