Eagle-eyed folks will notice that the original Irving stash of songs (dating back to at least 1994) is now almost fully depleted ("John Henry Bonham" is about all that's left, and that's in Chris Ziegler's pocket), and the number of released Weird Lovemakers songs is at about 86 now. Take THAT, Los Federales!

Next up we're going to get going on this "Live: Bigger Than A Cookie, Better Than A Cake" (title swiped from the Kent 3) disc that eMpTy will be putting out in June (see the 2/11/00 News). THEN work will begin on the new studio LP, also for eMpTy. We're not sure yet where we're going to record this one, but it should be done & out pretty fast (fast for us that is), so maybe by the fall of this year.

Tucson monolithic wall-of-noisemakers The Blacks have just released their debut full length L.P "Hate You Like Gold" on Chemical Valley records (POB 77142 Tucson, AZ 85703) & it's great. Still no substitute for plugging your ears while watching them live, but worth seeking out all the same (soon we'll have an MP3 of one of the songs on our sounds page & you can judge for yourself). We played a house party with them last weekend & even though we were drunken & totally lame, they sounded right on; clearing the room like it ought to've been cleared all along.

Well that's about it. Within the next two weeks or so we'll be adding a bunch of photos from last year's tour, so if we ran into you, you're probably going to be in there. After that there'll be some archival pix and maybe some video clips too, so keep checking back. Bye for now.

2/11/00
Hey everyone! Welcome to our new website. It's our plan to update this one pretty often & load it up with tons of cool shit, so be sure to plan your life accordingly. At the very least it'll be an easy way to check up on us & see what's coming along down the pike.

There's a lot of stuff that's happened recently or will be happening soon for us; a couple of the biggest are the pair of CDs (sorry, no vinyl) that should be out within a few months. We've recorded a batch of 17 songs for the foolish & easily manipulated Tucson label Star Time, and the end result will be named "Back 20" & should be out by April, 2000. We recorded all the basic tracks on 4-track at our practice space, dumped them onto Gerard's computer, & overdubbed everything extra at his house. It came out really cool, and the final mixing will be done by us, at a sub-human crawl of a pace, "pretty soon". No really.

A couple of songs from these sessions have already made their way onto compilations: "Pool Hopping" is on the "New Wave Explosion" CD out now on Super-8 Underground, which also features Scared of Chaka, the Bananas, the Rondelles, Luxo Champ, the Knock-Ups, Panty Raid, the Peeps & tons more. "Jenny Piccolo" is on the Punk Rock Onion sampler "Girls Kick Ass" and it's got a bunch of bands I've never heard of, but if the names Phonix, Mike, Urban Idols & Cruisin' Fer Grannies mean anything to you, perhaps this is where you belong.

The other CD that we ought to have out within the first half of the year is a limited live recording that eMpTy will release. Those of you who have seen us live are probably thinking "hey, shouldn't eMpTy be concentrating on something that might make them some more money than a Weird Lovemakers live album? Like maybe a Grunt Truck retrospective or something?", but Blake and Meghan are very, very stubborn people and despite the urgings of everyone who's heard about this plan (mostly us), they're gonna go ahead & put it out anyway. It's going to be called something really clever, like "Live at the Breakroom" (okay, the actual title is now "Live: Bigger Than A Cookie, Better Than A Cake"), and it features a full set of broken strings, inane banter & stupid cover songs, all captured pretty much by mistake (really) on Jason's 30th birthday; June 18th, 1999. If we sound really drunk, we are (and you can blame the Kent 3). If anyone sounds stoned, I think that it's probably Steel Wool's fault.

A few other Weird Lovemaker songs have come out within the last six months as well, "Sampoerna High" (Greg's ode to those foul cloves he's always smoking) was released on the pretty damn great CD "Day Dreaming in an Empty Station Wagon" on Dizzy Records out of New York. This is a pop filled gem of a comp & it's got The Young Fresh Fellows, The Figgs, The Decibels (covering the Insomnaics!), The Rondelles, the Kung Fu Monkeys & 17 more, all turning in fine numbers.

Another Weird Lovemaker track can be heard on the "Underachievers 4" cassette comp put out here in Tucson on Star Time. The theme on this one is local covers & we do a Seldoms song (circa 1982) called "Native American". The lion's share of the current crop of Tucson bands (with members over the age of 21 that is) can be heard here, including The Resonars, Al Perry, The Blacks, Scott "fancy pants" Moody, Bebe & Serge, The Knotts & Los Federales. A host of Tucson's past is alternately put up on a pedestal or raked over the coals, depending on your point of view. It's also got the first recorded cover of a Weird Lovemakers song; Lola Mellons does "Smells Like Rain" off the Electric Chump CD.

We've played a ton of really great shows lately, with some great fucking bands. There really are too many to list, but special mention should be made of at least a few:

Skrappy's grand opening was really, really cool and was fully packed with kids; more than I've seen at a Tucson punk show since the heyday of the DPC some 5 years ago. They're booking a lot of shows in the upcoming months (bands: call Kathy @ (520) 293-7789 or click here), plus the club is all ages & really nice.

Also amazing was the Scared of Chaka show down in Nogales, Mexico. The crowds there are pretty much the best, and they were going so crazy for SOC that at least twice when the power went out, enough people were singing along that they were able to finish the songs with just drums. I'm also pretty sure that everyone in the entire crowd got laid.

We also played a fine show with the drunken, Satan worshiping Kassos down in Nogales. I don't know if anyone got laid that night; but clearly every attendee is going to wind up in Hell for all eternity. Ray actually managed to get a big group of girls up in front by claiming that the crowd looked like a "weenie roast", Larry bled all over his bass, and Hernan made out with 6 people at once, each of a different gender! You should've been there. Maybe you were.

Okay, that's enough for now. Check back again soon & we'll have dates on those new CDs, and maybe tell you about the other ones coming out later this year (yeah, this should be a year of 4 full-length Weird Lovemakers releases; one for each horseman of the apocolypse).

-- Jason