NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2007
It seems as though anyone who has ever been into punk rock or the history of
San Diego underground music has come across at least one of the members of THE
ZEROS at
one point or another. Often referred to as "the Mexican Ramones," original
singer/guitarist JAVIER
ESCOVEDO comes
from a family full of musical lineage that includes No Depression poster boy ALEJANDRO ESCOVEDO (known also for his contributions to RANK
AND FILE, BUICK McCANE, THE TRUE BELIEVERS and NUNS), MARIO
ESCOVEDO (of THE DRAGONS and currently of MEX) and
others like his cousin and original ZEROS drummer BABA CHENELLE.
Many have also experienced EL VEZ ("the Mexican Elvis")
also known as the ZEROS second guitarist, ROBERT LOPEZ.
Perhaps the most familiar face about town as of late has been ZEROS
bassist HECTOR
PEÑALOSA, who plays in THE BAJA BUGS and SQUIDDO.
With some guidance and support from PEÑALOSA, MAREN PARUSEL and KELLY
ALVAREZ started WILD
WEEKEND as a ZEROS tribute band with ATOMS girls MELISSA
DUENAS and KAITLIN MATTICK in June of this year. After the latter two
dropped out to focus on ATOMS, they were soon replaced by WENDY JEFFERS (of
the SEXIES)
and BRIAN HILL (formerly of THE PLOT TO BLOW UP THE
EIFFEL TOWER, THE PRAYERS and
currently of THE MUSLIMS)... and there you have it. PHEW!...
that's a lot of bands to consider in such a short existence! If anything, though,
it's a telling
sign of the rich history surrounding WILD WEEKEND.
So
when I was asked by MAREN
to
do photos for WILD WEEKEND, it was a no brainer. Since I've had the burning
desire to use different backdrop patterns for photo shoots, I suggested that
she paint a ZEROS target on
a red backdrop of mine that had been sitting
around collecting dust. This job
was
a
piece
of
cake for
a seasoned
painter like MAREN,
and it suited the band just fine. One of my favorites
has the band displaying their guitars in a "Z"-like pattern, visually
representing the ZEROS in a subtle yet effective way. It's in the PUBLICITY/PROMO
GALLERY for your drooling pleasure.
The SAN DIEGO READER ran a TITANIUM EXPOSURE of WILD
WEEKEND's first incarnation on November 21. The same photo will
appear on the cover of their debut record. Spain's MUNSTER RECORDS has
agreed
to
issue
it so
we should see it in the early half of 2008 if things go as planned.
There's
a couple new videos up on the TE
YOU TUBE CHANNEL of Canada's KING KHAN AND THE BBQ
SHOW playing to a sold out crowd at BAR PINK ELEPHANT on
November 15, 2007. Everyone was well oiled up and
dancing
the night away to "Shake Real
Low" after KING KHAN flashed his underwear for the
camera and facetiously told everyone that JOHN REIS was
going to crowd surf and it was okay because they were about to play a surf
song. They followed with an encore of "Why Don't You Lie?" ending
the set with some truly budding
good
vibes (BBQ: "Don't use condoms... please, DON'T use condoms").
As link would have it, the kind people at BAR PINK ELEPHANT have posted the
video ostensibly on
the BAR
PINK ELEPHANT MYSPACE PAGE along with a few TITANIUM EXPOSURE slideshows
from shows previous.
AUGUST/SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2007
Rounding
out the summer of San (Diego) we have a ton of new photos in the TITANIUM EXPOSURE photo collections gallery. BAR PINK ELEPHANT,
San Diego’s newest hangout, started to have shows and I was there to
capture a few of the good times. Hightlights are photos of THE
SPITS in thrift store zombie garb
(playing the bar's inaugural show!), BEEHIVE AND THE BARRACUDAS givin'
oral
to
their instruments,
and BOB
LOG
III gettin jiggy with a couple girlies on grandpaw knees. Additionally, JOHN
REIS (of HOT
SNAKES, DRIVE
LIKE
JEHU, ROCKET FROM THE CRYPT, BACK OFF CUPIDS) is
part owner
of
the
bar,
and he
holds free 2 p.m. "SWAMI Sunday Mass" afternoon shows with new local
talent
every
couple
weeks.
Most evening shows are free so you’d be an idiot to not check their website
schedule
for
upcoming
events.
At any rate, also
new
to
the
gallery
are photos of DEATHBOMB
ARC bands SWORD
HEAVEN and FOOT VILLAGE from a night of savage mayhem
at
Scolari's Office on October 13, 2007. To make your life easier, I've
started to use slide.com to make Flash slideshows so that you won't have
to click through dozens of photos at a time. Yep, you can just sit back, relax,
and smoke 'em if you got 'em.
Of course, since
I've
literally
saved
you
seconds
if
not minutes of time, feel free to return the favor and POST A COMMENT
on one of the slideshows and
let
me
know
what you think.
The TE album art continues to
spread — like a disease... this time it has
infected San Diego's own ROXY
JONES on their debut album Wasn't Tomorrow Horrible? After
recording the album, singer/guitarist PETER GRAVES retreated
into the recesses of
his mind and came back with the
burning desire to smash a television set with a brick. You can probably tell
by now that I was totally game. The shorthand idea was to have the album's
insert
fold out to reveal a bloody corpse. It probably wouldn't be too difficult
to do in Balboa Park, since that kind of shit happens there all the time.
But we were on a tight schedule, so we laid out the groundwork like a scene
from a horror movie at a North Park park. Smashing the
TV was
no
easy
task,
but we had a lot of encouragement from a picnic blanket full of middle-aged
moms who cheered us on. Mixing the fake blood made it more of a spectacle
and smashing watermelons to use as hats was inexplicably part of the concept
as well. We hit our projected mark of sunset, with the light casting deep
shadows through the trees to mirror daybreak, and the rest is history.
The album is in finer record stores as I write this.
Alas,
there were some delays on the release of the ATOMS seven-inch,
but now seeing the final product, I have to say that it was well worth the
wait. Within we find
three spiffy songs, a tremendously slick package, and a couple sticker
goodies thrown in for good measure. I worked dilligently with primary songwriter
and frontman JOEY
UGALDE who conceptualized
how he wanted each song illustrated on the insert. I pretty much went above
and beyond the call of duty to make it happen and I am quite pleased with
the results (<-----see a sample to the left).
When JOEY explained all the heady conceptual
stuff to me, I had the sudden
urge to go out and rent FRITZ LANG's "Metropolis," paste PARIS
HILTON's
face on the female robot's body, and play THE MUMPS discography
as the soundtrack to the silent film. "Format" is about unrequited
love, "Pop Culture" is about brainwashing the masses with media,
and "2029" is about the apocalypse with a dash of granolahead ecology. With
its classist vendettas, conspiracy theories, mass destruction premonitions,
and false prophets/profits, what
more could you ask for in a seven-inch
record?
Well,
how about
an official
thumbs
up
from MARK
MOTHERSBAUGH of DEVO!?! You think I'm making this
up, but there is proof on the ATOMS
MYSPACE PAGE. While there, you can also listen to all of these spectacular
new songs for free.
SLEEPING
PEOPLE have a new record out called Growing (on TEMPORARY
RESIDENCE) and I did a few promo shots for their
upcoming tour. Awesome guitarist and outward
metalhead JOILEAH MADDOCK is back in the band
and tearing
it up like the badass muthaluva she is (former guitarist AMBER COFFMAN moved
to New York and joined THE DIRTY PROJECTORS). One of my
photos has allegedly been used for a Japanese
tour poster. Please
make note
that
the
Japanese pressing of their CD (out on STIFFSLACK)
comes with extra tracks, therefore making the Japanese poster that much
more collectible.
In fact, it's such a rare item that I don't even have one!
At any rate, there is a sequence of virgin shots (read NO Photoshop) on
their website (sleepingpeople.com)
and a different one on the TEMPORARY
RESIDENCE website profile. Want more? I just posted a completely
unique one in the PUBLICITY/PROMO
GALLERY too.
Another
thing I'd like to brag about is that the TITANIUM EXPOSURE has
recently expanded to include videos. I started a YOUTUBE
account and
will be uploading prime cuts of rock and roll goodness as I encounter them.
So
far,
I've got
some quickies from WILD
WEEKEND and BURMESE,
and a trilogy of dirty ditties from BLACK
LIPS playing M-THEORY
before their sold out Casbah show on
October 18, 2007. This came only a week after their
appearance
on LATE NIGHT WITH CONAN O'BRIEN and they were pretty hot
to trot rounding out their US tour here in Southern California with a brand
new album in tow, Good
Bad Not Evil (released on September 11,
2007,
no less). I was so drunk at their Casbah show that I think that I overpaid
them
when
emptying out my wallet to buy it with a buncha one$. But
that didn’t bother me much.
As
far as
I'm
concerned,
an
empty
wallet equals a good night when the BLACK LIPS are playing.
And I'm not just referring to what their bassist Jarod said in their VBS.TV special
chronicling their tour through Tijuana last year (he said, "I think
I'm totally gonna get laid... I've got $30"). Just mostly.
To
watch other videos,
the YOUTUBE channel is www.youtube.com/motleywoo.
Again, like the slideshows mentioned above, collect a few of those leftover
seconds of time (and I'm sure you've got a lot of those if you're checking
out TITANIUM
EXPOSURE DOT COM)
and leave comments on the video pages. You can also subscribe if you want
to stay current on forthcoming videos.
MAY/JUNE/JULY
2007
The
new and debut album by quasi-San Diego psychedelic rock band THE SHINING PATH features a couple of photos that I took
of them at the Ken Club in San Diego in 2005. The long-awaited LP record
was released on the psychedelic record label HOLY
MOUNTAIN on June 4, 2007, and comes complete with a CD version
of the same
psychedelic recording. If you're not familiar with the band, or perhaps get them
confused with the Maoist guerrilla organization from Peru that they were named
after, then let
me clue you in. Minimalist composer ILYA MONOSOV (known
mainly for solo work, but also for collaborations with the likes of the
venerable CHARLES
CURTIS and even TONY
CONRAD)
plays psychedelic guitar while dub savvy free jazz maven PRESTON
SWIRNOFF (of HABITAT
SOUND SYSTEM and SEESAW ENSEMBLE) plays
psychedelic bass, analog synth, organ and some psychedelic vocals.
Prior to this record, the duo released a series of well-received
recordings on the exquisite and extremely psychedelic ECLIPSE label.
Their recorded works pretty much run the gamut, and use their eclectic
musical tastes as a rudder into hemorrhaging, yet pastoral forays and uncharted
vortexes (Whoa, ma man! That last sentence was totes psychedelic!). THE
SHINING PATH has super-psychedelic overtones,
dungeness
decor,
and a God
complex, and well...
need
I say more? Well, actually,
I don't want to
forget featured psychedelic drummer BRANDON RELF (also
of SLEEPING
PEOPLE, BARFER, etc.).
He is truly a force (and sometimes a farce) to be reckoned with even if
he is not the centerpiece. Put it all together into one big fat psychedelic
blender
and
you might
hear something along the lines of MASAYUKI TAKAYANAGI, LES
RALLIZES DENUDES, KEIJI HEINO, FUSHITSUSHA, HIGH
RISE or anything Japanese, cool, psychedelic,
and/or bloody, seasoned
with THE BLUE HUMANS determined vision and spanked with SUICIDE's
dissonance. So check it out people,
before this psychedelic
nugget goes out of print.
Click on the ALBUM
ART GALLERY so
you'll be able to make a positive ID on your next trip to the record store.
There is already
a tidbit
of hoo-ha on DUSTED magazine's website. Click HERE to
view it psychedelically, brah. Did I mention how psy-ch-e-del-ic they are?
Also
soon to be inducted into the TE album art hall of fame will be San
Diego's ATOMS.
It's actually a seven-inch that'll be released on the fledgeling SWEET
TOOTH RECORDS (check out STR's devilishly good RICK
FROBERG logo art on their MySpace profile), but
it's their most official release to date and my studio photos are scattered
throughout
their
cover
art and
insterts to help illustrate their heady concepts. More on that later, after
the official release party. Until that big date, I've posted a couple group
shots in the PROMO/PUBLICITY
GALLERY for
all my peepz to adorn and admire. Additionally, I would reccomend that all
you press people jump on this band like flies on shit because even though
they have broken the early '20s age bracket hymen, they still have the energy
and veneer of a top-notch American
teenage
rock 'n' roll machine.
So
I'm sure you have spent many sleepless nights wondering what band I invited
to the 2007 MOPA rock photography class. Well, duh... you
should have known that it was VAGINALS.
What other San Diego band can be as provacative musically, culturally and
aesthetically while still representing three completely disparate generational
demographics? How did it go, you ask? Well, it was as wet and wild
as the law would allow with some
real shoot-'em-up
spaghetti
western
outfits, makeup, and a hint of Chippandale™ dancing. Many have already
sexed up BILL
WESLEY, fabled inventor of the Array Mbira
and its systematic note arrangements (a sort of full-scale African
finger piano with multiple octaves). Coincidentally, he is an
official member of VAGINALS,
and he turns heads and wipes drool like nobody's business. During the MOPA
class photo shoot, I got this great photo of BILL holding a plastic gun to
his head with
one of the most genuine ear-to-ear grins you'll ever see. You can find it
in the PROMO/PUBLICITY
GALLERY right...
now! Oh, and don't worry about VAGINALS photos — they're
on their way. I just want to string you along for a while by saying "VAGINALS photos"
as much as possible for no specific reason.
DROP
DEAD Magazine is planning an article on MR
AND MRS TRIBUTE TO UGLINESS that I took photos for. DROP
DEAD is a high-gloss goth mag that publishes quarterly, or
whenever they pay their credit card bills, so the article should hit newsstands
this
fall if we're lucky.
One
last thing... The SAN
DIEGO READER printed
one of my photos of THE
CORVINAS in
the July 12, 2007, issue. Since the band was named after a submarine, we
shot a couple rolls "Das Boot" style while
the band fashioned some striped (and sassy) sailor uniforms. The only difference
here was that these guys are Mexican, not German, and the sub we shot on
was a B-39 Soviet Attack Submarine, not a Gato-Class Sub, which the USS Corvina
was. But who gives a rat's ass? Nobody would have even known if I didn't
mention it here. So just look at the pretty pictures and shut yer pie hole!
FEBRUARY/MARCH/APRIL 2007
It's been almost two years since my last postcard
(of BUSINESS LADY), but
now I can officially say that postcards are back... WITH A VENGANCE.
This time around, it's two different pics of San Diego's CHAZ that
were printed up to coincide with their upcoming late spring/early
summer tour. One is a studio shot and the other is of them jumping
hysterically on an olympic-size trampoline (see one that didn't make
it to the postcard press to your right----->). Their self-titled
debut album is a bona-fide concept record about a real estate broker
who quits his job and moves to Jamaica to become a used car salesman.
After developing stature in the community, the "forces of evil" coax
him into moving to an underwater Atlantis-like utopia spawned by
the
illuminati.
He then moves back home to become a bartender and coffee barista
and invariably sees the rediculous folly
in it all and dies. Could this be a paradigm for today's disenfranchized
youth in America? Probably not,
but it
does appear to be an extremely gripping quest for self-realization...
something we can all relate to.
But
enough about CHAZ,
this website is supposed to be about me. If every interview is a step closer
to fame, then perhaps I'm on my way to world domination.
Not
one but
two
interviews
were
done last
year
with
two very talented and beautiful journalists. HELEN BARRASS interviewed
me for her UK zine The Riddler, while FARRAH EMAMI —
a former student of MOPA's Rock Shots class — did one for her school
photography
class project.
Both are excellent and I was so pleased that I dug up a KPBS radio interview
from 2004 and added an INTERVIEW
ARCHIVE section
to the TE navigation bar. So yeah, I'm basking in the glory of celebrity
rock photography
and it
is
a complete
gas.
My
only
gripe is:
Why
can't I
be rich
too?
Speaking
of MOPA's "ROCK
SHOTS" sonic photography class... the tardy
bell at rock and roll (photography) high school rings on Saturday, May 12.
This is your one
chance
to learn all my secrets, steal all my groupies, and ruin my otherwise spotless
reputation by becoming a great sonic photographer in your own right.
This
year, we've expanded the class to three sessions: one for live shots, one
for studio
portraiture,
and one for photoshop tips and tricks. I'm going to bring in a real, living
and breathing band for the studio shoot day so that everyone can see what
a glamorous life I lead. I'm going to leave it as a surprise as to who the
band is (don't worry, you'll
see
some
photos
on
this
here website
very soon), but I promise (and regret) that it will not be VOICES
OF THE HOMELESS.
Looking
for the TITANIUM EXPOSURE photo
collections that used to infect the TE splash
page? Well, they've become so popular that I've given them their own space
on the TE navigation bar. Recent additions include San Diego's best answer
to free jazz, THE
SEESAW ENSEMBLE, and Latin America's sexually pronounced
deviant, MONO
MONO. MUST
BE 18 TO VIEW.
And
finally,
I've been inundated with friend
requests from hundreds of bands that I've never heard of, let alone heard,
on my personal Myspace profile. I'm a friendly guy, so it's only
right and natural that
everyone
would
want to be my friend. So to appease the masses, I've created a TITANIUM
EXPOSURE myspace profile so that
I can be friends with everyone and still act like I have a private life
too.
JANUARY 2007
The stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve kicked
off a set by DUCHESSES,
a band that began about a year ago here in San Diego and has
quickly risen to the upper crust of
indie rock's neo-no-wave underbelly. After they recorded six
or so songs, got them mixed by BOBB
BRUNO, mastered by WEASEL
WALTER, and released on APOP
RECORDS, they all got
up and decided to split town faster than a collapsing
ponzi
scheme.
But they
rose
again
to christen us with a west coast tour, wherein their identities
have been obscured by costumed masks and propagandist misinformation.
Even the most honed-in of northwest aficianados believed that
the
band strictly carried X chromosomes (read: unanimous chick flick).
Funny, because that is the same assumption that many made about BUSINESS
LADY when
that old fag hag was still around. So it took some convincing,
but at least one article ran with a photo that I took of them
completely unveiled in Seattle's THE
STRANGER (only in print, nay on the online facimile).
Unbeknownst to them, yet beknownst to me, the correct photo
was passed along
and
published even though some gray area still existed. Can't say
so much for others. I sometimes wonder if the title of "Fact
Checker"
still exists in the digital
age and let alone for photos and their coinciding captions.
The fake "goth girl" one, likely lifted from the DUCHESSES myspace
profile, appeared in THE
PORTLAND MERCURY where
it remains to this day even in spite of one ostensible objection.
Oh well. In a nutshell, one got it right and thought they got
it wrong, whereas the other got it wrong and thought they got
it right. It's a mad, mad, mad, mad world.
On
a related "it's set in print, so it must be true" note, just in
time for the new year, I finished a bare bones version of a TE
TEARSHEETS ARCHIVE. Check it out today and then watch it grow to magnificence
in 2007 and beyond.
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