#Low Country Jam Machine

[korlieblog]

Venomous Riffs and Thunderous Drums: 'Venom Trick' by Low Country Jam Machine Review.

Released on February 7, 2025, “Venom Trick” by Low Country Jam Machine is a high-octane rock track that will leave you breathless. This dynamic duo of seasoned musicians, Garrett Ward and Will Sanford, have crafted a sound that blends intricate, melodic riffs with powerful, groove-centric drums. “Venom Trick” is a standout track that shows the band’s signature sound. The guitar work is…

[starssaroundmyscarssblog]

𝐂𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐓𝐑𝐘 𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐒𝐄 (part one)

pairing: 90s!damon albarn x fem!oc

summary: in which she lives in a very big house in the country, and he can't get enough

word count: 2.95k

warnings: clay (and real) pigeon shooting, mentions of game hunting, mentions of sex

maeve hadn't expected the living room to resemble a large 'escape the rat race' board when she entered, searching for the long coat she was sure she'd left over the back of a sofa (that had been banished to a far corner) the previous night. tiptoeing over the straw that littered colourful squares, she searched high and low for said coat trying to ignore her brother yelling at her to hurry up from the kitchen.

finally, after squatting down in a corner and groping around under the sofas until her fingers brushed the heavy material, maeve stood up and tucked it under her arm. a whistle from the door frame caught her attention and she was ready to tell her brother to do one, but she caught herself. damon was stood in the doorway with one hand above his head- it looked like he was trying to hold himself up from the doorframe whilst balancing a tray with two cups of tea on the other hand.

maeve hopped over the props that had materialised during her search and took a mug gratefully, taking a long sip as they walked down the corridor. "all set up, then?" she asked, stopping en route to collect a dark green smock hooked over a peg by the pantry as the fog of the morning hadn't lifted over the fields.

"yeah, we should be done by four if the boys turn up on time." damon looked at his watch, "which hopefully shouldn't be too far from now." the pair entered the kitchen, a room with a cold stone floor and even colder stone tiling, greeting george (maeve's brother) and her father who were stood by the back door and ready to go.

maeve ditched her half empty mug in the ceramic sink, and jammed her heavily socked feet into the wellies she'd upturned from the rack. george was hopping about on the spot, restless. "hurry up, maeve, i want to go!" he was younger by a few years and stroppy when he didn't get his own way. she sighed through her nose. "oh, tell him dad!"

mr archibald clapped him on the shoulder and lead him out of the door as he said, "we'll be going in a few minutes, george, maeve can't help that her coat went missing. we'll be away before the filming starts-" at this damon called out his thanks with his hands in the back pockets of his jeans, "-and we'll be back when they've finished and cleared up. okay?" looking out of the window, maeve could see her brother nod reluctantly.

"if you need anything, mum's only down the road visiting nan. don't let anyone on the third floor, george might kill you if he finds out someone's gone into his room, and i hope everything goes smoothly." with one swift movement, maeve zipped her smock up to her chin and kissed damon goodbye on the cheek.

he returned the gesture wholeheartedly and opened the back door even though she was perfectly capable of doing it herself. "thanks again for letting me stay over last night, and for letting us use the house. bloody nightmare trying to find one once people found out what we needed it for."

there was a scattering of wet paws spreading mud over the flagstones and all of a sudden two springer spaniels were panting heavily and clawing at damon's shirt. maeve slapped her thigh to get the dog's attention, glaring at them as she pointed for them to trail back out of the door. "poppy, ollie, out now." with their tails between their legs they trotted out of the kitchen.

"sorry about them, they just get excitable. they haven't been out with us for a few weeks. you can put your shirt in the washing machine if you want."

"oi, maeve, are you coming or we're leaving without you!" george bellowed from the bastle house, impatience rising with his temper. maeve sighed, grabbed damon by the cheeks and kissed him hard right infront of the kitchen window just to wind george up. he pulled away, breathless but smiling brightly. "if that's what i get every time you're late, i'm going to have to hide your coats more often."

"i mean it!"

"love you." she said, shutting the door behind her as damon winked when the doorbell rung. if she was quick enough, maeve could get all of her things from the bastle house in enough time to miss the rest of the boys arriving.

underfoot the muddy puddles splashed with the force of her wellies meeting the ground, and maeve swung around the door as george was filling a box with spare pellets. maeve grabbed her shotgun from where it was hung over a hook and snatched up a box of ammunition to stuff in her shoulder bag. in her pocket was her gun license, should people come walking over the public footpaths and ask why she had a firearm.

maeve knew her hobby was unethical, but shooting birds and hunting game was something she enjoyed doing she was clay-disc shooting this morning and then rambling through the countryside her parents owned before driving back in the old land rover to meet damon for an exhibition at the tate that evening.

george snorted a laugh as he picked up a polaroid picture he'd found wedged under garden tools piled into a corner of the bastle. "i think damon dropped something last time you were in here," and handed it back to her while miming wiping a tear from the corner of his eye.

"glad to see you've cheered up," she said before looking down at the picture. her cheeks flushed hideously, she remembered staring at the ceiling of her bedroom blissed out as damon hovered over her. before she could protest he'd snapped a picture of her, from the top of her tits all the way to her headboard laughing as if he'd said the funniest thing in the world.

she shoved it into her pocket to serve as a reminder to scold damon when she saw him again, running out of the bastle as she grabbed the car keys for the land rover and shoved all of her things onto the back seat before jumping into the drivers seat. she pulled out of the driveway as george pestered her to put the radio on and her father criticised her for changing gears too quickly when they drove past the rest of the band trundling up the road.

maeve lifted her hand off the steering wheel to wave at them quickly before turning onto a secluded country track to take them all the way down to the bottom fields. damon had asked them to keep the noise down, as he didn't want the takes to be messed up and he would get lost of he, the only one who had a decent idea of the land, was tasked with finding them.

george hopped out of the backseat with the dogs to open the gate, making 'forwards' and 'backwards' gestures with his hands as maeve attempted to park as best she could on the soggy mud. she locked the car after unloading her kit over her shoulders, and greeted tony and pete by shouting over the field at them. tony and pete's waved back as they continued polishing the clay disks with cloths worn down from generational use

"pull!" maeve's voice was loud as the wind carried her shout to tony, who reached into the cage on the table. she watched at the clay disk flew from his finger tips and into the sky, as it crested and she aimed just below as her finger rested in the trigger. with delicacy, she pushed the trigger down and dug her heels into the ground as the recoil shot through her arm and right to her lower back.

with a sharp crack the bullet left the barrel of the shotgun and propelled itself right into the middle of the clay disk, shattering it into pieces as poppy dashed forwards eagerly to retrieve the largest chunks. maeve waved away the smoke with her hand and returned to her dad, drawing a tally mark under where her name was written in chalk on the board. she was three- no, four, points now that he'd missed his shot, above george and wasn't a fan of his gloating.

she reached for the old china mug she'd left on the small wooden table they'd se up and took a sip of her tea, enjoying the warmth that seeped through her fingertips and to her wrists. maeve looked at her watch, ten to two and quite a while until george would be able to go into the house without seeing any of the band members. he didn't like them, she knew that, but she wished he wouldn't play oasis whenever damon was over. damon said he didn't mind, "really, i don't care. it doesn't bother me, love," but george did it anyway.

pete jumped over the gate and splashed wet mud all up his gaiters as he dropped a covered basket by his feet. ollie pushed himself through the gaps in the wooden fence and started to sniff around the basket, nudging it open with his nose and dragging out a limp pigeon in his sharp teeth.

george hollered and whooped, throwing a bird that regained use of its wings when it was set into the air and aiming at it. he was about to shoot when maeve beat him to it, the shot echoed around the field as the pigeon fell to the floor and poppy retrieved it for the pile of broken clay. he glared at her, yelled "pull!" before pete had a chance to drag to pigeons over to the clay disks, gesturing with the barrel of his shotgun at tony to hurry up and get on with it.

tony wrestled with the bird and flung it skywards, across to the corner of the field and george took aim before the crest and shot the bird out of the sky. in his excitement he fell backwards with the recoil and insisted, because he said so, that they go stalking through the forest for game.

their dad said no. maeve set the birds into the sky one by one and there was a free-for-all, with shouts of 'the one on the left is mine' or 'i've got the one on the right' ringing with gunshots and clicks of barrel reloading. poppy and ollie were springing about with pigeons stuffed in their mouth, dropping them infront of tony and pete who patted their sides and fed them treats for their hard work.

then maeve grabbed george, the dog's leads and the animals that she clipped them to, and they walked off into the woods with eyes peeled and ears alert. they were silent, leaves crunching and branches snapping underfoot as they tried to listen for rustling bushes or movements in the bracken. george locked onto what he thought was a rabbit but was just a clump of fluff caught on a bramble, and maeve missed a fox that came streaking past while she was untangling the strap of her shotgun from her hair.

they continued, circling the edge of the woods with only the dogs for company, until maeve realised they'd come all the way back round to the field where their dad was pulling clay for tony and pete was nursing a coffee maeve suspected he'd made irish with a dash of baileys from the hip-flask she'd bought him for his birthday.

all of a sudden, as they were trekking through the marshy ground, the heavens opened with a clap of thunder and flash of lighting. martin (their dad) had disassembled the trestle table in a flash and had chucked it into the trailer of pete and tony's car for them to take back to the house, had tipped pete's drink back his throat for him while he was disposing of the dead game, and loaded maeve and george's guns into the boot in the blink of an eye.

maeve settled into the front seat in her still dripping smock, martin hadn't let her take it off as the track to the country road flooded quicker than anything and they had to get back to the house before they were stranded until the rain stopped. "what's the point in having a land rover," george leant over the middle seats to turn the radio on, "if we can't use it to get through flooded roads?"

as maeve flicked the indicator and checked for the absent oncoming traffic, she said, "because last time it happened you were driving and you got us stuck. we had to call a rescue service who couldn't find us, and we missed the rehearsal dinner for cousin sophie's wedding."

"but sophie's a bitch. i'm glad we weren't there."

"i was the maid of honour!" maeve shouted as she turned onto the driveway and drove all the way around the back of the house to the bastle. damon and graham were outside smoking, leaning against the dry part of the wall protected by the porch overhang. she didn't see them as she left the car and hooked her shotgun over her shoulder.

graham whistled. "your arse looks great in those trousers, maeve," he called out with a final drag as damon pulled the cigarette from his mouth and stubbed it out against the wall. maeve smiled and disappeared around the bastle, hanging up her shotgun and putting back the box of bullets she's brought but hadn't needed to use. she hung out her smock to dry and wiped away some mud that had caked around her nose using the specked mirror on the wall.

maeve walked back round to the backdoor and held onto damon's arm as she kicked off her wellies and stood them upside down on the rack under the shelter of the porch. the thick socks on her feet padded over the flagstones of the kitchen and maeve nearly barged into alex, who'd appeared with a pitcher of water in one hand and a plate empty save from crumbs in the other, on her way down the hall and up the stairs.

the grandfather clock at the top of the staircase in the entrance hall chimed loudly five times, and right on cue the camera crews shook hands with martin and thanked him for letting them use the house before trooping out of the front door and into the vans waiting for them in the front drive.

damon sighed. "sorry we ran over time, i bet george was a pain in the arse."

"as per," she led him up the stairs and unlocked her bedroom door, letting the two of them in as damon flicked on the light, "but we lost track of the time anyway. managed to get out into the woods as well, but the rain cut us off after one loop." maeve cringed as she pulled her thick socks off and discarded them in the pile of her clothes that had gathered at the foot of her large bed, her bare feet making cold contact with the floor sent a shiver shooting up through her.

maeve slipped into her en suite and started the shower, revelling in the water that warmed her bones pleasantly - she hadn't realised she was that cold. standing under the hot water of the shower stream felt like bliss, though she was in and out in a few minutes after scrubbing her aloe vera body wash roughly against her skin. she rubbed moisturiser over the cracked skin of her nose whilst gently moving the excess down over her cheeks and to her collar bones, where a bruised colour mark was beginning to bloom under her pale skin.

damon was lying still at the foot of her bed when maeve emerged from the bathroom, playing with a rubix cube that had been unfinished since 1986 in his long fingers. she sat down at her vanity and the heavy chair legs scraping across the floor disturbed him from the quiet, instead turning to prop himself up on his elbows as he watched maeve run a brush through her hair. "so everything went well, then?" she asked, pulling a light brown eyeliner pencil through her lashline.

"yeah, all good. there might be straw under some of the sofas though, but we tried to get rid of as much as possible." he fiddled with something on his wrist, "sorry."

"don't worry about that, there's always mud caked onto the floor somewhere so we'll get round to clearing it away soon."

as maeve pulled on her tights and buttoned up her fitted shirt, she lifted up a delicate gold necklace. "would you?" she asked, turning to stand infront of the mirror to check her skirt when damon's hands slid over her shoulders and moved her hair away gently. the ribbon of the velvet bow in her hair tickled his nose as damon dipped lower and pushed a series of feather kisses to the back of her neck, clasping the necklace under the collar with a nip on the shell of maeve's ear.

her cheeks flushed as she pushed his face away, dragging her nails over the column of his neck before reaching around him for her chunky brown cardigan. maeve grabbed her bag and damon's hand, dragging him down the stairs and through the entrance hall, snatching her car keys from the trinket dish by the front door. she shouted 'bye, don't wait up', over her shoulder as damon wrapped his arms around her waist and bundled her over to her vintage mercedes parked on the gravel driveway

🪩⁺˚⋆｡°✩₊☕️

[dustedmagazine]

Liam Grant — Prodigal Son (VHF Records)

How does one go about making music not usually understood as “punk” sound like punk? How best to apply the DIY ethos, the construction by destruction, of punk art to other genres? How can the guide-fires that have been lit by past iconoclasts of the underground illuminate explorations in different styles? Maine-based fingerstyle guitarist Liam Grant provides his answers to these questions in the form of his sophomore LP, Prodigal Son (out 2/21/2025 on VHF Records), a collection of anti-tradition-traditional-style music — American Primitive with a capital A and P through a dirtied lens — kindly and perhaps counter-intuitively dedicated to his parents.

The opening track, “Palmyra,” starts with a gong-like bang on the open strings of a Weissenborn lap dobro prior to dipping into a sunny, up-tempo Fahey-style postmodern country blues jam. A typical start for a post-Jack-Rose guitar soli record, except that it sounds like it was run through the same amp and pedals Doyle Wolfgang Von Frankenstein used while recording “Where Eagles Dare”, with the gain on the tape machine dimed à la Bowie recording Raw Power. The disconnect between the refinement of the playing and the fidelity of the recording is striking. It isn’t circumstantially lo-fi, nor is it an attempt to sound vintage like a dusty 78 rpm disc, going back to the source — it’s an intentional push into distortion, taking something pretty and covering it in mud.

This distressed audio technique works well with the blues style music, you can situate the gritty sound of the slide in some kind of smoky Roadhouse scenario — trade out the casual violence for folks talking over each other about obscure records from Western Massachusetts while the guitar wails. It takes on another dimension of abstraction when Grant switches out the slide for the twelve-string and gets in raga mode. The lightning-like knots of fingerpicking on the moody, roughly thirteen-minute eastern-infected journey “Salmon Tails Up The River” dissolve into flattened fields of blown-out tape fuzz, blending with the textured booms of the low end strings to create a speaker-straining mass of sound. Another lengthy twelve-string piece, “Insult to Injury,” opens the B-side with a meditative counterpoint to the sturm und drang of “Salmon Tails”,twinkling riffs cutting through the sonic haze like a gentle ship passing through ocean fog.

The last two songs on Prodigal Son show different ways of approaching folk, in a broad sense, in a punk way, first by paying tribute to an originator, second by an invocation of the DIY lifestyle. “A Moment at the Door” is a take on a composition by a master of boundary-clearing, broke-down blues guitar playing, Loren Mazzacane Connors. The overdriven recording here finds a comfortable middle ground where Grant ably recreates Connor’s minimalist electric guitar style on his six-string acoustic, magnetic hiss filling the stretches between notes. The album closer “Old Country Rock” is a loose and joyous live cut from the Grant/McGuire/Flaherty old-time trio. This is where the DIY lifestyle aspect of Grant’s project comes in. Last year this trio embarked on an extensive Southeastern US tour, booking it and conducting business in a way that would’ve been familiar to Black Flag in 1981, if you substituted phone calls for Instagram DMs. Twenty years ago, the original incarnation of Old Crow Medicine Show were constantly touring road-dogs bringing Beale Street jug band songs from the twenties and thirties to places no one had ever played them before. The *music* wasn’t punk, but they were – not because of how they sounded but because of how they did things. Patti Smith, asked likely for the millionth time what punk was, said “To me, punk rock is the freedom to create, freedom to be successful, freedom to not be successful, freedom to be who you are.” Punk has never been an aesthetic genre. It’s a way of being, and Liam Grant literally slides into it on the first track of Prodigal Son.

Joshua Moss

[mariacallous]

More than two-thirds of the Russian tanks that Ukraine’s military has destroyed in recent months have been taken out using first-person-view (FPV) drones, a NATO official told Foreign Policy, an increasing sign of Kyiv’s reliance on the unpiloted aircraft as it awaits more artillery ammunition from the United States and other Western countries. 

With much-needed funding and artillery rounds held up in Washington, the Ukrainian military has largely turned to FPV drones to carry out anti-tank attacks. Ukrainian troops operate the drones via a controller and are able to watch the machines’ “suicide” attacks on Russian vehicles through video feeds, which now play on a loop on Ukrainian social media channels on Telegram and other platforms.

In the third year of Russia’s full-scale invasion, FPV drones have become nearly ubiquitous on the Ukrainian battlefield. Many of them can carry 10 pounds of explosives or more, and after nearly 780 days of nonstop war, drone pilots on both sides have gotten plenty of practice. 

“I used to shoot such ‘cinematic’ videos with the help of FPV-drones before the war,” Ukrainian documentary filmmaker Anton Ptushkin posted on X (formerly Twitter) last November. “Now we use FPV to defend our land.” 

But for every success, there are nearly as many blooper reel-worthy incidents. These aren’t the $20 million-a-piece Predator drones that the United States uses to hunt terrorist targets in the Middle East. These are inexpensive off-the-shelf drones that go for $400. They have cheap cameras, making them more difficult to aim at night or in cloudy weather, and they often carry improvised munitions such as grenades or homebuilt bombs, which sometimes detonate midflight. Some are duds. In one video shared on Telegram, a Ukrainian FPV drone gets stuck in the front window of a Russian minivan and doesn’t explode. Others hit Russian quadcopters and tanks that have already been abandoned. “What we’re seeing probably is a fraction of what’s actually happening,” said Samuel Bendett, an advisor at CNA and a member of the think tank’s Russia studies program. “FPV drones have a short range. So even if the Ukrainians lack enough long-range artillery, they can only use a few drones up to 10 kilometers [about 6 miles] because that’s the normal range.”

Analysts tracking the Ukrainian military believe the attacks are having mixed results. Rob Lee, a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Eurasia program who last traveled to Ukraine to embed last November, said the overall accuracy of FPV drones is less than 50 percent. It’s an experienced pilot who is going to score a “kill” of a tank—and the soldiers inside—with an FPV drone, not a newbie.

Even those drones that get through Russia’s increasingly sophisticated, if unchic, countermeasures—boxes of signals equipment strapped to tanks—might not deal a fatal blow. “You usually don’t kill a tank the first few times,” Lee said. “It can take 10 or more [FPV drones] to kill a tank.” 

Still, Russia has a good reason to cover up its tanks with camouflage and jamming equipment, Lee said. It is running low on armored vehicles and tanks. If Ukraine keeps attriting at this rate and Russia keeps sending in more tanks to replace the destroyed ones at the rate it has been, the Kremlin could lose its numerical edge in tanks, which could make it more difficult for the Russians to carry out offensive operations in the future. 

But Russia still has more troops. “The issue is that Russia’s getting a lot of manpower,” Lee added.

The all-out use of cheap drones indicates that the Ukrainians are turning to increasingly desperate measures to improvise weapons to fight back the Russian assault, which has moved farther west into the contested areas of Donetsk. Ukraine is using a network of microphones—similar to the one you might find on your iPhone—to sense incoming targets. The microphones are good enough to classify what type of munition is coming in, what direction it’s going, and what trajectory it’s on just by using acoustics. 

And with limited air defense munitions, Ukrainian troops have rigged heavy machines with sensors to shoot down most of the Iranian-made Shahed suicide drones that are overflying their positions. The NATO official, speaking anonymously based on conditions set by the alliance, said Ukraine’s hit rate against Shahed drones with simple machine guns and small caliber weapons is about 80 percent. It’s not a complete fix, though: Ukrainian officials have spent recent days urging the United States to send more Patriot air defense systems. 

And the FPV drones are not a match for artillery ammunition when it comes to keeping up a high rate of fire or for creating explosive effects. They can also be more expensive. “You cannot replace a 155 [mm] shell,” one Ukrainian official said. “It’s like replacing a Kalashnikov with a small gun.” And artillery is immune to electronic warfare. It’s just a bombshell that’s flying through the air. 

The rapid pace of innovation for drones has made U.S. military leaders second-guess big, expensive drone programs. The future, officials think, will be cheap and attritable. 

“I don’t think we could buy a drone and say it’s going to be in our formation for the next 20 years,” U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George said. “We can’t do that.”

It’s not clear how effective they will be in the long term. But like improvised explosive devices in the Iraq War, cheap drones have revolutionized the battlefield—for now.

“It’s possible that any vehicle, any system, any soldier that moves on the Ukrainian battlefield right now can be seen, observed, and ultimately hit with a [unmanned aerial vehicle],” said Bendett, the CNA advisor. “There’s no such thing as just moving around uncontested anymore.”

[countryofthedead]

MRTHN

"The (relatively) obscure weapon platform made in India. It is a combination of various intereseting solutions squished into the rifle with various influences of both european and soviet origin. Small numbers have made it's way into the stocks of few NATO weapon caches along with other curiousities from the regions of rice and salt.

Pretty alright weapon for a country known for met -musicals, funny scammers, spices, most brave (although unknowingly) politican, several diffrent home-spoken languages and making white people shit themselves because their stomachs are built diffrent.

Even indians want some of that zombie killing action, eh?" - weapon description from the gun itself

MRTHN is a military assault rifle appearing rarely in Dead Country. It's a unique gun being a mix of machine gun, assault rifle and PDW.

Design

MRTHN is weird-looking rifle with two diffrent versions: vintage and modern. Vintage is old-looking with worn-out steel and old wooden furnishings, while modern has more blockier and futuristic synthetic furnishing with more fresher, blued steel. Unlike most of the assault rifles (or rifles in general) it is ejecting bullet casings though the top. It has a two-sided foldable charging handle on the left and the right parts of the weapon. Same ambidexterous feature was added to fire selector switch and firing port release button.

Gun has markings in several diffrent languages: english, hindi, tamil, punjabi and bengali. It's written on them, that the gun is a property of indian goverment and it was manufactured in Rakshak Domestic Manufacture, New Dehli.

Due to ejection port being on top itself, accessory rail is partially sloped from the front to the around 1/3 of the rail. Bolt release is also just slightly above the magazine paddle. Sights have more low-profiile appearance in comparison to most of the other carbines along with it looking like a sci-fi weapon made from a vintage gun parts for a budget space movie.

Special version called "Dead Metal" is a hidden version, that was brought by Instadoom as a prize for LOAF event in Lubczyk. To earn it, you need to beat a puzzle and three challenges from the list that can be found in LOAF staff booth.

It has a oriental-themed decor with color scheme akin to a synthwave aesthetic. Gun itself has mostly cosmetic change for the gun, but it has painted sights to aim easier in the dark. Small portions of the Dead Metal can be customizable

2. Performance

MRTHN's statistics are both the positives and negatives of carbine, light machine gun and a hunting rifle.

It has slow firing speed, rough accuracy and recoil, relatively limited customization options, low chance of appearing and it is one of more difficult weapons both to maintain along with acquiring and tends to jam. It has, however, fairly low requirements for repair (most likely to balance out semi-frequent worning out), good spread, higher damage than average rifle, no movement penalties in comparison to most of other rifles, fairly light inventory space and (due to it's firing speed) it goes lightly on ammunition.

It's upper rail allows to mount optics, altough options are more limited in comparison to most of the rifles due to MRTHN's upper ejection port. Gun, while with afromentioned limited customization, it has still fair share of attachments allowing for upgrading it with accesories like laser sights, grips, muzzle devices and other miscellaneous options.

3. Behind the scenes

Gun's name and overall design are based on indian INSAS rifle, with some stylisting cues taken from experimental versions of FN FAL (there is also a weapon in Dead Country called "Cello F1", which is mainly based on FAL and it's variants) and some details came from Vz. 58 rifles. Modern parts and versions have design based on more modernized INSAS along with some stylistic choices influenced by Excalibur and Amogh carbines. Some additional parts have been based on FALO and INSAS LMG. Top ejection might have been influenced by SA Vz. 58's bolt design.

Name alludes to indian movie Miruthan, that is about zombie outbreak in Tamil Nadu province of India.

Dead Metal skin comes from "death metal", a music genre. It also might allude to game Metal Dead, where protagonists were a metal fans fighting with zombies.

Rakshak Domestic Manufacture seems to be based on Indian Ordance Factories, a indian weapon manufacturer. Name and loaction are a nod to indian rock band Bloodywood, with manufacturer's name coming from the album Rakshak and a track "Nu Dehli". Interestingly enough, Rakshak (or raksak) means "protector" in hindi.

Weapon's description makes reference to stereotypes of india. There are also references to a stereotypical online scammer being from india and a infamous situation, where a indian politician wanted to prove that a water from a sacred river that was polluted was safe to drink but ended up in a severe condition. Description also pokes fun at the stereotype of indian cuisine being problematic for foreigners.

[technonews-biz]

Air cabs and drones: The transportation of the future is already here

The world is changing rapidly, and technologies that seemed like science fiction just yesterday are now becoming part of everyday life. It seems that only recently we were watching futuristic movies in which people traveled in flying cars or received parcels with the help of drones, and now these technologies are beginning to be realized. Air cabs and drones are not just bold projects, but a real embodiment of the future of transportation, which step by step enters our lives.

Today, air cabs are seen as an effective answer to congested city roads, and drones are finding applications in a variety of fields, from logistics to medicine. These technologies promise not only to speed up many processes, but also to make them greener and safer. A new urban infrastructure is gradually taking shape, in which the transportation of the future is becoming a key element. Air cabs and drones are already offering opportunities that can transform our cities and make them more livable.

How air cabs work

Air cabs are compact aircraft capable of transporting passengers over short distances. In essence, they resemble a hybrid between a helicopter and an electric car. Most of these vehicles are equipped with vertical takeoff and landing, which allows them to operate even in dense urban areas. Air cabs are powered by electric motors and batteries, making them environmentally friendly and quiet.

Many air cab models are already being tested. For example, companies are developing solutions that allow the vehicles to fly autonomously, without a pilot. This is possible thanks to artificial intelligence systems that analyze routes, avoid obstacles and guarantee passenger safety.

The role of drones in modern transportation

Drones are small unmanned devices that are used for a variety of purposes. From parcel delivery to object surveillance. Their popularity is growing rapidly due to their ease of use and affordability. Today, drones are actively used in logistics, medicine, construction and even agriculture. These devices are capable of delivering goods to the most inaccessible places, saving time and resources. For example, in some countries, drones are used to quickly deliver medical supplies to remote areas. This helps save lives where traditional delivery methods may be too slow.

Advantages of air cabs and drones

Air cabs and drones have many advantages over traditional transportation. One of the main advantages is that they are environmentally friendly. The use of electric motors reduces carbon dioxide emissions, which has a positive impact on the environment. Another important advantage is speed. Air cabs are able to bypass traffic jams and deliver passengers to the desired place in a matter of minutes.

Drones, in turn, allow you to instantly solve delivery tasks. This is especially relevant for urgent cargo, such as medical supplies or food. Cost reduction is not to be overlooked either. Although building infrastructure for air cabs requires large investments, in the long term, such transportation can become more economical due to automation and low operating costs. Drones, on the other hand, are already an affordable solution for many companies.

Technical features of air cabs

Modern air cabs are designed with safety and user convenience in mind. Most models have multiple backup systems. For example, spare engines and emergency landing systems. This ensures that even in the event of a malfunction, the machine can safely complete the flight. The electric batteries used in air cabs provide enough power to cover distances of up to 50-100 kilometers. This makes them ideal for short routes, for example, between the airport and the city center. In addition, these vehicles make virtually no noise, which is especially important in urban areas.

How drones are changing logistics

Drones are already demonstrating their effectiveness in logistics. Companies are testing the delivery of goods using drones to reduce lead times. In today's megacities, where traffic jams can delay couriers for hours, drones are able to deliver packages within minutes. Another important use of drones is inventory in warehouses. The machines scan goods, check their availability and transmit the data to the management system. This allows to speed up processes and minimize human errors.

Problems and challenges

Despite all the advantages, transportation of the future faces a number of challenges. One of the main challenges is regulation. For the mass adoption of air cabs and drones, legal regulations need to be created to ensure their safe use.

Another challenge is infrastructure. Air cabs require special sites for takeoff and landing, while drones need bases for charging and maintenance. This requires significant investment and time. Safety cannot be overlooked either. While technology continues to advance, system errors or external factors such as weather conditions can cause incidents. Therefore, developers are focusing on creating reliable control systems and backup mechanisms.

The future of air cabs and drones

Despite the challenges, air cabs and drones continue to develop rapidly. Future transportation is already becoming a reality in some countries. For example, Singapore and Dubai are actively testing routes for air cabs, and companies from the US and Europe are developing mass delivery services using drones. In the coming years, we can expect such technologies to become more affordable and widespread. This will open up new opportunities for cities, companies and ordinary users. Reducing costs, improving the environment and speeding up processes all make air cabs and drones an integral part of the transportation of the future.

Conclusion

Air cabs and drones are not just interesting projects, but a real solution to many modern problems. Their development promises to change the usual ways of transportation and delivery. The transportation of the future is already here, and it offers us more freedom, convenience and opportunities. The most important thing is to use new technologies in a meaningful and sensible way, so that they bring real benefits to society, improving the quality of life and opening up new opportunities for everyone.

[therecordchanger62279]

THE MEMORIAL DAY PLAYLIST

Because I have a platform for it with this blog, and because the blog focuses primarily on music, I wanted to do something for Memorial Day. I grew up in the shadow of the Vietnam War. I never served. I had a draft card, and a lottery number, but the government ended the draft just months before I would’ve been called. My number was a low one, so it’s likely I’d have been drafted, and I would’ve served rather than seek a deferment. The war ended soon after.

Though I never served, that war compromised the futures of every member of my generation. The money that might’ve been spent at home was wasted in a futile war we never had any chance of winning. It undermined our faith in the military, and in our government and elected officials. The veterans who survived that war were, at best, ignored and forgotten, and, at worst, betrayed, mistreated, and robbed of the dignity of having served their country in what they believed was a noble cause. Even today, nearly 50 years after that war ended, the Vietnam Veteran is the least recognized, and the least celebrated of any group of soldiers who served in any war in this nation’s history. There were 58,220 men and women soldiers who died in that war. The list of casualties, however, military and civilian, is incalculable.

So, I get angry every Memorial Day when I see the flags wave, and the veterans of all the other wars honored, yet again, for their service while those who served in Vietnam are shoved aside, or ignored altogether. I wanted to bring that fact to light in this space by compiling a Memorial Day Playlist of the songs that impacted my thinking about Vietnam, The Cold War, and about all wars. The list was getting so long that I finally had to stop. But on Memorial Day, if you need a reminder that the day is not for celebration, but for grief, you have only to listen to these songs, and remember one thing: if your government tells you that fighting a war is necessary, it is your duty as a citizen, and a patriot to question authority. If there is another way, questioning authority is the only way a war might be avoided. If, however, a war becomes necessary, and all other avenues have been exhausted, then fight knowing that dying is the ultimate price of freedom, and that never, ever is war a cause for celebration.

Who’ll Stop The Rain – Creedence Clearwater Revival

War – Edwin Starr

Wooden Ships – Crosby, Stills & Nash

Once I Was – Tim Buckley

Feel Like I’m A-Fixin’ To Die Rag – Country Joe & The Fish

Last Train To Clarksville – The Monkees

What’s Happenin’ Brother – Marvin Gaye

Where Have All The Flowers Gone – Kingston Trio

Waist Deep In The Big Muddy – Pete Seeger

Masters of War – Bob Dylan

Grover Henson Feels Forgotten – Bill Cosby

Find The Cost of Freedom – Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

Military Madness – Graham Nash

Four Days Gone – Buffalo Springfield

Vietnam – Jimmy Cliff

The Unknown Soldier – The Doors

The War Song – Graham Nash & Neil Young

2 + 2 – The Bob Seger System

Born In The U.S.A. – Bruce Springsteen

Save The Country – The 5th Dimension

War Pigs – Black Sabbath

Eve of Destruction – Barry McGuire

Galveston – Glen Campbell

Give Peace A Chance – John Lennon & Yoko Ono

Requiem For The Masses – The Association

Sky Pilot – Eric Burdon & The Animals

Machine Gun – Jimi Hendrix

With God On Our Side – Bob Dylan

Bring The Boys Home – Freda Payne

Child In Time – Deep Purple

Rich Man – Climax Blues Band

Draft Morning – The Byrds

Daniel – Elton John

People, Let’s Stop The War – Grand Funk Railroad

Sam Stone – John Prine

Sweet Cherry Wine – Tommy James & The Shondells

Slip Kid – The Who

A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall – Bob Dylan

Blowin’ In The Wind – Peter, Paul & Mary

Handsome Johnny – Richie Havens

I Don’t Wanna Get Drafted – Frank Zappa

Peace Train – Cat Stevens

Invisible Sun – The Police

The Universal Soldier – Donovan

One Tin Soldier – Original Caste

Rooster – Alice In Chains

Undefeated – Little Steven

Little Boy Soldiers – The Jam

Games Without Frontiers – Peter Gabriel

Generals & Majors – XTC

Stop The War, Now! – Edwin Starr

Soldier – Neil Young

Washington Bullets – The Clash

Us and Them – Pink Floyd

Land of Confusion – Genesis

Russians – Sting

(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding – Elvis Costello

Arlington's Busy - Graham Parker & The Rumour

The Star Spangled Banner – Jimi Hendrix

[wild-west-wind]

Your thoughts on the uptick on tourist/ wildlife conflict? Seems like it’s every week this season!!!

Oh gosh.

It has been bad this year. We’re on track to have the most injuries of any year in recent history.

So I’m of the belief that this comes down to a couple things, one of which is going to expose a major personal bias of mine (you’ll know it when you see it):

There aren’t enough Rangers this year to keep folks appraised of the rules: So this year we’re operating on a highly reduced staff. Most years Interpretive Rangers are out in force, and we’d be able to keep folks away from animals, respond to calls about wildlife jams (traffic jams caused by animals, either by their standing in the road, or by folks stopping to look). That gives us the ability to both educate the public about safe wildlife viewing rules, and prevent folks from getting into situations that might be dangerous.

People Don’t Read Signs: This is a maxim in the NPS, folks just... they don’t try to read the signs, or the park newspaper, or anything. They will make no effort to educate themselves for their own safety, and will deliberately misread signs they understand to try and get away with things they want to do, which brings me to...

People want a ‘unique’ experience: People right now, for better and worse, are inundated with social media. There���s an expectation that there are things you need to see, because that’s What You Do in the area. Add to that though that folks are always going to want something that other people don’t have. That means getting closer to the bear for that great picture. Getting closer to the bison because ‘he seems calm.’

The Government Encouraged Unprepared Folks to Come into Wilderness Spaces: When COVID was first getting serious, many state and local governments encouraged people to go outside, go camping and hiking. The CDC is still saying that camping is an extremely low risk activity. As a result a FLOOD of people with no outdoor experience rushed into outdoor places. Zero preparation, zero outdoor knowledge, all these people who would usually vacation in Hawaii are trying to visit the few National Parks that they know offhand. As a result they are used to a resort-type experience, and assume that the space they’re entering is as controlled of an experience as a big hotel complex in the Bahamas. They are, of course, wrong.

The Disney-fication of Wild Spaces

Movies: People get these images in their heads of movie characters, especially Disney movie characters, having these magical experiences with animals. They hold out their hands, and the animal comes to them. They think they have a special connection with wildlife, that they’re different than those fools who get hurt. They hold onto this mindset and do things that they really shouldn’t be doing because they want to think they’re special.

Theme Parks: So Disney has made a lot of money off making fake, sanitized versions of America’s outdoor spaces, packaging them and selling them to folks. People see the old 1903 Inn near where I worked last year, and their first response is always “Oh like the one in Disneyland!” This is the introduction a lot of first-time National Park travelers have to our park. Then they come out here, where there are no smoke machines on the hot springs, they are boiling; there are no safe animals; there are countless ways to die, even in the front country; and they have NO IDEA how to deal with that. Their image of a National Park is a sanitized theme park area, so they show up here asking “What are the Best Attractions to do here?” and assuming that they are as safe here as they would be in Disneyland. They assume we wouldn’t let them do anything dangerous, and wouldn’t allow dangerous things to come to them, because of course! There’s just this fundamental misunderstanding about what National Parks are for. Yeah, we want you to have a good time, but this isn’t a theme park and if someone can’t get their head around that they’re going to always be in a more dangerous spot that someone else.

This is America and I’ll Do What I Want: Self explanatory.

Anyway, here are the rules for seeing large wildlife:

Stay 25 yards (25m) away from all large animals, except...

When watching bear and wolves stay 100 yards (100m) away

If an animals moves toward you, it is on YOU to maintain that distance

In a car you are not obligated to maintain that distance

If you’re watching a bear from your car you probably want to keep your windows up

Do not feed animals, or by inaction cause an animal to eat human food

A fed animal is a dead animal

Wildlife management doesn’t want to remove animals, but by feeding the animal you killed it

Throwing a bite of food to a bear is as good for that bear as you getting out of your car with a shotgun and pumping a dozen rounds of buckshot into its face

A habituated bear is more likely to hurt humans in the future, so feeding that animal might also get a person hurt or killed

Even squirrels and birds (but we won’t have to remove them, they’ll just die by themselves)

If an animal changes its behavior because you’re around, you should move further away from it

Do not fly drones near animals (they are illegal in National Parks anyway, but it stresses them out A LOT)

Remember you are a house guest in this animal’s home, be a good guest by practicing leave no trace

If the next person to pass by where you were can tell you were there, you did not practice leave no trace

This means no making cairns, no painting rocks, no carving your name into a tree

Do not disturb anything you don’t have to

[disgruntledkittenface]

I was tagged by @allwaswell16​ and @jacaranda-bloom​ to share five fics of mine that I really like. Thank you!! I’m pretty decisive, but I agree with Dee, these picks could change depending on the day, mood, etc. But here are the ones I’m going with!

Darling, so it goes (195k)

Harry Styles is a world-famous actor at the height of his career but a personal low point when he meets His Serene Highness Prince Louis of Monaco by chance. He doesn’t think they’ll ever see each other again, but after striking up a correspondence, it turns out they have more in common than he thought. Then they start to fall for each other. Louis is different from anyone Harry has dated before and their relationship moves fast as Harry realizes he’s ready for a change. Soon Harry finds himself adapting to an entirely new life, in a country where he doesn’t know the rules, the customs, even the language. Harry is used to people underestimating him, and he’s more determined than ever to prove them wrong.

He just needs Louis to meet him halfway.

Grace Kelly AU.

Okay, so usually the last thing I wrote is the one I like the most, but this is probably going to be my all-time favorite. This is the fic I have always wanted to write, and I finally got to post after it lived in my mind and my heart for three years. It’s my epic, and I love it. I loved researching it and including all of the details that fascinate me (looking at you, chapter 8). I love the characters (especially Harry’s family), the relationships, the settings, the smut, the fashion. Everything, I just love it. This fic is me. 

this is my jam (4k)

Harry goes to a gay bathhouse for the first time. 90s AU.

If you’ve read the author’s note, you know this is based on a story that my friend told me. I wish that I had written it before he passed away, and I just hope wherever he is, he knows how much I love him and how much I miss him everyday. I really like the way I interpreted his experience in the fic; I had to figure out how to capture a specific moment in time and I’m happy with how it turned out. As much as I hated using the AU Historical tag, I came of age in the 90s and I loved writing something set then. 

like sun on the rise (8k)

“Sorry,” Nick says at last, a crooked grin replacing her usual friendly, but not too friendly, customer service smile. “It’s my second double this week, so I’m kind of out of it. What can I get you, pretty?”

“No, I know you,” the girl insists, her green eyes wide as she leans over the counter. “I have known you so many times, in so many different forms, in so many different lives.”

“Uh…” Nick blinks, speechless for maybe the first time in her life. The thing is, the girl looks totally sincere. Kind of awestruck really, her pretty pink lips parted slightly as she takes Nick in. Like she can’t believe her luck or something. It’s not Nick’s fault that she has no idea how to act; no one has ever looked at her like this before. “Okay?”

Harry isn’t like anyone Nick has ever met before. Maybe that’s why they work.

I LOVE THIS FIC. I think it’s a little niche (its stats are... not great), but I just really love it. I was inspired by a quote from Megan Fox about Machine Gun Kelly of all things, and I tried to do a vague five times structure with it. I talked about how I’ve tried to grow as a girl direction author on the @roseanddaggerpodcast​, and I think this fic really exemplifies that; this is not a gryles fic with just the pronouns switched, it’s really about wlw characters and I’m proud of it. 

i must admit i thought i’d like to make you mine (50k)

Louis fell apart when her ex broke up with her and moved across the country. Just as she’s starting to move on, Zayn comes back to town for their mutual friends’ wedding – with a new girlfriend as her plus one.

Blindsided and scrambling to save face, Louis lets herself get talked into a fake relationship with her new friend Harry. Their arrangement makes Louis feel pathetic and embarrassed, but it’s only going to last a few weeks. She just has to get through the wedding – what could happen?

I got writer’s block the first time I tried to write the Grace Kelly AU, so I decided to try and do a long, trope-y girl direction fic for Big Bang that year instead. I did not realize that fake relationship AUs are really hard to write! I finally had to create a spreadsheet to track the character’s emotions and motivations in each scene. But I ended up with a story that I really love, and I like that I contributed a longer fic to the girl direction fandom.

a bagel for all seasons (29k)

Niall is a lawyer from the big city who’s sent to a small town to get paperwork signed for his firm’s biggest client. He only expected to be there for one night, but the longer his stay lasts, the more he starts to fall in love with the town and its cast of quirky characters.

One in particular.

A Shiall Hallmark Christmas AU.

This fic was inspired by a photo of Niall and the tags that @fallinglikethis​ included when she reblogged it. A Hallmark Christmas Movie esque story just sprang into my mind, almost fully formed. I remember getting stressed out while writing, and spending a lot of time figuring out what legal questions the small town residents could ask Niall, but I reread this one lately and it’s just warm and cozy and FUN. I really liked casting all of the characters, and I think they all really shine (including the cats). 

I’ll tag friends for five fics: @crinkle-eyed-boo​ @wabadabadaba​ @louandhazaf​ @kingsofeverything​ @uhoh-but-yeah-alright​ 

[fific7]

Ticket to Ride - Part 6

Billy Russo x Reader

A/N: Inspired by The Beatles song of the same name. This takes place in my S1 Punisher AU with Arrogant!Billy in attendance, in which he gets a taste of his own medicine. Here we are at the final part!

Warnings: 18+ NSFW due to sexual content, including oral and unprotected, between consenting adults* in some chapters. Drinking and swearing.

*Irl, please don’t go wild in the country without protection.

(My photo edit and my photos of Murano & Burano)

𝕄𝕪 𝕓𝕒𝕓𝕪 𝕕𝕠𝕟'𝕥 𝕔𝕒𝕣𝕖

𝕄𝕪 𝕓𝕒𝕓𝕪 𝕕𝕠𝕟'𝕥 𝕔𝕒𝕣𝕖

𝕄𝕪 𝕓𝕒𝕓𝕪 𝕕𝕠𝕟'𝕥 𝕔𝕒𝕣𝕖

{…𝕠𝕣 𝕕𝕠𝕖𝕤 𝕤𝕙𝕖?}

»»————————————-———-　⚜　———————————-————-««

Billy awoke early the next morning, reaching over to his phone on the bedside table and tapping the screen to see what time it was. Seven. Plenty of time to have a shower and make his way down to the breakfast room.

Standing under the stream of hot water, he couldn’t help feeling apprehensive. What if she had done another runner? He wouldn’t be able to cope with that. He didn’t think she would have, but…. he just wasn’t 100% sure what she was thinking or feeling right now.

After his full disclosure of what he’d got up to with Madani followed swiftly by his confession of love last night, he felt more optimistic but he could tell she was still conflicted.

He’d just have to do whatever he could today to persuade her to give him another chance.

»»————————————-———-　⚜　———————————-————-««

Making your way into the light and airy breakfast room at just after eight, you couldn’t deny you were pleased to see Billy, sitting up super straight like a well-behaved schoolboy, already at a table.

His face broke into a huge smile when he spotted you, and you could see a large measure of relief wrapped up in it. You knew he would’ve been wondering if you had run out on him again. But no, you’d decided overnight to at least see how things went today on your trip to the Lagoon Islands.

He’d thrown you a curveball by telling you he loved you last night, and while you were relieved to hear that he hadn’t slept with that woman (his anger when you’d pushed him on it had finally convinced you that he hadn’t), you still weren’t exactly happy with what he had admitted to doing. It was still cheating in your book.

Could you ever really trust him again?

»»————————————-———-　⚜　———————————-————-««

Billy fussed over her like a mother hen when she sat down across from him at the table, jumping up and rushing over to the buffet table, picking out a selection of toast, focaccia, butter, jams and Nutella for her along with a couple of mini pain au chocolat croissants. They were her favourites so he felt quite proud of himself as he laid the plate before her like the spoils of war, before making his way to the coffee machine and creating a cappuccino for her.

“Thank you, Billy - you’re spoiling me,” she said with a small grin. “Your every wish is my command, Princess,” he smiled back, hand covering hers and stroking gently. Now she started properly laughing at him, and he huffed, slightly offended. Once she’d calmed down a bit she said, “Honestly Billy, you don’t have to wait on me hand and foot. All I need from you is complete honesty.” Billy tried to look as convincing as he possibly could, “I will be, sweetheart, I promise.”

She took a sip of her cappuccino, and fixed him with an intense stare. “Bearing that in mind, Billy, just what exactly was going through your mind when you were making out with Madani?”

Billy blew out a big breath; he hadn’t seen that coming. “Well… uhh… nothin’ really. I was just doing somethin’ I had to do, and needed to get it over with as quick as possible.” Another sip of coffee, another intense look from her. “Uh-huh. So you didn’t enjoy it then? Is that what you’re saying?”

Billy suddenly felt like he was back on very thin ice. He could feel himself squirming in his seat, and fought to keep still. Madani was, in all truth, a pretty woman.

Fuck.

What should he say in reply to that?

»»————————————-———-　⚜　———————————-————-««

Your eyes were drilling into Billy’s, and he looked about as comfortable as someone who’d just found out he’d got a scorpion down his trousers.

His face flushed pink, so you could guess what that meant. He cleared his throat, and then said in a low voice, “Look, she’s not bad lookin’ so it wasn’t as uncomfortable as it could’ve been.”

You smirked, not ready to let him off the hook yet, “So you were attracted to her, then. Not sure I’m happy to hear that, Billy.”

“NO! No, I wasn’t. Well.. like I said, she’s not unattractive but I’m not interested in her.”

You picked up your knife and aggressively sliced right through one of croissants. The look on Billy’s face was priceless. No doubt he’d guessed that the croissant was a surrogate for a certain part of his anatomy.

“Sweetheart, they weren’t long or involved kisses… not real ones, not like between you an’ me,” he said in a worried tone, very unlike his usual assertive manner. “Sweetheart, you’re the one I’m in love with. The only one I want to be with.” He was gazing earnestly at you, hand covering yours.

You cut off another piece of croissant and popped it into your mouth.

Billy would have to work a hell of a lot harder than that today if he was going to get you back, you thought.

»»————————————-———-　⚜　———————————-————-««

Once the vaporetto had moored alongside the jetty you walked on board the boat up the ramp in front of Billy, while the disembarking passengers walked down the other side of it as it swayed from side to side, the boat moving in its own wake. The crew member who’d expertly tied up the boat a few moments ago was still calling out “Palanca, Palanca” as you headed through the covered section to the open area right at the back, sitting down on the bench seat in the stern and turning your face up to the sun.

Billy sat next to you, scooting as close to you as he could, suddenly lunging in for a hungry kiss. Two mothers with children in tow emerged through the doors leading from the salon, and you pushed him away while hastily smiling at the newcomers, saying, “Giorno” to them. Both of them smiled at you, returning your greeting, but then their eyes slid over to Billy and you saw both sets widening as they looked him over. You sighed. Having a hot boyfriend sucked sometimes. And Billy was looking particularly hot today in leather jacket, white t-shirt, black jeans and combat boots.

However, you noticed that Billy’s eyes were glued to you, still gazing at you ever since you’d fended him off. You didn’t think he’d even glanced at the other two women.

OK, Russo - one point on the plus side to you, you conceded.

»»————————————-———-　⚜　———————————-————-««

Billy was paying full attention to his girl. He felt slightly triumphant that he’d managed to steal a kiss, and she’d only shoved him away when he’d vaguely heard the salon doors opening behind him.

He was so worried that she still hadn’t made her mind up whether to take him back or not, and he knew that today was his final chance to convince her to do so. Whatever was in his power to do, he’d do, to make that happen. And he wasn’t dumb, that meant not paying any attention whatsoever to any other females in the vicinity. He’d guessed that a couple of women had arrived along with the kids he could hear squealing and laughing just out of his sight line, so he made sure he kept his eyes trained solely on her.

Her lips curved upwards in a small smile as she looked back at him.

Pleased, he thought - ha, think I just scored a point there.

He wondered how many more of those he needed to rack up to finally win his woman back.

»»————————————-———-　⚜　———————————-————-««

There were no direct vaporetti lines to the Lagoon Islands so you had to firstly go to Fondamente Nove, which was a busy hub for several of the numerous lines. You wanted to visit two of the main islands; Murano - where Venetians had made their famed glass items for centuries - and Burano, an island of fishermen and lacemakers. You were really excited to go there, as the houses were painted in a rainbow of colours. Legend had it that this was so the returning fishermen could spot their own individual houses as they returned home across the lagoon.

You needed to find the ferry stop for Line 12, which luckily Billy spotted just as the two of you were about to walk right past it. There was a vaporetto arriving just as you did and swiping your travel passes, you went aboard and took seats in the salon. This ferry was a slightly different type to the others you’d been on, longer and lower and was soon packed with locals and tourists alike.

It took a little while to arrive at Murano, alighting at the Faro stop. They still produced glassware on Murano but nothing like as much as they had in the past. You and Billy wandered alongside one of the main canals, looking into the windows of all the little glass shops until you came to the entrance of one of the big glass foundries.

They offered tours of the workshop and of course also had a shop, so the two of you paid for the tour and watched in amazement as an old man took a fiery red and yellow blob onto the end of a pole, and blew and turned it until it started to take on the shape of a little vase.

In the store, you browsed along the shelves looking at all the glassware on display, until you suddenly noticed you were alone. Glancing around, you spotted a dark head over in the corner at the cash desk and were heading over there when Billy turned round. His trademark smirk appeared and he hurriedly picked up the little paper carrier bag which was on the counter by its handles and strode towards you.

“See anything you like, sweetheart?”

Smirk getting wider. You eye-rolled and grabbed his arm, noting at the same time that the female sales assistant was still gawping at Billy, even though he now had his back to her. You tugged him towards the door, asking, “What’ve you just bought?” as you went. He shook his head, “Can’t say. It’s a surprise.” You glared at him, “Billy….” but he just kept grinning as you left the store and wouldn’t say anything, even though you nipped at his wrist just below his leather jacket sleeve with your nails.

“Wanna get a coffee?” he suggested, as you resumed your canalside stroll. “Yeah, okay,” you replied, stopping next to the outdoor tables of a small caffé and sitting down, Billy joining you. He slid his hand over yours, “M’glad we’ve got this time together today, sweetheart. Wanna make you understand just how much you mean to me.”

You nodded in acknowledgment before waving at the waiter and ordering two double macchiatos. You carried on, “The main problem I have, Billy, is how I’m ever going to trust you again? You might not think you cheated, but that’s what it is in my book.”

Billy looked over at you, eyes wide, sad …and scared.

»»————————————-———-　⚜　———————————-————-««

Billy had then looked up and thanked the waiter as the coffees were placed in front of you both. He really didn’t know what to say, to be honest. He knew Frank - and no doubt Karen - also thought that it had counted as cheating. But he truly hadn’t. Well…. Cheating Lite, as he’d already designated it in his head. But not proper, down-and-dirty, long-term cheating. It had been a means to an end. Nothing more, nothing less. He just hadn’t considered the bigger picture. At all. And that had been a big mistake.

He took a sip of his coffee, and cleared his throat before spilling out what had just gone through his head. “Y’know I’m not exactly an expert at relationships, angel. In fact, I’m sure you’ll agree I’m totally shit at them. I need you to keep me on the straight and narrow. Tell me how things need to be. Please don’t give up on us, don’t leave me… please.” Billy was completely and utterly pouring out his heart to her, and he prayed she could see that.

His girl looked at him, some anger and hurt still in her eyes but she managed a shaky breath and looked down into the depths of her coffee cup for a few moments.

Billy held his breath.

»»————————————-———-　⚜　———————————-————-««

Your eyes met his again, “But how am I going to trust you again, Billy, tell me that? Every time you say you’re working late, how d’you expect me not to think you’re meeting up with her or someone else?”

Now it was Billy’s turn to look down. The silence stretched out to a few minutes, and you did nothing to break it. Eventually he looked up at you again, “M’tryin’ to think of how I can prove to you that I’ll never, ever, do something like that again - whether it’s work-related or not.”

He reached across and slid his long fingers between yours, holding onto your hand so tightly it felt like he’d never let go.

“Firstly, I give you my word as an ex-Marine that I won’t ever pull a stunt like this again. Secondly, I’ll be the most attentive boyfriend you’ve ever had. In and out of the sack.” You tried to hide a smile, but you knew he’d seen it. “Thirdly, I’ll put a tracker on my phone, and I’ll hack you into my messagin’ and email apps so you’ll have absolute access to my location and comms.” He was smirking back at you by now, he felt this was going pretty well.

“But you’ve got access to burner phones, Billy.”

His smile dimmed, while his brain scrambled to come up with a solution to this inconvenient fact. You saw his eyes light up and the smirk returned, “Easy. I’ll put Frank in sole charge of issuing them and I’ll tell him not to give me any unless it’s absolutely necessary for an op.”

“Could just buy them in Walmart’s,” you dropped into the slight pause after he’d finished speaking. His face fell again, and now you burst out laughing. “Okay, okay, Billy - I get the message. I see that you’re doing your best to be honest and transparent. There’s no need for you to put all that tracking and hacking in place.”

Billy beamed at you.

“I’ll just get Micro to track your ass.”

His mouth dropped open as you spoke.

“And monitor all your calls and texts.”

»»————————————-———-　⚜　———————————-————-««

Woah! thought Billy, didn’t think she’d be getting King Nerd involved. That was probably Karen’s idea. Gee, thanks Karen. But he would agree, what else could he do? And he’d offered to track himself, so it didn’t really matter in any case, did it?

“Uhhh…” he stuttered, “….uhh yeah, whatever you like, sweetheart.”

She smiled over at him, a genuine smile. “It’s OK, Billy. I wouldn’t do that to you.” She side-eyed him, “Unless you give me good cause. Like… coming home stinking of another woman’s perfume ever again.”

His hand went over his heart, and he put on his best puppydog eyes. “Angel, I swear on my life - never. Never. Ever. Again.”

She nodded. “Okay, Billy, I’ll take that as you being on oath now, just like when you joined the Marines.” His eyes widened and he nodded fast. “Yeah. I am. I’m on oath.”

He watched as she drained the very last few drops of her coffee. “Okay, Russo! Let’s go,” she said standing up and picking up her bag.

“Yes, ma’am!” He jumped up and saluted, taking his place at her side as they retraced their steps to the Faro stop and their next vaporetto.

»»————————————-———-　⚜　———————————-————-««

You’d hopped onto the next Line 12 ferry which arrived, and recommenced your onwards journey to Burano. Sitting inside the salon again, the loud chatter around you from the mostly local passengers almost drowned out any conversation you and Billy tried to have. He finally leaned right up against you, snaking his arm round your waist, his lips against your ear.

“Got you a little somethin’, sweetheart.” He handed you the gift bag.

Opening it, you saw a mass of tissue paper inside the bag and took it out. “Careful!” he warned, so you slowly opened up the paper and saw a delicate rose pink heart trinket box sitting at its centre. You lifted its little lid up and then replaced it, delighted with it. Smiling at Billy, you said, “I love it!” into his ear and kissed his cheek. His lips returned to your ear, “See? You have my heart.”

Now you rolled your eyes heavenwards, “I’d stop there if I were you, Russo. Cheesy really doesn’t suit you!” He burst out laughing. “Hey! Give a guy a break. He’s over here layin’ his heart and soul right out in front of you.”

You leant in and kissed him on the lips, before pulling back and saying, “And don’t read too much into that!” But Billy was already grinning happily back at you.

»»————————————-———-　⚜　———————————-————-««

Billy was happy. His steps were light as he walked beside her from the vaporetto stop along a small street, lined with stalls and shops selling souvenirs and lacework, which eventually led to a square.

She loved the trinket box! he thought, very pleased with himself. The minute he’d seen it he knew that she would, and had decided to buy it on the spot. While he didn’t want her to think he was trying to buy her back, he’d just wanted to make some gesture to show her that he treasured her, the same way she’d treasure the little things she put in it.

He blurted all of this out to her as they strolled along. She stopped walking and looked at him, amazed, “Billy Russo! I think that’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me.” He felt shy suddenly, and he could feel his face heating up. What was happening to him? Is this what love did to you? He didn’t hate it. “It’s how I feel,” he mumbled, looking away from her. He felt her hand on his cheek, “Well, keep that up and maybe, just maybe…”

She turned and started walking again, and Billy hurried to catch up with her. I won’t push it, he thought, I’ll just leave it be while I’m on a winning streak.

There was another street leading off the square which was full of trattorias and caffés, and they chose one of the restaurants to sit outside, the tables rapidly filling as more people from the vaporetto stop arrived.

She’s definitely looking at me more kindly, he thought. Things might just be okay after all.

»»————————————-———-　⚜　———————————-————-««

After a delicious lunch of pasta and several glasses of wine, you and Billy started exploring the little canals and streets with their cute colourful houses. They looked so bright and beautiful in the sunlight, and you imagined the fishermen back in the day sailing home and being able to see their own little house from afar.

You reached the waterside, beside a quiet little square with houses all around it and some grass in the middle, clothes on washing lines strung across it, blowing in the breeze. There was no-one else around and suddenly you found yourself pressed up against the wall of one of the houses, Billy’s long fingers on the nape of your neck, his hand on your waist. His dark chocolate eyes were gazing into yours, a soft look in them. But you could also feel something a lot harder pressing into your hip, and you saw desire spark in his eyes.

His mouth was on yours and he kissed you, the sudden passion of which took you by surprise. He pulled back, his forehead touching yours. “I’ve missed your touch so much,” he whispered, “…every minute of every day since you.. since you left me.” You laid your hand on his chest, “I missed you too, Billy - even if I did hate you at the time.” He chuckled, “Do you still hate me?” You looked into those beautiful eyes, “No, I guess I don’t. Although you’re still walking a line, Billy.”

He nodded, “I know. I do know. But promise me you’ll give me another chance?” You smiled at him, pushing yourself away from the wall and him, “Let’s see, shall we?”

»»————————————-———-　⚜　———————————-————-««

Billy tapped on her hotel room door, and gave her a devilish grin as she opened it. He’d made sure to wear a white tank and a pair of grey tracksuit bottoms. He knew she liked him in those.

She was already in her sleepwear - an oversized Anvil T which she’d stolen from him ages ago - and leant against her door, looking back at him, amused. “Why Billy, whatever brings you here?”

He just kept grinning at her and also leant against her doorframe. As if she didn’t know, he thought. She’d had to spend the entire journey back from Burano fending off his hands and mouth.

“Just checkin’ you’re OK, sweetheart. See if there’s anything you need.”

She laughed. “And what could I possibly need, Billy?”

He angled his body so that she couldn’t fail to get a great view of his toned torso and more importantly, the very obvious outline of his erection showing in his joggers. If there was one thing Billy had complete confidence in, it was the effect his body had on women.

“I can think of one or two things, sweetheart.”

He was ecstatic when her hand reached out and grabbed him round the back of his neck, pulling him into her room. “Uhuh… maybe you should show me what those are.”

Billy’s grin got twice as wide.

»»————————————-———-　⚜　———————————-————-««

You gave a huge sigh as Billy pushed inside you, hearing an answering one from him and you ran your hands up into his lush hair. You couldn’t deny it, you had missed him. And his enthusiastic lovemaking.

However you were a little taken aback when he began moving slowly and sensually on you, instead of his usual frenetic pace. He was stroking your hair, placing little kisses all over your face and neck, running his hands over your body, whispering “I love you, love you so much” between his languid thrusts. He slid a hand down and massaged your clit, so well that you climaxed within a few short moments. Not long afterwards, you heard him gasp and he released into you, with a long groan.

The two of you lay in silence, side by side but still entwined. Then Billy leant across and kissed you, softly, slowly, with passion. “I can’t be without you, angel.” The puppydog eyes were out in force again as he gazed at you, “Please. Gimme another chance. I’ll be a better boyfriend, a million times better.”

You continued to look back at him, then gave a quick nod, “Okay. Yes, okay Billy. But one… just one transgression…” His hands went up in supplication, “Understood! Not one transgression will be made.”

“And you make sure to tell that thirsty bitch back in New York that her little dates with you won’t be happening anymore.”

»»————————————-———-　⚜　———————————-————-««

“Already done.”

He saw her eyebrows rise.

Oh. Oh, she thinks that means I’ve been in touch with her.

“No, sweetheart…. Frankie took care of that for me while I’ve been away.”

She smirked, “Pleased to hear it.”

Billy let out a sigh of relief, he was going to have to be so careful over the next few months. He’d only just got her back! He couldn’t let a stupid, chance remark or two ruin it. He ran his hand over her hair again. “I’m so happy, y’know? M’never going to take you for granted again.” He saw her smile widen in the darkness of the room.

“But, sweetheart, you gotta promise me something too.” She looked at him, puzzled, amused, “Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. No more runnin’ out on me and flyin’ halfway round the world.”

»»————————————-———-　⚜　———————————-————-««

@blackbirddaredevil23 @omgrachwrites @behindmyeyes-insidemyhead @ourloveisforthelovely @swthxrry @odetostep @supernaturalcat7 @obscurilicious @strawb3rrydr3ss @bruxa0007 @aleksanderwh0r3 @theshadowkingsqueen @bat-luna-cat @carlywhomever

»»————————————-———-　⚜　———————————-————-««

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

Of something beautiful, but annihilating🚬1

Warnings: nonconsensual sex, violence and abuse, mentions of miscarriage, mentions of death [other warning to be added throughout series]

This is dark!fic and explicit. Your media consumption is your own responsibility. Warnings have been given. DO NOT PROCEED if these matters upset you.

Summary: Reader’s husband brings home an unexpected houseguest.

Note: So i just worked my ass off and retail is always crummy this time of year so I’m gonna escape with some sweet Arvin Russell writing. 

Thank you. Love you guys!

As always, if you can, please leave some feedback, like and reblog <3

The spring air was warm as the breeze swept over the low fence and fluttered the tails of shirts hung across the line. You grabbed two pegs and a swathe of damp fabric and stretched it over the cord, pinning it in place before moving along. Your old machine had taken much of the day to wrangle and had even received a kick. It was decades old, an heirloom inherited with the old country house and much more clunky than the modern machines. Not many in the county had anything more than the old wringing machines.

Roy would be home soon. Your husband hated to hear about how the wringer jammed so easily and the fear that your fingers might again be bruised by the mechanism. Even so, you were certain it wouldn't last for much longer. It's rattles foretold its imminent fate. You'd be back to a bucket and board soon enough.

As you hung the last piece, Roy's oil stained overalls, you heard the putter of the truck. You picked up the woven basket and headed for the gate along the front of the house. You waved as he pulled up, tires loudly mulching the dirt, and you stopped short as he came to a jagged halt. He wasn't alone and you were stillwearing your grimy and wet apron.

Roy pushed his door open so roughly it creaked. He stepped out and gave an exaggerated stretch as he glanced across the roof of the truck and slammed the door.

"Don't forget your bag, boy," he growled at the other man as he felt around the chest pocket of his overall for his smokes. "Looks like you're too late for laundry day."

"Roy?" You unclasped the gate and opened it as Roy stomped across the gravel and lit up a smoke, "How was your day?" 

You peeked over at the other man who climbed out of the truck. He wore similar overall, though they were unbuttoned over a greasy white shirt, and he was shorter and thinner than your husband. He reached back into the truck and grabbed a long military style duffel before he swung the door shut. 

Your husband grumbled and blew out a mouthful of smoke.

"We have a guest?" You asked as you stayed by the gate.

"Arvin Russell," Roy flicked the ash away, "You remember I was talkin' 'bout renting out the attic."

"Um, yes," you blinked as the other man, Arvin, neared meekly. Roy had mentioned the idea once when he noticed the way his truck had started rumbling.  "It'll need a good dusting."

"So you better get on that." Roy coughed. "What's for dinner?"

"Meatloaf," you answered and turned back to smile at the other man as he bowed his head and passed through the gate.

"Hello, missus," he said kindly, "Nice to meet ya. I work with your husband, says you're a fine cook."

"The one thing she can do," Roy muttered as he ambled up the steps of the porch and dropped onto the bench sat by the window. "You go grab us some bottles."

You closed the gate behind Arvin but he waited for you to precede him before going any further. He was surprisingly polite for any man who worked at the shop. 

"Yes, Roy," you hid your disappointment. Those nights when Roy started drinking before dinner rarely ended well.

"Can I just have some water?" Arvin asked as he followed you onto the porch, "Please. I didn't get to my lunch today so I'm not really feeling like drinking."

"Of course," you said, "If you're hungry, I got a box of crackers and some cheese I can bring out."

"Thank you but I'd hate to spoil dinner." Arvin sat on the end of the bench and kept his bag between his feet as Roy threw away his cigarette. "Thank you both for having me."

You nodded and quickly skirted inside. You were a bit confounded by Roy's sudden burst of generosity. He rarely did anything for anyone else. To think he'd offer a room to a coworker was unlike him.

You went to the old fridge, marked with dings and dents, and wiggled the handle until it opened. You remember the day you Pa had broken the handle, he'd always promised to fix it but had only managed to make it worse. You missed him. It was easy to miss him in this old place. His wedding present to you and Roy. It was too tragic he hadn't lived long enough to see you enjoy it.

You grabbed a brown bottle then filled a tall glass from the tap. You went back to the door and opened it with your elbow. You handed Roy his beer as Arvin stood to accept his glass of water.

"Thank you," he chimed but your husband only popped the cap of his beer with his teeth and glared out at the yard.

"Well dinner is in the oven still. I'll just be finishing that before I get started in the attic." You told Roy but he only shrugged and gulped down the beer. "Let me know if you boys need anything." 

"Peace and quiet," Roy snarled. "S'all I need right now."

Arvin gave a sympathetic look and traced his thumb along the side of the glass. You hid your discomfort and retreated inside. That was just Roy. He was always in a mood after work. An hour or two and he would mellow out. The beer would surely help.

🚬

When you finished supper, you called the men in to eat. Roy started his second beer as Arvin remained quiet and awkward at the table. You didn’t say much as you pondered the work still left to be done. You had to tidy the attic before the night ended and collect the laundry from the line. You would also have to clear the table and clean up the mess of your cooking.

You stood before the men finished. You scraped your untouched scraps into the dish of leftovers and placed the glass lid on it. You scoured the loaf pan as you listened to the clink of cutlery on plates and set the pots on the drying rack. You returned to the men to gather their empty dishes and Arvin thank you as Roy belched and stood with a satisfied but gruff rumble.

Arvin watched you as you tried to ignore the pity in his face. You knew your husband wasn’t the most loving or vocal, but he was yours and he worked hard. You turned away and went back to the kitchen. You finished washing the last of the glassware and dried it before stacking it in the cupboards.

As you passed through the dining room, Arvin was gone and you could hear the buzz of the radio from the front room. Roy always liked to listen to the game after he ate. Sometimes you sat with him and crocheted or read but not often.

You tiptoed upstairs and found the footstool hidden in the bottom of the linen closet. You climbed onto the step and reached up to unhook the cord of the attic door. It dangled down and you pulled it carefully as you backed off the stool and kicked it away. The steps unfolded and you barely stepped out of the way of their descent as the heavy wood thumped against the carpet.

It had been a while since you ventured up to the third floor. There was only dust and forgotten memories up there. You slowly made your way up and sneezed as you reached the top. A wall of boxes blocked the window along the front of the house and shrouded furniture sat beneath grimy sheets.

You started with the boxes. You took one and peeked under the flaps. Some old oil lamps hoarded by your father from his own parents. You awkwardly made your way back down to the second floor and placed the box at the bottom. When you had them all down, you’d take them into your father’s old room to store. Perhaps you should sort through them at last and get rid of the unneeded artifacts.

You were six boxes deep when you were startled by a shadow in the open hatch. You exclaimed and nearly dropped your armful as Arvin poked his head through and peered over at you.

“Arvin,” you gasped. “My apologies, this place is a mess.”

“Not so bad,” he climbed up and stood, “You need some help?”

“Don’t be silly, I can manage--”

“You’re right. It’s a mess,” he insisted, “A lot for just one person.”

You stared at him and gave a small smile. He was funny. He neared you and reached out for the box in your arms.

“How about this, I’ll stay on the ladder and you bring the boxes to me and I’ll take ‘em down.” He took the box gently from you, “It’ll be much quicker.”

You looked into his soft brown eyes and let him. He backed away and cautiously made his way down the ladder. You turned and grabbed another box and he reappeared through the hatch. You handed him the box of figurines and he retreated once more. You carried on and soon, the boxes were stacked high on the lower floor.

“Alright,” Arvin climbed up and dusted off his hands, “Already lookin’ better.”

He neared the old sofa against the wall and pulled off the sheet. He coughed as the dust was kicked up and it soon turned into a chuck as he waved away the cloud.

“We can keep this here,” he draped the sheet over his arm and pulled the next from the tall lamp with the glass shade, “Move this into the corner,” he continued on and peeked under a sheet before unveiling the tall shelf, “If you don’t mind, of course?”

“Not at all. We should’ve sold all this years ago.” You teetered on your heels anxiously. Every piece reminded you of your father. “There’s a cot folded up over there,” you pointed behind a hidden end table, “But that wouldn’t be much better than the floor.”

“It’ll do,” he assured you and turned to sit on the sofa. He bounced as he hugged the sheets. “This isn’t too bad.”

“Well, there’s a bed down in my pa’s room. We could try to bring it up tomorrow. If you don’t mind offerin’ a little more help.” You wrung your hands. You were never very good with strangers and Roy’s friends often weren’t much nicer than him. You were tense, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“I think I could do that,” he stood and wiggled his nose as a sneeze threatened. “You got a broom? Maybe a duster?”

“You’ve done enough, I can finish it--”

“Ma’am, I’m a guest in your home. I might be paying for the room but it doesn’t make you my maid,” he intoned, “You’ve already done more than enough. I don’t think I’ve eaten so well since before my momma died.”

“Oh, I’m… sorry,” you uttered. “I--”

“Now, don’t be sorry,” he cooed, “Nothing to be sorry for. I assume you lost your daddy if his bed is free.” 

You nodded dumbly and blinked.

“Well, at least let me take these,” you reached for the sheets and he hesitated before he let you take them. You struggled to keep them balled up and hugged them against your hip as you turned back to the hatch. “I’ll bring you the broom.”

“Thank you,” he said behind you and you looked back at him as you took your first step down the ladder, “You let me know when you bring that washin’ in and I’ll help you fold.”

“You don’t have to--”

“I want to. Makes me feel a little better about stealin’ your attic,” he assured you.

You looked down and slowly descended. As your feet met the carpet, you sighed and looked around at the boxes. You couldn’t remember a time Roy had ever offered to help with anything. If it wasn’t to do with his truck, he couldn’t be bothered to lift a finger.

🚬

You were completely drained by the time you retired to your bedroom. You were still on edge, your exhaustion laced with anxiety as you unbuttoned your blouse. You sat on the side of the bed as you slowly undressed. It was still absurd to you that another person, barely more than a stranger, was living in your home. In your father’s house.

It changed your whole routine. You couldn’t help but go over it in your mind. That meant three plates, not two, for every meal, that meant the laundry basket would fill up quicker, than meant the shoes tracks in the front entrance would need to be mopped up more often. That mean you had to act like your marriage was truly happy.

You pulled on your night gown, the short sleeves tickled your upper arms as you dropped your clothes in the wicker basket on your chest of drawers. A framed photo of your parents’ wedding day sat beside it and on the shelf beside the door, was your own wedding portrait.

Three years wasn’t so long but it felt an eternity. You couldn’t quite recall when Roy had changed. When the beer had started to taint his kisses and his words. When all pretense fell away and only the man remained. The brutish country boy with the churlish demeanour.

Maybe the first day of your marriage. Maybe. You were so nervous on your wedding night that it angered him. You’d mend your dress one day, hopefully when you had a daughter of your own so you had something to promise her. 

Or maybe a week after the wedding, when you broke the vase gifted to you upon your nuptials and it shattered across the floor. Roy’s booming voice and his boulder-like fists.

Maybe, maybe, maybe, a month in when the world went black with his hand on your throat and you awoke alone on the kitchen floor.

Maybe a year when your finger was dislocated by a slammed door. Maybe the next year when you couldn’t sit for the pain in your hips. Maybe the one after when he’d grown impatient for a child only to find your sheets soaked in blood. 

Maybe it had always been there, from the first date, but you’d simply refused to accept it. Not you. Not Roy. You loved him and he loved you, didn’t he?

The door slammed and shook you from your sombre recollections. You looked up as Roy stumbled in. He snickered darkly as your eyes met his and his legs wobbled beneath him drunkenly.

You slid off the bed and turned to plant your elbows on the mattress. A prayer before bed, as your grandmother had taught you. Another sarcastic chuckle aimed in your direction as Roy’s stained white tee missed the basket.

“On your knees for me already,” he sat beside your elbow as he unbuckled his belt.

You couldn’t focus on your inner recitation. You could smell the alcohol on him, the stench of oil and his sweat. You clutched your hands together and cleared your throat.

“Why didn’t you call me?” You asked calmly.

He frowned and stood to shove his pants past his knees. He kicked the jeans away and fell heavily back to the bed.

“Call you?” He sneered.

“To let me know about our guest?” You wondered innocently. “I could’ve readied for him better.”

“Workin’,” he growled. “I don’t got time to be callin’ you with my head under an engine. Fuckin’ Christ.”

“There isn’t a bed in the attic.” You said.

“So. Arv’s small enough. I’ve seen him sleep on a stool.” Roy spat. 

You hid your chagrin behind your hands as you pressed them to your lips.

“Why’d you bring him?”

Roy’s nostrils flared and a fist formed atop his hairy thigh. “I gotta explain to you?” He snapped. “He paid me outright and he been sleepin’ at the motel since he started.”

“Mr. Dace has a room--”

“Mr. Dace lives twice as far as we do. I did the kid a favour. He saved my ass his first day.” Roy stomped his foot. “Woulda burned down the whole garage if he hadn’t caught that leak.”

“Kid? He that young?”

“Couple years younger than you, I s’pose, maybe less,” Roy rubbed his cheeks and shook his head, “What’s it matter to you?”

“Curious,” you said quietly and closed your eyes as you rested your chin on your knuckles.

Roy was quiet. He let out a long, thick breath and the bed jolted beneath your arms.

“You finished bleeding?” He asked gruffly. 

“I’m praying, Roy,” you insisted.

“How long’s it take you? I’m sure God’s heard it all before.”

“Don’t talk like that, R--”

You squeaked as he grabbed your wrist and wrenched your arms away. He rose and lifted you with him. Always a strong man, he moved you like a puppet to his will. He took your other wrist and pulled you against him.

“You know, I don’t even care if you’re bleeding.” He turned you and shoved you onto the bed. You cried out as you bounced so hard you bit your tongue.

“Roy, please, I’m tired,” you stared up at him fearfully as you pushed yourself up on your elbows. You could taste blood.

“You’re my wife. You do your duty.” He pushed his underwear down as his cock twitched. “You got energy to wash all them clothes, you can lay on your back for your husband.”

“Roy--”

“Shut up!” He shouted. “We got company. I don’t need ya keepin’ him up with your whining.”

You closed your eyes as he fell onto you. He crushed you beneath him as he tugged your skirt up harshly. He pushed your legs apart with his knee and you braced yourself for his painful intrusion. Even so long into the marriage, you had never grown used to his touch.

He retracted his hand and began to touch himself. He stroked his cock as he swore under his breath.

“Fuck. Come on.” He moved his hand quicker and rubbed his soft tip against your folds. “Open up.” 

He forced his dick against your entrance and tried to push inside. He was still half-flaccid and struggled to get further than an inch. You balled your hands and sank your head into the mattress as he thrust. He fell out of you, softer than before.

You opened your eyes sat up on his knees and looked down at his limp dick. He gritted his teeth as you watched him.

“You fuckin’ bitch,” he punched your stomach as hard as he could and you wheezed as you folded in on yourself. “Can’t even keep me hard.”

“Roy--” You hissed. “I’m s--”

“One more word and you’ll be real sorry.” He pushed himself from between your legs, making certain to pinch you as he did.

He stood and turned. You barely moved out of the way before he sprawled over his side of the mattress. You held your stomach, a painful pressure lodge there, and rolled to the edge of the bed. You reached over and pulled the chain on the lamp. 

As you laid back, Roy caught the back of your neck and kept you in a painful limbo.

“On the floor,” he jarred your neck as he tried to throw you off the bed. “Like the dog you are.”

You slid off the side and landed sharply on your knees. You stifled a shameful sob and lowered yourself down onto your side. You bent your knees and cushioned your head on one arm. You stared into the void beneath the bed as the frame groaned beneath Roy’s heavy body.

“Goddamn bitch,” he uttered groggily. “Fuckin’--”

His words turned to snores as he finally drowned in his bellyful of beer. You listened to his jagged, drunken breaths as you shivered on the cold wood. You closed your eyes and recalled the first night you’d slept on the floor. You’d been in much poorer shape and it had been the dead of winter.

At least, you didn’t have to sleep next to him.

[dustedmagazine]

The Spatulas — March Chant (Post Present Medium)

Wavering guitar notes and the cantering click clack of a drum machine push open “March Chant in April,” the eponymous first song from The Spatulas’ debut EP, March Chant. There’s plenty of residual amp fuzz and dusty space in the recording and two minutes, though one might be forgiven for thinking the remaining five tracks from the Oregon quartet might hold more of the same simple DIY explorations. That could be gratifying in its own right, as heard in vocalist Miranda Soileau-Pratt’s often mesmerizing and deeply lo-fi work as Miranda Spatula, but March Chant isn’t really that. In the final 30 seconds of “March Chant in April,” when Lila Jarzombek and Soileau-Pratt bring their guitars together in immaculate chug-chug strumming over Soileau-Pratt’s smirking vocal and a newly galloping drum pattern, March Chant comes alive. The following 15-ish minutes present an adept rock band that plays messy while sounding polished and fires off dissonance without sacrificing momentum.

The Spatulas’ sound is raw and charming. The band has room for the shambling tension of mid-1990s Smog (“Rescue Mission”) and, at March Chant’s most nauseated and aching, early Sleater-Kinney (“Psychic Signal”). Then there are moments like the woozy but rigorous stomper “Slinger Style” where the nimble, buzzy riffs and bouncing bass bring up Meat Puppets’ warped para-country. Throughout the record, Jarzombek’s lead guitar is blistering, particularly on “Psychic Signal,” where her playing jabs in and out of the rhythm like a single-needle tattoo gun. Despite that, and the aforementioned immaculate chugging, it wouldn’t be quite right to call March Chant guitar driven. It’s a full band record. The unshakeable rhythms from Kyle Raquipiso’s understated drums and Jon Grothman’s expressive bass fortify the six-string slashes and Soileau-Pratt’s declamations – Grothman is particularly articulate in his flowing line on “Rescue Mission.” As a vocalist, Soileau-Pratt can both ride low in the instrumental around her and pick her spots to stand out. Within the lurching swing of “Slinger Style,” she croons some of her lyrics slightly away from the music, then hops back up into perfect unison with the athletic central riff. It’s not quite a chorus, but it has that effect. Hers is a creative, unpredictable style, shifting with ease from gleefully offkey punk sneering on “Psychic Signal” to a sing-song shoegaze wistfulness on “Curvy Color.” Something like the way Patti Smith can drift between a poetry reading and a belted rock refrain in just a few lines.

While nothing here quite achieves the grainy punch or weird feedback haze of The Spatulas’ live releases, March Chant never lets go of the listener. For such a short record, it sounds complete, not a perfunctory teaser for something more fully realized. The band describes their formative jams in a Portland-area storage space as a response to their “mounting frustration with those dreary pandemic days,” and while the lineup has changed somewhat in the years since, March Chant retains the qualities that may have brought the band together again and again: the relief at venting your anger and the goofy waywardness of distracting yourself with a joyful noise.

Alex Johnson

[tired-eyes-cold-as-ice]

MERCER'S BOULANGERIE

Chapter III. - Bonnie

Summary: A relaxing day off... until it's not. Alex owns a bakery and thinks he’s got everything he needs until a gorgeous skateboarder crashes into his life and turns his whole world upside down. A story full of sweet pastries, yearning, and a lot of sadness… with a happy ending of course. Read on AO3, 3.1k taglist in the reblogs <3 Chapter Warnings: none

Alex really tried his best to sleep in every Sunday since it was his only proper day off. Unfortunately, his body was used to waking up at ungodly hours of the morning, so by the time it was six, Alex was wide awake with no hope of falling back asleep.

Rolling out of bed with a deep and unhappy groan, Alex took a moment to stretch his arms above his head before heading out of the room and making a bee-line straight for the coffee maker in the kitchen. Once the little machine was up and running, Alex leaned back against the counter and closed his eyes. The quiet rumbling of his coffee maker was the only sound in the apartment and Alex couldn’t help but smile.

He was still getting used to the silence in the mornings. And, well, the evenings. Silence in general. It was strange not waking up to Luke complaining intentionally loudly in the kitchen over someone finishing the milk and not replacing it. It was strange falling asleep without hearing Reggie practice one of his country songs in the shower. It was strange to walk into the living room and not find the two guys screaming at each other over Mario Kart, and while Alex certainly appreciated it, it still felt weird that he didn’t have to go banging on Luke’s door every ten minutes and tell him to turn his goddamned music down.

He was still adjusting to living alone—it had only been a couple of months since he’d moved out of the apartment he shared with Luke and Reggie since they’d started college after all—but he’d be lying if he said wasn’t already getting pretty used to having a space that was just his. His best friends stayed behind in their apartment and they lived close enough for Alex to be able to come over as often as he wanted to (and he took full advantage of that), but it was nice having his own place to escape to where Alex could just exist.

The apartment wasn’t lavish by any means. It was fairly small but thanks to the two large windows in the main living area, the place felt open and welcoming. The main room consisted of a small but comfortable kitchen (with an oven, thank God) and an area with a sofa and a couple of bean bags which Luke had lovingly christened as “the chill zone” when he and Reggie came over for a house-warming hang out. (Alex still wasn’t sure where Luke kept finding those damn bean bags but at this point, he was too afraid to ask.)

The most recent addition was a low, retro-looking armchair Alex had found at a yard sale about a month ago which now served as a window seat the baker took refuge in most mornings while his brain slowly woke up.

The coffee maker announced it was done with a soft beep which Alex also took as a signal to open his eyes and finally get some coffee into his system. He added a splash of milk before taking the first sip and a soft, content sigh escaped his lips once he brought the mug up to his mouth. Heaven.

After a couple more seconds of just enjoying the warmth of the mug in his hands and the sweet scent of coffee in the air, Alex made his way through the open space to the make-shift living room area and sat down in his little window seat, glancing down at the city below him.

One positive aspect of waking up way too early was that everything was still calm and peaceful. No people rushing to get to work just yet, no traffic jams filled with angry drivers. Just the occasional runner or dog-walker, and Alex had the time to take it all in as he slowly sipped his coffee, head resting against the cold glass of the window.

He allowed his eyes to slip closed for a moment, lulled by the sounds of the street below. Just as Alex found himself slipping back into the land of dreams and sweet unconsciousness, something warm and fuzzy brushed against his ankle and he had just barely enough time to open his eyes before he had a lap full of Bonnie. The cat didn’t waste a second before she was all up in his face, nuzzling up against his cheeks and nose, purring happily.

Letting out a surprised laugh, Alex carefully set his mug down so that both of his hands were free to give Bonnie all the attention she deserved.

“Morning, sweetie, did you sleep well?” he mumbled quietly against her fur as he scratched between her ears, chuckling softly when Bonnie let out an affirmative mrrrep in response.

“Mmm, I’m glad,” Alex smiled, sighing softly when Bonnie decided to settle down in his lap, clearly extremely pleased with herself. He was hoping to get up at some point but that wasn’t happening any time soon with a cat asleep on his legs so he just reached down for his coffee and went back to watching the streets below, using his free hand to gently stroke Bonnie’s long, soft fur.

Alex wasn’t entirely sure what breed she was, but she looked like a ragdoll with her cream white fur and dark spots around her eyes and on her tail. She had bright blue eyes that were always filled with wonder, a tiny pink nose, and there was a small cut in her right ear which was already there the day he found her. She was the most beautiful and loving creature Alex had ever seen.

A little gift from the heavens.

---

“Okay, one… two… three!” Alex yelled and both Luke and Reggie simultaneously dropped their hands from their eyes to look up at the freshly installed sign over Alex’s new bakery.

Even though his friends had helped him a lot in the months leading up to the grand opening, Alex had somehow managed to keep the actual name of his bakery a secret. He wanted it to be a surprise, a little reward they could look forward to as it was only being installed the day before opening, although he knew there was nothing he could do or say to thank his friends enough for all their support and the work they had put into Alex’s dream.

All the walls they’d painted, the pieces of furniture they’d moved, the months they covered Alex’s part of the rent so that he wouldn’t have to dip into his bakery savings. Alex was eternally grateful and made sure to remind Luke and Reggie every single day just how much he loved and appreciated them. He tried his best to help out at the music store whenever he could, he baked them cookies every other day in the shitty barely-functioning oven their apartment came with, he did almost all the chores around the house which nearly drove Reggie nuts but Alex couldn’t help it. He needed to repay them somehow.

Studying their faces as they took the sign in, Alex couldn’t help but blush a little. The name was, admittedly, a little silly.

Merci, one of the first and simplest French words he’d learned as a child, as well as a little play on his last name. The word itself was written in a beautiful script font that distantly resembled his mother’s handwriting. Underneath that was Mercer’s Boulangerie, in the style Alex remembered seeing all over France whenever he visited with his family when he was little. The text itself was white on a pink background, just dark enough for the letters to be clearly legible, and there were a couple of simple swirly decorations around the name itself to tie everything together.

It was a little cheesy but the sign looked beautiful nonetheless, and seeing it actually hanging above his own bakery made Alex a little emotional.

“Dude, that looks rad!”

“Alex, that’s so cool!”

Both Luke and Reggie exclaimed at the same time with bright smiles on their faces before smothering their friend in hugs and sloppy cheek kisses which Alex gladly accepted for once.

They must’ve stood there for minutes, all wrapped up in each other’s arms in the middle of the sidewalk, before Alex was finally released. He immediately noticed that Reggie’s eyes were glistening with tears which led to Luke cooing softly as he wiped them away from his cheeks, and to Alex rolling his eyes at his two idiot friends as he began walking towards the store.

“Come on, you guys, I wanna give you a tour. I know you helped with the moving and such but I spent all of yesterday decorating and putting up some new art and I really want you to see,” he called after them with an amused smile on his lips, before turning to unlock the door. The boys were by his side in an instant and both of them ran in excitedly as soon as Alex opened the door, earning them yet another one of Alex Mercer’s world-renowned eyerolls.

He was just about to follow them in when he heard the tiniest little meow from the ground. Alex looked around in confusion before his eyes landed on the small, shivering kitten that was slowly and cautiously approaching him.

The tiny creature was staring at him with its big blue eyes and Alex’s heart melted right there and then. Without hesitation, he quickly shrugged off his pink hoodie and crouched down, holding out a hand for the kitten. He waited patiently for the little bundle of fluff to reach his hand and sniff away at it a little, and when the kitten gently nuzzled its head against his fingers, Alex knew it was safe to carefully scoop it up into his arms and wrap the still shaking animal in his hoodie.

The kitten let out a little squeak as it sniffed the unfamiliar fabric, looking up at Alex warily, but it didn’t take long before the little creature got comfortable and began purring quietly. The baker sighed in relief and adjusted the fabric around its head before walking inside.

“Finally, dude, what took you so long? We want our tour!” was the first thing Luke said, before actually turning around and noticing Alex holding his bundled-up hoodie in his arms. “Um, whatcha got there, buddy?”

Reggie didn’t even bother wasting time with questions and immediately ran over to Alex, gasping dramatically when the little kitten blinked up at him from the folds of the pink fabric.

“Oh my God! Alex!”

“Guys, I’m sorry, it just came over to me outside and it’s just so small! And, and it was shivering and scared and I couldn’t just leave it there—” Alex started rambling, careful not to jostle the kitten too much, but was cut off by Reggie holding up a finger to his lips, eyes glued on the small animal in Alex’s arms. By that point, Luke had also made his way over to Alex’s side, all three of them absolutely mesmerized by the little creature.

“It’s so tiny,” the guitarist observed.

“I think it’s a girl?”

Alex’s guess was met with an approving nod from Luke and a nondescript hum from Reggie.

“She looks like one of those French chocolate things your mom always gave us when we came over, all bundled up like this…” added the bassist after a moment as he stroked the kitten’s head with his finger.

Alex raised an eyebrow questioningly, finally tearing his eyes away from the kitten to give Reggie a confused look.

“A bonbon?”

“Yeah!”

“You could call her Bonnie.”

---

Much to Bonnie’s dismay, Alex did eventually have to get up.

With the aid of caffeine, his brain had finally caught up with the rest of his body being awake and told him to go be productive. Bonnie granted him an annoyed little mewl after being woken up and nudged off his lap, but it didn’t take long before she was back on the chair and curled up in the spot Alex had just been sitting in, determined to continue her nap.

Sighing quietly, Alex downed the rest of his coffee, put on some music, and got to work.

Even though Sundays were his days off, Alex still had chores to do around the house since he pretty much ignored them during the week and as much as he tried not to, he always ended up letting them pile up until the very last minute. However, since Sundays were indeed his only days off, at least he was determined to finish everything as quickly as possible.

In just under three hours, Alex managed to take out the trash, sweep and mop the floors, clean out Bonnie’s litter box, clean his own bathroom, dust off any surface visible and he even managed to do a bit of laundry.

It was half past ten and the drummer was back in the kitchen, munching on a slice of clafoutis he’d brought from the bakery the night before as he waited for the water to boil so that he could get started on making himself some well-deserved high carb lunch. Bonnie joined him in the kitchen soon after and the two had a lovely—albeit a bit one-sided—conversation about how their respective weeks had been while Alex cooked his pasta.

Truly roommate goals, Alex thought to himself once he’d finally sat down to eat, watching Bonnie scarf down her own lunch in the form of a chicken paté while purring happily in-between bites. He finished his own spaghetti carbonara and sorted out the kitchen before making himself comfortable on the couch to scroll mindlessly through social media for a while and maybe nap a little in an attempt to kill time and relax before he had to go meet Luke and Reggie at the store for band practice.

They didn’t get to play much these days. All three of them were focused on their respective businesses more than their big break as a band, but that didn’t mean they’d lost their love and passion for Sunset Curve. Every once in a while they’d book a gig that would relight that fire inside of them and remind them just how much they needed this in their lives.

They had regular jam sessions fairly often since Luke and Reggie were always at the music store where the instruments were just begging to be played, but they rarely had a reason to actually practice. This was one of those rare times, though. They had a gig coming up at a local bar and the band was… rusty, to say the least.

There was a small studio space right above the music store. They’d nearly lost it when Luke and Reggie decided to take over the business after the previous owner announced his retirement. With the studio space included, the store would have been way over their budget and it seemed like they would be forced to let it go until they actually told Alex about it and the drummer immediately offered them the remainder of his bakery funds to cover the additional costs. Both Luke and Reggie were against that idea at first, but Alex was dead set on his decision.

“It’s the least I could do,” he told them, truthfully. Luke and Reggie had sacrificed so much for Alex’s dream; there was nothing the drummer wouldn’t do to help his brothers achieve theirs.

---

Practice ran much later than expected.

Partially because the guys were, indeed, pretty rusty and had quite a few kinks to work out in some of the more difficult songs and harmonies. For the most part, though, it took them so long to get anything done because Luke and Reggie were constantly getting distracted by one another to the point where they’d stop playing because staring at the other one’s ass took up too much of their brains’ capacity.

Alex was certain there was a bruise forming on his forehead from where he’d smacked it too many times to count at the sight of the two.

Their mutual pining wasn’t just annoying, though. It also made the session extremely stressful because they suddenly had way too much to do with not enough time. The anxiety slithering through Alex’s veins was already dangerously close to bubbling over just from playing the drums for the first time in a while, and his friends being dumb idiots did not help one bit.

By the time he made it home, Alex was a jittery mess. It was way too late, meaning he wouldn’t get nearly enough sleep before he had to get up the next morning. There was so much to do the next day at the bakery, there was so much to do before the gig, it was all too much.

His brain was running too fast as the drummer struggled to process everything that happened that evening. The wind outside was too cold, but his body felt too hot. The key in the lock was too loud, but the apartment was too quiet. Too many thoughts were rushing through his head and all Alex could do was let out a pathetic whimper as he slid down to the floor of his suddenly too small apartment and pulled his knees up to his chest, struggling to keep his breathing in check.

Just as he could feel himself slipping away, something warm and fuzzy started rubbing up against his legs. The silence in the apartment was suddenly broken by Bonnie’s soft purrs and short, quiet meows, almost as if she was asking Alex if he was okay. The drummer reached out a shaky hand to stroke her soft fur as Bonnie crawled on top of him, forcing Alex to stretch out his legs and let her into his lap. Once in place, Bonnie bumped her head against his chin with a content little chirp and nuzzled her pink nose against his cheek, still purring up a storm.

Alex let out a shaky breath as he stroked his fingers through her fur, trying his best to focus on just how soft it felt, how warm her whole body was, and how unusually heavy she felt on top of him.

Warm, soft, heavy.

Real.

“Thank you, sweetie,” he murmured, leaning down to press a kiss to the soft spot between Bonnie’s ears, earning him a soft meow in return.

You’re welcome.

Alex let his head fall back against the door and closed his eyes, waiting patiently for the anxiety inside his chest to slowly simmer down.

Monday was going to be rough.

[blackmidiarchive]

“BLACK MIDI, NEW ROAD” CHRISTMAS EXTRAVAGANZA! AT THE WINDMILL, BRIXTON (19/12/19) – LIVE REVIEW - Jimmy McCormac

‘SOLD OUT. Please don’t even ask’ is pasted on the ramshackle door of The Windmill. It is packed. Innumerable print outs of christmas songs litter the stage. Every ‘BM’ chord is written in bold. A nod to Black Midi’s ‘BmBmBm’. There is a real homeliness to the venue. Not at every gig do you see a man and his dog sitting at the bar.

Opening up, Wood plays a low key solo set. He’s sat on a bar stool with his guitar playing slowed down doo wop. He delivers lyrics about how he “stripped out his insides” telling someone “he loved them in front of Black Midi”. His legs are trembling along to his nervous shudder of a voice that goes in and out of a yodelling type falsetto. Although brief it was an intimate, theatrical moment of brilliance. The guest live.

Following a short break, an insane, progressive jazz jam is formed. The only few absences come from Ellery and Kelvin. A real shame. Especially when Kelvin was in the audience (only making a very brief appearance). Nevertheless the group still deliver. Sounding a bit like Miles Davis electric period mixed with King Crimson. Evans sax playing is in free form ‘Bitches Brew’ and ‘On The Corner’ style. To the point where he had to stop for a coughing fit. While Kershaw’s keys are very reminiscent to its predecessor, ‘In A Silent Way’. The other members play in tones not unalike John Mclaughlin, Johnny Sharrock and Greg Lake. The members jumped off each others energy. Wayne and Simpson play mind altering rush hour traffic drums. Both fighting bits of the streamer backdrop off their bodies. At one point Wood throws his guitar down to become a conductor. He raises his arms convulsively up and down. In response Simpson and Wayne deliver dynamic shifts in tempo.

The members interchange with some dangerous leaps from stage monitors to get their pint fix. One streamline jump from Simpson made me question if he trained for the olympics. The substituting members somehow carry the jam forward seamlessly. Their devoured bottles of becks are now smashed, lining the front row of the audience. The pint glasses from band members and audience alike are piled up shrinelike on the speakers.

Mid way through the set Greep leaps behind the drum kit while Wayne gets a pint. He grabs the mic and shouts “For one night and one night only. Geordie Greep on drums!” as if he is some kind of circus announcer. Wood makes a secondary announcement for those at the back. Greep delivers a collected drum solo alongside Simpson. This soon turns into a wild solo. While he does this he never removes his winter coat. Nuts.

In a third set the group play some festivities. A few eyebrow raisers in the mix. The band deliver their own version of Fontaines DC ‘Boys In The Better Land’. They replace ‘the better land’ with ‘the christmas hats’. I suppose this gives them an excuse to cover it. Vocals are switched between Wood and Greep as they commemorate their label mates. Speedy Wundergrounds Dan Carey stands next to me open mouthed. He quotes it as “fucking amazing”. Greep delivers bluesy licks teasing his later ‘Christmas Blues’. A piece where he puts on his best Robert Johnson impression. Another set highlight.

They play BCNR’s ‘Sunglasses’ and Black Midi’s ‘Ducter’, replacing the lyrics with ridiculous festive ones. ‘I am invincible in this christmas hat!” for example. Between a beer flying moshpit, a monitor convulses violently half way from the stage into the front row. It is saved milliseconds before a deafening floor smash by good samaritan audience members.

Covers of ‘Last Christmas’, ‘Mary’s Boy Child’, ‘We Wish You A Merry Christmas’ and other festive classics are performed to finish the set. Picton takes the lead on many of these, ending up in a humorous falsetto on ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’. Hereby Morgan struggles to keep his composure. He’s in a fit of laughter. Greep starts an alienistic ramble. “Christmas, christmas. Geordie! It’s been said many times, many ways! Merry Christmas oo-ee. Black Midi. Black Country New Road. Sponsored by The Windmill”.

Following the set everyone converges for drinks. The band members and fans discuss everything from business deals to Scott Walker. A fan goes round with his polaroid camera taking pictures with everyone he meets, and many leave the venue in festive spirit.

3 pints later Picton sets up a drum machine and macbook, Greep a microphone. They introduce themselves as ‘DJ Dairy and MC Spritz’. The most bonkers freestyle is performed over popular instrumentals. “Lets go lets go! Change the beat yo” Greep shrieks. He goes on to ask the audience questions. “Who would win, Tyson Fury or Mahammid Ali?”. Without a chance to respond he answers ‘Mahammid Ali’. He takes fast shots of straight whiskey.

This is followed by inviting fans up to ‘freestyle’. Over these ‘freestyles’ remarks are made from the pair. Somewhat alike to DJs over dodgy bootleg records. ‘Lets Go Motherfucker. Lucas from Manchester’ , ‘Anthony Joshua! Anthony Joshua’. Picton is waving his hands in the air rollercoaster style and they both sing fragmented versions of Kanye West songs.

Later Wayne staggers on stage and him, Greep and Picton form a trio of out of tune drunk singing. The song is ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ by Elton John. Greep and Wayne share a microphone. They have their arms around each other and swing backwards and forwards. Following suit are May and Kershaw (now in the audience), their pints clutched between their hands.

In the early hours of the morning a fan has collapsed on a sofa in the back room needing his friends to lift him up. Another fan lights a cigarette inside the venue, getting in an argument with a woman at the bar. Then there’s me. I missed the last tube and ended up in an abandoned old bank. No further questions. I present to you a normal night at The Windmill.

Web archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20210819205610/https://newsoundsmag.co.uk/2019/12/23/black-midi-new-road-christmas-extravaganza-at-the-windmill-brixton-19-12-19-review/

[aijamisespava]

I Remember It...All Too Well

Last week, I stayed up until midnight waiting for Taylor Swift's rerecording of her 4th album RED. And let me tell you, it was...an experience. I bought breakfast sandwiches at my school convenience store (I'm in college), got some coffee for a "breakfast at midnight" ordeal like she sings in the song "22." I painted my nails red hours before while listening to the songs she owns (basically any album not released by Big Machine, singles that came out during the Lover era, and her rerecording of Fearless earlier this year). And it ended with me staying up until 2am listening to refreshed versions of an album first released when I was 10 years old. I also dressed in red, with a hat, a scarf, and OF COURSE red lipstick! To top it all off, I watched the premiere of the All Too Well Short Film on Youtube on my dorm bed...holding a pillow my mom had made of my Red 2012 t-shirt that was my birthday gift just the week before.

Oh yeah, I might have wanted to start like this. As you can kinda tell, I am a Swiftie. I have been since her first album, and stayed for the whole time. I mean, look at my username here. 1989sspeakingnow is a reference to my two favorite albums of hers, 1989 and Speak Now. My Wattpad bio has my album ranking of all her albums, and yes. I have three things of red lipstick. And I bought the Taylor Latte at Starbucks last week as well. Okay, enough about me, let's get to the point of what this blog will be about.

One thing I had been doing since this past summer was ranking albums that I listen to often. It's so interesting because you're listening to them and finding your favorite song, but it's hard when you love the artist and all their songs are good (Like me ranking Taylor Swift's songs!). And I had been wondering what to do with my rankings because I don't want to just leave them for nobody to know, but I am a little nervous about people being like "bUt WhY iS tHiS sOnG sO lOw (or hIgH)?" So I figured I would put them here.

Normally, I would put a reason as to why (in my own opinion) a song ranked where it did, but with 29 songs to rank? I'm not going to do that. I'm going to give the ranking, and then I am going to pick a couple songs that I want to highlight at the end. This blog is going to be long enough. So buckle up! Here is my ranking for RED (Taylor's Version)! *note: I'm not putting (Taylor's Version) or (From The Vault) on these songs. They're Taylor's now, and I will prolly discuss my favorite vault songs later*

29. State Of Grace (Acoustic) 28. Run (feat. Ed Sheeran) 27. I Almost Do 26. Treacherous 25. Sad Beautiful Tragic 24. The Lucky One 23. The Moment I Knew 22. Girl At Home 21. Starlight 20. Holy Ground 19. Better Man 18. State Of Grace 17. Come Back...Be Here 16. Nothing New (feat. Phoebe Bridgers) 15. Forever Winter 14. 22 13. Stay Stay Stay 12. Babe 11. Everything Has Changed (feat. Ed Sheeran) 10. Red 9. I Bet You Think About Me (feat. Chris Stapleton) 8. Message In A Bottle 7. The Very First Night 6. We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together 5. Begin Again 4. The Last Time (feat. Gary Lightbody) 3. I Knew You Were Trouble 2. All Too Well 1. All Too Well (10 Minute Version)

Songs to Highlight: I have to start off with "Girl At Home". I LOVED the electro pop additions to it, and it made a song that was already a bop a bop even more. Mind you, I had already ranked the original songs from RED, and just added the vault tracks in when listening to them, so that's why "Girl At Home" ranks so low.

Next, I want to talk about "Message In A Bottle" and "The Very First Night." Those songs are actually closer to being tied! I loved their happy feel and was already jamming to them when I was barely a minute into listening to it.

"I Bet You Think About Me" was definitely one song I was not expecting to like so much. I had faded from the country scene not long after RED was released in 2012. Not to mention the high expectations I had for it after hearing Chris Stapleton perform at the CMA awards a couple nights before. But oh my goodness did I love it! The music video that came out on Monday was also hilarious and matched the tone of the song. *note: favorite line is "Oh my god, she's insane, she wrote a song about me"*

I had already really liked "The Last Time" when I heard it before. It ranked at number 3 in my original rankings before the rerecording. But OH MY GOD GARY LIGHTBODY! I had spent the whole song saying that Gary Lightbody's voice sounded amazing! It's one of the songs I have had on repeat this whole week! And the strings at the bridge to the end? LOVE IT!

I think the most anticipated song on RED was "All Too Well (10 Minute Version)" and I was also highly anticipating it. The original "All Too Well" was my favorite song of not just the album, but of Taylor's whole discography. After hearing the whole 10 minutes, I had said on my socials that "Only All Too Well could beat All Too Well." This version of All Too Well overtook the original by so much. Not to mention that it was already number 7 of my most listened to tracks of the month literally 3 days after the album was released. I think I have this on repeat too.

Well, that's my ranking of RED (Taylor's Version). All the songs are amazing and I'm so happy she owns them! I may be back on here later to get my Fearless (Taylor's Version), Lover, folklore, and evermore rankings up. So, see you later!

[jafreitag]

Grateful Dead Monthly: Gaelic Park – New York, NY 8/26/71

Fifty years ago today, on Thursday, August 26, 1971, the Grateful Dead played a concert at Gaelic Park in New York City.

Gaelic Park is located at West 240th Street and Broadway, five miles north and east of Yankee Stadium, in the Bronx. In 1926, the Gaelic Athletic Association purchased it to host the Gaelic Games. What are Gaelic Games? I’m a sliver Irish (just learned that a few years ago from a cousin who did some DNA stuff), but I didn’t know about such games until I asked the Google machine. Here you go, from the Wiki:

“Gaelic games (Irish: Cluichí Gaelacha) are sports played in Ireland under the auspices of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA). They include Gaelic football, hurling, Gaelic handball and rounders. Women’s versions of hurling and football are also played: camogie, organised by the Camogie Association of Ireland, and ladies’ Gaelic football, organised by the Ladies’ Gaelic Football Association. While women’s versions are not organised by the GAA (with the exception of handball, where men’s and women’s handball competitions are both organised by the GAA Handball organisation), they are closely associated with it.”

Some to unpack there. What’s Gaelic football? It’s basically rugby. (The rules are probably way different, but this is a music blog, so don’t judge.) And hurling? Rugby with a small ball and sticks that look like sporty pizza paddles. (Again, don’t judge.) Gaelic handball? Racquetball, except you use your hands and you’re outside, not in some bougie health club from the ’80s. Finally, rounders? It’s actually alot like baseball. Pretty cool.

Why were the Dead there? A 9/2/71 piece in the Village Voice by Carman Moore, now archived on the Grateful Dead Sources blog, said that Gotham promoter Howard Stein, a Bill Graham competitor who booked the Dead to play at the Cap Theater in Port Chester, NY and the Academy of Music in NYC, had turned “the drab little Riverdale soccer field … into a summer rock mini-festival.” (Check out the poster above.) Moore’s writing has an early-70s sizzle, and he refers to his colleague, now-legendary rock scribe Robert Christgau. Here’s an excerpt:

“Last week’s Grateful Dead concert up at Gaelic Park was a usual Dead session, meaning that the band-to-fan-to-band electro-chemical process for which rock music is famed was on like high mass at Easter. Although I think I know most of the time what they are doing musically (Christgau will like this notion); I don’t quite understand them electro-chemically. Like the New York Knicks of two seasons ago, they can do excellent things together though they are not a group of deathless superstars. Garcia gets his songs across, but he can’t sing, and Bob Weir’s voice rises to about average…maybe better when he gets to screaming and the music sweeps him along. I still find it difficult to recognize the Dead songs that aren’t “Truckin'” or “St. Stephen” one from the other. I am not one of their fans, but seem to be one of their admirers. Their music speaks in a special language to their live listeners, and that language has the vocabulary of everybody else, but a convoluted syntax all its own. The note sequences are not completely dependent upon musical factors but are also dictated by how involved the band feels and also upon what kind of heat the audience is giving off. I’m trying to get to some essences of this thing.

The drama of a Dead concert revolves around the fact that wherever the band plays they know that a certain number (several tons) of their partisans will be there and that their crowd knows the Dead potential to excite them, but they also know that the Dead may not get into gear until the crowd begins to apply some heat, and so forth. Both parties also know that the concert will be long enough and informal enough for anything to happen on either side of the footlights, and so audiences improvise (smoke, go to the hot dog stand, kiss and snuggle, cheer, dance, listen like star-struck fools) just like their musician friends on stage (who play light and funny for awhile, retire backstage awhile, stand around, or get lost in a piece and turn on the heavy jets). Like good lovers, the Grateful Dead know the secrets of good foreplay, taking your time, surprising the partner for awhile, and then just reacting for a spell.”

The timing of the show seems odd. The band was on the East Coast in July, but began August back in Cali – LA, SD, Berkeley – before a three-night run at Chicago’s historic Auditorium Theater. Then they trekked back to NYC. Our resident Deaditor ECM explains that aspect: “This show was supposed to be played the day before the Yale Bowl concert on July 30, but some issues with the equipment trucks and/or weather prevented it from happening from the scheduled date. There are a few stories on the web about people who didn’t get the message (no twitter back then!) and dropped some acid only to show up to an empty stadium. Haha!”

Moore said that the show reminded him of “a high school stadium I used to know – low stands, unfulfilled infield grass, mud holes here and there, beer sold at one end in some quantity.” He continued:

“The formal shape of the concert was a general crescendo, light at the beginning and heavy-groovy at the end – not a shooting-star, call-the-law finale, just a heightened physical-emotional climate…the goods delivered as promised…sort of like good preaching in a church known to be a happy place. I did not enjoy their country-westernish opening tunes; maybe they didn’t either, because the pieces were awfully short. But by the three-quarter mark they had involved themselves, the crowd, and me too.

First they got the rhythm engaged and finally, courtesy of Jerry Garcia’s lead and interplays with Lesh and Weir, they went into the soloing and jamming which are the real magic music territory of this band. Much is made of the Dead soloists, but it became clear to me by last Thursday that bassist Phil Lesh plus those two drummers create the atmosphere that makes the Dead thing possible. The drummers were exceptionally understated, but Lesh kept bopping and thrumming away, heavily at all times, until his patterns were consistently getting the other players off. In the middle of “St. Stephen” there was a special coming together: Lesh had found a nice ambiguous but compelling set of licks; Garcia eased into a solo; Weir strummed a cross-time lick over all of it; it built; it quieted; Garcia started to play strange classical kind of lines; the drums dropped out; the audience got quiet; nothing at all could be predicted for a minute or so; then Lesh began to grope his way out with two chords and rhythms which began to regularize; audience began to jump and then to clap; guitars began to straighten out; the band came home to the cheers of the fans. Good music-making. The listener goes home without a little tune to whistle, but he hears music. As if they were finishing off some personal solos based over the last riffs heard, the fans went out of Gaelic Park without a thousand encores and without a lot of fuss on the streets outside.

It’s all very interesting, surprising, and I guess mystifying as before. All I know is that the Dead, or their fans, or the combination of both lure you into planning to return when they’re all assembled and back in town again.”

Apparently, there was some grief about bootlegs at this show. The GD Sources blog has a post that archives a 10/6/71 piece by the excellently-handled Basho Katzenjammer (Basho, the 17th Century Japanese haiku master; Katzenjammer, the German word for hangover) that gripes about an army of 200# “muscle freaks” at the direction of tour manager Sam Cutler liberating a handful of tapes from 100# weakling Johnny Lee. It’s a truly fun read. An excerpt:

“The biggest piece of shit spewing from Cutler’s mouth is about the reasons the Dead have for being so pissed off: they don’t like the quality (remember Garcia’s line in “I Got No Chance of Losin”? He says, “I’m only in it for the gold.” Yeah, music has a way of being more honest than the artist intends it to be at times…) The “quality”? Anyone who has bought a bootleg recently will know and agree that the bootleg stereo album called “Grateful Dead” is one of the best underground products yet. The tape was taken from a concert the group did at Winterland, on the coast a few months back. Yeah, Garcia fucks up a bit on “Casey Jones,” and Pigpen’s ego may have been deflated a bit by his voice coming over poorly on “Good Loving” but that was a concert. You do a concert and you stand by your performance, good or bad. That’s show business.

This effete artistic bullshit doesn’t matter anyway … When you’re out to get all the money you can out of your gigs, like the Dead seem to be (like all the groups seem to be) you might be accused of being a bit piggish; when you use strong-arm shit to insure that you get every last penny that you deserve — by making Amerikan standards — you are a Pig. Jerry Garcia, is that you?

Nobody buys that anti-bootleg shit about the artistic integrity of the artist in saying what goes out. One, you stand by your performance; two, even if you don’t want to, Jerry, somewhat, and say “all your private property is fair game for your brothers (especially when they sell records of concerts that don’t compete with coming releases) and your brother (who’s gonna continue to dig you as we live off your comets we’re gonna keep ripping you off because it is possible. As simple as that.” If you and Cutler and Stein continue your shit, though, we’ll just have to sing the song the same old way, you guys being put in the position of being the same old reactionary establishment that we’re all ripping off. It’s all around. You break your back playing gigs for ten years and suddenly success is staring you in the face. Bread: lots and lots of bread. You turn your back on your poor, ripping ’em off roots and start to tighten up. You’re in the biggest rip-off industry around, but no one cares as long as they’re having fun.

Money. That’s the whole story, isn’t it? If these were other times, in another land under a different set of rules maybe you could justifiably complain about the people who want to give your recorded performances out free because you didn’t screen them and pick out the sections you didn’t like and do them over for the cat, ’cause no one charges for their music, and because the means of production belong to the people, and they can turn out all the good sounds they can, and you have a natural right to screen all releases. But we’re here. Now. You guys are making millions — or soon will be. Money is power, especially as the concept of money is crumbling nation-wide and power freaks like Stein are cornering the market on it. The channels that the green-power the Dead bring in travel aren’t the healthiest for the generations of revolution to come. Stein is one of these hopeful images of a freak with a chance to change things positively gone sour, who uses all his power to consolidate his power; who’ll go to any extremes to insure the natural expansion of that power. Fuck him. Fuck you.”

Speak, Basho! Quaint that the beef about bootlegs back then was sound quality, rather than copyright. Stuff got figured out at some point, I think. Like when Bobby shut down the LMA, lmao.

Ed featured part of this show in the 2016 edition of his epcot 31 Days of Dead project. Here are his listening notes, which are typically spot-on (and better than than the not-quite-on-the-bus commentary from Mr. Moore): 

“Less than three weeks after Pigpen’s definitive performance of Hard To Handle at the Hollywood Palladium (8/6/71), the Grateful Dead play the final date of their summer tour in 1971 at Gaelic Park in the Bronx. It will be Pig’s last show until December and the last time the band will ever perform in their original quintet configuration of Jerry, Phil, Pig, Billy and Bobby. By September, Keith will be rehearsing with the band to assume a full-time role on the keys. Perhaps anticipating his absence, Pigpen leads the band through 6 of his songs including the rarely-played Empty Pages and the last Hard To Handle. It is also one of the last performances of Saint Stephen, until the band revived it in 1976 with a major facelift, never to be played the same way again. When you consider these historical milestones along with the departure of Mickey Hart and the closings of the legendary Fillmore East and West earlier in the year it makes you realize that this concert carried a little more weight than anyone could have ever foreseen at the time. It truly was the end of a chapter in the life of the Grateful Dead. As you listen to each song you can’t help but feel a certain degree of nostalgia.

For me, the hidden gem of the show is the outstanding version of Uncle Johns Band. Jerry’s first guitar solo is an absolute joy to hear. His notes sing with irresistible melody and happy sunshine which perfectly capture the nostalgia of those carefree early years. If you listen closely you can hear Pigpen playing the wood claves.”

Speaking of Pig, this show features the second and final performance of Empty Pages. The NYS Music blog, which has a nice write-up of this show, describes it as a McKernan original that “pairs his traditional crooning style with a slow blues jam that’s nicely peppered with fiery guitar licks from Garcia. It’s a true rarity and a shame that the band wouldn’t be able to further develop this one.”

I feel like this was a try-hard post. It might be tl;dr, idk. Here’s the true goodness…

Transport to the Charlie Miller remaster of the soundboard recording HERE.

More soon.

JF

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