According to a release from Rancid, they will be going back into the studio to record their seventh album in December, right after their current tour ends. "Our plan is to jump into the studio right after tour, thats when our playing and singing is the strongest," said Tim Armstrong.

Armtrong also plans to release the first track and video from his solo record called "Hold On." In the months to come I plan on dropping the rest of the record for free on the internet, one track at a time." The first track is said to have an old school sound, with everything played live.

Tattoos are something that lots of herpers and musicians have in common. Some of the reptile tattoos I saw this year at Daytona were unreal and I will be snapping a few more for our gallery at Anaheim in a few weeks.

The tattoo I snapped here belongs to both a herper and a musician. This tattoo belongs to Skillet, lead singer for the the Oceanside California based old school punk band Wanted Dead. A seasoned road warrior, when he's not doing things like traveling with the band on Van's Warped Tour, he is a member of LLL Reptile's traveling road crew and can be seen working their booth all over the country selling reptile supplies and herps.

There are lots of other great tattoos, including the famous Tattoo Pete, over in our Tattoo Photo Gallery. Stop by, check them out and maybe upload a few of your own. And girls if some guy at a reptile show or concert stops you and asks to shoot your tats, before you slap the crap out of him, check the name badge, it might just be me;)

Stupid girls.

I have seen evil, and it's in the faces of these two little girls.

When I see thir cute smiles all I see is death.

Often over the years, members of my staff and I have been referred to by users who had had disputes with us as "Nazis." My answer to them has always been, "If you use up its meaning, what word will you use when the real Nazis come back?" I have always taken real offense at anyone referring to us in that manner, and always promised myself I would belt the first guy who says it to my face. These girls would treat such an insult as a compliment.

Usually I am not hyper-critical of 14 year old musicians but since these neo-nazi versions of the Olsen twins have a platform to spew their songs of lies and hate, I figure as a music critic I have a right to respond.

When the punk explosion came back to our shores in the late 70s and 80s, it returned with some nasty surprises as well. Long erroneously associated with all skinheads, the neo-nazi movement embraced the anarchic nature of punk and nazi-skinhead violence would sometimes follow bands with no racist intentions of their own. It got so bad that the Dead Kennedys' Jello Biafra penned the legendary thrash anthem "Nazi Punks Fuck Off." Since then, the problem of Nazi skinhead punks, while not abating, at least disappeared from the semi-mainstream as they launched their own white power labels and seemed content to play to their "own kind." Recently, however, the Nazis have begun to take a new tack, ditching the skinhead radicals and aiming straight for the mainstream heartland of America.

Beneath the dimples, braces, and smiley-faced Hitler shirts beat the cold hearts of Nazisim in all its worst forms. Lynx and Lamb Gaede of the band Prussian Blue first performed in 2001 at a white power fest and since then have released two CDs and a DVD. Looking more like they should be on Nickelodeon, overtly racist in their first release, their second release is horrifying in that they have turned to more traditional topics for 14 year olds, such as boys, crushes and dating in an attempt to mask their Nazi message and attract a more mainstream audience. That is frightening at so many levels it is hard to fathom.

I want so much to believe that this is all the work of their mother April, also an avowed Nazi, and that someday these girls will wake up to discover how horribly they have been exploited both by their mother and the Nazi movement. I want to take thse girls by the hand and walk them through the crematories at camps like Auschwitz and Treblinka, make them wade through the ashes of the millions in the mass graves, look at the mountains of hair, eyeglasses, and shoes collected from the victims, see the horror in the eyes of a survivor, hear it in their voice, and smell the stench of death that still lingers today in the camps. Unfortunately with their claims in press interviews that their name "Prussian Blue" is a reference to the dye used in the gas Zyklon B and singing songs about Rudolf Hess, it is clear that at the very least they have been very well programmed by the movement, and are doing more than just simply parroting mother April's teachings.

Unlike other media personalities that have managed to keep their anti-semitism below the surface and out of the public eye, or denying it, while quitely dispensing their hateful messages, these girls have embraced the whole of the Nazi movement and are now trying to spread their poisonous message to today's youth covertly.

This is not some marketing ploy cooked up by a P.R. agency to create controversy like embracing Kaballa, crucifying yourself onstage, or telling the President to piss off publicly. These girls are real and their message is deadly serious.

This is a warning. Nazis still exist, they are looking for new blood, and they are looking to start young. Please keep them away from your children.

If you can get there in time, the first club.kingsnake T-shirts to be given out en mass will be this weekend at the National Reptile Breeders Expo in Daytona Beach Florida. We will give out roughly half on Saturday and half on Sunday. Past experience has shown them to be gone after the first hour or so, so plan on getting there early of you want one.We are slated to be in the same spot as last year, in front of the south loading doors
in front of Freedom Breeder, table 541 according to this years program.

Of course if you miss us there you can get one in Anaheim, or Chicago later in the year OR you can even win one free by partcipating in our weekly contests.

Failing to live up to its press clippings, we have now had a MySpace page for over 72 hours and have yet to have a single teacher email us naughty pictures of themselves. Fortunately we aren't there to meet women, we are there to write about music. For kingsnake.com users unfamiliar with MySpace, it got its start kind of like a kingsnake.com for bands before it turned into the world's biggest dating site for pre-pubescent teens.

Still, even with all the controversy and press that surround the site, music remains at the core of MySpace and it has become a make or break marketing tool for the music industry. At SXSW06 MySpace parked what seemed like dozens of black tour buses stragically around the downtown area and was almost a dark presence looming over the event, like Darth Vader in the Death Star, waiting to suck unsuspecting bands into its gravity.

That said, we too have been captured by its tractor beam and will use our MySpace page to do some things that we can't easily do here, like running song of the week (or even day) picks, and communicating with users on our "friends" list. We are still investigating all the tools, options, and capabilities that MySpace affords, but for now you can view the best photos from our main photo gallery and listen to songs picked by our editors from MySpace's enormous catalog, as well as see how many "friends" we have (or don't have).

This week's song is by Gang of Four and is a 2005 remix of their punk/wave fav "Natural's Not In It" from their groundbreaking 1979 album Entertainment, released on 2005's Return The Gift. Gang of Four played a super secret show at Austin's SXSW in 2006 and to my eternal regret I missed it.

Check it out by going to our MySpace page at http://myspace.com/clubkingsnake

Add this one to the list of research studies that probably goes in the "Duh!" column. According to the Washington Post the infamous think tank The Rand Corp have apparently discovered that teens that listen to popular music are more likely to have sex.

Teenagers who regularly listen to music lyrics with explicit references to casual sex are more likely to initiate sexual intercourse and take part in other sexual activity, compared with those who do not listen to such music.

When asked, the teenagers not listening to popular music and having sex said that they wished they too could have sex, but they were either late for marching band practice or were too busy in the A/V department.

The report went further, reporting the top 3 songs least likely to initiate sex among teens include:

1> Lawrence Welk - Bubbles In The Wine
2> Captain & Tennille - Muskrat Love
3> Anything by Zamfir or Morrisey

Next on the Rand Corps.' list of research studies to be released:

- An indepth review to determine the true lyrics to Louie Louie
- A study to determine if listening to The Ramones does in fact cause mice to explode

Planning on seeing the Rolling Stones this year? How about Tool, Dave Matthews. or even David Lee Roth? Great, enjoy yourself, just remember when you purchase your tickets you can't email or blog about the show afterward.

I am serious.

No really, I am serious.

You agreed to a contract.

If you look at your ticket you will see that they are all Ticketmaster shows and if you go to Ticketmaster's web site you will see this nifty little clause in their purchase terms contract.

Recording, Transmission and Exhibition
You agree not to record or transmit, or aid in recording or transmitting, any description, account, picture, or reproduction of the event.

So according to the contract you can't transmit any description or account of a Ticketmaster event, you're basically surrendering your right to converse with others about what you saw. Not just photos or audio, words too!

The next line is even more interesting.

You grant permission to utilize your image, likeness, actions and statements in any live or recorded audio, video, or photographic display or other transmission, exhibition, publication or reproduction made of, or at, the event (regardless of whether before, during or after play or performance) in any medium or context without further authorization or compensation.

They, on the other hand, can talk about you, record your image, and display it in anything that they want with nary your say so, no matter how embarrassing or unflattering the portrayal.

So, is Ticketmaster going to come after you if you blog about your Stones concert experience on, say, MySpace? I don't know, but they certainly have set the stage to do so if they want. Certainly if you record the show with your cell phone and post it to YouTube you're probably going to hear from somebody's lawyers, but with the huge number of cell phones that record audio and video, as well as still photos, it is impossible to police everyone.

The music industry already came after the file sharers, are the bloggers next? If you see the Stones this year, great, just don't email me about it. I don't want any part of your illicit description sharing.

To see more of Ticketmaster's policies and terms go to http://www.ticketmaster.com/h/purchase.html

Technorati Tags: Rolling Stones, Blogging. Ticketmaster. MySpace. YouTube

A singer and multi-instrumentalist whose influence upon todays music scene is tremendously unrecognized, Arthur Lee of the band Love has passed away from leukemia.

Formed in 1965 in Los Angeles, Love was one of the first interracial rock bands and frontman Lee often billed himself as the "first black hippie". Lee's music has influenced thousands of musicians over the years, both directly and indirectly. Jim Morrison was said to have considered Love his favorite band and their songs have been covered by everyone from Alice Cooper's "Seven and Seven Is" to the Velvet Undergrounds cover of "She Comes In Colors". For more information on Arthur Lee and the band Love see the web site at http://www.lovewitharthurlee.com/

Technorati Tags: Arthur Lee, Love

Fans of club.kingsnake fav's Slayer can listen to their new album "Christ Illusion" for FREE on MySpace before it releases on Ausust 8th. Go to http://www.myspace.com/slayer to check it out.

Slayer hits the road again in October with a European tour.

Also - Check out club.kingsnakes new page on MySpace at
http://myspace.com/clubkingsnake

Technorati Tags:
Slayer, MySpace

Fans of Austin's famous SXSW interactive/film/music festival can now register for 2007's monster event. With attendance claims of over 100,000 attendees for last years festival, SXSW has rapidly(after 21 years?) become Austin's IT event of the year for internet, film, and music professionals and fans alike.

Last years event had surprise artists like the Beastie Boys, Flaming Lips, and Gang of Four popping up unannounced at local clubs, among the thousands of other scheduled bands performing every day and night. Personal highlights for me last year include getting to ask Henry Rollins a question at his interview, having lunch with Owen Wilson (Party Crashers) as well as discovering The Zico Chain (poised to be a major breakout band, their upcoming release produced by Joe Baresi who produced for Tool and Hole) and seeing The Pretenders after so long again.

Attendees that register early get a real break on price and first crack at the available hotels so if you plan on attending now would be the time. Even if you don't register for the festival there are probably just as many non-SXSW bands performing at the same time at non-SXSW venues all over downtown.

2007 promises to be a real zoo. Hope to see you there. And yes. We are planning on handing out FREE club kingsnake T-Shirts on a scale so vast that it frightens our accountants. If you will be attending, reply here and when the time comes we will let you know when and where the shirts will be handed out. If your band is performing at a SXSW event and would like to work with us to increase your audience, contact me directly.

For more information on how YOU can attend SXSW please go to http://www.sxsw.com

Technorati Tags:
SXSW, Austin, Owen Wilson, Henry Rollins, SXSW07, Free T-Shirt