Picture Sunday

Hello, end of weekenders, and welcome to another scintillating edition of Picture Sunday.

It all started on Facebook. Memes go around on Facebook like the crud, and every time I turn around I'm seeing "25 Random Things About Me," "My Life As It Appears On iTunes," "My Senior Year," and on and on till my head spins. I've done a couple, left more.

But I did one a couple of weeks ago that was a blast, and what was even more of a blast was seeing the end results done by other people. Without going into too much detail, here's what you do.

Go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random - the first random article is the name of your band.

Then go here: http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3 - the last few words on the last quote on the page is the title of your album.

Then, if you dare, go here: http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days - the third picture will be your album cover.

Then you go to the photo program of your choice, put them all together, and voila, Bob's your uncle, easy as piss, you have your band's album.

Here was mine:

























Yes, Stochastic Tunneling were a dreamy, jangly guitar kind of band that lasted about a minute. If anyone is interested in "Leave Others To Talk Of You As They Please," contact me. I have a stack of them in the crawlspace of the Poderosa. (Our album also had the unfortunate circumstance of looking more like a greeting card than an album.)

However, this was just so much fun I couldn't leave it at one album. And since I've had such a storied musical career, I thought I'd show you some of my other bands' albums.

(Now, I have to be perfectly honest and put an aside in here. Apparently the "Random Quotes" page just randomizes itself on a daily basis, because every time I hit the above link today I got the same page. So to try and make it fair, I closed my eyes, scrolled up and down the page a few times, and wherever my cursor was at the point, that was the quote I used. If I repeated quotes, I repeated the process. And as for band names, if a name came up randomly on Wikipedia that was already a band's name, I gave it a pass.)



















Back in my 20s, I was in an all-girl band. We tried to cash in on the popularity of the Go-Gos, and our first album was full of all-girl fun and frivolity. Until we all started fighting over each other's boyfriends and one of the girls got a skin condition, then it was goodbye. It sure was fun being in Self-Propelled Modular Transport, though. Our album "Saying What We Know" is a forgotten classic.
























When Grunge came into fashion, I donned my rattiest flannel shirt, stopped bathing, and joined up with a quartet called Dragon Buster. We were loud, snotty, and, well, while this works for the majority of young bands on the scene, we weren't that young and people got tired of us rather quickly. Our album "Kissing & Kicking" demands play at a high volume.

























Now, people may have been tired of Dragon Buster, but we weren't tired of each other. Well, most of us weren't. The drummer was as ass and we fired him, hired someone else, and re-formed as Fair Play. Our sound was edgier, our hair shorter, our hygiene better, and our wardrobe shinier. And our album "Perfectly Delightful" was, well, just that. To us. To the public at large it was just another Dragon Buster album.

























After the whole Dragon Buster/Fair Play thing I was pretty worn out, and frankly, no one was interested in hiring me, so I knocked around a while as a session musician. One of my efforts was working with Romanian songstress and free spirit Dimitru Carlaont, on her album, "Dimitru Carlaont Makes People Nervous." The album was aptly named - she made me very nervous.

























After that I got an opportunity I never thought would pass my way. A New-Age Contemporary Christian group, Edict of Chateaubriant, asked me to join them. We recorded one album together, "Understand Him," but as you might imagine, me hanging around with a bunch of New-Age Contemporary Christians didn't last long. They were dull, and I was kicked out after I was accused of corrupting the harp player.

























Finally, there was my very short-lived stint with Alt Country Band Pyramid of Teti. We did one album and played a showcase in Austin to promote it. No one came. We played anyway. We got kicked out of the club. We played on the street. We got arrested. We would have played in jail, but they wouldn't let us have our instruments in the cell. In the end, we had to sell them to make bail. We ended up hating each other.

So that's why I sit at home and play the clarinet now.

Oh, but wait! There's one I forgot!

I know you're waiting for a recipe du jour, and as it happens, there was this band I was in years and years ago, way back in the seventies when I was just a teenager. Let's see if I can find that old album cover around here somewhere.....

Ah, here it is.























Oh, boy. The Quick Dishes. We were something else. Our only album, "Ham Roll Up!" was a rockin' good mix of guitars and synthesizers. Our hair was long, our trousers were flared, our music was loud, and our sales were nil. But, man. Good times, good times.

Happy week.

Betland's Olympic Update:
* If anyone would like to make their album for me (if you haven't already in Facebook, or even if you have), that's why I printed the instructions. If you make one and send it to me, I'll put it in the blog. It'll be a record party!