Came by some good music this week - the new Goo Goo Dolls album Something For The Rest Of Us is pretty good. Not classic Dolls but good enough - you could stitch it to the end of Let Love In and not really notice the seams although as a whole, it is a lot stronger. I don’t think classic Dolls exists anymore. Much like Bon Jovi, they’ve gone past the point of no return and this is now what you get when you buy in. Not a bad thing, a little sad that there’s no experimentation anymore but like BJ it’s hard to argue with success.
From the backend of nowhere I also found a re-release of an album none of us should own on CD! Back when you all still had hair, there was a band out of Philadelphia called Teeze who were totally on a par with Motley Crue in the early days. Sadly, it didn’t happen for them and some years later, they changed their name to RoughHouse and the world promptly forgot about them. Anyway, the original Teeze album holds up pretty well considering all the years under the bridge. Whether I’ll listen to it much remains to be seen but sometimes bumping into an old friend is all you need to brighten a day.
On the book front, I’ve been struggling to find anything worth a damn this week but Bill Willingham’s Peter & Max is holding the fort just fine. A full length novel based on the characters in his FABLES graphic novels, you could do worse than spend some time with it. Probably not wise to share it with really young kids, but if you’ve got older ones and are into that sort of thing... well, it’s working well for me. I did try Barker’s Thief of Always a few months back with Rhiannon but his style doesn’t really move fast enough to keep a nine year old hooked at the end of a hard day at school - apparently.
Going to try and catch up with the Devil movie this week - that’s after I’ve taken aforementioned offspring to the British Museum for a Mummy-Fest, gone swimming at least four times and taken a trip to the beach to see if it’s any good for a picnic and a quick surf. Maybe the movies is a bit ambitious... anyway, Devil looks like it might work out OK. I think it will be a big hit or a big miss but either way has to be better than the pile of average I’ve sat through lately.
Work wise, I’ve found myself working with some great people who also do a lot of other things apart from tattoo all day long. With my first issue proper hitting the shelves in about a week, some of these people will be making a retrospective appearance here - it will all be relevant, I promise!
While we’re on the subject of work, I find myself authoring two books that are pitched at hitting the shelves before Christmas. Both are highly pictorial but also have a lot of commentary and interviews from me - I’m really excited about them both. I think I have about three weeks left on the deadlines so more information on these coming probably a lot sooner than I would have liked!
To finish up nicely, going through my phone pictures, I found this one of my friend Volko from Buena Vista Tattoo Club hard at work at the Tattoo Convention in London. I didn’t use it anywhere in the magazine so thought I'd post it here with a nice link to their site so you can see what all the fuss is about.
