Eh, well. There's me, Sgt. Bullocks, y'know? At one point I was Private Bullocks, which was just me with a guitar, which got old pretty fast. My mates The New Beat Brigade are sort of ever-changing...Squiddy D has been with me at almost all the gigs I can remember, though here and there he ducks out and Tommy the Brownie fills in... and Big Benny the Rat plays drums about 63% of the time. Here and there we get The Alabaster boys in on some horns, once in a while the Duchess sings with me and Bawston plays some harmonica.
Occasional members of the Brigade are folks like Timmy Two-Spits and The Hooch-meister, Beanbellies and The Belkin Bros come by when we're lucky, Sweet Sweaty Vinny when we're not.
You around for Friday's gig? You take punches like you take shots? You can be in the New Beat Brigade, too!
Influences
Ehhhh. I dunno. I hate this sort of business. You break it all down and we're influenced by everything, right? I think I mentioned the Tolkien, though I'd wager folks are looking for a musical leaning or two here...
Standard crud:The Sex Pistols, The Stooges, The Ramones, The Clash. Later on I loved those Dead Milkmen. Despite my obvious heritage, I like a lot of the olde Irish bits about...well drinking. The American skipper Tom Waits is good at that. some of those old blues songs are good at that basically anything about drinking and/or fighting generally amuses me, though the kitties tend to prefer Mozart.
Sounds Like
Criminy. It sounds like I got into a fight and wrote a song about it. Perhaps...while drinking?
Okay, right, so this cheeky bloke has taken pictures of me and a bunch of other weirdos at Marty's Sock Puppet Portraits. It's a bit inexplicable and bloody daft, but I sorta like it, too. Eh, to each his own, y'know?
At any rate, there's not so much to say about myself. I like a drink. I get into an occasional scuffle. Maybe a brawl here and there. Every once in a while I find myself in what might be referred to as an altercation and/or a tussle. And me and my mates in The New Beat Brigade sing songs about it. Half the time the fights are between us, anyways. Ok, 3/4 of the time. Whut - hat's not nearly 7/8! Annnnd... that's pretty much that, y'know?
I mean, what can I say? Oftentimes a feller finds himself at the local pub. Perhaps some cheeky little pony doesn't like his haircut. Or won't scoot down a bit. Or won't give me their drink or stop talking. Opinions differ and a gentleman(or lady) must resort to fisticuffs. "Chairs and hearts can all be mended, just serve us up another round," that's what me old gaffer used to say. It's all for the art, love. It's all for the art...
Mind you I'd never bring this violence anywhere near my home, and my mates know it. I got 4 kittys, 2 pups, a goldfish and a mess o weird hamster things whose names I forget. One time wanna the Belkin Brothers tried to start a thing in my den. I punched them many many times. Half the time I wake up hungover with 3 or 4 new little mouths to feed, you know? What can I say, I like critters. For the most part they're better conversationalists than any other humans, y'know.?
Oh and bloody hell I love JRR Tolkien. Who doesn't, right? Jackson's movies were pretty damned good for a Kiwi, too. Good stuff, good stuff. So if a bit sneaks into a song about how I mighta been fightin an orc or I have to thrust a sword into some lava, you can figure that I'm using my "creative license". Drunk driving through Middle Earth, as it were. Heh.
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I'm really terribly sorry for my behavior the other night. Sometimes the Duchess just - knows... oh, you know, the buttons to push on me, and the next thing you know i think I'm some sort of prized pugilist. I appreciate your "going easy", and truth-be-told, I suspect that my shiner has made my students respect me a bit more...
