Long lost Lehigh Valley skate punker & friend Rick Charnoski came through the east coast this month with his lady Jess (whose Filipina mum is from my mom's hometown of Baguio! I wonder if they knew each other as kids!) (and their dog Ruckus) on a film tour supporting his first feature length called Warm Blood. its a gnarly and great film you should go see! After reconnecting with a lot of the punk kids from back in the 80s at the old Emmaus theater in the LV, the tour rolled up to Spectacle Cinema in Williamsburg Brooklyn. Me & Beth walked over from our pad in Greenpoint. Rick showed some awesome short films prior to the big Warm Blood screening and I read a couple old stories from Raw Pogo On The Scaffold zine, written in the early 90s but about crap that went down in the early80s. Ive read Combat Boots in public at a few places over the years, like at End Of An Ear in Austin TX during Chaos En Tejas 2012, but this was the very first time I ever read Stop Jap out loud, thus my quavering voice..........
this is how it all looked going down:
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Combat Boots
Stop Jap
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This year, cuz of the WGA and SAG-Aftra strikes from may 23 to oct 23, was the absolutely wrong year to blow precious money on putting out 2 new vinyl LPs on EASY SUBCULT, but what could I do?!?!?!? so these 2 records are out in the world now and available for purchase at select and cool record stores, over on the EASY Bandcamp site, and of course at the EASY Bigcartel jawn....
the Hex comp was orig released on CDr only about 23 years ago. WTF!?!?
and the XPOEMSX / PHOTONS split features my loops and a little magic realist reading from something I've been writing for years, about reincarnating over and over, and as soon as you realize thats how it Life / Death works, the sooner you can chill and not worry so much about anything other than getting groovy, lovely & happy.
The Birth And Death Of The Historical Buddha xpoemsx / photon band split LP
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way the fuck back in october of 2023, XPOEMSX played a sweet fundraiser party for another cool film project, the film being made by Rich Fravel & Jess Kourkunis called The Space Between Attack And Decay. it was a really sweet show on the back porch of Rich and Jess' rad Germantown estate down in Philly. the avant psychedelic lady Emily Robb played too. she rules, go see her on tour on the west coast right now.
BLUES AMBUSH also played.
you can hear the whole XPOEMSX set here
but anyway, here's how the XPOEMSX configuration of me + good old Sean Byrne looked. it was also the first time we'd ever played together in person, as opposed to trading guitar loops and over dubs via the interwebs...
and Sean's band CAMINO SOUND has new music out, go listen....
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xpoemsx at the modern whitall mansion
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around
the holidays last year i wrote a long piece for the new relaunch of the
legendary SOUND COLLECTOR AUDIO REVIEW mag, creation of editor extraordinaire
Laris Kreslins.
I
wrote about living a forlorn life in the punk & student ghetto of Notting Hill
London having freshly turned 21 years old, and chancing upon the Breaking
Down The Walls Of Heartache comp tape on the Heartache tape label from the mythic and mysterious psychedelic town of Rugby,
Warwickshire England.
go here and read it!!!!!!! 
breaking down the walls of heartache forever and ever and ever and ever and....
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but oh man its now already late June 2023, i'm back at work in Brooklyn, far away from the chilled out bike rides and gardens and barn cats and good vibes back at our spot in Pennsylvania. I didnt get enough springtime this year, I feel cheated it sucks.... but I need to replenish my coffers with HBO money - so we can at least take a trip to Lisbon or The Philippines or Venice again before its too late, and drag more EASY releases and little books around the world to sell and give away to people.
we wanted to go to Venice this summer to see my New Wave big sister Victoria Haslam perform with the Prague Shakespeare Company in their version of Titus Andronicus,
But because of the fucking endless financial requirements & stain involved in renting a pad in Brooklyn as well as owning a house in eastern PA while the film industry slowly recovers from its strikes, it looks like its not gonna happen this year.
but depending on which pathetic old weirdo, genocider or rapist wins the Whitehouse, it might happen for good early next year. .......................
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but if you really wanna know whats been going on, and on an almost daily basis, follow my IG @f._mcstyles
(that 'mcstyles' name is from Pete Henke with whom i taught ESL in Japan in the 90s. He was an awesome bud & a dude from Canada - and one day at school me and him were the only teachers in the teacher's room for some reason and suddenly he was all like "yo yo what up Freaky Mcstyles?!?!?" in a 1990s urban North American affected accent. i couldn't stop cracking up. and that moniker stuck and has survived to this day.
Unfortunately Pete did not. He passed away a few years ago while living and teaching in Taiwan, leaving behind a Taiwanese wife and a half Canadian / Half Taiwanese baby boy. That's such sad stupid luck. But while he was alive and while I knew him in Tokyo, in my and our milieu of foreigners and freaks and teachers and friends from Tokyo & all over Asia, Canada, NZ, Australia, the USA & England, he was the sweetest, most considerate & funny and gentle Canadian, and I'm sure he was a good father too. RIP Pete.....
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