karisa sent me the sweetest, nicest long email. renee called me as soon as i got home. and as i was taking my pre-tsar power nap i was awaken by the soft little knock of clippergirl replete with kneepads and hot pie.

i wasnt depressed yesterday, sweet souls.

nothing in here is true.

if im depressed, the last place i will corrupt will be this beautiful playground.

mayor richard riordan in one of his interviews about the la newspaper that he wants to form on the backs of my pals ken and matt said that he wanted a paper that would tell the good news as well as the bad.

easiest thing in the world to do, in my opinion, is to spew out negative crap, or find dirt on dirty people. or bitch. or whine. or vent.

yesterday i just didnt want to go to work. i wanted anything other than to have to get up in a copter and seek out the bad in my fair city. even if all i was going to do was rub it out.

sometimes you feel like youre a rat catcher or a cockroach exterminator. someone calls you about a smell and you go to where they smell it and you smell around and you say ah ha theres the rat and you flush it out and then you capture it.

rarely is it pretty. rarely are you happy that you found it. rarely is the mess that theyve been making for months or years enjoyable to dig through.

im the most positive person that i know and it affects me, so you should see how it affects the rest of the guys around here. guys who were never upbeat or optimistic one day last year, or the year before that, or ever.

these are the cast-offs, the unloved, the misfits, the loners. anarchists with guns. criminals who roam the streets undercover chasing other criminals.

i dont want to be around some of them any more than i want to be around the real crooks.

but then i get into the office and i have my morning meeting with my team and we joke around and that comraderie makes it worth it all.

and i end up not wanting to be a bum on the 21 looking like george bush whose best slice of luck will be getting a bus transfer twenty five minutes into the ride.

i end up wanting to be the superhero that many of you already are.

then i climb into chopper one, ask the crew to pop in janes addiction idiots rule, turn the engine over, and we’re off.

dont cry for me islavista.

but when i fly over, feel free to show me your tits.

kate + welch + emmanuelle + layne

and coulter, drummer of my favorite band, tsar, peered over his sunglasses and said, what sort of secret show is this?

as is normal for lots of bands who want to try out new material without the pressure of appeasing their fans, secret shows are in many cases good ideas. unless the secret gets let out. and all your friends arrive with giddy anticipation.

we were only one marc brown away from capacity when the quartet took the stage poised to unleash a dozen new high powered rock assaults onto the mostly virgin crowd. yes, tsars best friends were there, but most of the audience had no clue.

until it was too late.

ive had a lot of favorite bands over the years: ac/dc, iron maiden, the police, the replacements, led zeppelin, janes addiction, the wonderfuls, thee mystakes, the beastie boys, but never has one of my favorite bands become more aggressive and powerful and spiteful as theyve aged. the key word last night was rock. rock motherfuckers rock.

the hot girls had to back off, even their tattooed boyfriends couldnt get too close to the blast coming from the stage which was furious, friends. there were no ballads. there were no la la las, there was no phone call from the governor.

tsar’s new tunes are thick and mighty and raw and sped up. you feel like you’ve been up all night on crank and a cute girl knocks on your door with some pure shit and your mind melts and you quickly tumble through the rabbit hole only to be greeted by… a trumpet, a gong, a timpani? no its the dual guitar attack of whalen and kern and kern only gets better on lead guitar and whalen wails in approval.

rock, motherfuckers. the kind that even midnight cant harness. a spit in the eye of the dance clubs blocks away with lines around the corner of trendies in their fendis. a poke in the eye at alleged rock radio with their incubus and suckubus and linkin puke and so ons. and a kiss on the cheek to everyone in attendence.

i have the best friends in the world and some of them are in the best band in the galaxy and if you dont believe me then youre wrong.

on the drive home my ears were ringing and the smiles shared between matt emmanuelle and i were big and bright as we sped through the streets that have names but dont matter for tsar had come and rocked our little worlds without even trying very hard. as if they had done it all in second gear. as if theyd done it left handed.

as great as last night was i will be expecting even more when tsar plays a real show on saturday may 17 at spaceland in silverrock.

tell your friends.

warn your enemies.

circa 1977 + leah + jesse walker + no left turn unstoned