Bob Casale, AKA Bob 2 from Devo died yesterday of heart failure at 62 according to brother Gerald, the source in various media outlets. Devo’s last album “Something for Everybody” is quite good, if you haven’t heard it. Photos of Bob 2 alone are hard to come by, and many obituary postings on the web are incorrectly showing Bob Mothersbaugh. This picture of Bob 2 comes courtesy of Raymond Ahner who photographed Devo in June, 2013 at a San Francisco music festival.

I can imagine that a lot of people (including myself) waited for a release like this by Wheezing Maniac, an obscure band out of San Diego that was featured on the soundtrack for H-Street´s Hokus Pokus video with two songs (“Dollar on a platter” and “Don´t come close”). Sadly, this is NOT an LP or CD release, but just a bunch of audio files that can be downloaded via iTunes and probably some other sources. It´s just my guess that this is the complete discography of the band, and hopefully it´s authorized.

I know it’s highly unusual for Mike V. to be involved with any sort of…drama, but after he kicked Ron Reyes out of the reformed Black Flag while on stage in Australia, and Reyes predicted that Mike V would replace him… two months later Mike V is officially the new singer of Black Flag. Vallely is still managing and speaking for the band, with his usual Mike V / Minisitry of Truth newspeak. Meanwhile Ginn is suing members of Flag as well as Henry Rollins over trademark of the word “Flag” and the Black Flag logo. I seem to recall an interview where Raymond Pettibon claimed he never got paid for any of his artwork that Black Flag used, but I can’t verify that. The new Black Flag has plans to record a new album in 2014, while Flag will likely continue to play the music of Black Flag without all the drama, or worrying about proving they can “be a stronger, more cohesive, tighter band.” [Source: Dying Scene – Photo: SST]

To be honest, I am not a big fan of Christmas songs, but this one is different. THE CROSSFIRES recorded this novelty kinda tune in late 1964. It´s a story about a shopping-mall Santa and a little boy with a huge list of things he wants for Christmas, but listen for yourself.

This is the Surf MC’s album Surf or Die that came out on Profile records in 1987. It’s pretty awful stuff, but the video has decent art direction with a little bit of Pee Wee’s Playhouse and a lot of Stacy Peralta and Craig Steyck. At first I thought it was a music video that Peralta would rather forget, but they used Skull Skates boards instead of Powell Peralta. – Thanks to Heath for the record and Johnny Sampson for the tip.

The first half of the 1960s were the hey-days for Surf Music with a high percentage of bands being from California. Many of those bands also wrote songs about Skateboarding or what then was known as “Sidewalk Surfing” (I counted about 30 releases so far from that era, including bands from other genres). But there were also bands from such “exotic” places like Texas.

New video from San Francisco’s Hot Lunch for the song She Wants More. Catch it after the jump.

Thanks to the Facebook-Site “Skateboarding Hall o Fame” for finding that rare video from 1965, featuring italian-born Piccola Pupa on the microphone and Wendy Bull on the skateboard.

Do you remember the catalogues that came with the old JFA records? Most of them also offered JFA skateboards in various sick shapes. I always wanted one of those, but they don´t pop up that often nowadays and I am pretty sure that I don´t want / can´t afford an original one.

So yeah, the auction says “vintage 80’s” but then it also says “Vision Brigade skateboard santa cruz deck” so obviously, the truth is not super important to the seller. It’s… mildly amusing. – Thanks to Tim Romans for the tip.