Bringing together a number of recent non-beer related themes in Brewz Newz… the other day, after I brought up my shift towards acoustic music, my friend Dover mentioned how much he liked the Matty Luv/Max split record from many years ago. My first thought was, “Maybe it’s on youtube?” It’s not. However, the songs can be found on the Matty Luv memorial website mattyluv.com
The featured beer this post is Mirror Pond Pale Ale. Generally I don’t get too worked up about pale ales. However, just out of curiosity I’ve done a great deal of comparison tasting. Most of the good ones taste similar to the classic Sierra Nevada Pale Ale with various hop characteristics to distinguish them. What I like about Mirror Pond is that it has a light but detectable malt backbone that is absent from most other pale ales. At the same time the initial hop taste is just as strong and pleasant.
Matty wrote those songs to play a few solo shows while he was between bands (Fuckboyz and Hickey). At first he didn’t want to do an acoustic record, but he said I could use a live recording that my roommate Todd had made at one of our house parties. When I was searching for that record on youtube I found another song from that same night. It was one that we didn’t have room for on the record.
The Spit Muffins were also playing and as soon as she walked in Matty dragged their singer Kimball to a corner to work on a song he had written to sing with her. I think that was the only time this song was ever performed and that’s kind of a big deal when you realize that Matty was the best songwriter of his generation. It sounds like someone really cleaned up the recording too. Thanks to the person who did this!
I’ve watched and listened to more youtube in the last month than I have in my life previously. My son Henry made me my own channel just so I could use it to post a little video clip of the Bananas on this site. Then on my next brewznewz post I was adding a link to the end of the post when I found that the entire Ringwurm CD was on youtube. I decided I would use my u-tube channel to post all of the old Probe Records releases, but then I realized that I don’t know how.
Last month I also decided that I’d like to start going out to shows again, but just the small ones. I almost never go to bed before 1 or 2 AM but I only want to go out during the day. It just feels wrong for me to be out late at night. Plus, I have to wear the double ear protection… on second thought – I’ll just stick to going to breweries.
A few years ago Main Street Brewery was having a beer pairing dinner, but when we got there they had a Mayan flute player cranking at Black Sabbath level volume. A fucking flute! I had to leave, left the wife alone once again. Luckily some really cool parents I knew from daycare spotted me from their car as I was walking out, I jumped in, and they quickly drove me to a drugstore to buy some earplugs. These days I always have some earplugs with me. Noise happens everywhere!
Hop Dogma Brewery
The wife is different. She’s not giving into old age as readily as I am. She still enjoys a good crowd and loud places.
Late last year I planned a half-day off work to drive out to the coast and visit Hop Dogma brewery, a beautiful brewery that overlooks the ocean, AND IT’S FUCKING QUIET THERE and also to see Joe’s new acoustic band play up the road at a place called Winter’s Tavern. It was on a weekday. The wife wasn’t thrilled at the idea and correctly guessed that I was just using the show as an excuse to go to another brewery. She mentioned that they often have shows at 1234 Go! Records in Oakland, the city where she works. “Why don’t we go to a show there? “ She then warned me, “You do know that Joe’s band is also playing this weekend in San Jose. Nobody is going to be at the show out in the middle of nowhere on a weekday.” I said, “Exactly!”
Brewer Dan
The Hop Dogma Brewery was wonderful. The brewer had just returned from the Great American Beer Festival and I didn’t have to ask many questions before he started telling stories.
The show was nice and small as I expected, with good beer on tap. I hung out with Joe and played pool with his new band -who had never even heard of his old band Ringwurm. It was a good night. However, I have to admit that my wife was right.
When we finally did go to a show at 1234 Go! Records it was… nice. Despite being in the city I didn’t stress at all. There was great beer on tap at two different places on the same street as the record store. Nice places with big windows! I barely looked through the records because these days I don’t know what records to look for. I bought a book about ACDC instead. Only two bands played and it was over by 10pm!
The Hickey LP/CD originally came out on Probe Records but Steve of 1234 Go! took over the repressing of the Hickey CD many years ago. At the time he didn’t have a record store. I learned about that when I read about it in the newspaper. I met him (10-12 years ago?) at some place in Oakland to give him the remaining Hickey CDs and I remember he downed three pints of heavy beers in the first 10 minutes that we were talking. I was a little surprised and told him that I couldn’t remember the last time I had met someone I didn’t keep up with. I felt the Hickey CD was in good hands.
Anyway, of course you should track down the real thing but here is a u-tube version of the greatest LP, punk rock or otherwise, to come out in the decade before the Internet. Any other opinion on the matter is due to ignorance or poor taste.
Hickey in Probe #6
I keep posting photos of the art on my walls. That is a theme on Brewz Newz that will continue. The two Matty Luv screen prints in this post were done by Bradley Roberts and have been hanging on our wall for almost 13 years. Judging from his instagram Bradley is a brewery patron, and an attendee of the vegan beer fest each year. He was the drummer for Your Mother and now Love Songs.
Matty at Hap’s with The Fuckboyz
To keep with another theme of Brewz Newz, getting old, I bought my first pair of reading glasses. I have been telling everybody. “Check out Brewz Newz, but don’t do it on your phone! It looks crappy on a phone.” However, now that I have glasses the idea of checking out stuff on a phone makes more sense now that I can see it. I have been trying to type text messages at arms distance for too long. However, I won’t be wearing glasses full time quite yet so I still prefer the home computer and good old email if you want to send a message, complaint, or pass on a link or something theprobeguy@comcast.net Actually, only one of my eyes is bad so I think I’m going to get a monocle to carry around with me on a little chain.
Matty Luv didn’t have plans for getting old. He delighted in his plan to be the 1,000th person to jump off of the Golden Gate Bridge. However, that was foiled when Bridge officials stopped keeping count at 975. I should have felt worse when Matty died. Despite the fact that I considered him the most important element of what made Hickey who they were and the entire cult that they created around them. I would have felt more heartsick if it had been someone else. Matty cared deeply, but he was also fearless. When I heard that he was gone I just nodded my head as if it made sense. He was an amazingly sweet and conscientious badass and he never wasted anybody’s time while he was on this planet.
Aesop and Matty =, Fuckboyz/Hickey/Yogurt and the glorious long gone Dr Dre Del “Mic of Defiance!” cassette tape can now be found on youtube https://youtu.be/PJ0LLAT-7v8