Ovipositor played The Hemlock Tavern in SF on Saturday night with our friends Generalissimo and Cartographer (both great bands who kicked out the fucking jams). Not only was it the unofficial kick off of our Fall ‘09 tour (with Generalissimo), but it was also the public unveiling of the CD we had a release party for — also at The Hemlock — back in December.

It’s about time we had some product to sling, but I still say it was worth the wait. The custom screen printing and die-cutting on the package looks and works great, and aside from the absence of the album info on the spine on the package, it’ll sit nicely on the shelf along side your other favorite CDs. (People still buy CDs everyone once in a while, right? Right.)

Here are a few photos of the newly released physical version of Oakland Minor (holler at us over at the Ovipositor site for some mail order action):

(Front)

(Back)

(Open)

(Interior)

Saturday night’s show was a bit of a trial run of a tour setlist for us, though we have a pretty good repertoire of tunes at this point, so we plan on switching up every night. Of course, we also played last, which, to quote Colin, meant that we were either headlining the show or cleaning up the mess, depending on how you look at it. Turns out it was a little bit of both.

Generalissimo and Cartographer killed it, and of course I forgot both my camera and my digital recorder so I failed to document their greatness (stay tuned, however, for plenty of Generalissimo tour photo action in the coming week). They played to a good crowd that trickled in as steadily as they trickled out as the evening went on. By the time our set ended, the audience had thinned out. Luckily the homie EJ showed up right before we played and managed to get some photos of us in action. So here you go, just like you were there:

I recently started following Ted Bawno on Twitter. Aside from being a prolific Twitterer (so much so, in fact, that I briefly consider unfollowing him daily), Bawno — who may or may not be the alter ego of NYC journalist, former Vibe music editor, and Ego Trip founder Sacha Jenkins — was the publisher of the now defunct Ego Trip magazine, “The Arrogant Voice of Musical Truth,” which launched in 1994 and folded after the publication of its fourth anniversary / farewell issue in 1998. Since the magazine’s closure, the Ego Trip crew has released two books, Ego Trip’s Book of Rap Lists and Ego Trip’s Big Book of Racism, and produced the VH1 programs, Ego Trip’s The (White) Raper Show and Ego Trips Miss Rap Supreme.

Anyway, Bawno mentioned on Twitter not long ago that he was planning to bring back the print edition of Ego Trip, which would be dope. In addition to a unique and intelligently irreverent editorial voice, the magazine always boasted really interesting and artistic yet functional design, right down to the house ads. And they were damn good house ads — simple, eye catching, culturally relevant, whip smart.

Unlike most magazines’ house ads, which are basically just boring subscription pitches featuring a couple of past magazine covers, a rate discount and (maybe) some slick or catchy marketing copy, Ego Trip’s were brand defining without actually making a sales pitch, and were more impactful than just about any house ad campaign I’ve seen since. What these house ads lacked in directly measurable ROI potential (no call-to-action message tied to user revenue), they more than made up for in memorable brand recognition. I’m not going to remember a subscription pitch I get from, say, Maxim — just another generic sweaty hot chick in a biki, offering me 70% off the regular newsstand rate of a magazine I couldn’t care less about — but I sure as hell remember most of Ego Trip’s house ads, 11 years after the magazine folded (the one featuring the image of Reggie Jackson walking off the field for the last time, tipping his cap to the crowd, under the caption “Bow down to a player that’s greater than you.” has always been my favorite).

The last issue of Ego Trip (cover above) was full of house ads, and reading of Bawno’s intention to reanimate the magazine got me thinking about them, so I dug that issue out of my own little magazine archive and did some scanning. The ads themselves are a bit grainy (note the difference in resolution quality of the copy over the images) and my scanner is a few years old, and not of the highest quality, so…it is what it is. With the exception of the “The ghetto’s trying to kill us.” and “We get lifted.” ads, these are all full-page or two-page ads. They’re all pretty brilliant…

(Note the prophetic statement under the space walking monkey: “Publishing is Dead.” This was ‘98, these guys were way ahead of the game.)

*The Ego Trip cover and all the house ads from that issue that appear here are the property of Ego Trip. I scanned and posted them simply to illustrate the blog entry, and because I really like them, and I’ll happily remove these images if Ted Bawno and/or Sacha Jenkins asks me to.

I had started writing this piece as a longer post about the uncanny lyrical prowess and MC skills of deceased Harlem, NY rapper Big L, but fuck it, I think this movie preview speaks for itself. If you’re a fan of rap music, or even remotely interested, you should damn well know about Big L already, and you should be as stoked as I am to check out this long-overdue documentary about one of the greatest MCs who never blew up…

I’m a fan of mixed martial arts. I watch most of the pay-per-view events, I know a fair amount about the sport, I even dabbled a little in training for a very brief (almost inconsequential) time when I was younger and working as a bouncer. And yet, despite my interest, I’ve never owned a single Tapout, Affliction, UFC or other fight culture branded piece of clothing, and I’ve never closely followed the UFC reality show, The Ultimate Fighter. This month, however, marks the start of the show’s 10th season, and I’ll definitely be adding it to my DVR queue. (I will not, however, begin purchasing fight-branded clothing.)

The rivalry between Season 10 coaches Quinton “Rampage” Jackson and Rashad Evans is enough to pique my interest. Both guys are extremely skilled fighters, and the camera loves both of them, Rampage because he’s charismatic as hell and a more than just a bit looney; and Rashad because he’s just as charismatic, and has that good-lookin’ clean-and-mean vibe about him. Plus, they’re both good shit talkers and they seem to genuinely dislike each other.

This season’s teams consist entirely of heavyweights — there hasn’t been a heavyweight division on the show since Season 2, and this is the first time show has focused on a single class — and the field looks pretty fierce. Among them are four retired NFL players (including All-American college player and first round NFL draft pick Marcus Jones), former IFL champion Roy Nelson, and a bunch of other big ass, badass dudes, including street fighting legend and former Elite XC champ Kimbo Slice.

I’m not big on the “reality show” drama surrounding all this stuff (which could explain why I’ve only casually kept up on previous seasons), I prefer to just watch the fights, but I think this season will be the most worth-while to-date. The show starts September 16, on Spike TV. Check this out…

Meet The Heavyweights

I’ve mentioned this in passing, but have offered no details…until now.

Ovipositor is going on tour September 30 through October 4, winding our way up through Northern California to the upper end of Washington State and back. We’ll be traveling and playing with our friends, and damn fine fellow Oakland band, Generalissimo, and we’re really excited to hit the road.

Here are the dates as they currently stand, so here ya go…

September 30th-Oct 4th: Goin’ north with Generalissimo:

• - 9/30: Chico @ LaSalles w/ Ana Lucia and Cold Blue Mountain.
• - 10/01: Portland @ Kelly’s Olympian w/ Cougars.
• - 10/02: Bellingham @ Jinx Art Space w/ Police Teeth.
• - 10/03: Seattle @ Slim’s Last Chance Chili Shack w/ Police Teeth & The DTs.

This is, of course, in addition to our upcoming show at the Hemlock Tavern in San Francisco, with Generalissimo and Cartographer.

We’d love to see you when we land in your town. So come out and buy us some beers, we’ll do our best to repay you in rock goodness.

Ovipositor, “Oakland Man,” Oakland Minor

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“Keeping in touch with the things that help us feel alive – music, books, movies, even the theatre, if, mysteriously, you are that way inclined – becomes a battle, and one that many of us lose, as we get older; I don’t think enough of our cultural pundits, people who write about that stuff for a living, fully understand this. It’s one thing to have an opinion on Little Boots remixes if you earn your living hanging about in cyberspace; quite another if you’re a full-time teacher with three kids.”

— Nick Hornby, author, writing for the Guardian UK.