gremmie.net

Many of you already know where the term “Gremmie” comes from. While those on the West Coast and others in Australia argue that it’s a deragatory term describing an amateurish, showy sufer - the roots of the word Gremmie actually come from a cover song Pearl Jam released on a benefit album M.O.M. (Music for our Mother Ocean) entitled “Gremmie Out of Control”; originally penned by a rockabilly surf band ‘the Silly Surfers‘. While the resemblance between the word ‘Gremmie’ and the band ‘the Silly Surfers’ may be too strong for some to ignore - ignore it. Goof and myself simply ripped the word out of its conspicuous context and left some of the dangling connotations attached for good measure.

Pearl Jam, in collaboration with Ames Bros. developed a t-shirt design and printed it as a ‘Ten Club issue only’ circa 1994. Below is a picture of some random guy wearing one.

Now gremmies, I have been scouring the internet for years searching for this shirt since a)Gremmie as a band became HUGE and b)I finally am making serious money where I could offer someone an upwards of $100 for it, and finally c) I am a Gremmie.

So, if you know someone who owns this shirt in ANY size, e-mail me and let me know. As an aside I will point out that I have twice used this elusive dishtowel of a graphic-tee as matrimonial bait.

On an unrelated note, the media section is fully functional finally and that alliteration aside, it will be updated more in the coming weeks. In addition, the Mike Doughty section of gremmie.net, or as I call it, gremmie.doughty has been revamped (that’s a fun word isn’t it? revamped. makes me think of vampires touching live wires). The new lyrics section is also up and running.

What a handsome couple. To my brother gremmie.

While the band Gremmie is still very much alive in hearts and minds of gremmies everywhere, the onset of adulthood and geographical preference (country mouse/city mouse syndrome or as I call it: CM/CMS) has grinded the progress of Gremmie to a screeching halt. The kind of screeching you hear on the Uptown R everytime it pulls into a new subway station. Sometimes I think bashees have migrated from Ireland to the NY subway system. Anyway, through an organization called Off Wall St Jam I have managed to disease my way into three different bands to continue the spread of Gremmiedom.

The first band is a Mike Doughty cover band called Shoebucket whose name is derived from a story Mike Doughty told during one of his shows in 2001 about, yup, you guessed it - a bucket of shoes. The second band, called Something Else, (they can’t all have killer names) is a top 40 rock n’ roll cover band whose interests include Soul Coughing, Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews, STP, you know the song and dance. The third band, whose name is still being kicked around though is - though currently leaning towards the moniker “Green $ Disease” because all of us work in Finance - is a Pearl Jam cover band. There will be shows starting in late July though I have no hard dates available as of yet. Once the shows are booked, you gremmies will be the first to know.

On a side note, I finished reading Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk. The Onion had this to say “Palahniuk’s writing style has matured; it’s not as raw as it was in Fight Club, which may disappoint some of his fans, but it’s also not as chaotic and choppy as it’s been in the books since. He’s started to write in paragraphs instead of catchphrases, and sentences instead of punch lines, and the result is a book that flows as smoothly as the putative lullaby of its title. Palahniuk’s theoretical description of a culling-song-shaped future society—in which any and all noise is anathema—contains some of the most evocative writing he’s ever done. For the first time since Fight Club, he’s not only telling a highly entertaining story, but also shaping a riveting world where the incipient breakdown of society is equal parts insurmountable horror and blessed relief.” Pick it up if you are in the market for a quick, satisfying read. Me, I’m going to Borders on Broadway to pick up a copy of Choke this afternoon.

I believe the following images quite sum up the fun I had this past weekend while camping.

Follow this link to the photo album for the Emerald Lake campgrounds. More pictures to follow.

The last rendition of a Gremmie Newsletter dates all the way back to the fall of 2003. For those old gremmies reading this, you might also remember the more frequent and capricious Gremmie Newsletters pre-2001; they were chock full of wry humor and pointed comments that cut through their subjects like a hot knife through your mother. Originally devised as a vehicle for informing fans of our tour dates in Albany, the Newsletter has matured along with its founding members, Matt A and Matt M. Or so we’d have you think.

The appropriate thing would be for us to bring all those living in blissful Gremmiedom up to speed with a brief but lucid recap of the previous 1 1/2 years. But, seeing as Gremmie has not once ever done the appropriate thing, we’re not about to start now. If you want to know about 2004 you’ll just have to wait for “Gremmie: Making Ourselves Cry in 2004, an Autobiography” to be released some time in the next deacade. Wait for it. We’ll sign it for you. And we don’t write with pencils. That crafty piece of dodgery somehow brings us right up to the summer of 05. Or as us Gremmie’s like to call it - “the summer of 05″.

City slicker Matt M lives in Manhattan now, or as bumpkin Matt A puts it, “them thar big city livin’”. For those who know New York City beyond just Grand Central and Broadway musicals, Matt M lives on the lower west side in Battery Park City in an apartment that’s more like a hockey rink. Except there’s no ice or Mike Searles; it’s just fucking big and has a goalie net in the common room. Actually, there’s no goalie net - I lied. If you’re upset that I lied to you, then you must be new here. Welcome. Matt M works for Bear Stearns now which is not the department store Sterns (thank you Rob Salom), nor is it a place where you raid picnic baskets and maul ugly Canadian tourists, and it is most definitely NOT a department store where you raid picnic baskets and maul ugly Canadian tourists. Bear Stearns is an Investment Bank. You gremmies are probably asking yourselves how an English major, who almost failed accounting had it not been for one Brandon Martin, got a sweet job at an Investment Bank. The answer is simple. It’s a little secret called none of your god damn business. But I will say my lips are chapped.

Forever upholding his duty to bring balance to the Gremmie force, country boy Matt A does not live in Manhattan, nor does he work for an Investment Bank. As a matter of fact, Matt A’s life is pretty much the exact fucking opposite of Matt M’s. Matt A lives in the outskirts of Albany, NY… some 150 miles north of Manhattan, just beyond the stench of subway pee. There he is gainfully employed by two people: The Man, and himself. You see, Matt A works for the state of New York as an I.T. Specialist, specializing in…I.T. If you don’t know what I.T. is, hang up your computer, you’re a go-tard. In addition, Matt A now is the proud owner of a rad software development company. If you didn’t know what I.T. is, you sure as shit won’t know what I’m talking about now. Just know this: it’s cooler than you.

Now, we’ve established that we’re both on the fast path to affluence, so the question in the minds of all the ladies undoubtedly becomes: Are we available? Well, yes and no. No really. Yes AND No. There’s two of us, remember? Silly gremmies.

Matt A is quietly enjoying his last 119 days 23 hours 45 minutes and 36 seconds of the single life. Although he categorically denies that he’s counting. It’s not that he much enjoyed his single life to begin with, and not that any women actually ever enjoyed dating him; but alas, our little Gremmie has found his Gremlynne. Yes, that’s right…Ms. Sarah Budka will be marrying into the Gremmie family on October 8th of this blessed year (apparently no one warned her about what about happens when you do that). Silly Gremlynne. The Best Gremmie will be none other than Matt M; as if that’s a surprise.

Matt M, as it turns out, is not getting married; not that this was ever a question anyway. Oh sure he’ll walk down that white aisle one day, but it won’t be today and it sure as shit won’t be tomorrow. Living in NYC has left Matt M with a bitter taste in his mouth when it comes to the less-fair sex. Girls in NYC are generally shallow, well dressed, and hot as the dickens. Sadly, this doesn’t leave Matt M with too many options since he is hot, well dressed, and NOT shallow. Either way I’m the Best Gremmie at Matt A’s October wedding, that suits me well for now. Oh and Sarah is fantastic. But you knew that already.

For those of you scrolling down through the Newsletter for updated Gremmie tour dates, here you are; we will be playing the Emerald Lake camp grounds on June 18th and 19th. For directions please consult a damn map of Vermont. We’re playing where the small ‘X’ marks the spot. If you happen to follow the large ‘X’ on the map instead and find gobs of buried pirate booty, please take it with you to the aforementioned small ‘X’ and we’ll consider it your entrance fee, Goonies style. For those of you who will be geocaching your way to the show, don’t come - or do and we’ll have Goof strangle you with his chimp-like prehensile feet.

As for the Gremmie song list…
-Won’t You Help Me
-Last Kiss (dual guitars, Pearl Jam)
-The Opposite of Blue
-Poolshark (Sublime)
-Shark
-Saw Red (Sublime)
-SadJ
-Boss DJ
-Hurry Up Your Devil
-Untitled (MFC, Pearl Jam)
-Black Angel
-Tremendous Brunettes (Doughty)
-Patriot
-Throw Your Arms Around Me

As you can see, the Gremmie song list has grown to include some popular covers, new gTunes(tm), and old fan favorites such as SadJ and Opposite of Blue.

Those of you accustomed to the ‘traditional’ acoustic duosity of Gremmie from yesteryear should know that things have changed a tad:

As our liner notes once read:
Matt M: Lyrics, Lead Vocals
Matt A: Guitar, Backup Vocals

They now read:
Matt M: Lyrics, Lead Vocals, Backup Vocals, Guitar
Matt A:

Yes, the Gremmie songlist (g|List(tm))above is a more accurate representation of songs Matt M can now play in their entirety, while Matt A has forgotten how to play a fucking G chord. The fact that every Gremmie song centers around the G, C, and D chords means Matt A is pretty much useless. If Gremmie had a body, Matt A would be its appendix. If Gremmie was a car, Matt A would be its spare tire. If Gremmie was corn, Matt A would be the cob. No one eats the cob, they just shove it up their ass. Get it?

Moving right along, this will be the summer of the Gremmie. Matt M is currently in three separate bands. One a Mike Doughty cover band, another a top40 rock band, and a third and seemingly a no-brainer, a Pearl Jam cover band. As an arbiter of Gremmie activity, he will also be overseeing 10 or so Gremmie cover bands in the New York area, providing insite to their Gremmie-ness. With Matt A’s impending wedding, plans of debauchery are being sped up, and while the strippers had to be rescheduled, it’s fine since they come to Matt M’s house once a week anyway. Matt A plans to work himself silly for the next several months by a) having a day job, b) having a night job, c) owning a company, d) completing several freelance jobs, and e) planning a wedding. He only hopes to live past 2006 in order to reap the rewards of working so damn hard - you know, financial independence, a house, time with his wife and kids, etc. Chances are more likely, though, that Matt M will get discovered in NYC in one of his cover bands, land a solo record deal, and become infinitely wealthy. Just wait until 2007 and ask him who Matt A is. His answer will undoubtedly be “Who?”.

As per tradition, we’ll wrap things up with some Gremmie facts:
1)The number of Gremmie Groupies Matt M has hooked up with: 17 (if you count minors). The number of Gremmie Groupies Matt A has hooked up with: 1. Himself.
2)Matt A drives a 1998 Hyundai Sonata. He ran over a steel ladder in the middle of the highway a few weeks back which took out half his front bumper. If you ask him, he’ll tell you it was an improvement on that ‘foreign piece of shit’.
3)Current figures: Matt M 8″ x 4″, Matt A 3″ x 1″. Nothing ever changes.
4)Matt A is getting married on October 8th 2005 at the Altamont Manor in upstate NY.
5)Matt M is looking…reads: MATT M MASTURBATES, A LOT
6)Matt M is now much better at guitar than Matt A, leaving Matt A useless, except for wiping Matt M’s ass and constructing custom guitar-string thongs for himself.
7)Matt M’s summer intern’s nickame is Top Gun. Why? Because she is carrying BOMBS. DD.
8)Matt A has no intern. And he only drops bombs.
9)Matt M is disease free. Remarkable isn’t it?
10)Matt A is now finally disease free after sharing an apartment with Matt M 4 years ago.
11)Matt M’s famous brown locks are envied by hair stylists and gay men everywhere. Matt A’s hairdo is best described as ‘only sideburns’.
12)Matt M still has his notorious ‘ghetto booty’, only now, after a serious Nair(tm)-ing accident, you touching it causes severe ass pain.
13)Matt A had a dream that Matt M made him late for his own wedding. This will most likely happen.
14)Matt A and Sarah got a tiger cat and named her ‘Nala’. That’s the name of the lion king’s mother. Why he named a tiger cat after a lion is anybody’s guess… perhaps he’s just retarded.
15)Matt A and Sarah are a few clowns short of a circus, who names a fucking tiger cat after a lion anyway?
16)Sarah is going to be a Mrs. Gremmie. It’s official. Plus she has - in the words of Monty Python - “huge tracks of land”.
17)Matt A and Matt M are currently looking for a tattoo parlor in NYC to cement their love of all things Gremmie in the form of the word ‘Gremmie” - how clever.
18)As he writes this, Matt M is drinking a Stewart’s Key Lime soda and wondering if he lubes up the rim he can stick his g|Cock in it.
19)Matt M is gay for drinking Key Lime soda.
20)Matt A longs to be a ballerina dancer; this Techonology stuff is all a front for his dream production of “Gremmie: Ballet Dancing in Cocoa Butter”
20)There’s nothing worse than a gremmie outta control.

That’s all for now gremmies.

The New York City subway system in the summer time is akin to a bayou. The sweltering stick of rotten moist and disposition of a half million irritable sons of bitches is beginning to make the Catholic’s idea of Hell much more inviting. It’s remarkable how often our peers complain about how cold it is during the frozen winter, begging for a summer respite; but when summer arrives in its infernal muggy ball of second skin t-shirts and lobster sunburns no one can wait until it finally cools down again. Here’s to being born in the fall.

Anyway, I saw Elijah Wood on the subway this morning. Only it wasn’t Elijah Wood. I know this because the person I saw was a girl. For those gremmies who would debate Elijah Wood’s gender, I’m going to rely on the fact that he did play Frodo in Lord of the Rings. And while you may retort with ‘It takes a girly girl to play a Hobbit’, what with Pippin and Merry being played by 2 Irish gals, I would promptly remind you that Samwise Gamgee was played Sean Astin; you know, Mikey from the Goonies, and Rudy from - well - Rudy. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that Elijah Wood as a girl is really hot.

This morning on the subway I was listening to a set of Soul Coughing tunes on my iPod when the song ‘White Girl’ began playing. Towards the end of the song and coincidentally as we’re pulling into the Union Square station, Mike Doughty sings the phrase “White…Girl!!” over and over again. The subway doors swing open and peering out I notice a blonde wound-too-tight crossing over from the recently arrived Uptown 6 local over to the Uptown 5 express train I am in. She moved like a stick arcanely granted the ability to walk. Maladroit and less than buttery, my iPod shouted “White…Girl!!” over and over again as she strode through the closing doors of my Uptown 5 and sauntered over to the open spot beside me. Standing there dressed the part of urbanite business-woman, left sleeve in Calvin Klein right sleeve in shark skin, the soundtrack continues, “White…Girl!!” The correlation couldn’t have been more conspicuous short of my yelling the lyrics into this poor white girl’s ear.

I wonder if she was aware of her part in my morning music video.