that's such a great song...
anyway, it's been a long time. sup.
shit's been crazy. that's thing 1.
but there's something else that's been gnawing at me for months.
part of the problem, here at Gunshy Industries is that i hate 99% of the music that's out there right now. a very, very dear friend of mine says that trends don't even matter. and it's true. they're nothing. Bieber is a construct. The Jonas Brothers are a packaged commodity. anyone who really loves music in general should recognize that that's not real music at all. it's a product and a distraction. i've been trying to make my newer lyrics and melodies simpler and more direct, faster and catchier, and thus i myself run the risk of attempting the same trick. someday i want to write a song that's so dumb and catchy that it has no choice but to become an international super-hit. we all do. every one of us. but i probably hate your music, too.
there have been exactly two albums that i have listened to the hell out of at this point. if they were tapes in my car like in high school, i'd have had to buy new copies by now. and even those albums, i made a mix CD for my car with basically the first half of Random Access Memories and the first half of Yeezus combined, with room to spare for Lil Wayne's God Bless Amerika and him & Eminem doing No Love as bookends to the whole CD. true story: i listened to the first six songs of RAM for like 2 months straight, and when Get Lucky became this huge radio hit i didn't even know it was Daft Punk for like 2 weeks. true story! and i was listening to fucking Daft Punk in 1997. by the same token, yeah, i totally should have known it was them. i love those guys. them and the guys from Ween should really get together. or Ween and Yo La Tengo. i've been listening to a lot of The Allman Brothers, a personal favorite. their live shit is incredible.
but back in January-February, i listened to 3 things for 2 months straight for some reason.
1) Frederick Chopin - Piano Sonata #2 - Funeral March
2) Bauhaus - Bela Lugosi's Dead
3) Bruce Springsteen - Nebraska (the entire album)
add in the the rap and disco from the summer, and it's been a pretty fucking crazy year, musically, regardless of everything else. and yes, my musical interests are all over the fucking map. yes. welcome.
another part of the problem here is that i don't have anything to sell. i don't mean the music itself. i have no ass to shake, if you ask me. there's no gimmick, here. and nobody can compete with a girl wearing a meat suit and another riding construction equipment naked. i certainly can't. it's just been about music the whole time, here. i've never even really had any ideas for music videos for my songs, and i went to two semesters of fucking film school. pathetic.
ugh. i hope some of that explains things, and i hope it - and my attitude about it - starts to change. it's not just that i keep trying to write songs, but because i miss music being fun. i miss it like hell. and it's my own fault. it really is. and part of that is that i reversed my whole recording process for the last 6 or 7 songs, and simultaneously removed everything exciting about recording guitar and making the drum patterns for the songs. the results were mixed. and now, i've somewhat paralyzed myself with the backwardness of that process. i hate the staleness in the drums in the newest crop of songs i've published here, and the newer songs i've been working on sound even worse.
so i have to drop a reverse card on my own reverse card.
and just drop a tempo and hit record. somebody just smack me, because yeah it should just be that easy. and it is. but i just kept trying to plod ahead with the drums using guide instruments in FLP that i'll just take out later and have to re-do and yes it sounds ass-backwards. just hit record.
another night.
i hope.
and another night.

Just wanted to drop a line: I'm germinating some new musical ideas... a new kind of sound for some new songs and old favorites... a sound not so overproduced as Hotel NJ and Something for Nothing... not so fuzzy, but not so neat and tidy... like Rolling Stones meets AC/DC... some kinda blues metal pop... a simpler, more straightforward, up-front, direct, and honest approach to recording and production... and to life, as well, i hope ;)

I'm not sure if I'm actually making money off it, but here's 3 of my albums on Amazon.com

Ah, Putin... he wishes he was an immortal giant lizard. He wishes.

Hey, everybody. Keep a lookout... uh, or an ear out. did somebody use Hotel NJ in a YouTube video? Word comes to me that someone did. 10 Cool Points for whoever posts the link. It's cool, I just need to be given credit. Use my music for whatever the fuck you want that's free to share, equal commons, YouTube. Just let me know. That's all I've ever asked. Well, that and if you're making money off of whatever it is, I want some. But on here? Go nuts. You'd be doing me the favor ;)

On YouTube I'm ROSSunleashed so just drop me a line.

oh, ALSO:

Gunshy Army Facebook
Gunshy Army Reverb Nation
Gunshy Army Myspace eeeewwwwww myspace...

And still, the best way to really help me (so far) and help us (make music) to help you (and us) make the world a better place in general is by buying any one of my self-published weird novels in paperback or hardcover from this weird site that never quite took off that USED TO PUBLISH MUSIC, right?

But there's lots of cool stuff there, like my 1st book, which reads exactly like a journal kept by a 17-year-old (the main character) should sound... especially while he's on a mass murdering road trip with his three friends from 6th Period Lunch.

So... yeah. Long live rock and roll and literature! Play it loud. Shit, read it out loud.
Stay weird. Be well.
[+G]

p.s.: I'm reading "Team of Rivals"

GUNSHY ARMY
dystopian new wave grunge rock n' roll
blues + metal + pop = grunge
Nirvana + Pink Floyd + Tool + Beatles = Gunshy Army

Feel free to suggest a new band name.

So... okay. If you like any of the Grunge/Rock songs I've posted here over the years... then this is how you can show me.
First of all, you are HERE... right here, where it all began.
But if you can, you should go HERE - to the Gunshy Army Facebook Page - and click that silly 'Like' button thingy... it's really me behind the curtain!
And if you know ReverbNation, then you should definitely go HERE for some Gunshy Army streaming music and some of the OTHER hottest new artists while you're at it.
But if you still happen to use MySpace, then maybe try out THIS link, but if you don't it might just be fun to see if MySpace still even exists... right? Cuz it does. and they actually made it A LOT more music-centric. So LOTS and LOTS of Gunshy Army songs, in awesome high-quality... seriously. I'm not kidding.

And still, the best way to really help me (so far) and help us (make music) to help you (and us) make the world a better place in general is by buying any one of my self-published weird novels in paperback or hardcover from this weird site that never quite took off that USED TO PUBLISH MUSIC, right?

But there's lots of cool stuff there, like my 1st book, which reads exactly like a journal kept by a 17-year-old (the main character) should sound... especially while he's on a mass murdering road trip with his three friends from 6th Period Lunch.

So... yeah. Long live rock and roll and literature! Play it loud. Shit, read it out loud.
Stay weird. Be well.
[+G]

Hey, I wrote this book, The Autobiography of Jesus X: a novel and it's not what you think.

In a brand new 'With Teeth' Edition - fully-restored - all 584 glorious pages, 6 x 9 paperback, 10pt font. Ships in 3-5 business days. Part sci-fi, part exposé, part memoir, and part stand-up comedy routine, the narrator pretty much frames it as His last message to humanity. So you better listen. Cuz it's not what you think. Unless you think everything is wrong. Imagine if Kurt Vonnegut and Hunter S. Thompson collaborated on a new version of The Bible, and you get the gist. It's just a big fucking joke. With teeth.

The Autobiography of Jesus X: a novel is not for the faint of heart, and is guaranteed to enlighten, incite laughter, and offend indiscriminately. Take political correctness and shove it. Nothing is sacred, and no holds are barred.
When one thinks of Jesus, it's easy to picture a mystical, magic man. But portrayed in detail in Jesus X is the unknown human side: ecstasy and depression, trial and error, success and regret. Here is the boy that J once was, losing his virginity to a witching foreigner; and the man and prophet he became, a cynical dreadlocked pothead. But the narrator is the god he once was, now retired. After this one incarnation as a human, he quit. As God, he had become indifferent. As a tall black Jewish man with deep blue eyes and a red beard in the Roman Empire, he proved to be too smart for his own good. Or maybe just too human.
He was an opium addict, and a drug dealer. He's pro-choice, and pro-gay marriage. After attempting suicide he became a prophet, stopping his own mother's execution - on charges of prostitution. Mother and son celebrated her freedom with sex, and she was healed of her MS. After Jesus dies, his ghost confers with his best friend, Lucifer, about how these disclosures might be received by his believers worldwide. Satan already knows about the book, of course. In the finale, the Holy Ghost tests and tempts his former self, showing the human Jesus some of the futures of his own suicidal legacy. He even places his former self right in the middle of the World Trade Center during the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001. He goes there.

And actually, that's at the end. Oops.

A while ago, I went ahead and also made a Facebook Page for JX (as I call it, ooh) so if you're still giving up our privacy or tending a farm on there, you should subscribe because I really don't do anything on there except post funny pictures that make fun of religious people.

The book costs $20.01 plus shipping. Not bad.

[+RA]

Way back in the day I wrote about how I keep lists of all the projects that I have yet to work on, so I thought I'd finally post a couple of those lists here. (By writing/revealing song/story titles and concepts here, I am thereby, in effect, copyrighting said titles of works for commercial purposes. So there. I'm paranoid like that. One thing that I hope i can start doing by the end of the year is making instrumentals again, for people to use in movies and games. ive focused so closely on song-by-song shit, i had all but forgotten what it was like to just make music with fruityloops instead of planning out every single millisecond of an entire composition. Just making music. I really miss it.)

SONGS (as yet unheard):
Prayerless
Woulda Shoulda Coulda (OR: Secretless)
Finger On It
Don't You (Déjà Vu)
Empty (You Make Me)
Plucky Comic Relief
New Dark Age
Chains Will Come Off
Floodwaters
Big Baby
Quitting Before Saving

(and this isn't counting shit I want to re-record: Waiting To Die, Four Chords, As If, etc.)

COVER SONGS:
Without You (I Can't Live)
Something In The Way
Crimson and Clover
It's So Hard To Fall In Love

STORIES:
(just finishing up) Life Is A Temp Position
(already started) Past Medical History
Expiration Date
Infinity
Quietus
Greet Death
The Chronicle of New Mike
Rogues & Scallywags
Weakness & Confusion
Twin Flames
Testament

...and there's some more in there I'm forgetting, I'm sure. Odds n ends short stories n such that fly under some of those same banners. Like "Twin Flames" is actually that story and "The Lizard's Den" and both exist in the same fantasy-genre universe. Testament is also a whole collection of short stories that are based on real events. Maybe only real events to me. So it is what it is. Semi-autobiographical stories about me growing up in the fictional White Horse City. My street and neighborhood next to the fictional Sanhican River. Some of my college experiences at the fictional and historic White Horse University - two semesters. All of these are gritty, often brutal depictions of the American Northeast Corridor urban experience.

I want to say, thanks for sticking around, everybody. I am.

[+R]

p.s.: i'll probably write some hellaciously dark song next, just because that's where i've been lately. but i have to say that generally speaking, the power-grunge-poppyness as of late will not stop or slow down. it has only grown roots and legs and whatnot, in new songs like "finger on it" and "don't you" and a few others. i have been listening to too much classic rock, rap, and r&b in my life to not be seduced by the power of the fucking beat. i want the music to sound a little more sexy than it should. my hope is that it gives grunge some hips and wings. grunge can swing. so for the cover songs, i'm gonna do what i do, grungify themt. it's all blues/grunge when i'm playing it, anyway. i can't help it. i can't help but but this fucking twang crunch in here and there. it's too fun to play like i try to play. that's why i don't normally cover nirvana songs. they're mostly boring to play, unless you fuck with them somehow. kurdt would, constantly.
p.p.s.: at least two of these stories, "Twin Flames" and 'Rogues,' have to do with NEOs, like DA14 that passed us the other day. This kinda shit? I can't imagine seeing it in person. Horrifyingly awesome. Anyway, in my stories, a giant comet passing the planet, in the case of Twin Moons, and in the second case it's a rogue planet that's on a collision course with Earth. That's R&S, and it should be fun to finish up. Because no, there's nothing they can do. The main character in that one's a master hacktivist in the year 2400. He's contacted by the human-looking aliens living inside the rogue planet, and helps them engineer a worldwide TV takeover to announce the impending collision. So be on the lookout for that in the weeks and months to come; plus, a story about a supervolcano explosion, and probably the songs "Don't You" and the Nirvana cover coming in the next few weeks. I hope. ...I know. Waiting sucks. But I work a lot. And life is what happens when you're busy making other plans. Like these lists. And these songs. Besides, I really have to finish Life Is A Temporary Position first. It's the first in a planned trilogy, so y'know...? I was hoping it would be a short book, and now it's almost 300 pages. Short, for me, but hopefully not TLDR for you. But we're so close to the end, it's almost within reach, and there's so little time left...

Hey, it's me. I feel like I'm emerging, and it may be out of the frying pan and into the fire... or the opposite. Or something else entirely. I want to thank Silver for his kind words of gratitude and encouragement. Also RiotFlash, Sour Cherry, Chickengod, Vojife, and all the rest who've messaged me over the years about how the music i've made helped them thru dark times, rough times, or just helped them breathe a little bit. i've felt like i've been drowning for the past year and a half. but now i feel like my head is just poking up above the water. thanks for for helping me breathe, everybody. thanks for helping to pull me out. there's still a long way... lol to the top.
of rock n' roll.
Stay weird
Be well

[+R]

there was no apocalypse? oh well, i guess i'll have to get my shit together instead.
let 2012 be a lesson, kids. when they say "the world is ending!" it's probably not. unless you see it yourself, like, about to end.
in the meantime:

GUNSHY ARMY
dystopian new wave grunge rock n' roll
blues + metal + pop = grunge
Nirvana + Pink Floyd + Tool + Beatles = Gunshy Army

So... okay. If you like any of the Grunge/Rock songs I've posted here over the years... then this is how you can show me.
First of all, you are HERE... right here, where it all began.
But if you can, you should go HERE - to the Gunshy Army Facebook Page - and click that silly 'Like' button thingy... it's really me behind the curtain!
And if you know ReverbNation, then you should definitely go HERE for some Gunshy Army streaming music and some of the OTHER hottest new artists while you're at it.
But if you still happen to use MySpace, then maybe try out THIS link, but if you don't it might just be fun to see if MySpace still even exists... right? Cuz it does. and they actually made it A LOT more music-centric. So LOTS and LOTS of Gunshy Army songs, in awesome high-quality... seriously. I'm not kidding.

And still, the best way to really help me (so far) and help us (make music) to help you (and us) make the world a better place in general is by buying any one of my self-published weird books in paperback or hardcover from this weird site that USED TO PUBLISH MUSIC, right?

So... yeah. Long live rock. Play it loud. Stay weird. Be well.
[+G]

Also: if you want to read it before everyone else in the world does:

The Autobiography of Jesus X: a novel - it's not what you think. unless you think everything is wrong. then you'll love it. imagine if Hunter S. Thompson and Kurt Vonnegut collaborated on a new version of the Bible, and you get the gist.

GUNSHY ARMY
dystopian new wave grunge rock n' roll
blues + metal + pop = grunge
Nirvana + Pink Floyd + Tool + Beatles = Gunshy Army

So... okay. If you like any of the Grunge/Rock songs I've posted here over the years... then this is how you can show me.
First of all, you are HERE... right here, where it all began.
But if you can, you should go HERE - to the Gunshy Army Facebook Page - and click that silly 'Like' button thingy... it's really me behind the curtain!
And if you know ReverbNation, then you should definitely go HERE for some Gunshy Army streaming music and some of the OTHER hottest new artists while you're at it.
But if you still happen to use MySpace, then maybe try out THIS link, but if you don't it might just be fun to see if MySpace still even exists... right? Cuz it does. and they actually made it A LOT more music-centric. So LOTS and LOTS of Gunshy Army songs, in awesome high-quality... seriously. I'm not kidding.

And still, the best way to really help me (so far) and help us (make music) to help you (and us) make the world a better place in general is by buying any one of my self-published weird books in paperback or hardcover from this weird site that USED TO PUBLISH MUSIC, right?

So... yeah. Long live rock. Play it loud. Stay weird. Be well.
[+G]

i mean.... uh... what's up with you? haven't seen you in a while... everything ok?
i mean... if it's not... i hear ya. it's a mixed bag here. i wish there was something i could do.

it turns out, i am Gunshy. the handle. the man. and i own the Gunshy Army.
We make music, and i write stories.
but Gunshy Army needs a bassist, and probably another guitarist at some point. i would love a keyboardist somewhere int he mix, but we don't have enough room yet. in the practice space nor in the songs themselves... it's me and Roddy making shit happen.
making music. the NG standards, and songs anew... hopefully, shit that moves you, shakes you, and holds you.

and we're making it amidst this backdrop... of the campaigns, the media chatter, the practice, the love, and the fun... and the joy of making music all by itself. don't anyone ever lose hope. love. be loved. let me say goodnight before i make a fucking total fool of myself :P