A bi-product of my obsession with Chinese bootlegs and 80's action figures. They are handmade out of resin by me. I made 24 of them. You can get them at the Scumlife Store.

Photos by Lizzy Snaps.

You're probably asking yourself, "Has he lost his mind?", with a price this low.
No, I haven't, well my mind is no more lost than it's ever been.
I just figure I could use to make some extra money, fast, and 11 bucks is a good deal... (it's even better than the friends price).


This sale will go on for an undetermined amount of time maybe a week, maybe two, who knows, so get your credit cards, and get down to the Scumlife store and get yourself some Scumlife at 'off the truck' prices.
_TONE

Mikey Palms, Kennan Juska, and Kray are all very good friends of mine.
-Mikey is the Cus D'Amato of my rap circle.
-Kennan is an ill artist and good guy.
-Kray has been my friend since my teen years, and has also been my rap co-conspirator for the same amount of time.

Together they have a really awesome show on East Village Radio called 'Chances with Wolves'.
You can check them out at www.chanceswithwolves.com, listen to them on East Village Radio or walk by EVR on a Monday between 2-4 pm and wave at them.

(I'd been meaning to post about the show for a minute, so I realize a lot of
you probably already know about it by now, but I figured maybe there
might be a couple people who still don't know about the show. This is
for them. And if you already knew, give yourself a round of applause
for being able to be like, "I already know about this.")

You can view this post in all of it's original glory @ www.scumlife.com

We took the 11:30 from Santa Fe to Albuquerque and hiked up Old Route 66 and we saw:

















You can view this post in all of its original glory @: www.scumlife.com

I've behaved like a 17yr old for most of my adult life. My obsession with music and T-shirts probably started when I was 11 or 12 and have remained with me into my semi-adult life. They have even become a decent part of my livelihood.

I've seen a lot of people that used to be obsessed with cool/creative things become obsessed with way less-fun things such as: serious jobs, serious mortgages, important 401ks, yelling children, and practical wives.

Not me. From a preventative standpoint the only natural thing for me to do was to regress even further back, back past the loud music and offensive t-shirts, even back past girls alllll the wayyyyyy toooo... TOYS.

No, I don't mean cool-guy, limited edition, vinyl, soft-cutesy, Munnys, Dunnys, or any other kind of _unny.
I mean OG toys like Masters of The Universe, Thundercats, M.U.S.C.L.E., Madballs, Battle Beasts and things of that nature.

So this Christmas the gifts I received were the gifts an 8 year old would receive... in the 80's.

So here are a few of the presents my wonderful woman got me for Christmas:

(it is probably in your best interest to already have a woman, if you are considering on embarking on your own ultra-nerd mission into your childhood)

It's interesting to take a look at why we stopped doing certain things that we did as children.
For instance, I stopped collecting He-Man figures because my peers had informed me he-man was corny (I think they actually said he was "gay"), which He-Man himself obviously was (and not in a tough 'it's a power thing' prison sort of way either), but the other characters were all ill!

and I'm going to leave you with this... I think all of these kids went on to become members of Nuk Fam when they grew up... peep the Park Slope-kid haircuts:

You can check it out in real life webpage action!!!

-or-

you could just read this text and imagine how def defying it would be on an actual webpage......

Surf & Spell

I don't really need any excuses to write about a rapper from Brooklyn. Especially one like Tone Tank who's down with the Nuclear Family, a crew who've made multiple appearances in this space. But when that artist makes a record based conceptually around life in Southern California, beaches and surfing (among a few other things) where he raps exclusively over Surf-Rock samples I can't help but be reminded of my own SoCal origins, my childhood (when I thought surfing was super-cool) and my mom, who was known to hit the waves on a board in her own sun-bleached youth. Did I mention that when my housemate heard the title track "King of Surf Guitar Rap" she remarked that "you can do the swim to this" and started dancing around the apartment?

Yes, the record (which is not for kids) is called The King of Surf Guitar Rap. And to be perfectly honest it's not a record at all. It's a free four-track digital EP you can download from Tone's clothing company Scum Life's website for free! Everything else I said about the Surf-Rock samples and the songs about parts of California that don't have anything to do with locs, Raiders caps and "mark ass marks" is accurate though. And you can bet that the atypical themes and locales intrinsic to such a concept put Tone in a position to flip an array of unusual pop-culture references and flex his storytelling muscle. The From Dusk Til Dawn-esque "The Case of the Reptilian Roadhouse," where Tone poses as a pulp superhero facing down a barfull of half-man-half-lizard desert rednecks and biker types, and "Mala!," a MexiCali-flavored story about a phantasmal hitch-hiker with a dark past, are particularly colorful. While "Arthur Brown" stands out for the slurry MF Doom-ish cadence Tone freaks over the speedy track's tom-tom rolls and guitar shrieks. It's an unexpected, and unforeseeably dope, companion piece to his Punk-themed Black Six Sessions EP.

Tone Tank The King of Surf Guitar Rap (Download)

My mother never did get around to teaching me how to surf — although she did make me listen to an unfortunate amount of '60s Surf-Rock when I was a kid — so I guess I'll have to live vicariously through Hip-Hop on that one. And why not? If California gang culture can inspire a whole industry full of fantasy gangsters a few imaginative tales of foaming oceans, territorial locals, desert hallucinations and youth gone wrong spurred by California surf culture can't be a bad thing.

This entry was written by El Keter, posted on September 8, 2008 at 11:07 am

I like this write up:

Tone Tank's free bedroom rap EP

Posted by jeremy k in media, mp3, stuff on Tue May 20, 2008 | Permalink |

EL KETER IS THE MAN, HE HAS SUPPORTED NUK FAM FROM JUMP HERE's what he wrote in his 'MUSIC TO SURVIVE A ROBOT UPRISING TO' on OKAYPLAYER.com:

Oh, and speaking of free stuff, Tone Tank of Blogarhythms favorites Iller Than Theirs and the Nuclear Family is giving away a six-track EP called The Black Six Sessions which is pretty damm boss. It's built around samples from Hardcore Punk records, so it doesn't really fit in with today's robot theme. But it's free. And Tone looks like a pretty tough guy, so if I had to put together a team of mercenaries to fight a robot uprising I'd probably get at him to be a member.

by El Keter



you can also check it out here:
http://blogs.okayplayer.com/blogarhythms/2008/05/21/music-to-survive-a-robot-uprising-to