Ten For Tuesday Episode 203: Marbled Army Youths

Listen here.

Gang Of Youths - The Angel Of 8th Ave

Peter Murphy - Cuts You Up

New Model Army - Winter

The Slackers & Papa B - The Love I Bring

Supercar - Lucky

Defiance, Ohio - Call It A Comeback

Marbled Eye - Laughing Sound

Lucie, Too - Maboroshi No Koibito

Grant Hart - Glorious

La Oreja de Van Gogh -  Soledad

Email: tenfortuesday@gmail.com  Twitter & Instagram: @notmovingpics

Blog: www.notmovingpictures.blogspot.com

Older episodes can be found at www.archive.org. Just search for Ten For Tuesday.

Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.

Ten For Tuesday Episode 159: Screaming Velocity Sports

Agent Orange - Everything Turns Grey
The Ramones - Do You Wanna Dance
Screaming Females - Glass House
The Reverbs - Picture An Eye
The Clash - Guns Of Brixton
Defiance, Ohio - The White Shore
Velocity Girl - Why Should I Be Nice To You
Black Flag - Wound Up
Bad Sports - Open That Door
The Guiding Wave - With The Birds

Email: notmovingpictures@gmail.com  Twitter: @notmovingpics
Blog: www.notmovingpictures.blogspot.com

Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.

notmovingpictures Episode 075: Mini Vacation

If my voice sounds a bit off it's because I'm fighting a cold that was contracted during my trip home to see my family. That's what this episode is about, going back to a familiar place to spend an all too little amount of time with family. That concept seems to be getting more important to me the older that I get.



Opening music: Alloy - Live To See The Day
Closing music: Crocodile Shop - April Reigns

Email: notmovingpictures@gmail.com  Twitter: @notmovingpics
Blog: www.notmovingpictures.blogspot.com

Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.

I Stood Waiting

I stood waiting in front of the barracks building that housed me and my classmates at Fort Benjamin Harrison. My uncle had told me to be there at a certain time and my cousin would pick me up to bring me to their house for a home cooked meal. If you’ve ever been sent to military training and been away from home you know just how big a deal that is. Of course I bragged to my classmates as I daydreamed about what wonderful food I would be served. They were jealous but in a good natured way. Glad for me but wishing it was them. Just the idea of being around people who had nothing to do with the Army had us all excited. It seemed it was a fortuitous thing to have been assigned here after all.

My uncle, aunt and cousin and I weren’t exactly close, mainly because of the distance between our homes. They lived in Indianapolis, Indiana while I lived in tiny, little Ironton, Ohio. Growing up, if we saw each other more than twice a year it was out of the ordinary. The times we saw each other my cousin and I always did hang out with each other though. Regardless, we were family and they had offered to feed me and let me get away from the post for a few hours. The thought of it all brimmed with the excited aura of what seemed like normal life from before I had joined the military and was engulfed into their way of doing things. So still, I stood waiting in front of the barracks.

After a time doubts began to slip into my brain, after all, my cousin should have been here by now. To counter those thoughts I came up with possible reasons for the delay. Perhaps traffic was excessively bad or maybe he had to work late. Maybe they really didn’t want to see me. Wait, no, I couldn’t think like that. He was now more than an half an hour overdue so I went inside and tried to call their house to see if the plans had changed. There was no answer. I walked back outside as my anxiety level slowly ratcheted higher and higher. Time went by. After more than an hour had passed since the original agreed upon time, once again I went inside to attempt to call them. Once again, no answer. I walked back outside where I stood waiting.

What a sad, pitiful sight I must have been. This lonely scarecrow waiting and waiting as his faith in family slowed slipped away. More than two hours had passed before I finally gave up my last shred of hope and dignity and I slowly shuffled back inside. I tried calling one more time. The result was the same, no answer. My classmates were asking why I hadn’t gone and all I could do was hang my head and mumble “I don’t know.” The rest of the day I spent by myself, withdrawn and disappointed. No longer standing out front waiting but waiting inside my head. That’s the day I learned that the idea of extended family was overrated and not to be trusted. I never did call them again for the rest of my time in training at Fort Ben Harrison. As a matter of fact I never spoke with them even at the funerals that came later. I guess I gave up waiting.

Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.

Ten For Tuesday Episode 072: Frustration Part Deux

And I thought last week was frustrating. I've recorded and deleted parts of this episode more than four times. Everything looks fine individually but when I out it all together suddenly files change from stereo to mono. It makes absolutely zero sense. Of course after making the last change I had to re-record all of my audio and edit it and.........well you get the point. It's enough to make me wish I could afford to buy some good software and take a class on how to use it. But I can't so I end up trudging forward with what I've got. Frustrating? Immensely, at times. Ah well, I keep telling myself that it's worth it because I enjoy doing it (overall) and perhaps the handful of listeners think so too. Enough bitching, here's the music even though it's a day late:

Radioactivity - Other Life
Generacion Suicida - Estoy Sangrando
Toxic Reasons - War Hero
Jason And The Scorchers - Last Time Around
Lone Justice - I Found Love
The Long Ryders - I Want You Bad
Wednesday Week - Why
Parasitic Twins - It's Shoved (Melvins Cover)
Defiance, Ohio - The Calling
Belgrado - Those Times

Ten For Tuesday is a podcast dedicated to playing the music I couldn't find anywhere else. The music I like varies from style to style, genre to genre and era to era. You will hear punk, ska, rock, Americana, metal, country, rockabilly and more from all over the world. It doesn't matter if it's a major label or indie as long as I like it then it gets played. The motto is Less Talk More Music which means you won't hear me waxing poetic for fifteen minutes between songs. At TFT its all about the music...and me of course.

Email: tenfortuesday@gmail.com Twitter:@notmovingpics
Blog: www.notmovingpictures.blogspot.com

Old Episodes can be found by going to www.archive.org and searching for Ten For Tuesday

Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.

Would You Like To Play A Game?

When I was a kid my mother, sister and I used to frequently visit my aunt who lived out in the country in the southeastern part of Ohio. She had four kids. Nick was the oldest followed by Larry, Mary Liz and Bernard. My older sister Teresa and Mary Liz were close to the same age and so were Bernard and I. My sister Karen was the youngest.

When you get that many kids together it's inevitable that they will want to play games and were  no different than most. For a time it was friendly games like hide and go seek. After we grew out of that the game we wanted to play the most was called Hotbelt. I have no idea where the idea for this game came from or why we wanted to play it as badly as we did. I mean we would literally beg our parents to let us play and even though they didn't think it was a good idea eventually they would give in against their better wishes.

So just what does a session of Hotbelt consist of you may well ask yourself? There was a very large tree in the front yard that was the "base." As long as you were touching it you were safe. A belt was hidden in somewhere in the area, it could be behind the house, to the side of it but never too far off. The idea was that you could either look for it or find a place to hide. Once it was found you would have to make your way to the base. Sounds pretty simple right? Except of course that's not everything, there's one more piece of the puzzle left to talk about.

The person who found the belt would then try and catch the rest of the kids as they (usually) would run to the base. As they chased them they would whip them in the buttocks area with the belt. Seriously. This is the game we would beg to play. I don't think I'll ever understand what was wrong with us mentally but we always wanted to play it no matter how afraid we were (and I was quite afraid) of being whipped. My skinny butt got whipped quite a few times. Maybe that was when I first got an inkling of the value of being quiet and sneaky.

After everybody had made it back to the base the "whipper" would then go hide the belt and we'd do it all over again. We would play this game for hours. For some reason Nick and Larry always seemed to be the ones who found the belt. In fact I can't remember a single time that I myself ever found it. There was a reason for that if you can see where this is heading. It wasn't until many years later and we were all older that I found out that Nick and Larry were cheating. They would tell each other where the belt was hidden with the understanding that neither one of them would use it on the other.

With hindsight in now seemed so clear. Perhaps we were blinded by the stupidity of youth. After all, it was simple to reason that they were older, bigger and faster than the rest of us. I myself was short and skinny, two things that you cannot say about me today. Why wouldn't they always win against the rest of us? I tend to chalk it up to being naive. At that age you don't realize that people cheat, they don't always tell the truth or try to follow the rules. Sometimes they'll do whatever it takes to win. Sometimes they'll do things just to be mean just because they can.

Personally I'm kind of glad that I was so clueless, that it took more time for me to learn those lessons, some of which in just a few short years were drilled into my head in a rather cruel manner. Then the reasons for that treatment would be for where I lived, my lack of stylish or cool clothes or how I looked. Kids can be quite cruel when given ample opportunities. I don't think my cousins put a lot of thought into what they were doing, it was probably just funny to them and they didn't mean any serious harm.

No, I am glad I was able to hang on to my naivete,, to stay innocent and stave of the realities of the world just a little bit longer. The harsh knowledge of real life would come knocking altogether too soon. That's just the way it was and honestly it's part of what made me who I am today. Not every memory or story can have a happy ending after all and we aren't owed anything. It's what we do with it and what we learn that ends up being most important. Life is life.

Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.

Father And Son Comic Book Day

My son turns seven at the end of the month so I thought it was about time to introduce him to the time honored tradition known as the comic book shop. He loves to read (takes after me) and he loves superhero movies like The Avengers and Spiderman so it seemed like a foregone conclusion that I should help to facilitate the connection for him. So off we went to The Comic Empire located here in Tulsa. We found a few cheap Marvel ones and a Sonic The Hedgehog and another whose name escapes me at the moment. We were just looking for something to get him started. I got The Walking Dead volume 19 as well as a few Judge Dredd issues from the 80s.

Truthfully I am out of my depth with comics. I read them a lot when I was a kid but that was a long time ago. A really long time ago. In the last five years or so I have gone to the library and read The Walking Dead volumes 1-18 and whatever they have by Kevin Smith. Tulsa County has a really good library system. I'll have to take my time getting back into this because I need to educate myself. Collecting comics isn't really something I'm interested in doing. I only want to acquire stuff that I'll  to read multiple times, basically I'll just like I do with books.

I did also have an ulterior motive to going to the comic book store. I've had a story idea running around in my head for a while now and at first I thought of writing it as a movie script but lately I've been entertaining the idea of making it a comic book. Problem is, I don't know any artists that have experience and/or interest in doing something like this. I had a good conversation with the owner of the store and found out from him that while there seems to be a lot of writers in this area there is also a dearth of artists. Still, I think it's a good idea and I'm going to try and see where it can take me. At the very least I can gain some knowledge about the whole process. Maybe the next time I get to go to Peru I can find some artists there because that's where this story will take place.

Afterwards we ended up going to the movie theater to see what was showing. As it turns out Captain America: The Winter Soldier just came out yesterday so we ended up spending way too much money to see it in 3D. I will say however that the seats at the AMC theater were pretty awesome even though we were in the front row. Basically it's rows of recliners attached to each other so it's like watching the movie with the comforts of home (and a lot more people). We had a pretty good time to say the least. Then it was off to get something to eat where my son could play and I could use free wi-fi to write this. All in all it was a pretty good time for a father/son hang out day. Every time we have one I try to do something different, the last time was laser tag and with summer coming I foresee more outdoor types of things.

However I also get the idea that going to the comic book store will be something that we'll be sharing fairly regularly. Some of my fondest memories from childhood were walking from the 9th street projects in Ironton, Ohio to the downtown bookstore where I could buy and trade comics. It was a more innocent (some might say ignorant) period in my life. Those days can never come back but I can take every opportunity to make this time in my sons life as good as it can get. Making these trips to the hallowed ground of the local comic book store is one of the best ways to do that that I can think of. Who knows, maybe later in the summer I'll also actually be able to make the pilgrimage to Jay and Silent Bob's Secret Stash in Red Bank, NJ. A boy can dream can't he?

Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.

The Art Of Cowardly Fighting

Recently while in Sunday School I had a memory of a kid I knew when I was young. It's been over twenty-five years since I've seen him and as a result I no longer remember his name. For the sake of the story let's just call him Greg. Greg didn't live in my apartment building but did live on the same block as me in the projects. We were friendly off and on over a period of a few years but not exactly friends if that makes sense. As a matter of fact, the last memory I have of him was a fight between me and his younger brother and subsequently me and him but that's another story entirely.

On this particular day when we were about ten years old during a period of friendship we happened to be standing outside on the block talking. Greg had this bad habit of running his mouth to other people but unfortunately for him he had absolutely no ability to defend himself. For whatever reason there was he would start calling another kid names, saying bad things about his family and what he would do to the kid. Since he couldn't back any of his smack talk up whenever it came to physical violence (which with boys at that age it invariably will do) Greg usually wound up taking a beating. I recall on one occasion a boy we'll call Mike (can't remember his name either) came running up to Greg and started punching him out of the blue. It seems Greg had been mouthy with Mike in school where Mike couldn't do anything about it but now out in the open he had found his opportunity for revenge.

Greg immediately dropped into a fetal position and covered up as best he could while Mike pounded away on him. Eventually Mike tired of this and figuring that his need for revenge was sated he stopped pummeling Greg and told him he'd gotten what he deserved. Mike let him up and told him in great detail what he would do to him the next time he dared to talk to him the way he had before. Greg kept his head down and started to walk away sniffling but when he had gone about thirty to forty feet he started a vicious, nasty, verbal assault on Mike the likes of which I had never heard before. Greg took off running with Mike in hot pursuit but he only got a short distance before Mike caught him and the whole scene repeated itself.

Once more Mike let Greg up and once more he walked away before starting another verbal assault. Mike chased him down again and bashed him as best he could, given Greg's fetal position. This scene repeated itself several more times before Greg finally made it to the safety of his home (or Mike just tired of using him as a human punching bag) whichever came first. Greg had suffered a very public beating but had never stopped running his mouth once he had gained some sort of relative safety. Mike had shown that he could dominate Greg but could not stop him from running his mouth, no matter how many times he beat him down. It's hard to say whose will was more indomitable.

What's could all of this possibly have to do with Church you say? Our lesson was about a leader who refused to make an oath that he would war no more even though he and his men were trapped and could not win. They faced complete destruction and still he would not give in. Greg was very much like that leader. He put himself in a bad situation of his own making and talked about what he would do but ultimately would not fight back and defend himself. Behind his verbal smokescreen he was a coward and could not face his own demons. Not once did he stand up for himself, not once did he attempt to throw a single punch. Instead he chose to transfer those demons to others in what I can only surmise was an effort to deflect the pain he felt inside. As a result he ended up having pain on the outside fighting a war he could never win.

Greg could not bring himself to capitulate nor could he learn from his mistakes. At the very least he should have realized that the smart thing to do was get a little more distance between Mike and himself before opening his mouth again, but he could not even do that. I don't know if it was pride, stupidity or good old fashioned craziness which drove him. At the time I didn't know whether I should admire or pity him and even now I still can't say for sure how I feel. His behavior puzzled me then as it does now. If you won't defend yourself then perhaps it's better to just keep your mouth shut. If he never learned from his mistakes and dealt with those demons he might still be stuck in the same revolving door pattern he developed all those years ago. For his sake I really hope that's not the case. It would be rather sad at his age to still be living a life as a cowardly fighter.

Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.

Mom Comes For A Birthday Visit

Earlier this week my mother left to return to her home in Ohio after spending a week with us. She came in for my four year old son’s birthday which was the first time for her to do so. The last time she saw him was almost two years ago. All the other grandkids grew up in the same area and indeed still live there today but I’ve always been the one in the family to roam and unfortunately that means we live quite a bit of distance from each other. It was good to see her but I knew that the week was all about her and my son spending time together, that was the most important thing and they both loved the time they had. To be certain all of us need to make a better effort at seeing each other more often and the past week showed us how important it is for my son Johnny.

He needs to see his relatives as often as possible so I’m already thinking about trying to fly back home later in the year, at least for a week or so if I can. After that we need to find a way to save the money it will cost for us to go back to Peru and visit my wife’s family there. To make that happen costs quite a bit of money and I’ve been racking my brain trying to come up with a way to procure the funds but so far nothing has come to fruition, especially since I don’t foresee a future for myself as a bank robber or thief. Too much bad karma there if you ask me.

So instead I try and call once a week and I’d like to get everyone on Skype so that we could all do a video conference and at least see each other as well but it’s like pulling teeth to get anyone to listen to me. I mean it’s free as long as you’ve got an internet connection. Doesn’t get much better than that does it? I’m not really a phone person and I’ve never been one to call very much. When I was single I would call maybe once a month or so if they were lucky, okay really my family usually would call me and I rarely was the one to call. Gotta be honest with myself since it is my blog.

As we get older it becomes clearer to me how much more important it is to talk about things now because honestly we don’t know how much time we have left in this world. Personally I don’t want to leave something to chance on the hopes that I can always talk about it later. In the past my motto was why talk about something today when I can put it off until tomorrow but that just doesn’t cut it anymore. All it took was having a kid for me to realize that.


Published by Don Leach

Yearbook Day Was The Worst Time Of The Year

A few days ago as I had finished my shower and was drying off (I know it's a scary thought) and I started thinking about how one of the worst times for me back when I was in high school was at the end of the year when the yearbooks came out. Now I don't recall how I got to that unusual point because normally I'll just have a thought that reminds me of something and that leads to a similar thought and the next thing you know I'm miles away from where I started out and I'm thinking about something bizarre. Like on this day.

The day that Yearbooks (or rather Annuals in some places) were given out was quite stressful to me. Frankly put I was horrified about the thought of going around the school asking a load of people that didn't really know or like me to sign my book. Then there was the unlikely scenario that people would ask me to do likewise. I've mentioned on this blog before that I had absolutely zero self confidence in myself and really believed that there was nothing about me for people to like. I was too different, too far from "normal" for the vast majority of my classmates to understand. Plus, I had moved around and attended three different schools in a year and a half's time so that made it especially hard for me to have had a chance to make friends or even acquaintances.

I considered myself extremely lucky to have one good friend, one or two somewhat friends and then perhaps a few other people who knew me by name. That was a best case scenario. So there I would be, sweating over who I would ask to sign my yearbook. It was easier to know who I wouldn't ask. Anybody popular or a high level athlete or a cheerleader was out. They weren't even in consideration because the thought of one of them deigning to sign my yearbook was ludicrous. Then there were the students who weren't quite at that level, who hung around the popular kids in the hopes that they might be thought of as cool by association. Out. The students who thought I was in a different grade? Out. Foreign exchange students? Maybe, if they didn't have a full grasp on the English language although usually they did.

For the most part that left the usual suspects of the losers, geeks, nerds and other forgotten loners that just didn't fit in. Unfortunately it didn't include the sluts although years later you normally found out that they really were more chaste than any other girl in school. Damn those high schools boys and their rumors! Well, from that group I would choose the the ones that didn't terrify or frighten me too much and chance a request for their autographs. I was happy if I got signatures on the front and back pages. I thought that at least that way it would look better years later to anyone going through my yearbooks. They might actually think that I was somewhat well known and popular.

Now those yearbooks sit in a box at the bottom of a closet and are rarely brought out and looked at and I could care less who did or did not sign them. They're just a reminder of days long gone past that time has shown weren't really all that important at all. My "permanent record" didn't follow me nor did 99% of those that purported to like or dislike me. That's the way it is for almost everyone I'm sure, we were just too young and stupid to realize it.

Published by Don Leach

12 Inch Singles # 2 AND Night Tracks or Night Flight?

I can tell that I'm getting old. Earlier I was thinking about a certain video from the early 80s and how I remembered watching it on a particular channel before I had ever laid eyes on MTV. Somehow I remembered that it was on the WTBS show Night Tracks around my sophomore year in high school however as I decided to do some fact checking before posting (a rare thing) and I found that it cannot have happened that way. The above mentioned show didn't air until 1989 which was about 7 years too late. I knew I had seen this video (and many others) on a show that aired on Fridays and Saturdays in the evenings but couldn't figure out what it was. At first top 40 or top 40 aspiring mainstream videos would be shown and as it got later in the evening you would see edgier, more alternative videos from artists like Devo, Iggy Pop and so forth. This was my favorite time to watch. Forget all of the mainstream garbage that was being pushed my way, no I went in for the different, unique and well, just downright odd groups. You have to know, I lived in a small town (pop. roughly 12,000) named Ironton in southeastern Ohio and wasn't near a larger city where you could get exposed to different kinds of music. I graduated high school in 1983 (in a different state) but attended my 20th high school reunion in Ironton and most of the people wanted to listen to disco so that should be all the explanation you need about what living in that place was like. Still, it was better than the town that I ended up graduating from.

At any rate the band I was thinking about was The English Beat and the video was for the song "Save It For Later." It was so immensely different than the music on local radio or what I heard anybody else listening to that it made a distinct impression on me and to this day it stills brings a smile to my face when I hear it.



Now after doing some actual research I think the show was actually Night Flight on the USA network and since the name is so similar I'm sure you can understand my confusion. It started in 1982 (my sophomore year) a few months before MTV aired and from all accounts it seems like it should be the one. Of course I also used to hear groups on the tv show Fridays which got called a rip off of Saturday Night Live but it didn't matter to me. They featured artists playing in a live setting like The Jim Carroll Band, The Plasmatics, Devo and so on that Saturday Night Live would never touch. Of course, that's another story.