Emotional Compatibility Quotient

Dear Friends,

  Hard Taco asks... What is Your Emotional Compatibility Quotient? Take our newest quiz to find out!

Question #1: Your significant other insists on paying for dinner every time, even though you make nearly twice as much money. Do you:

a) Let him/her pay. It's not worth the domestic turmoil and besides, that's more money for you to spend on hair care products.

b) Insist on paying at least the tip this time, and refuse to leave the restaurant until you get your way. 

c) Raise one fist in the air, slam a mind-splitting power chord on your guitar, and swing your sweat-drenched hair in circles, grimacing sardonically. 

Question 2: You have a date to have coffee with an old college buddy, but as usual, he's twenty minutes late. 

a) It's no big deal... some people are just more punctual than others. Besides, your cell phone has a great solitaire game. 

b) Say, "Hello, Mr. Show-Up-Whenever!" when he gets there and pout a little bit while he orders his cafe mocha.

c) Go down to the tattoo parlor and get a giant demon-winged death's head tattooed on your chest with a flaming snake coming out of its mouth. The snake will also have a skull head with skeletonized dragon wings and blood dripping off its fangs. It will also have inverted bloody crosses made out of bones instead of eyes, and each cross will have a crucified goat-demon on it with inverted pentagrams shooting out of its mouth.

Question #3: You accompany your parents to your grandmother's birthday party and you are soooo bored. You:

a) Sit in the corner and admire the Kleenex cozy she knitted, waiting patiently for Grandma and her friends to go to bed.

b) Start tugging on your mom's sleeve and whining as soon as you get to the nursing home parking lot.

c) Bang your head against your drum kit, kick over the bingo table and scream in German until you can taste blood in the back of your throat. Throw your flailing body through the China cabinet, tongue wagging, and then slam-dance with your great aunts until the police finally arrive and disable you with three times the usual dose of tranquilizer darts. 

Scoring: Give yourself 1 point for every "a", 2 points for every "b" and three points for every "c".

If your score is 1-8: 

You are timid and weak. You are a parasite living on pigs and worms. In due course, you will be willing herded to the slaughter along with everyone you know and a new society will rise from your smoldering cadavers. 

If your score is 9: 

You have potential to succeed in your relationships, but something is still holding you back. You need to focus less on pleasing others and stop living as if your parents are still watching your every move. You will be happier and healthier when you learn that it's okay to do something special just for yourself sometimes. 

We hope you enjoyed the quiz, and learned a lot about your Emotional Compatibility Quotient. The Hard Taco song for March is called, "The Medicine Show," and it's the opening number to a forthcoming musical by almost the same name.  From now on, you can assume that any song that seems to have a cast of thousands is probably part of this project, but I will try to remember to let you know which ones those are.  Also, don't forget to take our previous quizzes: "Are You a Slave to Your Pets?" and "Which Famous Author Are You Most Like In Bed?"

With warmest regards,

HT

Wisdom of a Founding Father

Dear friends,

  Every month I start my newsletter with those two words, and there is a reason. You are all my closest friends. Seriously!!! In fact, just thinking about it I find myself having to wipe a glorious single tear off my cheek. A few minutes ago I was really struggling to think of a greeting card-caliber proverb or a sentimental aphorism to match this symbolic tear, but my own mind wasn't inventive enough to express the appropriate degree of tenderness. That's when I decided to consult the hundred dollar man himself, Benjamin Franklin.  

  As you probably know, Benjamin Franklin wrote, "Poor Richard's Almanac," an entire book of quotes (most of which start with "I quote myself, saying...") Franklin penned this manifesto of maxims shortly after the Revolutionary War, during which he saw many of his most trusted companions become Tories and join the redcoats in battle against his countrymen. Many of his adages about friendship were especially apropos to these times, including:

"Beware old friends like meat twice boiled"

"Best friends, like fish, stink after three days"

"Two friends may keep a secret if both of them are dead."

"The only difference between friends and enemies is that enemies won't lend you the stick to beat them with."

"A friend is someone who will help you move. A real friend is someone who will help you move the first friend's body after you beat him to death with a stick."

  My views about friendship are much more traditional. In fact, I just came up with my own proverb:  "It's no coincidence that the words 'friendly' and 'friend' share the same root." I don't think one proverb is enough to publish a whole book of quotes, but I'm going to keep working on it.

  I am also working on a side project, which is to compile a complete list of real life best friends. I think I'm just about done, but if you can think of any more that should be on this list, let me know...

The Lone Ranger  -  Tonto

Blossom  -  Six

Mike Seaver -  Richard "Boner" Stabone

Ricky Schroder - Alfonso

Theo Huxtable - Cockroach

  The song for February is called, "Best Friends Forever." Even though I generally express myself best with lists (see above) I thought I'd give music a shot, too. A lot of people are asking me if the guy I'm singing the song with is actually my real life best friend. Unfortunately, my publicist has told me not to answer that question directly. I am supposed to segue back to plugging the last Hard Taco album or talk about the Golden Globes. 

With warmest regards,

HT

Why I Hate Terns

In this Week's Hard Taco Digest: 

1) Why I Hate Terns 

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Dear friends,

  This is why I hate terns: 

  Project Puffin is an organization dedicated to reintroducing wild puffins into their natural habitats. Recently, my wife and I joined the Audobon Society's "Adopt-a-puffin" program. Our adopted puffin is a beautiful 26-year-old named Y22. She spends the summers with her lifemate Bi70 on Eastern Egg Rock, an historic nesting island in the Gulf of Maine. We have already received a good deal of correspondence from Y22 and her caregivers, and we have watched her grow over the last year. She has been seen loafing with other puffins, billing with Bi70 (a graceful puffin pair bonding ritual), and bringing white hake fish to her fledgling chick. All of this may sound rather droll to those of you who have never experienced the joys of parenthood, but to us, there is no greater joy than seeing our own Y22 nurturing a new baby puffling. 

  When I picked up the most recent issue of "The Egg Rock Gazette," I was shocked to learn that another animal protection group has moved in on Project Puffin territory. Some pencil pusher at the Audobon Center has decided to save money by repopulating the same island with Common Terns! For those of you who haven't had the great displeasure of meeting a tern, allow me to describe these filthy creatures. Terns are the ornithological equivalent of yipping lap dogs. They are small, hideously ugly, and have annoying high-pitched chirps. They do not have any adorable behaviors like "billing" or "loafing," and their chicks are called "hatchlings" rather than the infinitely cuter "pufflings." Basically, the Common Tern is only an endangered species because of its own stupidity and complete lack of any useful purpose whatsoever.  To make matters worse, these terns consume massive amounts of herring, white hake, and sand launce fish, the three dietary staples of the Atlantic Puffin. In just a few short years the terns already outnumber the puffins on Eastern Egg Rock with nearly 1600 chicks fledged! 

  I have also heard that terns come up a lot more often than puffins in crossword puzzles. Unfair.

  Now is the time for men and women of conscience to take action.  I'll be damned if I'm going to see one more of those gentle, loveable puffins crowded out of her ancestral nesting grounds by some brainless hake-stealing waterfowl. Please help me send the Audobon Society a strong message that we have zero tolerance for their shameless tern-promoting policies. Let the terns live, I say, but let them live somewhere else. Contact them at puffin@audubon.org or visit them on the web at http://www.projectpuffin.org/ 

  The January Hard Taco song is called, "Dr. Fenwick's Snake Oil." Any and all profits I make off this song will be earmarked for disseminating my birdist propaganda. Enjoy. 

With warmest regards, 

HT 

A Three Piece Iron Hand Fluter

Dear Friends,

  Gather round, children, for I have a story to tell.  A story that will capture your imagination and lift your spirits. Be careful, though, or you might learn something along the way... about antiques!

  The story of Harris's Fiddle Tune dates back to age of the Old South, to the days when aristocratic jack dandies lazed away hot summer days, resting their mint juleps on the backs of hard working cotton gins. Legend has it that the greatest fiddle player in Kentucky in the early 19th century was a man by the name of Harris, and he was about as far from an aristocrat as you could get. Fiddle players in that particular time and place weren't exactly what you or I would call law-abiding, and Harris was no exception. He did it all. Gambling, petty theft... Why he even robbed a stagecoach or two.  I guess you could say that crime was his day job, and fiddle playing was more his hobby. Nobody would want to run into him in a dark alley, even if there were any back then, I'm telling you. But in the dance halls and in the juke joints of the Shallow South, Harris was a bona fide hero. His signature piece was a blazingly fast solo number that became known simply as "Harris's Fiddle Tune."  

  One night after a particularly raucous show in a Louisville cat house, the local sheriff caught Harris beating an old grocer with a three piece iron hand fluter. 

  Harris tried to escape, but his feet were no match for the sherrif's 31" antique lead tricycle. 

  Harris was immediately arrested and sentenced to hang the next day. The good judge sat down with Harris to draw up a will, but it wasn't really necessary - the only thing Harris owned was his old wooden fiddle. (The hand fluter belonged to the grocer, and Harris gave it back after the beating.)  Harris' fiddle, however, was nothing to be sniffed at. It had a tone so rich and so pure that every fiddle player in Appalachia coveted it more than an intricately detailed shoe made of pure gold.

  Harris promised to leave his fiddle to anyone in the county who could match his skills at his signature tune. The day of his execution, the sheriff led Harris down from jail to the town square, sat him on the back of a horse and tied the noose around his neck. Dozens of fiddlers lined up single file and took turns performing their renditions of Harris' Fiddle Tune. Harris listened patiently, but when the last fiddler put down his bow, he realized that none of them had the skills or the passion to carry on his legacy. He could never bequeath his magical figgle (as he called it) to a two bean imitator. 

   As the crowd watched in awe, he hoisted the instrument high above his head, as if he was about to hand it to one of the fiddlers. Suddenly, he brought it crashing down on the horse's rump with a wild crack. The fiddle was smashed to pieces and the horse took off running, leaving Harris dangling like a rare bronze stirrup.

  Harris' ashes was placed in an antique copper urn, the predecessor to the modern day Thermos. The fiddle's ashes were placed in a tin one. Legend has it they were never buried, but left beside a horsecart somewhere south of Owensboro. 

  Over the years, the fiddle tune itself was lost.  No one could play that song like him, you see, so it was long forgotten by time you and I were born. This month's Hard Taco song, "Harris's Fiddle Tune," is not actually a rendition of that forgotten tune, but rather a tribute to the story of Harris and his legacy. I recorded a low-fi version of this song in 1996, which has also been lost somewhere in the archives of history. Since then, I have become related by marriage to a gentleman named Harris, who by pure coincidence is both the most gifted fiddle player and fearsome criminal mastermind I have had the pleasure to know. Ain’t life a funny roll in the mud, sometimes?

With warmest regards,

Zach

The History of Hard Taco

Dear Friends,

   Does anybody know who makes CD liner notes? I want to bring something to their attention. When I buy a CD I want the content of the liner notes to be limited to: 1. Lyrics and 2. Weird gorked out pictures of nothing in particular with defocused song titles stenciled over them chaotically.

   I DO NOT want: 1) A long list of silly promotional thank you's, such as "Ozzy would like to thank Dean Markley Guitar Strings" and 2) Tedious retrospectives about the band. I don't care about which band member joined the band when and how many doughnuts they always seemed to have on the  tour bus. ("I can't give you exact numbers, but it was a lot!").  

   I realize, however, that not everyone shares my views. Therefore, I have prepared this issue of the Hard Taco Digest for the amateur rock historians out there who don't find autobiographical masturbation as offensive as I do. For the rest of you, feel free to skip to the last paragraph.

   The first incarnation of Hard Taco was the environmentalist rock band Savannah, formed in the summer of 1992. We all had eco-centric pseudonyms. I was Logbert and the other founding members were Skybert and Willow. We released one LP, "Love Thy Planet (Like Yourself)" which featured the singles, "The War For Ecopendence" and "If This Bark Could Cry." We broke up after about two years under less than ideal terms. Skybert felt that glass containers should be rinsed before being placed in the recycling bin, while Willow felt that rinsing them was a waste of water. Next thing we knew, Skybert had left us to join The Rock and Roll City Rockers, who later changed their name to Spoon Phed. We put out one Savannah album without him ("Godspeed Johnny Appleseed') but it didn't really take with the fans. Willow broke off to form the Urban-folk Chamber Pop band Orpheus Morpheum. They eventually changed their name to Morpheus Orpheum, and changed their style to Riot Grrrl Surf Revivalist. 

    I spent a few months touring with the San Antonio-based band Thrombosis before we were commissioned to work on the music for the 1996 Winter Olympics. The rest of the band was keen to pick up that torch and run with it, as it were, but I refused to be a part of it. I have always felt that the Olympics are the cruelest, ugliest head of the international corporate hydra. To be fair, they did end up writing a pretty catchy jingle for the 500 meter slalom. In the Spring of '97, we reunited briefly, changed our name to Chain Slaw and put out a controversial live album, "Mister Fantasy." This album was hailed as one of the most influential Blendist Noise Pop Cowpunk recordings of the decade, although personally I think it fell more into the category of East Coast Neo-emo Proto-ambient. Unfortunately, Sam Goody refused to sell "Mister Fantasy" because of the song, "Bet You Can't Murder Your Own Children." It still ticks me off... The people who were boycotting that album never even listened to it. Jerry Falwell was quoted as saying that the song "promoted gambling," and his entourage of loud-mouthed conservative sticks-in-the-mud bullied the distributors into jumping on the boycott bandwagon. Anyway, without the Sam Goody market, we basically folded outright.    

    Secretly, I was relieved that Chain Slaw broke up, because I had spent the previous two years wanting to get back to doing eco-rock. I hooked up with the former members of The Recyclone and formed a  band called The Dian Fossey's. We spent most of our time gigging around Colorado, although we never made it into the studio. We were the headliners at the Green Party convention in '97 and several rallies against timber corporation fraud. We raised almost $4000 for gorilla awareness, I think, but I could tell it wasn't going to turn into a full time gig. 

   I spent a brief stint in the band Vracht! with Kaat and Raf DeMonikle. They were a brother/sister team from Antwerp, and were already Belgium's hottest names in Grindcore Electro-goth. We put out an album of dance songs for sleepover parties, called "Pajama Jams" on their Demeulemeester Label. We were two gigs into our North American tour when Kaat suddently left us for the New Traditionalist Christian Psychobilly band, Jubilation Now. I'll always have fond memories of the DeMonikle twins, but after all these years, I still never found out which one was the brother and which one was the sister. 

  It was about this time I got a call from some ad execs at Chrysler. At first, they wanted some kind of radio spot, but by time we hung up, I had talked them into funding my side project, "Classic Cars! The Musical" It was an upbeat fun-for-all-ages stage show that opened at the State Theater in Detroit in December of 1999.  The cast wore roller skates and dressed up as classic cars, bragging (in song!) about how they had "Four on the floor" and "Pressure Plates a-Burning." The show featured Levi Stubbs from the Four Tops as the '45 Studebaker. Classic Cars was the sleeper success story of Detroit musical theater that winter. It was during preproduction for the show that I met my future wife, Lauren. She had also been cast as a '45 Studebaker (We were only able to secure the rights to impersonate one car, so we had lots of people playing '45 Studebakers.) Once I heard her sing the high harmony in "Posi-Traction Chrome Runner" I knew I would never love another. The show may have lasted longer, but we hadn't taken the appropriate safety measures to insure against the Y2K bug. When the millenium rolled around two weeks later, everything went positively haywire. 

   After the show closed, I recruited Lauren as a vocalist on what would eventually be the first Hard Taco album, "Eight Songs About Five Things." It was really a Kraut Rock Go-Go Fusion Crossover album, but it developed a bit of a cult following in the Indie Urban Cowboy Swamp-Bop circles. 

  A few months after 8SA5T hit the stores, Lauren and I were at the farmer's market, and we saw a great Peruvian PanFlute band called Alpacataquar ("Alpaca Attacker"). I was scouting for some new talent, so I invited the band to Perkins for a slice of pie. Next thing I knew, I had recruited 17 new members for Hard Taco: Jon, Jeff, Thellea, Ty, Russell, Darin, Adam, Aaron, Josh, Marsha, other Zach, David, Tom, Nicole, Dan, Sandy, and Siobhan. Nine albums and TONS of doughnuts later, there have been remarkably few personnel changes. It's been a great ride, and I'd like to thank each and every one of you who helped us along the way, and I think you know who you are. (I'm looking your way, D'Addario guitar strings!)

  If you're in the mood for a sentimental drinking song about lost love and self-pity, the November HT song, "Tonight the Rafters Roar,"  may be just the medicine you need. However, if you are wheezing and short of breath, I would consider albuterol first. You can try the song as second line therapy if the albuterol doesn't work. 

With Warmest Regards,

HT

Gimme Yer Lunch Money

Dear Friends, 

  So I'm hanging out, you know, around town, minding my own business, and some dumb-looking guy walks by looking all whatever, stupid and stuff. So I shove him a few times, and his girlfriend says, "Pick on someone your own size!" What's that all about? It's hard to find someone exactly my size to pick on. Most of the people who are as tall as me and weigh as much as I do so much fatter than I am. I mean it's disgusting sometimes to think that they just let themselves go like that. Anyway, I realized that if I lost 50 pounds, I could safely and fairly pick on people who are 50 pounds lighter than me, without the stigma of mismatched weight classes. Furthermore, those guys who are my current size would feel guilty about picking on me. It's a win-win situation. Suddenly the cultural obsession with weight loss makes sense to me. 

  The key will be to slim down without losing any of the intangible qualities that make me such an effective bully. After all, good bullying is not just about throwing your weight around. In fact, it's not about violence at all. It is about grace and honor. When most people think of bullies they think of intimidation and arm twisting, but the true bully is foremost at harmony with himself. He meditates on patience and humility, striving to achieve an objective state of completeness. Only when he attains this transcendent state can he focus his entire being on giving swirlies, grundies, wet willies, and atomic noogies to twerps who have it coming. 

  The true bully knows his enemy as he knows himself, and anticipates his enemy's next move. For instance, when I say, "Hey, Twinkie, give me your lunch money or else," I have to be prepared to defend against a possible "Or else what?" Furthermore, when I lift someone up by their shirt and slam them against a locker with their feet dangling, I have to be prepared to defend against a possible pants-wetting. 

  Speaking of pants-wetting, I'm about ready for a new pair of jeans just thinking about the October Hard Taco song, "Hooded Jackets." If you've ever yearned for the summer to finally end, this is your torch song. Be careful, though, because it kind of rocks, so don't play it too loud or your mom might take away your boom box until you learn to be more considerate of others who don't have the capacity to rock as hard as you do. I'm still waiting to get my boom box privileges back from when I played the fourth Boston album in my parents house in 1992. 

With Warmest Regards,

Zach

Sing with me ee ee ee ee

Dear Friends,

   I hope you are having a fulfilling Labor Day, or "Labour Day," for you lazy Canadians. I only call you lazy because you also skip work on Victoria Day, Canada Day, Remeberence Day, and Boxing Day. Also because you always call in sick on Fridays, and then later that day I see you at Home Depot with your cousin from out of town.  I have much more respect for harder working countries like Japan who consolidate their holidays (i.e. Kinro-Kansha-No-Hi, or Labor Thanksgiving Day.) I have a friend who went there once in February and said they don't even get off early for Lincoln's Birthday. 

   Speaking of upcoming holidays, October 29th is Korean Alphabet Day, as in "Only 58 more shopping days until Korean Alphabet Day!" I think we should have an Alphabet Day, too, primarily because we already have a theme song. It would be a touching show of patriotism to have 15,000 people taking their hats off and singing their ABC's before a baseball game. The great flaw with the English Alphabet Song is that there seems to be some controversy about what the last line is. I learned it as, "Now I know my ABC's, next time won't you sing with me," but some people end it with, "come along and sing with me." If we're going to institute Alphabet Day as a holiday, that's going to have to be standardized. I suggest, "Now I know my ABC's, Sing with meeeeeeeeeee." That should satisfy both parties, because nobody has to add any phrases that make them uncomfortable.

  Now that I think about it, English Alphabet Day might really bring together from all over the world. There are probably at least 100 other countries that use the English alphabet, and many of them don't even speak English! I'm sure they would get behind English Alphabet Day. In fact, I bet we would export a lot of limited edition Red White and Blue Alpha-Bits. 

  The September Hard Taco song is entitled, "Forced to Breed in Captivity." As you can probably surmise from the title, it's a duet. If you're like me, you may think of duet as a four-letter word. It always makes me think of John Denver and Miss Piggy. They would always be singing some stupid love song that would start with Miss Piggy swooning over John Denver. Somehow, by the end of the song she always worked herself up into a jealous rage and was punching him. It was predictable and boring, and only worth sitting through because Veterinarian's Hospital was often next. Let's work together to remove the stigma of the word duet, and cleanse our minds of any memory of John Denver.

Love, 

HT