I've done the fanmail thing quite a bit. Email is nice.

Successes -

Henry Rollins - I wrote Henry a couple times, and he always responded. They were always very short responses, but it was nice to read. Also gave me some good advice about this time where this anonymous girl was harassing me through email...long story.

Bruce Loose - Wrote him once. Responded once, but then I got on his mailing list. I'm still on it.

Ted Falconi - I've written Ted a couple times, and each time he's been great. I haven't emailed him in some time though. He once told me that way back in the day he tried to get Michael Gira to sing for Flipper, and told me a little about Gaudi when I was in Barcelona. Awesome guy.

Dave Riley - Sent him something complimenting his great stories (which are funny as shit), and his Killdestroy bass-playing in days of yore, and he sent a two-liner saying he was genuinely flattered. Not much, but hey, still something.

Failures -

Mike Watt - Wrote him twice. Never responded.

Pat Smear - Wrote him once. Never responded.

Shannon Selberg - Tried to send him an email at the Heroine Sheiks website, but my email got shot back by the Mail Delivery Failure Subsystem.

But none of the previous failures compare with this one:

Keith Levene - This one pissed me off. Keith Levene is one of the greatest guitarists and synth players ever, and PiL's early music got me through late high school and is helping me (barely) survive college. I basically sent him something saying that, and he basically wrote something along the lines of: "That's nice, you should try and find "Commercial Zone", it's really good." What a douchebag prick. I spill my guts to him and THAT'S what he gives me back? No wonder Wobble hates him. I was so mad when I first got it that I sent Rollins an email telling him about it. I still remember the first line: "Mike, I can't believe he was that lame." You said it, Hank.

Cripes, maybe I've done the fanmail thing a little too much, but I feel it's really nice to send congratulations and thanks to people whose music has made a difference in your life.

I wrote Mike Watt once and he responded. This was only a few years ago. I wanted to tell him that his "hoarse" singing on some of the songs on Ballot Result was one of the best things I'd ever heard. I also asked if I could get a few of the d. boon "Punk is what we made it to be" stickers. He sent some. They are great.

Not stupid.

Slacker Bitch !
Ha ! Ha !

I sent sa a bd 7" once with some sort of complimentary letter in it ("let's play a show!?!), several years later he would pull it out and embarass me

night_tools wrote:

Flaneur wrote:In 1995 I mailed comic artist Evan Dorkin, who draws 'Milk & Cheese', asking if he was ever going to come over to the UK. I didn't know, at the time, about his intense phobia of flying. I got a really nice reply back, which I printed out and filed with my Dorkin comics.

This guy is incredible. I love his work.

Is this a fan letter?

rayj wrote:

night_tools wrote:In 1995 I mailed comic artist Evan Dorkin, who draws 'Milk & Cheese', asking if he was ever going to come over to the UK. I didn't know, at the time, about his intense phobia of flying. I got a really nice reply back, which I printed out and filed with my Dorkin comics.

This guy is incredible. I love his work.

Yah, Milk and Cheese is fantastic.

I had the M&C zippo:

and the "Gin Makes a Man Mean" shirt.

both are long since gone, but so funny. so funny!

I never wrote a fan letter -- I was always convinced I'd sound like a drooling idiot. But years ago I was singing in a band in Lansing, Michigan, and I shared a house with the guitar player and drummer, where we practiced. Once Saturday night, we had a show in Mount Pleasant, and returned home to find a note stuck to our front door. It was a fan letter full of dripping, worshipful praise, but about a third of the way through we realized it wasn't meant for us. Doc Dart from the Crucifucks lived about five blocks away from us, and apparently a couple of kids from Flint who thought the Crucifucks were godhead drove up hoping to meet him. Unable to find Doc's house, they asked around the neighborhood if there was a house where a rock band lived nearby, and they got pointed to our place.

So that's my fan letter story -- I once got some of Doc Dart's fan mail. For the record, we passed it along.

Mark Lansing wrote:So that's my fan letter story -- I once got some of Doc Dart's fan mail. For the record, we passed it along.

Doc! I have a bunch of crazy letters from him. I used to do his webpage for him, and we were friends. I got him and his children to talk to each other again. Then I wasn't sad enough when his bunny died and he cut me off. But he wrote a mean song about me that's on his newest album, and we occasionally exchange intellectual insults through the mail. It's fun! He says I'm a psychic vampire. Sometimes I wish we were still friends because he's a smart guy and he's very kind and generous and it's fun listening to Crucifucks stories, but he is crazy. At least I got a song about me.

Kayte R. wrote:Sometimes I wish we were still friends because he's a smart guy and he's very kind and generous and it's fun listening to Crucifucks stories, but he is crazy. At least I got a song about me.

A friend of mine, Aaron, played guitar in the Crucifucks for a while and had LOTS of incredible stories. Best was about being stranded with the band at a KOA Kampground outside San Francisco for a week when a whole bunch of tour dates fell through. Imagine spending a week in a camper with Doc while subsisting on potato chips and Mickey's Malt Liquor. The mind reels!

Mark Lansing wrote:

Kayte R. wrote:Sometimes I wish we were still friends because he's a smart guy and he's very kind and generous and it's fun listening to Crucifucks stories, but he is crazy. At least I got a song about me.

A friend of mine, Aaron, played guitar in the Crucifucks for a while and had LOTS of incredible stories. Best was about being stranded with the band at a KOA Kampground outside San Francisco for a week when a whole bunch of tour dates fell through. Imagine spending a week in a camper with Doc while subsisting on potato chips and Mickey's Malt Liquor. The mind reels!

One of the weirdest things I've ever seen is Doc feeding bananas to Literally Hundreds of racoons on his porch. He named probably at least half of them, and they would just jump right in his lap. He is the king of racoons!

My boyfriend and I, back when we were friends with Doc still, helped connect this band ZTTF from Arizona with Doc. They had gone on tour with my boyfriend's band and were really really into the Crucifucks so we introduced them. They all became friends too, and the singer Fred ended up living with Doc for several weeks and helping him with his album. Then right after that Fred and the drummer Derek died in a car accident in new mexico. The last time we talked to Doc was right after they died.

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