animation by Steve
"My Ex's Lawyer Is The Antichrist" video on YouTube
Travis Shredd Homepage
My old pal MC Stevie-Bob Lethal is gone. Just up and died with no advance warning. As I told Jeff "Tea-Boy" Welch, when he delivered the news in a phone call to me, I wasn't done playing in bands with him yet. It's a very unhappy thing.
He was an exceptionally fine drummer. I used to invent drum parts that I couldn't play, program them on a computer, hand the recording to MCSBL, and he would somehow learn my stupid drum parts and play them live. With really good meter. When we played a couple of shows where there was a "professional quality" drum set supplied that we were required to use, he still played all his parts great. The rest of us Good Ol' Homeboys never really forgave him for eliminating one of his bass drums and using a double pedal (didn't look "metal" enough for our artistic sensibilities), but we all secretly had to admit that he played all the scorching double bass parts just as well with the new, more compact setup. Still, it did make him kind of a weiner. I think we all stand by that assessment. Just in case anybody thinks MCSBL was without flaws, that was the one. Weiner single-kick drum setup. I bet he listened to Toto on the car stereo.
Just in case anybody isn't clear on this: Steve Leathart was a proper Atheist. Unrelenting, no apologies, clear thinking, rock solid. As much as I admired him for his excellent (though presented in a weinerly visual manner, what with the single kick drum) drumming, it's his philosophical conviction that I hold in the highest regard. He was an inspiration to me, a fellow Atheist, and y'all should remember that, before any of y'all go talking about him "being in a better place," or any of that nonsense. Believe what you want, but Steve knew that when you die, you're just gone. He was not waiting for an imaginary friend, a spaceship, magical faeries, or a coterie of assorted virgins to be presented in an afterlife. That means he lived like he meant it and he was not expecting a second chance at the whole thing. Let's all take a lesson from his example.
I hate to belabor this kick drum thing, but seriously, have you seen the pictures of the double-kick set with the two flaming skull logos? It was bad-ass.
Steve didn't smile much. This led people to think that he was kind of a cranky bastard. Well, he was. But that wasn't why he didn't smile much. He always thought he had funny looking teeth. Seriously. For real. How do I know? He told me so. So you can add vanity to the short list of personality flaws, I guess...along with questionable choices in kick drum selection. And just in case you think he was perfectly okay with his baldness, take a look at the "My Ex's Lawyer Is The Antichrist" video. In the bridge, there's a shot of him waving his hat at the camera. Watch as he unconsciously covers his baldy head with his free hand. Man, I love that shot. Squinty-Clint-Eastwood-eyed, tough-talking MC Stevie-Bob Lethal wished he was prettier. Isn't that just the best? Me, I loved his look. Jason Alexander combined with Danny Trejo. Do a search for each of them, you'll see what I mean.
As I'm writing this, I'm sitting in front of my drum set. My snare drum is a Pearl single-ply birch model. They're a little bit scarce, because at the time Pearl introduced it, it was kind of expensive. When I moved away from Seattle to Las Vegas, Steve gave me this drum as a going away present. I play on it every day. In front of me, hanging on the wall over my computer desk, is a bass drum head. It has a flaming skull on it. It's the outside head from the kick drum. THE kick drum. The one that was cast aside in the name of compactness and ease of setup, replaced by a double pedal. Behind the flaming skull logo is a triple sunburst fade, in black, red and yellow, lovingly applied by Steve with cans of spray paint. So maybe you can see why I'm harping on this whole double kick drum topic so obsessively. You can hear that drum getting abused on the second and third Travis Shredd albums. You can see pictures and video of Steve on the Internet. I won't forget him. As I continue to get older and lose more bits of memory, I have a Pearl snare drum and a flaming skull bass drum head staring at me every day to help me not forget.
Don't any of you forget either.
