Back Soon

We're working on the next podcast and a few other things that will appear shortly as well as pulling some insane hours at the day job. I had to break away and hit the water this weekend. Me and my bud both limited out. See you soon.

Johnny

Live Fast Racing Podcast #25

Alright, we're back in business just in time for the Memorial Day weekend. You know the drill...this time we've got NASCAR, IRL, F1, WSBK, MotoGP and even a little bit of street bike chatter on the end. Hope you like it and let us know what you think.

LISTEN: Live Fast Racing Podcast #25

Johnny

Spring Joy, Osa Kaksi

And for our second installment of Salmiakki tasting, we have this interesting offering from Fazer. It is quite a different flavor than the Halva. It is a moodier and much more complex flavor. Instead of the initial, over the top ammonium chloride blast of Halva, Fazer takes on a more holistic, mellow, almost savory flavor that lasts throughout the taste experience. In this case, the saltiness more or less compliments the licorice/anise flavor and while there are still some sweet notes, and certainly more than there were in Halva, it still is far and away much less candy-like than American licorice, even if the texture is close to it. I'd think between the two, Fazer is a much better choice for the Salmiakki virgin and honestly was good enough I'd like to put it in my regular rotation. Excellent.

Spring Joy

It has been a while since I've done a foreign candy tasting on here so I was thrilled when my man xMarkusx threw in a couple of boxes of Salmiakki with the Ill Omen shirt he sent me last week. As far as Salmiakki goes, this kind, Halva, is like a text book example. The texture is semi soft and there are three distinct phases to the flavor. When you first bite in, it is overwhelmingly salty, then switches to an intensely smokey flavor I'd put somewhere near the old Copenhagen Hickory Long Cut and then it finishes semi-sweet with plenty of authentic anise/licorice flavor. While my wife and my dad recoiled in horror from this stuff, I think it's been some of the best licorice I've ever tasted, and so far the best Salmiakki I've ever had, although I'll be doing another test later in the week. Try some of this, it's way better than the overly sweet, corn syrup laden stuff that passes for licorice these days.

Video: Wolverine Blues, Pettibone Edition

Killer video here of John Pettibone (HIMSA, UNDERTOW, THE VOWS) doing Entombed's epic "Wolverine Blues" with CONVERGE as the back up band. Truly a show I wish I'd been at.

Live Fast Racing Podcast #24: The Return

Ok, without a lot of boring details and self pity, we just couldn't stand not doing the show so we're trying to bring it back. Here's our first stab at it. Hope you like it and be sure and leave comments.

LISTEN: Live Fast Racing Podcast #24

Johnny

Video: Almost Free

Here's an amazing new vid from pro skater and owner of 4Q Conditioning Max Schaaf taking one of his latest bikes to Southern California and bike. Besides it being a completely sick ride, the filming and music are top notch on this.

Vintage Indy Car Pics

In preparation for the kick off of the Indy Car Season this Sunday in St. Pete, here's a couple of killer pics from one of my readers of one of A.J. Foyt's old cars. It was truly from the era where men were men and exhausts were exhausts.

If they replaced the current stinkbugs with something half this sexy, something says they'd have a whole lot more eyes back on them.

Crucial Read

Simply put, you CANNOT miss this piece Jeff wrote over at My Name is IRL. In the midst of the IRL's swoon over the Barber PR machine's latest predictable attempt at "if you come here we'll fix the track" empty promise, Jeff has laid out the best timeline of the shenanigans that have gone on down there for the last decade and specifically addresses why there are no MotoGP and WSBK events there. Somehow all the serious motojournalists like Robin Miller, Oreo, Despain, Noyes or whoever never thought about (or were convinced otherwise?) questioning the monolithic wall of fiction that comes out of that place but a simple word butcher sacked up and sought the truth in less than a week. In fact, this may be one of the most well researched pieces I've ever seen on any type of enthusiast blog. Read it NOW.

Back With Some Music

It's been a killer month as far as overtime and illness goes this March but I'm definitely going to be better about posting in the future. Other than WSBK, racing has sucked so bad this year that there has not been much to talk about anyway. But, instead of just a boring update about how I'm doing, here's 3 quick music picks from albums that came back a few months ago that I never got the time to do full reviews on. All three are seriously worth your time.

First up is Soilent Green's latest that came out a while back, Inevitable Collapse in the Presence of Conviction. While, I've been on board with these guys since the first EP on Relapse and basically love everything they've done, this completely tops any previous outings. The schizo breaks between groove, sludge and grind are still there and still at like 1000mph but there's an overall cohesion to this that everything else they've done has lacked. Just completely solid swamp metal. I thought the cover was a little different for them, but anything that serves as a reminder of The City Of Lost Children is good in my book. Totally underrated masterpiece here.

LISTEN: Soilent Green on Myspace

Next up is NEUROSIS co-frontman Steve Von Till's 3rd Solo work (4th counting Harvestman, for the nitpickers) entitled A Grave is a Grim Horse. Although this album continues in his usual arc of very sparsely arranged acoustic ballads centering on isolation and rebirth of the monolithic spirit, it also incorporates some more modern, almost alt country elements. The steel guitar on "Willow Tree" and "Western Son" were downright Austin City Limits, were the subject matter not so unflinchingly dark. This was a well-fitting and needed update to where he has been going the last few years.

Finally we have the much anticipated DISFEAR/DOOMRIDERS split out on Deathwish Inc. For as good as "Live the Storm" was, the DISFEAR track "Fear and Trembling" on this is just so much better. While it retains the complex song structure and melody that their last album had, it also returns to their grittier, more bass heavy MOTORHEAD type sound that just totally crushes. It's like the riff on this track explodes and rebuilds itself like three times. Completely unreal. The DOOMRIDERS track stays with their usual BLACK FLAG+DANZIG+THIN LIZZY thing that you either are either down with or not by now, although I have to admit this track went a little long even for me. Regardless, you should get this just for the DISFEAR track alone so just count the 'Riders as bonus material.

LISTEN: Deathwish Inc. Audio Player