Depeche Mode Star Sued for Stalker Assault
Depeche Mode frontman Dave Gahan was forced to pay $40,000 to a male stalker who drove him to violence. The stalker, known only as Roy, insisted on holding all-night vigils outside Gahan's house -- until the singer head-butted him and broke his nose. Gahan says, "You'd look out the window at four in the morning and Roy would still be standing there. I ended up assaulting him -- well, I head-butted him and broke his nose. And I actually got sued! He sued me for $500,000 and he ended up getting $40,000. He claimed I gave him brain damage, but he was pretty [bleep] up to start with."

And here I always figured those Depeche Mode guys were pussies.

I was talking to my friend Chris the other day, and we got to talking about Squirmer, a band that he and I used to play in. Squirmer was really my first and pretty much only "real" band experience, as most of what I do now is solo or virtual collaborations. The band sort of evolved from a group of friends, and to this day most of the members are gigging musicians in other bands, a couple have new kids to deal with, but we all remain friends and still try to play together on occasion. Squirmer was also the first real experience I had with recording, and at the time, we would record our practices and gigs with a Tascam 488 Portastudio 8 track, which is sitting about a foot away from me as I type this. Alot of times we would just rig up a couple mics and hang them from the ceiling of Mark's recording studio, but at gigs, we would try to rig it up better. I've got tons of cassette tapes, masters that haven't been mixed down yet, sitting around waiting to be digitized, and I think I'm going to start work on a squirmer CD project I've been meaning to do for years. Try to mine the nuggets I know are hidden in this trove of tape. Anyways, I found a pretty good recording of Squirmer doing "Hopeless", a song I wrote around 1997 I think, but would later become a staple of the Squirmer setlist. Recorded October 7, 2001 live to 8 track and featuring Mark on drums, Chris on lead guitar, Bill on bass, Eric on guitar, and myself on vocals and guitar.


Hopeless - Squirmer

Back from Burning Man, tired and still trying to get the playa dust out of my skin. Before I left, I managed to squeeze a bit of time in at the legendary sonofsupercar studios in the armpit of Japantown in San Jose. At least it's next to a brewery so there's something to be said for that. Future Boy and I were treated to Blue's famous fish tacos and then we basically cranked out this tune in about 3 hours. So check out The Japantown Three doing "Rattle" over on Songfight! And don't forget to listen to all those other fine tunes while your at it.