Newsletter by Joe King
December 11, 2007

Hello friends and neighbors. I must apologize right off the bat for being so late with this update of All Things Queer. Your humble working boy has been...well...working harder than normal as of late. I went down to Texas with Marky Ramone for a few shows, got home and promptly flew up here to NH as my Mom was in the hospital for a brief stay. To make a long story short she had to go in a nursing home so I jumped into the breach and flew up to help with all that shit. She is starting to suffer from Alzheimers so it was a lotta work getting her in to the place as she didn't know what the fuck was going on half the time but she still managed to let me know every time I fucked something up bless her little heart. Add in a sister with cancer and you can see I have my hands full. Still all flesh is as grass and we all must soldier on, no matter what cards we are dealt by an all-knowing God, so I face all these daunting tasks with a smile and an extra shot or two of espresso each day.

As far as band news...let's see. We are going out in early January for a couple of weeks. We'll head up to Canada and then down as far as Baltimore and take a break till the spring. * I was asked to delete any info on the Insubordination Fest as I wasn't supposed to say anything about it. God Save The Queers will be out on Asian Man Records next month. I think it came out great so check it out. Wimpy and Tulu and I continue to talk about the next Drunken Cholos album and since we are all here in NH we will do it this winter. I am the one holding us back now cause I have been so busy with this family shit going on. We had a great time in Chicago at the Riot Fest thanks to all our friends who showed up and cheered us on. We played fairly early so it was an easy show for us. The Queers own Chicago so I felt bad for the bands who went on after us. Many kids emailed saying we stole the show but to be honest I didn't stay to see Stiff Little Fingers and Naked Raygun. We had to hightail it to Cincy for the next show so we headed out as soon as we got offstage. The Methadones played both nights in Chicago with us and were awesome as usual. Shot Baker was great and though I talked to all the guys in Sludgeworth-us being old pals and all-I wasn't able to see their set as they played the next day. The whole thing was a blast though. What else? Oh The Guts-my little buddies from Portsmouth, NH-just got done recording a new cd for Rally Records entitled Let It Go, its pretty awesome. Guests include none other than Hallie from The Unlovables (as if there could be any other Hallie) and Ben Weasel himself who stopped by to lend moral support and sing a rousing rendition of Love Love Love!! Yes that's right, I said Love Love Love. Obviously the standout track on the whole album (for me at least) it came out great though the guitar player didn't play the solo exactly as he should have. I would have loved to have done it but for some strange reason (sniff) I wasn't asked. Jeff Useless and I will discuss this later but maybe it was my fault. Perhaps the limo showed up to get me at the wrong time or something. Seriously it came out great so check it out when it's released soon.

Another release I am psyched about is the new Regal Beagle album called All Tide Up. I produced it a year and a half ago so it's great it will finally be released. Rally is doing this one too. I sing one song on this album now that I think of it. They have some absolutely great songs on it so get it. I know what with all the other pop punk bands out there today Regal Beagle isn't as well known but seriously they are a great band. I hope to see them touring soon and I am going to try to take them out next spring when we get out west. "It Came From The Basement" is my fave song on All Tide Up and Phillip Hill sings backups on that song and the whole album actually. The Queers recorded the great Regal Beagle song "Baby Girl" which I want to start playing live. I am listening to "Summertime" the song I sing with them right now. Another great tune in my humble estimation. That reminds me I am getting all the songs together I sing lead vocals on with other bands and doing a solo album. I forget all the songs I have sung on though so if anyone out there remembers let me know. Email me here or on the myspace page.

Now one other thing I have to do. We have a roadie by the name of Gollum. I met him in Dayton last year. He cornered me outside as we were loading out and started to talk to me about Anti Flag which got me going and we became friends and he did a tour or two with us. Now before I get more death threats from those well-meaning and well balanced Anti Flag hippes-excuse me-fans I just want to say I don't hate Anti Flag. They mean well and obviously believe all the political tripe they spew constantly. There are worse bands out there. I just hate bands telling kids who to vote for and how to think. It's so conceited and pompous. Anyway this Gollum has a mother who-like this Gollum character-likes a lot of this Irish/street punk stuff. I won't launch into another boring diatribe on all that as I have belabored the point quite enough. I will say I saw Al the singer from the Dropkicks in Portsmouth the other day and we had a good chat about punk rock and both hate a lot of the same stuff in the punk scene nowadays. I've known him and his wife for years and they are both really cool and we have many mutual friends. I of course apologized for badmouthing the street scene but he good naturedly laughed and said there are a lot of things he isn't too keen on with that scene either. But as I was saying this Gollum's Mom likes all that Irish stuff. We were out with Gollum on tour and his long suffering Mom had asked him to send her shot glasses from around the country. He didn't send one till we got on his case and started buying them for her ourselves. So just to prove to her that our fans are way cooler than any and all of those faux-Irish/street bands' fans, I am asking our friends and fans to send Gollum's Mom some shot glasses. I don't care where you are. Grand Rapids or Zimbabwe-please send this woman a shot glass or two. She has it in her tiny skull we are not as good as those phony 'I live in Alabama but I'm Irish' idiots. This is the "Let's show Gollum's Mom Challenge"!! You can send your shot glass to her at:

Gollum's Mom
32931 Charmwood Oval
Solon, OH 44139

She prefers city shot glasses to state shot glasses but it doesn't matter if you write Gollum Sucks with a Sharpie on the shot glass (as a matter of fact I kind of like that idea) but anyway just send her one or as many as you can please. Thank you in advance.

And with that I will head off to Goodwill to drop stuff off for my Mom. I am cleaning out her condo and it's a pain in the balls. I found a few old pics of me in high school looking like a complete idiot so maybe I'll put them on myspace to show I can dish it out and take it too. Merry Xmas-Joe

PS-I am selling another guitar. It's my black Fender Strat I have played for the past three years. It's a 1999 with a maple neck. It has a Dimarzio Tone Zone humbucker in it. Anyone that is interested please make an offer at joe@thequeersrock.com or on our myspace page here. I'm not taking less than $800.00 for it as I paid more than that for it so if you don't want to offer at least that much forget it. I'll pay for the shipping.

Newsletter by Joe King
August 22, 2007

Well here we are. All in one piece after our arduous journey overseas. We were cruelly used I might add. Following Marky Ramone around was an adventure. The shows were fun as hell but the traveling left a lot to be desired as we were stuck with the road crew. All rookies and none of them knew the first thing about touring. This resulted in more wrong turns-fucked up gear and wasted time than I have personally seen in all my years of touring. Of course not a one of them would pay the slightest attention to Dave and I when we would try to tell them they were driving 500 kilometers out of their way to get to the next show. We left there with a rather sour taste in our mouths about the whole thing. The honor of playing onstage with Marky every night was outweighed by the idiots running the operation. And should any of those cretins be reading this I give them a hearty fuck you.

We are off to China for a festival with Marky on September 9th in Beijing. I guess it's some huge thing that Nine Inch Nails is headlining and they expect around 50,000 people. The Queers are not on that show but Dave and I are playing with Marky and I will be 'networking' to get contacts so the mighty Queers can get over there on our own. After China Dave and I will fly to Tokyo and meet up with Matt Drastic and none other than old Wimpy Rutherford himself and do 6 Japan shows and 2 in Korea!! We have been to Japan quite a bit though not in years and never to Korea so we are all excited as hell to head over. It will be nice to headline our own shows once again too. I mean as I say it was an honor to play onstage with Marky but I am not a guy to play second fiddle to anyone. I like to run my own operation. Marky is nice as pie but it was very frustrating to have someone else run the show and watch these idiots pull bullshit every night. The first night we had different set lists than Marky. So here we are opening up for Korn and we have different set lists. We looked like idiots. They didn't have the wherewithal to get a piece of wood for the stage in front of the kick drum and it moved all over the place every night till we finally went on our own and bought one for Marky. They lost all of Marky's personalized drum sticks about the 3rd show. I mean just fuck up after fuck up. When we blew a tire and never got a spare after a week Dave and I finally bought one ourselves so we wouldn't miss a show when the next tire blew. The very first night we got stopped on the long drive to Slovakia by the Italian border police and the idiot sound guy had pot and hash on him. Luckily the cops let us go but I mean Punk Rock 101 is never travel in Europe with drugs and especially crossing into other countries. It fucking sucked and I am still pissed off at those morons as you can no doubt tell. Eh fuck them all. When we finally made it to Italy The Manges crew all showed up and drove us around and we kept away from the crew which made it very nice. We'd like to give a special thanks to Mass and Richie from The Manges and Diego Mass's room mate (and owner of Skaletta the premier punk rock club in La Spezia) for going way out of their way to drive us around to the shows. Cami and her pal in Forli hung with us the whole last day and took us to the airport so we could fly back to Barcelona and avoid what turned out to be a 26 hour ride from Italy to Spain. The actual ride should have taken 14 hours but the cretin crew took 26. Dave and I smelled a rat on that one and bought tickets to fly. Anyway thanks to all our Italian pals who helped us and offered to help. That was way nice and you saved us from numerous headaches.

In more pleasant news all our old Lookout albums are now out and available on Asian Man Records. A Day Late and a Dollar Short came out last week. Recess is doing all of them on vinyl though I think at the moment all he has is Love Songs and Munki Brain but email Todd and ask him. Mike Park and Skylar at Asian Man did a great job and tons of work to get these albums remixed and remastered and new artwork done. Our tribute album-God Save The Queers-is out next week in Japan only on CR Japan. Asian Man is releasing it over here in a few months but if you just can't wait and have to have a copy email CR Japan and they will take care of you. That thing turned out way better than I hoped as we have everyone from The New Bomb Turks and Screeching Weasel to The Hard Ons and Toys That Kill on here as well as a lot of smaller bands that all did kick ass versions of our songs. I'll be honest with you-most of the stuff on here is way better than our versions. The Dwarves doing "Love Me" is worth the price of the thing alone. Blag is the only person that could best Pappy's original version and you gotta hear that to believe it. Le Volume Etait Au Maximum from Montreal doing "Teenage Gluesniffer" is a standout too but really every song is awesome so get it when you can. Ok I must go walk the dog and try not to think about the injustices that befell us in Europe on that Marky tour. I'll just go watch the freaks here in Atlanta parade around Piedmont Park and try to focus on them. Piedmont Park is kind of like the boardwalk in Venice Beach and it's amusing to just walk around and gawk at the locals. More often than not you'll see a naked crackhead screaming and wandering around as everyone ignores him and let's face it-there's nothing more amusing than a naked crackhead. Ok I am outta here-Joe