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The most recent installment of the Indie Spinner Rack<\/a> podcast (direct link here<\/a>) is a special episode that features music by cartoonists and one of the songs included is “That Mile” by my old band, Come on Thunderchild. This is a great idea for a show–and one that I’m surprised hasn’t been done before. There are lots of cartoonists with musical backgrounds and\/or side projects, the most notable being R. Crumb & His Cheap Suit Serenaders, the Leisure Suits featuring Peter Bagge, Sof’ Boy<\/em> artist Archer Prewitt’s band The Sea and the Cake, and James Kochalka Superstar. On this episode you’ll hear Alex Longstreth playing a Magnetic Fields song, a great cut from Scott Pilgrim<\/em> cartoonist Brian Lee O’Malley, and a cut off of the self-titled Come on Thunderchild record from 1998.<\/p>\n At some point the full story of Come on Thunderchild, and its previous incarnation Electro-Luxe, (with whom I played bass only for the very tail end of its existence) will make its way to The Internets. In fact, I purchased the domain thunderluxe.com a while back with this thought in mind, and COT guitaris\/keys-player\/singer John Morris<\/a> and I talked a bit about setting up a site, but with me busy with comics stuff and a new baby<\/a> and John running his own business<\/a> whilst also playing in what appears to be about thirty-five different bands in Charlotte, nothing’s really been done on that front…<\/p>\n Anyway… In the ISR episode, the host Charlito speculates that I abandoned music for comics, which wasn’t really the case. I of course wound up pursuing comics post-band, but that wasn’t really part of anything as well-considered as an agonizing “music vs. comics” life-path struggle. Regrettably, though, I have let my musical passion pretty much idle since then. Time-wise, there just don’t seem to be enough hours in the day to squeeze in comics and<\/em> music, along with the usual day-to-day stuff. I did, though, recently purchase a vintage Harmony ukulele and have been really surprised at how much I’ve been enjoying playing it. At the moment I mainly know a weird combination of faux-Hawaiian songs like “Little Grass Shack” and “Tiny Bubbles,” and stuff I learned to sing to my daughter Marion (who thankfully can’t yet vocalize any objections to my off-key caterwauling) like “Baby on Board” by Homer Simpson’s barbershop group the B Sharps and “Rubber Ducky” (a kid’s song with some surprisingly non-standard chords).<\/p>\n A few images of band-related stuff from the days of yore:<\/p>\n The article above is from a 1995 issue of Billboard<\/em> Magazine spotlighting the just pre-COT version of Electro-Luxe. Our then-drummer Michael Glaser would unfortunately succumb to a bad case of carpal tunnel and we later added David Kim (AKA “D.K.” or “Da Kid”) on drums. Pictured left to right: me, Randolph Lewis, John Morris, Michael Glaser.<\/p>\n I’m not exactly sure where this was taken, but I think this was maybe a rejected publicity still. Right to left, that’s: Randolph Lewis, me, John Morris, occasional percussionist Chris Krull, and David Kim.<\/p>\n![\"cot_article.gif\"](\"http:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/uploads\/2008\/04\/cot_article.thumbnail.gif\")
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