in lieu of real posting - 'desk tattoos'

You may have noticed some subtle changes about the blog recently. With my newfound knowledge of CSS templates along with the usual Blogger interface, I've indulged in a bit of tweaking. Partly to revert some changes that happened a few weeks ago, and partly to shake up the aesthetics of the site a little. A very little - mainly brown hyperlinks. Anyway, I though I needed a fresh header to top it off, so here it is.

The drawings are all my own (it's a drawing board I use) but none of them are original, so this is the list in case you don't recognise them all:

(clockwise from left)

- The Ramones, 'Hey Ho, Let's Go' banner/eagle with baseball bat crest, designed by Arturo Vega. The chevrons in the centre are very sloppy for some reason I can't remember, but hey, it's not my national seal of office. And I actually don't have the Ramones shirt with this logo, somewhat out of principle. I have a different one, of course.

- Hot Water Music, flame logo. Not only are they an amazing band, but they have a great, great logo too. I'm not sure if it was designed by Scott Sinclair (sinc), who does all their album art; they also had a less stylised version on their first releases.

- The Velvet Underground, The Velvet Underground and Nico Andy Warhol banana picture. And yes, I do have the 'peel slowly and see' tag written in above. Such a great album - which leads on to a bunch of other stuff which is just as good, but is still one-of-a-kind.

- AFI, Art of Drowning demon drawing (just the tail of it, and a bit of wing, are in view). That album is good, along with the ones on either side of it. Everything before that, pretty much, is too punk - at least for my tastes - and everything after it nowhere near enough. I remember having serious goth issues when I first decided to buy this album, but really, it rocks.

- Black Flag. Duh. After (or possibly before) HWM, that's one of the best punk rock logos ever. I don't even listen to them that much, and at the risk of heaping opprobrium upon myself, I'd be a Rollins-era kind of guy.

- The Bouncing Souls, the 'bouncing soul'. In real life it's half black, half-white, but since the former (the left-hand side) is difficult to do in outline, I just left it to the strength of the lines to tell the story. That's from one of their earlier albums, but the version on the cover of How I Spent My Summer Vacation really defines the image for me.

- Operation Ivy, 'ska man'. With porkpie and weirdly-fingered hand. I've hardly ever mentioned Operation Ivy on the blog, but Energy or the Op Ivy discography CD are a real must for anybody's punk record collection. It's ska without horns, as well as fierce early Bay Area punk rock. Tim Armstrong (aka 'Lint') and Matt Freeman from the band went on to perform in the more widely recognised Rancid, while Jesse Michaels released several excellent records in Common Rider, which had much more ska feel.

(Also on the board but out of shot are the Pennywise logo, Husker Du 'Metal Circus' logo, the flower from Green Day's first album, and the skull from Rancid, Life Won't Wait. As you can probably tell, most of this comes from my younger days; but what the hell, they're all still important bands to me even if I have to remind myself to listen to their albums from time to time)