Mono Men - Have a Nice Day, Motherfucker: I was reading a fanzine while a friend was getting a tattoo and there was an interview with Dave Crider (guitarist and vocalist in the mono men and Estrus Records head). There wasn’t much news in the interview text aside from a synopsis of the warehouse fire (which was just a retelling of the postcard - the fanzine’s fault, not the interviewee), but there was sidebar discography for the band. And I was amazed at just how many releases (LP’s 7"s and EP’s of all sizes) the band has had to their credit. Actually, the amazing part was that unknowingly I had acquired pretty much all of them. Now, the point of the ramble is not to discuss my record collection, but to state the fact that when pigeonholed into an historically stale genre, the Mono Men have found the means to be extremely prolific because even if I don’t listen to those records on any sort of regular basis, I can’t deny that each and everyone of them was a solid, worthwhile piece of tape. I don’t think you can really say that about any band, especially any band in 1998. But on the ride home, and this is no joke, I actually brainstormed the reasoning with myself; sad, yes, but the final conclusion was that no matter how old you get or how jaded you become there’s always something, somewhere, to piss you off. It could be yourself, your lover, the man... whatever, but when you’ve built a career, and more importantly; your technical ability, around encapsulating the piss and vinegar running through your veins at no point in your musical life can you ever stop and ever stop being sincere with it all. Dave Crider is a bitter man. Maybe not on the phone, in casual conversation at a bar or if you run into him at the Safeway, but the Dave Crider who writes for the Mono Men is an extremely bitter man and as long as they continue to record, that side of him will always let you know he exists. (Estrus)