At the risk of being a total dork, I made my Positive Influence Zine playlist public on both Spotify and Apple Music to share what posicore and straight edge hardcore music I was listening to both back in the day as well when I was putting together my introduction to the anthology. I found it helpful to get into the same headspace I was in decades ago while searching those dusty corners of my mind for interesting stories or factual tidbits about creating the zine with Buster.
In 1988 I created an illustration of the vocalist of Norwalk band, Walk Proud, for the cover art of their debut New Age Records release, “Be Yourself.” A credit on the back cover of the 7″ states “Cover Art: Anji,” though I didn’t create the cover artwork, per se. Chris Cole drew the logo and I have no idea who did the transfer letters of the title or the overall layout. My pen and ink illustration was used on the original cover art for the first pressing on black vinyl.
Front and Back Cover of Walk Proud ‘Be Yourself’ on New Age Records
Interestingly, the cover art was initially composed of just my drawing of Lalo (in a smaller size) and Chris’ graffiti style logo (in a larger size) placed in a stacked formation. I found an entry on Discogs with a photo of this original design layout. In a 2018 interview with No Echo Mike Hartsfield of New Age Records said:
Even though it’s been a long while since I posted my last episode of The Chillcast with Anji Bee, I still make monthly (and sometimes weekly) playlists. Exploring new music is what makes me most happy! I’m an Apple Music user, but since more people seem to rely on Spotify, I took the time to recreate my yearly Top 20 Mix on my Anji Bee Spotify account for folks to check out.
The Spotify player above will allow you to stream the full playlist (with commercial breaks) even if you don’t have an account. The Apple Music player below will only play you clips of the songs if you do not have an account.
As you may or may not know, I am a pretty big BTS fan. I guess you could actually say I’m ARMY as I’ve even subscribed to the official fanclub the past 3 years. Ryan and I saw them perform at Rosebowl for the Love Yourself Speak Yourself tour and then I saw them again at the 2019 Jingleball, both of which I posted videos from on my YouTube channel. I had floor seats for the MOTS tour that was cancelled, and you better believe I cried my eyes out over that. I posted a video, too, about the terrible experience I had with the Ticketmaster pre-sale for the Permission to Dance in LA shows going on right now. Rampant errors on the site caused me to end up with what folks call “nosebleed seats” at the SoFi Stadium for Day 2. Sigh.
During the discovery phase of compiling the upcoming Positive Influence anthology, I cam across a drawing I did for Against the Wall back in 1988. This thin marker sketch with a bit of stippling and a bit of cross hatching is very indicative of my style at that period. The simple black and white designs xeroxed well thus were perfect to use for zines and flyers. This is the same drawing style I used for the New Age Records logo graphic. If memory serves, this drawing was done as a potential cover for the first Against the Wall single that was going to be released by New Age, the label of Against the Wall member, Mike Hartsfield. The ‘Identify Me‘ single ended up being released by Nemesis Records in 1989 with a completely different cover.
It’s been awhile since my last Happy Healthy Vegan travel vlog! Ryan and I took a much needed getaway trip to enjoy some nature in the Palm Springs area at Andreas Canyon. We also checked out Chef Tanya’s Kitchen for the first time. I hope you’ll feel relaxed by watching this chill day in the life video featuring the beauty of our California desert and music by my band, Lovespirals!
Just got home from a lovely and rejuvenating camping trip on Catalina Island with Ryan. I already miss the gorgeous weather and idyllic conditions over at Little Harbor. We are currently having record high weather in Los Angeles, well in excess of 100 degrees all across the county, including the beaches! If only I were still back in Little Harbor, chillin’ with a sea breeze… Thought you might like to check out some of my photos from my Catalina camping trip over on Facebook. Some of these pix are also on my Anji Bee Flickr account, which you can also see directly on my website in the sidebar.
Some highlights from the trip were unexpectedly perfect weather — since the meteorologists predicted fog and cool temps, being the only campers at the beach front spots for 2 nights, spotting buffalo in camp for the first time, making vegan s’mores around the camp fire all 3 nights, and having AMAZING sunsets with unobstructed views all 3 nights including an awe-inspiring simultaneous sunset and moonrise on the Autumn Equinox. I’m sure that Ryan and I will talk a little bit about our experiences on a Chillin’ with Lovespirals band podcast sometime in the near future.
This weekend I got a chance to hang out with friends and fellow former Projekt Records label-mates, Audra. I hadn’t seen brothers Bart and Bret Helm (also of Black Tape for a Blue Girl) in years! They drove down from Arizona ( along with their drummer, Jason) to play a show at Club Eterno, in Los Angeles, on Saturday night. This was the first time I had heard their post-Projekt material from their latest album, Everything Changes. The band have definitely evolved their sound over the past few years, with a slightly more aggressive edge and more of a rock feel. Their live set was very confident, too. Check out this video I shot of their new song, “Syd Barrett.”
Bret Helm, Anji Bee, and Bart Helm at Club Nocturne
Just popping in via video to wish you all a Happy New Year and to talk about some of the things I am working on for 2010. Gosh! Can you believe it’s already 2010? It sounds so futuristic… But then again, could we have imagined we’d be communicating like this 10 years ago? I was still having trouble uploading 64k mp3s via dialup, for crying out loud! Its absolutely unreal how much the internet has evolved the past decade, and I’m sure we’ll see even more evolution over the next decade. Hopefully you’ll still be following my content stream. Thanks again for your support and love!
Anji Bee shares her 2010 to-do list (via Facebook)
Just thought I’d pop in to send you a little Halloween love with this free download by one of my fave indie pop bands, The Postmarks. They did a really cute cover of Ministry’s “Every Day Is Halloween” a few years back and are still offering it on their site. Because the navigation of their site does not allow one to link to specific pages, I can’t link to their audio section and am forced to deep link it directly here. Boo! But please do go visit the The Postmarks site as they have more free songs, videos, and fun stuff to check out.
