World Racketeering Squad Blog

And here she is in color:

Here's Nika relaxing:

Here are some more pics of World Racketeering Squad's sexy robot girl Nika that i have been working on lately:

Here is the video for the song "Zombie Ukulele Apocalypse", which we were commissioned to write by Sean Frost.  Enjoy!

This one is parked in a new coffeeshop in Chicago caled Worm Hole.  The whole place is straight out of 1984 and has a souped up time-traveling DeLorean in the front window.  That means The Squad could play this joint any year we want!

She's just excited about her new illustration which is being colored!

 We did some recording today. Here's Reed goofing around while laying down a vocal track:

Cee-Lo Green is best known lately as the voice of Gnarls Barkley. This is his new song, a beautiful soul tune about a trifling female called "Fuck You":

I was recently talking to Rufus from Scoot Inn about playing there sometime soon, and he offered this Saturday, August 21.  

Turns out I'm playing bass in You Might Think We're Sharks at the Texas Roller Derby halftime show this Saturday, so I wasn't available. But I said I could hook up an awesome show for him.

Saturday, Aug 21, Scoot Inn

So this Saturday at 9pm at Scoot Inn, for the low low price of $5, you can catch three excellent bands: paperthreat, J_Dub and The Tease, and Coast of Nebraska.

10pm Coast of Nebraska

First up at 10pm, Coast of Nebraska are a young band, playing catchy poppy rock music. On Big Western Flavor, Westy writes about the impact of a Coast of Nebraska show on him and his girlfriend, Anna C:

We went to see the band because I thought there was a real spark in some of their online recordings and writ large, seeing them live only reinforced that. Strong original melodies and oddly loping, catchy guitar parts at their best moments make them engaging to watch even in their current incomplete form.

11pm J_Dub and The Tease

J_Dub and The Tease may be familiar names to Austinites or fans of WRS, because lead singer Jonny Dub served a stint as our bassist a couple of years ago. He left to devote more time to his own band, and has since put out an excellent CD, Atom No. 5, and continues to play around town with his Spyjet Zero labelmates.

Jonny and his band will be bringing their mellow soul grooves to the Scoot Inn stage at 11pm.

12am paperthreat

Last up is paperthreat, at midnight.  paperthreat have been covered a number of times recently by Austin Town Hall, as well as appearing on ATH's Austin Summer Mixtape. 

They play electronic pop music, and you can get a feel for it at their Bandcamp site. If you like it, you can download it for free, and come out to see them Saturday night!

The always hard-working Big Western Flavor has delivered our first album review for What is Nerdwave?:

The tunes on What Is Nerdwave? tell stories. The band uses its knack for good, sticky chorus hooks and supports it by writing lyrics that increase the expectation and hence the payoffs for the choruses.

They also make their 80's-rock inspirations their own by injecting the Racketeers' personal obsessions and quirks, from the technosexual weirdness of "Electromagnetic Pulse" to the fanfic romance "Summer" (as in Summer Glau).

The smart construction of the songwriting enhances the modest pleasures of their playing. A few songs really pop out: "I'm Not Dead" is fast, goofy fun and "Looking for Lorelei" is expertly conceived power pop.

Thanks, Westy!