I wasn’t a good student in school and spent a lot of time drawing in the principal’s office waiting for mom to pick me up.  I got interested in tattooing as a young lad reading Heavy Metal magazine. Heavy Metal did a layout on band members and their tattoos; I loved the bad ass image and fuck-you-attitude that went with it.  I started to draw the tats out of the magazine. So after high school (1993) I tried to get an apprenticeship. Keep in mind that at this time there was only a handful of shops on Long Island.  At these shops they believed very strongly in keeping the trade a secret.  So I started to get more into graffiti: the next best thing which still had the bad ass image and fuck-you-attitude. After a brief run in with the law that ended my short graffiti career, I decide to order a tattoo kit out of biker magazine.  I figured that I could have used the money I spent staying out of jail to move toward tattooing. By the end of 1994 I had my kit and a lot of skin on my leg, so I started tattooing myself and then moved on to a few friends who weren’t scared.

Well, at least they didn’t run.

In my early 20’s I got involved with some guy who wanted to jump on the tattoo boom.  I knew how to ink and he had the money to open a shop.  At the end of this experience I walked away from the shop with nothing and he had a full crew of new tattooists. Which left a bad taste with me for the tattoo scene. I didn’t know at the time that this would be the fuel for the new beginning.  In others words, it was the best thing that ever happened to me.  After being bitter and crying to friends about how I wasn’t inking anymore, I realized that I didn’t have to sling ink in a storefront to be a tattooist.

In 2002 I had a moment of clarity while I was sitting on the bowl.  It came to me: I could smell it in the air… Second Flight Studio.   Just like that, 2^nd F.S. was born.  It’s only been five years now and slowly—with a little help from my crew—2^nd F.S. is becoming a strong name on Long Island.  We’re creating solid ink in a relaxing yet professional environment. We’re certified by the Nassau County Board of Health, we’ve got running water in the studio taps, and now we’re expanding our waiting room.  Online, our review section is slowly growing with some of the most solid writers around.  I have been surrounding myself with people who enjoy what they do and don’t let their labels dictate who they are.

I don’t need a cable show on the Pretentiousness Channel and I don’t need people to believe I’m an ‘artist’: Prince already cornered that market.  I’m a tattooist, baby, and I’m here to stay.

Obsessed with music since the age of 3, Chuck Foster finally put pen to paper in 2002 and has since regularly contributed to the New York Waste, Under the Volcano, Horror Garage and The Big Takeover.  He also wrote the liner notes for the Repercussions’ Modern Sounds, a bio for the Turbo AC’s and introductory narration for the film Elwood Carlisle Superstar.  Along the way, he has had the pleasure of interviewing such diverse voices as Jello Biafra, King Buzzo of the Melvins and Sky Saxon of the Seeds.  He cites Richard Meltzer, Lester Bangs and Mitch Meyers as his main influences in the Rock Lit/Crit genre and he hopes to have his name rank among his heroes one day.

Chuck has been in numerous bands with names like Twitch Party, Leopold, Pope Goat VII, Maggot, Optimus Prime and most recently, ULTRABASTARD!.  He also does Noise/Experimental music as Ghoatefische and Simstim Technologies, and has been associated with deng, Eckankore, +DOG+ and the Quiet Sickness.

Possessing a collection of approximately 4000 CDs, an uncountable amount of vinyl and a slew of extremely rare cassettes, Chuck is a hard man to impress but here are a few hints:

 His Top 5 Favorite bands are the Stooges, Black Flag, the Jesus Lizard, the Dwarves and the Dictators.

Touch & Go, Amphetamine Reptile, Alternative Tentacles, SST and Dead Beat are among his favorite labels. 

He possesses every conceivable genre of music, from Beethoven to 1920s Delta Blues to Avant-Garde Jazz to Hip-Hop to Noise to Afro-Beat to Norteñas to Funk/Soul to every form of Rock/Punk/Metal/Goth/Indutrial/etc.

However, if you sound like any band on the Warped Tour, Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews, Rush, Bruce Springsteen or Kenny G, please don’t waste his time, as he has plenty of good music to listen to and all that other crap just gets in the way.

 And in case you were wondering, Chuck loves Horror Movies and the books of Anthony Burgess, William S. Burroughs and William Gibson.

Take a chance – he’s unpredictable.

I’ve always been interested in music from day one. My dad, a professional musician and music teacher, was always playing music in the car on the stereo. In high school, I started to get into music on my own, starting with Korn, then moving to White Zombie and Metallica, then to Sepultura and Pantera. I stayed pretty entrenched in the metal world for a while, but there’s only so long you can do that: once you get into grind, death and black, you kind of hit a wall.

Luckily, I had plenty of my dad’s old stuff ingrained into my memory from childhood to throw in some variety. I became an avid fan of classic rock and proto-metal: all the obvious choices (Sabbath, Zeppelin, The Beatles, Stones, Hendrix etc.) in addition to some reggae (Bob Marley and roots reggae only, no fucking reggaeton), some jazz (Miles Davis etc.) and through the classic rock, some traditional Indian music (Ravi Shankar) as well.

Of course loving music so much had to translate to forming my own bands, ranging from metal (Precipice), metal/industrial (Saladin), avant-garde punk rock (The Blue Angels Inc.), improv jam (The Moon Jam Troopers) to the comedic and ridiculous (The Gabe Saladino Experience).
I have a pretty open mind when it comes to music, so I will try to review as fairly as possible, but if it sucks, it sucks.

While Bep Kororoti has no real background in writing, he is a rather opinionated person - particularly when it comes to music - and has no problem whatsoever expressing his distaste for your favorite effeminate, self-deprecating, uninspired, emo/pop/alt/indie dime-a-dozen band. This and the A++ he was given on a 6th grade short story project are more than sufficient credentials to assure his dynamic capabilities as a Rock Writer.

That said, Bep K. has been listening to music as long as he's had ears to hear. Without these ears, his life would be gosh darn close to being meaningless as he's dedicated his entire life to the business of sound. In pre-school, Bep spent a significant amount of his time listening to Michael Jackson's Thriller cassette on headphones and stealing the crappy little casio key board his brother had gotten for Christmas to press and hold single keys for lengthy periods of time, listening intently to the pulsing tone.

At some point in grade school, Bep K. took to learning the saxophone. He quickly understood that he would never compare to Coltrane and immediately gave up the instrument. Through the proceeding years, Bep made several efforts at maintaining rock bands but soon learned that too many people wrote awful music so he bought his self a bass guitar and began a quest to right the musical wrongs brought on by the infiltration of pop ignorance into the sacred grounds of rock. His tastes range from rock, punk, hardcore, metal, blues and R & B to jazz, classical, folk, country, blue grass and all the way to Hip Hop, turntablism, electronic and gangsta rap. Bep K. is constantly involved in musical projects to satisfy his need to produce sound, however displeasing to the ears of others. A few bands in which Bep K. has been involved or is still currently involved include; Optimus Prime, ULTRABASTARD! and Radiomuzik. He is also a live musician for various other bands and projects. He noise/expermental music as Bep Kororoti Nois.
If, for some reason, you're seeking to get on Bep's good side, your best chance would be to buy him a nice sushi dinner and a case of Guinness, as well as a trip to the zoo or the museum and following up with a night of gorey movies and old school cartoons (muppets included). Some of his favorite animators include John Hubley, Chuck Jones, John Kricfalusi, Ralph Bakshi, Hayao Miyazaki, Dino Stamatopoulos, Katsuhiro Otomo, and the Fleischers (Max and Dave).
Bep Kororoti is Kyopo Indian and in english translates to "I come fromspace/beyond."

Inspired by zines like Radio Riot in the then-burgeoning New Brunswick, NJ hardcore punk scene of the early ‘90s, Matt Berlyant put pen (well a computer with a word processor and a dot matrix printer) and paper together and made 3 issues of Plastic Conspiracy, 1 issue of Dead Pervo Instinct and an issue of My War. The last issue featured interviews with Sticks and Stones, Holeshot and God is My Co-Pilot. He then put together another issue of My War, featuring interviews with Spitboy, Los Crudos and Anchor, but decided to not put it out. If you’ve never seen or heard of any of these fanzines even if you were involved with the scene at that time, that’s because he only made about 100-125 copies of each, selling or giving away most of them at shows and selling the rest on consignment at stores like Cheap Thrills and Vintage Vinyl.

Fast forward to 8 years later. His enthusiasm for music never wavering, a then 28 year-old Berlyant, who hadn’t written about music since being a teenage fanzine writer and editor, was asked to review a Radiohead show by The Big Takeover’s Jack Rabid. He accepted the challenge and his still-ongoing involvement with that legendary magazine was born. Since then, he’s had the pleasure of interviewing Frank Reader of The Trashcan Sinatras, The Fiery Furnaces, British Sea Power, Andrew Chalfen of The Trolleyvox and most recently, his childhood hero Peter Cortner, the former vocalist for Dag Nasty and Los Vampiros and currently of The Gerunds. He’s also transcribed interviews with Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, The Undertones and Death Cab for Cutie, Jason Pierce of Spiritualized and The Feelies and written numerous live show reviews for the magazine as well. In addition to this, since November 2005 he has been a blogger for The Big Takeover’s website, updating his blog each week with a new Top 10 list and writing mostly show reviews and whatever else comes to mind. Before that, he also maintained his own personal blog.

Born and raised in the rough world of Long Island suburbia, I spent most of my youth making, listening or skateboarding to music. My first musical interests were Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel. (Hey, I was young and you know they're good.) Then I discovered the jazz of Glen Miller and Thelonious Monk at my grandmother’s house. That became the catalyst for my obsession with music.

My metalhead cousin introduced me to some heavy metal favorites like Black Sabbath, King Diamond and the almighty Slayer. He gave me the proper education in Heavy Metal 101 and I found my love of the dark side.

Since most of my friends were skateboarders, punk rock was always blasting from the trunks of their cars. The noise pollution of NOFX and Bouncing Souls then became my new favorites, earning me my education in Punk Rock 101.

Realizing there were many ways to put together the sounds from the hands and mouths of humans, I began my quest for more musical pleasure. I went hunting for different styles, different instruments, and I haven’t stopped since. I began with the trumpet and piano, then to guitar, mandolin, and the bass. In my journey, I worked with various bands like Johnny On the Spot and Porch Junkies (Emily Brooks). I currently play bass with The Spines (Strawhouse/Sony/Red). Our debut album, Radiolarian will be released on February 17th 2009.

Although I have no real experience and absolutely no credentials to be a writer (except a few book reports in school), I love to listen to music and recommend new bands to friends. Now I have a chance to write it down and reach the masses. There is way too much garbage being pushed as a good music nowadays, while good bands end up in the trash. I’m here to sort that out!

I enjoy music from just about every genre, even bluegrass and zydeco. If you say, “I listen to everything,” and it turns out you have only five CDs, you might get slapped. Introduce me to a new band or I’ll invite myself over to browse through your CDs