Here we are, Gentle Reader(s), deeply in the depths of the Holidaze Season. With another Christmas now safely behind us a new year beckons, full of potential and uncertainty. What shall become of us, one and all? Impossible to say, of course, but I'll remain hopeful as is my nature. As a parting gift to the year that was I offer forth another installment of the saga of The Road Crew. In this chapter the Cretins put their best foot (feet?) forward for the good people of Wichita, KS, and manage to recruit a few more fans to their cause, whatever that might be. A small victory, but a victory nonetheless. Let us hope for the small victories in 2026, and perhaps a big one once in a while, just for yuks. Fond regards to one and all! P.S. - Rumor has it that DJ Inky will be returning to the Matador on 1/1/26. Stay tuned!

As we rejoin the Road Crew for installment Numero Quatro the Cretins prepare to hit the stage for a club gig in lovely Wichita, Kansas. Beano searches for the perfect snare drum sound, the Goof and Ink reminisce about the lovely dumps they've played, and the convoluted back story of the Cretins is at last revealed. Love it or hate it, keep those cards and letters coming in, Gentle Reader(s)—unless they're 'cease and desist' letters, in which case please contact my solicitors at the firm of Dewey Cheatham & Howe. Thank you.

Seems that the festive season is nigh upon us, Gentle Reader(s), and herewith I offer you some respite from the turkey and the football and the lip-sync parades and the dish washing and the caroling and Black Friday madness and all manner of holiday stuffe that rolls around at this time of the year. You will find that this section is longer than the preceding two as we commence a deeper dive into the internal dynamics of the Cretins and the rather fraught background of the Goof. The Cretins are revealed to be a complicated band with differing objectives and philosophies despite being but a trio. Perhaps that's the way it always goes: I suppose even a solo act can be beset with internal conflict and tension, depending on the particulars of who's involved. The Cretins are no exception and the stage is set, as it were, for the band's excursions into the dark heart of early 1980s mid-America. Buckle up and please don't hesitate to weigh in with your thoughts via the Contact page on this very site. Stayed tuned for Part Four, scheduled to drop in the second week of December.

No, Gentle Reader(s)—DJ Inky has not hung up his headphones… not just yet, anyway. This hiatus from posting of Matador Playlists—those vaunted bellwethers of musical innovation and rock & roll history, that pounding pulse of the subterranean Galisteo Street subconscious, the fruits of that crepuscular gig so intensely groovy that no one except for your very own selves has any notion of its continued questionable existence—was temporarily suspended for another extended sojourn in New Orleans to attend to pressing matters of family and bizniz. Those matters having been successfully concluded, Your Humble Narrator has returned once again to the alto desierto and reclaimed the DJ hidey hole at Ye Olde Matador Bar & Lounge. A grateful nation breathes a collective sigh of relief.

Time for the second installment of The Road Crew, Gentle Reader(s). This section puts the gear wonkery behind us for the moment (but only for the moment, as gear wonkery is eternal) and sets the stage, as it were, for the Cretins' tour through Mid-America in support of the Tom Kindler Band. Enjoy and stay tuned for another section before the end of the month—a Thanksgiving gift, from me to you.

Okay, Gentle Reader(s), we're going to try out something a bit different here at InkyInkInc. As you may well have gleaned from anything more than a cursory examination of these pages over the years, Your Humble Narrator is an alleged musician as well as an alleged writer. Way way back in the day I became friends with a fellow musician by the name of Steve LaRue, whom I typically refer to in these pages as the Goof, or Goofa. The Goof was my closest friend and we saw and/or talked to one another every single day of every single week for many years. We were bandmates, roommates, artistic collaborators and we even toured America together back in the early '80s. The Goof left us back in 2017 and even before he checked out I had started working on a sort of hopped-up memoir of our time on the road. Steve never got to read any of it but after he died I applied myself to the project with sporadic vigor and finally came to what I considered to be a finishing point about a year and a half ago. Since then, it has been edited and re-edited again, and that process could potentially go on forever. With a bit of gentle prodding from a friend or two, I have decided to share a bit of the manuscript with you. Love it or hate it, you can let me know what you think—that's what the CONTACT page is for. The full manuscript is quite long, so this is just a very small sampling. New installments will be posted on an approximately monthly basis. Here goes nothing...

I’m not sure how many of you out there, Gentle Reader(s), might be acquainted with the life and legacy of Theodore Isidore Gottlieb, otherwise known as Brother Theodore. I became a big fan of Brother Theodore’s unique brand of philosophically-minded mania through his guest spots with David Letterman on Late Night in the 1980s. Over the course of 16 appearances Letterman obligingly played the straight man for Brother Theodore’s unhinged ‘stand-up tragedy’ routines. Letterman loved to needle Gottlieb by referring to him as ‘Ted’ and by bursting the bubble of his bug-eyed bluster with mundane comments and questions.

Here I am once again, tucked into the dim corner that serves as the DJ booth of Ye Olde Matador Bar & Lounge. It is September 11–a date that remains laden with the weight of events that unfolded 24 years ago in New York, Washington DC, and rural Pennsylvania. I remember the day all too well. By the time I woke up that Tuesday morning the tragedy was already underway and it took me several groggy minutes to try and make some sense of what the radio was telling me. By the time I staggered downstairs and turned on the television United Airlines 175 had slammed into the south tower of the World Trade Center. In that moment I realized that the world had changed. Forever changed and much for the worse. I don’t mean to get all grim about this—not my signature jam, Gentle Reader(s)—but there just ain’t no way around it: We live in difficult and precarious times and it doesn’t take much imagination to draw a line directly from the global cataclysm spawned by 9/11 to where we find ourselves today.

Yes—I know: You can scarcely believe your luck, Gentle Reader(s), for here it is once again, that much beloved (if largely ignored) Mass of the Opiates, that Musical Balm in Gilead, the Cure for What Ails Thee—Ye Olde Matador Playlist. Yes indeed, it is that time once again and we—'we' being pretty much the same thing as 'I'—have a real doozy for you this week. Not that the preceding playlists were in any manner lacking for dooziness in their own right(s), but please allow me to pump myself up, to toot me own horn a bit, as it were. I feel as though I have earned it... sort of.