New live galleries of Lamb of God from December 2007 and Papa Roach from October 2007 have been added for your viewing enjoyment. Also new is a Peanut Gallery montage featuring Steve Lukather (lead guitarist for Toto and solo singer-songwriter). So for you fans of Randy Blythe or Jacoby Shaddix there's more pix to see now. And with the addition of Steve to the Peanut Gallery, the popularity of my montages just keeps rising. Enjoy Me Dears...

For several years I've suffered on and off with lower back problems and the pain literally has been a pain in the arse. March 2007 at my doctor's recommendation I started to exercise again, eat right and take off some weight to alleviate the strain and pain on my weak discs. 35lbs lighter and an abdomen tighter (hey that rhymes!) I'm doing much better but am still having painful flare ups. I'm too young to have fusion surgery which they don't want to do and the painkillers just make you drool and want to hug everyone!

So the last three weeks I've been having acupuncture treatment for my lower back pain. Three times a week at 7am I've been baring my arse so that the very nice Dr Thomas can stick needles in my lower back for 20 minutes at a time. Some sessions involve just the needles and then others the needles are hooked up to wires and electrical pulses are run through them to stimulate the affected areas and promote blood flow to help heal.
   

The short and thick of it is that I'm actually starting to feel a difference and improvement and the day to day pain is much less than previously. Now I'll be the first one to admit that I thought acupuncture was a load of tripe but the Chinese have done it for a thousand years and it's still going so...... At least they did something useful that didn't contain lead paint eh? Ha! Seriously though, if you're having lower back pain and haven't explored the option of acupuncture then at least research and consider it. Here's a couple of links that have interesting information.

Acupuncture Today

American Academy of Medical Acupuncture

Yours with a prickly bottom, just hanging at the house with Daisy...

ASH

The March 2008 edition of Modern Drummer has a really interesting feature that Seether fans and drummers will enjoy. My mate, Seether drummer John Humphrey is featured this month in a six page spread that I helped make happen. The story tells of John's years of back problems, the onset of degenerative disc disease (of which I suffer also) and his traumatic 2006 spinal fusion surgery and recovery. A well written piece that features photos by yours truly taken back in September last year when I caught up with the Seether boys in Kansas City.

This was just two concerts into John's return to the drums with Seether. Anyone who's heard the new Seether album "Finding Beauty in Negative Spaces" will agree that John Humphrey hasn't missed a single beat and seems to have come back an even stronger drummer. Check out the pics from the article below...
   

On another note, had a couple of friends of mine came in from New York to see me a wee bit back. Mark and Billy from Roadrunner Records were nice enough to take me out to dinner at the Republic Of Texas where we imbibed the local burned meats and finest Single Malts. Hadn't seen Mark in quite some time so as you can see from the pics he gets kinda excited when he's had a beverage or two...
 

Billy is an awesome bloke as well. He kinda helped get me started with all this Rock Photography stuff and he set up my very first photo shoot with a musician back in 2003 with Corey Taylor who was touring with Stone Sour at the time. Check out the shot of Corey from back then...
 

I just recently purchased a little Canon camera for snapshots and farting around photos etc... Check out this cool little Canon Elph SD1000...fits right in your pocket! Smart little camera, not bad for a couple of hundred bucks! Check out the snapshots of my wee beasties...
    

My friend Pam in Florida who is a badass vector artist recently made this vector image for me from a photo of Daisy and I. Pretty darn cool looking. She's done some other vectors from my images as well. See if you can spot them at her most excellent website www.pamzylove.com


Cheers Me Dears - ASH