Marked Men - On The Other Side 7"

Two songs recorded in Dec 2009 while Jeff Burke was home for Christmas. Or so the 1-2-3-4 website says. Lest I start internet misinformation, I should point out this is on 540 Records, but I can't find any web presence. I can't say I am or was the hugest Marked Men fan, but there are a bunch of people out there I know (read: hot chicks) that go buck nutty for such things, and the artwork is by Mr. Tim Kerr, so I picked it up. Shockingly enough, On The Other Side sounds like Marked Men: competent enough garage rock that is probably a lot more fun in a small Texas room with a couple Shiners in you.

I don't think this release is any harbinger of an official MM reunion. Erika saw them at this year's Chaos in Tejas, but I don't think that was more than a convenient maximizing of Jeff's time in from Japan. Can't find anything on the interwebs either but I'm going to leave that bit of sleuthing to those that care. If you number in that lot, buy On The Other Side here.

R

The Marked Men - Ghosts

The Marked Men are from Denton, in the delightful Republic of Texas. They play the garage punk that the kids enjoy very much in this day and age. They are decent, in my mind sort of a garage-ier Figgs if they covered Chixdiggit's Van Horne a bunch of times in a row. Ghosts has grown on me a bunch. I really didn't care for it the first time, but I bet I'd like them a lot more a couple beers in at Dan's Silverleaf. 

Three-quarters of these Marked Men used to be in The Reds, before one of their members left and moved to Japan. They say lightning never strikes twice, but damn if it isn't happening again. The Denton/Japan commute seems like it's going to be cost-prohibitive, so it would appear this may be one of the last chances you're going to get to get some Marked Men in your life. When it hits, like on Ditch or Red Light Rumors, it's a pretty damn good thing. You can definitely see why John Reis released their stuff on Swami. See what you think. You can hear some tracks at their social networking interface here. If you decide you'd like the home version of our game, you can pick Ghosts up here from the kids at Dirtnap.

R