Hello, my name is Mario and I am a recovering Taxi-holic. I am no longer a part of the mighty LST and therefore I am taking a great risk in writing this blog without their permission. I only hope that they will grant an exiled panda this last request.

Today my son will be born. It is now 4:18pm in Bismarck, ND and Alison is nearly ready to complete the final round of this 15 hour contest. As I sit here waiting to see Nathan Natal Pesacreta for the first time (yes, I lost a bet to Nathan!) I can’t help but feel nostalgic.

Does anyone remember just how high Franco used to jump? Can anyone recall when Nathan donned his “Funky Pants”? Can anyone forget the time I had long beautiful hair, like an overweight Fabio?

Franco: I can’t believe its not butter!

Mario-Fabio: That’s because it is butter!

I will miss the vikings of Quilcene: Bjorn and Mike. Everyone misses Sally, I will never forget her and we all loved her very much!!

Mr. Wilson, I hope you can build me a mic holder for my trumpet again, but this time in five minutes instead of ten. Also, if you have not picked up a copy of the “Zombie Survival Guide” yet, you may be in for a rude surprise.

To the Chards (excluding Andrew of course): Thank you for your hospitality, ribs, wine, camera lenses, and for one hell of a bass playing son.

Thanks to the band for putting up with my mood swings, perfectionism, and hygene.

Also to everyone else in Quilcene, and Touchet, and Yakima, and countless other people that fed and housed the plague of locusts that is LST.

LST is a magical group that will always have the ability to touch peoples hearts and… yes even their ears through unclassifiable, ever changing music.

This is the last blog of the panda.

Goodbye.

Our new album is so close to being done.  And we have a name for it: Mr. Brown.  We’re calling it that partly to honor our venerable and magical sound man, Tom.  Right now Tom is probably in his dark cave surrounded by knobs, buttons and little flashing green lights, mixing the album.  He has to wait for the barometer to drop below 970 before he can do this.  Low atmospheric pressure is better for his ears.

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Mario and Alison are moving to North Dakota to have their baby boy.  Ally’s family is in North Dakota and they wanted to be close to them.  They will be missed by us big time.  This means that Mario won’t be performing with LST for awhile.  Mario is not replaceable, but in order to make up for his absence Nathan is learning to play the harmonica, Sam is buying more drums and Franco is trying not to be so skinny.

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Andrew Chard played his last official LST show on bass last September.  Then he subbed for Milo Mullins, his successor, at a show on October 3rd.  He was an excellent substitute bass player - our best ever in fact.  He moved on for a variety of reasons, one of which was to write a book.  Chard played bass with us from 2007 through most of 2009. 

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Mario is still featured on the new album, as is Andrew Chard.  We will still be performing several of Mario’s songs at live shows.  He gave us his blessing to do this.  The songs will sound a bit different of course, but good songs are good songs and Nathan and I have really been enjoying singing them in rehearsals.

This has been a crazy summer for LST. Crazy good! The band has managed to write at least a handful of new tunes and our live shows have been better than ever. Enough bragging, let me catch you up on some LST gossip.

Nathan Geyer- He is done with school and ready for…. more school! This time he’ll be the teacher and you kids better watch out! He will turn you into a lean mean music machine!

Sam Stockard- Sam is heading off to Africa for vacation. Who the heck goes to Africa? If he gets a limb ripped off by a wild hippo he is out of the band!! Or at least his pay will be cut by 1/4 to make up for the lack of an arm or leg.

Franco Bertucci- His house is finished and it is beautiful! He has ducks, and a kitten and he is very happy. You can tell at our shows because he now jumps so high that he hurts himself.

Andrew Chard- Andrew has gorgeous hazel eyes and is ready to commit full time… to the band!! He is currently writing the great American novel. I think it is about Nazis and I hope it is about zombies. He says if it doesn’t sell he’ll turn it into a romance novel. His parents are the best and they have let us stay at their lovely house for too many nights and provided countless pounds of delicious barbecue.

Mario Pesacreta- Thats me!! What am I up to….?????.a.dojfopihja;sl;lnc ummm……… I am currently awaiting the Zombie Apocalypse. My friend Scott Wilson has assured me that Quilcene is the place to be when this inevitably happens. I am counting on our friend Bjorn (he is a living Norse god) to protect us and provide us with oysters to eat until the infection has passed.

See you soon everyone,

Mario

On behalf of the band I would like to give a huge thanks to Chard’s parents, for putting us up for three nights, feeding us amazing meals (breakfast, lunch, and dinner!) and letting me make some milkshakes involving half and half and a pint of schnapps.  During these practice sessions we managed to write four new songs, work up two new covers and re-work “Heart in The Buff” a too little heard Franco gem. We’ve decided to record a new album in the fall of ’09, and offer free downloads of some bootleg recordings from 08. Also, watch out this summer when we cut Franco’s leash and get him a wireless system for his guitar. You might even see Andrew (aka “Chard” aka “big brother”) playing on a sweet full size (3/4 to be exact) upright bass on a few taxi favorites.

Thanks again to  Mike and Sue Chard for the wine, the ribs and for a little baby boy named Andy Chard!

Sam’s beard ticks me off! It looks perfect and he grew it in like one day!! I have been trying to grow mine for three weeks, and it doesn’t look 1/4 as cool. I hope he gets a drumstick caught in it, or maybe his brushes.

Should I just be happy we have the best drummer LST could ever hope for? No, I’m still ticked.

Well at least mine is starting to look better than Chard’s….

-Mario

P.S. Pictures of my beard coming soon.

Who is Franco Bertucci? How is it that he is able to charm the pants off of audiences, and yet at the same time all of these pant-less people dancing around don’t seem vulgar? How is it that he could have done what Elvis did with the same amount of pelvis and have remained a good catholic boy? Enough with questions. Here are some statements that I think are true of the man in plaid. He can’t jump as far as he used to, but he can still jump to conclusions about the comments I make.  Franco once drank at least a pint of my home-made root beer, even though I think it tasted like feet, and was probably alcoholic.

I remember when I first met Franco. It was in Centralia College pep band, and I was a high schooler joining in on the fun. I remember this kid that looked just like Paul Simon (I don’t really see the resemblance now) and had a really old, red electric guitar.  He looked like he wanted to make music that didn’t involve expensive distortion pedals or Jimmie Hendrix covers, so he was a step above anyone I knew at that point. I went and said hi, and something about wanting to start a band. He was interested. Franco was farther along in the song writing department. I think he had a handful of songs written whereas I had two songs half finished. We got along right away despite our differences.  Those differences have lessened with age, probably due to  the bulk of my vulgarity being cleaned up by my wife.

Franco and I are now brothers as far as I’m concerned, though he doesn’t need anymore, and he is my favorite guitar player.

Peace,

Panda

Its a very rainy afternoon here in Centralia, and I thought I could finally get around to posting another blog. The last couple of shows have gone very well, even though Chard’s father was semi-molested by an inebriated fan. You’ll have to ask him about it when you see him at one of the shows. This fall we managed to write a new song, a flamenco-esque waltz, and a few more that are still incubating. We have greatly missed the triceratops-wounding hero Nathan Geyer. He is busy with grad school, teaching high school choir, and a string of unacceptable (to this panda) relationships. NO WOMAN IS GOOD ENOUGH FOR NATHAN! I suggested men, not me, but maybe someone like Chard.

A former member of LST is to be married…I cannot say which one, you’ll have to guess, but I won’t tell you even if you are right. It could be one of our 13 past drummers or 3 bassists. I’ll give you a great hint, he’s straight.

Are you desperate for a new LST album? Are you tired of us reissuing the same 14 songs for half a decade? Were you disappointed when you got “False Alarm” only to find out that you’ve listened to those songs for years? Want to do something about it? Email Franco and tell him he is running this band into the ground! Or even better, buy a ton of LST CD’s as Christmas presents so we can justify putting out an album of our all new material like All I Wanna Do, Graysters, Coffee, The Reggae song, Nate’s New Ballad, On the Road and more! The first person to order 20 CD’s gets a free autographed trombone. No Joke.

Hopefully I’ll post another blog soon about the special cookies one fan gave to Nathan, and how Sam finished them.

Peace,

Panda

We have received a few reports from folks purchasing our live album, “Harvest of 2007″ that the track containing the Red Head Song has some errors in it and skips in a couple of places.  This is a bummer and we are very sorry if your CD has this problem.  You can download the error-free version of the track for free right here:

Red Head Song

(Right-click and select “save target as.”)

We really hope this helps.  Feel free to download the song as many times as you like for free.

- Papa Taxi

In case you are wondering, Mario does not have a computer right now and has been very busy moving into a new place, working at a music store fixing horns and other instruments (including my guitar) and rocking with LST.  This is the excuse I am making on his behalf for his lack of recent posts to this blog.

I, on the other hand, am not busy at all.  I am only handling bookings, promotion and guitar duties in a very excellent, but somewhat unwieldy band, raising two daughters, and building a house … with my bare hands.  I have all kinds of time.  But I hope that Mario will take up the task again soon because the people are in need – whether they know it or not.