Press Release: Free Weed’s Album ‘Introducing’ is Out Now (and Every 4/20 Forever) on Bad Diet Records
Cannonballing the infinity pool party of your mind’s eye like a shirtless kaleidoscopic kegerator made of sentient weed, don’t worry your ‘rents will bottle the water, and table the alligator float—Bad Diet Records happily introduces... Introducing by Free Weed.
*steel drums start playing*
Free Weed is the solo moniker of Rikky Gage, the L.A.-based rocker who’s harvested verdant punk cred and a substantial following as ringleader of the bands The Memories and White Fang. With his debut solo album, Introducing, Bad Diet Records positions Weed/Gage as the millennial ambassador of the Legalize It movement. (We’d officially run him under the Belushi Party; only Free Weed doesn’t run, he flies high.)
Themed and inspired by Weed’s well-Interwebbed love of bud, this scale tipper contains not one twig or seed. Introducing is all killer, no filler. And never sputters into stoner novelty. That’s a Bad Diet promise we’re good for.
Boosting your happiness and lowering your inhibitions, Free Weed refracts Ween’s freak power illumination off Beck’s Mellow Gold, and lasers right on through the Butthole Surfers’ cheekier side of the moon. (Maybe call him FKA No Twigs when you’re home alone with Garfield on a mon-day.)
The pedigree of Introducing extends to being mastered by Aussie rock luminary Mikey Young, member of the band Total Control. Far-out album art, by Dustyn Peterman of the San Diego art collective Mushroom Necklace (Thee Oh Sees; Ty Segall), pays bitchin’ homage to the classic Creepshow nugget, “The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill” (which was adapted from the story “Weeds” haha penned by Verrill himself, Stephen King). Oh-oh-oh, but the smoke rungs keep laddering...
Illustrator and VICE art editor Nick Gazin—yessir, the mustachioed dude responsible for the iconic cover art of equally iconic Run the Jewels—has created a mini color comic for Introducing. This is Gazin’s first music-related project post-Jewels. Entitled “The Gnarly Life of Free Weed”—and exclusive to copies of the limited-edition color vinyl purchased from Bad-Diet.com—it unveils the eldritch spark behind Free Weed’s origin. (Anyone copping the regs vinyl/digital album from Bad Diet direct receives a Gnarly e-comic.)
Every vinyl copy of Introducing includes a DVD with a few Free Weed bonuses, and Doper, a lost documentary about three blue collar dopers, never before released on DVD, directed by Jim Van Bebber and Michael King. (Van Bebber’s Deadbeat at Dawn is an all-timer, and Joe Bob Briggs gives Doper his “stoned-fu” seal of approval.)
Like a based Krofttian octopus, Free Weed’s tentacles juggle magic markers, guitars, ‘scripts, and the keys to L.A.’s GnarTapes (the dirt-chic cassette label). He did the “Burger TV” theme for Burger Records, and recently popped up in the King Tuff video, "Headbanger," directed by comedy god-body Jake Fogelnest. Remarkably, according to a rock journalist, villagers from the surrounding area swear that they “never even saw the long-haired gringo get out bad.”
Bad Diet and Free Weed. Now that’s a match! Go together like: the Hulkster and kayfabe; like Andy Kaufman and ‘k babe; GG Allin and records for no limit! Like Jordy Verrill and “meteor shit!”? No, more like a meteor hit. From the bong. We rolling like a stone gathering all that moss. Stick the sticky in your ears. And “Light the Night!”
