One broken contact lens & Methyphobia in a car full of beer by We Did This Records
So this was found while going through draft posts on the blogs back end… This was a post that Misha was working on but had not finished and for some reason we had all forgotten about. His writing has been posted below unedited. On April 19, 2015 Misha Ecroignard passed away in hospital after jumping off the roof of a building, by the Maboneng Precinct in Johannesburg, committing suicide. He was 20 years old.
Misha had a few music projects. Galactic Fish was his ukulele punk project that he wanted to involve with us. Among some others that he was joining or starting, he also played bass guitar in a Pretoria-based metal core band.
Around the time of suicide Misha had found work at an animation studio in Johannesburg. Michael Way and myself, Sloppy Folk’s founding members, had similarly, that year, also started working at an animation studio, a different one, with no prior qualifications. The current We Did This Records cat logo is Misha’s design. He is greatly missed.
– Shaun
One broken contact lens & Methyphobia in a car full of beer.
When Shaun messaged me post-tour, asking me to write a little iddy bitty thingy for the blog, the first thing that came to mind was starting said iddy bitty thingy with this intro. After that, I hadn’t a clue how to continue. So much happened in the space of 2 weeks that I’ve yet to process the magnificence of it – and it’s been a month. The day I wrote my last exam (ever), a friend exposed me to a rad folk-punk jiggy named Sloppy Folk. We found that they were “signed” by a record label covered in similar material. Discoveries like this are always the coolest. It was only a week later that said friend pointed out that said label was local – and after 5 minutes an email was heading to Shaun’s inbox with such ferocity and speed that I’m surprised it survived the impact. Within that email lay the very first infant recordings I did with a webcam microphone in my bedroom three years prior. Upon hearing them, the first thing Shaun did was tell me how it made him cum… This is how our relationship started… So he invited me on a horribly organized tour to Cape Town and back. Take that in. A week after finishing Matric, I was going to Cape Town with a group of (the fucking coolest) strangers, armed with nothing but a ukulele. It was god damned terrifying. It stayed similarly terrifying when I discovered that all my comrades were politically savvy herbivores. Intimidating stuff for a medicatedly unshy kid like me. Forward a bunch more, skipping a very long drive from Johannesburg to Cape Town, we arrived at our first venue at around 6pm. The gig was to start at 7pm. Naturally, it only did so at 9:30pm. It was explained to me that this was just the way everything worked in Cape Town. Shaun, performing as All These Wasted Nuts, kicked shit off with songs about animals and the best kind of professionalism. 3 acts later, I nervously got on stage, made a joke about my nerves, and began yelling a Spoonboy cover. By the end of the evening, I had made people dance, attracted a washboard player, yelled back at other acts, and met the most radical American lady who had just happened to pop into a bar that just happened to be filled with musicians playing music she seemed to enjoy thoroughly. We spent that night crashing at our first floor of the week. The first of a few. The rest of the week saw us attending a noise-rock show in an old underground skate park (with much moshing), and an Anarchist Book Fair that saw no more marketing than a bit of graffiti on the pavement, yet had the most surprisingly awesome turnout. That evening, I made fun of Shaun for not having a setlist, and somehow got people to laugh about it. More songs, more singing, more admiration of my fellow musos, and a big ball of the coolest and grooviest vibes. I’m doing my best not to go on and on about the people I met and the things that the peeps from We Did This let me experience, but I fear that a tl;dr might be impossible, then. So, tl;dr: Going on tour is fucking awesome, even if you’re methyphobic and the car is filled with beer – let alone when your contact lens is torn.
– Misha Ecroignard
circa 2013