IN THIS ISSUE
- A Short Trip Between Art and Life

- Captain Audio - 'Bugs'

- Contributions of the First People

- Cottonmouth, Texas

- Diamonds in the Dust: Burning Man 2001

- Gen-Y Cops

- Grand Theft Auto III Trailer

- Los Amigos Invisibles - 'Ponerte En Quatro'

- Max Payne - X-Box Trailer

- Rhett Butler

- Robert Creeley and The Persistence Of Verse

- Stronghold: Behind the Scenes

- The Comas - 'Tiger in a Tower'

- The Last Record Store

- Unity Square: The New Language of Pain

- War and Peace: American Crossroads

Cottonmouth, Texas -Jeff Liles

To make a long story short (which is always the smart thing to do, if you ask me) cottonmouth, texas was/is a horrible accident gone awry.

Here's what happened: started an instrumental hip-hop group with a couple of other guys called Decadent Dub Team back in 1988. We didn't have a rapper or vocalist. The first song we ever recorded was called "Six Gun", which was later remixed by a 19-year-old kid by the name of Dr. Dre. The song was supposed to be instrumental. Our record company rep was in the studio with us when we recorded the song, and insisted that we come up with some kind of a vocal part. One of the other guys in the band did an impromptu spoken-word thing, and that was that. The song ended up on the soundtrack to Dennis Hopper's gang movie, "Colors".

A year or so later, I figured I could do spoken word stuff myself. I didn't really record anything, but I started keeping a journal of all of the odd situations I kept finding myself in. I have this weird "Forrest Gump" thing going on. I was in Dallas when JFK was shot. I was a hundred yards down Bundy Lane when OJ Simpson (allegedly) murdered his wife. Ronald Goldman even spoke to my friend and I as we were watching a Stanley Cup hockey game on the TV behind the bar at Mezzaluna the night before it happened. I'm not making this shit up. After a while, I figured if I didn't start writing all of this shit down or recording it, I might start to think myself that it never really happened.

[Cottonmouth] So, three albums and two short films later, you have a handful of snapshots of me fucking up, of me being in the wrong place at the right time. The film pieces were produced by a now-defunct Los Angeles based production house called "The Underground". At the time this film was created, The Underground (or "UGround", as it was later called) was an amazing thing to be a part of. I had simply never seen anything like it. A British photographer and Executive Producer named Andy Rosen and his partner Jeff Sachs, along with a British producer named Cordelia Plunkett, had put together an incredible group of directors, photographers, musicians, editors, and artists. Animator Chel White was one of those directors, and like the other directors at UGround, had a signature style all his own. Rosen and Sachs looked at the cm, tex project as a way to challenge Chel in a live-action format. I think he did an amazing job. The Underground later disbanded after the untimely passing of Jeff Sachs, and later, the passing of director Fred Stuhr (the man behind Tool videos for "Sober" and "Prison Sex").

Chel, of course, has gone his own way as well. He has his own production company in Portland now, and is busier than ever with new original short films of his own. We still keep in touch, and obviously hope to work together again some day.

Jeff Liles was the lead actor in the cottonmouth, texas films and is currently a Producer for SubstanceTV.