Hickey Million "78666"
Named for the zip code of where we recorded these songs, San Marcos Texas, 78666. Shell went to college at Texas State University in San Marcos and 50 million and Shellshag make San Marcos a regular part of their tour stops. Swimming in the San Marcos river is an amazing break for touring bands. I especially enjoyed taking the prominent punk icons the Slits swimming there in 2008 on tour to SXSW together.

Story from Shellhead:
The lyrics are based off a real event. 50 million played a crazy ass show at the Chameleon in 1995 and I was wearing a superman costume, with bleached hair and a dark unshaven scruff- I looked like bizzaro Superman. Wade played guitar, Norlon on bass, Scottzy from the amazing SF band Faggz played drums while I front manned it singing. We played the songs so fast it was freaky scary and in 17 minutes it was over. I was outside cooling off standing in a small group when my brother Wade said "Steve Diggle liked the show", gesturing with his thumb towards nowhere. I said "who's Steve Diggle" "from the Buzzcocks" Wade says- my response, "I don't know dick about the Buzzcocks" and then I walked away.
That statement became the opening line of this song 78666.

When Hickey came through Austin Texas at Christmas time in 1996, 50 million had just moved their home base from SF to Austin and hosted a show with Hickey at Hole in the Wall. Christmas Eve with Hicky at a hole in the wall called Hole in the Wall- perfect. Later that night at our friend Niki Lake's house in the woods of San Marcos, we got stoned and went on a night time canoe ride down the san marcos river that was very "apocolypse now" and one of my fondest memories of our friends in Hickey. The next day, Christmas day, in freezing weather, we recorded a handful of songs together as a 5 piece in Niki's metal storage shed. It is a really cool record we call Hickey Million and the original plan that never happened was to press a limited edition of 7" singles and sew them shut in screen printed fabric sleeves. Artist Allan Buris made the art, but the project never happened and that exact art cannot be found. So the art here is a small close up of a painting by Allan Burris that I have in my personal collection, and I made the image in photoshop myself to use instead. Very cool group of songs including a Billy Bragg cover.