On February 26, SST Records will release Life is Too Short to Not Hold a Grudge, the debut album from GOOD FOR YOU, the brand new band featuring influential guitarist and bandleader Greg Ginn and professional skateboarder and musician Mike Vallely (aka Mike V). Featuring eleven uniquely distinct high-energy rock songs blistered with themes of betrayal, regret, disillusionment, resolve, determination and independence propelled by Ginn‘s distinctive, stun-gun guitar, Life is Too Short to Not Hold a Grudge sets a new course for both musicians and delivers a strong statement of intent that begs to be heard.

Recorded at Ginn‘s Casa Destroy Studios in Taylor, TX, Life is Too Short to Not Hold a Grudge teams the singular guitarist — named as one of Rolling Stone’s ”100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time” — with the creative, aggressive Vallely for the first time since BLACK FLAG‘s 2003 reunion shows in Los Angeles where Mike V performed the entire My War album from start to finish with the world renowned punk rock band at the invitation of Ginn.

As the founder, guitarist and driving influence behind BLACK FLAG, Greg Ginn defined the west coast punk sound and the DIY ethos of punk rock. In many ways, Vallely is the perfect frontman to lead Ginn‘s first hard rock band since the dissolution of BLACK FLAG. A strong-willed, determined, intense and inspirational figure, Vallely (owner and creative mind behind Elephant Brand Skateboards) has earned a devoted, worldwide following over the course of his two decade plus career as a professional skateboarder and years fronting the bands Mike V and The Rats and Revolution Mother. The vocalist first saw BLACK FLAG perform at City Gardens in Trenton, New Jersey in 1984, crediting it as a life changing experience. Greg and Mike first met in Long Beach, CA in May 2003 when Mike V And The Rats started a supporting run of shows for Greg that would eventually lead to the guest vocal spot at the BLACK FLAG reunion shows. A friendship was formed and the two have kept in touch through the years with the intention of collaborating on new music at some point. In February 2012, Ginn presented Vallely with new music and the singer spent the next five months filling notebooks with lyrics. The duo’s intense songwriting chemistry generated both a solid set of dynamic songs that would become Life Is Too Short To Not Hold A Grudge and the formation of an entirely new band: GOOD FOR YOU. Life Is Too Short… features the traits of a benchmark release. Rarely is rock so pure and hard-hitting.

“Greg and I had been talking about writing music together for many years, comments Vallely. “There was no real plan in place to “team up” or anything like that. It was more so just about the music. Creatively and artistically we just found a common road and from that came an output that became this new music and this new record.”

“Working with Greg really opened me up as a writer and vocalist, he continues. “His approach to writing, recording and producing was so free that for the first time I feel I was really able to honestly express myself in the studio.”

“I can’t wait to deliver these songs live with Mike,” said Ginn. “I have the feeling that things are going to get wild.”

“I try to play what I would like to hear,” Greg Ginn explains the electronica sound of his latest project, The Royal We. “If it feels good to me then there’s other people that might enjoy it. Everybody isn’t in the same place at the same time.”

Greg Ginn is an innovator. “I like a lot of hybrid bands. Different trance, electronica, and a lot of House. Most of that music doesn’t have guitar. And that’s had a lot of impact on my guitar.”

Greg Ginn and The Royal We’s We Are Amused is set for release on November 8th, 2011 on SST Records.

Greg has been making music professionally, successfully, but not always publicly, for over 3 decades. “I became less excited about what was happening in rock in the 90’s and 2000’s. There are rock bands I like, but I like wilder stuff.”

“Skrillex. I like him a lot.” Greg describes the evolution of electronic music from techno forward. He has appreciation for all if it, from Jumpstyle to Dubstep. Among the acts he likes, he names some of the more intense and less commercially successful artists: Lotus, The Glitch Mob, Signal Path, and most notably The String Cheese Incident. There’s a specific commonality there regarding inventive creators moving on, leaving a past experiment and progressing forward to something new without trying to meld one project into the next.

For the last three and half years Greg Ginn has been breaking ground and experimenting with his own brand of electronica, combining his ear for jazz, his sensibilities to truly crafted-work, and his thorough acceptance of noise. The Royal We is his one man band and show. “It’s something new, for new people.”

The freedom of writing and recording alone means round the clock hours for Greg’s creative process to flow. “Other people’s schedules don’t interfere. I can play anytime.” Greg explains that this limitless schedule has been conducive for him. “I’m recording all the time. I have a lot of unreleased stuff.”

Greg is well known for his guitar work and has often played his own bass lines in his recordings. Not surprisingly, he does so here in a very electronic format along with some other instruments that might surprise you. Greg plays the theremin, a device that goes back to the 1920’s. It’s an instrument that you’ve heard many times but probably didn’t know its name. It sounds like a futuristic harp, and looks like you might have found it on the Starship Enterprise. “It’s the most primitive electronic instrument. It’s an oscillator. You control the frequency with your hand.”

A 40 inch LED monitor screen is perched on top of the equipment on stage, displaying perfectly synced video of Charlie Chaplin and silent film cuts. The videos were meticulously crafted by engineer and drummer Mike Shear. Every live song has its own video for a total of 2 hours worth of streaming symbiotic sensory ambiance.

Among the new recordings is an outstanding piece called “Eavesdrop.” Remove all constraints of the expected and accepted that has tamed your ears and remember what it’s like to be new again. This is the sound of Steampunk: it hasn’t been invented yet, it is still being dreamed. It’s a glimpse of the future through someone else’s imagination. It is impossible to listen to this hypnotic pulsating innovation without bouncing your head along involuntarily in universal agreement.

“Laundering Reality” presents another soulful beat incessantly tickled by the theremin, made to do things we didn’t know it could. Somehow this song’s intoxicating groove reintroduces itself to you almost our minutes in, all over again, despite a repetitive essence. It remains as familiar as it is surprising.

“Baiting,” “Refuge,” and “Gilded Entry” all make you stop and question, absorb, and then ultimately click repeat again and again. These are powerful instrumentals. One of the best parts about a completely unique sound is that every time you hear it, you’re free to misinterpret it again and again. What is it you’re hearing? A slightly Chinese sounding melody? Am alien instrument? A King Crimson inspired lick, a Phillip Glass meter that was too perfect for the Photographer, The Dust Brothers playing Deadmau5 backwards, a classic Chick Corea moment? Yes. No. Just play it again, please. And all of it electric, and bouncing, and fresh.

By the way, if you think you’ve heard the words “Greg Ginn” and “Innovator” in the same breath before, you’re right. In 1976, at 22 years old, Greg Ginn founded a band that changed the way music would be perceived, forever. As the principle songwriter, guitarist and unequivocal mastermind behind Black Flag, Greg Ginn taught us that music is subjective, inspired, and ever evolving.

And 35 years later we are re-learning that lesson all over again.

Mutts first played together with tape rolling on Pretty Pictures EP in July 2009. Bob Buckstaff pitched the idea of recording Mike Maimone’s new material after they met as hired musicians for Company of Thieves. The pair instantly clicked over respect for honest, unrefined recordings and love of Tom Waits, Nirvana and Elliott Smith. They called mutual friends Jon Alvin and Chris Faller to engineer and play drums, respectively. Over a 3-day session in an old warehouse on the north side of Chicago, Mutts wrote, arranged and recorded their seminal release.