I want to hang out with you and you never hang out with me and I want attention and you never listen to me why don’t you ever listen to the things I’m not saying!!!!!!!!!
I probably should have removed the spaces between words to get a better feel for that one.
Stop here,
Back away
Because everything I try to do just breaks
It’s only been like this for a few weeks but this horror I can’t shake
I’m lockin’ all the doors and bar the windows to keep everyone else safe
and you think I’m alone in this, No way
Creepy, crawly, tentacled, how many legs? I’m sure I’ll never know
__________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________
but still I’m not alone in this
So hold me
‘cuz somethin’ under my bed is droolin’
I’m so new to this
and I don’t really know what I’m supposed to be afraid of right now
‘Cuz all this outside-in and inside-out has got me upside-down and ass-backwards
There’s gotta be a way to set this right
We’ve gotta find it quick or die tonight
I’m goin’ back to where this all began because I think
It Will Help
and I’m in love with this
I’m in love with it
I’m in love with this
so in love
with my huge, fuckin’ mess
Oh no
So hold me
‘cuz somethin’ under my bed is droolin’
I’m so new to this
that I don’t really know if I should be full-fledged afraid of it just yet
I’ve been writing / arranging for a while and I’m starting to get a cohesive idea for the full-length Curious Quail album. Not all of these will make the cut, but this is what I’m starting from - Every one of these songs (provided they are finished) will be recorded during the album sessions so I may actually get to release some b-sides.
(All tentative titles unless otherwise noted and no particular order)
When The Cats Learned To Speak
Hidden Track
Turns us into Enemies
Playground
Wells
Something Under The Bed Is Drooling
Elektropawp
Diary of Lee Brighton
What Kind of Day Has It Been?
Starting Point (Growing Wings)
Once In A While
Elaeven
Refugee Camp
Cried Wolf Again
Bottlecaps
The Visit
Brink of Time
Tranquility Base
Me: You should get some taco meats.
Her: Yes…..these are the ideas that lead nations!
Hidden
track
at the end of the record
You can say all those things
you couldn’t before
So you
Hide a song
at the end of your CD
and hope the die-hards
or someone will notice
that track ten
isn’t ten minutes long
You’re just too damned afraid
to say what you feel
You’re just too damned afraid
to say what you mean
Boy, there’s nothin’ worth livin for if you
can’t even afford to be
honest
with
yourself
Grains of salt are fallin around you
Snow-globing like you don’t own
What you say
You’re just too damned afraid
to say what you feel
You’re just too damned afraid
to say what you mean
Wheel Works Employee: Go ahead and slide your card.
*Swipes Card, puts it away, uses the stylus to answer the various prompts*
Jess: Hmm.
*Pulls out card to swipe again*
Wheel Works Employee: No, it went through.
Me: It says, “Swipe card” again.
Jess: I guess it lied.
Wheel Works Employee: It must be a man.
*silence*
Wheel Works Employee: You know. It must be a man. Because it lied. It tells lies. Like men.
*silence*
“Owww…..my forehead hurts from thinking…”
“I just assumed boys shower twice a day. It makes me feel better about the world I inhabit.”
“Nope. Two-lose rule. We’re not playing with the Wookie anymore.”
Curious Quail is finally in full swing. The EP is on iTunes, the physical CD’s are coming in the mail and I have songs lined up to be finished. All I need to do is line up more shows and practice.
I took this picture on our Birthdaversary road trip through the Mojave and intentionally tagged it on Flickr with the names written on it hoping they might find it.
They totally did.
Rule # 1 - Never blog when you have nothing to say at that particular moment.
Rule # 2 -
I actually trolled 4chan today. I don’t know why. It just sort of happened in a bout of sleeplack coupled with the everlong wait that scanning negatives brings.
This has been a somewhat productive couples of weeks for me, musically. I’d had a few…shit, I don’t know…genre identity issues? Not that it’s a bad thing but I want at least a little cohesion.
Ideally the guitar tones and the vocals will make my music easily identifiable but time will only tell. The EP still isn’t finished and still doesn’t have a name, but that’s also a good thing because I’m not playing as many shows as I should be. I’d rather be playing shows with a product to hand out / scalp, and since I’m not booking every available weekend for that Ive got time to finish this recording.
I experimented with a few ways to record acoustic guitars but I think I’m going to have to bite the bullet and borrow Vincent’s condensers. I’m looking forward to co-producing stuff with him, as well as stage sharing in the near future.
Two tracks are pretty much 100%, maybe a little tweaking on one. Track 3 is in need of vocals and a final mix. I still haven’t decided if it’s five or six tracks, nor what tracks those would be. Or rather, I haven’t slimmed down the choices. I know what songs I am NOT putting on this, which makes it a little easier. Oh well. A “Fall” release was unreasonable anyway, with me still in Braeburn at the time and not exactly sure what I wanted out of this project.
Here’s to a (NOMHP willing) a January release?
You need to go check out the Infinite Cat Project. I’d completely forgotten about this.
You know something is afoot when your doctor shows up less than one second after the admitting nurse leaves and the first thing out of her mouth is, “You Don’t have a Tumor”.
On Tuesday I finally got to sit down with my primary care practitioner and explain all of my sinus weirdness. She opted to attack it from both sides, treating allergy related issues as well as possible surgical (Ear Nose and Throat) options.
A CT scan the following day showed her all kinds of wondrous things. More than she told me, to be honest. What actually happened is that I got a voicemail from her saying “It looks like you have cysts and a possible erosion in one of the maxillary sinuses.” I shot her an e-mail back thanking her for the quick reply and the referral to an ENT surgeon for the next step.
E-mails in the Kaiser system stay a part of your medical record, so said referred ENT surgeon thought I had been sent the radiologists entire report from the CT scan.
What the scan report said:
“Several maxillary sinus cysts, a sizeable infection in the concha, and an unknown mass in the sphenoidalas, possibly a tumor.”
It turns out it’s not an erosion, not an infection, and certainly not a fucking tumor. It’s a bizarre open cavity called a Howler Cell that will dissolve with the same antibiotic I’m taking for the infection.
All kinds of fun today.
Sidenotes: I got to help Marcel set up his Pro Tools rig AND Jess and I got to have Sushi date night.
Man: “My wife would LOVE your shoes.”
Jessica: “Oh, thank you.”
*Pause*
Man: “I left her tied up at home.”
Jessica: “….yea, I’m not touching that.”
While watching season 3 of Northern Exposure Jess and I came by this, one of many scipted jems given to Barry Corbin in his role as Maurice Minnifield. (In discussion of the Japanese idea that sex under the aurora would produce a “gifted” child)
“If some of our GM executives had been conceived
under the Aurora Borealis, we wouldn’t be in the
mess we’re in today.”
It’s scary how it’s only about fifteen years ago and we’re saying the same things.
Instead of editing and creating my own theme for the time being, I thought it pertinent to represent the SNES.
The random thought train has just checked into station! This is your final warning.
I was reading up on the Mother 3 (Earthbound 2) fan translation over at Starmen.net when the “Radio PSI” link popped up. They have some kind of radio show that plays…well, I’m not sure what. I figured it would be music from the Mother series, or perhaps mixes? I have a “PSI Mix” from the Earthbound Soundtrack on my iPod which is an amalgamation of all the songs that aren’t long enough to have their own track. The file info (it’s a live streaming .ogg file) was for a hidden track from the Chrono Trigger soundtrack and even had Uematsu as the credited artist.
ANYWAYS - what I heard was just a guy talking. Live. At 8pm his time. Sounded like he was responding to questions live from a forum because he was pausing, answering something, or laughing, or sounding upset. I couldn’t stomach it for more than five minutes, mainly because I had no idea what was going on, like it would work as a video but without images to correspond to what was going on it became an excersize in the imagination that I don’t think I want to participate in.
When I was like…fifteen, or sixteen maybe, a couple of my friends and I registered “Smegpot.com” and used it as a “pre-blog-era-blog”. This was around ‘99 or 2000. Real Player was a suitable media system and Napster was the way to get music. We (with help from a guy doing a similar thing in Minnesotta) figured out how to stream audio files for seamless playback on searing 56k connections and proceeded to write (sometimes in ten minutes or less) sketch comedy bits. We recorded the segments over the span of an hour or so, took the best parts and mashed them into one “episode” and then uploaded. We had no set schedule, each episode was anywhere from one to ten minutes long, and usually contained sound effects and music stolen from the MP3 directory of Heroes of Might and Magic III.
Jokes would include anything from the deviant (and imaginary) sex life of Sean and Steve, two of the co-creators, to pop culture bits about Samuel L. Jackson, Keanu Reeves or whatever else was going on in this time period. We did Transformers bits where I played the roll of Starscream. Steve would always be Samuel L. Jackson, even at totally opportune moments. I don’t want to make it sound better than it was, but the first time I saw ‘Robot Chicken’ I thought, “Wow. It’s everything we wish we had done.” We did fake prank-calls and made them ultra high-tech by using a different phone line in the same house (pre-cell phones here, people) and recorded using one microphone for both the “caller” and the speakerphone to pick up the “Called”.
Freshman year (I remembered now!) we passed the site around amongst people at school and it kind of blew up for a little bit. I have a very fond memory of a parody we did on Nazis. Entitled (geniously, I might add) “The Nazi Song”, it was mostly written by special guest stars David Harvey, J.P. Lungaro, myself and Steve. The music comprised of singing and clapping in a sad attempt to recreate marching. The lyrics were funny, but ridiculously insensitive to anyone who has a connection to the holocaust (or anyone with German ancestry, for that matter). At one point, Steve substituted the word “Jews” with “Muthafuckas” in his Jackson voice, which caused half the singers to start laughing. We (of course) only did one take. The song was so catchy that one person I hadn’t met before told me (at school) that he failed one of his finals because he couldn’t get the song out of his head.
Another segment (that we reprised one or two times) was “Dr. Science”. Imagine a satirical situation with a pedophiliac Mr. Wizard type character, his young “assistant”, and topped it off with tentacle-rape sounds provided by ripping WAV files out of the Zerg campaign in Starcraft. ’nuff said.
What brings me back to all of this is that I don’t speak to Steve, Sean, Etchell, J.P. or Dave Harvey anymore. Harvey joined the Air Force and I only saw him about five times after that recording. No idea where he is now. The rest of us had a falling out and I don’t know where they are or what they are doing. I DO know that my life when they were in it was not exactly productive or positive. I used to laugh at kids who sat around and got high all day because they were wastes of space, but we (with NO drugs whatsoever) weren’t really different. We made fart jokes, insulted each other, everything around us, played video games, ate fast food every night, worked shitty minimum wage jobs and lived with our parents. It was fun, and I still enjoy some of these things in doses (Read: Video Games and Fart Jokes), but it was our entire life and I’m so glad to be beyond that. Not that I’m saying they aren’t, it’s just interesting to look back at weak points in your life and associate it with the people you were surrounded by.
Pretentious of the month award, that last paragraph. BOING.
My computer desk is neat, yet the chair is not comfortable. This isn’t too surprising as it is a basic folding chair one would find at home around a folding card table. Only without the AA innuendo.
Jess and I house-sat for Andee and Jeremy, or rather, dog-sat. Ginsburg is a lovely creature and a fun companion. Being back at home feels weird. We didn’t (as we are prone to do whilste house-sitting) grocery shop knowing that our place would be abandoned and food gone to the spoil. Balls.
Musically things are going swimmingly. Recorded Marcel on Friday, got at least acoustic tracks down for a song or two; I’m really excited to get his EP going. Jeremy has an oldschool Fender amp with two inputs, which has been the bane of my amp lately. When I go to practice my live set I have to use headphones to get the vox and guitars to properly output so it was nice to set up the pedals and be able to play loud. Still not sure about a setlist for the 22nd.
Met up with Vincent this week also to tinker with some ideas. We ran through “Fade Out” and I threw a few lead guitars over, which inspired him to add a lead of his own. Sounded pretty cool, plus we got to get some musical dialogue going.
Marcel got me a piece of (I’m so not kidding) buffalo bone to whittle down into a nut for my Martin’s headstock which is kind of fucky. I has stoked all over my brains.
I am not surprised by the results of California Proposition 8. I am sickened, but I am not at all surprised.
On the other hand, watching the first non-white individual accept the mantle of President-Elect of the United States ran some chills all over. There are political reasons for days as to why tonight was fantastic, but it’s heartwarming (as a person of mixed race) to see our country take steps to move beyond the skin’s colour. Maybe Vincent’s right, in 50 years we’ll be over the homophobia as well?
Congrats, friends. It’s an exciting time we live in, and I’m keeping my November 5th, 2008 copy of the New York Times to show to my grandchildren.
This is not a post regarding my feelings on prop 8, just to be clear.
The world in which we live is sometimes a sickening place.
MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — A 13-year-old girl who said she had been raped was stoned to death in Somalia after being accused of adultery by Islamic militants, a human rights group said.
Dozens of men stoned Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow to death Oct. 27 in a stadium packed with 1,000 spectators in the southern port city of Kismayo, Amnesty International and Somali media reported, citing witnesses. The Islamic militia in charge of Kismayo had accused her of adultery after she reported that three men had raped her, the rights group said.
Initial local media reports said Duhulow was 23, but her father told Amnesty International she was 13. Some of the Somali journalists who first reported the killing later told Amnesty International that they had reported she was 23 based upon her physical appearance.
On Monday night at a band meeting I quit Braeburn. The most interesting responses (polar opposites) came from the two individuals present who are not members of the band. The support from the one side was very insightful and welcome, and the attempted attack on my previous bands failures by the other was unexpected. Makes me wonder even more what was said about me when not present. Oh well. I am a musical control freak, but let’s be honest: hindsight is 20/20. It’s highly effective to say, “I knew all along that…” if you want to feel self-righteous or need to make yourself feel better about disliking someone.
Don’t know why, but I thought about this song I haven’t heard since I lived in Boston. Vid after the jump.
Tonight,
a bird will fly
and collide
with the window of this apartmentIt’s all yours
We’ll stay home
Agoraphobe
I never want to go
(I never want to go)
Stay home
Agoraphobe
I never want to go
Stay homeWe’ll stay home
Never want to go out there
We’ll stay homeTonight
Monday will probably be a better time to put out all of the thoughts and such I had regarding tonight’s show.
Braeburn decided to play at least one show before Jonathan left on a romp through Europe so we came up with the idea for the “Fall Harvest” (in keeping with the apple theme), a massive backyard party at Noe’s father’s house.
We got some studio lighting, got a sound guy, turned the deck into a stage and made it quite a venue. It was an awesome. Until the cops showed up.
Oh Well.
I started shooting film. This makes me happy.
Jess and I had plans to have a late lunch with her college roommate Sarah in Mountain View today. It is the perfect halfway point between us and her since she would be Caltraining from San Francisco and there’s this awesome cafe called Neto’s which makes a salad so tasty that Jess abandons her hatred of all things “rabbit food” to partake in its leafy goodness.
Sarah canceled and then UNcanceled, only to cancel again. Lucky for us, the hunger for tasties and the knowledge that my buddy Vincent was playing at Red Rock, just down the street a few hours later, meant we had a good day planned.
The food was fantastic, the coffee and tea were phenominal, Jess got to take her Bronica medium format camera with its Polaroid adapter out into the world, Travis of Slow Trucks was also playing with Vincent, and their third performer didn’t show so I had an impromptu set and opened for them using Vincent’s guitar.
I can’t wait to get my film developed, I think I took some amazing pictures of Travis and Vincent. We shall can has see.
UPDATE
The camera has a broken light meter and a shutter that does not always open and close all the way. Made for some rad pictures. See the Flickr set here.
ON A SEPARATE NOTE:
Natasha Bedingfield can actually sing live and puts on a neat show. Speaking of impromptu, a local radio station had some contest and dropped her, her Italian guitarist Luc, and a group of “VIP” radio listeners in front of my store yesterday. We found out at like, ten AM and she was scheduled to start at noon.
We called in some friends from other stores to have extra help on hand just in case. My twelve hour day was up at noon so Jess and I got to watch her set. She’s got an incredible voice, tons of energy and is quite quirky for an essentially cookie-cutter pop singer. I liked her music with just her and a guitar much more than the produced versions. She only played five or six songs, all of which were or are currently singles. It was a really fantastic way to end my streak of nonstop work days and kick off my “weekend”.
None of which I feel at current. This is by far the most emo thing I have ever put on the internet.
We’re getting down to the wire on election season. I’ve been watching the coverage of the candidates rather extensively and what bothers me more than anything is this double talk about Homosexuality. Both campaigns “Support same sex UNIONS, but not Marriage.”
Here’s what I don’t get: How can it possibly be okay to create a law making it illegal for any action that does not harm the parties involved or anyone around them? We create laws making it illegal to talk on cell phones while driving, because that can be dangerous. No open containers while driving, that one makes sense. It’s illegal to own certain types of animals as pets because they can potentially get loose and cause havoc.
So why a law saying two people, regardless of who they are, don’t deserve visitation rights, shared property rights, or even the right of spousal privilege protection in court? Sure, civil unions can do some of that, but why does it have to be different? Why are protecting an institution that has not always been black and white “between a man and a woman”? A disgrace to marriage you say? Divorce is a disgrace to marriage. Catholic annulment (So long as you haven’t had sex, you can UNDO the marriage? What the fuck?) is a disgrace to marriage. ARRANGED MARRIAGES are a loveless, insulting disgrace to marriage. Do away with these things and then we’ll talk.
In the meantime, let people who love each other have what I have. Rights. Why? Because they are human, and I do not care what deity if any you believe in, all the religions of the world follow a similar concept that we are all as humans created with equal rights.
To quote people much smarter than I:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
A YES vote on Proposition 8 here in California is INHUMANE and I’d hate to think I know anyone who could do such a thing.
One quarter of a century is not a very long time to walk the earth, but it has more or less been enjoyable. I certainly think more quarters of centuries are in order.
Oh, and this on the left is Frump. He’s a Lionhead Rabbit.
Ever since re-launching a MySpace profile for my music and actively seeking out the people I’d like to hear said music I have discovered just how MySpace has changed over the last couple of years.
On the whole, it looks and acts the same, but the fear of spammers and profile hackers has led to the implimentation of the famed CAPCHA, a jarbled image mess of letters and numbers angled in such a way that no computer program should be able to determine what characters are present.
The first CAPCHA’s I ever saw were about three years ago and only had about four characters. This is what I am used to.
When I post comments on MySpace profiles whom have the CAPCHA option turned on I am greeted by a fucking paragraph of sideways text blurred and smeared in such a way that I usually have to click the reload button about seventeen times in order to comprehend it. This is WITH my reading glasses on.
So I guess my question is, if I can’t read a CAPCHA does that make me a robot?
I hate to be sensationalist, but I seriously think I will have to move out of the country if the moose-eating whore become a heartbeat away from the presidency.
I thought that apart from myself and maybe climatologists, no one knew what the word “albedo” means. Saw this on Digg today. Seems interesting, but the name cracked me up.
An EP is an important step for any musician. I call this the Catch 4/4; Do you perform to gain notoriety and THEN make an EP or do you have an EP ready to go so you can produce it upon request at performances?
I’ve done both with previous bands and I’m not sure which is better. In situations where we had to throw down money to get a demo or decent recording I always wanted to wait as long as possible to guarantee we’d have someone to sell it to, thus needing a fanbase.
So my plan so far is this:
The EP (Which I’ve decided for various reasons NOT to call ‘Sonrise’, which was the tentative title until I realized how it could possibly taken as religious and I don’t want anything to do with that) will be no more than six tracks.
I’m not sure about the positions, but so far it will definitely include newer versions of:
1) The Secret Lives of Retail Monkeys
2) Making Circles Square
3) Somedays We Sin
4) Something Under The Bed is Drooling
5) Yesterday I Watched The World End
I’m not sure about track six. “When The Cats Learned To Speak” is coming along nicely, and “Tranquility Base” has been something I’ve wanted to work on for a long time, but I don’t want to rush it.
I think I’ve nailed my genre down to “Electropop sprinkled with shameless guitar rock”. Live I’m an acoustic bit of nonsense.
It’s hard to get shows when all you have is an “electric” demo.
Who knows?
I’ve been experimenting with Ableton Live after all these years of having it sit in a folder I never touch. I love and hate it; it can do almost everything I want it to, but it can do so much more than I’ll ever care to need. I wish there was a way to turn off all the features that I don’t use and make it look less cluttered. Plus, coming from YEARS of Pro Tools, learning an entirely different interface doesn’t come easily to me.
I’ve been working on using it as both a sampler and a loop station. It is intuitive until it comes to tempo - the looping via a midi control pedal (in this case, my keyboard) involves starting and stopping at “the begining of the next measure” which can kind of screw things up if you’re not playing to a metronome, which I certainly don’t want to live.
I know this program is notorious for its quantizing but I can’t seem to make it work on the fly. I think I need to just spend more time with it. I tried playing “Once in a While” and just laying down the initial acoustic track was a bit of a pain in the ass because if you stop playing the stop is included in the loop, and if you play too long it overlaps in the real-time audio as the loop starts over.
There’s also no auto-start that I’ve figured out yet. That could save me a lot of time.
I’ve been separating songs into what needs loops and what needs triggered sequences. That’s been fun, the songs that need both may very well kill me if I ever perform them.
No matter what, I’m going to have to be extremely tight with what I do. Little or no room for screw ups, which I’m not sure how I feel about. I like being fluid live, not constrained. This method will let me perform the songs as they are meant to be played but at the cost of fun? I’m not sold.
Maybe fuck loops altogether and just trigger Midi shit? Research must has happen.
The Evergreen Gig was a bit of a disaster.
Mike had been told that there was a sound system, and therefore no need to bring one. He was told there would be an awning and chairs for the crowd to sit under and in respectively.
A ten inch speaker with two XLR inputs does not a sound system make, nor an assortment of PVC pipes in a bag with what amounts to a tarp tied to it.
Needless to say, things were off to a bad start. Luckily, there was a band playing later who let us use the guitar amps so we didn’t have to mic the guitars. The crowd was now non-existent, so we shifted the stage to face the line of people getting food. This let the sun pour directly on to where we would be playing. The “opener” bailed, so Marcel went first and the “sound system” died twice during the first verse of his first song. As in, the power for the stage went out. Twice. He eventually played a different song, then went back to the first where it died again during the last chorus. That was the end of his attempt.
I went up and played two songs by myself and Nashu showed up to play some other three with me. He wore sunglasses the whole time. Rawk Starr. He had to plug his bass into a Marshall stack and I was into a Fender “Cyber Twin” that was ten feet behind me. The “PA” was in front of me, obviously without a monitor.
I don’t think I’ve ever played in such a shitty situation, and my performance suffered because my inability to hear my voice and the guitar feeding back from people turning it up while I was playing.
Highlights:
Got to hang out with Marcel and Josh. Marcel got to inadvertently meet my mother, who missed (luckily) both of our sets and only started the soon to be twenty minute conversation with him in the cafeteria because he happened to have a guitar. I learned that my guitar, no matter how good my case is, will go out of tune with the slightest bit of direct sunlight. I got a tan.
Live and learn. I’ve hit what I deem to be a rock-bottom in terms of gigage. In theory, I can only do better from here. Looking back, the whole thing was like a Flight of the Conchords episode with less intentional funny and more all out awkwardness. Murray could have saved the day, methinks.
Songs and Status (Electric/ Acoustic):
Elæven - Done / Done
Shard - Done / Done (Will probably never play solo acoustic)
Somedays We Sin - Done / Done
The Secret Lives of Retail Monkeys - Done / Done
Yesterday I Watched The World End - Done / 40%
Making Circles Square - Done / 80%
Bottlecaps - Done / Done
The Visit - 40% / Done
Starting Point (Growing Wings) - 40% / 0%
Gods and Monsters - Done - 70% (Possibly a Braeburn-Only Song)
The Diary of Lee Brighton - Done / Done (Possibly a Braeburn-Only Song)
Something Under The Bed is Drooling - 60% / 40%
The Cats Learned To Speak - 30% / 30%
Eclectricity - Done / 0% (Possibly a Braeburn-Only Song)
Refugee Camp - 50% / 2%
Public Service Announcement - 80% / 5%
The Aeronauts - Done - Done (Possibly a Braeburn-Only Song)
Once in a While - 70% / 10%
Write the subject line later; it keeps you more free to do what you want.
I’ve made it a point to actually spend more time writing and updating this. My lyrical and literary work has been getting pushed aside as of late.
There are quite a few songs both for my solo project and Braeburn that are in the works and I think the last time I posted lyrics was Making Circles Square, which has been done since July.
Lift has been an interesting experience. A great platform to play new material, rework old material and translate things into an acoustic environment. Put simply, if there was ever a time I could have an easy way to build solo confidence, this would be it.
Mike has asked me to play at a show he is setting up at Evergreen Valley College tomorrow, so I’m going to do a bit of “Shirleycakes greatest hits”.
Don’t hold me to this, but I think the setlist will go something like:
Secret Lives of Retail Monkeys
Something Under the bed is Drooling
Somedays We Sin
Bottlecaps
Elaeven
Making Circles Square
I’ll pull out Circles and Bottlecaps if there are time constraints.
Dental work is a strange beast; I think I should feel more attached to the pieces of my body that are being removed. The tooth being yanked in seven hours is something I’ve had for a long time, a piece of my genetic history. Seem strange that I’m anxious to see it the fuck gone; could have something to do with the infection, or the swelling.
Oh Well.
Tried Retail Monkeys and Making Circles Square acoustic at Cafe Lift. Hope to have the videos soon, I think they went well.
I do not want Safari. I do not want Quick Time. I do not want the Apple Mobile Device service. I do not wan the iTunes Helper service. I do not want the Apple Software updater. I just wanted to see if iTunes 7.1 had anything other than iPhone additions and I’m sorry that I clicked “Yes” at the “Would you like to upgrade?” prompt.
You are better than Microsoft, man. Fucking act like it.
One of my hard drives suffered a SMEF (Spontaneous Massive Existence Failure) this evening while I was trying to partition a completely different hard drive for an OSX install.
It’s funny, the drive I was technically doing illegitimate things to trucked along nicely. This other drive (my Pro Tools drive, might I add) physically vanished as a logical drive and reads in Partition Magic as “BAD”. My options are to Format or Format.
I spent a good thirty minutes online looking for Data recovery programs. The ones that are free can’t see the drive. The “free trial” of the expensive shit taunts me with the file structure of my Pro Tools session files. Not to bash on open source software, but it seems they can only recover deleted files on an existing hard disk and not pull one out of a black hole with naught but a scratch.
The “free trial” had to scan all 398,283,480 sectors of the disk before it could give me a permanent readout. The next step was, of course, to copy the 180 gigs from that readout to a separate drive so I can format the “BAD” drive and start over.
It’s been a really long fucking night.
A judge in Russia dismissed a sexual harrasment suit where a female employee was told by her employer that she would be required to have sex with him or lose her job; his reasoning is that “Sexual harassment is necessary for the propagation of the species.”
On one hand, I’m glad it’s not my country but knowing shit like this happens all over the world is disgusting to me. It’s like the woman in Italy who lost her rape case because her jeans were extremely tight and it was “impossible” for her to not be an accomplice in the sexual act. We should market a line of skinny jeans called the “Unrapables” and see how that flies.
We got back from the Mojave last night - earlier than planned but still an amazing experience. Check the Flickr in the meantime.
It would be nice if women stopped believing the lies the Republican party tells them. Sure, they may campaign on some of them pesky “female issues” but let’s face the facts: The GOP as it stands right now is not “Republican”, it is a hijacked airliner full of Neoconservative right wing religious fanatics who would just as soon revoke the right to have abortions, “male” jobs, and the ability to vote if they thought they could get away with it.
It’s the “barefoot, pregnant in the kitchen” view that permeates from this group, the same group that believes woman are ordered by “god” to be subservient to men in all ways, the earth is less than 5,000 years old and man coexisted with Dinosaurs until Noah forgot (intentionally or not) to put them in his ark.
In short, go fuck yourself Carly. I liked you more when you were getting your ass fired by one of the worlds largest computer companies for being an incompetent git.
Noe and Sarah got married yesterday and we all had way too much to drink. Noe looked so happy I thought his smile was going to break his face, Sarah’s dress was beautiful, Grayson smuggled in water bottles full of gin, the DJ thought porn jazz and Bon Jovi made good wedding music - it was an all around memorable night. I’m incredibly happy for them and their new life together.
The interesting thing came as the evening drew to a close; Sarah was busy consoling her extremely drunken brother while Noe (so drunk he was unable to make eye contact) sat down at the lounge piano and started tinkering around. He Josh and I sang some old tunes and messed around a bit but then he sang me a song that effectively went, “I was apprehensive about joining this band because Josh is horrible as explaining things and Mike is a disorganized bastard and if it weren’t for him, we’d have an album by now,” in the form of a nice Cmajor 4/4 ballad.
I tried not to think much of it at the time, mainly because I was solidly plastered and tried to joke around with him by adding a second verse but Jess videotaped the entire thing and watching it reminds me that people say what they mean when they are drunk. Noe is an incredibly funny guy, but I could tell from his tone that he wasn’t joking. He was drunkenly honest. I wasn’t bothered by it until after the fact, and not because it’s insulting. The insults don’t matter, it’s the blame that gets to me.
Braeburn has been a roller coaster. The expectations in the beginning were unclear and when I established my role as lead songwriter / final say in modifications to works I had written a power struggle began and almost ripped the band apart. I stepped back, asked that my songs be kept intact and that we as a group would work on newer material TOGETHER, playing the older (my) songs as they were when performances were scheduled. They agreed, and while sad that they didn’t have a say in my material’s layout, assured me that they liked the songs enough to play whatever parts I wanted them to when the time came.
Disorganized? Yes, I was. That part he is right about.
As a colaborative group we have yet to complete one song due to constant changes, modifications, schedule conflicts and half-band meetups. Josh and I will work on a song, Noe and Jonathan will work on another, and by the time we all meet together again it is such a slow process that it seems nothing has been done. I’ll find footing in a song and begin vocal work when the verse suddenly changes at the next practice, or the part of the song I really liked has been removed entirely. I don’t think this is that big of a deal because it is always changing and theoretically for the best, but it is a GRADUAL process and I wasn’t aware we thought it would be elsewise. We do have like, five cooks in the kitchen. Things are going to take a while.
I’m also desperately trying to be able to write lyrics as part of a group but I have trouble writing about things that are not personal; if I do get a nugget of gold I am still uncomfortable with others changing it. It’s a control thing and I know that.
The band didn’t want a leader, they wanted us all to have equal writing say and power, so in theory wouldn’t it be all of our faults that an album hasn’t been done? Why pin it on me? Because I am the “lead singer”?
While we’re on the album subject, what is the point of an album if you do not play out and no one knows who you are? (We don’t play out because the live repertoir at this point is only “the Mike” songs, and we are working on new material) This of course, brings up an even bigger issue: Noe told us outright that if this band were to get serious (ie, touring, albums, record deal) he would quit because it’s just a hobby and doesn’t want to take it seriously.
So I am really confused at this point. I may not know exactly what he meant but I do know that he was drunk enough to say exactly what was on his mind. I love these guys like brothers but I perpetually feel as though Josh is the only one that wants me there.
–
Lift my bloody face
from the table
You’re readin’ it wrong
We’re all in this together
We’re all in this as feathers
Up and Away.
So roll me up a cliff
that isn’t stable
It’s so precious how
Impossibility’s nurtured
When our volatility’s perfect
Up and Away
and I thank those who came first
So I go to town to find
a new start
The hooker’s polite, but
I’m not interested darlin’.
I’ve got a pattern of fallin
Up and Away
So I thank all those who came first
‘cuz they’ve no idea what they’ve gotten into.
I try but I fail consistently
There’s gotta be somethin’ I’m missing,
Should we call it a day like that?
cuz I feel
sicker than hell
and I know we aint done yet.
It’s like home on the range
High again,
Stones in my brain
Stop readin’ the bad news
and don’t hide in the bedroom
From your scars
So lift my battered face
of this table
and calm the fuck down
I don’t get why we care
We’re making circles square
aren’t we?
and I thank all those who came first
cuz they’ve no idea what they’ve gotten into
I try but I fail consistently
There’s gotta be somethin’ I’m missing,
Should we call it a day like that?
cuz I feel
sicker than hell
and I know we aint done yet
I know we ain’t done yet
and I pray for those who came first
cuz they’ve no idea what I’m
about to do
I try but I fail consistently,
There’s gotta be something I’m missing
Should we call it a day like that?
Like that?
Ya like that?
I feel
sicker than hell
and I know we aint done yet….
….tell me why we aint done yet?
The coordinates of the place where the Apollo 11 spacecraft landed on Luna are 00°41′15″N, 23°26′00″W (in moon terms). Those EXACT same coordinates on Earth are in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. What’s fascinating is that this particular spot in the Atlantic is pretty damn close to where Ignatius L. Donnelly predicted the lost continent of Atlantic to have been, according to his book Atlantis: the Antediluvian World.
Joshu Friedman is a guitar God.
Not just in the performance / teaching / playing sense, but in the world of repairs. I was tinkering with my busted Martin (shattered on solid concrete sometime in 2005) seeing if I could salvage parts when I remembered that my Braeburn-mate had once worked for Santa Cruz Guitar Company. Granted, he only did finish work, but he did see the production of these beauties. In fact almost every acoustic show we have played I used his custom Santa Cruz.
I thought to myself to bug him about the possibility of salvaging my black Martin beauty. A couple of clamps, wood and super glue, and a stack of heavy books including the complete works of both J.K. Rowling and William Shakespeare mixed with Josh’s brilliance have brought this beast back from the dead.
At first I just assumed it would be at BEST playable to the point where it doesn’t go out of tune that badly. It not only retains tune like a champion but it sound fucking incredible for having had holes in it only last week. The only thing I’m unsure about is the pickup; it may be shot or it may just need a new 9v because it crackles when I strum too loud.
Anyway, I meant only to go into that a little bit and say this on the subject of Independence:
July 2nd is the day we declared independence from the United Kingdom. John Adams wrote to his wife,
The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.
My July 4th was awesome, though it did lack fireworks due to wind worries. Maybe we should celebrate independence on the correct day next year.
I’m thinking about playing some more acoustic solo shows to work out some performance comfort. Saturday went great, but I feel I’m still not 100% when in front of a crowd regardless of how many people I do or do not have the acquaintance of. I’m going to run a few a few experiments with Guitar Rig 3 as a vocal processor instead of a guitar, and just plug an acoustic straight into the compressor. That way I’ll have access to loops and delay without having to invest in more pedals.
I wouldn’t say no to an entirely analog rig but since I have digital effects for days I might as well capitalize on that. I need to keep a mental tally of all the things I need to buy. It’s silly.
…and for the record, the supreme court has done much worse in our history than allowing our judiciary process to apply to those in Guantanamo.
What I don’t get is that when Habeas Corpus was denied to us by the British we raised holy revolutionary hell. How have we fallen as a society? Is it because there were less of us? Is it because we have become complacent? When comes the tea-dumping?
Jake and I were discussing the gay marriage issue the other day - he poised the question that all religions, which differ on many points, have marriage so how can the Christian faith (of which he is a follower) specify that it is between a man and a woman and have the “correct interperetation”? To say that a gay couple can’t be married is like saying a Buddhist couple isn’t married once in our jurisdiction.
I pointed out my argument from the other day, that I was married by a judge, without the “sight of God”. He reminded me that he was married by a drunk who was packing a flask of scotch.
Now, I wouldn’t call myself a drunk but the scotch part is true.
© .:the.albedo.effect:.. Powered by WordPress using the DePo Skinny Theme.
