Friday, August 20, 2010

so it goes

trying to get productive again. got bored of the internet here at wormhole, so i started loading some animated pics into imovie to try to get going on the 'falling stars' video, which is supposed to be animated. it ended up motivating me to go through all of the rest of that stuff- there is a TON! more than i'd expected- i have enough footage to finish a '4am train' video- just need about a minute or so of footage of stefanie to round it out. nice surprise. i spent all summer taking still photographs of flowers progressively blooming and i'd previously thought that it was kind of bullshit, but as it turns out i think that it was a good project to do and i have some other stuff to build on for a 'whisper' video. 'under the flood' i was going to do at the zoo and possibly the bean in millenium park. nice. the only concept i have for a 'narcoleptic' video would require someone outside the band to film it- i thought it would be a good idea to do a rip off of the nina nastasia 'cry, cry baby' video- but out in our backyard. i was going to do this thing with all of us in the backyard anyway, but then i thought it might be good to do a sort of combination video/live recording. the version we'd record would probably end up being better than the one on the record and it would allow us to test out the whole recording live to 2-track concept i've wanted to try for a long time.
i ordered a second yamaha spx 90 because my current one was acting up, so i bought another one for cheaper than i bought the first one. now, naturally, my current one has calmed down. ironically this would make it possible to do more live recordings as it would allow us to add reverb to the vocals by having a second spx90. i even pondered recording the new christmas song live to 2-track, but i think that we might have to go with the old live recording format. i should be able to include brandon in the proceedings, however, and i think it'll work out quite nicely. with distortion and whatnot it would be a bit difficult to record it live with the strings- they'd have to be in a seperate room and we don't have enough sets of headphones to get that accomplished properly.
slept until one o'clock today. not good as i have to be up at 6am tomorrow. shit.
had an extremely strange day yesterday- felt about every emotion i'm capable of feeling in the course of a day. mondo extremes- mostly caused by running into a friend at work who really knocked me down off of my cloud by very rudely snapping at me and it ended up overtaking pretty much my entire day. i had trouble sleeping because of it. i dunno- it's kind of a recurring thing with this person- i always feel like they're my friend but then it seems that she gets sick of me and then just finds me annoying and ends up talking down to me, being dismissive and occasionally just outright ignoring me until i go away. i guess that's not really a friend, then. one of my newest projects in life is not to be too taken-in by extremely outgoing, likable people. it seems to me that they are so used to having people be nice to them and like them that it's practically nothing to just brush them off when they're done with them. maybe not a big deal to extremely outgoing people, but for me i try to pick my friends very carefully, which is why i have so few. when i consider you my friend and you fuck it up repeatedly it usually puts you on my shitlist and while it's difficult enough to get me to come out of my shell and be your friend it's much more difficult to get off of the shitlist once you're on it- your third visit is usually your last and you're no longer considered a friend. mostly what gets you on the shitlist is if you treat me in a way that you don't want to be treated, or if you play up the 'i'm so sensitive' angle but then repeatedly toss off insensitive rudeness my way despite the fact that i'm also a very sensitive person. i guess those two kind of tie in together. i'm a 'treat others how you want to be treated' person. you don't want to piss someone off like that. end of rant. also, this person is moving in a little under a week and a half, so i suppose this is their way of severing ties. message received. have a nice life- thanks for getting me to think you were a cool person only to grind that image into complete oblivion at the last second.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

garage days revisited

every so often i fall in love with noisy, trashy, gloriously sloppy and passionate garage rock all over again. this is the result of listening to so much ty segall and thee oh sees at the moment. this began in portland way back in 2003 or so- for whatever reason that's the year that i finally got into the stooges. why did it take so long? who fucking knows... i'd always loved 'funhouse' back when my college roommates used to play it for me.
right now what's really doing it for me is 'warm slime' by thee oh sees- which is officially my favourite of the more rocking oh sees albums. i played 'help' after listening to 'warm slime' the other day at work and found that 'help' sounded terribly tame by comparison and during all of the many amazing noisy freakouts contained within 'warm slime' it was very revelatory- sounded fucking amazing. i don't know what it is with me and noisy stuff, but to me it's something incredibly beautiful and revelatory. transformative. good stuff.
so right now i'm listening to 'everything goes wrong' by the vivian girls- a record i bought last year and neglected quite unfairly. someone put it on at work the other day off of my ipod and i was saddened by the fact that i hadn't listened to it more. it seemed to be a grave injustice. it was a largely ignored record when it came out. people were very underwhelmed by it. i think it's the fact that the songs aren't as immediately memorable and hooky as the songs from the first record. what's more they were still releasing that never-ending stream of 7"es that were as instantly memorable as the songs from the self-titled record. it also has this slightly more polished soundwise, yet more unhinged aesthetically kind of thing going on, which is a touch confusing (at least to me and i'd imagine to most other folks).
today is the first of a two-day weekend for me. my schedule has returned to its normal state. the bad news is that tuesdays still blow and now i no longer have a shared off with stefanie and the good news is that i'm making more in tip money AND getting two days off in a row. there are also a ton of great shows coming up. a ton, dangit! thee oh sees is one of them. ty segall is on tuesday. i am wondering if i should just go to the free instore with stefanie or to that and the empty bottle show. i suppose this would be something i should just feel out once the time comes.
we're rolling into finishing up all of the necessary practice for the show at cole's. speaking of which i should probably finish a flier for that today and post it and whatnot. it's two weeks from sunday. yipes. i hope it goes alright. i'm mainly concerned about how it will be soundwise- need to go over their stage plot again and plan accordingly. i should also probably get going. i've been here for quite a while. the greenpeace clipboard people are multiplying on the streets, i have things to do today and, most importantly, if i am gone for more than two hours i lose my 25 cent transfer option.