i recorded a song yesterday by the above title. i think it's going to be for the 'chinese blue' debacle. i say debacle because i feel like it's about an eternity away from being done. i've lost track of all of the songs i've written for it. a lot of the songs are still just disjointed fragments spread out over up to three moleskine diaries. i have tried to consolidate them all into an easy to carry notebook- one of those old composition books that i used to use back in the day before the moleskine diary came into my life. my life is beginning to revolve around the ubiquitous notebook. i lost a box of old notebooks that contained a few songs i was in the process of trying to update- one for the 'all hope is blind' album. it's good in its own way because it forces me to rewrite them and these days i'm more capable of doing a better job. plus when i've found things later oftentimes my brain redoes things in exactly the same way- sometimes verbatim. kind of terrifying. one time i lost a string arrangement, panicked, rewrote the whole thing recorded it and then found it later and i'd put the thing together in exactly the same way. very very unsettling. i'm not sure what i think that that means. am i the one writing these things or are they just sitting somewhere for me to pluck them down.
anyway, the song. it's probably a rip-off of a buffy st. marie song that i've never actually heard. spiritualized used to cover it in their earliest days- 'codeine' or 'codine' as it's written on her first album. i tried to look for some of her records when i was at laurie's planet of sound last but i had trouble figuring out where it would be filed- under 's' or 'm.' but anyway, i might have ripped it off wholesale- i'm not quite sure. the chorus is only vaguely similar, but the verse is probably a bit more than vaguely similar. either way it turned out really well. it was pretty difficult getting the whole thing down and what started off as being a very simple idea got a bit complicated- it's in waltz time. it's mostly one chord- e. the progression does two measures of e, then the third is an asus2/e, it goes back to e for the fourth, then three more measures of e, and the fourth is a dsus2/a and then it starts all over again. for some reason my brain only understands it that way when i'm singing the words, but it rewrote it for me during the breaks- it subtracted the fourth measure of e strumming after the asus2/e. but it did that in every break without me thinking about it at all. so i'm not sure whether i should keep it that way or change it because it was fine with the main guitar and the vocal, but started to cause problems when i started adding more guitars. it was a huge problem when i added the bass- which took a long time and which i did last. i even had the drums to play along with, but things still got a bit convoluted at times because the original rhythm guitar was the first thing added. i added guide guitar while singing, added a different vocal because there was too much bleed from the guitar, added another rhythm guitar which became distorted and then a lead guitar, then two seperate drum tracks- same basic beat but one used christmas bells and the other one a maraca and then the bass. it took forever. i started at 2pm or so, finished the guitars at about 4pm, did the dishes, went back at about 5pm and did the drums and bass and wasn't done until about 7pm. that's a grand total of four hours. back in the old days i used to be able to crank out a full track in about an hour. i guess that the setup has become a bit more involved- it takes me about 20 minutes to get the drums all miked up and ready to go. plus our bedroom has become a bit of a rubik's cube these days- move this to get to that, move both of those to get to this, then reverse to put everything back. it's amazing how much stuff we've accumulated living in this place for three years. we have three or four new shelves that we didn't have when we moved in. i'm thinking of putting some shelving up in the bedroom for master tape storage and such. there are stacks of cassette tapes that i'm working on on top of the bass amp, on the bedside table and they are getting to be a foot-and-a-half tall. i had no idea i was working on so much stuff. i had always thought that i was moving a bit slowly these days, but i don't think so anymore... *sigh*. i guess that it's a good thing, really. i enjoy working on tracks. i only got grumpy towards the end because i always thought that the bass was something i was able to do the easiest, but i was proven quite wrong.
i'm looking forward to the next few weeks on the tip front. i am hoping to get ahold of the last missing piece on the 2-track so that i can start using the tape to see if i need to calibrate the machine (i'd imagine that i do need to). after that i have to get money saved for mastering. as long as the record comes out by about june i'll be fine with that. we do need to get saving again as well. we'll see how that goes. i need to call the act one guy today dammit. now. i think i shall go and do that right now in fact. exeunt pursued by bear.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Thursday, January 29, 2009
just enough to waste the day
to anyone wondering where i get 90% of my entry titles- it usually is a quote from a song or artist i am listening to at the moment- in this case 'let it flow' by spiritualized. i am at the coffee shop since it is loafing day. i am going to do some recording later. i wrote a new song last week and i'm going to spend some time recording it today. i just spent some time looking for decent contact microphones for stringed instruments and i think i hit the jackpot. i found one that's pretty inexpensive and looks like it will work very nicely. i'm not sure where i'm going to come up with the money to buy three of them, but since when has that ever stopped me before. this could be nice as it could grant us the possibilities of doing more shows with live strings that will work a bit better than that last one. yay!
i've finally started to get in touch with people about playing shows again. i'm gunning for mid-april for the strings show- ideally a saturday night. if billy can't make it then i guess i'll just place another craigslist ad for a cellist. it's worked fairly well up to now. i'm recording with katelyn on saturday. i wanted to try to get her and chris together for some recording, but i haven't heard a word from him at all, which i'm interpreting as meaning he's too busy to help us out at the moment. i have some things to score now. boy, do i have things to score right now. i have to figure out what songs are ready to go. i can only think of three or four off the top of my head. i had previously thought that more would be ready, but it doesn't look like it's going to be in the cards.
i met someone at work who does market research and he seemed keen to have stefanie and me come in and do a session. that would be a nice way to make some extra money. emily did it one day and said that it was the easiest $50 she's ever made.
march is looming. i need to get my shit together to start planning the tour. get some places lined up for stefanie to call. we are going all-out and are going to contact tons of colleges in the hopes of getting at least three college shows. what would be ideal is if we would be able to play a college show early in the day and then another show at night. what i really wish is that we had the time and energy to play two shows a day- college show in the afternoon, another show at night. that would mean we'd have a free hotel room lined up every night. how nice would that be? plus we'd just be able to view the college shows as practice-sessions.
it never ceases to amaze me how the second i am plugged into this computer typing into this blog how every thought i have is literally dumped from my head.
i had some weird rush of contentment at some point last week. it really freaked me out- sort of a sense that i really didn't mind my job much at all- which is totally true. i have a tendency to bitch and moan about my employment situation all the time, but really this situation isn't so bad. there are a few recurring incidents to be certain, but the job itself is pretty good actually. tips are really good again because there are less people working. less people working also means that there's more to do and the time goes by faster. that might have something to do with the sudden overwhelming sense of good will. my tips are just going into show-going land right now. i started paying money to my credit card so as to pay back the amount as quickly as possible so as not to increase interest. i'm not in a terrible, dying rush to get the ep released. it's going to take some time to raise the funds. i want to be very careful right now not to lose sight of the long-term and resolve it with the short-term. we did successfully renegotiate our lease- our new rent is $730 a month. that's not too bad- only $15 more than our last lease raise. i've been paying stefanie $360 for my half for the last few months so that only raises my end by $5. i even planned out my financial year in my daily planner. it has kind of calmed a lot of my fears and anxieties in a lot of ways. it helps to know what i'm capable of over the course of the next year. it's necessary given everything that i still need to do. a little extra money to save for these things is kind of important, though.
i asked for us to be added to a show at subterranean where darker my love is playing. that'd be really nice if that happened because i wouldn't have to figure out some way to get my ass down there for that show. i can't believe i missed them at schuba's when they came through last time- LAME! a tundra is playing at the whistler on the same night as eleni mandell at schuba's. i'm beginning to think that i'm going to end up going to eleni mandell because i've never seen her play and it's at schuba's so it will be a super-easy trip. whenever i have to go down to belmont it's almost like it's a complete delight because it doesn't take one hour or more. it's almost like when we went to my bloody valentine and nick cave over that weekend of never-ending delights- riding to lawrence from here only takes five minutes. it takes the annoyance out of the commute. why i often get so annoyed with the cta is mainly because everywhere i go on it takes for fucking ever even without all the delays and weird unpredictable crap.
the a tundra show was really fun. i am really glad that we went. once i'd gotten home from work and taken a three hour nap i felt just fine. i really love their 7". i haven't been able to download the mp3s for it yet (it includes a bonus track which i'm pretty pumped to hear). i really should buy their cd sooner rather than later. we ran into miles raymer at the show and had a pleasant and relaxed conversation with him. i'm kind of glad said relaxed conversation occurred because when he interviewed us we were super reserved and guarded. i'm sure he's probably used to that but it really was like night and day- we were just chit-chatting and then he set his recorder on the table and the red light went on and we were totally tight-lipped from that point on, particularly me. when i was talking i couldn't get my thoughts out coherently either- stefanie almost acted as my translator. she often does in those interviews. i was just fine in an email interview, though...
i just sent a random myspace message to a friend of billy's who plays the viola. i asked if she could come by to record on saturday night, but i anticipate she probably won't be able to even if she wants to. i love random myspace messages. i'm always very reticent to send them- but i've found people usually are pretty receptive to that kind of thing. it's one of those things where i have to expect the opposite of what i would do. of course if i got a random message from someone i'd donly met once asking me to play some guitar for them i'd probably jump at the chance. so maybe it will be the opposite in this case. dang. i just really want to get the two at a time principle going on these recordings- i feel like the recordings will come out a bit better. plus i'd like to lighten the load on billy's shoulders. the next visit to kc i would like to be a relaxed one for a change. not just for his sake but for mine as well.
anyway, i shall go now... transmission over.
i've finally started to get in touch with people about playing shows again. i'm gunning for mid-april for the strings show- ideally a saturday night. if billy can't make it then i guess i'll just place another craigslist ad for a cellist. it's worked fairly well up to now. i'm recording with katelyn on saturday. i wanted to try to get her and chris together for some recording, but i haven't heard a word from him at all, which i'm interpreting as meaning he's too busy to help us out at the moment. i have some things to score now. boy, do i have things to score right now. i have to figure out what songs are ready to go. i can only think of three or four off the top of my head. i had previously thought that more would be ready, but it doesn't look like it's going to be in the cards.
i met someone at work who does market research and he seemed keen to have stefanie and me come in and do a session. that would be a nice way to make some extra money. emily did it one day and said that it was the easiest $50 she's ever made.
march is looming. i need to get my shit together to start planning the tour. get some places lined up for stefanie to call. we are going all-out and are going to contact tons of colleges in the hopes of getting at least three college shows. what would be ideal is if we would be able to play a college show early in the day and then another show at night. what i really wish is that we had the time and energy to play two shows a day- college show in the afternoon, another show at night. that would mean we'd have a free hotel room lined up every night. how nice would that be? plus we'd just be able to view the college shows as practice-sessions.
it never ceases to amaze me how the second i am plugged into this computer typing into this blog how every thought i have is literally dumped from my head.
i had some weird rush of contentment at some point last week. it really freaked me out- sort of a sense that i really didn't mind my job much at all- which is totally true. i have a tendency to bitch and moan about my employment situation all the time, but really this situation isn't so bad. there are a few recurring incidents to be certain, but the job itself is pretty good actually. tips are really good again because there are less people working. less people working also means that there's more to do and the time goes by faster. that might have something to do with the sudden overwhelming sense of good will. my tips are just going into show-going land right now. i started paying money to my credit card so as to pay back the amount as quickly as possible so as not to increase interest. i'm not in a terrible, dying rush to get the ep released. it's going to take some time to raise the funds. i want to be very careful right now not to lose sight of the long-term and resolve it with the short-term. we did successfully renegotiate our lease- our new rent is $730 a month. that's not too bad- only $15 more than our last lease raise. i've been paying stefanie $360 for my half for the last few months so that only raises my end by $5. i even planned out my financial year in my daily planner. it has kind of calmed a lot of my fears and anxieties in a lot of ways. it helps to know what i'm capable of over the course of the next year. it's necessary given everything that i still need to do. a little extra money to save for these things is kind of important, though.
i asked for us to be added to a show at subterranean where darker my love is playing. that'd be really nice if that happened because i wouldn't have to figure out some way to get my ass down there for that show. i can't believe i missed them at schuba's when they came through last time- LAME! a tundra is playing at the whistler on the same night as eleni mandell at schuba's. i'm beginning to think that i'm going to end up going to eleni mandell because i've never seen her play and it's at schuba's so it will be a super-easy trip. whenever i have to go down to belmont it's almost like it's a complete delight because it doesn't take one hour or more. it's almost like when we went to my bloody valentine and nick cave over that weekend of never-ending delights- riding to lawrence from here only takes five minutes. it takes the annoyance out of the commute. why i often get so annoyed with the cta is mainly because everywhere i go on it takes for fucking ever even without all the delays and weird unpredictable crap.
the a tundra show was really fun. i am really glad that we went. once i'd gotten home from work and taken a three hour nap i felt just fine. i really love their 7". i haven't been able to download the mp3s for it yet (it includes a bonus track which i'm pretty pumped to hear). i really should buy their cd sooner rather than later. we ran into miles raymer at the show and had a pleasant and relaxed conversation with him. i'm kind of glad said relaxed conversation occurred because when he interviewed us we were super reserved and guarded. i'm sure he's probably used to that but it really was like night and day- we were just chit-chatting and then he set his recorder on the table and the red light went on and we were totally tight-lipped from that point on, particularly me. when i was talking i couldn't get my thoughts out coherently either- stefanie almost acted as my translator. she often does in those interviews. i was just fine in an email interview, though...
i just sent a random myspace message to a friend of billy's who plays the viola. i asked if she could come by to record on saturday night, but i anticipate she probably won't be able to even if she wants to. i love random myspace messages. i'm always very reticent to send them- but i've found people usually are pretty receptive to that kind of thing. it's one of those things where i have to expect the opposite of what i would do. of course if i got a random message from someone i'd donly met once asking me to play some guitar for them i'd probably jump at the chance. so maybe it will be the opposite in this case. dang. i just really want to get the two at a time principle going on these recordings- i feel like the recordings will come out a bit better. plus i'd like to lighten the load on billy's shoulders. the next visit to kc i would like to be a relaxed one for a change. not just for his sake but for mine as well.
anyway, i shall go now... transmission over.
Friday, January 23, 2009
o neko, how i suffer for you...
i bought my tickets for neko case today- $84. owie. that's not too terrible as far as ticketmaster charges go- usually they manage to double the price somehow. it's shipping them to you that gets mondo expensive. i opted for the scariest choice- having them mailed via standard mail through the u.s. postal service. it's in the hands of our mailperson now. i shall keep my fingers crossed. our mail hasn't been going too badly lately- we've been getting all of our magazines and bills and less of our junkmail. we don't get many bills really- i think we still get paper bank statements and credit card bills even though we do all of that stuff online now. i really should switch over- just seeing the stuff in the mail gives me the willies. i'm so on top of my finances these days that i'm in the habit of checking things online very frequently.
it's goodbye to tyler's tips for a little while. bjm tickets go on sale tomorrow at noon as well. i think i might risk not buying them right when they go on sale- i should be home by two or so. i could also get stefanie to buy them- just give her my credit card number and my ticketmaster password. the only reason we're buying these two sets of tickets right now is because these are the only shows of all the tons that are coming up that we are quite certain will sell out. i think the next problem is to get ahold of primal scream tickets. it hasn't sold out yet. i'd guess that their level of popularity is about equal to that of spiritualized. i can't remember when we bought our tickets for that but i think we waited a while and paid in cash. i can't remember if it sold out or not either. it was a pretty packed show. kylie is balking at seeing bjm since it's at the metro. the metro's not that bad, really. they do charge $6 for a bud light, but other than that it's not too terrible. the sound is reasonably good.
i haven't done any recording in a really good long time. my well is a bit dried up at the moment. i'm just limited in what i can actually do these days. i'm sure i've already spent a lot of time talking in terms of this, but it's very true at the moment. today is a loafing day. it's official. if you can't tell from this blog loafing is something i take very seriously. seriously enough to write for hours about how i'm loafing.
tomorrow the week begins once again anew. yipee.
here is something new in my life that i think i should appreciate- i have several cheerleaders now. people have been very encouraging about the music-making aspect. it's very nice (and somewhat new). i often debate with them about the prospects for me on the horizon- i usually am the one with the bleaker view. it would probably behoove me to listen to them for a change. i'm so used to just blocking out what everyone says that i'm even cynical of good advice and encouragement. it's difficult to get that kind of a block reversed. it's just not something i'm used to in any capacity, but then when i look back there have always been encouraging people. i just never felt like they were being 100% honest with me. basically i think i'm going to believe that something good is going to come of all of this that i've been doing. the results are getting ridiculously pleasing at the moment. i am very happy with the material on the new ep, i'm still very happy with 'down to sleep.' i'm very impressed by the newer stuff that is starting to take shape finally. i'm happy with the way that my skills in the recording world are coming along. i have problems accepting compliments. it's one of my more infuriating attributes and i think one of the reasons i don't have many friends. i also don't trust most people and just flat-out don't enjoy being real social. the other night when i went over to will's to watch 'metalocalypse' episodes i was ready to go home by about 9:30. most of the time i'd rather just stay at home and hang out with stefanie.
i'm thinking of going to logan square today just to drop off a cd at the whistler. we need to get some shows going. if for no other reason than to get at least a warm-up show for this proposed strings show under our belts. we seem to require the warm-up show before anything really big or important. signing off. stayed tuned for some youtube festival type of thing.
it's goodbye to tyler's tips for a little while. bjm tickets go on sale tomorrow at noon as well. i think i might risk not buying them right when they go on sale- i should be home by two or so. i could also get stefanie to buy them- just give her my credit card number and my ticketmaster password. the only reason we're buying these two sets of tickets right now is because these are the only shows of all the tons that are coming up that we are quite certain will sell out. i think the next problem is to get ahold of primal scream tickets. it hasn't sold out yet. i'd guess that their level of popularity is about equal to that of spiritualized. i can't remember when we bought our tickets for that but i think we waited a while and paid in cash. i can't remember if it sold out or not either. it was a pretty packed show. kylie is balking at seeing bjm since it's at the metro. the metro's not that bad, really. they do charge $6 for a bud light, but other than that it's not too terrible. the sound is reasonably good.
i haven't done any recording in a really good long time. my well is a bit dried up at the moment. i'm just limited in what i can actually do these days. i'm sure i've already spent a lot of time talking in terms of this, but it's very true at the moment. today is a loafing day. it's official. if you can't tell from this blog loafing is something i take very seriously. seriously enough to write for hours about how i'm loafing.
tomorrow the week begins once again anew. yipee.
here is something new in my life that i think i should appreciate- i have several cheerleaders now. people have been very encouraging about the music-making aspect. it's very nice (and somewhat new). i often debate with them about the prospects for me on the horizon- i usually am the one with the bleaker view. it would probably behoove me to listen to them for a change. i'm so used to just blocking out what everyone says that i'm even cynical of good advice and encouragement. it's difficult to get that kind of a block reversed. it's just not something i'm used to in any capacity, but then when i look back there have always been encouraging people. i just never felt like they were being 100% honest with me. basically i think i'm going to believe that something good is going to come of all of this that i've been doing. the results are getting ridiculously pleasing at the moment. i am very happy with the material on the new ep, i'm still very happy with 'down to sleep.' i'm very impressed by the newer stuff that is starting to take shape finally. i'm happy with the way that my skills in the recording world are coming along. i have problems accepting compliments. it's one of my more infuriating attributes and i think one of the reasons i don't have many friends. i also don't trust most people and just flat-out don't enjoy being real social. the other night when i went over to will's to watch 'metalocalypse' episodes i was ready to go home by about 9:30. most of the time i'd rather just stay at home and hang out with stefanie.
i'm thinking of going to logan square today just to drop off a cd at the whistler. we need to get some shows going. if for no other reason than to get at least a warm-up show for this proposed strings show under our belts. we seem to require the warm-up show before anything really big or important. signing off. stayed tuned for some youtube festival type of thing.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
i have a passion sweet lord
back again. a bit of an exhausting week. we did some housesitting and really didn't get very much sleep- especially the first night. jay and diana's cat terrorized us all night. surprisingly it didn't catch up to me until last night. i woke up at almost noon today- haven't done that in quite a while. i didn't go to sleep that late last night- almost 2am. i feel pretty good though. it seems to me that i got a lot of rest over the holiday and was able to get back on track. very nice.
i went over to will's last night and watched every episode of 'metalocalypse'- it was pretty fun. i really liked the show a lot. i didn't realise that it was by brendon small of 'home movies' fame. he did all of the music as well as four of the voices- quite impressive. funny stuff. i wanted to embed the dr. rockso video onto here, but embedding has been disabled. bummer. i think that means that it's being embedded too much. not that much of a surprise. when i was watching the video the first time it took me a few times to realise that he's skiing down a mountain of cocaine. wow. hysterical.
i'm listening to the spiritualized recording from the metro. i wish that it was better- but what can you do really. if i hadn't recorded over the original minidiscs i would attempt a remaster of it like i did with the my bloody valentine show. at least for my own edification.
there is a feeding frenzy on spacemen 3 vinyl going on at ebay right now. all of it closes on sunday. yipes. i already have to buy tickets for shows this weekend- neko case tickets go on sale tomorrow (at least the presale does) and brian jonestown massacre goes on sale on saturday. i've got to get tickets for both of them immediately because i'm worried they'll sell out quickly if i don't get on it. there are also a ton of shows coming to town in february that i'd like to go see- appleseed cast, alla, juana molina (that one's at the morse theater, which would be about a five minute ride from where we live) and then there's primal scream coming in march as well. eleni mandell plays at schuba's inbetween that and bjm. i think i'd like to finally go and see her play already- i've been meaning to for about 10 years now. i don't have any of her records, but have heard tons of her music and i really like it. i think now's the time too- i'm so into that female singer-songwriter thing right now. that's about my musical taste- female singer-songwriters with heartbreaking voices, sad bastard folky shit, psychedelic weirdness from any era, 60's music and then holly golightly (who covers just about all three of those umbrellas). we've missed holly golightly twice the last time she came through. i even missed deerhunter when they came through town last. kind of a shame because i suspect they might not bother to do as much touring for 'microcastle' as they did for 'cryptograms.' they came through chicago about three times in 2007. we were going out to a nice dinner with claire and her mom for stefanie's birthday and i didn't want to have to run off in a hurry from it. i also didn't have any money (as per usual). speaking of which i really need to get this survey filled out for this sleep study i want to try and do. this one is a bit less involved than the others i've applied for. kind of nice. it would pay about $150. not very much, but hey, money is money. i've got so much to do this year. it's a bit scary, really. i've heard that obama was planning on doing another economic stimulus thing. i haven't placed too much reliance on such a thing, and if it does happen i plan on using at least half of it to pay to my credit card balance. the same goes for if we get a refund (by some weird miracle). of course i'm still waiting on my w2s. i don't anticipate getting those much earlier than the last possible second, which is a bit annoying because we like to file really early so that we get our money back faster. we always have it routed to stefanie's bank account. this year we're probably going to file online too so hopefully that means it'll be that much faster. we like to file so early because then if we owe money we have some time to raise it (like we did last year).
i was looking at my earnings on my paycheck at my year-to-date from a paycheck in november and it was kind of sad. i hadn't even made more than $10000. wow. i am amazing. i always get a bit down on myself for never being able to follow through with all of my big plans but seeing that was pretty sobering- it suddenly became amazing that i was able to get that much done with that little. quite impressive. the only point at which i ended up having to break out the credit cards was during the tour and only towards the end of proceedings.
i am rambling. so what else is new?
i have a recording session coming up soon- katelyn is coming by to do some more violin stuff. i can't get ahold of chris. that's kind of a bummer- i was going to try and do something kind of revolutionary- i was going to try to record them both at the same time and see how it worked so as to save myself some time during mixing and save myself from having to bounce tracks (which is going to be a necessity for some songs). i also have a theory that both players will play better when they are laying their parts down together. some of the stuff that is on tap to record is still in very early stages and if i can get it done in by using as few inputs as possible, then that will help me a lot as things progress. other than that we're kind of limited in what kind of stuff can be accomplished over the next four or five months. i'm at logger-heads with my equipment yet again. i'm going to try and buy some more mics again so as to record the drums a bit better. i'm getting to be quite the stickler for drum sounds. i don't know why this is- it's just something i've always felt was a weak point because they are the hardest thing to record well. my standards have also gotten frighteningly high in that department. i think we were listening to something that i used to think pretty highly of and the drums sounded kind of lame to me. that's been happening on a lot of records that i used to love. a good example of this is 'gish' by smashing pumpkins- man the drums sound totally crappy on that album. this is true of a lot of butch vig's records. steve albini does the best with drums. even a few things of his don't sound that dynamite to me if i'm in the right (or wrong as the case may be) mood. i guess i should relax a bit and not really worry about it so much (or spend so much time worrying about it). i just want to push things along and improve. i've really liked the drum sounds i've been beginning to get. i'm happy with the way that things are progressing in that department, but it's a long road of constant improvement. once i finished 'christmas song revisited' i was really unhappy with the drum sound we got. i listen to it now though and i really like it. a lot of it was that there's no really clear-cut way to record a snare drum being hit with a mallet very well. so that track has both stefanie and me playing drums. i doubled her part playing it the same way with a regular drum stick. it took some doing- that's something that's kind of hard to get down on tape- doubling a drum part. especially one that's so ridiculously stark.
i have been doing a middling job of detoxing off of sugar over the course of this month. i can't remember when i started but i believe it was right around new year's day. i've been trying to keep off of it for at least a month. i don't think i've been doing that great of a job. i've been ingesting things with some sugar. if it doesn't have very much sugar i go ahead and let it slide. joe's o's have 1g of sugar, for example. i figure that that's okay to let slide. i've accidentally been eating more than i'd like simply because sugar is in fucking everything. it's even in soy milk. grrrr. so i am now coming from the point where i just want to lay off of the sorts of items that are really heavy in refined sugars- i haven't touched a muffin, scone, cookie or sweet bread at work the entire time. i haven't bought a donut the entire time either. those were where i was getting most of my sugar intake as well. i've also started doing 100 crunches every day. so far i've lost about 10 pounds. i weighed myself at jay and diana's and i weighed about 210 pounds (that was with clothes on- my clothes account for another five pounds apparently). it seems to me that the lack of sugar would've made more of a massive difference if it were true that that is another factor in my weight gain. i think the main thing has been all of the bagel-eating that i have been doing working at a bagel shop. i didn't moderate when i started either- i'd have at least two a day when i first started. that's very bad. i think as long as i can do some physical activity to offset it i'm hoping that that will enable me to get back to a good weight- i think it would be a really great accomplishment if i got back down to 195 even. ideally i'd like to get down to 175 eventually because that's how much i weighed when i was living in portland and i felt very healthy during those years. we walked around a lot back then- we used to walk all the way downtown from our apartment on 23rd and hawthorne. often times we'd walk downtown all the way to powell's, go look around and then walk back home. i even had to walk home from union station one time when i got back from london because i had absolutely no money whatsoever for bus/cab fare. it was kind of a sad state of affairs to be in. i think i crossed the hawthorne bridge and got to about se 7th before stefanie caught up with me in the car. the honda civic. o how i miss thee lem. that car probably wouldn't have made it this far though thanks to the complete idiots who 'repaired' it at carstar after my only accident. every time i'd take the car in to get repaired for anything the mechanic would mention something about how it was put together very shoddily by someone in the past. i'd always just nod my head and sigh. that was a fantastic car until that happened and it was so fantastic to have a car that reliable and easy to drive. it got such amazing gas mileage too- it could get more than 40 mpg on the highway. i don't even want to think about how much cheaper that west coast tour would've been if we'd been able to do it with lem. i think that it's entirely possible that the money we earned in bozeman could've paid for all of our gas on that trip. it's even possible that we would've had money left over once we got back. but that's just how we do everything- by the skin of our teeth. it's what makes us who and what we are.
i went over to will's last night and watched every episode of 'metalocalypse'- it was pretty fun. i really liked the show a lot. i didn't realise that it was by brendon small of 'home movies' fame. he did all of the music as well as four of the voices- quite impressive. funny stuff. i wanted to embed the dr. rockso video onto here, but embedding has been disabled. bummer. i think that means that it's being embedded too much. not that much of a surprise. when i was watching the video the first time it took me a few times to realise that he's skiing down a mountain of cocaine. wow. hysterical.
i'm listening to the spiritualized recording from the metro. i wish that it was better- but what can you do really. if i hadn't recorded over the original minidiscs i would attempt a remaster of it like i did with the my bloody valentine show. at least for my own edification.
there is a feeding frenzy on spacemen 3 vinyl going on at ebay right now. all of it closes on sunday. yipes. i already have to buy tickets for shows this weekend- neko case tickets go on sale tomorrow (at least the presale does) and brian jonestown massacre goes on sale on saturday. i've got to get tickets for both of them immediately because i'm worried they'll sell out quickly if i don't get on it. there are also a ton of shows coming to town in february that i'd like to go see- appleseed cast, alla, juana molina (that one's at the morse theater, which would be about a five minute ride from where we live) and then there's primal scream coming in march as well. eleni mandell plays at schuba's inbetween that and bjm. i think i'd like to finally go and see her play already- i've been meaning to for about 10 years now. i don't have any of her records, but have heard tons of her music and i really like it. i think now's the time too- i'm so into that female singer-songwriter thing right now. that's about my musical taste- female singer-songwriters with heartbreaking voices, sad bastard folky shit, psychedelic weirdness from any era, 60's music and then holly golightly (who covers just about all three of those umbrellas). we've missed holly golightly twice the last time she came through. i even missed deerhunter when they came through town last. kind of a shame because i suspect they might not bother to do as much touring for 'microcastle' as they did for 'cryptograms.' they came through chicago about three times in 2007. we were going out to a nice dinner with claire and her mom for stefanie's birthday and i didn't want to have to run off in a hurry from it. i also didn't have any money (as per usual). speaking of which i really need to get this survey filled out for this sleep study i want to try and do. this one is a bit less involved than the others i've applied for. kind of nice. it would pay about $150. not very much, but hey, money is money. i've got so much to do this year. it's a bit scary, really. i've heard that obama was planning on doing another economic stimulus thing. i haven't placed too much reliance on such a thing, and if it does happen i plan on using at least half of it to pay to my credit card balance. the same goes for if we get a refund (by some weird miracle). of course i'm still waiting on my w2s. i don't anticipate getting those much earlier than the last possible second, which is a bit annoying because we like to file really early so that we get our money back faster. we always have it routed to stefanie's bank account. this year we're probably going to file online too so hopefully that means it'll be that much faster. we like to file so early because then if we owe money we have some time to raise it (like we did last year).
i was looking at my earnings on my paycheck at my year-to-date from a paycheck in november and it was kind of sad. i hadn't even made more than $10000. wow. i am amazing. i always get a bit down on myself for never being able to follow through with all of my big plans but seeing that was pretty sobering- it suddenly became amazing that i was able to get that much done with that little. quite impressive. the only point at which i ended up having to break out the credit cards was during the tour and only towards the end of proceedings.
i am rambling. so what else is new?
i have a recording session coming up soon- katelyn is coming by to do some more violin stuff. i can't get ahold of chris. that's kind of a bummer- i was going to try and do something kind of revolutionary- i was going to try to record them both at the same time and see how it worked so as to save myself some time during mixing and save myself from having to bounce tracks (which is going to be a necessity for some songs). i also have a theory that both players will play better when they are laying their parts down together. some of the stuff that is on tap to record is still in very early stages and if i can get it done in by using as few inputs as possible, then that will help me a lot as things progress. other than that we're kind of limited in what kind of stuff can be accomplished over the next four or five months. i'm at logger-heads with my equipment yet again. i'm going to try and buy some more mics again so as to record the drums a bit better. i'm getting to be quite the stickler for drum sounds. i don't know why this is- it's just something i've always felt was a weak point because they are the hardest thing to record well. my standards have also gotten frighteningly high in that department. i think we were listening to something that i used to think pretty highly of and the drums sounded kind of lame to me. that's been happening on a lot of records that i used to love. a good example of this is 'gish' by smashing pumpkins- man the drums sound totally crappy on that album. this is true of a lot of butch vig's records. steve albini does the best with drums. even a few things of his don't sound that dynamite to me if i'm in the right (or wrong as the case may be) mood. i guess i should relax a bit and not really worry about it so much (or spend so much time worrying about it). i just want to push things along and improve. i've really liked the drum sounds i've been beginning to get. i'm happy with the way that things are progressing in that department, but it's a long road of constant improvement. once i finished 'christmas song revisited' i was really unhappy with the drum sound we got. i listen to it now though and i really like it. a lot of it was that there's no really clear-cut way to record a snare drum being hit with a mallet very well. so that track has both stefanie and me playing drums. i doubled her part playing it the same way with a regular drum stick. it took some doing- that's something that's kind of hard to get down on tape- doubling a drum part. especially one that's so ridiculously stark.
i have been doing a middling job of detoxing off of sugar over the course of this month. i can't remember when i started but i believe it was right around new year's day. i've been trying to keep off of it for at least a month. i don't think i've been doing that great of a job. i've been ingesting things with some sugar. if it doesn't have very much sugar i go ahead and let it slide. joe's o's have 1g of sugar, for example. i figure that that's okay to let slide. i've accidentally been eating more than i'd like simply because sugar is in fucking everything. it's even in soy milk. grrrr. so i am now coming from the point where i just want to lay off of the sorts of items that are really heavy in refined sugars- i haven't touched a muffin, scone, cookie or sweet bread at work the entire time. i haven't bought a donut the entire time either. those were where i was getting most of my sugar intake as well. i've also started doing 100 crunches every day. so far i've lost about 10 pounds. i weighed myself at jay and diana's and i weighed about 210 pounds (that was with clothes on- my clothes account for another five pounds apparently). it seems to me that the lack of sugar would've made more of a massive difference if it were true that that is another factor in my weight gain. i think the main thing has been all of the bagel-eating that i have been doing working at a bagel shop. i didn't moderate when i started either- i'd have at least two a day when i first started. that's very bad. i think as long as i can do some physical activity to offset it i'm hoping that that will enable me to get back to a good weight- i think it would be a really great accomplishment if i got back down to 195 even. ideally i'd like to get down to 175 eventually because that's how much i weighed when i was living in portland and i felt very healthy during those years. we walked around a lot back then- we used to walk all the way downtown from our apartment on 23rd and hawthorne. often times we'd walk downtown all the way to powell's, go look around and then walk back home. i even had to walk home from union station one time when i got back from london because i had absolutely no money whatsoever for bus/cab fare. it was kind of a sad state of affairs to be in. i think i crossed the hawthorne bridge and got to about se 7th before stefanie caught up with me in the car. the honda civic. o how i miss thee lem. that car probably wouldn't have made it this far though thanks to the complete idiots who 'repaired' it at carstar after my only accident. every time i'd take the car in to get repaired for anything the mechanic would mention something about how it was put together very shoddily by someone in the past. i'd always just nod my head and sigh. that was a fantastic car until that happened and it was so fantastic to have a car that reliable and easy to drive. it got such amazing gas mileage too- it could get more than 40 mpg on the highway. i don't even want to think about how much cheaper that west coast tour would've been if we'd been able to do it with lem. i think that it's entirely possible that the money we earned in bozeman could've paid for all of our gas on that trip. it's even possible that we would've had money left over once we got back. but that's just how we do everything- by the skin of our teeth. it's what makes us who and what we are.
Friday, January 16, 2009
you can't be 20 on sugar mountain
at the coffee shop again. oh, the lazy day i will have today. and it will all culminate with tacos. woot!
my day of recording yesterday was a touch disfunctional and non-productive. i spent a good chunk of time trying to get as much recording finished for 'all hope is blind' (as in the song) only to figure out that the loop wasn't working at all. i'd even bothered to record the piano in the rehearsal room at the other building, finished the loop, loaded it into the sampler, played along with it on the 6-string bass, sang a scratch vocal, recorded some reference drums only to listen to it at the end and hear what a horrible, awful mess the whole thing was. the loop just isn't reliable enough for a group of people to play along to. it slowed down in the middle just for a second and it has a few open spaces that just make it difficult for everyone to stay on the same page, so basically i came up with an entirely new way to play it that should yield similar results and make it easy to play live. i think it'll be better. it's going to be good dammit! i was going to cut down the lyrics, but i don't think that that'll be necessary. it's about seven and a half minutes long. so the record will close with a few classic shalloboi epics. what the fucked-up version did yield is a nice roadmap for the ending of the song. i did an improv 6-string bass distorted solo at the end and it turned out really nicely indeed- solved several sound problems with the 6-string bass that have plagued past recordings.
'all hope is blind' is an odd song that's existed as an idea for a song for at least 10 years at this point. i think an old version of it exists somewhere in my mountain of old 4-track tapes that turned out fairly well. the motif kind of underwent a makeover while i was working at starbuck's (i believe that that might be when i recorded the piano part for the original loop). tiny strands have always been coming together around it seperately- i tried to round them all up a few weeks ago and it's been quite the to-do. i had to comb through all of my old pocket notebooks to round all of the loose threads together- a string melody on one page, a 6-string bass motif on another, and then i couldn't find the notebook with the lyrics for the old version. i ended up scrawling what i could remember in my last notebook one day at work when it was really slow fairly recently. i didn't remember much- maybe the first four or five lines. from there i got some new ideas and one day (another really slow day at work) i wrote free-association and ended up with an entirely new set of lyrics and something that *might* work as a hook (i don't really know anything about hooks- but it seems like it could be something for people to grab onto- who knows). then a few weeks or so ago i finished the old loop very quickly, loaded it onto the sampler and tried to played along to it with what i had, trying to get a decent arrangement. what i ended up with was what i'm keeping, but the old loop was so slow that it rendered the song completely plodding. it was over nine minutes long and the gaps between lyrics and melodies were just gigantic- which i sometimes like. i was able to drum along with the loop very easily, but everything else i had to strain to play slow enough to not get ahead of the loop. a big problem. plus we have enough plodding nine-minute plus songs and i felt like it needed to be at least a bit faster, so that's when i started the new loop that i finished yesterday. it picked the speed up enough to make it two minutes shorter (which is fine) and once the strings are added i think it'll have a nice balance of everything while still leaving some space for everything. also it's become something that we will probably have to do live now, so once stefanie learns it and starts playing it she'll probably speed it up a bit. we've been getting all keyed up at our shows lately and playing pretty fast (at least for us). it's kind of nice to not be tied to the tempos of those loops. we've also been learning the new songs as they've been coming. the newest song i've written was called 'falling stars' and i thought it would fit in on the 'chinese blue' album, but as i was recording it i realised that it might work for the 'all hope is blind' album. i had a guitar melody that i turned into a violin melody and fleshed the other string parts around that. then i tried it a few different ways with different guitar tones and then tried one that involved the reverse reverb and this giant swirling delay setting that i used to use all the time and that ended up being used for a song called 'paper doves' so i recorded both of those. stefanie and i have practised playing the two new songs at our last practise and they sounded really nice even without the strings. kind of like our old stuff but no distortion. nice. we're going to be putting the album together with songs that have already been started (and many of them nearly finished) that don't have drums and are more gauzy and dreamy than other things we've done in the past. it's going to be quite a record. i'm pretty excited. i'd wanted to have 12 songs on it, and i'd thought that i would be able to succeed at this because a lot of the songs were coming out really short and i figured i'd be able to fit all 12 on an lp, but it's getting trimmed back to 10 i think max because even with all of the short songs a few songs have stretched out enough to make it seem most plausible to fit 10 songs on the lp. if it was really important to me that all of the songs be short then i could edit down the stretched out songs, but i have difficulty condensing something that feels best the way that it is. why fuck with it?
my god, i've rambled and rambled as always.
i had a bit of a sobering moment yesterday. i went through my day planner and tried to approximate the amount of money i would be able to save at a rate of $60 a week (skipping one week every month). i then tried to do some addition and subtraction based on the cost of everything i would want to get accomplished this year. it's quite a lot, but basically as long as we don't go down to sxsw this year then we should be able to get it accomplished. basically not everything can be accomplished without some extra financial help (of course). i've looked into a few studies for some extra money. i even found an editorial internship that looked pretty nice that i don't think that i quite qualify for, but would like to give a shot anyway.
we're housesitting for jay and diana for a few nights coming up soon. i think they're leaving town on sunday morning and coming back into town on wednesday i believe. so that's three nights. this will mainly be a pro-bono thing since they watched our cats while we were out of town. we'll get to have a car for a few days. that'll be fun. i kind of enjoy that bit. pita inn. woohoo! i'll probably try and do some fun with photo shop- the warlocks were soliciting for artwork for a new album (!) recently and i did get an idea for something but photoshop would kind of be a necessity- and that's only if it actually works. what annoys me about these tiny digital cameras is that they don't take large enough pictures to make adequate tifs. one has to shell out a boatload of money to get a camera nice enough to do that kind of stuff.
i've been trying to plan out my finances for the next year as well. just to know what i'm up against. it is time to make some sort of effort to buckle down and get debt under control. i mainly just tried to do the math and figure out how much i can actually do in the coming year. i can still plausibly release 'dandelions' at least, which is a good thing because i really think it will be worth releasing. i also want to try and do a good job of promoting shows that we get this year. i'd like to try and not do too many of them. i do still want to play some shows this year, but the emphasis is definitely not going to be on quantity. i am hoping that the whistler will prove to be an open-minded place to play at this year. i'd like to play at the empty bottle again this year as well (if at all possible). if we could do those two things and manage to get a show at schuba's then i would be pretty happy with that. on the touring front the emphasis will have to be getting said tour to at least pay for itself. not a big deal- just getting enough college shows to pick up the tab- pay for the rental car, gas and ideally hotel rooms when we need them. what i learned last year is that if you're doing a really long cross-country drive and don't have time or logistical ability to stay with friends along the way then you need to be able to pay for a hotel room because you have to get a decent night's sleep. even if you only have a handful of hours to get then you at least need to make it count.
another thing i've learned just now- the telescopes are a criminally underrated band. criminally. exeunt.
my day of recording yesterday was a touch disfunctional and non-productive. i spent a good chunk of time trying to get as much recording finished for 'all hope is blind' (as in the song) only to figure out that the loop wasn't working at all. i'd even bothered to record the piano in the rehearsal room at the other building, finished the loop, loaded it into the sampler, played along with it on the 6-string bass, sang a scratch vocal, recorded some reference drums only to listen to it at the end and hear what a horrible, awful mess the whole thing was. the loop just isn't reliable enough for a group of people to play along to. it slowed down in the middle just for a second and it has a few open spaces that just make it difficult for everyone to stay on the same page, so basically i came up with an entirely new way to play it that should yield similar results and make it easy to play live. i think it'll be better. it's going to be good dammit! i was going to cut down the lyrics, but i don't think that that'll be necessary. it's about seven and a half minutes long. so the record will close with a few classic shalloboi epics. what the fucked-up version did yield is a nice roadmap for the ending of the song. i did an improv 6-string bass distorted solo at the end and it turned out really nicely indeed- solved several sound problems with the 6-string bass that have plagued past recordings.
'all hope is blind' is an odd song that's existed as an idea for a song for at least 10 years at this point. i think an old version of it exists somewhere in my mountain of old 4-track tapes that turned out fairly well. the motif kind of underwent a makeover while i was working at starbuck's (i believe that that might be when i recorded the piano part for the original loop). tiny strands have always been coming together around it seperately- i tried to round them all up a few weeks ago and it's been quite the to-do. i had to comb through all of my old pocket notebooks to round all of the loose threads together- a string melody on one page, a 6-string bass motif on another, and then i couldn't find the notebook with the lyrics for the old version. i ended up scrawling what i could remember in my last notebook one day at work when it was really slow fairly recently. i didn't remember much- maybe the first four or five lines. from there i got some new ideas and one day (another really slow day at work) i wrote free-association and ended up with an entirely new set of lyrics and something that *might* work as a hook (i don't really know anything about hooks- but it seems like it could be something for people to grab onto- who knows). then a few weeks or so ago i finished the old loop very quickly, loaded it onto the sampler and tried to played along to it with what i had, trying to get a decent arrangement. what i ended up with was what i'm keeping, but the old loop was so slow that it rendered the song completely plodding. it was over nine minutes long and the gaps between lyrics and melodies were just gigantic- which i sometimes like. i was able to drum along with the loop very easily, but everything else i had to strain to play slow enough to not get ahead of the loop. a big problem. plus we have enough plodding nine-minute plus songs and i felt like it needed to be at least a bit faster, so that's when i started the new loop that i finished yesterday. it picked the speed up enough to make it two minutes shorter (which is fine) and once the strings are added i think it'll have a nice balance of everything while still leaving some space for everything. also it's become something that we will probably have to do live now, so once stefanie learns it and starts playing it she'll probably speed it up a bit. we've been getting all keyed up at our shows lately and playing pretty fast (at least for us). it's kind of nice to not be tied to the tempos of those loops. we've also been learning the new songs as they've been coming. the newest song i've written was called 'falling stars' and i thought it would fit in on the 'chinese blue' album, but as i was recording it i realised that it might work for the 'all hope is blind' album. i had a guitar melody that i turned into a violin melody and fleshed the other string parts around that. then i tried it a few different ways with different guitar tones and then tried one that involved the reverse reverb and this giant swirling delay setting that i used to use all the time and that ended up being used for a song called 'paper doves' so i recorded both of those. stefanie and i have practised playing the two new songs at our last practise and they sounded really nice even without the strings. kind of like our old stuff but no distortion. nice. we're going to be putting the album together with songs that have already been started (and many of them nearly finished) that don't have drums and are more gauzy and dreamy than other things we've done in the past. it's going to be quite a record. i'm pretty excited. i'd wanted to have 12 songs on it, and i'd thought that i would be able to succeed at this because a lot of the songs were coming out really short and i figured i'd be able to fit all 12 on an lp, but it's getting trimmed back to 10 i think max because even with all of the short songs a few songs have stretched out enough to make it seem most plausible to fit 10 songs on the lp. if it was really important to me that all of the songs be short then i could edit down the stretched out songs, but i have difficulty condensing something that feels best the way that it is. why fuck with it?
my god, i've rambled and rambled as always.
i had a bit of a sobering moment yesterday. i went through my day planner and tried to approximate the amount of money i would be able to save at a rate of $60 a week (skipping one week every month). i then tried to do some addition and subtraction based on the cost of everything i would want to get accomplished this year. it's quite a lot, but basically as long as we don't go down to sxsw this year then we should be able to get it accomplished. basically not everything can be accomplished without some extra financial help (of course). i've looked into a few studies for some extra money. i even found an editorial internship that looked pretty nice that i don't think that i quite qualify for, but would like to give a shot anyway.
we're housesitting for jay and diana for a few nights coming up soon. i think they're leaving town on sunday morning and coming back into town on wednesday i believe. so that's three nights. this will mainly be a pro-bono thing since they watched our cats while we were out of town. we'll get to have a car for a few days. that'll be fun. i kind of enjoy that bit. pita inn. woohoo! i'll probably try and do some fun with photo shop- the warlocks were soliciting for artwork for a new album (!) recently and i did get an idea for something but photoshop would kind of be a necessity- and that's only if it actually works. what annoys me about these tiny digital cameras is that they don't take large enough pictures to make adequate tifs. one has to shell out a boatload of money to get a camera nice enough to do that kind of stuff.
i've been trying to plan out my finances for the next year as well. just to know what i'm up against. it is time to make some sort of effort to buckle down and get debt under control. i mainly just tried to do the math and figure out how much i can actually do in the coming year. i can still plausibly release 'dandelions' at least, which is a good thing because i really think it will be worth releasing. i also want to try and do a good job of promoting shows that we get this year. i'd like to try and not do too many of them. i do still want to play some shows this year, but the emphasis is definitely not going to be on quantity. i am hoping that the whistler will prove to be an open-minded place to play at this year. i'd like to play at the empty bottle again this year as well (if at all possible). if we could do those two things and manage to get a show at schuba's then i would be pretty happy with that. on the touring front the emphasis will have to be getting said tour to at least pay for itself. not a big deal- just getting enough college shows to pick up the tab- pay for the rental car, gas and ideally hotel rooms when we need them. what i learned last year is that if you're doing a really long cross-country drive and don't have time or logistical ability to stay with friends along the way then you need to be able to pay for a hotel room because you have to get a decent night's sleep. even if you only have a handful of hours to get then you at least need to make it count.
another thing i've learned just now- the telescopes are a criminally underrated band. criminally. exeunt.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
back into the line of fire
i had odd dreams last night. they started out very simple and got very complicated and weird at the end. after a difficult day at work stefanie and i turned a corner and we were suddenly in portland (which happens in a lot of my dreams- place gets very muddled and incidental) and we were partying in this strange house with these people that i don't think that we knew. i think i drank an entire bottle of jameson. the house was like a maze and i got a sense several times that we weren't supposed to be there because the housekeeper kept brandishing a gun on people who were wandering through the house trying to find the bathroom (which was, of course, very difficult). after the party i was leaving the house and it was backed up against the edge of the ocean and it was nighttime. i saw demonic-looking men with black wings pouring out of the ocean. i said something to the person i was with to that effect and they began to pour out in a giant plague. as they got closer to us they changed their form- normal looking humans and ostriches. i thought that it was just a deception to make us think that they weren't little winged demon men. they poured into the house and we decided to go in and try to hide. somehow we did and avoided all of the chaos and confusion and screaming. when we came out of hiding and looked out the window and we could tell they'd moved on because the beach was completely barren and we went up onto the roof of the house. i think that at that point we were supposed to be in philadelphia or something because on the roof we could see a massive city far across the water (which then lead me to believe it wasn't an ocean after all) that i suspected was new york and over on the other side was a beautiful skyline of a large city. i also heard some of the demon men grumbling 'how do these people ever sleep?' because there was too much light. nice dream.
i'm now trying to coordinate the two string players that i know in town (i guess i actually know about four) so that i can get some parts recorded quickly and at the same time- saving me some much-needed space on the teeny 8-track (which is actually a 7-track). i have to use the piano in the rehearsal space next door today. i am at the coffee shop. it is more sparsely populated than normal- i'm guessing because of the brutal cold today. the high today was supposed to be -2 i think. yipes. it wasn't as painful as i was prepared for when i left the house today. when i walk to the coffee shop i don't bother to layer up the full amount and i don't wear a hat either.
no particularly unpleasant interactions at work this week. it is now my job, however, to take the train to the rockwell store and pick up muffins on saturday mornings. shit. that kind of sucks. i don't know how much longer that's going to take, but it's still a bummer no matter how you cut it. i also am not sure of any of the specifics or even if i'm supposed to do it on this upcoming saturday. as at any place with people communication is always an issue. will is very monday to friday oriented and doesn't usually think of those of us who work on the weekends. it's a nearly weekly occurrence that i arrive at work on saturday to see some new apparatus or something that i'm not familiar with at all that has materialized mysteriously between wednesday and friday. apparently a lot gets done in those two days. so this is what you call a damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you-don't situation. if i don't go pick up the muffins on saturday then i might get into trouble during the week and i'll never receive any kind of explicit instructions on where to go and what to do to get these muffins and if i do then it's a self-motivated act of responsibility. those acts of responsibility are bad there- they have caused me nothing but grief and they worry me. i don't want to be too responsible at that job. it's like putting yourself on an island. or an isolation chamber. not fun. i think that will is actually going to hire someone new. i hope it's a girl. i realised the other day that it's all guys at this point. even if it's the bohemian persuasion of male i am still not that wild about being stuck with all men. jenee is still around, but she is the sole female. there needs to be more of a balance. i've heard some people at work tell me that the more women you have the more drama, but i don't believe that this is so. you get drama with all males too- it's just an annoying repressed pathetic non-communicative passive/aggressive bullshit kind of drama that tends to drive me crazy. i just don't like it. it's my own personal hell. i like a good balance. that's ideal. but given the choice between all-male workplace and all-female workplace i'm going with all-female. it frees me from involvement in a lot of drama and i'm privy to some conversation that is much more interesting than in an all-male setting.
i'm pretty pumped for a new neko case album. it's a bit overdue. i hope that that means that she's going to play in town soon. considering the fact that she's based in chicago she hardly ever plays here. naturally i missed the last time. grrrrr.
what else am i looking forward to?
i'm trying to get on an unofficial show for sxsw. i emailed that todd p guy. i'm really not holding out hardly any hope that we actually are going to get to go down there. it seems like quite the longshot at this point. thus, i'm pursuing something like that in a way that i can best describe as half-hearted.
no one will return my show-requesting emails. oh god, i would love to never have to email another booking person ever ever again. no more, god, no more.
we are going to logan square on sunday so that we can go to new wave coffee at last and to the whistler to try and get another place to play at. it'd be nice to not have to deal with any of the 'traditional' venues for a while. the whistler sounds promising on that front. i'm beginning to ponder the possibility of playing some open mic nights for god's sake. that's how sick of that shit i am. plus i'm not real sure how to get a following amassed for the band. i have a few promotional ideas, but they all revolve around shows of some kind. i would like to get another show at the empty bottle. i'll start bothering them again after the strings show is over. i am even thinking of trying to do a bit of a mini-tour of a few places in the midwest in the summer or something mainly so that we can play shows in kansas city, st. louis, and possibly bloomington or ft. wayne or some place like that. that way when we tour in september we can just do a week and be happy with that. ideally anyway. that would be nice since in november we are supposed to go on some kind of trip for stefanie's 30th birthday. i am pretty much saving my change for that one. i figure that might be the only way i'm going to be able to save much of any kind of money for it. i've been saving all of my change for a really long time. so far. the peanut butter jar is about a 1/4 full. the last time i counted there was $17 in it or so and that was quite a while ago (at least a few months). people at my job are going to want to kill me, but i guess really that i don't care. i only missed a few days of work to go home for christmas so i figure it should be a bit more of a non-issue. ironically leaving on christmas eve was something that really worked in our favor.
i got ahold of both of the my bloody valentine remasters. yup, they leaked. yup, i downloaded them. nope, i don't plan on buying either one officially. it is possible that i will buy the remastered 'loveless' vinyl. really i haven't noticed that much of a difference- at least not enough of one warrant buying them on cd. cds are so disposable at this point. now, if they'd come out back in june when they were supposed to then i would've paid for them in a heartbeat. if you check the amazon.co.uk pages for them the release date keeps getting changed. currently it's january 29th or something. what's more there is no american release date at all. having to order it on import (which actually wouldn't be a bad deal at all), massive delays, the fact that they are remasters of albums i already own on multiple formats= i download it when it leaks and don't buy it when it finally fucking comes out. i know that record company spooks go through this blog- i've seen the evidence. so there's your lesson you greedy little fat-cats- that one was free AND legal- see the two can go together.
speaking of which i love that nina nastasia bootleg that i downloaded and tried to link to discreetly through here (it's now disappeared- bummer) there is but one complaint i have. no 'stormy weather.' i thought that it just wasn't played at the show, but then i found a youtube video of her playing it at the roundhouse. why wasn't it on the bootleg? that's one of my very favourite of ms. nastasia's songs. it's probably her best one. if anyone wanted me to play them one song of hers that would best represent her i would play that one. bummah. mondo mondo bummah! what does i do???? i guess i could download that youtube video through one of those sites that lets you do that, but it's missing the intro. next entry will be a tv-night type of entry. i have about 30 more minutes here. i am also listening to 'dogs' so it might be an until-'dogs'-is-over kind of timeframe.
i just listened to 'furnace room lullaby' by ms. case. that record is one that i never thought as much of as 'blacklisted' or 'fox confessor...' but that one is slowly getting into my marrow. every time i listen to it i like more and more of it. even 'thrice all american' i am starting to like which i really used to not like at all. it might be about time for me to buy 'the virginian.' did you hear that industry spooks- i do still buy music! HA! HAH!
i would like to pat my back on a somewhat well-constructed entry. the lucid and somewhat interesting stuff is all at the front of the entry and in a condensed (well, somewhat) form while the self-indulgent and boring/incoherent rambling crappola is all pushed to the end of the entry.
one of the things i'm happiest about from christmas time is the fact that i got to meet that crazy dog (or crazy doggg) henry. see the entry marked 'henry yr a star.' i'm glad i have a photo of him. nice. somehow i have a decent number of photos of dogs even though i've never owned one- i have a few of seth, one of hank, henry and then stefanie has tons of her old dog simone. i almost cried at the end of 'marley & me' for pete's sake.
i still toy with the idea of writing a book every now and again. i don't really know why- it seems like it'd be neither here-nor-there at this point. i am a terrible liar. the best stories i've written have been ones that are taken wholesale from real events. the further i stray from the truth the more unrealistic it becomes. a long time ago i was writing a book where i was trying to use that to my advantage- the narrator was unreliable and the whole thing was supposed to completely unravel at the end and all of his lies were supposed to crumble around him at the end of the book and the reader was supposed to realise how full of shit he was. i tried to start up a parallel storyline that was supposed to be the real half of it, but it backfired bigtime and the 'real' storyline came out so ridiculously that i got to the point where i ran into a wall at about 70 mph and it ended up killing the whole thing. oh how it killed the whole thing. argh.
i should probably call my fambly. it's been over two weeks since i went home to visit.
i'm now trying to coordinate the two string players that i know in town (i guess i actually know about four) so that i can get some parts recorded quickly and at the same time- saving me some much-needed space on the teeny 8-track (which is actually a 7-track). i have to use the piano in the rehearsal space next door today. i am at the coffee shop. it is more sparsely populated than normal- i'm guessing because of the brutal cold today. the high today was supposed to be -2 i think. yipes. it wasn't as painful as i was prepared for when i left the house today. when i walk to the coffee shop i don't bother to layer up the full amount and i don't wear a hat either.
no particularly unpleasant interactions at work this week. it is now my job, however, to take the train to the rockwell store and pick up muffins on saturday mornings. shit. that kind of sucks. i don't know how much longer that's going to take, but it's still a bummer no matter how you cut it. i also am not sure of any of the specifics or even if i'm supposed to do it on this upcoming saturday. as at any place with people communication is always an issue. will is very monday to friday oriented and doesn't usually think of those of us who work on the weekends. it's a nearly weekly occurrence that i arrive at work on saturday to see some new apparatus or something that i'm not familiar with at all that has materialized mysteriously between wednesday and friday. apparently a lot gets done in those two days. so this is what you call a damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you-don't situation. if i don't go pick up the muffins on saturday then i might get into trouble during the week and i'll never receive any kind of explicit instructions on where to go and what to do to get these muffins and if i do then it's a self-motivated act of responsibility. those acts of responsibility are bad there- they have caused me nothing but grief and they worry me. i don't want to be too responsible at that job. it's like putting yourself on an island. or an isolation chamber. not fun. i think that will is actually going to hire someone new. i hope it's a girl. i realised the other day that it's all guys at this point. even if it's the bohemian persuasion of male i am still not that wild about being stuck with all men. jenee is still around, but she is the sole female. there needs to be more of a balance. i've heard some people at work tell me that the more women you have the more drama, but i don't believe that this is so. you get drama with all males too- it's just an annoying repressed pathetic non-communicative passive/aggressive bullshit kind of drama that tends to drive me crazy. i just don't like it. it's my own personal hell. i like a good balance. that's ideal. but given the choice between all-male workplace and all-female workplace i'm going with all-female. it frees me from involvement in a lot of drama and i'm privy to some conversation that is much more interesting than in an all-male setting.
i'm pretty pumped for a new neko case album. it's a bit overdue. i hope that that means that she's going to play in town soon. considering the fact that she's based in chicago she hardly ever plays here. naturally i missed the last time. grrrrr.
what else am i looking forward to?
i'm trying to get on an unofficial show for sxsw. i emailed that todd p guy. i'm really not holding out hardly any hope that we actually are going to get to go down there. it seems like quite the longshot at this point. thus, i'm pursuing something like that in a way that i can best describe as half-hearted.
no one will return my show-requesting emails. oh god, i would love to never have to email another booking person ever ever again. no more, god, no more.
we are going to logan square on sunday so that we can go to new wave coffee at last and to the whistler to try and get another place to play at. it'd be nice to not have to deal with any of the 'traditional' venues for a while. the whistler sounds promising on that front. i'm beginning to ponder the possibility of playing some open mic nights for god's sake. that's how sick of that shit i am. plus i'm not real sure how to get a following amassed for the band. i have a few promotional ideas, but they all revolve around shows of some kind. i would like to get another show at the empty bottle. i'll start bothering them again after the strings show is over. i am even thinking of trying to do a bit of a mini-tour of a few places in the midwest in the summer or something mainly so that we can play shows in kansas city, st. louis, and possibly bloomington or ft. wayne or some place like that. that way when we tour in september we can just do a week and be happy with that. ideally anyway. that would be nice since in november we are supposed to go on some kind of trip for stefanie's 30th birthday. i am pretty much saving my change for that one. i figure that might be the only way i'm going to be able to save much of any kind of money for it. i've been saving all of my change for a really long time. so far. the peanut butter jar is about a 1/4 full. the last time i counted there was $17 in it or so and that was quite a while ago (at least a few months). people at my job are going to want to kill me, but i guess really that i don't care. i only missed a few days of work to go home for christmas so i figure it should be a bit more of a non-issue. ironically leaving on christmas eve was something that really worked in our favor.
i got ahold of both of the my bloody valentine remasters. yup, they leaked. yup, i downloaded them. nope, i don't plan on buying either one officially. it is possible that i will buy the remastered 'loveless' vinyl. really i haven't noticed that much of a difference- at least not enough of one warrant buying them on cd. cds are so disposable at this point. now, if they'd come out back in june when they were supposed to then i would've paid for them in a heartbeat. if you check the amazon.co.uk pages for them the release date keeps getting changed. currently it's january 29th or something. what's more there is no american release date at all. having to order it on import (which actually wouldn't be a bad deal at all), massive delays, the fact that they are remasters of albums i already own on multiple formats= i download it when it leaks and don't buy it when it finally fucking comes out. i know that record company spooks go through this blog- i've seen the evidence. so there's your lesson you greedy little fat-cats- that one was free AND legal- see the two can go together.
speaking of which i love that nina nastasia bootleg that i downloaded and tried to link to discreetly through here (it's now disappeared- bummer) there is but one complaint i have. no 'stormy weather.' i thought that it just wasn't played at the show, but then i found a youtube video of her playing it at the roundhouse. why wasn't it on the bootleg? that's one of my very favourite of ms. nastasia's songs. it's probably her best one. if anyone wanted me to play them one song of hers that would best represent her i would play that one. bummah. mondo mondo bummah! what does i do???? i guess i could download that youtube video through one of those sites that lets you do that, but it's missing the intro. next entry will be a tv-night type of entry. i have about 30 more minutes here. i am also listening to 'dogs' so it might be an until-'dogs'-is-over kind of timeframe.
i just listened to 'furnace room lullaby' by ms. case. that record is one that i never thought as much of as 'blacklisted' or 'fox confessor...' but that one is slowly getting into my marrow. every time i listen to it i like more and more of it. even 'thrice all american' i am starting to like which i really used to not like at all. it might be about time for me to buy 'the virginian.' did you hear that industry spooks- i do still buy music! HA! HAH!
i would like to pat my back on a somewhat well-constructed entry. the lucid and somewhat interesting stuff is all at the front of the entry and in a condensed (well, somewhat) form while the self-indulgent and boring/incoherent rambling crappola is all pushed to the end of the entry.
one of the things i'm happiest about from christmas time is the fact that i got to meet that crazy dog (or crazy doggg) henry. see the entry marked 'henry yr a star.' i'm glad i have a photo of him. nice. somehow i have a decent number of photos of dogs even though i've never owned one- i have a few of seth, one of hank, henry and then stefanie has tons of her old dog simone. i almost cried at the end of 'marley & me' for pete's sake.
i still toy with the idea of writing a book every now and again. i don't really know why- it seems like it'd be neither here-nor-there at this point. i am a terrible liar. the best stories i've written have been ones that are taken wholesale from real events. the further i stray from the truth the more unrealistic it becomes. a long time ago i was writing a book where i was trying to use that to my advantage- the narrator was unreliable and the whole thing was supposed to completely unravel at the end and all of his lies were supposed to crumble around him at the end of the book and the reader was supposed to realise how full of shit he was. i tried to start up a parallel storyline that was supposed to be the real half of it, but it backfired bigtime and the 'real' storyline came out so ridiculously that i got to the point where i ran into a wall at about 70 mph and it ended up killing the whole thing. oh how it killed the whole thing. argh.
i should probably call my fambly. it's been over two weeks since i went home to visit.
Monday, January 12, 2009
my bloody valentine- 2008.09.27- aragon ballroom take 2
i did some more work on this recording. after listening to it a bunch i decided to revisit the recording and see if i couldn't fix it up so it sounded a bit better and i did indeed get it to sound better than it did before. so i've reupped it to megaupload. and i'll repost the artwork as well. it's in flac and mp3- whichever's your pleasure.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=4GMROEZ0 (flacs)
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=YN5M4ISE (mp3s)
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=4GMROEZ0 (flacs)
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=YN5M4ISE (mp3s)
Friday, January 9, 2009
if i should
got some good stuff laid down yesterday. i ended up pulling my 6-string bass out from the very back of the closet yesterday. i did some regular 4-string bass as well. finished a loop, played along with it on the drums. ironically it's easier for me to play along to it on drums than it is to sing or play the 6-string bass stuff i made up for it. i'm thinking of speeding the loop up. it might not work though because that sp303 is kind of shitty about changing speed on loops. it hacks them up and they sound all... well, hacked up. not good. it was fun to kind of suss out some newer tones yesterday. that's something i really kind of enjoy and it's something i feel like i'm quite good at if nothing else at all. i noticed when we were on tour that i was able to get all of my sounds very quickly, even if they were pretty radically different. i'm sure no one else notices, but i am quite happy with it. i also overcame a rather sizable hurdle yesterday- i have always been trying to no avail to get the 6-string bass to sound more brutal when i turn the distortion on- something that i've never been able to get right. it's a problem i solved yesterday as well and it's pretty simple- i just ran it through the vox boost pedal that i have (it has a tiny tube in it) and that worked like a dream. the next time we go on tour i actually want to bring the bass amp and the 6-string bass and play those songs again. it's kind of something i really want to do- play those songs again. there are a few new ones, so that should give me the motivation to follow it through.
wow, i'm off to a rolling start here.
i wanted to go to that plastic crimewave sound show last night and the coin toss told me to do it, but i ended up staying home with stefanie. i've become such a homebody these days. i want to go to the tomorrow never knows festival next week to see department of eagles, alla and poison arrows (the guys in that band come in to beans and bagels all the time because two of them work for touch and go). i am beginning to think that i'd better buy myself some tickets so as to assure that i get off of my ass and get down to schuba's. it shouldn't be a problem because i seem to not have any problems getting off of my ass and going down there. it's not very far away or difficult to get to, so that tends to be a major factor. if it's going to take more than about 30 minutes then i tend to stay put. there've been many shows at the bottom lounge that i've passed on because it is a bit of a to-do to get down there. realistically it isn't that big of a deal, but i always tend to lose my gusto once stefanie comes home and we eat dinner and start watching a dvd. i guess i just really like being in my apartment. so there's my strategy right there- buy a ticket this week. i've been meaning to see alla for a really long time and have never bothered to actually get out and see them.
so there you have it.
right now i am listening to sigur ros- a former favourite of mine that i sort of turned off of for a period. 'takk' is a great record, but my heart will always belong to 'agaetis byrjun' and '( ).' i have a bootleg in my ipod of the show i saw them play at the civic opera house. that was a wonderful show. i went by myself because it cost about $50 and i'd missed them when they played at the chicago theater. i was working late a ceda that night and ended up walking down there to try and get in, but of course to no avail. bummer. i had gotten all cavalier about it and then when i was there trying to get in i was really bummed that i couldn't. but the show at the opera house was a beauty. i missed the beginning sadly. i can't remember why- i think it took me a bit longer than i expected to get downtown and get there on foot. i could hear them playing 'glosoli' as i was walking around up the tiers trying to find where i was supposed to go in. it was a really fantastic sounding show. the new stuff sounded really nice in that setting but it was whenever they'd play an old song that i'd get real emotionally involved. they played 'vidrar vel til loftarasa' too, which i'd never seen them do live, and i almost passed out about four times. no lie. i got very overcome and i had to fight myself not to cry. it stops about four times i believe and that was all that would save me. i was really happy they played that one because it's one of my favourites of theirs. my other favourite is 'svefn-g-englar' which they didn't play, but they played it the other two times i saw them so it's alright i think. all in all it was a very emotional night. i don't normally get like that at shows. i got pretty emotional at spiritualized a few times and at my bloody valentine once or twice. what really kind of renewed my sigur ros gusto was seeing 'heima'- highly recommended if you haven't seen it. amazing.
even given all of that jive they aren't one of my favourite bands anymore. i don't know why. i don't listen to them anywhere near as much as i used to. a strange thing because the first time we saw them was their second american tour. we came up to chicago to see them- the show was at the vic (which pretty much seems like small potatoes for them at this point). it was a wonderful trip as well- we had so much fun. i seem to even remember stefanie and i talking about how we'd forgotten how much we liked chicago. for some reason we were still hell-bent on moving to portland. we certainly did more and had more fun than we had ever had on any of our trips to portland. we also had tons more friends in chicago than in portland. oh, well... what can you do? o to be young and naive again. the other night i was entertaining moving somewhere and i couldn't really think of anywhere to move to that i truly and honestly would want to move to. even kansas city. the only way in hell i would ever consider moving back to kansas city is if they put the light rail in. i saw a system map of it and it looked quite nice. if i could live in kansas city and not have to drive everywhere it would be the shit. but then on second thought it'd probably be better to stay away. that seems to be how it retains its charm. i also noticed there isn't a single thing to do there late at night. it's very difficult to keep yourself entertained out there past 10:30 at night unless you want to go to a bar and get wasted. here you have a few decent dining options and there are a few other things that work well. i certainly am rarely lacking in decent shows to go to.
i guess that what i'm trying to say is that i'm enjoying living here.
stefanie is beginning to get burned out on working at lorna's laces. or i guess i should say that she's getting burned out on dealing with beth and amanda. that's really all that you can get burned out by at that place. the work certainly isn't very strenuous or irritating. the worst you can say about it is that it's boring and repetitive. i do love hearing people complain about repetitive work. if that's all you have to complain about then you've got it pretty good in my opinion. she even spent a good half hour to an hour sending out emails and beefing up her resume. bad news for them because she'll get something and probably pretty quickly. as is always the case with stefanie i always want to pat her employers on the back and be like 'good job, you fucked up big time. good luck finding someone half as competent.' she was an office manager for god's sake.
as far as i'm concerned i've always thought of myself as a good worker, but now i'm beginning to think that that isn't necessarily the case. i'm very lazy and i don't like to hold any kind of a job that's much in the way of exerting. i also have other things i'm always having to do so i haven't been able to acquire any kind of job that requires a full-on commitment. going out of town to go on tour isn't something most employers would allow. this next time should be hopefully not such a major biggie. no one at beans and bagels seems to care that much. at least no one's said anything (which i know doesn't necessarily mean that no one minds). i am looking forward to going out again. i'm chomping at the bit to do so in fact. we have a lot of travel on our plates for 2009. kind of scary. as always where is the money going to come from? i am kind of dreading getting the news if we actually get into sxsw. it would be a very good thing, but also kind of like getting a bill for about $500. we also don't hear until some time in february. i guess it's nothing to agonise over- the likelihood of us getting in is very very low indeed.
i am hoping to get some shows going in the next couple of months. i definitely want to get back to practising again. i have started to make a list of new and old songs to get to work on playing again. i would like to make an effort to play some of the old stuff again. i say that and then the new stuff just takes over. to the maximum.
i have some things to do today as usual. i got all of the running around out of the way yesterday. today is doing the dishes and changing the litter. fun stuff. i don't really understand how my days seem to be so packed. i don't understand how anyone manages to set aside enough time to loaf and watch tv etc. i guess that i do actually spend much more time working on music than i am necessarily aware of. i guess that this is a good thing. how could it not be? i am really happy with how the new record is beginning to come together. so far i've only hit one snag and it's that loop i was talking about earlier. i think that i might have to try and approach that song from a different angle or something. every record has a problem child. i'm not so sure that 'dandelions' had one necessarily. i don't think i had to do multiple versions of any of the songs- i think there are two 'sleep now...' versions maybe but one never got past the scratch vocal stage. i just sat down and sang and played the whole thing and it was too long and i tried it a different way and ended up liking it better and thus never bothered to do anything else with the other version. 'down to sleep' had several problem children. there are three versions of the title track alone. two were completely finished. there are two of 'don't go' and then all of the extra tracks that didn't make the cut mostly went through a few versions. ironic. the best songs usually go like a dream the first time. that's usually how i can tell i am on the right track if i'm doing another version of a song- if a version goes really smoothly where the other version(s) had hit a huge snag that was difficult to overcome at some point.
i'm really getting into the mode again here. i'm totally going to have some stuff to go over and get going when i get home. possibly. i guess it might be some string stuff that's coming to mind. over and out.
wow, i'm off to a rolling start here.
i wanted to go to that plastic crimewave sound show last night and the coin toss told me to do it, but i ended up staying home with stefanie. i've become such a homebody these days. i want to go to the tomorrow never knows festival next week to see department of eagles, alla and poison arrows (the guys in that band come in to beans and bagels all the time because two of them work for touch and go). i am beginning to think that i'd better buy myself some tickets so as to assure that i get off of my ass and get down to schuba's. it shouldn't be a problem because i seem to not have any problems getting off of my ass and going down there. it's not very far away or difficult to get to, so that tends to be a major factor. if it's going to take more than about 30 minutes then i tend to stay put. there've been many shows at the bottom lounge that i've passed on because it is a bit of a to-do to get down there. realistically it isn't that big of a deal, but i always tend to lose my gusto once stefanie comes home and we eat dinner and start watching a dvd. i guess i just really like being in my apartment. so there's my strategy right there- buy a ticket this week. i've been meaning to see alla for a really long time and have never bothered to actually get out and see them.
so there you have it.
right now i am listening to sigur ros- a former favourite of mine that i sort of turned off of for a period. 'takk' is a great record, but my heart will always belong to 'agaetis byrjun' and '( ).' i have a bootleg in my ipod of the show i saw them play at the civic opera house. that was a wonderful show. i went by myself because it cost about $50 and i'd missed them when they played at the chicago theater. i was working late a ceda that night and ended up walking down there to try and get in, but of course to no avail. bummer. i had gotten all cavalier about it and then when i was there trying to get in i was really bummed that i couldn't. but the show at the opera house was a beauty. i missed the beginning sadly. i can't remember why- i think it took me a bit longer than i expected to get downtown and get there on foot. i could hear them playing 'glosoli' as i was walking around up the tiers trying to find where i was supposed to go in. it was a really fantastic sounding show. the new stuff sounded really nice in that setting but it was whenever they'd play an old song that i'd get real emotionally involved. they played 'vidrar vel til loftarasa' too, which i'd never seen them do live, and i almost passed out about four times. no lie. i got very overcome and i had to fight myself not to cry. it stops about four times i believe and that was all that would save me. i was really happy they played that one because it's one of my favourites of theirs. my other favourite is 'svefn-g-englar' which they didn't play, but they played it the other two times i saw them so it's alright i think. all in all it was a very emotional night. i don't normally get like that at shows. i got pretty emotional at spiritualized a few times and at my bloody valentine once or twice. what really kind of renewed my sigur ros gusto was seeing 'heima'- highly recommended if you haven't seen it. amazing.
even given all of that jive they aren't one of my favourite bands anymore. i don't know why. i don't listen to them anywhere near as much as i used to. a strange thing because the first time we saw them was their second american tour. we came up to chicago to see them- the show was at the vic (which pretty much seems like small potatoes for them at this point). it was a wonderful trip as well- we had so much fun. i seem to even remember stefanie and i talking about how we'd forgotten how much we liked chicago. for some reason we were still hell-bent on moving to portland. we certainly did more and had more fun than we had ever had on any of our trips to portland. we also had tons more friends in chicago than in portland. oh, well... what can you do? o to be young and naive again. the other night i was entertaining moving somewhere and i couldn't really think of anywhere to move to that i truly and honestly would want to move to. even kansas city. the only way in hell i would ever consider moving back to kansas city is if they put the light rail in. i saw a system map of it and it looked quite nice. if i could live in kansas city and not have to drive everywhere it would be the shit. but then on second thought it'd probably be better to stay away. that seems to be how it retains its charm. i also noticed there isn't a single thing to do there late at night. it's very difficult to keep yourself entertained out there past 10:30 at night unless you want to go to a bar and get wasted. here you have a few decent dining options and there are a few other things that work well. i certainly am rarely lacking in decent shows to go to.
i guess that what i'm trying to say is that i'm enjoying living here.
stefanie is beginning to get burned out on working at lorna's laces. or i guess i should say that she's getting burned out on dealing with beth and amanda. that's really all that you can get burned out by at that place. the work certainly isn't very strenuous or irritating. the worst you can say about it is that it's boring and repetitive. i do love hearing people complain about repetitive work. if that's all you have to complain about then you've got it pretty good in my opinion. she even spent a good half hour to an hour sending out emails and beefing up her resume. bad news for them because she'll get something and probably pretty quickly. as is always the case with stefanie i always want to pat her employers on the back and be like 'good job, you fucked up big time. good luck finding someone half as competent.' she was an office manager for god's sake.
as far as i'm concerned i've always thought of myself as a good worker, but now i'm beginning to think that that isn't necessarily the case. i'm very lazy and i don't like to hold any kind of a job that's much in the way of exerting. i also have other things i'm always having to do so i haven't been able to acquire any kind of job that requires a full-on commitment. going out of town to go on tour isn't something most employers would allow. this next time should be hopefully not such a major biggie. no one at beans and bagels seems to care that much. at least no one's said anything (which i know doesn't necessarily mean that no one minds). i am looking forward to going out again. i'm chomping at the bit to do so in fact. we have a lot of travel on our plates for 2009. kind of scary. as always where is the money going to come from? i am kind of dreading getting the news if we actually get into sxsw. it would be a very good thing, but also kind of like getting a bill for about $500. we also don't hear until some time in february. i guess it's nothing to agonise over- the likelihood of us getting in is very very low indeed.
i am hoping to get some shows going in the next couple of months. i definitely want to get back to practising again. i have started to make a list of new and old songs to get to work on playing again. i would like to make an effort to play some of the old stuff again. i say that and then the new stuff just takes over. to the maximum.
i have some things to do today as usual. i got all of the running around out of the way yesterday. today is doing the dishes and changing the litter. fun stuff. i don't really understand how my days seem to be so packed. i don't understand how anyone manages to set aside enough time to loaf and watch tv etc. i guess that i do actually spend much more time working on music than i am necessarily aware of. i guess that this is a good thing. how could it not be? i am really happy with how the new record is beginning to come together. so far i've only hit one snag and it's that loop i was talking about earlier. i think that i might have to try and approach that song from a different angle or something. every record has a problem child. i'm not so sure that 'dandelions' had one necessarily. i don't think i had to do multiple versions of any of the songs- i think there are two 'sleep now...' versions maybe but one never got past the scratch vocal stage. i just sat down and sang and played the whole thing and it was too long and i tried it a different way and ended up liking it better and thus never bothered to do anything else with the other version. 'down to sleep' had several problem children. there are three versions of the title track alone. two were completely finished. there are two of 'don't go' and then all of the extra tracks that didn't make the cut mostly went through a few versions. ironic. the best songs usually go like a dream the first time. that's usually how i can tell i am on the right track if i'm doing another version of a song- if a version goes really smoothly where the other version(s) had hit a huge snag that was difficult to overcome at some point.
i'm really getting into the mode again here. i'm totally going to have some stuff to go over and get going when i get home. possibly. i guess it might be some string stuff that's coming to mind. over and out.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
the record bar 12.27.08
you can go to stream and download-
http://cllct.com/release/122708-therecordbar
you turn down
glasslands
petals in a rainstorm
voices in the air
the sun is so bright
sleep now
all tracks in a zip file
listen to the whole thing and then listen to a screaming hardcore band so you can re-create the transition and flow of this particular show. enjoy!
http://cllct.com/release/122708-therecordbar
you turn down
glasslands
petals in a rainstorm
voices in the air
the sun is so bright
sleep now
all tracks in a zip file
listen to the whole thing and then listen to a screaming hardcore band so you can re-create the transition and flow of this particular show. enjoy!
did you even try?
here i am at the coffee shop once again.
i have been rereading a few of the entries here and i must admit that i am pretty pleased with some of the things i've written here. i had pretty much thought that this page was a graveyard of incoherent rambling- something i'm really exceptional at, especially on the internet- but here not so much. not that it really matters- so few people follow this thing.
the recording from the record bar show is finished. i posted it on cllct and all of the sound files on our website as well. i'll post that stuff at the top once i'm done with this current dense chunk o stuff.
the newest hurdle in the ongoing drama of shalloboi- where am i going to get the 'dandelions' ep pressed? disk makers and cdman both offer only a minimum of 1000 bulk cds. the price is good, but fuck man- i don't need 1000 copies of it. 500 i can stomach sitting around unbought for ages and ages, but not 1000. i am beginning to wonder if i should just press the ep on vinyl. i've been having some problems with the hidden tracks anyway, so i figured i might as well look into pressing 500 or so and using the screen i have burned to make promo cds. i even checked superdigital and they do a minimum run on bulk cds with no artwork of 1000. i'm just not so sure what i should do with this stuff... i'm even considering not bothering with an official cd release. cds are so useless as it is these days. i know i only pop them into the computer once to rip the audio and put it on the ipod and then they tend to languish on the floor in piles by the computer. this is the whole point of switching to lp only releases. that and i think it will force me to shape up and make things a more bearable length. i also think that people will actually buy lps.
i am feeling a bit distracted right now- the people across from me are talking about some really heavy stuff. i suspect that it's a man and his lawyer going through divorce papers. the man does not seem happy at all. i haven't really been eavesdropping- i'm listening to music on my ipod.
some recording- i just did some guitar tracks on monday night. back to the old way- i asked stefanie if she would rather play along with guide guitar tracks or those drum presets in the keyboard. she said she liked the guitars better to play along with. this is probably not much of a surprise and probably will sound a bit more organic since the guitar tracks for these songs required the real dense treatment- it's the two amps facing each other, excessive volume and five microphones placed. not very conducive to live recording. not even enough mics left over to mic the drums properly. plus a nightmare in terms of bleed. so it ended up taking me an excessively long time to get these two parts recorded- a while to get everything set up and then it took me a few takes to play the whole thing through without something going wrong- mostly forgetting to step on the switch for boost at the right time, a problem with the sound, a few careless errors, some sloppy playing. once i finally got them both finished i listened to the playback and they just sounded dreadful and i couldn't figure out why for a spell until i happened to notice that i hadn't plugged the guitar chord into the second amp. dep. i had been playing and wondering why it wasn't as loud as normal- normally things shake and quake- i can feel the force on my chest. then i had to do them a few more times to get it down, but then i got them both and they sounded pretty nice. i'm not sure what to do today- i would like to get some work done, but i also have a nice helping of errands to run, so it might have to wait until tomorrow. i only have a few things i'm working on at the moment. what i can currently do is a touch limited. i am still holding out for a few more mics. unfortunately they are of the rather expensive variety.
i think i might have to ban yelp.com from our computer. something i do now is i tend to type in my favourite places in town and read the reviews and get very offended at the very negative ones. i really should probably ignore them because the negative ones are usually more telling of the people giving them. one thing i have picked up from the negative ones- don't order chinese food delivery. it never seems to work. pick up and take out seems fairly reliable. but not delivery- that seems to be something that doesn't quite work.
i only have four more months until i turn 30. i guess that my life isn't really what i thought it would be by the time i reached that age. when i say that i'd like to clarify that i don't mean that in a bad way at all. i think that i'm doing what i love and obviously i'd be much more unhappy if that weren't the case. there are costs of course- i'd say the bulk of the costs is the whole 'being ignored' thing. i feel like i'm putting it all out there and not getting much back and just hitting the requisite road-blocks. on tuesday i had to go to permanent records and pick up all of my consignment cds that i had there that hadn't moved. i think i sold one cd out of 10. i guess that means i'm a glass-half-empty person. it's not a bad thing though- at least i sold one. i am aware that my self-promotion skills are nil and given that it's a miracle that i even sell anything at all. what was kind of funny was that will was talking to a customer while i was cooking and somehow he'd told her that i was a musician and she was asking me 'what kind of a musician are you?' and i didn't answer immediately because i wasn't sure if she was talking to me. i'd also just picked up all of my stuff, so i said 'me?' and will was like 'of course, who else?' and i think i said 'i play a lot of slow, sad bastard stuff that no one buys.' i try to say those things in a joking way- but when you see it written out it does seem a bit negative. i dunno. i guess that what's going to happen is these next two releases are going to come out and then i'm going to be 30 and working at a coffee shop (which i discovered via yelp is a refuge of young and un-employable) for who knows how much longer and playing in a band that is garnering zero recognition or attention. i guess i'll worry about that more towards the end of the year. no sense in getting all worked up about it now. stefanie wants to take a trip for her birthday. somewhere where we don't know anyone at all- she doesn't even care where. my little change peanut butter jar is basically for that trip. i'm in a place right now where i'm having trouble picturing how i'm going to be able to save anymore money for such a thing, but i'm sure we'll get there. we always do. plus 2010 is going to be somewhat of a reflective year. a release-free year. i am going to stick to this assertion. i'm looking forward to going a full year without doing another release. i don't even know what i'm after anymore. i don't even think i want to be signed to a record label- ideally i'd like to just be able to keep control of how my music is released. it'd be nice to have someone else to handle all of the promotional mumbo-jumbo because i'm just not a fan of that stuff at all. it's just not something i'm terribly good at.
i have been rereading a few of the entries here and i must admit that i am pretty pleased with some of the things i've written here. i had pretty much thought that this page was a graveyard of incoherent rambling- something i'm really exceptional at, especially on the internet- but here not so much. not that it really matters- so few people follow this thing.
the recording from the record bar show is finished. i posted it on cllct and all of the sound files on our website as well. i'll post that stuff at the top once i'm done with this current dense chunk o stuff.
the newest hurdle in the ongoing drama of shalloboi- where am i going to get the 'dandelions' ep pressed? disk makers and cdman both offer only a minimum of 1000 bulk cds. the price is good, but fuck man- i don't need 1000 copies of it. 500 i can stomach sitting around unbought for ages and ages, but not 1000. i am beginning to wonder if i should just press the ep on vinyl. i've been having some problems with the hidden tracks anyway, so i figured i might as well look into pressing 500 or so and using the screen i have burned to make promo cds. i even checked superdigital and they do a minimum run on bulk cds with no artwork of 1000. i'm just not so sure what i should do with this stuff... i'm even considering not bothering with an official cd release. cds are so useless as it is these days. i know i only pop them into the computer once to rip the audio and put it on the ipod and then they tend to languish on the floor in piles by the computer. this is the whole point of switching to lp only releases. that and i think it will force me to shape up and make things a more bearable length. i also think that people will actually buy lps.
i am feeling a bit distracted right now- the people across from me are talking about some really heavy stuff. i suspect that it's a man and his lawyer going through divorce papers. the man does not seem happy at all. i haven't really been eavesdropping- i'm listening to music on my ipod.
some recording- i just did some guitar tracks on monday night. back to the old way- i asked stefanie if she would rather play along with guide guitar tracks or those drum presets in the keyboard. she said she liked the guitars better to play along with. this is probably not much of a surprise and probably will sound a bit more organic since the guitar tracks for these songs required the real dense treatment- it's the two amps facing each other, excessive volume and five microphones placed. not very conducive to live recording. not even enough mics left over to mic the drums properly. plus a nightmare in terms of bleed. so it ended up taking me an excessively long time to get these two parts recorded- a while to get everything set up and then it took me a few takes to play the whole thing through without something going wrong- mostly forgetting to step on the switch for boost at the right time, a problem with the sound, a few careless errors, some sloppy playing. once i finally got them both finished i listened to the playback and they just sounded dreadful and i couldn't figure out why for a spell until i happened to notice that i hadn't plugged the guitar chord into the second amp. dep. i had been playing and wondering why it wasn't as loud as normal- normally things shake and quake- i can feel the force on my chest. then i had to do them a few more times to get it down, but then i got them both and they sounded pretty nice. i'm not sure what to do today- i would like to get some work done, but i also have a nice helping of errands to run, so it might have to wait until tomorrow. i only have a few things i'm working on at the moment. what i can currently do is a touch limited. i am still holding out for a few more mics. unfortunately they are of the rather expensive variety.
i think i might have to ban yelp.com from our computer. something i do now is i tend to type in my favourite places in town and read the reviews and get very offended at the very negative ones. i really should probably ignore them because the negative ones are usually more telling of the people giving them. one thing i have picked up from the negative ones- don't order chinese food delivery. it never seems to work. pick up and take out seems fairly reliable. but not delivery- that seems to be something that doesn't quite work.
i only have four more months until i turn 30. i guess that my life isn't really what i thought it would be by the time i reached that age. when i say that i'd like to clarify that i don't mean that in a bad way at all. i think that i'm doing what i love and obviously i'd be much more unhappy if that weren't the case. there are costs of course- i'd say the bulk of the costs is the whole 'being ignored' thing. i feel like i'm putting it all out there and not getting much back and just hitting the requisite road-blocks. on tuesday i had to go to permanent records and pick up all of my consignment cds that i had there that hadn't moved. i think i sold one cd out of 10. i guess that means i'm a glass-half-empty person. it's not a bad thing though- at least i sold one. i am aware that my self-promotion skills are nil and given that it's a miracle that i even sell anything at all. what was kind of funny was that will was talking to a customer while i was cooking and somehow he'd told her that i was a musician and she was asking me 'what kind of a musician are you?' and i didn't answer immediately because i wasn't sure if she was talking to me. i'd also just picked up all of my stuff, so i said 'me?' and will was like 'of course, who else?' and i think i said 'i play a lot of slow, sad bastard stuff that no one buys.' i try to say those things in a joking way- but when you see it written out it does seem a bit negative. i dunno. i guess that what's going to happen is these next two releases are going to come out and then i'm going to be 30 and working at a coffee shop (which i discovered via yelp is a refuge of young and un-employable) for who knows how much longer and playing in a band that is garnering zero recognition or attention. i guess i'll worry about that more towards the end of the year. no sense in getting all worked up about it now. stefanie wants to take a trip for her birthday. somewhere where we don't know anyone at all- she doesn't even care where. my little change peanut butter jar is basically for that trip. i'm in a place right now where i'm having trouble picturing how i'm going to be able to save anymore money for such a thing, but i'm sure we'll get there. we always do. plus 2010 is going to be somewhat of a reflective year. a release-free year. i am going to stick to this assertion. i'm looking forward to going a full year without doing another release. i don't even know what i'm after anymore. i don't even think i want to be signed to a record label- ideally i'd like to just be able to keep control of how my music is released. it'd be nice to have someone else to handle all of the promotional mumbo-jumbo because i'm just not a fan of that stuff at all. it's just not something i'm terribly good at.
Friday, January 2, 2009
henry yr a star
this is henry- the awesomely obese dog that billy was watching over the break. this dog was so chunky that it couldn't make any of the typical dog noises. particularly nice is at the bottom when the dog climbed into my lap. billy's cats also beat up on the dog mercilessly. hooray for henry!
and then, of course, the images from the record bar show.
and then, of course, the images from the record bar show.
parachute me down
killing some time at the coffee shop waiting for some bidding on some tape. finally. i almost bought a microphone last night but a coin toss told me not to. i feel a bit better after my ranting and raving yesterday. i did wake up agitated this morning about some hotbed issue- probably gay marriage. this whole gay marriage ban is the incredibly disheartening flipside of this last incredibly encouraging election year. a warning to make sure not to have too much faith in humanity just yet- there are still plenty of ignorant jerks. my favourite thing about arguments that people use with me against gay marriage that whole 'preserving the sanctity of marriage' thing i am always surprised because i tend to get into discussions with people about who aren't married and who usually have no intention of getting married any time soon. most curious. plus there is the fact that i'm married and i'm all for gays being allowed the right to marry. fuck, just look at that last sentence and tell me how a gay marriage ban is NOT discriminatory. they. aren't. ALLOWED. to. marry.
i tested out the new harmonica mic yesterday- VERY happy with the results. i used it on a new songs that i demoed earmarking it for 'chinese blue' and it's turned out really nicely, but i'm going to give it another shot because it got a nice string arrangement one of those mornings when i had to open at work, so i'm going to give it the stripped-down with strings treatment as well and see which one i like better.
i have no idea what to do with myself today after i leave here. the internet is increasingly becoming less and less of a time-killer. youtube binges kept me up late last night, but even that's starting to dry up. occasionally i get caught in the wormhole, but it is becoming increasingly rare these days. i have been enjoying watching the new dvd sets. the nina nastasia bootleg i downloaded is nice as well click if you please. i haven't had a second to listen to any of the new cds that i got for christmas. i've only now gotten a chance to listen to the new sigur ros. i assume i obviously could've listened to it at some point when i was driving around in my mom's car.
i finally got ahold of the photos from the show at the record bar. they are pretty nice- thanks to grace's husband adam for those. nicely done indeed. the recording needs to go through a few alterations before i can post it but i burned it to cd yesterday. i just need to find something short to finish out the rest of the cd.
i just lost the ebay auction. i lost it to one of those fucking robots- there's someone who always seems to be bidding on any and all recording equipment that's around- i have lost about it's a name like this- x*****0- always just a letter, a bunch of asterisks and a number. there are different ones but i find it very difficult to believe that they are all different people, call me crazy. possibly different people with the same kind of hacked software that they use to outbid people on ebay. kinda sketchy if you ask me- but they didn't so there you go. if it is one person they have incredibly deep pockets. grrrrrr.
oh well. my only hope is that my christmas money holds out until i am able to use it on something recording related whether it is tape or more mics. i'm after two or three more. soooooo close.
my pay schedule is turning back in my favor for some reason- i don't really understand how that's possibly but it's happened. i get paid again on the 9th. woohoo! it's going to be a bit of a weeny paycheck, but that's ok. it's going to be more than half- which i can work with.
so there you have it- i think i'm about out of steam here. might be leaving soon after doing a few more things.
i tested out the new harmonica mic yesterday- VERY happy with the results. i used it on a new songs that i demoed earmarking it for 'chinese blue' and it's turned out really nicely, but i'm going to give it another shot because it got a nice string arrangement one of those mornings when i had to open at work, so i'm going to give it the stripped-down with strings treatment as well and see which one i like better.
i have no idea what to do with myself today after i leave here. the internet is increasingly becoming less and less of a time-killer. youtube binges kept me up late last night, but even that's starting to dry up. occasionally i get caught in the wormhole, but it is becoming increasingly rare these days. i have been enjoying watching the new dvd sets. the nina nastasia bootleg i downloaded is nice as well click if you please. i haven't had a second to listen to any of the new cds that i got for christmas. i've only now gotten a chance to listen to the new sigur ros. i assume i obviously could've listened to it at some point when i was driving around in my mom's car.
i finally got ahold of the photos from the show at the record bar. they are pretty nice- thanks to grace's husband adam for those. nicely done indeed. the recording needs to go through a few alterations before i can post it but i burned it to cd yesterday. i just need to find something short to finish out the rest of the cd.
i just lost the ebay auction. i lost it to one of those fucking robots- there's someone who always seems to be bidding on any and all recording equipment that's around- i have lost about it's a name like this- x*****0- always just a letter, a bunch of asterisks and a number. there are different ones but i find it very difficult to believe that they are all different people, call me crazy. possibly different people with the same kind of hacked software that they use to outbid people on ebay. kinda sketchy if you ask me- but they didn't so there you go. if it is one person they have incredibly deep pockets. grrrrrr.
oh well. my only hope is that my christmas money holds out until i am able to use it on something recording related whether it is tape or more mics. i'm after two or three more. soooooo close.
my pay schedule is turning back in my favor for some reason- i don't really understand how that's possibly but it's happened. i get paid again on the 9th. woohoo! it's going to be a bit of a weeny paycheck, but that's ok. it's going to be more than half- which i can work with.
so there you have it- i think i'm about out of steam here. might be leaving soon after doing a few more things.
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