Friday, August 29, 2008
all i wish is gone away...
yup, i'm back on the cure folks. listened to joy division this morning as well- 'unknown pleasures' because of the movie (of course). while i was hanging out in our apartment i watched more of 'show' as well. i watched the first 45 minutes right after we got our new tv just to see it on the big screen- it was very nice. the first 45 minutes of it is the best in my opinion- basically that's the set from 'open' to 'trust.' i do really love 'show' very much and for the love of heaven it confounds me and annoys me that it continues to not be released on dvd. of all of the cure live videos that exist the fact that it continues to go without a dvd reissue will always be beyond my comprehension. as far as live documents of them at their peak there is not an alternative to match it. 'in orange' is good too- but 'show' is the closest thing to them near 'disintegration' as there is in existence. plus i really love 'wish' (i'm listening to it right now, hence the quote) and i have come to think of it as a signpost in their career as nearly everything they've put out since 'wish' hasn't quite compared except for 'bloodflowers.' plus it's the last live record with boris williams who will go down in history as the cure's best drummer. period. i'll still watch the damned thing on vhs, but come on- they need to reissue it. '1991- the year punk broke' needs to be reissued on dvd as well for fuck's sake. i lost my vhs copy of it. it's in a golden box along with the old vhs copy of 'show' that i got for my 16th birthday and watched every day over the summer of 1995. there are all kinds of other goodies in that box- and it got lost during the move from kansas city to portland. the cdr with the original 'petals' pictures is in it as well. we had to use a really crappy printout that i had made in portland. our old printer put lines across coloured pictures like that and that's why it looks like that. the original photo was a crappy jpg.
yeah. not much to report today. we're going to hot doug's for lunch today. i had to clean out my little savings raft, but yesterday i discovered that stefanie has a savings raft as well, which i didn't expect. i basically did the finances up and made preparations intending to foot the bill entirely myself. occasionally she contributes monetarily. the last trip to new york we split 50/50 which was nice. this will be nice as well. so basically, i think that we will be prepared once it's time to leave. hopefully we will make enough money at the empty bottle show to pay for the igo car. if that happens then in my mind the show will be a raging success. we got a nice write-up in the onion that i am very happy with. i'd like to give the person that wrote it a gold star because they deserve one. the time out listing was classic lazy journalism- they even got the name of the record wrong. we even sent them a copy of it. somehow they thought it was called 'endless december.' i guess that the 'recordings' part of that sentence isn't important. i also guess that the 'shalloboi- down to sleep' on the spine wasn't enough to clue them in. it seems to have worked for everyone who's accepted it to sell on consignment.
i also have to pick up seth from lorna's after lunch because- get this- the new cleaning lady is afraid of dogs. so here's some more twisted beth logic- bring my intimidating and kind of cranky out of it great dane that likes to bark at everyone and sometimes bully them for no reason, including yours truly, but then when you get a new cleaning woman ask stefanie to remove a dog that is so mild-mannered it could pass for a cat out of the building for the cleaning woman who's afraid of dogs. what the fuck?! i mean, honestly- where is the logic in that? i guess my mistake was not going directly to my boss and saying 'could you please leave that dog at home- i'm afraid of dogs.' i'd been told that most of the time her response to that is 'oh, he's harmless.' i just don't get it i guess...
la-dee-da.
so now the rest of my afternoon will not be spent relaxing at home- i have to drive the dog back up to evanston and then get right back in the car to pick up stefanie. thanks cleaning lady who's afraid of a cat dog. i'm afraid of dogs and i have never once found seth even the slightest bit remotely threatening. i've heard him bark three times i think and never at a person. this is incredibly ridiculous and annoying to me as you can tell.
no word from the eaf people. just waiting on the okay for the strings show. the date i asked for is october 18th. if that doesn't work then i'm going to ask for the second weekend in november. i might look into some other spaces. i'm a bit reticent to ask at someplace that i've never been as i know that eaf has a decent enough p.a. system to pull off such an endeavor. i really hope it works out because i really can't think of anyplace else that would be suitable and i want the show to sound good. it is incredibly crucial and a half-assed p.a. is not going to do the trick. so here we come awesome strings show. the reader didn't make a blurb about the empty bottle show, so i'm looking at that as a kind of bonus, so hopefully i can get a decent listing about this strings show in there. that would be very nice. what will be even nicer is that we probably won't play another show unless we get some sxsw action of some kind in march- so we'd probably just play an acoustic show in kansas city and then not worry about anything until march if we're actually going down there and just play a warm-up show at someplace like ronny's or something like that.
yeah. not much to report today. we're going to hot doug's for lunch today. i had to clean out my little savings raft, but yesterday i discovered that stefanie has a savings raft as well, which i didn't expect. i basically did the finances up and made preparations intending to foot the bill entirely myself. occasionally she contributes monetarily. the last trip to new york we split 50/50 which was nice. this will be nice as well. so basically, i think that we will be prepared once it's time to leave. hopefully we will make enough money at the empty bottle show to pay for the igo car. if that happens then in my mind the show will be a raging success. we got a nice write-up in the onion that i am very happy with. i'd like to give the person that wrote it a gold star because they deserve one. the time out listing was classic lazy journalism- they even got the name of the record wrong. we even sent them a copy of it. somehow they thought it was called 'endless december.' i guess that the 'recordings' part of that sentence isn't important. i also guess that the 'shalloboi- down to sleep' on the spine wasn't enough to clue them in. it seems to have worked for everyone who's accepted it to sell on consignment.
i also have to pick up seth from lorna's after lunch because- get this- the new cleaning lady is afraid of dogs. so here's some more twisted beth logic- bring my intimidating and kind of cranky out of it great dane that likes to bark at everyone and sometimes bully them for no reason, including yours truly, but then when you get a new cleaning woman ask stefanie to remove a dog that is so mild-mannered it could pass for a cat out of the building for the cleaning woman who's afraid of dogs. what the fuck?! i mean, honestly- where is the logic in that? i guess my mistake was not going directly to my boss and saying 'could you please leave that dog at home- i'm afraid of dogs.' i'd been told that most of the time her response to that is 'oh, he's harmless.' i just don't get it i guess...
la-dee-da.
so now the rest of my afternoon will not be spent relaxing at home- i have to drive the dog back up to evanston and then get right back in the car to pick up stefanie. thanks cleaning lady who's afraid of a cat dog. i'm afraid of dogs and i have never once found seth even the slightest bit remotely threatening. i've heard him bark three times i think and never at a person. this is incredibly ridiculous and annoying to me as you can tell.
no word from the eaf people. just waiting on the okay for the strings show. the date i asked for is october 18th. if that doesn't work then i'm going to ask for the second weekend in november. i might look into some other spaces. i'm a bit reticent to ask at someplace that i've never been as i know that eaf has a decent enough p.a. system to pull off such an endeavor. i really hope it works out because i really can't think of anyplace else that would be suitable and i want the show to sound good. it is incredibly crucial and a half-assed p.a. is not going to do the trick. so here we come awesome strings show. the reader didn't make a blurb about the empty bottle show, so i'm looking at that as a kind of bonus, so hopefully i can get a decent listing about this strings show in there. that would be very nice. what will be even nicer is that we probably won't play another show unless we get some sxsw action of some kind in march- so we'd probably just play an acoustic show in kansas city and then not worry about anything until march if we're actually going down there and just play a warm-up show at someplace like ronny's or something like that.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
so much, so much...
it feels so nice to have a day off finally. things have been nice and crazy lately. i am forcing myself to do nothing today. well, i might make a new screen. some of the t-shirts came in the mail and i've messed up about eight of the black ones (basically all of the black ones that i had). i think i figured out what the problem is- the ink was drying too fast, so it wasn't sticking to the fabric- the prints were more and more faded. did i give up? no, of course not- i just ruined about $45 worth of t-shirts that i paid for with a credit card. it's been a bit of a disaster. i've been trying not to think too much about it. i went into it with some really unrealistic expectations- mainly because the first t-shirt i tried to silk-screen went perfectly pretty much, so i just figured all of them would. the first one i did is still the best of all of the ones i've attempted. basically i need to get started on the blue shirts and the screen for those hasn't been made just yet. if i don't do it today i would like to tomorrow and possibly try to start printing the other t-shirts. i really wish that i'd had enough crappy t-shirts to ruin before i started using the ones i needed. there might still be time to replace the ones i ruined before tour, but i'm beginning to think it wouldn't be such a good idea. i'm about to give up entirely on the idea i'm so disappointed in it.
we're also housesitting for jay and diana right now- and have been since last week. they will be back on wednesday afternoon i believe- we basically have to go straight from housesitting to our show at the empty bottle. i'm not too worried about it- we've played some good solid shows leading up to it and the empty bottle has a great sound system so that usually means we'll be fine. we also won't be rushed at all, so that can only help. i think we're shooting for around a 45 minute set bearing in mind that if we go over it won't be a big deal. it'll be very interesting to see how the whole thing turns out. i'm very curious to see what the turnout is like and how many people will stick around to hear us. since there are four bands the outlook isn't too good on that account in my mind. oh well, we'll just have to make the best of it.
two weeks from saturday the tour starts. yipes. i had no idea it was so close. it kind of snuck up on me. the finances are in a terrifying state. we were saving for a nice sized raft of funds, but as always pretty much everything which could go wrong has and every opportunity to fix this problem has been foiled. tips have been very lackluster. i think i have one last shot to rectify it, but i would be extremely surprised if it worked out. i'd be extremely surprised if the chase thing works out because i realised that i might have to do the training again and i don't think i can sanitize missing three more days of work at the coffee shop after missing 10 days just to go through the training again. i guess we'll just see...
to further push the financial troubles the store ended up being closed in the morning on tuesday. i only ended up missing out on about an hour-and-a-half of work. naturally the store is closed on labor day. it'll be nice to have a day off in the middle of my working week. i might try to put my pedal board together that day because that will save us so much time at the shows and then things will be less rushed and we won't forget to do important things, which we tend to do because we are always so rushed at shows.
before tour we are supposed to record with chris. i'm not 100% sure of what we'll be doing that day. 'sleep now...,' 'petals in a rainstorm' and 'no stars' are the most obvious and pressing ones. it crossed my mind to finish 'disappeared' at last, possibly even 'dried blooms in baby's breath' so that it doesn't have to be done later on, but who fucking knows... honestly...
i am just very tired right now and probably not making much sense. i have the car right now- had to go to the post office to pick up a package for stefanie. last saturday we spent all fucking day driving all over the fucking city- stefanie wanted to get her tattoo touched up and the guy who did the work lives over on grand and western, so after i was done with work i figured i'd head to our apartment and spend some time with our cats and feed them, but stefanie called me and wanted me to take the dog while she was getting her tattoo done which she insisted would take '30 minutes max.' well, it took an hour and a half and the car that we're driving around in has no a/c and the dog (he's a greyhound named seth) gets overheated very quickly if it's over 80 degrees. it was humid as fuck and over 90 all day on that saturday and i had to take him around for what ended up being an hour and a half. i was a little upset. this was after opening the store and working a full day. the pace has not really slowed down since that day. then after all of that we came to our apartment to practise. at least the weather got cooler. it's just been very difficult to relax and even more difficult to actually spend time with our cats. after i'm done here i need to head back to our apartment and spend some more time with them. then i have tomorrow off and then i have to go right back into the whole thing again. jay and diana's cats are used to being fed at 6am every morning, so they come into the bedroom and wake us up as early as 4am. as you can imagine all of this running around on practically no sleep is a little exhausting. it'd be a bit easier if we didn't have our own cats to take care of. but really, we like housesitting for them- their house is very nice, it's nice to have a car for a while, it's a refreshing change of pace to go stay out in evanston for a while and basically we really need the money. the payment for this is constituting about half of the money we will be taking on tour. basically i just tried to factor in the worst cost of gas and try to have the money on hand ahead of time so that if we happen to get paid decently at any of these shows (haw haw haw) then we have money to do fun things.
i think i'm going to wrap this shit up in a little bow then. love ya! see you tomorrow.
we're also housesitting for jay and diana right now- and have been since last week. they will be back on wednesday afternoon i believe- we basically have to go straight from housesitting to our show at the empty bottle. i'm not too worried about it- we've played some good solid shows leading up to it and the empty bottle has a great sound system so that usually means we'll be fine. we also won't be rushed at all, so that can only help. i think we're shooting for around a 45 minute set bearing in mind that if we go over it won't be a big deal. it'll be very interesting to see how the whole thing turns out. i'm very curious to see what the turnout is like and how many people will stick around to hear us. since there are four bands the outlook isn't too good on that account in my mind. oh well, we'll just have to make the best of it.
two weeks from saturday the tour starts. yipes. i had no idea it was so close. it kind of snuck up on me. the finances are in a terrifying state. we were saving for a nice sized raft of funds, but as always pretty much everything which could go wrong has and every opportunity to fix this problem has been foiled. tips have been very lackluster. i think i have one last shot to rectify it, but i would be extremely surprised if it worked out. i'd be extremely surprised if the chase thing works out because i realised that i might have to do the training again and i don't think i can sanitize missing three more days of work at the coffee shop after missing 10 days just to go through the training again. i guess we'll just see...
to further push the financial troubles the store ended up being closed in the morning on tuesday. i only ended up missing out on about an hour-and-a-half of work. naturally the store is closed on labor day. it'll be nice to have a day off in the middle of my working week. i might try to put my pedal board together that day because that will save us so much time at the shows and then things will be less rushed and we won't forget to do important things, which we tend to do because we are always so rushed at shows.
before tour we are supposed to record with chris. i'm not 100% sure of what we'll be doing that day. 'sleep now...,' 'petals in a rainstorm' and 'no stars' are the most obvious and pressing ones. it crossed my mind to finish 'disappeared' at last, possibly even 'dried blooms in baby's breath' so that it doesn't have to be done later on, but who fucking knows... honestly...
i am just very tired right now and probably not making much sense. i have the car right now- had to go to the post office to pick up a package for stefanie. last saturday we spent all fucking day driving all over the fucking city- stefanie wanted to get her tattoo touched up and the guy who did the work lives over on grand and western, so after i was done with work i figured i'd head to our apartment and spend some time with our cats and feed them, but stefanie called me and wanted me to take the dog while she was getting her tattoo done which she insisted would take '30 minutes max.' well, it took an hour and a half and the car that we're driving around in has no a/c and the dog (he's a greyhound named seth) gets overheated very quickly if it's over 80 degrees. it was humid as fuck and over 90 all day on that saturday and i had to take him around for what ended up being an hour and a half. i was a little upset. this was after opening the store and working a full day. the pace has not really slowed down since that day. then after all of that we came to our apartment to practise. at least the weather got cooler. it's just been very difficult to relax and even more difficult to actually spend time with our cats. after i'm done here i need to head back to our apartment and spend some more time with them. then i have tomorrow off and then i have to go right back into the whole thing again. jay and diana's cats are used to being fed at 6am every morning, so they come into the bedroom and wake us up as early as 4am. as you can imagine all of this running around on practically no sleep is a little exhausting. it'd be a bit easier if we didn't have our own cats to take care of. but really, we like housesitting for them- their house is very nice, it's nice to have a car for a while, it's a refreshing change of pace to go stay out in evanston for a while and basically we really need the money. the payment for this is constituting about half of the money we will be taking on tour. basically i just tried to factor in the worst cost of gas and try to have the money on hand ahead of time so that if we happen to get paid decently at any of these shows (haw haw haw) then we have money to do fun things.
i think i'm going to wrap this shit up in a little bow then. love ya! see you tomorrow.
Friday, August 22, 2008
dreaming is free
today is loafing day. i plan on doing absolutely nothing today. nothing. at. all.
maybe watch a few movies, maybe not. it's possible that i might make another guide track, but as it happens i might have to wait to arrange the song before i do so. i resurrected a song i wrote back in 1999 that i'm fairly happy with- reworked it for strings and i went through the lyrics and wrote them all down. they were surprisingly good, i have to admit- a lot better than i was expecting. that's often the case when i go back and read my old lyrics. sometimes they're better than lyrics that i write these days- at least less stuck in a rut. i will have to fix them somehow- not sure how that will be- they are probably a bit of a cure rip off. i will probably just shorten the song as i've been enjoying cutting my songs to bits for this particularly cycle. this song also has three verses- which i never do anymore because it takes too long for me to do two verses as it is.
i have caught some kind of weird cough. it's just a bit disconcerting in some ways because now whenever i catch a cough i worry that it's going to turn back into that cough that i couldn't get rid of for almost a year. when i think about it though that one is always the scariest. why i didn't immediately go to a doctor is beyond me at this point. this new cough has gone straight to my chest. delightful! i don't even think it was in my throat for an hour- all of a sudden i had this really bad chest cough. we have a bunch of cough syrup left over that seems to be helping. i was in a bit of pain by the time i went to bed, but today it seems to be less painful. i also took some emergen-c. i wish we had some colloidal silver because that shit would knock it right out of the water. i won't start worrying until it gets closer to the date of the show and it still hasn't cleared up. i think it should be alright, though.
bootlegs, bootlegs, bootlegs. i have three or so new ones to listen to. there's been a long dry spell, but man is it over.
fyi the students are definitely back. it's a good thing we won't be around much this weekend for the unpleasant surge in drop offs. we do have to practise on sunday. i pondered just moving all of our equipment up to evanston to practise at their house, but that seems a bit ridiculous to me. i suppose it would be more considerate to our neighbors, but then again...
we were interviewed for that 'what to wear during an orange alert' blog. that'll be up a few days after the empty bottle show. the guy asked me good questions- one was mainly a recording question. those seem to be the only kinds of questions that get me to talk. it was also done through email which worked out much much better. i am about a million times more articulate through the written word. whenever i try to think of the word 'articulate' in that context the word always eludes me- i find that incredibly funny.
recorded a nice guide track yesterday. best idea i've had in a while- it was for this keyboard sample thing that fades in and out and is completely arhythmic. i did the part (which will probably be used in the final mix) on the sampler and had a microphone plugged in that i counted through very steadily. i then sang a scratch vocal just to see how it worked. when you take the counting out it's just perfect and even better you can't hear the counting when it's turned down. the problem with doing such stark songs is that oftentimes if i use a rhythm guide like the keyboard drum machine thing, even when you have it turned down all the way or even if you record over it you can still hear it very faintly if you're listening on headphones. i remember listening to 'sloba' and still hearing the drum machine track just at the beginning before the real drums kick in. with the stark quietness of these tracks it's becoming important not to have to worry about that, and my idea seemed to work very well. yay. i'm always happy when something i try works out like that- a problem solving kind of thing. it makes me think that i actually might be good at what i do.
maybe watch a few movies, maybe not. it's possible that i might make another guide track, but as it happens i might have to wait to arrange the song before i do so. i resurrected a song i wrote back in 1999 that i'm fairly happy with- reworked it for strings and i went through the lyrics and wrote them all down. they were surprisingly good, i have to admit- a lot better than i was expecting. that's often the case when i go back and read my old lyrics. sometimes they're better than lyrics that i write these days- at least less stuck in a rut. i will have to fix them somehow- not sure how that will be- they are probably a bit of a cure rip off. i will probably just shorten the song as i've been enjoying cutting my songs to bits for this particularly cycle. this song also has three verses- which i never do anymore because it takes too long for me to do two verses as it is.
i have caught some kind of weird cough. it's just a bit disconcerting in some ways because now whenever i catch a cough i worry that it's going to turn back into that cough that i couldn't get rid of for almost a year. when i think about it though that one is always the scariest. why i didn't immediately go to a doctor is beyond me at this point. this new cough has gone straight to my chest. delightful! i don't even think it was in my throat for an hour- all of a sudden i had this really bad chest cough. we have a bunch of cough syrup left over that seems to be helping. i was in a bit of pain by the time i went to bed, but today it seems to be less painful. i also took some emergen-c. i wish we had some colloidal silver because that shit would knock it right out of the water. i won't start worrying until it gets closer to the date of the show and it still hasn't cleared up. i think it should be alright, though.
bootlegs, bootlegs, bootlegs. i have three or so new ones to listen to. there's been a long dry spell, but man is it over.
fyi the students are definitely back. it's a good thing we won't be around much this weekend for the unpleasant surge in drop offs. we do have to practise on sunday. i pondered just moving all of our equipment up to evanston to practise at their house, but that seems a bit ridiculous to me. i suppose it would be more considerate to our neighbors, but then again...
we were interviewed for that 'what to wear during an orange alert' blog. that'll be up a few days after the empty bottle show. the guy asked me good questions- one was mainly a recording question. those seem to be the only kinds of questions that get me to talk. it was also done through email which worked out much much better. i am about a million times more articulate through the written word. whenever i try to think of the word 'articulate' in that context the word always eludes me- i find that incredibly funny.
recorded a nice guide track yesterday. best idea i've had in a while- it was for this keyboard sample thing that fades in and out and is completely arhythmic. i did the part (which will probably be used in the final mix) on the sampler and had a microphone plugged in that i counted through very steadily. i then sang a scratch vocal just to see how it worked. when you take the counting out it's just perfect and even better you can't hear the counting when it's turned down. the problem with doing such stark songs is that oftentimes if i use a rhythm guide like the keyboard drum machine thing, even when you have it turned down all the way or even if you record over it you can still hear it very faintly if you're listening on headphones. i remember listening to 'sloba' and still hearing the drum machine track just at the beginning before the real drums kick in. with the stark quietness of these tracks it's becoming important not to have to worry about that, and my idea seemed to work very well. yay. i'm always happy when something i try works out like that- a problem solving kind of thing. it makes me think that i actually might be good at what i do.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
just because
the students are coming... the students are coming...
the more independent ones are already here. the ones who get apartments and live on their own, the returning ones, etc. but i'm not talking about them- i'm talking about the new ones. i saw someone giving a tour to a bunch of fresh-faced kids. they're coming. station wagons and minivans here we come. moronic suburban parents see you soon. probably this week i'd guess.
we are getting an astronomical number of hits on our website these days. well, for us anyway- usually it's just a random handful of people who look at a few things.
i have practically nothing to do today. i was up until 3am last night writing sheet music out. i made a list of all of the stuff that needs to be recorded and played live (hopefully) and since it was so daunting i just got started. i am having trouble finding my cheat sheet for alto clef that brandon gave me. it basically just told me what the lowest note on a viola is and the highest and where they are written out in the sheet music. that's all the info i need to be able to figure out how to do the rest myself. so far i've written out the sheet music that i need chris to record, done two arrangements for 'to the sky' that i want to do at one or both of the shows with strings (dependent on which ones actually work out) and then a handful of other things. if i'm feeling really industrious today i should get some scratch tracks recorded. i worked out an arrangement for 'windsong' that kind of surprised me. that's actually what took me so long to get my ass into bed- i was sitting working it out on the guitar before i went to bed. it's really simple harmonically but somehow quite odd and totally fitting for the song. kind of nice because i was really sweating it over what to do for that song and what i came up with is way beyond my expectations, which is rare. i really love writing string parts so much- it's so fascinating how to get everything to work together and even better to get it to work together and really bring out some unexpected results. i'm quite excited to get to work on the strings for the next record. very excited. i think that they're going to be quite nice and such a good time to do something that's really involved with strings because the songs are so stark and open- they will be the perfect vehicle for emphasizing that element.
i'm getting a bit nervous because the reception to 'down to sleep' is starting to go so well that i'm worried that we're going to blow it with the next two releases that we're already working on. i know that it's kind of pointless to get worried about, but nonetheless i think that'd really be a shame for us to blow something good right when it started happening. nevertheless i am going to stick to what i'm working on. if i think that it's good and worth doing then i feel like the rest will take care of itself.
in other ground-breaking news- we have already booked our christmas flights to kansas city. we managed to get a thoroughly decent deal that i am quite happy with. it does kind of suck that we'll be flying in on christmas eve again, but it made quite a sizable difference in the cost. almost $120 for the both of us. we will fly home on christmas eve and fly back on dec. 29th. i think that it might be nicer because we'll be able to relax a bit after the christmas craziness and there's less lead up to it. i'm going to try and plan on playing a show possibly the night before we leave and i'd really only like to do a day's worth of practise with the string players (or just billy as the case may be). if it doesn't work out it's definitely not the end of the world- especially if the show we're planning here works out. i would like to be very careful not to make it a stressful thing. short set- 45 minutes max. relaxed place with decent sound would be nice, or even something with no p.a. would probably work.
for some reason i don't really have much more to say at this point. i'm trying to scrimp quite a bit. unfortunately tips have gone way down lately- they are just nowhere near as good as they used to be. i guess that that's just the joy of being in a recession. la-dee-dah. liz got a massage job, so she's kind of gone now, which is weird. it's good in the sense that it's much easier and fun to be at work without someone that abrasive and negative. it's bad in the sense that she worked tons of shifts and now they are all open and who knows what's going to happen now. there were only three of us on wednesday and it was quite a to-do to get everything done. we had a busy lunch as well. two people cooking and then just me on the register and making drinks. it was tough to juggle the two. i think i did a good job, but i think that my boss thinks that if i'm not running around like a chicken with its head cut off and harried to no end that i'm not really doing anything fast enough. i just try to keep a cool head during times like that. things i can do quickly i do quickly, but most times i just try to multi-task in an efficient way.
going back to chase looms before me. it's on my mind a lot. i'm going to have to get some days off. i don't know why i'm worried about something like that- it's never been a problem there at all. i really shouldn't be dreading it- it's not a terribly difficult job. hopefully they've worked the kinks out of the problems that they had last time and things will be more laid-back. i'm also not sure what they'd have me doing- it definitely won't be the same things as i was doing last time- that stuff was kind of a special case. i also have to get some kind of a walkman and start listening to tapes again because they don't allow mp3 players there anymore. hee hee- listening to tapes again- it makes me laugh. so ridiculous. i think i'd most like to do more data entry type stuff, although i'm sure that they won't need anyone to do that kind of stuff. it'd be nice if i could just go back and do what i was doing before because i didn't really mind it- it was kind of fun actually.
i obviously have spent a long time not saying much of anything in particular, so i think i'm going to end this here.
the more independent ones are already here. the ones who get apartments and live on their own, the returning ones, etc. but i'm not talking about them- i'm talking about the new ones. i saw someone giving a tour to a bunch of fresh-faced kids. they're coming. station wagons and minivans here we come. moronic suburban parents see you soon. probably this week i'd guess.
we are getting an astronomical number of hits on our website these days. well, for us anyway- usually it's just a random handful of people who look at a few things.
i have practically nothing to do today. i was up until 3am last night writing sheet music out. i made a list of all of the stuff that needs to be recorded and played live (hopefully) and since it was so daunting i just got started. i am having trouble finding my cheat sheet for alto clef that brandon gave me. it basically just told me what the lowest note on a viola is and the highest and where they are written out in the sheet music. that's all the info i need to be able to figure out how to do the rest myself. so far i've written out the sheet music that i need chris to record, done two arrangements for 'to the sky' that i want to do at one or both of the shows with strings (dependent on which ones actually work out) and then a handful of other things. if i'm feeling really industrious today i should get some scratch tracks recorded. i worked out an arrangement for 'windsong' that kind of surprised me. that's actually what took me so long to get my ass into bed- i was sitting working it out on the guitar before i went to bed. it's really simple harmonically but somehow quite odd and totally fitting for the song. kind of nice because i was really sweating it over what to do for that song and what i came up with is way beyond my expectations, which is rare. i really love writing string parts so much- it's so fascinating how to get everything to work together and even better to get it to work together and really bring out some unexpected results. i'm quite excited to get to work on the strings for the next record. very excited. i think that they're going to be quite nice and such a good time to do something that's really involved with strings because the songs are so stark and open- they will be the perfect vehicle for emphasizing that element.
i'm getting a bit nervous because the reception to 'down to sleep' is starting to go so well that i'm worried that we're going to blow it with the next two releases that we're already working on. i know that it's kind of pointless to get worried about, but nonetheless i think that'd really be a shame for us to blow something good right when it started happening. nevertheless i am going to stick to what i'm working on. if i think that it's good and worth doing then i feel like the rest will take care of itself.
in other ground-breaking news- we have already booked our christmas flights to kansas city. we managed to get a thoroughly decent deal that i am quite happy with. it does kind of suck that we'll be flying in on christmas eve again, but it made quite a sizable difference in the cost. almost $120 for the both of us. we will fly home on christmas eve and fly back on dec. 29th. i think that it might be nicer because we'll be able to relax a bit after the christmas craziness and there's less lead up to it. i'm going to try and plan on playing a show possibly the night before we leave and i'd really only like to do a day's worth of practise with the string players (or just billy as the case may be). if it doesn't work out it's definitely not the end of the world- especially if the show we're planning here works out. i would like to be very careful not to make it a stressful thing. short set- 45 minutes max. relaxed place with decent sound would be nice, or even something with no p.a. would probably work.
for some reason i don't really have much more to say at this point. i'm trying to scrimp quite a bit. unfortunately tips have gone way down lately- they are just nowhere near as good as they used to be. i guess that that's just the joy of being in a recession. la-dee-dah. liz got a massage job, so she's kind of gone now, which is weird. it's good in the sense that it's much easier and fun to be at work without someone that abrasive and negative. it's bad in the sense that she worked tons of shifts and now they are all open and who knows what's going to happen now. there were only three of us on wednesday and it was quite a to-do to get everything done. we had a busy lunch as well. two people cooking and then just me on the register and making drinks. it was tough to juggle the two. i think i did a good job, but i think that my boss thinks that if i'm not running around like a chicken with its head cut off and harried to no end that i'm not really doing anything fast enough. i just try to keep a cool head during times like that. things i can do quickly i do quickly, but most times i just try to multi-task in an efficient way.
going back to chase looms before me. it's on my mind a lot. i'm going to have to get some days off. i don't know why i'm worried about something like that- it's never been a problem there at all. i really shouldn't be dreading it- it's not a terribly difficult job. hopefully they've worked the kinks out of the problems that they had last time and things will be more laid-back. i'm also not sure what they'd have me doing- it definitely won't be the same things as i was doing last time- that stuff was kind of a special case. i also have to get some kind of a walkman and start listening to tapes again because they don't allow mp3 players there anymore. hee hee- listening to tapes again- it makes me laugh. so ridiculous. i think i'd most like to do more data entry type stuff, although i'm sure that they won't need anyone to do that kind of stuff. it'd be nice if i could just go back and do what i was doing before because i didn't really mind it- it was kind of fun actually.
i obviously have spent a long time not saying much of anything in particular, so i think i'm going to end this here.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
wzrd set
here are sound files from the board recording of the set we played at wzrd on saturday night. they've been run through audacity to get them nearer to mastered. sorry if you tuned in at 8pm and got sick of waiting- we didn't even end up playing on the air until about 10. enjoy!
the sun is so bright
don't go
to the sky
you turn down
angels floating on the head of a pin
sloba
down to sleep
the sun is so bright
don't go
to the sky
you turn down
angels floating on the head of a pin
sloba
down to sleep
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
