Monday, July 31, 2006

report upon our current activities

today me and tommi recorded the drums for one of our new songs, it's called mediocrity, and it's about whatever. i did the synth and vocal for it last friday, as well as the bass and vocal for the other new song - get bored. so the recording of the drums went pretty well, i still ended up being about a half an hour late for work here at the damn jazz club, but after a rushed set-up for the fucking big band, all was ok. tommi's drumming sounds hot, it's some fucked up dance beats all mangled. hopefully my mic placement wasn't too rushed and rudimentary. i need some better fucking microphones at this point anyways. anyway, all that's left is to add daniel's guitar shronk and probably some more synth pizazz, and then the great struggle of mixing shall begin.

as for shows, me and tommi and tony went and saw my friend charlie's cover band iY play at this dive bar in alameda last friday night, and it turns out they do free show there all the time, so we got ourselves on the calendar for:

Friday AUGUST 25th - John Patrick's Pub

it's gonna be awesome, i'm basically putting the show together, gonna get two or so bands to play with us. the way it works is the bands get a 1/3 cut of whatever the bar sells, which is cool with me, cuz we ain't big time, so whatever, it's all about turnout turnout turnout, so yeah. at this point i've asked jaye of poperratic if she wants to come up from LA and got a maybe, and i asked this acquintance i know sylvia if her death metal band called six billion dead wanna play and got a maybe there too. also sent invites out to dyspecific, and this band called lemonade who tommi and i randomly saw play at amnesia one night back in may who are this totally amazing dub noise percussion group.

the ishta music people said they might have us back in august for another night at the element lounge also, so hey that'd be pretty cool. in the meantime we gotta get more songs together, stuff we've recorded, stuff daniel needs to learn, and i need to like write two new songs or something also.

Monday, July 24, 2006


so the show last night went pretty ok, these things never go perfectly i guess, at least for kids as green to playing live as we are. basically the main problem was that daniel and i had trouble hearing each other, so he got lost a bit on some of the more complicated songs. but for the most part we were able to fake our way through it. one of the guys in the ishta music company or whatever is this dude named Moose, and he was all like i love you guys, i think yr brillant, which was very flattering and all. apparently he wants to record us or remix us or something into dance music or something. i got to hear just a little bit of his music at the end of the night when i was speaking to him, and it seemed pretty cool. i'm not exactly sure what might come of it, but he seemed very hyped to make something happen, so i guess we'll see. he was all like lemme come over this next weekend and record you guys at yr rehearsal space, and i'm like, well we're working on getting a rehearsal space, right now it's just our bedroom. i'm not sure how aware he is that we have recordings, or that is our particular strength, as it seems like it would make more sense to hand him over some audio tracks to play with rather than record us live, but whatever, we'll see.

the other bands were pretty cool. they were all definitely more electronic. the first band, pistols will air, ended up as i expected sounding very much like air, mainly because they used so much fender rhodes keyboard, but their song-writing was very solid and they had lush thick sound of texture. we met the turntable beat guy william and he was totally cool, really complimentary, said that it took a lot of balls to stand up and sing in front of people, and i was like yeah it's scary, and he was like, yeah, i just hide behind my turntables, and i was like hey that's cool.

after us was deletist, who was fucking awesome. it was just one chick, who actually was the person behind the "not your bitch" sticker on the bumper of my car that has been there for like 5 years, as tommi picked up a bunch of her stickers way back in the day at a comic convention and once emailed her but never followed through on getting a t-shirt made with her logo (her comic was called bitter pie or something). anyway, her music was totally cool, very darkwave, like an electronic goth kinda cat power, but in a cool way. after her performance i told her she was awesome and she gave me and daniel stickers. from her website i learned that she has a cd on sale at amoeba so i'm gonna go try and pickup a copy after work tomorrow, cuz she was really fucking cool in a very inexplicable way.

lastly there was the neighborhood bass coalition, who on myspace seemed like a hip-hop mash-up thing, but live were more ambient and more of a noise thing. they were alright, but i didn't really pay too much attention to them, though they seemed kinda cool, they just didn't draw me in really. some of their stuff sounded like the orb.

anyways, once again we didn't get paid, but who cares, we only got ten people to show, so they comped us a couple drinks, so yeah, whatever. it was pretty cool, hopefully they'll have us back again, and hopefully next time we'll play better and show some more improvement with this live shit.

oh yeah, and tony ayala took the pictures below cuz he's a sweetheart. it was really dark in there, i could barely see my guitar during the first couple of songs, fortunately the notes didn't really matter, haha, cuz we're sooo no-wave, right. we realize now that maybe he should have take a few with the flash after all, even though we hate the way it looks with flash. oh well.

report upon our show last night

we played: jazz, i hate music, (then daniel joined us and we played) the failed musician, i got a mental block, ambisexual, mediocrity, get bored, another dead queer boy.

Monday, July 17, 2006

my drunken shame

so i was such a damn fool this weekend. i worked like all fucking week like 55 hours, plus rehearsing and shit for a lot too, and what do i do saturday night? i go out with mikey and get fucking shit faced on vodka. i fucking puked for like the first time in like forever, it was stupid! fortunately i left the bars before doing anything stupid, like going home with some ugly guy and puking all over their toliet. what i learned was this: i should always leave my cell phone at home when i go out getting trashed in the castro because - 1. it always looks tacky in my pants pocket, and - 2. i always end up drunk dialing or drunk texting stupid boys i shouldn't be talking to anyways cuz they already dissed me cuz they stupid fools and it ain't like i got anything to say to them that isn't gonna make me look totally retarded because, cuz while it might seem like a good idea at the time all i will feel is utterly stressed out and shamed at the silliness and stupidity of my actions whilst drunk the previous night. i text stupid cuban art boy, never can i ever be seen by him again, my only hope being that he has completely forgotten my existance and my drunken actions merely perplexed him, though most likely i came across like a psycho. whatever. then somehow in the middle of puking i got a call from bryan the flirt/tease and somehow managed to pull my shit together and have some kind of conversation the contents of i remember very little, though i believe i called him back later on and left some kind totally dumb voice mail. i always seem to talk to him while completely trashed. he probably thinks i'm alcoholic, haha. all this while i'm also trolling for guys on adam4adam, god damn i'm dumb bitch, haha. and so how did i spend my one day off? completely fucking hungover, and it was sunny and nice and wonderful beach weather, i'm sure. but i did get a call from the sfpd, and it turns out they found my wallet, stolen on pink saturday, minus the $25 i had in it. but i did find my missing social security card which had been in my wallet for the whole two years or so i thought it was lost! so i got my wallet back, yay! cuz it had sentimental value since it was a gift from tommi from his trip to italy and it's less bulky than the crappy one i bought for $7.50 a couple weeks back. yay stupid drunken me!

as far as i know...

...we'll still be playing a show on sunday. i'm a little confused as to why we were pushed back a week, as i was told that there was a scheduling problem with the element lounge for the 16th, yet last night i got two mass text messages imploring me to come to the bandstand event that night at the aforementioned venue. whatever, it's not like we haven't need the extra week to get our shit together. we'll be doing three new songs and bunch of the old shit with daniel doing whatever he can to make noise and racket. one of the new songs sounds like the fall, another is like some electroclash bullshit, and the third one is like fractured spazz emo or something type crap. it'll be neat!

Thursday, July 13, 2006

state of the show

so for the show on the 23rd, it looks like daniel is going to play with us after all. we practiced with him last night and several songs really came together with him adding noise synth wankery and shit. as far as him playing stuff more song based, well, he's not quite ready for anything too challenging, but the sound of having another person adding to the racket is pretty cool and he does have some good instincts. if i could just get someone to give him piano lessons, cuz ugh, that shit is so tedious for me to do. i've been working up some new songs and stuff, the only main challenge being the lyrics, but that shit's starting to come together somewhat also. i think i've given up on mikey. we had him over on tuesday, and he did manage to learn some bits to a song, but he also brought his date to hang out which was really fucking annoying even though he was a nice enough guy being submitted to some serious suckiness. anyways, the plan is to do some short tunes and some longer jam type shit, yeah that word has negative conatations, but whatever. we'll sound sorta like the acid mothers playing pop songs. it'll be neat. so plug plug plug:

july 23 2006 @ element lounge (1028 geary @ van ness ave)
9pm $5 21+
with a bunch of other bands and shit

Monday, July 10, 2006

date change, show now on sunday July 23rd

just got word that the show on the 16th is being pushed back a week to the 23rd. not sure why, but whatever, it gives us more time to work out the new songs and possibly have daniel and mikey play with us.

tommi and i went and saw meshell ndegeocello last night, it was pretty cool. the opening dj, dj funklord fucking sucked though and we waited like 2 hours for meshell to come on. she played a lot of new stuff and while her band were all great musicians, they didn't gel together terribly well, like they were a little undercooked or not quite feeling the chemistry. also the drummer didn't look like he was being challenged enough. i mean it was serious jazz blues funk r+b rock fusion, but it didn't seem like she was quite pushing it hard enough. plus the set was only like 70 minutes. but it was cool still for the most part. the new songs were pretty cool, definitely in the comfort woman and cookie vein, but a bit more rocking, maybe just not rocking hard enough for my tastes.

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

show - july 16th

the semi-finals!!! oh so exciting...right...

july 16th
element lounge
1028 geary st @ van ness ave

we will destroy the competition, or not, haha.

tommi's not thrilled at all.

Monday, July 03, 2006

monday night jazz hell, july 3rd edition or looking for a bass player

here i am again, another night of souless wank from the big band, but they do try ereally, they do. oh adam theis, shove that microphone into the bell of your trombone, oh sound, slow loud, so low, but oh too bad, yr clipping my board, so ya know what bucko, turning ya the fuck down. they never learn, they just never learn, cuz i don't care if you think it sounds cool or good, i'm calling the shots here, so what part of no distorted trombone coming through my speakers don't you understand?

so i guess we're looking for a bass player. we tried mikey out again today, and kinda didn't pass the 2nd audition. he just doesn't have the skill to do even the mediocre limited tunes i writes, so whatever, no hard feelings, but after 45 minutes, we was all over it, and he had some kid to go fuck or something. so, ugh, craiglist...bass player...anyone, anyone?