Jackercrap

An Attempt At Catching Up: Part 1

•September 30, 2009 • Leave a Comment

I can’t believe it’s already been a couple of weeks since my trip to Chicago. I don’t know what I’m doing with my life if I’m not immediately writing about it on here. I think I’m going to have to start canceling shows and rehearsals so that I can really get this going. I’m pretty sure that I’m kidding.
The first day of the “Chicago tour” started off with getting picked up around 10:30am and heading to Danville, PA for the first show. After about an hour on the road I realized that I had left my hi-hat stand back in NY. Whoops! In my defense I only use it on ONE song out of about three hours worth of material. We wound up not needing it at all even when I borrowed one for a show in Chicago. On the way to Danville we made a quick stop in Bloomburg, PA because the other band member wanted to check in with someone who might be able to get her a show in the future. I took the opportunity to check out a record store and Salvation Army and didn’t spend a dime. Woo. We also checked out this cafe with strange doors (I’m not even going to try and get into this) and a college kid running it who didn’t know the price of a cup of tea. And now I know that, according to Bloomburg’s website they are “the only incorporated TOWN in Pennsylvania”. So that’s really exciting. Right? When we got to Brews n Bytes to check it out before loading in we had some delicious complimentary food. I got some sort of tasty tuna sandwich and a really good chai latte.

I am chai man. I am made of chai.

It was close to rivaling my Starbucks no water vanilla chai which was kind of scary. After loading in the very nice and personable owner of the venue gave us a quick van “tour” of Danville. This tour mostly involved the hospital and we saw the incorporated town in about 20 minutes. Afterwards I walked around what seemed like a ghost town really and stumbled upon this:

Apparently good samaritans need creepy dolls to function.

Feeling like I was in the middle of some strange horror film I went back to the venue and did the music thing for a couple of hours. They had a pretty good built in audience and we had a good time. We stayed the night at a friend of a friend’s place apparently. She was basically a stranger to both of us but she was very nice and wanted to shoot the breeze a lot. I slept on a fairly comfortable couch and was not molested by the two cats. Thus ends day 1 and part 1 of this continuing series in the land of jackercrap. Stay tuned for parts 2 through 53. I’m sorry for ending on such a cliffhanger.

Posted in Music In My World
Tags: bloomburg, brews n bytes, chai, Chicago, cliffhanger, danville, hi-hat, king crimson, pennsylvania, Starbucks, tour

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Pills

•September 29, 2009 • Leave a Comment

Ok. I’m trying to get back to writing about things other than my musical activities. So today I offer up some more CRAP!

Does your week start on Sunday? Mine starts on Wednesday.

This be a JUMBO 7 day pill-box. I like how the word JUMBO is larger than the other words because JUMBO does in fact mean large or big or even HUGE! I found this on “the bench” last night along with some other stuff. No details on the other stuff yet but they just might be edible. But I mean hey, what isn’t edible? Lots of things are edible I suppose. Edible meaning “fit to be eaten”. One could say that leaves are edible. It’s not going to kill you or anything. What I’m getting at is that the next time you see a pile of leaves don’t hesitate to grab some for a snack. Unless you’re too good for leaves that is!

Variety is the spice of life. Spice is also the spice of life.

Did I mention that this pill-box is JUMBO? Because it totally is. I hope that this a novelty item because if you need that many pills I feel bad for you. I feel so bad for you that I want to give you a nice foot rub. Would that be ok? Maybe you just can’t see very well so you need JUMBO letters to make sure you take the right pills on the right day. If this is the case the foot rub offer still stands. Don’t worry ok? And yes, it does remind me of a certain Glassjaw album cover. Did I mention that I can generally swallow a pill without water? Well I can. On that note, here’s the very necessary peek at the behind:

That behind is green. Wink. Barf.

Posted in Crap
Tags: Crap, creek, edible, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Silence, foot rub, glassjaw, jumbo, leaves, pill, pill-box

Quay To My Heart

•September 28, 2009 • Leave a Comment

I’m playing a show tonight with the band that I recently went to Chicago with. It’s always nice to play a gig close to home for obvious reasons. I’m not looking forward to lugging drums around in this rain though. We’ve played at this irish pub once in this past and I know it’s not that great. Whoops! I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow.

Posted in Music In My World
Tags: brick, Chicago, irish pub, rain

Double Dribble

•September 27, 2009 • Leave a Comment

I’m back in NY after a great rehearsal in Philly. We got to finish up some ideas and concepts that we’ve been playing with for quite some time. We’re going to be playing a show in late October that’s supposed to be a night of “experimental” music/bands. We kind of fit in this category but it’s given us an excuse to do some weirder stuff that we’ve discussed in the past.
We watched Brainscan Saturday night. It was fun to watch something with such a strong mid 90s kind of feel. I’m sure if I had seen this movie when it came out I would have loved it but it was still enjoyable. There was some really great music in there like Primus and White Zombie. Today we watched Night of the Dribbler with lunch. I got this movie from Amazon the other day and it was one of the few times that I brought a movie to watch in Philly that I hadn’t yet watched. The movie was made in the mid 90s (fitting the cinematic theme) but was “lost” and never released in theaters or home video until recently when it was found in a warehouse or some craziness. It’s supposed to be “the first and only basketball horror-slasher-comedy” according to the box. It’s definitely got a lot of basketball. I can’t say there’s much genuine horror but it’s got elements of a slasher film. There’s a crap ton of comedy though mostly unintentional. I could talk a lot of trash about this movie but I was entertained by it’s junkiness. It was also great to see an accidental shot of what looked like electrical and masking tape covering up some nipples. Both movies are worth downloading or checking out on Netflix. Balls.

Posted in Movies, Music In My World
Tags: amazon, basketball, Brainscan, experimental, Horror, ipod, netflix, night of the dribbler, ny, Philly, primus, slasher, white zombie

Phi Del Phi

•September 26, 2009 • Leave a Comment

First day of rehearsal in Philly was swell. We’ve started working some covers in there too. Sneaky.

Posted in Music In My World

As Anticipated

•September 25, 2009 • Leave a Comment

So last night was the first MPF show. As I had predicted the turnout was very small. It was definitely frustrating but we had a good time regardless. The performance was actually better than I expected considering all the new elements we were working with. Having said that though, there’s still a lot to improve and work out. It was a good learning experience and I think if nothing else it proved to me/us that we can make this work in a live setting. The same crappy “audio engineer” that was at this venue the last time we played there with our main band was there again last night. This guy is just terrible and I don’t even waste my time talking to him because he’s a piece of human crap. I’m also planning on a whole entry on “sound guys” and the general black hole that they crawl out of. Not much else to say about this show at the moment.
The main band has rehearsal this weekend in Philly. I’ll try to post some random crap over the weekend. Next week I’m going to really try and get back into this whole posting somewhat interesting stuff with pictures and what not.

Posted in Music In My World
Tags: audio engineer, Crap, golly, sound guy

Cats Up

•September 24, 2009 • Leave a Comment

Today I’ve been going through all the old recordings of previous bands and projects I’ve been involved with. I’m sending a cd to the guys from my first “real” band in high school. It’s going to be a collection of some of the good and bad music I’ve been a part of. For some reason all this music isn’t on my ipod or computer but I think it’s buried deep on one of my external harddrives. It’s very strange listening to music I wrote/recorded 10 years ago and haven’t listened to in 5. Surprisingly, some elements still hold up or interest me while a lot of it is pretty much unbearable to listen to. I’ve always had a hard time listening to myself especially singing but either I’ve gotten better or can tolerate it more over the last few years. Maybe I’ll try using some of the material from my high school and college years in some other context.
As I mentioned, tonight is the first show of my new band which we’ll call MPF for the moment. MPF has really come together in just a few months. It doesn’t look like our turnout is going to be very good tonight but you never know. I’ve learned not get upset or frustrated at how many people do or don’t show up. I’m planning on doing a whole segment on people coming to shows and the psychology involved. Regardless, MPF is going to be a lot of fun tonight and it will be nice finally testing out a lot of things that we’ve never tried in other bands. I’ll try to write up a brief and hopefully not too boring review of the show later. Once again no pictures. Boo hoo.

Posted in Music In My World
Tags: definitely, mpf, psychology, show

Prep

•September 23, 2009 • Leave a Comment

Hey. Where has my day gone? Perhaps down the gutter. Tomorrow is the debut of the new project I’ve been working on. We’ve done two open mics to help prepare for the show and worked out some of the kinks. The first show with a new band/project is always tough but also great. We’ve hit some bumps in the process of getting everything ready but I’m really excited and pleased with how it’s all coming together. It’s going to be really nice to have this first show under our belts and pants. We rehearsed last night and we’ll run through the set tonight. It’s been hard for me lately to find the time and motivation to keep up with this jackercrap. I should be back in the swing of this soon. The focus is always going to be on my music and my life outside of the internet. However, I have been enjoying this outlet and plan on continuing.

Posted in Music In My World
Tags: gall, gutter, internet, Open Mic, pants

Raincheck

•September 22, 2009 • Leave a Comment

Yo! I’m still recovering from yesterday’s drive. It’s also hard coming back after being gone for 5 days and trying to get your regular life back up to speed. I’ll probably be posting something substantial tomorrow. On a completely unrelated note, I’m looking forward to Zombieland.