third nye blind

i spent five hours working on mostly one project today.  probably shouldn't have taken me so long, but i wanted to make it easy on me for future weeks.  now it should take me an hour or two each week to update everything on this ongoing showlist of chicago shows.  i was pretty proud of it until i realized how utterly insignificant it is in the grand scheme of things, and what i could have been doing in those five hours. 0.00259% of my life so far, down the drain, assuming my math is right.  probably a little bit less, i just rounded to 22 years... but that's irrelevant.  what is relevant is that a skilled surgeon can do a heart transplant in 6 hours, i could fly to new york from chicago in two and a quarter hours, and the gettysburg address was given in a little over two minutes.  lots could happen in five hours.

i wrote lyrics to a song today.  we'll see how that goes.  a little girl on the bus kept on giving me strange looks while i was writing it, and i felt like the woman next to me was reading over my shoulder.  who knows what they really thought.

i also got rained on today.  i was the only one at milwaukee/north/damen that didn't go for shelter.  it was a pretty odd feeling, but the rain stopped soon.  a guy smiled at me like i knew something he didn't when the rain stopped.  he had torn jeans and an umbrella.

had piece pizza for lunch and a veggie burger, chips and salsa for dinner, complemented by goose island beer and some fudge that grandma bradney had sent.

listened to part of neil young's new album today.  the other intern begged me to stop.  said it was horrible.  frankly, it's not his best album by any means, but it isn't horrible either.  it's just a guy with his guitar, and i guess that's why i like it so much.  granted, it's a guy with his guitar in a very nice studio with a bunch of very nice gadgets to make it sound pretty, but it's still neil young playing his guitar and singing.  he's probably spent decades doing that.  serious musicians spend a lot more time playing than bystanders think.  hendrix used to take speed so he could stay up and play guitar more.  clapton learned how to play all the records in his house.  that doesn't come overnight.  it's a pretty deeply personal thing, and that's how le noise comes off to me.  it may not find its way into my regularly listened records, but it has its place in my music library.

i also listened to the beatles today, first time in 7 or 8 months, likely.  rubber soul.  it and help! are probably the two albums that i have listened to the most in my life, besides so far so good by bryan adams (it was the only cassette i owned for about three years).  i need to go through and listen to all of the beatles' discography.  it's been a really long time since i've listened to revolver or the white album all the way through.

oh yeah, the title.  mike and i looked up bill nye parody songs today.  this was one of the parody bands' names.

lazy or busy

i could make excuses all day for not writing on this blog.  here are a few of my favorites:

• it's mold awareness month.  i was being aware of mold.
• i was cast in a b-movie zombie flick.  zombies don't use the internet.
• the coriolis effect

the truth of it is, i mostly forgot.  lots of interesting events occurred.  big bro got hitched, i got a second internship with eventric, i mixed a song that alien orders had recorded in practice, i finished In Cold Blood, and the cashier at the local jewel-osco shorted me five stickers for my free cookware scorecard.  hussy.

i'm going to try to be better about it, honest.

saw a fellow jma intern's band at schuba's tonight.  they were called carbon tigers, and were a very technically proficient band, which made me all the more proud to be an un-technically proficient musician. i'm not saying that what they did was bad by any means (it really wasn't bad.  they had very skillful compositions), i'm just glad that my bands have always been on the "pure energy" side of the music spectrum and not on the "intricate detail" side.  i get to jump around and yell more that way.

jeff and jill and i had dinner.  i had a vegan burrito.  jeff, if you read this, thanks again.

i'm starting two projects tonight.  first, i'm mixing a second song from the alien orders practice.  this one is called "day terrors", and is shaping up to probably be one of two songs that we play under 120 bpm (for non-concert band nerds, that's about the tempo of "getting better" by the beatles).  i'm also starting a biography of winston churchill called Churchill: A Life (creative title, right?) by martin gilbert.  apparently this 1000+ page book was expanded upon later in gilbert's career, with him advertising 14 books on Winston Churchill, ranging from 967 to 2165 pages long.  this guy has a serious hard-on for churchill.  i can't wait to read the book.

that's about it for now.  joey and i did a bit of work on some alien orders songs, rearranging them for two guitars + bass instead of one guitar + bass.  weezer on friday, alien orders practice on saturday and sunday.

oh, i also went on a serious neil young kick this weekend, as well as an iggy pop video kick.  can't beat iggy for his live show, and i probably listened to the live rust versions of "hey hey my my" and "my my hey hey" a dozen times each.  new thermals album is growing on me, but i doubt i'll end up liking it as much as their last three.

jazz fest

i went to the chicago jazz festival today.  only really saw two acts, but saw two incredibly fluid guitarists.  first was ted sirota's rebel souls.  they played a reggae- and world-infused style of jazz that i thoroughly enjoyed.  drummer played a little too showy for my taste, but the guitarist was simply amazing.  he kept going from dazzling quick solos into strange diminished and augmented chords, making me think he would just start comping for the rest of the band.  instead, he would go into a run of eighth note chordal changes to continue his solo.  not easy chord changes, either.  i honestly didn't think some of his chord progressions were even possible on guitar.  completely blew me away.  he was playing what looked to be an es-335 clone and a 2x10 music man combo, which made me really happy and sad at the same time.  i can't express how much i want to play my music man amp/cab right now... but it does have the distinction of "the loudest clean amp ever made," and i am living in a low-noise environment.  also, +1 for the band playing a charlie mingus tune.

i saw part of zooid, but decided that i would rather listen to jazz that was more palatable than artsy and complex.  so i went to the complete other end of the spectrum:  nick colionne.  pretty smooth jazz, really not my stuff with the exception of his guitar playing.  actually, i probably would've left his set after the first song if it weren't for his guitar.  he wasn't really playing all that interesting of stuff in terms of progressions, but he was doing it with such flair and such ease that i had to watch.  he was quite the showman.  +1 for the ridiculous keyboardist, -1 for doing a really sarcastic and terrible purple rain cover.

on my way back, i walked past a choir.  just as i passed, they sang this song:



one of my absolute favorites from going to church growing up.  i may need to listen to more hymns in the near future, i forgot how much i enjoy them.  there's just an infectious feel about them, right down in the depths of the music itself.  even the lyrics are creative and well-done (like most hymns, it does seem to get a little lazy on the third verse), not terribly preachy but still getting the message across loud and clear.  i think a lot can be gained from secular songwriting with hymn style in mind.  i mean, ray charles made an entire career from doing that.

eating leftover burritos tonight.  the "medium" salsa is more of an authentic salsa, "hot" to a gringo's tongue.  i definitely was not expecting this, and drank a lot of water with my first burrito last night.  two glasses worth at least.  also watched up in the air today.  *sort of spoiler alert*  it was a very good film, but i cannot express how much i wanted it to resolve in the end.  so many loose ends, so many questions... however, it has kept me thinking about the film all day, so i suppose it ended in a successful way.

tomorrow's labor day.  i have the day off.  might go to a neighborhood festival sort of thing.  we'll see.  i also may actually finish the Alien Orders in The Shed mix, which i've been threatening to do for about three weeks running now.

listening to simon and garfunkel's bookends on the turntable.

running and lounging

i've been either running or lounging these past three days. running around chicago, finding new places, or lounging on my bed, watching arrested development, the lion king, and the simpsons (in that order). not entirely sure why i chose to watch the lion king. not really my favorite disney movie. it is a good movie, though. a lot deeper than i remember it.

played guitar for about 45 minutes each day, though. that's been nice. wrote a new riff, need to go through my lyrics to find something that matches up with it or write new lyrics.

listening to the replacements right now. wonder where paul westerberg was when he wrote i will dare. mentally and physically. i can't find anything about it. i'll probably read a biography i found, though. i heard they were lured with promises of coke to get their picture taken for Let It Be. gotta love the good ol' rock bands.



it's 5:18 am now. just spent about 7 hours investigating tube screamers. hopefully all the research will pay off in the form of a bitchin guitar pedal.

probably going to the jazz festival tomorrow. that is, if i can wake up in time after all this time spent awake. i have some ridiculous coffee from stauf's that should be able to do the trick...

little hungry right now. see ya.

two for the price of one!

i didn't blog yesterday.  i'm sure my already innumerable legions of faithful readers were devastated.  in order to make up for this disappointment, i plan to recount two days in this one post.

forgot to wear my retainer again two nights ago.  yes, i still wear my retainer on occasion.  i am sort of obsessed with dental health when you get down to it.  used to brush my teeth as many as 7 times in a day.  i've backed off a little since then because it's likely that the excessive brushing did me more harm than good.  anyway, i could tell my teeth were a little out of alignment.  obviously a terrible start to a day.

the rest of the day was fairly mediocre.  met a second intern, mike, and jeff's wife jill.  i was still a little cobwebby at that point in the morning, due to my apparent inability to buy coffee filters, and made a fairly terrible stuttering first impression on both of them.  i plan on winning them over slowly but surely, culminating in a dramatic scene at the senior prom.  or maybe that's a john hughes movie.

came back to the apartment, came in through the back door, somewhat startled sarah's boyfriend.  he was waiting for her.  nice guy.  tall.  i offered him spaghetti.  he politely declined.

i played guitar and quietly sang for a while.  it was not pleasant.  i do not sing well at low volumes.  i eventually gave up on this and gave into sleep.

i wore my retainer that night, though.  it was a good decision.

been reading In Cold Blood.  it's a great book so far, i'm about a third of the way through.  i need to mix the Alien Orders live recordings so everyone can listen and learn.  not necessarily learn how awesome we are, more so that members of our band can learn the songs and learn what was done right and wrong in the songs.

i've been eating baby carrots and peanut butter fudge at night.  two nights in a row now.  the fudge is good in small quantities, the carrots are good in large quantities.  i should probably invest in some ranch dressing for the carrots.  but for now, these are no a la carte carrots.

anyway, i've been doing stuff at my internship.  i'm applying for Pitchfork either tonight or tomorrow.  it would be nice to have a change of pace in terms of internships.  right now i spend a lot of time catching up on music news and compiling lengthy artist reports for jma reps to read over before they meet to discuss promotion plans.  i'm learning quite a bit though.

SHIT.  i almost forgot!  you need to listen to this.  it's a JAM.