as it turns out, i'm a natural at blogging

... not.

this is the same reason why keeping a journal has failed multiple times with me.  it's not a necessary part of life, so it gets pushed to the side.  watching entire seasons of the simpsons and fiddling around with the wiring to a diy effects pedal... now those are priorities.

lots has happened in the past two weeks.  i helped put on a weezer show at osu.  that was huge.  i got into columbus on late thursday night, around 12:30 am, after making a record-tying run from chicago to columbus (6 1/2 hours).  i proceeded to pick up old roommate tyler, take him to a bar, realize he wasn't 21, and later go back to my house to enjoy a beer on the porch with new roommate eric.  that was nice.  i have a feeling that porch will get a lot of use when it gets warmer again.  as it was, it was perfect weather for lounging on a porch, so i lounged again on friday around 11 am.

then came weezer.  i helped out from about 12:30pm until midnight.  weezer was incredible.  they played a few too many new songs for my taste, but i compromised by not singing any of the words to those songs.  they played six songs off the blue album, and my favorite pinkerton song (el scorcho), though.  rivers also crowd-surfed, sang part of a song on top of a port a potty, and apparently had his glasses stolen.  lolz.

saturday was Alien Orders' first full band practice.  we played for a little under two hours because of technical difficulties, but went through 4 songs in that time.  not bad at all.  this band has potential to sound pretty incredible, and that's coming from a completely unbiased source (the band's lead singer/songwriter/rhythm guitarist).

sunday i ran errands, finally got my columbus room subletted, and drove back to chicago.  on I-70, i ended up stopped for close to an hour, as apparently a car had crossed the median and had a head-on collision with a semi.  fatal for the car driver.

mon-fri.  worked.  started populating my tube screamer circuit board.  ate.  slept.

sat tried to go to a free local h show at the beat kitchen, but got turned away at the door because they hit capacity.  had to walk all the way back in the rain... i got fettucini alfredo though.  the main success story of the day was that i got my tube screamer working.  doesn't have a case, still doesn't have a permanent wiring arrangement, but it works.  i had to rearrange some LEDs and other diodes to get it to work, but it's purring like a kitten now.  a kitten with rabies.  just the way i like my kittens.  here's a bunch of sound clips that everyone will probably skip over:



sunday i saw the thermals.  fucking incredible.  i was in the second row directly in front of hutch.  cymbals eat guitars opened, and they seemed ok, but everyone knew why they were at that concert.  westin had a bass drum head with the "personal life" art on the front.  he was the first one we saw, coming out personally to soundcheck the drums.  then he went back behind closed doors, returning shortly with hutch and kathy.  they shouldered their weapons, and launched into st. rosa and the swallows.  it was like someone had touched a live wire to the floor of logan square auditorium.  not in that people were jumping around like madmen (although some were), but that the entire venue was filled with a palpable energy.  they played a lot of songs off of personal life, but mixed things up thoroughly with songs like how we know, returning to the fold, we were sick, when i died, now we can see, no culture icons, and ending with pillar of salt, which left me wondering how my band could possibly make a two guitar arrangement that was as catchy as what he did with his one guitar (he was playing the major parts of three instruments from that song: guitar, second guitar, and keyboard).  then they said "thank you" and left.

but none of the crowd left.  well, the two annoying fucks who had been making out during songs about breaking up and dying and being disillusioned with religion, those jackasses left.  and i moved up to the very front.  the thermals came back out and played one more song, then left the stage for good.  that's the way encores should be done, if they're done at all.  they didn't have the final song listed on their setlist, it was a spur of the moment thing, utterly dependent on what the audience wanted.

today was a monday.  i'm not a big fan of mondays.  hard to believe that a person can be inclined to like one rotation of the earth better than any other rotation of the earth, but that seems to be the shape of it.

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.