jazz club go bye bye, and we have shows!

so the jazz club is going out of business at the end of april unless the remaining owner somehow gets her shit together, which is highly unlikely. i could seriously write a book about the four years i've been here and watched this place been so mismanaged and poorly run. it's really astonishing to see two people fuck up a cash cow and steal so fragrantly from their own business. it's totally retarded and they deserve to lose it. unfortunately for me, i'll be out the extra $600-700 a month i make by still working at the dump part time. oh well, i guess i'll manage.

as for shows, we got some coming up! we're playing April 19th in a tiny little town called Point Arena that's 3 hours north of SF. it's at the Oddfellows Lodge there and it has something to do with the town's one hundred year anniversary. tommi's mom and her husband connected us to the people setting it up, so it's gonna be an adventure, that's for sure. there is one other band on the bill as far i know now, and that's about all i know, other than we're gonna be playing sometime after 9pm. unfortunately this is on the same night that Dylan of Raencloud asked us to play a show with them at John Patrick's Pub in Alameda. i have to admit i had little desire to return that dump, but it would have been good practice, and would be cool to see Raencloud with their new lineup and play with them again. anyways, the next show i got scheduled after that is May 29th at MAGNET in the castro. it's some kind of benefit for something called GAWK Pride. apparently Violent Vickie saw the same ad on craigslist, so haha! anyways, we're excited, it's a free all ages thing, so some kids who haven't been able to come out and see us before cuz they were under 21 can come out this time without having to finangle fake IDs. we're hoping to set something up in Santa Cruz and the East Bay soon, so hopefully all this crap will just keep moving along!

booooooooooooorrrrrrrrreeeeddddddoooommms!!!!!!

so me and tommi and jerry all went and saw the boredoms play at the fillmore last tuesday. it was my 4th time seeing them, and it was definitely the longest and most varied set i had seen them play. jerry's mind was approriately blown, i believe. we really should have dragged corey out, cuz even though it's like a totally different language of music than the power pop he is accustomed to, i think they would have won him over. as it was, it was pretty fucking cool! saw a bunch of friends there that i hadn't seen in awhile, so that was really cool. the show was an exhausting two and a half hours with two encores, and this time it was more than just one hour long tune with maybe 4 or 5 variations. they actually have varied songs that they're doing using all kinds of of conventional and unconvential sound making devices, be it a monolithic 7 headed electric green guitar played with drumsticks, to that pad thing that manipulates sound via a screen that you muck about with your hands (i should get one of those!) eye had cast on his leg, so his jumping about and hollering was augmented by a crippled hobble, but that didn't seem to impede him at all. and yoshimi had bass pedals and a keyboard too. it was pretty fucking rad, and their younger drummer that they had is a total skinny little babe. but then again, i got thing for hot and skinny drummers.

so we've been working hard practicing and shit. really getting these new songs going. corey is totally ready to record. he called me up today and was like, can we record the new song so i can play it for my dad when i go to montana next monday? and i was like, uh, fuck no? and he's like, but it's my favorite song now, and i want something to play for my dad! and i'm like, well, it's sounding good, but jerry doesn't have his part worked out and i don't have finished lyrics, and he's like, well jerry doesn't need to be on it, and i'm like, whatever bucko. so i'm like trying to tell him that we're not gonna record anything until we are absolutely ready, AND i get my new fucking laptop computer. and he's like really wanting to have something to share with his dad to make him proud or something, cuz he hasn't seen him in awhile or something, and i'm like, well, we gots the youtube videos dude. and he's like, oh i dunno if i wanna show him that, cuz then i guess his dad will see that he's in a band with three total gay-bots, hahaha, cuz i guess that could be an issue or some shit. but anyways, we ain't recording until we're ready, cuz otherwise it'll be substandard, and i ain't about to make no substandard shit, czu we be committed to excellance, or something, hahaha. i relayed all this to tommi, and tommi was like, oh hell no, we ain't recording yet, i ain't got my drum part perfect yet on that new song. anyways, when that damn song is ready to go, it's gonna sound fucking wicked or something. i'm still sticking with the plan of starting in may, but right now i'm just trying to figure out how to finance the purchase of the computer with the savings i have and my damn credit cards (i got a new one coming with zero apr until january '09), but we're still talking about up to $3500 that i'm gonna be dropping on this including RAM and updating to the latest software of digital performer and shit. i just wanna be damn ready that when it comes time to record we're totally fucking tight and prepared, cuz it's always a million times easier and quicker to record and mix when you actually know what the fuck yr doing. the record is gonna be tight and under 45 minutes, and hopefully on plastic and vinyl by october of this fucking year. and then i wanna do another one six monthes after that. at least, that's my goddamn plan. i mean, it's not like the four of us our incapable of coming up with an adequate quantity of song. whether they be songs that anyone wants to hear, well whatever...

more new songs

cuz we need 'em. last week, corey was like, we should do a glitter glam song. and i was like, like what do you mean. and he was like, just listen to a lot of t-rex, it'll come to you. so i was like, ok, let's get together and do this together. and then, i ended up writing the song without him, after coming with ideas and shit for riffs and stuff all in my head last thursday. of course it's all a total rip off of the t-rex cover we already did, kinda haha. so we gave it a try last night, and the guys were like, what are the words about? and i was like all casually, oh it's like all the weird sex shit the boys in my neighborhood did when we were like little kids. and corey was like, god damnit, not another gay song. and now i'm like, damn i feel bad, i've ruined his excitement over doing a glitter glam song. but i was like, well it's not really gay song, cuz as far as i know, none of the little bastards it's about are gay, it's just a song about the weird sex stuff little kids sometimes do, you know, before they hit puberty or whatever. anyways, so i guess i should make the lyrics a bit more ambiguous or discreet or something, i dunno, some weird shit went down in my neighborhood back then...probably gonna get in trouble for writing a song about, haha.

corey has a song that he's been working on, i think it's really good, but he doesn't have lyrics yet, or at least he has yet to be forthcoming with them, but we gave it a go last night so that i could come up a bass line, cuz he's gonna play guitar on it.

jerry has words for a song and a rhythmic idea, it's something he originally wrote for his old band, but they never developed or played it. it has something to do with menstration as a metaphor for something or other. i'm trying to work with lyrics to turn it into something i'll feel comfortable doing, not sure how to approach the menstration angle? how about bleeding out my ass...hemmoroids?

tommi wants to write a song, music and lyrics altogether, so i keep saying, then sit down and do it!

i'm trying to turn this one song we got that i wrote into something that doesn't bore me. it's getting there, but i gotta work on the words, cuz they just ain't good enough, at all. i'm at work right now, so maybe i'll just get drunk and see if i can come up with anything usable. it's supposed to be about religious persecution or something. but it's hard to approach this kind of subject matter without sounding like a complete pious retard.

it seems like learning and arranging songs with group has become a bit of chore, i dunno, just been kinda tough lately. but after a couple weeks it seems like the tunes really start together. i just hope no one is getting discouraged by having to do the work.

anyways, i'm still saving up for a new computer (laptop that is!) and i don't seem to be getting any closer to having the money for it. i mean, i could just use a credit card and get it now, but i don't wanna deal with interest and debt, i'd rather just have the fucking money. but i keep having to pay bills bills bills! sux. oh well, me and tommi got to see some good friends of ours yesterday, at our homegirl brooke's birthday party. she was in the band for a couple of months on keyboards back in early 2004, before she got pregnant. her little daughter is SO cute, it's sickening, big ol' smile and shit. anyways, we got to hang with emily (jane white) and gillian of the gibbs for a while, it was really good to see them. hopefully we can do some shows together soon! emily's great, we played with her about a year and a half ago to less than ten people out in alameda, and the gibbs are totally super fun, i can't wait for their record to come out.

videos are up!

ok, i got videos up of most of the show on youtube. you can see them here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/diseriq

of the video, age of irony got cut off during the recording cuz i guess the camera battery died and andrei and tony had to switch it out. anyways, i uploaded everything else onto youtube except for our performances of on the hill and you don't love me anymore, cuz they were newer to our set and came off kind of weak. otherwise, everything sounds pretty good from my stand point, although i get a bit off key during fear of death, and i think i'm over projecting a bit too much in general...need to work on that! as for the sound, well the fucking bass is like omnipotent, and keyboards are totally drowned out. corey thinks he needs to get new speakers to make his bass louder, but clearly, it is more than loud enough on its own for a small club! anyway, we'll get the balance better next time. i think we all just need to work at being able to control our individual volumes, like knowing when to be louder and in the foreground as the lead, and when to be more subtle and in the background providing support. which is tough when you're working with loud electric instruments, but we'll get it together, i'm sure.

report on the show last night

success! it went really really well. turnout was good. still didn't sell a single damn cd. oh the $3000 folly. but i thought we played really really well and didn't really fuck up to badly. a couple of the new songs were a big rough, and the t-rex cover had a botched beginning that was too fast, so we had to start over, which irritated corey, but i was dude, it's not like the cover was ever gonna sound tight. besides i liked it better all trashy and garage rock like. anyways, we played:

birthday suit
inspire
fem politique
popstar, for sure
oh tyler
persona
on the hill
solid gold easy action (t-rex)
age of irony
you don't love me anymore
fear of death
anal fixation

as far as the sound, i'm told that the bass was a bit too loud, and the keyboards too soft. but i thought we had a fat wall of sound regardless! we got video of about 95% of the show, so my plan is to transfer and edit all of that tomorrow and get it up to youtube and onto dvds asap.

like cramming for a big test

that's what practice feels like, cuz we ain't altogether ready. i guess we'll probably end up cutting some songs if they haven't come together by thursday, but that'd be a shame, i suppose. oh well. gonna be rehearsing all this week. it really is a challenge to pull together a full set with two guys who have only been in the band for three months, but hopefully we can pull it off without too many tunes being absolute trainwrecks!

i updated the MEDIA section today. now with more obvious direct links to our youtube page, and a flickr page i created for hosting photos and shit. kinda neat!