stud show

Thanks to all y'all who came out last night to the show at the Stud. We had a problem right away, one of girls from Blasfemme was under 21 and the club wouldn't let them play. Sucked.

Anyway, Tommi and I played some songs - they were:

Older Brother
What is Beauty.
Eulogy
I want to have Fun
Love 2.0
Die Young
Out of Fashion
Yr Sex
The Revolting Youth

So there were three new ones in there. They were a bit shaky, but I at least managed to remember most of the words most of the time! Everybody asked about the whereabouts of Jimo and if/when he'd be coming back from the jungle. We do not know. We just do not know...

Next show - Sunday Dec 4th @ KIMO'S - PARAE's last show ever at Kimo's :(

PCN CDs are here

Ok, first off, lest i sound like an absolute whiner in some of these blog posts, let me clarify my position. I think most people would agree, looking for and applying for a job is simply the worst. It sucks. Having a band or musical project is a lot like constantly having to apply for a job over and over. In a sense, you're constantly shouting, PAY ATTENTION TO US, LIKE ME!! And that, at times, well most of the time, makes me feel like an asshole. Now, there are a lot of aspects to life that I have conditioned myself to block out, unfortunately I'm not wired properly to still not feel like an asshole when I'm trying to shamelessly promote the band and get some miniscule fragment of people to ever so vaguely give it a fragment of their attention. Let alone give the music a chance. It's a personal problem. Now, many of my close associates would argue, "But Eriq, you are an asshole in general anyways, why do you have a problem being socially gregarious and uncompromising with your own self promotion?" And the answer is, I just don't know. Maybe if I did cocaine all the time, the impenetrable self-confidence that I require might manifest itself. Unfortunately, cocaine gives me the shits.

Regardless, the album has gotten a couple write ups by some blogs, which is completely fucking awesome. Thank you! At the end of the day, we just want the album to be heard, because I'm sure as hell not capable of listening to it anymore.

So the PCN CDs are here, and third time's a charm, no fuck-ups with the artwork or the printing - yay! They look perfect. Speaking of perfect things, let me briefly address the album cover. The album cover is EXACTLY as I envisioned it from conception. I am so very proud of it. Tommi painted most of it, definitely all the harder technical stuff, and I assisted with more of the grunt work. These internet Gifs and Jpegs do not do it justice - at all. If someone thinks it is ugly, that's totally fine. But it is exactly what I envisioned. It's an homage to a highly unique cult movie series. If you've seen them, then you'll get the reference. What I did not want to do was create a Photoshop atrocity, because first off, my Photoshop skills are severely limited as they are. And that shit just dates the work. What I wanted was something real and organic (like the album), and cinematic - that harkened back to the days when movie posters were painted. Now, we weren't making a movie poster, so the goal was to keep the emphasis on the three of us as subtle interpretations of characters the movie series we're referencing, and to me, I think we succeeded. And just like the music, the cover is something that we made, all by ourselves. Don't like it? That's fine. I think it's cool.

We're playing some SF shows - this Saturday at The Stud, and Dec 4th at Kimo's. It'll be our last Kimo's show, as they are closing / changing ownership and discontinuing live performance. They've always been great spot to play with excellent sound, it sucks to be losing that space. The Stud show will be as a duo, and we're not sure if Jimo will be joining for the Kimo's show. Regardless, Tommi and I have been working on a bit of new material and will be playing some the new songs this Saturday.

album cover

we finished the album cover painting earlier this week. used the digital camera to photograph it, which was a challenge or trial and error. not sure if i got the best outcome possible, but got what we got. for the most part it looks exactly how if looks in real life, which was the goal. and it came out exactly as i envisioned. tommi did most of the painting, and i assisted in some areas, doing some of the more simpler grunt work.

i have been trying to market the album to blogs and such. it's kind of like applying for a job, which is horrible and generally something i tend to avoid doing at all costs. perhaps if i had some kind of training as a publicist? it comes down to "what do I write?" and "how will that effect perception?" and "will this encourage the reader to actually check out the music and give it a shot?" the worst aspect is, does it even have any effect at all? my strategy thus far has been to construct a simple email that keeps the focus on the availability of the music online at the bandcamp and the purity of the listening experience available alongside the visual art component that we have provided. presenting the album in a vacuum where it can be judged on it's own merits. is that too pretentious? or not high concept enough? what grabs a stranger's attention via an anonymous email? ought i construct an elaborate yarn filled with falsehoods of adolescent travails, like that one band...you know, the one that i can't fucking stand. out of the thousands of emails sent every day, every week, from bedroom garageband auteur amateurs of "check out my track on soundcloud", "pick me pick me!" how is it that we are to stick out and simply upon only our merits? more so than the merit of simply being 20 years old? what does youth/age have to do with anything? how is that relevant to narrative beyond crass marketing maneuvers?

these blogs, they say that they want to discover "new music", they all say they do. but that's rarely true. they all feed off of each other, a food chain of influence and a trade of cultural kineticism. i'm sure each one would love to be the one to say FIRST and have the mantle of kingmaker of discovering a new artist, but unless they exist in the upper echelon blogdom, i doubt that a persistent course in such action lacks the patience of attention for most part-time music bloggers. perhaps there are a few, i wouldn't know where to look, and even less on initiating their seduction.

we announce ourselves into a vacuum of indifference. is it that our work is unworthy? not forward thinking enough, lacking zeitgeist, or simply bad luck. or are we destined to be overlooked along with a legion of like-minded unknowable others only to be discovered by future hipsters 20-30 years henceforth as part of a renaissance of reappropriation and rediscovery? fuck that shit.

i try and create a noise upon the facebook machine. no one cares, no one cares, facebook is a narcissist's domain, especially among "friends", utterly impunible to marketing of but the cheapest and broadest of virility. it is only the blogs, they are the only hope, yet how does one penetrate such a dominion lacking the hype, interest, or appellations of sex and newness? Richard says we should make more music videos, which would be a fun endeavor, unfortunately one of our band members remains AWOL from all group activities. perhaps we ought to cast a stand-in?

we'll be playing a show on nov 26, just myself and tommi - we'll see what that's like. been a long time since we've done a show as a duo, hopefully we each learned something in the interim. we should have some physical CDs of PCN for sale as well.

shows, things, PCN

we played a few shows, well one PARAE show, that was pretty fun. and then two halloween shows with our ex-bass boy corey (sans jimo) doing Misfits cover sets. the parae show with jimo was our standard 10 song set, and it was pretty blazing. the Misfits sets with corey were a complete mess, but a lot of fun to do, low stakes and all!

tommi and i are still working on the cover painting for Post-Camp/Nonplussed? i've done a lot of the base work, it just up to tommi to finish the actual detailing. it looks really cool, it just needs to be finished already!

we don't have any shows booked at the moment, but something will probably turn up soon. really just trying to get the word out online about the PCN album.