Confessions of a New York City virgin

I'm really psyched to see that the good folks at Traveling12Feet.com have used an excerpt from "New York City" in a pretty cool narrated photo montage that can be viewed here (quicktime) or here (flash). The song plays for the last minute or so. Sweet.

i know where my taxes go while my taxes know nothing about me

last night was the beagle club show. i swear to god those guys get better every single time i see them. they opened with "mr. miller's opus" (listen to it over at my mog page), which i think is the best song to come out last year (period), and a great opening track. and they never looked back. i'll write more about how wonderful they were soon in a more visible place than this remote portopotty on the fringe of the internet fairgrounds. i might even post a picture or two.

drew and the medicinal pen (or you can just call him drew) opened. he opened their last show at goodbye blue monday (which i wish i lived closer to) as well, and he's a really nice guy that's really coming into his own on stage; last time i liked him, this time i really liked him. i picked up his cd and i'll spend some time listening to it tonight. the beagle club guys tell me it's really good. he's having a cd release party this weekend that i wish i could go to.

and now, if you'll allow it, i'll plug myself a tad. green dragon podcasted another one of my songs today...new york city this time. i really can't thank him enough for that. you can check out the podcast here (.mp3 link). if you feel like it, leave him a comment mentioning that you liked hearing it. that'd be rad.

her daze and her nights

i've been reading a pretty good book this weekend called miss misery. it's not the greatest book i've ever read, but it's got a great soundtrack (can books have soundtracks?) and it takes place in new york city and namedrops a ton of places i frequently find myself. and as far as lines go, it's got a few real winners sprinkled about, which is where i got the title for this post. it's about blogging, kinda. but also it's about music and new york and being young and an idiot. basically it's really emo and i am eating it up.

it's come to my attention that the songs available for download on myspace are working kinda funny sometimes (downloading without file extensions?! wtf). this can be solved by just editing the filename or whatever and adding ".mp3" to the end of it.

i had an absolutely lovely weekend. but i'm very sleepy now because of it.

i want you to have these.

there are some things that i knew in high school that i don't know anymore. in high school i knew that eventually, all things would find a way of working themselves out. i used to tell people so all the time. i guess that's the kind of thing you think before you've had your ass kicked by the world a few times, or before you've spent much time riding the new york city subway. what me worry?

also i knew how do to delta/epsilon proofs pretty well and i had a real knack for standardized tests. and i was a much better bowler.

###

i just scratched my face and found a tiny spot that i missed shaving this morning. that's going to drive me f-ing crazy all day.

it's 9am and i'm at work, even though the office doesn't really open until 10. when i am king, the first thing to go will be alternate side street parking laws. the second thing will be tom cruise.

i can think of at least one person who will cringe when they read this, but lately i've been listening a lot to powderfinger's odyssey number 5. and bloc party. still love bloc party. and all the wolf music.

there are 4 songs available for download now at the watched pots myspace page. most of them have been up there streaming for a while, but you can download them now if you want. you are invited and welcome to send them around to anyone you think will like them. you know, not that i think you'd hesitate without my permission. you intarweb folks are an impulsive, lawless bunch. j/k, lolz!!!!!!111one srsly.

...all those songs will eventually appear on the record, which will be given away for free online as well, although they might still see a change or two before they're officially finalized. lyrics and other song info are available in the music section.

oh and one more thing. this happened in lil rhody this week. i've been meaning to show you.

it's not a long walk to my place from here

today is thursday, which means it's alternate street parking day where i live and my car needs to be elsewhere by 8:30 am. it's not usually a big deal because i work, but this week it sucks because i totally planned on sleeping until noon and when my alarm woke me up at 8 and it was raining i basically wanted to throw a temper tantrum.

so i hoof it to my car in the same clothes i wore last night and plan on finding a spot quickly, and returning to my warm bed where i had been oh so happy only minutes before.

but i couldn't find a spot after one circle around the block so i got cranky and just drove 45 minutes out to long island where i've been recording and did some takes on "triple deke." nailed it, dude. on the second take. at least, i think so. i'll have to listen again in a few days. but i sound tired and kinda sick and my playing is a little sloppy. if you're a dork like me, you think that's cool because the lyrics kinda lend themselves to that sort of delivery. or something.

so. it's raining in new york city, and i think i'm going to put myself back to bed now. this day has already been productive.

also in case you missed the memo sam ash still sucks.

were they all just lost in the flood?

i've spent all day so far today listening to old vinyl records. i have a totally sweet turntable that i never use and a really warm sounding old hi-fi amp that i probably paid about $10 for at a yardsale because some yahoo got himself an alpine. old speakers, etc.

the point is that everyone who says rock and roll sounds best on vinyl is 100% right. i have all these records on cd and vinyl. and they all sound better on vinyl. and if it totally doesn't break my bank, i am going to make some vinyl versions of "they're more afraid of you than you are of them" when i finally finish it. from what i hear vinyl is a specialty thing, but is affordable in small quantities. of course i haven't really done much homework on it yet.

but let's talk a bit about the record, since i don't feel like i do much of that anymore and as i've been recently reminded, that is why i started all this writing in the first place.

it's coming along. not without its share of frustration (i just shitcanned all but the drums for "a viking's funeral" so i can redo it in a different key that i can sing better), but it's coming. a song is done when i am still proud of it 2 weeks after the last time i tweaked it. and by that measure, 4/8 songs are done. of course one of those is the centipede song and it doesn't even belong on the album and it's been done for years and it'll probably just be a hidden track but who the f cares? the other three that are done are "if these walls could talk," "i spin forever," and "new york city." i haven't even started "doctor, these headaches" or "triple deke" yet. that leaves "the loudest man on the laugh track" which is the one i earlier intimated might end up sounding like a william shatner song. at this point that is still possibly the case.

in a drawer here at my desk i have about 10 rolls of undeveloped film dating as far back as my sophomore year in college (which is like 5 years ago) and some recent introspection has made me decide to get them developed. for all i know they've expired or something, but they've all been in lightproof cases and all that so i'm just going to hope for the best. the point is, there's going to be a lot on there that's going to hurt to see. but probably a lot also that'll be really nice. and since none of them are labeled, everytime i do one it'll be a surprise. i hope whether nice or not they'll move me forward with this record and with life in general. not that i'm living in the past or anything (not that far in the past anyway) but these film rolls represent to me a lot of shit i've avoided confronting for a long time. i guess i'll keep you posted.

lastly, i know i've linked you to the ex-girlfriend project about a million times by now, but he mentioned the other day how "mary, queen of arkansas" always reminded him of "kara" (who so far is unquestionably the most interesting of his ex's) and that just came on while i was typing all this. on vinyl the way it should be.

it's never going to heal if you keep picking at it

i've posted what looks to be the final version of "new york city" at all the music sites. check it out when you get a chance. i think it sounds pretty good.

i'm not sure how the whole record is going to go just yet, but i'm pretty sure the 2 new songs that are up will be the last 2 on the record, in the order they've appeared. so you can let me know if you think that's dumb.

and i guess you can't see the image of my horrid moustache on myspace unless you join, so if you don't want to do what all the cool kids are already doing, you can check it out without joining anything at pulverradio, all you gotta do is put your mouse over the thumbnail on the bottom right. that picture isn't going to stay there long because the more i look at it the more i get creeped out by myself.

new york city redux

i made something really pretty tonight. i can't wait for you to hear it. but i'm going to. because i want to sleep on it for a while and make sure it's really finished.

for my money, it makes my frustration last night with the recording process totally worth it. because tonight it just all came together and i found myself getting it right in one or two takes, and moving on. and with very few effects and very little mixing, i'm pretty thrilled with the results. but you'll have to judge for yourself at a later date.

i'll be taking down the "new york city demo" at the pulverradio site permanently very soon, so if you love that or something, you should go listen to it a whole lot right now.

quick like a bunny

yo. so today i was in the shower and a lyric kinda came to me so i jumped out (the shower still skeeves me out a bit anyway, see below) to write it down. next thing i know it's about 2 hours later and I've got a song completely written and a demo of it recorded.

now granted the lyrics may change a little bit, and the recording sucks, but i'm kinda proud of it. it's got a last-song-on-the-record feel to it, and i think you might like it. it's called "new york city" and you're encouraged to listen to it and tell your friends about it and listen some more. i'll probably only leave it up for a few days, until i get a better version of "a viking's funeral" finished, at which point i'll be putting that back up.

it's available to listen to at all the usual places: pulverradio, myspace, and purevolume.

ps: i did a lot of work on the rest of this site this weekend, just making it look better and shit. take a look around. it's more...elegant.