RPM '09

Just dropping a note to say that I'm putting tracks up from this year's RPM album (as yet untitled.) You can find 'em here at Pete's RPM Page.


More later...

-p

Puke!

This is surely a sign of the end-times.

Jesus and I are a year older!

Howdy, strangers! It seems a shame that I have not blogged since September, but you know me better than that, right? I'm not surprised at that! Anywho, Christmas was great. We survived the foot-plus snow in Seattle (yeah, a dusting of snow shuts this town down,) and headed up to Debbie's house. It was a joy to watch Annabel get into Christmas and run around asking "what's that" over and over again. She really is into shoes now, so every pair of shoes was magical. Christmas gets to be such a non-event in early adulthood, so having a child really kicks it back into the stratosphere. I was worried that there would be no Christmas this year due to the awful weather. It seems that everyone out here had some hitches in holiday plans because of the snow. Melissa got me Rock Band 2 for Christmas, which was stranded at Matthew and Heidi's place until yesterday. Melissa went to pick it up, and dropped Annabel off at Grandma's place so that we could have a baby-free night as well. We spent it playing Rock Band and heading out for an early birthday celebration at The Bohemian in West Seattle. We ate a bite and had a drink, and then in walked Nicole, Keaver, Ali, and John. We joined tables with them, and I hopped up to the piano in the place. There's nothing that I enjoy more than tickling ivories, so it was a blast to rip out some boogie-woogie and stride stuff on their old player piano. Sweet!

Today, for my official birthday, Melissa and I BOTH slept in. No "your turn with the baby". We had breakfast at home, and headed out to see "Frost/Nixon". Holy crap, that is a darn good film. We were pleasantly surprised at how funny and entertaining it was. Both leads did an incredible job in their roles. We met up with Matthew and Heidi, and headed up to Ballard for a stop at the comic shop and dinner at the Hi-Life. All in all, it was a great weekend.

In sadder news, a moment of silence is in order for our good old pal Cookie. She spent 15 years on earth, and was laid to rest on Saturday. i will miss her crazy shenanigans. I was out for coffee this evening, and a dalmatian dog went walking by. It was kind of like she was saying goodbye one last time. Sweet, that!


P.S. Thank you to all the folks who sent me a birthday message on Facebook. Rock Band party at my house?

New Oasis Review

Sorry it’s been a while… there, I said it!


Man, I’ve been awash in new music lately. Let’s just say that it is feeling like the Brit-pop heyday of the nineties all over again. As of late, I’ve been digging new tunes from Paul Weller, The Verve, and Oasis. The Weller record is strange, but fine. It’s hard to believe that The Verve has been around almost 20 years, and we’ve just received their fourth studio album. If you dig the other three, the new one, Forth (oh, I get it…) will fit right in. With that aside, let’s get to the important matters.

So, I’m listening to an advance copy of Oasis’ new record, Dig Out Your Soul. Another album, another silly title that makes no sense. Reviews have been very slow in appearing on this record (granted it’s not out until October 6th,) but most interviewers who have heard tracks have been praising the boys for a return to form. I disdain anyone who says that a band has returned to form, because it implies that they’ve not developed in the years since their first albums, and that they slipped colossally from the heights of those days. Oasis never really fell from that peak, they just made slow progress for the last few albums. Their last LP was well received critically, and it certainly made a lot of people interested in hearing what this new LP was going to sound like. In a nutshell, it sounds quite good and quite different.

To say that Oasis has had a rough-go over the last decade is an understatement. They inherited the reputation for following in the footsteps of rock greatness and excess, sharing that lineage with acts like The Who, Led Zeppelin, and Guns and Roses. Very few acts have the talent to back up rock’s excessive dark side. While the world was tuning in to the crappy pop-slosion of the ‘90s and early 2000s, Oasis slowly ground away at a return to anthemic rock. I still reference their first record as probably the best debut record of all time. Their second LP blew away an notion of a sophomore slump. By the time they dropped #3, the cocaine snowstorm (ala Stone Roses) started to blow its fierce winds upon the land of Gallagher. Not content to simply overdub a few guitar solos on top of each other, Noel wanted 37 tracks of him playing at once. The idea was to make some kind of neo-Wall of Sound record to blow out all the stops. What resulted was a record with brilliant singles and much filler. The fact that they hardly ever play a single song from the record live is a testament to what must be the internal feeling about that era. Not wanting to sound negative about it (as I really do like that record,) let’s just say that “All Around the World” more than paid for the bloat on the rest of the record. Literally. I still hear it on AT&T commercials… I digress.

Stuck with a poorly received album, founding members quit. They still made plenty of money touring, and still had some cred with fans and critics. The following records were a document of a band in transition. There were moments of brilliance with their new members and somewhat stripped-down sound. I remember listening to albums like Heathen Chemistry and Standing on the Shoulder of Giants with a grimace. I had to make plenty of excuses in my head to get through them. In the years since, I’ve fallen in love with those records because I stopped expecting them to equal the brilliance of their first two LPs. Enter Don’t Believe the Truth. Expecting another by-the-numbers album, I was totally floored to hear the band in very strong form. This was the record that I was waiting for. I could pull it out and play it for non-fans and feel like there needn’t be excuses. I saw them on that tour (as with almost all of their US tours,) and was amazed at how it worked so well live. Mind you, their drummer was Ringo Starr’s son. Young Mr. Starkey was also a member of The Who, having been trained by Keith Moon himself. As much as I loved Alan White, Zak was amazingly better. He survived until halfway through this record, before quitting for good. Sad, that.

I’m sitting here listening to the new record which will drop shortly. One thing is for sure, Noel’s claim that they were throwing out the typical rules of songwriting, rings true. The album is very groove focused. There are definite shades of Noel’s work with Chemical Brothers. I just am not hearing a single on the entire record, which is about the best compliment that I can level at it. That sounds negative, but if I’m not hearing a single, it means that the album works as a whole, with consistent quality. There are no attempts to sound like any other record of theirs. Maybe it’s due to the fact that they switched labels, but it is very welcome to have a cohesive and well-made album from this band again. Overall, the album is very psychedelic without relying too much on forced lyrics about plasticine and rocket ships. Everything down to the artwork suggests that they were going for the psychedelic feel this time out. Does it work? For damn sure. In comparison to The Beatles, this album arrives as a kind of drone-y and heavier version of the Pepper/Mystery Tour era.

Let’s take it by the numbers:

1) “Bag it Up” – Nice slinky psych-pop opener. You can hear the total shift in sound here. Right from the get-go, most of the classic Oasis elements have been thrown out of the window. It’s immediate and claustrophobic at the same time. The care that they put into the grooves on this record really show how far they’ve come as a band. The beauty of this record is in the rhythm section. It is sad to see Zak gone, because he and Andy Bell are so interlocked on this album. The end of the track dips into The Beatles territory (surprise,) which sounds very apt.

2) “The Turning” – The groove continues. They’ve gone into very dark territory for this track. The layered keyboard work here is quite nice. Setting tone for the rest of the album, it is a long song, which relies more on mood and groove to keep the listener interested. Oh, it ends with a bit of “Dear Prudence”… fun!

3) “Waiting for the Rapture”- Holy crap! Once you’ve heard the opening to this track, you know that you’re in for something quite different than normal Gallagher fare. This album is very minimal in so many ways. This track is pure minimal joy. I’m a sucker for Noel’s vocals, and this song has some fine falsetto work. Overall, it’s a very minimal-yet-swampy T-Rex vibe.

4) “The Shock of Lightning”- This is the first single. The angular melody is gorgeous and raw. Some typically silly lyrics (Love is a time machine up on a silver screen… err… yep,) but it sounds so outrageously anthemic that you cannot resist just bobbing your head along.

5) “I’m Outta Time” – The requisite Oasis ode to Lennon, including samples of John from an interview. Liam so desperately wants to BE John Lennon. Noel makes fun of him for it, but Liam’s taking the “proof is in the pudding” approach. He really has come a long way toward being a great songwriter, and this tune is absolutely gorgeous. It reminds me of Free As a Bird and Real Love in so many ways. Mellotron ahoy!

6) “(Get Off Your) High Horse Lady”- This one is quite interesting. It’s basically a rewrite of “Hi Heel Sneakers” mixed with the “Give Peace a Chance” rhythm track. When it really kicks in at about 1:40, once again we are in non-typical Oasis territory. The minimalism is confusingly brilliant. Maybe Noel should have been stripping it down years ago.

7) “Falling Down” – This track is very Chemical Brothers. It really reminds me of “Setting Sun”, which Noel wrote with the Chems. It slows down that track and goes for a beautiful and creepy vibe. I’ve been dying for a solo record by Noel, and this is what I would imagine it to sound like. Intriguing. It’s funny how George Harrison was tapping this kind of songwriting style back with “Within You Without You”. Lennon did it with “Tomorrow Never Knows” as well. Those two were… advanced.

8) “To Be Where There’s Life”- Aw hell, I’m gonna draw a comparison to Kula Shaker here. This is what KS could have been if they did not get lost in the joss stick mist of Krishna consciousness. This kind of reminds me getting stoned in college and grooving to “Raagy One” by Kula Shaker. This is probably the best put together tune on the record, sitars and all.

9) “Ain’t Got Nothin’” – Damn this track is gritty. Perhaps the weakest of the bunch, it is what Mikey would describe a “Hauptschule”. Nothing clever or deep about it, it must be fun to play on stage.

10) “The Nature of Reality” – I thick blues, it is riff-rock to the core. If you go for that sort of thing, have at it…

11) “Soldier On”- Hey, it’s “Mambo Sun” from T-Rex and “Better Man” from Heathen Chemistry! Well, after that intro part is gone, it is quite dreamy and spooky. It’s a nice finish to the album. Liam sounds very good on this track.


I very much like this record. Psychedelic music has been threaded through the decades since the ‘60s, and this is another take on the genre. It really is a departure from the Oasis formula, and bodes well for their next release. You do owe it to yourself to pick up a copy if you admire dark and moody psychedelic albums.

Harde-har-har

Follow the link and spend the 30 seconds to complete this game. I assure you that the song over the end credits will make you fall out of your chair...

You Have to Burn the Rope

No Words Can Describe This!

HULK SMASH!

Quick note... saw the Hulk movie yesterday, and loved it. I researched a bit and heard that there are quite a few hidden Easter eggs in the film. Google "G4 hulk interview", watch at about 2:58-3:00, and you can see (by the HUlk's right hand) the figure of Captain America with his shield quite clearly. You may need to watch a few dozen times, but it is for sure there. WOW! Dorky...

Wrap-up from last night.

Last night's show went well. Aside from a broken saxophone (fixed with tape,) the show went well. It always feels good to give back to the community, and this year's cause was pretty great. Considering the amount of homeless people in Seattle, anything to ease their burden is fantastic. Thanks to all of you who made it out for a fun evening.

Other than that, I'm now hopelessly addicted to Facebook, so find me on there. I just wish they had more music options.

Noise for the Needy

realizing that my previous post with this title was blank (duh,) I thought I'd rectify that. We are playing tonight at the Sunset up in Ballard at 9 PM. The show is one of the benefit concerts for Noise for the Needy this year. All this leads me to give a piece of advice to all you rockstars in training. DON't SHAVE YOUR HEAD BEFORE A GIG!!! I'm remembering the last time I shaved my head and then played a show. Let's have an equation of what will happen, shall we?

1 hot venue + 1 bald head + hard work = nothing to stop sweat from rolling into one's eyes. Ouch!

Maybe I should rock the headband?

Dig it...

Autumn Island by The True Bugs

Every once in a while, I like to slip in an album review on this old blog. I’ve toyed with the idea of just having a review-only blog, but that’s another battle for another day. Anywho, I’ve been addicted to this album for the last week now, and it’s time to shine a light on a great album from 2007. I am speaking of Autumn Island, the swansong by The True Bugs. Let dissect…

The now defunct True Bugs have made a great rock record. The music grabs you from the get-go due to the immediacy of the songs coupled with supremely evocative lyrics. Mike Gervais has a great way of weaving little vignettes of heartbreak and resignation into beautiful self-contained universes full of political fire, social disillusionment, and an overwhelming adoration of the natural world.

The album is coming from a very specific corner of the post-“American Century” landscape. Anyone half-conscious of the current political climate who was born during the seventies or eighties will immediately latch on to the coming-of-age in modern America theme of the album. In less capable hands, this could have turned out to be a preachy mess. If you need a comparison, listen to early Springsteen or Mellencamp. Mike carves out the same territory by making intensely personal and detailed observations from the point of view of very real characters who inhabit his 3 minute slices of life. The power of all three as songwriters is that they bring you directly into the lives that they are examining without pretense or judgment.

The lyrics are dense and beautiful. Here are some random lines from the record (as best as I can transcribe…) I’ll arrange them as sentences, because they sound as if they should be in the middle of a novel.

Cars drive by on a tandem-highway. Paul and I work on my bike in the driveway
‘til Diane says “come in I made some dinner darling.”

Spiced tea steeped in its cup on the table. Sirens scream out a warning as flashes burn and as ashes fall on land that’s known a thousand fathers.

Silently she wipes the grease off of the cutting board, smiling as she’s dying for another hour more.

Drops cling to drops as the air begins cooling and fall through the mid-Autumn sky.

Open the door - handle creaks as it turns - to newspaper smell and dry eyes.

And no, he’s not coming back again, letters can’t bring a reply. Desert sand drains his memory, staining rocks red as they dry.

Cracked into wakefulness - coffee and corridors -the river is rusty today.


See what I mean? The man is no slouch when it comes to filling his songs with visceral details.

All this talk of the lyrics doesn’t mean that musically there is something lacking. The album straddles the territory of Neil Young and ‘90s rock. Fans of Wilco (the “real” Wilco, of AM/Being There/ Summerteeth fame) will feel right at home. It’s all very competent sounding, with great little flourishes here and there. One of my favorite tunes on the record is “Morning After”. It’s all very carnival-esque with flashes of Dark Side of the Moon-like saxophone in the opening. Much like other songs on the record, it’s a twist on familiar conventions of rock and roll. There’s enough to feel comfortable about in the music, but there’s always a bit of something extra thrown in. “Morning After” falls into a very slow blue-beat feel at times before shifting back into gorgeously slow guitar passages. Many a modern band could learn more about playing with slow intensity by listening to this record than thousands of others. Not for one second is any of the power or passion lost because people aren’t screaming and playing at breakneck speeds.

Overall, there’s not much to dislike about this record. In fact, it’s damn fine. It’s a very smart album without being too clever. In a strange sort of way, I would love to sit down with the Bush administration and throw this record on. I think that it would be a very revealing picture of where we are as a result of their policies and practices. Yeah, it really is that political in its undertones, but as I said before, in less capable hands, it could have been too preachy. What we’re left with is a fantastic snapshot of one writers take on modern America.

Come on already

Here in Seattle, it feels like September. It's June, and the heat is still on. Sigh. Oh well, another cup of tea should do the trick...

Taking stock and making new music

I finally got around to starting my next solo record last night. I have most of the material written already, so all that's left is recording. I smashed through the first song, "Call Me Ishmael" yesterday. I've still got a bit of vocal work on it, but I'll post it to my myspace page tonight. There are some songs left over from The Curious Flying Machine as well as some brand new ones.

Speaking of solo stuff, I started cataloging all of my songs from about 2003 onward. I have around 100 songs recorded since then, but I know that I'm missing a bunch. The scary thing is that I know I've "lost" a bunch because I never recorded them. It sucks to look through old notebooks and find lyrics or chords to something that was never recorded. I guess Noel Gallagher was right. If you go to sleep and wake up the next day having forgotten the previous day's song, well, it was crap anyway!

All of the cataloging was pretty interesting. Looking at the songs, there were definitely threads of ideas that were dropped. Theoretically, I could go back and assemble all of the stuff into the intended albums/EPs, but it's great to just have an Excel spreadsheet listing all of the locations, names, and details for the last 5 years of creative output. Here's some of what I've found:


Clever Love EP - recorded in 2003, and reviewed on Threeimaginarygirls.com
Track List:
Clever Love
The Unwritten Letter
Birthday Waltz
Silly Boy Dreams
Weeping Wall
I'll Get You (by The Beatles of course)

Perhaps the Next Day EP - recorded in 2003 and intended as a follow-up to the previous EP. I never threw this one together, and some of the material landed on Shutdown Vol. 1
Track List

Perhaps the Next Day
Proof
The Grand Exit
Lonely Surf
Little Things That Happen
In the Meantime
Crying (Roy Orbison cover)

Shutdown Vol. 1 LP - I have a real soft-spot for this album. There was so much material recorded, that I found 4-5 unused backgrounds along with rough demos for almost all of the songs as well. I never did finish designing the cover for the album, but imagine me on the beach, a surfboard, and a typically rainy Seattle day. Fun! If I were all famous and stuff, someone could make one of those outrageously expensive "Super-Deluxe" versions of this album with the second disc full of unused songs and drastically different demo versions. The (d) next to a track name means that there is a different demo version as well.
Track List

The Mighty Crash
Repeat History / Godspeed (d)
Perhaps the Next Day (d)
Slide (d)
Ghost Talk (written with Matt Gervais from Curtains)
Time
Shutdown
Tourism
Lonely Surf
Bad Words (d)
Surfer Blues
SfL (written after the death of my Grandmother, Louise. It stands for Song for Louise)

Unused songs:

4
Wicked
Normandy
Hole In Your Heart
The Moon Was Out (vocals only doo-wop song... someday I'll finish it)


The City of Good Neighbors LP - This one is the first "cohesive" album I've ever written. Everything on it was written specifically for it. Some of this stuff ended up on the first Curtains For You record. It's pretty psychedelic at times, and very poppy at others.
Track List

A Beginning
The Big One
The Pugilist
King for a Day
Insomnia Can Kill You
The Diagnosis
She Married the Earth
Futurebright
The Ballad of Gavril Ivolgin
Small Change
The Island Life
Skating with Wilma
(HIDDEN TRACK) The City of Good Neighbors

After CoGN, I started to write a straight ahead pop record intended to be called Dumb Angel. I never finished the album, and Dumb Angel wasn't even written until my last record for the RPM Challenge. Here is what I had for the album.
Track List

Halictidae
Hummingbird Blues
Surprise
The New Deal
Licorice Skies
Watches & Trains
The Missing Piece
6/5




Next comes my last LP, The Curious Flying Machine I've blogged about it before, so not too much to say...
Track List

Roadtrip to Disaster
The Great Land Grab
They Could Have Been Bonnie & Clyde
Just Like That, She's Gone
Sal's Wild Years
Sal & Ramona
Safety Glass Blues
Dumb Angel
Blueprints
I Can't Explain
The Curious Flying Machine


The next record has these songs so far

Call Me Ishmael
Selling The Future
Briars & Brambles
Apex Blues
Ballad of Molly McGinty
The Song of the Ants
What it Takes to Get By


So, in my hyper-OCD way, it feels good to have accomplished a pile of stuff in the last 5 years. Maybe someday I'll go back and finish some of this stuff. Until then, they all live on my hard drives collecting virtual dust.

Noise for the Needy

Album Endorsement

I don't normally endorse many modern albums, but this one's a no-brainer. You owe it to yourself to go and pick up Freedom Wind by The Explorers Club. Find them here.

Also, they will be playing Chop Suey on the 17th of June. Wanna go?

Update the damn thing already!

I know, I know, no updates in a while. Here's the scoop:

Melissa and I left Annabel with Grandma D on Saturday so that we could go out with Doris and Chris. We took in a showing of Iron Man (AWESOME!) and then went off to the most unfortunately-named place in America (well, besides Bunghole Liquors in Boston,)the Beveridge Place Pub. Try explaining where you are going to someone over the phone. They will frantically be googling "beverage place pub", and ending up with nada. Anywho, it was a blast to get out of the house without the little one in tow.

Speaking of the little one, Annabel is just shy of 8 months, and she is displaying super-genius powers already. She's been crawling for a long while now, pulling herself up on furniture, and has identified me repeatedly as "Da Da". Next week, she's probably going to balance my checkbook. Here is a shot of her conducting static experiments while smartly wearing protective gear.


Other than that, I heard the demos from Brian Wilson's next song-cycle, That Lucky Old Sun. It is quite good. It reminds me of Orange Crate Art, which was a great song, but a terrible album (thanks Van Dyke!) It should be released in September, and will no doubt be compared to sMiLe for its content and style.

The Curtains record is moving along. We are hoping to drop it sometime around the end of July.

Sony GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

Let's start this post by saying that there are two companies that I have an all-consuming white-hot hatred of. Apple is one, and Sony is the other. I'll leave Apple alone, namely because they owe me $500 right now, and I don't want to get iScrewed out of my refund. They already iScrewed me for an extra $130 plus $8 in fees this week. Once they sort out the financial hoo-hah, then I'll proceed to rip on them. For now, let's turn our focus on Sony...

Sony has built a reputation on making over-priced gear that only plays nice with other Sony equipment/software. Going back to the days of Beta vs. VHS, Sony has been trying to make the world see that Sony alone will solve all of our technical problems/needs. I've owned TVs, Discmans (should I put a copyright on that... I'm sure Sony would want that,) gaming platforms, and countless other little doodads. They have usually been over-priced compared to other similar products, but there was always some kind of implied quality to a Sony product. For some reason, Sony products break down more for me than any other brand, so the quality may not be so great. Granted, I'm a little bitter because I own an HDDVD player, but that is not shading my opinion too much. I understand that Sony was angry over losing Beta (still,) and that they basically just paid the movie studios MONDO amounts of money to make themselves successful. I admit that "buying friends" sucks in real life, but it sure works in business. I digress...

I am the proud owner of a great little HD camcorder from Sony. It was a very generous gift to Melissa and I shortly before the birth of our daughter. I have spent countless hours of my life with video camera in hand, coupled with a good amount of time with both linear and non-linear editing systems from broadcast tapes to DV. I don't do it for a living, but I'm the guy that often gets tapped to assemble and edit things when people around me have footage. That said, I fell in love with our camera because the video looked so fantastic. When hooked up to ye olde HDTV, this camera rocks! Unfortunately, it comes with some serious caveats.

The first thing that I noticed about shooting in HD was that if the lighting was perfect, the shot was perfect. Daytime light means good HD footage. Conversely, "poor" light (anything less than a bright sunlit day) means that the footage is so noisy that it is almost unusable. I would love to have a film crew setting up lights around me as I document the everyday awesomeness of having a child, but that isn't practical. Having a camera to catch the first time that one's child does this hugely random and monumental leap in development is great. Having to have a professional lighting setup to come out with decent looking footage is impossible. I shot our proceedings last weekend in the studio in pretty low-light conditions. Studios are dark places. The footage shot looks grainier than if we had shot it on 8mm. Now that seems like a great effect, but when it's not intentional, I get angry. Grr.. Hulk no like camera noise!

The straw that broke this camel's back is the fact that Sony wants to shoot video in its own format which is incompatible with EVERYTHING except for the piece of shit software that comes with the camera. I have thousands of dollars worth of editing software, and I have to use something that looks like it was designed for Windows 95 . All that it allows is looking at the footage... not editing it. Also, I have a pretty beefy rig to watch the video on, and the included software cannot even run the video from an internal hard-drive without choppiness and audio mis-matches. When I found a plugin for other media players, they did just fine. Even Windows Media Player can do a better job than the software made for the camera. Put that aside, and you're stuck with footage in some Sony-only format called m2ts. They will allow you to convert it all to Mpeg2, but the audio is still in some exotic Sony-only style, so all that can be done is to watch the footage (hopefully) and not edit it. Thank you, Sony!

Having a mountain of footage means that I need some kind of slick workflow to get it ready to be edited or archived. Having to convert each file (thereby doubling the space it takes on the hard-drive) means countless hours wasted waiting for the footage to be "ready" to use. Sony refuses to let go once again, and the consumer suffers. I feel sorry for the people who bought cameras similar to this and have no clue as to what to do with the footage. Even backing it up to a DVD to watch on the TV requires hours of internet research, experimentation, and technical know-how. Mom and Pop America are not going to have the patience for that. They suggest that you plunk down big bucks for Vegas, their own editing suite. Of course, they fail to mention that Vegas does not work with the format particularly well. Sony drops the ball just to be totally in control once again. Whether it is their penchant for making goofy Sony-only batteries (that are impossible to find,) or their love of walling themselves off from the rest of technology land, it is time for Sony Corporation to stop being cocky assholes about their proprietary hardware/software. Even Apple, obsessed with locking down every piece of hardware and software it makes, still bows to the public now and again. Sony just doesn't get it.

Don't get me wrong, I dearly love the camera when it works. It takes breathtakingly great HD video. It has outstanding battery life, a HUGE hard-drive, and hooks up to my television with ease. Even the built in mic sounds good. It's just that when I shoot some footage, I would like to know that it can exist outside of the camera it was shot on. I would like to load up my copy of Adobe Premiere, and be able to use said footage.


Aside form the doom and gloom, I've edited together about 20 minutes of "making of" from the sessions. I'm intending to get about 50 minutes of footage into some kind of cohesive film about this new album that we are doing. The eventual plan is that we are going to rent out the Jewel Box Theater to show the film and then play a private show for friends and family. I would love it if we did some sort of formal dress-up affair. Sounds fun, right?

Here's a peek behind the curtain(s)...

Tired... ZzzzZZzZZ

Well, the lads and I are in the studio this weekend recording our next LP. That means that anyone wishing to get in contact with me should just wait until Monday. Our first day in the studio was uber-productive. We laid down 6(!) tracks today. That's darn good for a a day in the studio. We are recording at London Bridge here in Seattle. My favorite thing about this record so far is that we are recording old-school. That means live in the studio. That means if one of us screws up a take, we can't use it. That's how records were made before the days of digital. We're laying it down to 2 inch tape as well. How sweet is that? It all feels very '60s right now. Other than Oasis, I cannot think of one modern band that still records live in studio... well, except for Mudcrutch, but that's a record review for anbother day! All in all we are all very tired but very pleased with how this monster is turning out.

I'm trying to document as much as possible on the old DV camera, but studios don't make for sexy TV. In fact, recording studios are pretty much the most boring place to be for 90% of one's time there. It's the 10% when the red light is on that counts...

Man, I'll get over Brian Wilson one of these days...

So, as the title suggests, I'm stuck in Wilson land yet again. I picked up Sunflower/Surf's Up used at Easy St. Records and proceeded to bash the two of them without mercy on the ride home. WRONG! Well, at least half-wrong. I am seriously starting to put Sunflower upon the pedestal of Beach Boys awesomeness. Serously, I'm starting to think that "This Whole World" is one of Brian's best songs EVER! Admittedly, I'm a total music dork, but the man can pack more musical development in two minutes of song than anyone I've ever heard. Go and iTunes that sucker right now... I dare you! Anywhen, the rest of the album is very solid. The only hitches are that "Add Some Music to Your Day" (the single) is really poor, and that "Forever" was sung by Uncle Jesse on Full House not once, but twice. Does anyone want to help me beat up Mike Love yet? It's sad really, because "Forever" is so goll-darn beautiful. I'm poised to steal the whole na-na-na background vocals for my next tune.

Speaking of next tunes, I've got a new one rolling around my brain. I'll post it up as soon as I demo it. In other music news, Curtains will be heading into the studio to record the next record this weekend. I'll post some pictures and/or snippets next week.

Oh, Annabel has a new tooth to be celebrated. Huzzah! You should head on over to Melissa's blog to see a cute picture of Annabel with her hearing gear on. 'Nuff said for now...

Paging Peter?

Where have I been lately? Sheesh, every time I start a blog the promise of frequent updates seems to evaporate rather quickly. Let's play catch-up, shall we?

- I went paintballing for the first time last weekend, and I have a bruise the size of Miami on my left thigh. It's moving from purple to yellow, so that's a good thing... I think. Ryan (the birthday boy and impetus for paintball) was driven there blindfolded, and was really quite pleased. Fun!

- In a sleep-deprived stupor, I nearly sliced a finger on my left hand off while doing dishes. Today is day 2 without a bandage on it, and I'm glad that my healing ability (while not quite Wolverine level) is pretty darn fast.

- Melissa, Annabel, and I went to the beach with the Hales a couple of weekends ago when it was 80 degrees here in Seattle. One week later, it was snowing. Yes, snowing.

-Speaking of snow, Curtains For You had a snowball fight before taking the stage at The Comet last Friday. We played a frantic short set before giving the stage over to the boys in Apple War. They were quite good, and had a 300 pound organ in tow which had a Leslie speaker and a Moog built in. Wow...

- Speaking of Curtains, we had a hilarious photo shoot last night. It involved costume changes and meat. Melissa and Annabel also attended, and little baby Annabel made it into a few of the band shots.

That's mostly what has been happening as of late. A few things that have been stealing brain power away from me as of late are Jim Noir's excellent new album, Rainbow Six Vegas 2, and finally getting around to finishing Dies the Fire. It's not a great book, but is has some fun moments. And now for a random picture of Dr. Strange, because I just got around to watching that new movie about him, and just got volume three of essential Dr. Strange form Amazon the other day.