On Wavves, Grizzly Bear, Animal Collective and life:
http://blog.limewire.com/posts/18537-indie-rock-baseball-animal-collective-vs-grizzly-bear/

I assume you know about the big show on Saturday, and I'll say it clear: the new Giraffes record is the best thing i've ever played on, and the achievement i'm most proud of. It's nice to be able to say that at age 38. How it ranks in the Giraffes discography will be up to you, of course. Still, it’s a dense, foreboding - but sophisticated - slab of rock, and i'm excited to hear what you think of it.

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Not entirely unrelated, and not long ago, i was contacted by John Bendik, my old pal from the Cash Registers! Another figure from the past, demystified, the Facebook way. Still, this was indeed a surprise, only because i assumed he was such a luddite he didn't even own a computer (except maybe to record). But, he's in the mix now, chattier than ever, and he even made a Cash Registers page.

That guy was a riot too, one of those “write 10 songs a week” guys. I can still sing hooks from demos he played me once, 8 years ago. Oddly (though a theme that would repeat throughout this now nearly 20-year long musical adventure), despite logging over two years with the Registers, only one thing ever got released: a perfectly dandy 7" record. I'm not sure if they ever did anything else after i quit, but it sure seems like they recorded a lot: despite having played almost all the material on the page, i'm pretty certain i appear on only one of those tracks (suitably, the instrumental, "Bear Mountain Jump"). I have no idea who's playing bass on the remainder. Great tunes regardless.

All that said, my favorite stuff i ever recorded with John - and still one of the best things i've played on, period - wasn't even the Cash Registers at all, but rather Music From Big Punk, a 10- or 12-song side project he whipped together to indulge both his country and his musique concrete leanings. It was Johnny on about 19 different guitars and sound effects, me playing bass and a Vox organ with two broken keys and Robin van Maarth making her drumming debut, on a kit with no cymbals. The finished product was never released, and i quit playing with him after that, though looking back on it, i can't for the life of me recall why. I loved that guy, he was one of the most prolific composers i've ever met, and things he taught me about music and songwriting (both by design and example) have stuck with me ever since. It was also probably the best drumming Robin ever did. Despite its non-release, it's a personal Top 5 recording. And i am proud to own (i believe) the only existing copy of his incredibly disturbing “Snuff Girl.”

Speaking of drumming debuts, The Giraffes may have been the only band that could've possibly unseated my now #2 selection, The Turkey Sessions by Julia Marvel. What a fun, funny time for all involved. I swear that whole thing came together in, what, a month and a half, and with a guy who'd played drums once IN HIS LIFE before joining the band. Plus, recording in Julzie's loft on Manhattan Ave., rather than, oh, a studio like most bands was a decision based in practicality rather than any attempt to be lo-fi, but the weird fidelity definitely suits the music. (I'll never forget DJ Mojo saying "Great demo, can't wait to hear the real thing." Keep up the good work at Trash, big guy.) We actually went to a studio (and a very good one) for a second batch of songs that never got finished. At a pivotal point, Dave confessed he thought the material was not up to par, and the band quickly fizzled out. It hurt at the time, but looking back on it, he was correct in his assessment. There were a couple of potential hits, but ultimately, i enjoy the Marv's legacy being accurately represented by the compactness of The Turkey Sessions.

And, speaking of odd sounding recordings, coming in at #3 is the Denver Zest (the band in which i met Tris McCall), in this case the DZ vs. Peekskill Sizzle, the debut recorded by James and Jeff (and was my introduction to the two of them). A very solid case could be made for the second outing (vs. Fon-Du-Lac Savage Attack), but the immediacy and sheer weirdness of the sound of the Sizzle makes it the one i play for people who've never previously encountered the Zest. I've never heard a CD sound quite like this, before or since, and it definitely suited Jesse's quick funny songs. As for the Fon-du-Lac Savage Attack, it was during those sessions that i first met J. Braun. This one features my favorite DZ song, "Signing Dad's Cast", and rounds out my personal Top 5. Pivotal act, the Zest.

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Honorable mention time. During my stint with The Black Tie Party, we recorded three times. Our "formal" EP - which had its charms - was bookended by two sessions, that, if combined, would've made an incredible 10 song CD. Alas, they were never released, mastered or even heard by anybody except Jay, myself and Larry. Wait, scratch that, there's no way Larry listened to any of it.

I believe i went out on a high note with Career Club as well. And it's not every day a drummer of the caliber of Philip Gutbrod falls out of the sky and is more passionate about your own material than you are, but he's pretty much the MVP of this "Pure Hearing." The first 7 or 8 songs especially are pretty popping. The first disc had its moments, but suffers from the worst mastering job in the history of anything, and manages to sound both off-kilter and flat. Some of the songs were half-baked, and recording it in a 6 x 7 room probably didn't help. But i still really like about half of it. I'm still surprised that people didn't respond band more.

The one glaring omission thus far has obviously Come On / Girl Harbor years. For a couple of compulsive list makers as James and Jeff, those bands had a remarkably unwieldy (and chequered) recording history. I swear i have at least four separate versions of "Spring is in the Air" in my possession, playing either bass or drums. I could probably put together a decent disc if i had a spare week, but alas, the legacy seems to be shitty recordings of great songs or great recordings of shitty songs. In fact, the stuff i like by far the most is the 3 songs i did with them when in Texas i was the fill-in drummer for the Break-Up, (which fell squarely in the great song / shitty recording category). These i think ended up on a CD of some sort, but i could be wrong about that. I do feel to the Break-Up was the best band of the James / Jeff rock axis.

And, yeah, it's odd that there's more recorded evidence of my drumming than there is of my bass playing. Did you know i was in Creme Blush at the very end? Yeah, i forgot about them too. That was an odd, short chapter, but the worst drumming i ever did - easily - was on Tris McCall's If One of These Bottles Should Happen to Fall. Which is too bad, as it's his best record, despite the fact that it was probably my least favorite recording experience. Good thing Martin was there. Oddly, the best drumming i ever did was on the Sonic Boomfinger record.

And let's hear it for the sax! I find it ironic that the one Vitamen song i ever appeared on is my least favorite song of theirs. But, playing that one show at the Mercury with them was worth it. I also played one track on the Bel-Air CD, a disc i have yet to hear in its finished form by a band i have yet to see live, reprising a part i initially came up with five years previous.

Lastly, the solo stuff. If it weren't for the vocals and a couple of very underwhelming numbers, i'd probably like Sings Seven Songs Sweetly a lot better. That said, i do have a long-term plan for my now relatively dormant MySpace page, and my shot at redemption. With a lot of spare time, an unemployed accomplice in Hans, about 12 unused songs and no major Giraffes tours on the horizon, i’ve begun piecemeal recording Solo Effort Part II. Strangely, i've been playing drums on the sessions (entrusting the bass to Jay H.). This will be an on-going process; i hope to drop the first batch of songs in the next month or so. I still hate singing.

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In the meantime, shining above it all, The Giraffes Ruled. I can't wait for you to hear it. May 9, Mercury Lounge, w/ Freshkills.

What's your favorite thing that you've done?

(simulcast on the FB)

Man, was this a flashback ... anyway, it was a long time coming, but for everyone who thought that Ke-Ri Hanson was a Girl Harbor publicity stunt (and believe me, i wish it was), check this out ...

Eva Fay

Date:

Apr 30, 2009 7:23 PM

Subject:

Ke-Ri Hanson

Body:

You were in Girl Harbor, right? My name's Eva. I made the Ke-Ri Hanson website that you guys befriended back in 2002. I wanted to let you know that since geocities is disappearing, it'll be gone for good. So if you want to say bye to Ke-Ri, she'll be there for a few more days.

Peace!

http://www.geocities.com/mysterygrill

With the dame out of town and much more in the way of spare time than spare money, i made an impromptu trip down to Coney Island a couple of nights ago after practice.  The F train stops right by our studio, but the one i caught terminated at Kings Highway, about three stops from the end of the line.  I awaited connection on the elevated platform right at sunset, looking west, with the Verazano Bridge glowing green, resplendent, against the deep red, cloudless horizon, dotted with city lights.  The weather was about one degree too cold for what i was wearing and there was a slight breeze.

The next F train came fairly quickly.  It was fully dark by the time i got to Coney.  I exited at the W 8th Street exit - the penultimate exit, for those of you with impending SATs - and walked down the long overpass, past the aquarium, scarcely lit, completely alone.

There weren't too many folks on the Boardwalk either.  The sun had still not set enough to where star gazing was much of a possibility, so i decided to survey the state of Coney Island 2009.  Friends, it will depress you.

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For those of you not up on your Coney lore, here goes in a nutshell.  What was once the crown jewel of amusement areas in the beginning of the century goes in to steep decline with the advent of auto travel and Robert Moses; by the 70s, the decrepit (but still somewhat functioning) shell of the area becomes a metaphor for New York itself, rides closed but still standing, creepy, dirty, reeking of lost glory, fit for the final scenes of the Warriors.  Come out and play.

A group of five of us moved here from Denver in 1996, and once we'd found a place to live (Sackett St., Park Slope), the first place we went was Coney Island.  It was October, and though it was daytime, the feeling was similar: about 12 people too many to be a legitimate ghost town, but close.  We thought initially it was always like this, but the summer would prove otherwise.  It was also, oddly, my first glimpse at the Atlantic Ocean.  I was in love.  I breathlessly described it back home as being like the haunted amusement park in some episode of Scooby Doo.

Again with the metaphor: like New York itself, Coney began to experience the double edged sword that is revitalization.  Say what you want about sports and public money being thrown at stadiums, but the addition of the Cyclones was a nice touch.  What wasn't: the midnight destruction of the Thunderbolt, a roller coaster that had been out of service for two decades at that point, now completely covered in ivy.  Giuliani - the most aesthetically challenged public servant NYC has experienced since Moses himself - saw it fit to destroy it in 2000 and subsequently build ... nothing.  A bitter preview for Coney circa 2009.

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Anyway you get the idea.  Fun has been had, raw clams eaten, nights whiled away at Ruby's drinking way-too-sweet pina coladas as old black women danced to Neil Diamond on the juke box.  Shoot the Freak continued to be underwhelming, the Wonder Wheel a charmless death trap, the batting cages ruled, etc.

An assessment of what's there and what's not:  Well, the Cyclone (roller coaster) has been landmarked.  That's not going anywhere.  Astroland (its attendant amusement park), gone gone gone.  Pure pavement.  Though oddly, the Astrotower remains in full effect.  Wonder Wheel park is still there, for now.  The batting cages and all that have been gone for a while, replaced with, well, gravel.  The entire block of shops that included Ruby's, Shoot the Freak, the auxiliary Nathans (not the big one on Stillwell), the awesome little gift shop, etc., all gone, replaced with shuttered gates, for rent signs and a gigantic hole in the boardwalk to boot.  That's scheduled to be fixed in 2010.  The message is clear.

Meanwhile, to the west, the repainted Parachute Drop - garishly lit with varying shades of red, blue and green, a symbol of how Coney's past could have been preserved and revitalized - continues to lord over the increasingly opposite outcome below.  Real estate developers make me sick.

The best part being of course that this is 2009, and there's not a person alive with the capital to make anything out of what's still there.  Those rent signs are going to be up there longer than it takes to build the Second Avenue subway.  Knocking shit down is easy, especially when you don't have anything resembling a soul.  Building requires a long term commitment that i'm willing to bet Thor Equities and its staff of low-lives don't actually have the fortitude for, now that the chips are down.

And so, Coney Island, its legacy and its potential both utterly mismanaged, has the outcome its corporate overlords truly deserve:  Greetings from the new Asbury Park.  Without the live music, of course.

I didn't have the heart to walk by Tonnono's and see what was left of it.  I spent about 10 minutes watching a bunch of local kids do soccer drills on the beach, attempted some stargazing, then caught the train back home, suitably melancholy. 

(simulcast at bookface.)

As much as i want to like astrology, there's just too much of a disconnect between birthdays and what actually happens in space for me to give it much respect.  Even as a little kid, looking at the ecliptic (the zodiac, scientifically defined) in my worn out copy of "The Stars" by H. A. Rey, i noticed that the constellation Ophiuchius [sp?] is dipping his foot in the pool, right between Scorpius and Sagittarius.  So, where are all the Ophiuchians?

Additionally, if you were to go out and look at the night sky right after sunset on your birthday, chances are you would see almost the entirety of the constellation that is supposed to be your sun sign.

The sidereal zodiac is at least an attempt to rectify this by compensating for the Earth's shift in relative position to the stars since the advent of astrology.  Thus, according to our modern stars, i'm actually a Cancer, just like Manny.  But this would also make Jax a Pisces, and this i can't cotton to; after the last Pisces i dated attacked me with a wine bottle, i swore "never again."  Say, maybe i *do* believe in astrology.  Or cling to outmoded beliefs.  Hey, what's the difference?

Anyway, according to Wikipedia, there's actually 21 constellations crashing the astrological party; the 13 mentioned or implied above, as well as ...

Cetus (the whale that almost ate Andromeda);
Corvus the crow and Crater the cup, both of which ride on the back of Hydra the, uh, hydra;
Orion (named after the Metallica instrumental);
Pegasus;
Scutum (a shield);
and Sextans (an antiquated navigational device, later made famous in "Moby Dick").  

This seems to cast a wide net, but planets can get around.  Between this and Pluto, how does Joyce Jillson still have a job?  Then again, there's a recurring column in the Daily News about picking lottery numbers.  People will believe what they want to believe.

"Hey baby, I'm a Scutum."  And, yes, i'll leave the Sextans joke to you jokers.

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Tonight, spin the bottle . com.  Giraffes, live, 11pm-ish.

In a recent discussion about Spin magazine and the bands they tend to champion, Jax and i came up with a new sub-genre of music: publicist-rock.

First, i'm curious to see what all y'all think of this article: http://www.nydailynews.com../opinions/2009/02/11/2009-..02-11_the_downturns_upside.._nyc_may_finally_reg.html

It regards the financial downturn in the city, and how it may lead to
the reclaiming the old character of New York. Tough, dark,
anything-goes, etc. It's written by the guy who writes for a blog,
Jeremiah's Vanishing New York. And, yes, it's way too easy to envision
this guy sitting at the front window at Dumont, chatting to his old
classmates at Bard about how the city really needs a return to "Pelham
1-2-3" values, while smugly assuming he's not going to get mugged on
the way a party in Bushwick. (Oh, has anyone else experienced a high
uptick in mugging stories recently? I've heard three in the last two
weeks.)

Still, as someone who will probably be seeing off a lot of friends and
acquaintances in the next two years barring a fiscal miracle, there's
something to be said for this. Especially when you hear of stuff like
Stefan from the Holiday Cocktail Lounge finally dying, or the
demolishing of so much of Coney Island, to give way to a "new" Coney,
that, much like the 2nd Avenue subway, will probably never be built. I
still find it a bit hard for me, yet another guy who moved here from
the country's vast midsection, to talk about the negative influence of
New York's whitey surge, but i didn't come here to eat at Papa John's,
you know what i mean?



So, it's especially ironic then, that Jeramiah's forum for the day, the
Daily News, is also at least indirectly responsible for its own little
slice of vanishing New York: the "Brodaway" sign: http://www.nydailynews.com../ny_local/2009/02/09/2009-..02-09_mta_spellers_way_off..off_broadway_in_broo.html

It refers to a misspelling in a set of tiles on the wall of Broadway
Station on the G-line. It's been there as long as i can remember, or at
least it was. This is the station Damien and i usually exit the train
at (notice i didn't say "get off at", perverts) when we are returning
home from practice, and we'd walk by it and laugh at the general
ineptitude of the MTA, much like we make fun of the automated voice
that chides you to "HAVE A NICE DAY" as we're exiting all 8 stories of
the hilariously run down Smith-9th station.



So, you can imagine our dismay when - after waiting a good 20 minutes
for the G to arrive, which kinda goes without saying - we exit and see
a correctly spelled Broadway, complete with, in a fitting gesture of
half-assedness, two center tiles that DON'T EVEN MATCH THE REMAINDER OF THE WORD. Why not fix the whole word? Better yet, why not just leave it the way it was?

You see, it seems as if we've gone about fixing a lot of the wrong broken things.

Back to work . . .

- simulcast in the "notes" section of that other popular social networking site -

For the benefit of those of you not (yet) on Facebook, i wrote this today in the "notes" section.  Simulcast here:

There was an interesting article in the Times today about a Burger King campaign, informally tied in with Facebook. The gist: you de-friend 10 facebook friends, you get a free Whopper. The "Whopper Sacrifice." Don't worry, i would never do this to you, not even for meat. "Meat", rather. Anyhoo ...

* This is further proof that Burger King has the, well, not the *best*, but the most creative advertising squad in the history of selling things. The Subservient Chicken, the Plastic Faced King, and now this. It can't be the *best* of course, because they continue to get crushed by McDonald's. I mean, yeah, i think those R. Kelly-knockoff "McNugget lovin" ads are hilarious, but i think all R&B is hilarious.

* In keeping with that sickly unctuous tone that simmers just underneath the surface of every Times article, no matter how good, the writer couldn't resist getting 1st person 2/3rds of the way through the article, to admonish a co-worker at that. Go back to McSweeny's, poindexter.

* Has facebook officially left MySpace in the dust? It may have. Shit, even Jackie finally relented. I have mixed feelings on this. I've always had a soft spot for MySpace's trashiness and still-superior boob rate. Facebook doesn't seem to be all that interested in accommodating bands (which may help explain its popularity among the 95% of the population not in bands). I don't like being e-poked or served virtual cocktails all that much, and i can't come up with one interesting random thing about myself, let alone 25. (Ir)regardless, i sure am on this site a lot more often now, and not just because i don't get caught in catchpa vortices. Case in point: "notes."

The article: http://www.nytimes.com/200..9/01/29/fashion/29facebook...html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=burger..%20king&st=cse

There's one other thing about "notes" as opposed to "The Blog": i sure think about what i'm going to write a lot less there.  And thus, write more.  I've been doing here what i consider the great crime of any creative endeavor: taking it too seriously.  And using too many colons. 

Next Giraffes show: Feb 6, Mercury, 9pm, All-Hits Hour.

Seen today whilst out and about ...



Wow, huh?  A snotsy nutzy?  A *slutsy* nutzy, i can see.  Or a snotsy Nazi.

In fact, i have a theory regarding this.  Naturally.  My hunch is, whoever made this flyer intended to write "snotsy Nazi" but misspelled it.  Or - perhaps less likely - they decided that notzy [sic], when it really came down to it, was just too harsh an invective for a person whose main crimes seem to be snotsiness and a generally disappointing nature.

Either way, they realize their misstep only after making their flyer, grab the one remaining bottle of White-Out from the counter at Kinko's, and go to work on the 'o'. 

I also theorize that the person who made and posted this flyer is, in fact, "the Sybil", and has NO IDEA they actually made or posted this flyer.

Regardless, if you see the Sybil or anyone else masquerading as a hotsy-totsy loose on the streets of north Brooklyn, don't hesitate to report it to the 94th.  You'll remain anonymous and snotsy nutzy filth like the Sybil will get tossed behind bars, where they can't break anymore hearts.  Thank you.