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Friday, January
21, 2005 at 13:53:28 (EST) |
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Convince yourself that chill is only
ice
This weather blows. I need to do laundry. All that wax potting
of my guitar pickups doesn't seem to be solving my feedback
problems. Bush is still President. Smoking is still bad for
you. I am no better at the saxophone today than I was yesterday.
But tonight I will venture out of my house, again to Williamsburg,
to see Parts
+ Labor and Big
Bear at Todd
Patrick's new performance space. He doesn't have a name
for it yet; indeed, the renovations are not even completed.
But they're going ahead with the show anyhow. I just hope
the heat is working.
Speaking of works-in-progress, what should the artwork look
like for our new 7" record? We should have all the printing
supplies in soon, and we want to get it finished ASAFP, of
course. But what sort of image/graphic best represents us
as a band? We have our marketing department on it, here's
the brilliant ideas they have so far:
The wonder of it all!
Posted By Jimmy Legs
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Thursday,
January 20, 2005 at 14:36:42 (EST) |
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You look like you just got back from
somewhere
At Laila
Lounge last night there was a very odd show. Our friend
Doug
Keith performed as The
First Person to See an Elephant, which in of itself is
not so strange. But his act was followed by two guys who each
in their own way shaped the evolution of what, for lack of
a better term, has become known as "indie rock."
First up was Grant
Hart, former drummer/singer of Hüsker
Dü. It was just him and his guitar, playing a lot
of old Hüsker tunes and, I guess, his solo stuff. But
it seemed to be mostly the Hüsker Dü stuff. He couldn't
remember the words to a lot of the songs, which is forgivable
considering how old they are now. But what has this guy been
doing all this time? He had an hilarious stage presence, the
audience never being quite sure if he was joking or not. He
kept harping on people who left the room during his performance,
whether or not they were really leaving of just getting another
drink. To give you an idea of the tone of his performance,
here's an excerpt:
GH: Sometimes I really miss Joey. You guys miss Joey?
AUDIENCE: Yeah. And Dee Dee.
GH: Dee Dee? I don't miss Dee Dee. And I miss Mark Bell, too.
AUDIENCE: But he's still alive ...
GH: (mocking audience voice) "But he's still aliiiive!"
I know he's still alive. I just meant I missed the
whole 'Mark Bell' thing. Jeez, you guys let yourselves get
sucked up into the vortex ... the showbiz vortex.
Finally it was time for David
Grubbs to play. His indie-rock honeycomb is heavy with
Royal Rock Jelly (sorry, still thinking about beeswax): Squirrel
Bait (who themselves owe much to Hüsker Dü)
and Gastr
Del Sol. His set was good, just him an acoustic guitar,
playing really complex stuff and (I think) several GDS songs.
I'd never been to Laila before, it's not a bad little space.
I just wish it was down the street from my house instead of
a long, cold G train ride away. Ande now, here's a picture
of what they do to innocent vegetables in our borough's grocery
stores:
Posted By Jimmy Legs
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Wednesday,
January 19, 2005 at 18:37:53 (EST) |
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Wasting my money, slapping my face
Has anybody else been getting these letters from the NY
State Department of Taxation? They're ostensibly just
to tell me they're not sending me the usual tax forms, "To
help us reduce printing and mailing costs." Okay, fine,
but today they sent me this notice three times today! And
I received it before, last week. Buzz has also received 2
so far. All told, it's fewer pages than come in the tax packet,
but it still begs the question as to how serious they are
about conserving paper.
Same thing when charities send me direct-mail circulars that
ask me to use a stamp "to help reduce postage costs"
for the charity. Hey, why not just leave me off the list in
the first place? Not that I am anti-charity, or even anti-direct
mail marketing, but at least have the guts to be straight
with your marks. And somebody tell the tax guy to send only
checks to this address from now on. And chocolate truffles.
Posted By Jimmy Legs
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Wednesday,
January 19, 2005 at 14:21:49 (EST) |
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Stokin' up the fire take it right up
to the wire
"Jimmy," you ask, "What
do you do if your electric guitar pickups make an unholy, high-pitched
squealing sound when the gain is too high on your amp?"
Good question, folks, one I'm sure many of you have experienced.
The squealing is known as microphonic
feedback, to be differentiated from the slow, swelling,
"good" feedback cultivated by Jimmi Hendrix. Well,
if you find yourself in this unlucky predicament, here's what
I suggest:
The odyssey begins
here ...
Posted By Jimmy Legs
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Monday, January
17, 2005 at 14:05:41 (EST) |
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How I escaped my certain fate
As promised, The
Bowery Ballroom is a really good space to see bands. The
Mission
of Burma show wasn't overly crowded and the sound was
pretty much perfect. But there was one glaring problem. Two
words: NO REENTRY. So we felt a little trapped in there. But
at least the band kept us transfixed for the entirety of their
extremely long set. They played two sets and then played an
encore which could have qualified as a set in its own right.
All this and the band was apparently fighting off a cold as
well. I hope I can do that 25 years from now. I was especially
pleased to see that Bob Weston (of Shellac)
was present to handle the tape loops for which Mission of
Burma is famous. He even joined the band during the encore.
Man, that guy has a pretty cool life.
The audience was hilarious. The most energetic members were
also probably the oldest people there. The best ones were
this pair of Scandinavian dudes with long blond hair, one
of the sporting a jacket with a crudely homemade Jam
logo. Another guy was sporting the "I'm still cool"
ponytail to distract the eye from his totally bald head. Why
do guys think this look works? At any rate he was pogoing
around like a high schooler (which he probably was the last
time he saw Mission of Burma).
Damon
and Naomi first came to fame as the other members of Galaxie
500. I have never heard their solo work, but assumed it
would be the same sort of slow, smeary pop for which their
previous band was famous. Turns out that was all Dean
Wareham's doing; their set was, at best, reminiscent of
Belle and Sebastian. This didn't sit well with some members
of the audience, with some guy in the balcony shouting at
them throughout the set. "You suck!" he shouted
after every song, and later simply "STOP!" I bet
Bob Weston was just itching to get up on the mic to put the
heckler in his place, but Damon just whispered "We get
this at every show."
It was good to see The
Seconds, a band featuring one of the members of the Ex-Models.
Buzz didn't care for them, but I found their erratic style
kind of interesting overall. During their set a stinkbomb
went off, leading some to speculate that the band had arranged
it themselves. Short of having some kind of jazz fusion band
play, they probably couldn't have come up with a more divergent
set of bands for this bill.
Here are some random pictures,
some of the show and some of us at the Alibi the night before.
I seem to be experiencing a sort of Renaissance with that
joint these days.
Posted By Jimmy Legs
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