12/31/03

dysphoric fine mix. done with this again. made it better, still not perfect, but whatever, it’s more listenable, and dynamic! lesson learned - still not very good at these long epic bombastic pieces of shit.
uh, was gonna do a best music of year list, but this is all i could think of that i so far own.

xiu xiu - a promise
rufus wainwright - want 1

there’s a lot of stuff out there that i haven’t picked up yet, like the new me’shell ndegeocello, and the blood brothers, and other bands that i've gotten into, so here, lets do a list of cool bands i got into this year (and often found their records for a buck a piece!)

the b-52s
peter gabriel
the blood brothers
xiu xiu
brainiac
autechre
boards of canada
basement jaxx
underworld
blonde redhead

there’s way more than that, but i’m over this list thing. blasting the b-52s wild planet, preparing for the new years eve party, ugh, and the apocalypse.

12/28/03

been working on the art stuff for the cd. back to flip-flopping on what to do. digital printers are annoying me and not giving me the answers that i want, so we’re not sure... still gotta finish the dysphoric tune. updated the bio page, made it less, uh, out there.

listening to autechre draft 7.30

12/19/03

ok, so this cd thing, back to the original plan, 100 cdrs, burned here by us, and we’re gonna hand craft the art after getting it back from a printer. the color art for the case is pretty much all set, so we just gotta put together the lyric booklet thing, may just go minimal. for now, fuck pressing, mastering, and plastic jewel cases, i decided that it’s better that we own the whole process of making the cd and hopefully that will show through. gotta finish the dysphoric redux still, need more drums, like lots.

gotta another diss from pitchforkmedia recently regarding the Dismemberment Plan remix. just discovered it today, here’s the link. thanks for refering to me as “dude” rather using parae. yes, #2 on the top 9 worst songs on otherwise great albums of 2003. you know, really, i think it’s quite an honor, i mean, i’m on a list next to fucking radiohead (well they beat me out for #1), and gbv are on there too! the writer asks why the D-Plan included my remix, and why they had to put it first. well, i dunno bucko, but the overall impression i got from my dealings with them was that they really liked it, a lot, and were quite jazzed to get something back that was a bit farther out, but i’m not gonna speak for them. as to why they put it first, well from my own opinion, you know, i guess a lot of artists front load their albums with the best song first, so really, while i’m biased, whatever! no really, what’s “so obviously awful about it?” fuckin’ hack.

oh yeah, looks like the show is gonna be the weekend of jan 10th.

listening to aphex twin’s selected ambient works 85-92.

12/12/03

brick walls everywhere, i tell you. i got four hundred bucks that i should probably toss towards the irs or my credit card or something, like pay for all the shit i never quite paid for, right. like, oh yeah, i could do a real fuckin’ cd for like two grand. get it mastered even for another grand. what the fuck would i do with 1000 cds sitting in my bedroom? not like anyone would ever buy them. so like you wanna real cd replication thing, well not under 1000, or under 500, glass mastering thing. fuckin’ bullshit. all these places have the same story and the same prices, and the same bullshit. even these “CDR Packages” are really a fuckin’ rip off for what they are. if i want fuckin’ cdrs i fuckin’ do it myself. i ain’t got no money. i ain’t got no connections. we ain’t never gonna get “discovered” and we ain’t never gonna go nowhere. so, back to plan whatever. guess if i ever get fuckin’ dysphoric done, i’m gonna burn 100 cds on my computer, and i’m gonna find a digital printer, i’m gonna make something that’s all mine. we’re way past the point of any legitimacy and i can not compete within the system the way it is. it’s fuckin’ bullshit. really over it.

12/6/03

when been paid, yes actual money for music work done! we got a check from Desoto Records, so fuck yeah, we got a budget to do our cd now (cuz my jobbie job paycheck is allocated to getting the irs and my credit card off my ass). so shit be manifesting for sure.

we got brooke in the band now, and we’re gonna be meeting a bass player guy, who if anything, is a sharp dresser!

12/3/03

so like i have some things to say today!

had another horribly painful day at work trying to stay awake and not let my boss-lady’s constantly stressing and mini-freakouts affect my psyche more than temporarily, ugh. anyway like yeah, so i never really talked about the Xiu Xiu show we all went to last week. it was really cool, just Jaime doing solo guitar and harmonium stuff, very raw. anyway, like a total wuss as i am, i ran away after the show, even though i kinda wanted to go say like, hey, i enjoyed yr show, yeah. but there were all these like uber fans there (i.e. suicidal girls and closeted fags) totally in love with him. ok, i shouldn’t be so harsh, cuz i kinda fall somewhere inbetween the two groups, hey hey! naa, but after my friends assured me that it would not be insanely dorkly and lame, i emailed mr. xiu xiu guy to say i really liked yr show and such (especially the fabulous muscles song!), and lo and behold he wrote me back! made my day! it’s so cool when people are nice back to you!

so movement has been made on the cd thing, yes, it is manifesting! we actually worked on the art for it this past weekend, i.e., i did all the computer work on it and tommi come in and help when stuck to approve or improve with helpful suggestions. so we got the cover, back cover needs a little work, and the outer spine looks good. we wanna do like a digi-pack, non-plastic thingy, with two inside pockets, we’ll see what’s feasable.

oh yeah, since the cd thing is starting to happen, i’ve finally gotten motivated to fix Dysphoric, as right now it is a big stinking turd. i made a bunch of improvements just earlier, and it looks like we’re gonna re-record most of the drums, put some effort into them this time. really, i’m not gonna impose a deadline on myself again in the future, cuz it compromised this tune too much, and it just wasn’t finished back in april, plus i always felt it had a lot of potential, so i’m fuckin’ fixing it proper. it sounds SO MUCH better already. i’m gonna try and refrain from tinkering with any of the other tunes, though i may fuck with para soniq just a little bit.

oh, so brooke is in the band for sure now, gonna get a pic up on the bio page soon. anyway, since we’ve got brooke to boss around now, got to thinking that we should try looking for a bass player again, so we put up an ad on Craig’s List and got a couple response. one guy sent a pic, and we all agreed that not only was he a sharp dresser, but also cute enough to be in the band. we’ll see, not in any hurry.

listening to blur’s think tank, so good, must buy real copy, i used to love blur so much back in the day. acquired fucking the new Andrew WK album, called the Wolf, fuckin’ a, it’s like so bad and uncool and like overblown meatloaf type shit (in the pop-rock sense, not long drawn out bullshit operatic sense) that it’s kinda cool and enjoyable, totally so bad it’s kinda good. be better if some of the fake keyboards were a real orchestra, and if some of the guitar wank was more wanky and made some more quiet raw moments, but yeah, hmm, didn’t think i’d actually dig it, i just wanted to laugh at the stuff, damn!

oh so, looks like the show thing is happening right after x-mas, on like dec 26th or 27th, we will not suck.

11/24/03

we might be a trio again, cuz our good friend brooke has been lobbying to join up for awhile now doing a keyboard/guitar/vocal thing. she’s currently a member of the Diamond Star Halos, and was previously in several santa cruz bands and such. i’ve warned her that i’m kinda difficult and at times a pain in the ass, but hopefully it’ll work out cuz she’s also a super talented artist and is probably gonna be helping us put together the art and such for the describe cd. maybe we might even find a bassist someday, though, depending on her guitar chops, i might end up doing bass on a few tunes live.

we’re going to see Xiu Xiu tomorrow, i am elated. hopefully it will not be all sold out when we get there like the other day when we tried to go see Pretty Girls Make Graves.

listening to Peter Gabriel’s Birdy Soundtrack, very atmospheric, diggin’ the percussion. was listening to Steely Dan’s Pretzel Logic before that. i acquired a two piles of vinyl recently all around the $1 each range, usually grab around 20-30 whenever i hit up amoeba. while i was last there i also scored a near perfect vinyl copy of Prince’s Sign O’ Times, one of my all time favorite albums ever, and it sounds so magnificent blasting out of the speakers in my room, fuck yeah.

11/19/03

been doing some vocals tonight. got some serious masterpieces coming down, for sure, in technicolor panavision, for sure. gonna get cracking on some more political shit, cuz i’m mighty pissed. it’s not like i be wanting to get married, but when it comes to equal rights, shit is just a no-brainer ya know? all these opportunistic fucks, i.e. republicans, and the pricks that own and control the ‘mainstream’ media, and opposition party pussies need to fucking not be fucking with civil rights i am so clearly entitled to!

we’ve been practicing consistently 3 times a week, so we’re starting to not suck so damn much at this live thing i suppose.

don’t ever buy anything from AnythingGoesWholesale off of ebay. i bought my speakers from this jerk in alabama, and like one was defective, and after a three and a half month eternity, i finally got what was supposed to be a refund, and the fucker totally stiffed me for almost $40 bucks, and insists on not refunding me a portion of this shipping charges i paid, even though he shipped me a bogus item and was reimbursed by fedex via insurance protection. a real unprofessional dude. i’m considering filing a fraud complaint through ebay, even though it will cost me like twenty bucks.

listening to massive attack’s mezzanine, haven’t heard it before, seems pretty cool, i’ve acquired way too much music lately, gotta clear it off my fucking hard drive! found a lot of cool electronic stuff though, this group called Boards of Canada are fucking amazing, i am buying their records for sure!

11/15/03

so like my brother karl made this. said something about it maybe being in an animated pinnochio movie prequel or something, and y’all thought i was the talented one in the family. enjoy!

11/4/03

my number one hit song of the year or next year, whatever, lay down yr accolades motherfucker:

corporate rock

the mp3 sounds like shit. hell this probably isn’t even mixed right, sounds great in my expensive sony headphones, and like shit on my computer speakers. whoever you are, you’ll either hear this is as the ultimate genius, or muddy bullshit. well, andrea gives it maybe a 7. but i ask you? can your drummer play this fast? i’ll be straight up, the drums are for sure a composite of more than several takes, but no tangible voodoo correction was applied. tommi’s only been playing for a little more than two years, with no proper lessons, and matched with my desire for extreme velocity, we can’t expect the kid to play flawlessly all the way through in a single take now can we? everything else though was mostly done in one or two combined takes. but really, my point is not how fast the song is, i ask you can you write songs this fantastically mindblowing great? well at least i’m blown away by myself. i dedicate this song to liz phair. it sucks to sell out and then end up with less than you had before you cashed in your credibility. perhaps this would sound better if i hired the matrix to produce it. a lot of this was inspired by the time i bought my lexicon vortex gizmo off the guy from Mephisto Odyssey, and some of the words are probably nearly verbatim. i spent a lot of our phone conversation listening to him explain how one can make it in the music industry with just a little bit of compromise, that is, while i wasn’t on hold as he talked to his a+r guy on the other line for like a fucking eternity. wonder why they haven’t put out an album since that conversation? sucks to blow yr advance on a coke and porshe. andrea is always saying/maybe joking that i could really make it if i just sold out and that i could do my arty bullshit after i make a million dollars, yeah man. anyway, that’s probably enough context, i reckon this is one of my best songs ever, so lick me.

listening to that david bowie record again, listened to that Madonna American Life record earlier, her 2nd or 3rd worst album ever (i don’t really care for her first 2 albums, and i’m Breathless is unlistenable, yet it contains her greatest song ever!) her mistake was working with a single producer who’s not really in touch with the scene she was trying to assimilate. really she ought to have gone more electroclash, and on the singer songwriter shit, done it more raw and acoustic, cuz this shit be over-produced. there was a potential good album buried in this mess, but the bad definitely makes a mess. it was funny that i always hated that die another day song and yet it sound quite good in the context of the record. the single american life is fucking unlistenable though. madonna, yo drop me a line when yr ready to go for broke, i’d generate you some fucked up shit, just check out of my hit singles for proof. we’d do noise shit and make it danceable, it’d be fucking awesome. we’d do rock shit that’d be totally nasty. we’d do hip-hop and i could help you not sound like a jackass when you rap. oh the visions i have.

watched Miike’s Audition last night, what a fucking mindfuck. the guy’s one of the best film artists out there, yea for bit torrent!

11/2/03

halloween was fun, we ended up going to a party/show at our friend brooke’s place. i was a “zombie-casualty of bush’s war” and tommi was “go-go yubari” from kill bill. we may end up playing a show there ‘round december, hopefully it’ll work out. her room mates are kinda snotty, so if we do get a show there it will be imperative that way blow each and every one of them indie rock poseurs away.

last night we watched “ichi the killer,” the uncut version, and fuckin’ a, that movie is a piece of work. a real challenge for us (me, tommi, and andrea) to sit through, but a real work of art none the less, reminded me of Buneal, but with lots of gore. i mean, i don’t think i’d wanna sit through it again any time soon, but i’d be down to see director Miike’s other films.

oh yeah, so we did some drum recording for Corporate Rock yesterday, and after shifting through the tracks today, we got about half of it set. we’re gonna try and lay down some more tuesday afternoon, and i’ll have the mp3 posted asap, this one is razor sharp, a fuckin’ number one hit i tell ya.

listening to the new david bowie album, haven’t bought it yet (!) but i’ll probably try and pick up a used copy once i get paid. it seems alright, not quite as good as heathen so far (i found the first 3/4ths of that one to be wonderful, but the last 3 songs blow), but better than hours, which was utter vh1 wanna-be shit, a real let down after earthling.

10/29/03

so my new jobbi-job is reasonably resonable. like the first day was annoying cuz i didn’t have a clue as to what i was doing, but at this point it’s mellowed out, and while i am busy for most of the time i am there, what i am doing is so easy or like an adventure to a store for supplies, that it ain’t too bad...for now. anyway, once i get some paychecks coming in, i’m gonna be paying down some of my “debts” and siphoning off some to fund these projects i got in the works. at this point i’m leaning towards doing a limited cdr run of describe of 50 or 100, although, if i can find a place that will do cd duplication for around $1000 and gimme a full color cover, i’m might just save up and do that and then do additional with lyric/art inserts DIY myself...it would push back the manifestion of such to probably early 2004, but like whatever i suppose. definitely gonna place the order for stickers once i get my first paycheck, i made a really cool design earlier this summer, it is bomb.

fuckin’ i was all jazzed recently about this thing i did for ATE 13, but like my girl down in LA is like totally MIA, so like whatever. i dunno, i was getting all excited about working on some more of these killer rock tunes she’s got, but like i ain’t heard nothing.

hopefully in the next couple of days me and tommi are gonna lay down the drums for like my best song ever, if done properly, it is so a hit single, oh yeah. in another dimension, that is.

listening to RJD2 - deadringer, before that i finally sat through U2’s all that you can’t leave behind, and i have to say that i have little regrets about waiting 3 years to hear it all the way through, i didn’t miss nothing. like i really liked POP, so screw you, and Zooropa was pretty damn cool too. hell i like most of their stuff (not that i listen to them much), except that fake blues shit, but like they are the worst band ever when they pompously pander to the mainstream.

10/27/03

you never knew me

changed my mind. that bridge sucked. took the bridge from the first attempt from this summer, cut n’ pasted and with a creative transition, oh yeah. don’t know if the change up heightens the drama, or if it would be better served as all one take, but this is the best of both worlds, and i don’t feel like hollering these lyrics again.

ok, it works, fuckin’ wasn’t payin’ attention and that shit caught me off gaurd, made me jump, thought oh shit my speakers is broke! i am pleased.

10/26/03

new music, so fresh, so raw, so just did this less than an hour ago, so it may disappear.

you never knew me

i was listening to this Xiu Xiu cd that tommi got me for my b-day earlier and snoozed out to it, and got motivated to re-attempt this tune proper and just go for it. i re-did some of the words, and made the tempo less rigid and all fluid like, or something. i think the only part i could do better is the vocals during the bridge, but my goal was to do it all live in one take/attempt, so after about 20 false starts i made it all the way through and figured that there was much more worth keeping than throwing away, i figured it would be adequate even though there were some nuances of the previous attempt from earlier this summer that did not reappear in my voice this time. so i dig on this Xiu Xiu shit, though this jaime stewart is a bit immature in some of his words, i get what he’s going for...well except that ian curtis wishlist tune, like i’ve worried in the past if my music is pretentious, really what makes pretentious music, i’m not sure if i’m sure, but i’m not diggin’ on that tune, i mean musically i like it, but his vocals, like i’m not buying it, it’s a little hackish. i think i read somewhere something about him joking about being king of the art fags, that amuses me. anyway, i wanted my delivery to be more nuanced, and i wanted dynamics. there are no edits or anything here. it’s a bit icy i suppose, but it’s got it’s warm moments, right? it’s really not about anything deep, i don’t know, been having trouble coming up with deep songs lately. oh yes, and the last line is proudly stolen from bob dylan. i still have yet to form a strong connection or comprehension of his work, but i heard his tune “my back pages” and really really really took a liking to the hook on that one, thus i was like, i’m using that. it’s kinda personal, and it’s kind of a response to this former friend/acquaintance who talked some shit on me and tommi and pretty much everyone else he decided to burn bridges with upon moving to los angeles, and he always seemed like such a sweet boy! anyways, my crush on rufus wainwright is so renewed, i so want to have his baby. i mean, he is kinda pretentious, but his voice is just so damn effortless, makes me fucking melt. ok, so finally, with this song, lets be clear, i am not about creating a persona, like there are some artists that have a lot invested in their personas and shit, but like yeah, i think my persona has a lot invested in me, and i just haven’t felt the need to give it the time of day, maybe when i sell out.

10/26/03

fuckin’ feel like liza minelli dragged kicking + screaming to rehab, so kinda hungover. i got a job on friday that will last for a couple of months, so oh joy. didn’t get the cool gay porn job, this one is as a personal assistant to someone at a catering company, should be easy.

yesterday was my birthday, so oh joyous day. saw kill bill, it was really funny. got lots of cool music n’ shit, like now i’m listening to the new rufus wainwright album. i love rufus, he’s so fucking rad, and this one is better than his second one, maybe even better than his first one, which was bomb. i would so do bad things to him all over his body. i actually sort of met him once, but i was too shy and starstruck to shake his hand, and then tony, the ballsy basterd, asked and got a kiss from him. that was back in the day.

oh i was gonna put some effort into this, but i’m just not feeling it right now.

10/22/03

elliot smith dead - sad; suicide - weak. i got into him about six months ago, a beautiful songwriter and guitar player.

saw bubba ho-tep yesterday, go see it, it rocks.

listening to GBV internet radio.

10/21/03

so like i’ve got a job interview on wednesday, yea! it’s with a porn company called naked sword, it’s a customer service position, ahem. seriously, i am stoked, i want this job, cuz like working for a company that sells gay porn videos is just fucking cool, and i’m totally broke. my mom is none too thrilled.

should have some new music coming in the next few weeks or so, i’ve gotten about 4 additional songs started since moving and they are in relative phases of completion, as are the previous 4 or so. i’m basically trying to be more quicker about things, and for the most part i’ve been able to get a lot accomplished in like day long shifts when properly motivated. actually recorded some vocals earlier (for the fake cat power song), the dog didn’t seem to mind too much, and every one was out at the bars or something for the most part, so as long as the neighbors were passed out, i suspect it may have all gone undetected! seriously, i’m trying to stretch out a bit with melodies i find as per general inspiration from GBV. they so fucking rule, i’ve basically been going to sleep to the fan internet radio station which plays all of their stuff, i totally dig this song called “i am a tree,” it’s soooo rockin’.

i’m listening to American Music Club’s San Francisco, got it a few months back for dirt cheap. it’s not as good as the other one i have by them, Mercury, but i’m diggin’ on Mark Eitzel’s pathos and shit, he’s got really good song titles if anything.

10/18/03

so i just discovered the coolest thing i got at that sale. a live dvd by the Blood Brothers, they’re like queer dance punk hardcore, fucking awesome. they're all cute little emaciated indie rockers, and their drummer is hella fine. fucking rad. i need their cds NOW!

10/17/03

fuckin’ i’m not gonna redo Edge of California for the Go Little Records Compilation anymore, cuz i was listening to my almost 4 years old version, and it ain’t that bad. i mean, there are things i would change and do differently, but from where i am now, i think i would end up just re-creating the damn thing almost as it is, and that kinda seems pointless, and there are a lot of cool little subtle textures in there that sound really good, so i think i’ll wait to i’ve got some kind of new live version cooked up to fuck with it, cuz, damn i don’t need to be repeating myself. especially when that song was such a pain in the ass the first time around!

i’m gonna put up props to margaret cho, cuz i just discovered that she’s blogging on her website now, and damn, that bitch can write. go check it out, she rips Ann “thrax” Coulter to fuckin’ shreds, and very much sums up my thoughts on ol’ boy Fred Phelps, though i wanna just add my two on the old fuck. Fred Phelps, well i wanna say is obviously a classic case of a male having completely repressed his sexuality, but i don’t know him, i mean i get that tone from the pathetic writings on the godhatesfags website, which i believe is maintained by one of his spawn, or grandchildren (who is for sure queer, i can tell - i have the best gaydar in the world), however from watching some footage of the guy in some movie trailer for a documentary they got, the guy comes off more like a straight up demon monster, and i don’t use that lightly or in any form of jest. mofo is a fucking demon incarnate hate monger. he seems to have some other reason for dedicating his life to hatred that’s not a repressed sexuality, something from his childhood...he’s rebelling against, rejecting someone, or something happened to him. i look forward to hearing word of a long degenerative disease racking his body, much like old dutch boy ronny and heston gots, though karma is not always the most discerning. that fucker is intense though, i greatly anticipate the day that we play a show in westboro kansas, hell lets have a fucking midwest weeklong pride celebration in westboro kansas, bring out all the fucking queers, fuck yeah! folsom st - westboro, yeah...

so, still now job, hell no call backs, and like i am pretty fucked. guess i gotta start looking at food service jobs...christ. i’m thinking of putting up a wishlist in the rants section, cuz, why not. i did apply for a position with a company that makes gay erotica/porn videos and websites, this is so my dream job, that would be so fucking rad, and i have experience in everything they asked for, just not a whole lot of paid work experience.

i’m listening to some shit called Static Engine. it’s totally gothy, kinda sub-trent lyrics, but not downright awful, i think these guys are just a little too industrial to be electro-clash, but for now i think i’ll keep it out of the bad records pile, though the song playing now is called “victim club,” uh, these words are kinda shallow, oh shit these is so pretty hate machine...hmm, well if i make it all the way the cd, it’ll stay in the general collection.

10/17/03

so earlier, i guess technically yesterday, cuz it’s almost 4am now, getting close to my bedtime, we did our first session of drum recording here at our not-so-new-anymore place. it went rather well, lo and behold, no fire trucks happened to pass by, nor any bitchy neighbors made any appearance at the front door. we were recording drums potentially for Alien Tempo Experiment 13, so hopefully jaye’s gonna dig the lil’ artistic liberties we took. it actually came out sounding quite good, we ended up recording the tune a little slower, and i re-did all the bass and guitar parts i had previously recorded. i actually managed the guitar part in a single take for the whole tune, no fuck-ups, after consuming some mighty spicy nachos that were concocted by tommi and andrea. anyway, i think our semi-basic version of the tune has got some real potential, so maybe y’all be hearing it soon on the radio with the rest of ATE 13’s #1 hits...oh wait, that’s an alternate universe...right the one where mainstream radio doesn’t suck!

i started a new song last night, currently titled Fake Cat Power, cuz it sorta sounded like that crazy bitch at first. anyway, i hauled my whole setup downstairs to the garage and did some shit with the not-quite-in tune piano that belongs to one of the kids down there. that thing fucking rocks. it’s so much more pleasant to use a real piano than a shitty keyboard preset sample. that sucker’s got some soul n’ character n’ shit. anyway, i pretty much recorded the whole song in a matter of hours, other than drums and vocals of course, gotta come up with some words and obviously a better title, for sure. been taking inspiration from guided by voices, i need to do more songs, and labor over them less, just gotta bust ‘em out instead of procrastinating. i mean, i could do a song a day if i wasn’t so damn lazy, and they would all be better than you and yr shitty band, motherfucka!

i’ve been listening to these Gov’t Mule cds, the deep end vol 1 and 2, that i got at that sale last week. i’m not a fan of blues rock, but this is pretty reasonable stuff, it’s very well played, suppose having gotten into creedance has opened my horizons, however i don’t expect to start wanking on the pentatonic scale anytime soon...fuck, now i’m gonna have to do one...

10/15/03

i finally finished backing up all of the describe sessions a little while ago, what a fucking process! anyway, now i have slightly more than half of my hard drive back, yea!

there is now content in the RANTS section, it’s a list of the 5 worst most horrible albums i have the honor of owning.

i’m listening to a band called Cave In, they’re really quite good, grabbed it the other day cuz it had interesting art. rock, a little proggy, with really good druming, and very well produced, and the singer’s not to bad either.

10/12/03

so the show yesterday was...ok...it was kinda chaotic, well it was like we got a little drunk cuz we was nervous, but people were enthusiastic and very supportive and stuff. yeah, there were people there, a good 20-30. basically, i didn’t mix my vocals loud enough in the PA, and yeah, we fucked up a little bit, but i am the master of the clever save, so yeah, no do-overs, cuz that’s the kiss of death. i wanna incorporate more material into are set, cuz right now people think we’re a punk band, as we’ve basically just been doing all the loud and fast ones, as at the time that seemed like it’d be easier, but now it seems to make more sense to go for the more schizophrenic approach that’s a bit more in line with the studio stuff.

so we’re gonna do a song for this Go Little Records Compilation thing that should be floating about by the end of the year. i asked Jaye if there was any of my old songs that she really digs that we could re-do, and so we’re gonna do everyone’s old time favorite, Edge of California, the original version of which i have always disliked, or well it didn’t end up right. so i’m gonna re-do the damn thing and make it right, and the new version will be exclusive to her compilation.

i have to get a job like now, cuz my unemployment claim fucking expired. as soon as i do get a job and pay off the bills though, i’m gonna make some either real cds, or do cdrs of describe in a limited first edition type thing, yeah, think i went over this already.

ok, right now i’m in the middle of backing up the rest of the describe material to dvd-r, which is taking FOREVER. it sucks cause i went to the KZSC 25cent cd sale on saturday morning and once agian scored 30+ cds for about 8 bucks, and i can’t listen to any of them while doing this project. i did pretty well this year, though they fucking started early even though i got there a little before the official start. i still scored though, just grabbed anything where i recognized the band name or the cover looked cool. got me good mix of indie and major label shit, like some silkworm, calla, glenn kotche, tre hardson (of the pharcyde), luna, elbow, anna waronker, talk talk’s first LP, and lots of random shit. all bands i don’t own anything by already.

finally saw the movie May, that Jaye of Ate 13 did most of the music to, and that some of my music was “almost” in at one point or another or something, was like in consideration. i’d say i’m very bitter now after seeing the film and it being such a quality work of art, but i’m trying to not be so damn bitter about stupid shit anymore, i probably would cringe if i heard any of my old shit anywhere regardless. it’s been called a horror movie, and i suppose it is horror, but not in the sense of a horror movie, or at least the mainstream concept of a horror movie, it’s rather arty.

i’m listening to that internet radio again, some Paul Van Dyk live set from europe or something. been meaning to pick up a few of his cds for like forever.

10/9/03

i wanna give props to Shure. my sm-57 broke (mysteriously, ahem!) awhile back and i sent it in about a week ago for repair under warrenty. earlier this week they sent me a new mic, free. fucking excellant.

so Ahnold is the govenator. i ended up voting for camejo, and against the recall. why did people voted for Ahnold? because those people are fucking morons. can’t say the democrats did a whole lot either. bustamante probably should have stayed out of the race. they also shouldn’t have agreed to debate ahnold after he skipped all of the other debates, that was bullshit. it really pisses me off when democrats blame greens. i think greens would vote democratic more if the democratic party were trying to repeat clinton and be so damn moderate all of the time. like i re-registered as a democrat so that i could vote for kucinich in the upcoming primary. now i don’t reckon he’s got much of a chance of winning, and he’s certainly not running a very good campaign. i get a lot of email and shit from his organization, and while he says the right stuff, he just doesn’t seem to be trying too hard. it’s more like he’s using this as a boost to maybe run for senate in the future, he doesn’t seem to want it badly like say howard dean. i think howard dean is alright. i’d like to see him get the nomination out of all the kids running, cuz he’s obviously a ruthless fighter, and that’s what it’ll take to win, not bland centrist psuedo-clintonism.

i’m listening to some faceless trance shit on internet radio. it’s the rhythmic kind, like tribal, not that cheesy shit.

10/7/03

oh big news, i have been formally dissed by the leading internet indie elite, aka pitchforkmedia. they’re a great site, lots of content, i’ve been going there daily for years. i’ve even sent them some fake reviews a couple of times trying to get to write for them (a bad idea, of course!) anyway, they just posted a review of the People’s History of the Dismemberment Plan, and i get a whole fucking paragraph, why read on:

“The disc, unfortunately, gets off on the wrong foot, with a strange remix of "Face of the Earth" by a guy calling himself Parae, who, according to the disc's liner notes, had never even heard the band before completing the track. It's an interesting vocal cutup, but folks expecting finished results anywhere even remotely close to the original material will be immediately let down, and more importantly, Parae's rhythmic sequencing of Travis Morrison's breathing patterns and snatches of syllables wander for too long before he introduces his climax, a blast of frozen, sampled guitar and percussion. That this was chosen for inclusion-- let alone to lead the record-- is a classic case of concept trumping execution.”

i’m so gonna use “concept trumping execution” on merch n’ shit someday, cuz that just sums my whole sound up, oh yes. my a favorite part is the “a guy calling himself Parae,” like they invest so much in to the make believe little stage names mofo’s come up with all the time and like, “a guy calling himself Parae,” like an instant dismissal, like “you” aren’t even deserving to have music heard by others, let alone try and make music. hack, ahem.

i’ve been playing meat beat manifesto’s subliminal sandwich all night and haven’t shut it off yet.

10/5/03

me and my room mate made some art!

10/1/03

so NO ONE has yet tried to get their mits on a free cd. guess i don't get much traffic afterall.

got upgraded a couple days ago with some better web stuff software, courtesy of my bud charlie, the ex-bass player for Statutory Dan. he's doing "solo" stuff now and i'm gonna help him produce some vocals when he's ready. i'm also gonna be doing some collaborating with Rhane Alexander, all around auteur and creator of the new comic Tranzilla, who's living out in baltimore. she visited and played out here this past july, and dug the cd i gave her, thus commanded me to assist her with her cause. of things that have actually transpired i've been working up something for miss JBL of ate 13, just gotta get some of tommi's drumming on it now.

so the show on Oct 11 is definitely on, we're gonna be playing probably a 15-20 minute set sometime between 6-9pm, so it'll be some of the same old shit, and some of the new songs. we're gonna fuckin' just bash through them, cuz we're probably gonna be the noiziest act there, so y'all just have to wait for Frooty Flavors if you tranny dykes wanna dance.

i scored 3 lps yesterday, peter gabriel's so, grace jones' slave to the rhythm, and terence trent d'arby's neither fish nor flesh. like a loser i haven't actually put any of them on yet. listening to the replacements' let it be, so quality.

9/25/03

ok, i gots the package from desoto records today full of “promos” for the D-plan remix record. who wants a fuckin’ free cd?

FIRST THREE PEOPLE TO EMAIL ME RIGHT NOW GET A FREE FUCKIN’ CD, ‘aight, that’s the contest. just send me yr address and such, and i’ll mail you a copy. i’m not sure how much of the traffic that comes here is looking for more than porn and major label mp3s, so i suppose this could take awhile...

as to the two seconds issue i was bitching about last night, well, it turns out my remix on cd is now only 3:02, so that’s four seconds mysterious gone... just to clarify, the effect that i had on the start and end of the tune was a kind of mimicing of tape bleed-thru. i used to only listen to cassette tapes, and lots of times you could hear a sonic imprint of a song about a second before it actually started, i remember this quite clearly with my copy of Disintegration by the Cure. anyway, they cut off the start, and have some kind of fade out added onto the end, fuckin’ mastering engineer. they got everything else right though with my comments on the inside, so yeah, whatever, i still implore everyone to go out and buy the record cuz it’s great, really, and i’m getting paid a lil’, and you know i have no job and lots of credit card debt.

9/24/03

so i’m listening to the People’s History of the Dismemberment Plan, which is streaming in Real Audio over at their web-site. It’s interesting to hear all of the remixes in context, a lot of them are very good, but i’d say that most don’t stray too far from the originals. instead they tend to be tweeked out and driven into other directions that at times sound rather natural, only a few tracks go off into the outer realms. i don’t know if fans of the band will care for it, but i’m only really familiar with their last record at this point, so yeah. it’s a little uneven on first listen, but they definitely put the best one first, right ... oh shit, ok i just started the real player over again, it sounds like the first two seconds of my remix have been cut off...lame...shit, i just checked my original file which is 3:06 and the track they’re streaming is 3:04...yo that’s just stupid. those first 2 seconds, while nearly inaudible, are very important to the continuity of the track. it’s like, hey what’s that... and then blam! click click click click, and then at the end (which is intact) the song fades out until all that’s left is that nearly inaudible loop from the beginning. if i thought starting it off with click click click click was the way to go, i would have done it like that, but nope, the little bit of ambience is what adds to the whole “french saying i can’t spell.” it’s not like i sent them a sloppy ass wav; i sent them my remix perfectly edited, no rubbish, just the tune, start to end. whoever compiled this cd, and engineered the mastering seriously fucked up, either they didn’t notice the first 2 seconds of the track when looking at the wav image (or didn’t listen to it), made an assumption that it wasn’t supposed to be there, or someone choose to hack it off. this is lame. maybe it’s just the real audio that’s fucked up, maybe the real cd is fine, we’ll just have to see. it’s not like i’m gonna email kim or travis at desoto and bitch directly, that’s what this forum is for. but as absurd as it sounds, yeah it’s just two seconds, i’m kinda fuckin’ bummed, cuz those two seconds are part of the song and SUPPOSED TO BE THERE. guess i’ll have to save the real 3:06 version for the box set. please note, i do not react well to being edited.

me and tommi practiced sort of for the first time at our new place today. it took us a while to get the drums set up in the living room, we had to go out and get some supplies from the wal-mart of music stores, like a new drum pedal and head and such. we’re not sure how practicing at the house is gonna fly, cuz our neighbors are right on the other side of the wall, we’ll just have to see i suppose. i’m trying to figure out which songs to get ready for the show(s) we’ve got coming up, as we’re just guitar and drums now, things are a little different. we actually may be playing a show on halloween over at our friend Brooke’s new place, so that could be quite cool, if it materializes.

9/19/03

ok, so i reckon that this site overhaul i’ve been working on is about now done. i figured out what was taking up the mystery space on my server and made it disappear, so that freed up around 20 megs. so we’re now 33 mp3s strong. that’s 33 mp3s of original music, all here, for anyone to download and suffer through, so tell me what has your band ever done? oh you play shows, right, ok i’ll crawl back into my hole now.

so me, tommi, and our room mate andrea just went and saw Grant Hart (formerly of Husker Du) play for six bucks. well, they weren’t dragged, but, yeah i was into it. for some reason andrea thought he had something to do with the Frogs... but she seemed vaguely interested. anyway, Grant was really cool and genuine and pretty much took requests for the whole set, just him and his electric guitar. i recognized some of his Husker Du tunes; i have yet to pick up any of his solo or Nova Mob albums, but when i get some money it’s at the top of my list now. it was kinda weird how there were only 20-30 people there at this bar to see him play, considering how well Bob Mould seems to do (i almost saw him last year, but decided that it wasn’t worth paying $30 bucks after that shitty Modulate record). Grant Hart rocks, i highly recommend seeking him out and support his ass, he is punk rock royalty, and he’s family too.

so now that i’ve got this dsl, i’ve been downloading all kinds of mp3s and filling up the remains of my hard disk, which is gonna be a problem. but anyway, i finally heard some of the other remixes on the Dismemberment Plan disc that are posted over at their official website, and they were ... interesting. maybe i’m an arrogant basterd, but everytime i’ve sat through my remix, i’ve been pretty damn impressed with myself. anyway, i also checked out the singer’s solo stuff that’s posted on his site, and i was surprised at how much i like it! i had read some gripes by fans dissing it, so yeah, anyway, i take back my police/sting comparison, for the time being. here’s hoping that he sees the light and drops the right wing yabl.

9/17/03

so i got my dsl hooked up today, oh joyous day, now so much quicklyer i may search the internet in effort of pure procrastination. i must find a job type thing now, as little income i have is so very speedily sucked away by ungood surprises like parking tickets, brakes dying on corolla vehicle of mine, and the great challenge of making my new room/house livable. we have a working kitchen now, yet the stove situation is still fucked and filled with mice feces, yum. i am this close to having the property management cited by the city agency that handles such things, my restraint is slipping.

i will be making modifications to the mp3s housed on this site, downgrading the rest to 128kbps to free up some more room on my server. i would like to put up one or two songs from each of the older album/collections and maybe rotate the selections every now and then, as evidence or demonstration of the progress of my - i don’t like to say work - stuff.

found out recently that i will definitely be receiving some promo copies of the Dismemberment Plan remix album. in honor of receiving free stuff, and as i have no need for the full amount the generous Kim Coletta is sending me, i will most likely hold some type of contest and give away a few copies or something. being that the amount of traffic here is questionable, i’m unsure what form the contest/giveaway will take, but i’ll figure it out when the package arrives.

so i finished reading George Orwell’s 1984 last night. i had never read it before, (i read Huxley’s Brave New World ‘round the time i was finishing high school), and it’s amazing how much of popular culture is derived from this book, it’s influence is immense. i think it’s very relevent as it is a clear inspiration for the neo-conservative movement and their work toward creating a U.S. fascism. most people i believe would read it as a warning of the future, i believe the people in power in the U.S. government read it as a plan for the present. the shit is pretty fucked up. it should be required reading for everyone. if i were to rename parae right now, i would go with ‘doublethink’.

so living in this city of san francisco is weird. i spent about 18 years living in lompoc, and then 7 in santa cruz and boulder creek, so yeah, i’ve never really lived in an environment with lots of angry people everywhere. i suppose SF is pretty mellow compared to other metropolitan areas, but yeah, i’m not quite feeling it, you know, it’s not quite feeling like home, though my house is more liveable, as we’ve been doing some painting.

music i’m listening to - Thunderball, Ambassadors of Style. got this off of a cd my buddy Kevin burned me and presented to me at our “we hate our new house” party the other. everything i’ve listened to off it so far is really cool, lots of chill electronic trip-hop stuff, Kevin rocks, thanks!

i haven’t started anything or worked on any music since the move, and it’s bumming me out. i’ve got ideas and songs ready, and my room is now slowly becoming less chaotic, hopefully i’ll get my shit together, cuz my excuses are few.

9/11/03

So October 6th 2003 is the official release date for The Peoples History of the Dismemberment Plan on Desoto Records. Go buy it and support my semi-legitiment music career. Check out the press!

so my house is still fucked and it get’s better. the property management does not like receiving “threatening” letters, and insists that they will fix all the problems (on their timeline of course) or release us from the lease if we so desire. they called my qouting of california laws silly! is this letter threatening? why i think you’d be pissed off too!

September 10th 2003

Citibrokers
4273 California St
San Francisco, CA 94118

Re: 639 Geneva Ave

This letter is to serve as a follow up notice to our previous letter dated September 8th 2003, regarding the many issues present upon move-in for the rental unit at 639 Geneva Ave, leased by Eric Iverson, Tommy Ko, and Andrea Paul as of September 1st 2003.

PGE came out to the property on Sept 9th and examined the gas leak coming from the stove. A gas leak was in fact found coming from the oven, however, the PGE inspector was unable to repair the leak, so he shut off the gas supply to the oven. He also found the back left burner to have a broken igniter. Please see the supplemental materials left by PGE for more information about issues found, such as the lack of an accessable valve shut-off for the stove/oven unit. Upon pulling the stove/oven out and apart, as well as the refrigerator, an incredibly high amount of mice urine and feces was discovered. On several occasions over the past week and a half mice have been spotted. It is quite apparent that the conditions are unsanitary, and we will call the city/county health officials out to the property if action to remedy the situation is not taken immediately (24 hours).

It has been brought to our attention by a previous tenant of the unit that during their tenure the dishwasher and garbage disposal never functioned.

Further problems we neglected to mention in our previous letter:

Both of the kitchen windows and the bathroom window have large cracks.

The fan in the kitchen is incredibly filthy.

The living room windows are damaged in that they are missing handles or are rusted to the point where they will not all close completely shut. As the rainy season will be starting soon, we are very concerned.

As previously stated, if the many issues we have raised are not suitably addressed we will request to terminate the lease. If Citibrokers chooses not to release us from the lease, we will withhold rent as per California State ruling 10 Cal.3e 616 [111 Cal.Rptr. 704] and/or abandon the unit as per California Civil Code Section 1942. If Citibrokers is unwilling or unable to address and remedy all of the issues that have been raised, we may be willing to negotiate a decrease in the monthly rental rate of the unit, as per any remaining substandard conditions. However, we would like to reiterate, unlike previous tenants, we are not going to be satisfied paying large sums of money (including a $2700 deposit) for the honor of living in a slum, and we are fully prepared to pursue any necessary legal litigation should the need arise.

Sincerely,

--------------------
so patriot act II has been revealed, how neat! let’s give so called terrorists the death penalty for association with “tragic” events. how timely!

9/9/03

so our new place is totally fucked. here’s a copy of the letter we just delivered to the property management. just for some reference, they hadn’t been out to the rental property in somewhere around five years, so yeah, there was no walk through or anything by them to insure the unit was in live-able condition when we moved in!

September 8th 2003

Citibrokers
4273 California St
San Francisco, CA 94118

Re: 639 Geneva Ave

This letter is to inform Citibrokers in writing of the many issues and problems with the rental unit on the upper floor of 639 Geneva Ave that were present upon the commencement of the lease period of September 1st 2003 for the entering tenants Eric Iverson, Tommy Ko, and Andrea Paul.

The unit was not clean and was nearly uninhabitable. Floors, walls, windows, were filthy. The kitchen was very dirty and the inside of the refrigerator was fowl. The bathroom was covered in grim, and the bathtub had a pink layer of mold growing around the edges. Additionally, the previous tenants left a great deal of furniture and trash in the inside of the unit, of which we have temporarily chosen to keep only a chair, a couch, and a metal shelf unit. The rest of the trash and general junk left behind has been placed on the stairwell outside of the unit; cummulative to at least three large bags of trash. This trash needs to be hauled away ASAP.

General Problems and Issues:

The one key we received from the previous tenants did not work (thank you for sending the lock smith out).

Dishwasher does not work and is severely rusted on the inside.

Garbage disposal has broken glass and metal jammed inside, aka it does not work.

Toilet in bathroom is not firmly connected to floor surface and wobbles.

Both water faucets are missing filters.

Kitchen sink is clogged.

The air vents in the floor contain a fair amount of trash bits, and came with a thick layer of dirt.

Possibly more than half of the electrical outlets and light switches lack covers.

Rat or mice feces has been found in the kitchen cabinets.

Much wear and tear on the walls of the unit including large patched holes, nail and screw holes, and random sized holes. Many walls have been painted - poorly, as there are paint drops on the wood floor all throughout the unit. We are content with the paint, and with your consent we may chose to make changes.

We believe there is a gas leak coming from the stove. PGE was supposed to come out the other day.

Both bedrooms and the hallway are missing light fixtures.

Both bedrooms have broken door knobs that need to be replaced.

There are no curtains or screens on the bedroom windows. The living room windows have broken handles that make opening and closing them difficult.

The kitchen light works very sporadically, it may be an electrical issue. We would like to request that it be replaced, as the current setup with a timer is just unnecessary and bizarre. If it could possibly be replaced with standard light bulbs instead the current flourescent setup, that would be a plus.

The refrigerator is missing the two bottom shelves.

Doorbell does not function.

The dining room door from the kitchen has broken hinges (though we will never use this door).

The main door has a broken metal guard.

The outside walls of the stairwell are very dirty, it may be bird feces.

We hired a cleaner to come and clean the unit, at this date there is still work to be done. We expect to either be directly reimbursed for the full cost of the services or have the cost deducted from the next month’s rent.

As of the date of this letter, we have resided in the unit for eight days without use of the kitchen as the sink is clogged, and the appliances present do not function.

We would like to request that a portion of this month’s rent be prorated towards next month due to the severe inconvenience of these many issues. We would also like to formally request that these issues be addressed and dealt with, if not already in process, within 5 days - September 12 2003. Otherwise we will terminate the lease as it was obviously signed under bad faith by Citibrokers and we will vacate the premises at the end of the month (Sept 30, 2003). We will expect an immediate full refund of our $2700 security deposit. If necessary we will proceed with all legal recourses and take the issue to court.

Hopefully we can resolve these issues, if you would like to discuss anything further please call us at ---------------

--------------------------------

so yeah, in addition, we forgot to mention to the slum-lords that both the windows in the kitchen have large cracks, and it turns out that some of the electrical outputs do not put out a steady stream of electricity, which just killed some strips of light i was trying to put up, nice red lights, i am pissed. pretty much everything i try to do to make the place/my room live-able is fucked. did i mention that my room doesn’t have a closet? it’s a coverted dining room, though converted is probably too strong of a word. so me and tommi had this great idea that we’d hand a chain across the room to hang clothes from. well, i guess this shit hole was constructed before dry wall was in use, cause in addition to not being able to use push-pins to put up posters and such, when you do nail shit in, if it ain’t hitting a wood stud, ain’t nothing gonna hold. even then once i was almost finished hanging all my clothes up, the fucking screw thing just ripped right out of the piece of shit wall. did i mention that my other room mate, why a long time friend, can be mean as hell with little provocation? i am so not wanting to deal with living here for a year. oh yeah, and tommi and i both got $100 tickets the other day for illegally parking, this after we had just finished moving out of our old place and went to sleep at five in the morning - our first real night here. i want to thank the neighbors for being pricks. also, while the guys downstairs seem cool, and the dog is ok, turns out that there is in fact a third person sort of living down there. he’s the drummer in their band and seems alright, but in addition, one of the previous tenants of our wonderful domicile has been crashing down there until he sells his car or something. he seemed alright at first, but has all this shit taking up the storage space throughout the house and garage and left lots of shit in our realm, like booze that he expects to get back! i’ve been here little more than a week, and i am so fucking over it. there are short moments where it seems like it could be home, and then something fucked just happens. i look forward to possible litigation, oh joy.

8/29/03

new songs, 14 mins and 23 seconds worth - neat. some of these mixes probably need some more work, but whatever, for now it’s alright.

seahara - another song about a encounter with a crazy girl, this one a chick i worked with a few years ago for about a week at the bead store. anyway, i think it’s pretty self explanatory. musically, i thought it would end up more ambient or ethereal, but yeah, it turned out pretty meaty. anyway, dealing with crazy people, like people having a schizophrenic episode, is NOT something i prefer to do while stoned, you know what i mean? i have a hard enough time dealing with myself, shit!

the ballad of michael huffington - is it bad or is it good? kinda hard to tell. i like this one a lot, but it’s pretty awful, maybe, really kinda ambiguous, some of that foo-foo stuff. michael huffington was a dude who ran for congress in the santa barbara area back in 1992, so i had to deal with his punk ass representing me for 2 years. he then blew like a third of his fortune running for senate, which he lost. anyway, i always had nasty associations with him or his name, as i do with most republicans, until recently i found out that he came out as gay a couple years ago. so after reading some article bio thing on him and his life story, i, in my pretentious self-aggrandizing way, felt some form of empathy/pity for the dude and his implied regrets and such and thus named my song for him. i kinda think he’s an ass again though, as apparently he’s still somewhat of a republican, and was contemplating running for governor in the recall thing. there’s no way i would EVER vote for his ex-wife arianna, who’s IS running for govenor, cuz i remember when she was a total right winger.

i could... - this is a really old song i wrote in like high school and maybe a bit during my first year of college. it was inspired by some fag i sorta had a crush on who was at the time as closeted as myself, who’s parents expected much greatness, thus go be a doctor son, make us proud. i assume all the other implications of hetero-normativity were also necessary for parental approval, so yeah. anyway, this is one of my classic really well crafted songs that i had just never gotten around to recording for some reason, though it was always in my thoughts at the start of a series of projects. so being that i haven’t been writing any good new songs, i must use up all my old ones. yes, i haven’t even made it anywhere and the well has already dried up! this is my fake blues song, and i can’t even stick to it, i hate playing blues style progressions so much. i decided to go with a rawer recording style on this one rather than overproduce it to death. had to work some voodoo on the drums towards the end, that’s always “fun,” oh yeah.

my college rock years - i’m not kidding about the well being dry, ok yes i am, anyway, this is another old classic, a really early tune from high school, always thought this would be the big single, oh the visions of grandeur. i first recorded this song with Al and my first year room mate Dave back in the spring of 1997. that version is great, cause you can hear my totally inept attempt at singing, and the words suck too. yup, maybe that version will be on the boxset! anyway, i decided recently to record more old songs that i haven’t recorded, decently that is, so i redid a lot of the lyrics on this thing, though the topic is still the same, my disillusionment at the college/university experience, in that it sucked and is full of much hypocrisy. don’t get me wrong, UCSC was a great place to go to school and be a fag, especially these days i hear! i could have done a lot worse, for sure, i was most definitely a freak show for much of my academic tenure. can’t say any of my antics did more than alienate fools though, certainly didn’t get me laid, hardly. anyway, the lyrics for this tune are much better now that i speak from experience, and song has now evolved into one of my cheesy little social protest ditties, so yeah, did i mention it’s fake mariachi? this is a hit single. the encoding rate of 128 on this one makes the cymbals sound a little sketchy, and some of the levels are off too, like on that damn congo drum...

so i’ve got like four more tunes that are like halfway to almost done, one of which is one of the best songs i’ve ever written, it’s called Corporate Rock - just gotta get tommi to drum faster; another one is an addition to my fake hip-hop canon; then some acoustic bullshit that cops a line from dylan; and lastly a straight-up Curve rip-off. but we’re moving, and i’m looking forward to a weekend of pure hell! my dial-up is gonna be sorta gone, so i’ll be without internet for awhile, probably a couple weeks, until we get DSL set up at the new place, so yeah, it’s probably best that i stay of the fucking net for awhile anyway, maybe i’ll find a job...

so that new Neptunes compilation album wasn’t as good as i had hoped, kinda half-assed, though they are just SO CUTE!

8/21/03

Ok, so we have a show coming up, yea! Well, in October, but whatever, that’ll give us time to work out more new songs. Getting ready to record drums over the next week before we do the move. So yeah, we’re going up in the morning to go sign this lease thing for our new place in SF, so probably once we’re up there, we’ll get some more live shows lined up or something, maybe even get jobs!

So like i only have one speaker now, as one of them arrived blown out, as i discovered when a bass was put through the bloody thing. So FedEx is taking the blame, and i am awaiting either a new speaker, or a partial refund or something. It sucks and is annoying, but at least i have one speaker (with a dent) that does get rather loud (though i want my shit in fucking stereo, ya know!)

Listening to the Pretender’s Viva el Amor for the first time, ripped it from a friend. It’s ok, not as good as their first album which i just got on vinyl the other day.

8/14/03

so like my fucking speakers came today, they sound alright, but each one has a nice dent on the side, turns out the wood frame is PARTICLE BOARD. ghetto! anyway, i suspect that they were not necessarily damaged in transit, and may have been this way when i purchased them from some “power seller” off of ebay. anyway, at least i now have mucho amplification.

so we found a place in SF, yea. it’s cool, sorta, not as cool as this place, but yeah, it’s a house, there’s a pool table, W/D, a dog, it’s next to the BART, there’s parking in the neighborhood, it’s not a total rip off, uh, it’s technically a house, though, is a house still a house when it’s right up next to another house? fucking, i don’t think that we’ll be able to realistically do this music thing there, sucks. so like, it’s really two apartments, sorta, in that there are two dudes that live downstairs, but they’re musical, and while initially threatening, in a SWM kinda way, they seem pretty chill. all this moving out of the forest just to find a better job or something, cuz like i really wanna work, oh yeah.

i’m listening to Neil Young and Crazy Horse, Broken Arrow. fucking, i went to Amoeba records the other day, and fucking spent like over sixty bucks. got 30 records though and 13 cds, so yeah, it was a deal. fucking Pansy Division was playing, trip out yo. they’re cool and cute and silly, but yeah, have i gone over the story about how the singer tried seduce me this one time back in 1998? whatever, not like i was having it, cuz i got this thing about older men, you know, in that i don’t fuck them. it’s a real funny story, but i digress. so like during this intro to one song, the singer like made eye-contact with me, then i quickly looked away, cuz i’m a dork, he then made some comment about hoop earrings. yes, i was wearing hoop earrings. it stank of some form of bitterness which my friends might claim i’m well acquinted with, but alas, it was not the impression i wanted to leave on him, though, not that i care, if he even remembers meeting me anyway, i mean, how many long-haired boys does he try to take home during the course of a week anyway? yeah, that’s his fetish, long hair, oh and i reckon he likes them young too. don’t get me wrong, i think they’re cool, i didn’t buy their new cd though, cuz i wasn’t buy new stuff, so yeah. fuck i’m stoned.

8/8/03

so like my credit card increased my limit by $500, so yeah, y’all know what that means, FREE MONEY! so yeah, amplification is in transit, yea! i purchased 300 watt pa speakers off of ebay, and a powered mixer from a more legitiment source. no more shall we be challenged by a lack of loudness. it’s all good cuz i got maybe a lead on a job up in SF, so if that works out, i could actually afford to get cds pressed by november or december. so yes, we are moving up to SF for real now, although we have yet to secure a place. we’re gonna try and find a 3br house with our chica Andrea, so yeah, full speed ahead, out of the fucking forest!

so i’ve got like 2 songs finished out of the eight that have been started, with the rest coming along. we’ve been working out drum parts and stuff ahead of time so that recording is less painful for tommi. this stuff is fucked up, like it’s totally coming into form with the idea of the working title quite a bit, which is kinda trippy. i think i’m definitely gonna end up with a real mess, should be cool, in a way that no one will like, but yeah, what do i got to prove?

so with our move up to SF, erin is becoming an auxillary member of the band, aka, she might play with us every now and then, or if we ever get a tour together. i’ve tried to convince her to move up also, but she’s not so sure if that’s what she wants to do, it’s all good though.

for CA govenor i’m endorsing either Cruz Bustemante, Peter Camejo, or Larry Flynt, we’ll see who polls better, anything to keep that jackass AHNOLD out.

i’m listening to Anthrax again right now, but i’ve been super obsessed with the B52’s Cosmic Thing lately.

7/27/03

so you got a mac, and you start up and all you see is a flashing question mark - i now know what to do in that situation. took me three fucking hours last night, and i almost lost my whole fucking hard drive, so yeah... still better than dealing with a pc... and i was gonna start a new song.

i am attempting to get through GNR appetite for destruction. i know some kids who swear by their life that this is one of the best records ever, and i’ll admit that the singles were cool back when i was in 5th grade...but yeah, like when that chinese democracy shit comes out and totally blows, it’s not like there was ever a high standard... at least not to my ears. the drummer on this record sucks too.

7/21/03

so i just did like a whole new song. today. see, i’m productive sometimes! it’s real lush, with lots of synths, slow and steady and about two minutes. i think it’s quite good, but it ain’t going up yet. anyway, just got this package in the mail from “discmakers” about this event they’re putting on where you can get “discovered” and play a show at the knitting factory in LA. it’s only $20 or something to enter, so i think i might, cause i’m so much better than all the other losers that’re gonna try. yes, eriq king (er, queen) of the losers, aka failed musicians!

i’m listening to Verbow - chronicles, saw them open for frank black the first time i saw them, not sure if i’m grooving to it, though it was produced by bob mould...

7/20/03

so, we probably aren’t going to be moving right away after all. our buddy LOO is gonna stay with us for august, and we just acquired LOO’s cat “paris is burning,” whose been watching me upload stuff onto ebay for sale all night. fun stuff. anyway, people are telling me that i shouldn’t be so quick to give up such a killer house, so i’m re-thinking things...

the new goal is to get the “describe” cd pressed by november, an ambitious goal if any...not that there’s more than a couple kids who’d buy it.

traffic to this site has dropped quite a bit over the past couple months, i’m not sure why...perhaps i ought to get some of the new songs finished...

i’m not listening to anything right now, but i was listening to Anthrax - sound of white noise, earlier.

7/17/03

so, we’re gonna have to relocate, yes move out of the forest...it sucks, cuz we’re giving up an amazing house where we are able to record and be loud. it’s cool only if - we can find a new living situation just as nice, and we end up somewhere with more possibilities. we’re thinking about san francisco, berkeley, or hollywood (though tommi REALLY wants to live in new york at some point). it sucks though cuz if we’re leaving the area, then erin is basically out of the live band : (

listening to the Spinanes - Manos

7/11/03

still unemployed...into the fifth new song. progress is being made, well not on finding a job that is... the only joy i feel is watching fake president dubya’s bubble explode - shit is going down! trying to sell shit on ebay (nothing music related of course!) perhaps we need to have a fundraiser here? hmmm... i should have studied computer science or become a teacher like my parents :(

oh them failed musician blues. i’m listening to Come, Don’t ask Don’t tell. neat! i like her voice.

7/6/03

this is a cry for help! i am having a breakdown of mariah-esque proportions. well, actually, i ain’t, things are just totally in limbo right now and it sucks. evil genius that i am, i can’t seem to hold onto a steady day job! well i did have a good semi-run for a while where i was raking in some dollars doing the office bitch thing, but alas the part time position i held for the past 4 and a half months, aka the stupidest job ever, aka data entry hell, ended on the 30th, and i am fucking broke (well almost). sugar daddies and beneficiaries antie up, cuz i hate looking for a new day job, especially ‘round these parts, cuz there ain’t much. i gotta get on that grant thing...

three new songs half or more done... right now i’m listening to Neil Young’s classic TRANS, inspiring...

7/2/03

our band now has a VAN! yes, tommi, the illustrious drummer extrodinaire has purchased an ‘86 volkswagon vanagon, so we’re ready to go anywhere to play a show or get drugs, whatever. we’re still challenged by our lack of amplification, but yeah, i’ll figure something out, wait... i’m broke and unemployed again, ah fuck! guess i better start thinking about that career in adult entertainment again...yeah right...

so, yes i have been recording new music, when not unnecessarily involving myself in other people’s drama. i learned once again the other day why i rarely post on message boards over at the “official May the movie” message board thing. some psycho kid had been harrassing my friend, and like a true vigilante fuck up, i thought it reasonable to get involved. of course i did this anonymously and it only added to the confusion! ha ha, oh well. it’s really kinda embarassing actually. but, yes, we were talking about music, right? so i have 2 songs recorded (without beats), and i’m sticking to the plan, a song a week, and i’ll post them when i have 6 done. been working out new songs to play live with erin and tommi too.

6/19/03

fucking hell i need some DSL. really, uploading mp3s via the telephone where the lines only go to about 24600 is excruciating. anyway, for yr listening pleasure, 3 improved mixes of ain’t got no rights, she wants to die, and so you wanna fuck a rock star? so you wanna fuck... has been sharpen into how it always was supposed to sound, i’m just not always able to mix with a clear ear directly after doing a song, plus it’s all a learning process. just dealing with the drum mics and the pristine sound they rendered was an unexpected challenge. anyway, onwards and forwards, i’ve finally started recording a new song on wednesday, and it is coming along quite quickly. my goal is to be doing a tune a week, so yeah, that’s realistic... actually i’m broke and probably gonna be unemployed again soon, which really actually fucking sucks. yes, we accept donations, or grants. we’d be happy to be your beneficiary. please endow us with your financial support, yes it’s pledge week... i have credit card debt! anyway, this new tune is fucked up. everything is gonna be more fucked up than what you’ve heard. anyway, i’ll just keep making these damn songs and hopefully it will keep me distracted from constantly awaiting word of promising prospects. when i get six done i’ll upload them.

6/10/03

i am such a nerd, but... check it out, a shout from Jaye of ATE 13 in this new interview. i am of course honored and astonished to even be mentioned among such names! i’m happy to have one fan (well i have a couple, but you know... this one didn’t know me first). i haven’t heard from her in forever though! tommi and i were supposed to record some beats for her record, i have no idea what’s up with that...

6/9/03

so yeah, our show on the 6th was called our “best show ever!” (so far). we played really well, 8 songs, quit while we were ahead, to actual people, more than just the other bands. i was really surprised that a lot of our friends came out, and bummed that some of them got there right when we finished. but it’s really cool and inspiring that people came. our sound was good, and we totally scored a PA off the UC via tommi’s last few days of student status. even was a good night, even though my keyboardist was totally drama, and crying before and after the show because of some retarded fight with her boyfriend, whatever. the other bands were cool, it was french fried cigarrettes last show ever, or something, they had a cool post rock disco no wave thing going on, people were dancing. the last band, amor tifera were ok, reminded me of trail of dead, but they were hiding behind their loud guitars and had too much cock. afterwards they were bitching about how no one was into them (a significant amount of people left after FFC) and that they should be more selective about doing shows. really lame. one of the guys actually complemented me though as i was breaking down the PA, and i told him that just cuz no one seems to be into what yr doing, you should always play yr best, even if it’s for just one person or no one at all. like, just because you think yr shit doesn’t mean yr entitled to anything (i didn’t say that part, but should of). anyway, yeah, it was cool, and the drop-in center made a good amount of money. so now that our tour of downtown santa cruz has wrapped up, my goal is to get another 10 songs performance ready play elsewhere or anywhere, more! i also have a bunch of songs i want to start recording, and have a new one that i was supposed to do this weekend, but yeah, i did other things, like saw that crap matrix movie. i hated the first one, and i hated this one. can’t wait to hate the next one, fucking waste of six dollars.

6/2/03

ok, so the show on the 31st was educational... playing with a foreign PA and trying to use a lot of different sounds, and sound balanced... yeah, not so hot. gotta be less ambitious i suppose! we were seriously sucking at first, but then we got ok i guess, just that PA was a real bitch, like murphy’s law. like the audience was non-existant, except for our friends and the hanger-ons for Statutory Dan. actually most of our friends we had suckered into coming didn’t show up until half way thru our set, and missed the worst of it, cuz we went on earlier than we thought we would. the actual teenagers couldn’t have been bothered to pay us any attention anyway, no matter how good we looked, turns out they were doing some kind of silk screening thing. anyway, yeah, hopefully the show on the 6th will be more consistent, gathered we acquire some form of amplification.

i’m gonna start recording some new material soon, but i won’t be posting any of it up until i have quite a few finished, so yeah.

5/24/03

hey check it out. that dismemberment plan remix thing has a release date now, it’s Sept 22, and it’s called The People's History of the Dismemberment Plan. what do you know, my remix is fucking first! here’s the tracklist:

01 The Face of the Earth - parae
02 What Do You Want Me To Say? - Drop Dynasty
03 Academy Award - Cex
04 Following Through - Cynyc
05 The Other Side - Justin Norvell
06 Life of Possibilities - Noise McCartney
07 Pay for the Piano - Grandmaster Incongruous
08 Time Bomb - ASCDI
09 Automatic - Oktopus
10 The City - Ev
11 The Jitters - Ender
12 Superpowers - Erik Gundel

fuck yeah, did i mention i’m getting paid at some point for this? fucking checks from kim coletta, formerly of jawbox. i have to say that’s pretty fucking cool. have i ever mentioned my love of jawbox? i was first turned onto them by their Savory video on 120 minutes back in 1994. that shit was cool, they were an awesome band, wish i’d seen them live.

5/13/2003

Rob's Amazing poetry generator!

parae song, is that i 146;ll sleep yea..... 4/27/
03 so yeah!
one in parts and posted
what iguess you Would just unpacking all x=d.all[
a rackmount crap i need to
get to get finished
difficult for
erin, and i 146;m so yeah,
we should have it up by yr favorite bands
i.146;t support
it
gets much EASIER now. nearly maxed out.

Oh, we also have a SHOW coming up on May 31st!

5/5/2003

our show was fucked. we played well, but we played only 5 songs in like 12 mins before being booted off the stage cuz of “time constraints.” basically the girl organizing the show had no competence and fucked us over. we were the only band out of 10 acts to be cut, cuz there was no set-up time factored in to the line-up. we set-up in 10 mins, which was pretty fucking quick, i think, but like after 3 songs, she’s all up on the stage saying one more, we’re half hour behind, which was fucking bullshit. she has made a mortal fucking enemy. the sound guy totally fucked us over too, as he kept fucking with with my mic, turning it up and down. i was very aggrivated for the whole evening afterwards, but we did play well even though most people were like “what?”

went to the bargain barn on sunday, got like 40-50 records for $3 bucks. i finally found this neil diamond record, the one with “forever in blue jeans.” i’m listening to it right now, and i swear i know every fucking song from when i was like 2 or 3, it’s so fucking cheezy and hilarious, his singing is so half-assed, yet i know all of the melodies to these songs, even though i ain’t heard any of them in like 20 years (which is a trippy thought). we’re gonna cover that fucking song, we could do it so better!

4/30/03

alright, here is the refined version of dysphoric, hopefully final version, cuz i’m so over polishing this turd any further. it’s better, but i think i screwed this one up quite early on, i don’t know. it’s still like the weakest track out of the batch, but it’s like at least 80% close to my original idea/vision, so that’s pretty ok, i guess.

so the show on the 10th got moved to the 9th. it’s totally fucked cuz we just found out and we already have plans/tickets to see the great throwing muses. i’m annoyed. our friend whose organizing it says she is putting something else together later in the month and that we can probably play at that. we’ll see if that pans out. the only positive aspect is that it gives us more time to get more material up to par.

4/30/03

hey chicas. well i always do this, upload shit before it’s done, or like when i’m unhappy with it. so like i think i have fixed dysphoric, yeah. download what’s here now and yr sure to have an inferior rarity. basicially just fixed the main problem part by making it even weirder, think tom waits, yeah. anyway, should have it upload soon, so yeah, the album is still officially done.

so the show is coming up and we’re gonna sound like a high velocity sonic mud ball, but i think in a good way, yeah. we’re just gonna sound weird next to all of the sensitive lesbian folk pop. the organizers are trying to cram 10 acts into a 4 hour period. totally not gonna happen. anyway, check out the flyer i made on the shows page! that’s a fucking daisycutter bomb. yes, tax dollars hard at work for the elite, fuckin’ A!

anyway, i feel glad, i have improved my song, yea!

4/27/03

ok it’s done. been making updates for like the past 6 hours, dial-up blows! anyway, this is gonna be short cuz i gotta go do some laundry.

dysphoric - this is the last one i started, and it really came to embody the title. an absolute mess. i might end up working on this some more, but i’m not that motivated. basically trying to be too many things, has a couple moments i suppose. trying to do new things with my voice.

para soniq - the best thing i’ve ever recorded. so close to perfect. didn’t ruin it with words.

my gift to you - added some drums, sounds reasonable now.

so yeah, our record, describe, available only here for downloading. if you want a copy on cdr, come to a show, or email me, they’re free. the plan is to get it pressed maybe late summer or early fall, after i pay down some of this credit card debt or something.

4/27/03

it is done. i’ve finished the last few tracks for this “album” er, collection of songs. i’ll be posting the new mp3s later, as well as updates to the site - including info on our upcoming shows, after i sleep. yea.....

4/17/03

just uploaded transcend. this has been in the works for like way to long. most of it was written and recorded last summer, ‘round july, and then left to sit in the can awaiting drums. i re-did and re-wrote the vocals and words like three times, changing the perspective and sujugation. oh yeah, and this is the third title it has had. this is another boring discertation on gender theory disguised as a pop song. transgender essentially is defined as crossing or changing one’s gender from something to something else, and is not necessarily limited to the binary associated with the masculine/feminine. my school of thought however, is that gender is entirely a social construction with no biological bounds, and therefore does not exist. gender is merely a set of roles and actions of assumed and attached behavior assigned generally to one’s biological sex. the concept i’m working at is instead of transforming one’s gender, to transcend gender. i personally, me/myself, reject the idea of using hormones and cosmetic surgery to transform one’s body from one form of gender representation to another. that stuff is just way too sketchy and financially exploitively driven, it is not safe or healthy in my opinion, nor very creative. unless one is changing/transforming one’s body for art, i’m like whatever. you are who you are no matter what you are or how the fucked up world around you seems to choose to mis-percieve you, and yeah, gender does not exist, unless you choose to acknowledge it. there is a lot i reject about the society where i live, and i’m not so sure on the intelligence of the people that live here. anyway, this song has some surprises in it, i was going for a coltrane (not that i know much about coltrane) meets beefheart (not that i know enough about beefheart) meets sonic youth maybe type thing, but my ability to breathe was somewhat limited by my having not touched the thing for the past 3 or so years. and yes i very much choose to make it sound that way, regardless of much scrutiny and dissection by tommi and the mole. i was also going for a krautrock vibe at the end, don’t know if it’s that successful, i need more that one neu! record in my collection. this ended up better than i eventually expected, but it’s not that great with respect to other ones.

4/15/03

OK, so we got some shows coming up on May 3rd and 10th. Details are over in the SHOWS section, with more information forth-coming. We’re practicing real hard so that we don’t suck. Also trying to gather the funds to get our own PA, so we don’t have to deal with any inexperienced prick/cock soundmen. I keep getting these credit card offers.

So we got a new song most likely done, finally, but i’m gonna give it the 24-48 hr test, and run it by tommi and the mole before i upload it. the other songs are all still like “almost done” so yeah, gonna get them up by the end of the month. should have another song up by this time next week!

4/6/03

here’s my latest labor, a remix/reconstruction of the Violent Vickie tune the Lord healed me while I was watching T.V. for more background on it go to the new remixes page.

so i’m still trying to finish recording this album thing. it’s pretty much all dependent on my drummer, who has been busy with other things and such. as it stands, these delays give me ample time to overthink and re-approach the remain songs with the hope of finding a way of making them less sucky. actually they might end up sounding alright in the end. my goal this month is the same as it was last month, to finish this crap by the end of the month. after that i would like to focus on producing drums for the ATE 13 project (that is if i ever hear from Jaye again and get the stuff i need...) and starting a new batch of new material with radically different approaches, like more electronic but also organic, maybe slower, but faster, definitely more fucked-up. no matter what, i’m still gonna be too piss broke to get any cds pressed right away, so i may examine other options...... regardless everything will remain available here in mp3 format for those one in a million visitors who show up, download something, and actually enjoy it. i know most of y’all suckers are either the government spying on my operation or pedophiles looking for illegal material. i never thought i would attract such a diverse amount of freaks just by posting the lyrics to my songs. it’s fucking weird.

3/26/03

Ok, lots of changes, too tired to discuss. essentially, i am working to expand the scope of this site and will be filling in additional content over the next few months i suppose. check out the remixes page for the extended story on remixing the dismemberment plan.

and new music! (sorta) there was a line in So you wanna fuck a rock star? that was really bothering me, so i came up with something better, and fixed it in a creative way without having to dump all of the original vocals for the part. also, we recorded My Privilege live in the our studio over the weekend, as i decided a rawer live version would be better for the context of the album (i.e. general schizophrenia) than the studio version from last fall. so yeah, we did it all frank black and the catholics style (kinda), totally live, straight to the computer on 8 tracks, with minor panning and eq and compression. most throughout straight-up thing i’ve yet done. i kinda fucked up the ending, but this was the best and most energetic take. i guess we kinda sound like the white stripes, but the original idea was to rip of sleater-kinney, as i’ve stated a million years ago. it’s pretty nasty i suppose.

3/21/03

Yoowccch!

I had no idea Travis from the Dismemberment Plan was such a ill-informed right winger! Makes me almost embarassed to be associated with their Remix album thing. Damn! Like when he says: "Americans have suffered for too long because of the events of the Middle East, events that really aren't that much of our doing. We've supported some dictators and eased others into power, but we never had much choice in these countries." Hello, Henry Kissinger once said, Oil is much to important to simply be left to the Arabs. Yeah, we have SO rebuilt Afghanistan! Right, uh-huh! Who sold Saddam all these Weapons of Mass-Destruction in the 1980s? Who pissed off the entire arab war by bombing the fuck out of Iraq in 1991. Who has allowed Israel to continue systematically break UN Human Rights Law by vetoing any criticizing UN sanctions? Who's CIA has engaged in more than 3000 military operations across the globe over the past 50 years? I'm sorry, but the U.S. government does not play fair, so it's no surprise the a lot of people do not hold, lets say, a positive view of it's government or even it's people. Yeah, Americans have so suffered! 911 was nothing compared to shit that's constantly pulled in our name.

3/7/03

alright, i got it! so i just uploaded my song Another Dead Queer Boy with redone vocals. bascially what happened was a couple months ago our drunk friend Bildo was like, “eriq i could sing Another Dead Queer Boy way better than you.” at first i thought he said this cuz the song offended him (cuz he was pretty close to the guy who died, frank), but then i talked to him about it, and he had no idea it was about frank! (on a conscious level that is). he just figured he could sing it better. so i started to think about this and i was like, shit, the vocals i did back in july when i busted this thing out, while passable, really could have been better, especially when they were a cut and paste job, something i’ve been trying to refrain from resorting to <ever> lately (just like i NEVER pitch correct any vocals - NEVER - NEVER - NEVER, not for any reason ... ok, i’m alright now). so i was trying to redo this about a week ago, and it just wasn’t working, ya know, i just couldn’t get it. so i spent all this week just thinking about it whilst stuffing envelopes at my new retarded job, you know, just thinking it all out, like in the Music Man (not that remake bullshit, i’m talking about the original from the 1940’s). and after doing everything else i could possible work on today, with a sense of a dread i opened up the another dead queer boy file. well, you know it is so rare that i end up doing stuff in anything less that 50 fucking takes, but sometimes, just sometimes, i get it right off, first take, no cut, all one thing, just completely fucking perfect to the point where i’m not totally second guessing myself. this one feels right. fuck you Bildo!
ok, so i should have a new song done and posted by early next week, it’s pretty out there, but not far enough, but whatever, it’s pretty cool i guess.

now i would just like to take a moment and implore any random soul that is reading this to go purchase the new THROWING MUSES and KRISTIN HERSH albums. they are mind blowingly great as all things Kristin creates. the colors in her songs just make me so happy!

oh yeah, one more thing, my server now makes forums, ain’t that neat? i might have one up by the end of the night. maybe some of you freaks who stray here looking for porn or free music by yr favorite bands (i.e. not us) will leave a comment or two!

3/5/03

ok, so here’s what’s in the works! i don’t have anything new to post as of yet, other than i did upload a new version of Hit List, as i felt the need to tighten some screws and sharpen some razors. most likely tomorrow or so i will post the updated version of One Day You Won’t Be Young Anymore, as i felt the need to redo the vocals at the very end and make ‘em more subtle and less sucky. the other things i’m working on are redoing the problem areas in My Gift to You, and redoing the vocals on Another Dead Queer Boy. besides such, i still have three songs to finish! they are nearly done and just need drums and percussion added for the most part. they’re pretty killer, nothing spectacularly groundbreaking, but on the more experimental end of things i suppose, for me at least. also, we’re trying to get it together to get these drum tracks recorded for Alien Tempo Experiment 13, but tommi and i both kinda lagged at getting it done last weekend, although we did start, we really did! what i have been totally lagging on is doing the remix for DJC aka Violent Vicki or whatever she’s calling herself these days. i’ll get to it soon!

oh, and whoever is out there, can someone tell me why You Got It and My Gift to You are the most downloaded songs? i really would like to know!

2/24/03

so yeah, the first order of business tonight is ain’t got no rights. when i first came up with this song about two years ago, i knew it was very good. even when it had no bridge or midsection until i sat down and began recording it last summer, or even thoroughly developed lyrics, i knew that this one was gonna be one of my most bestest! this song is simply, probably, one of the most near perfect things i have slowly tortured myself with recording. if only it wasn’t confined to the outdated technology of 16 bits and 44.1k samples per second. as i once heard the great neil young bitch, the bar was set far too low! anyway, this is like a protest song or something, but not of my recent antiwar variety. i think it’s pretty fucking obvious as to what it’s about, but i’m sure it could apply to other things too. anyway, if i ever had a hit single, this might be it. sometimes i like to pretend i’m kathleen hanna.

onto other business, tommi and i added some drums to michelle (plus i remixed the problem areas). it sounds neat! i also remixed 46 ever so slightly in order to balance out the two vocal takes on the verses. it sounds a little better now.

currently we’re gearing up to start recording drums tracks for Alien Tempo Experiment 13, and we’re gonna do it later this week whether Jaye sends us the goods in time or not!

this past weekend tommi and i played with our friend BILDO. like the idea is to be a punk covers band. it was cool, we were drunk, and our other friend andré kinda played bass. bildo is a good punk singer/screamer for someone whose never played in a band ever before. i think he wants to call the project the Devil’s Member... or no, that was tommi + bildo + andre’s not-quite-tangible band from their high school years or something. anyway, we bashed through the songs for the Mole and his boy when they arrived and then me and tommi played one of our sporadic rock improvisations that was rather high in quality and consistency! why i should have recorded the fucking thing, oh well...

2/18/03

here’s the next new song, i bring you the rock - Hit List or how to influence political change in the modern imperialist world. so yeah, another lame political song. the riffs rock, so yeah, you can shake yr ass to it. i tried to keep it a bit unpolished in a punk rock kind or way, but it’s pretty metally, so yeah, punkish metal political fag rock. anyway, an anti-war song for y’all. maybe this stupid war thing won’t happen, if people keep protesting. maybe if people voted then the people in power wouldn’t be in power. oh, ok, i was going to talk about the perspective of the song. the basic idea is this! if say the terrorists, al queda, actually had their shit together and really wanted to improve, let’s say the poverty and economic imbalance of living conditions in the middle east by making a strike/point against the united states government, let’s float the idea that perhaps it would be more effective for them to assassinate united states political leaders than united states civilians. but no, it’s not about that, it’s about power - power through fundamentalist religion. a dude like bin laden is just the same as dubya bush, or the military dictators of say pakistan or iraq etc. they’re dudes who hold power and influence over many people and use they’re power in order to gain more power, which usually does little to benefit those they hold power over, yeah. ok, so while i’m not one to advocate violence... ok, yeah, so the point is, well there is not much point, other than war sucks, especially when i don’t support it and the person i did not elect has the power to do kill in my name. and also, to touch on the stupid concept that people have in this country, which is that the united states is like the greatest nation in the world. that whole superiority concept is such pompous bullshit. the united states really kinda sucks right now, and if it gets much worse, me and all my friends are fucking moving to new zealand!

2/12/03

so yeah, here’s the next song now - so you wanna fuck a rock star? aka my meanest song ever. yes, the last of my mean songs, because i’ve been doing too many of them, and i don’t want to get pigeonholed now do i? honestly, i hope the absurd humor is perceptible, cause this thing is also about mocking me, ya know! but yeah, it’s all true and uh, yeah, i wrote this at a point where i didn’t think that i was ever going to talk to this person again, but yeah, well i’ve thought that quite a few times about this particular kid now.

so me and tommi have been practicing on like a daily basis in order to not suck for our show type thing on thursday, and i believe that we will in fact most likely not suck! i’m not totally clear on the format, and the turnout is probably going to be super low, as most events are at the ucsc campus, so if by any miniscule chance we do suck by any means, it will not be witnessed by many!

2/7/03

finally! you can download She Wants to Die and hear what Tommi’s drum playing really sounds like (aside being here in the studio...yeah.) anyway, this was such a bitch to do - the drum recording that is. i mean, the song was easy, i wrote it back in october whilst procrastinating on the whole You Got It thing, and it was like one of those things that came together in like five minutes. recording all the parts was a breeze also, and i think it’s definitely one of my strongest guitar “rock” type songs. but the drums, yeah... well being that doing this whole real drum mic thing was kinda tricky, well we’re learning as we go. anyway, we did it all in parts and of course we were going for “close to perfection,” no half assed shit. anyway, this sounds good really loud, or loud on headphones, as usual! but seriously, i wanted the drums to be as “natural” as possible, so i stayed away from fucking around too much with EQ and effects. I just basically compressed the shit out the bass drum and snare so that there’s a good even thwack to it all! anyway, yeah, one down, 6 and a half to go!

oh, so yeah, most of the Alternate Mp3s are pretty much gone now, as i had to make room. as always, anyone who would like a free cdr of any of the old stuff can just email me.

i’ll try to get another song done over the weekend, and hopefully the only distraction will be an active social life (and not bed-ridden puking + pooing! fuckin’ shit that sucked!)

2/3/03

ok, so yeah, we got a show coming up, and it’s not at the lodge, so yeah! it is:

february 13 - 8:30pm @ UCSC GLBTI Resource Center

like the event is an open mic / band thing, so there will be other music and poetry type stuff involved also. should be neat. we’re gonna do it as a power duo, cause erin is off in europe doing the europe thing, and the mole ain’t been practicing enough (and has a prior obligation or something). so yeah, we promise not to be drunk or stoned this time, yeah!

so i got like 7 songs i’m trying to finish up, but yeah, shit just keeps happening. like this weekend, i got puke-ass sick all day saturday, and ending up missing out on seeing the Melvins, and alas no drums were recorded all weekend long. a sorry state of affairs indeed. hopefully something will get finished soon...

in the mean time, i secured some photos from out infamous new years eve show (infamous for my extended/tedious stand-up routine) and man are they shit. or i mean the quality below is shit. they are courtesy of loo, and are from a contact sheet and were taken without flash, so yeah... when i get something better, i’ll post it for sure.

(damn i'm a poser!)

(the blotch on the left with the bass is the mole, and tommi is behind the mass of drums that is all black and blurry, and you can kinda see erin in the one on the right)

1/28/03

so yeah, new stuff is coming...eventually! me and tommi were finally able to lay down some drum tracks over the past weekend, but mixing them into already mixed songs, and general timing imperfections has made getting anything close to finished difficult for the time being. hopefully we should be able to get some of them done after a few more sessions over the next week or so. like, we should have a revised mix of Michelle up and a couple songs that bring you the serious rock.

1/23/03

uh yeah, more technical updates, boring boring boring.

oh, right, you can now download the polished up version of You Would Be King. i re-did most of the vocals with my new SM-57, which was soooo much easier to use than the crap i had been using. like recording vocals is so much EASIER now. whoa, deja-vu...

1/22/03

yowzaa! i’ve gone and refurbished the whole god damn website! look at that! and here i thought i wasn’t gonna do anything useful tonight... well it’s all a bit more linear, i think, and hopefully there aren’t any kinks to be found. i may tweak it a bit over the week, but perhaps this set-up can last us a bit. wouldn’t that be nice?

i should have some updated versions of songs up in the next couple of days, and oh yeah, the Alternate Mp3s are gonna disappear soon, so yeah, get ‘em while you can!

1/14/03

one last time, hopefully! One Day You Won’t Be Young Anymore in its final form. as always, i posted what i thought was done before actually giving myself a day to seek better judgment. anyway, i changed some shitty vocals to some cheezy guitar, so yeah, just going for that Queen / Brian May vibe with my somewhat limited abilities. the Mole approves highly of this piece and and claims it as one of my best productions yet (thus verifying my ego). what are you waiting for? ingest this bitter sugar-pill already!

so my drum mics arrived today, courtesy of my maxxed out credit card, whoo-hoo! i spent a couple of hours just unpacking all the crap i ordered and then assembling what needed to be assembled, like a tri-guitar stand and a rackmount (crap i should have gotten ages ago!) the new cymbals are coming tomorrow, so yeah, we should be pumping out some eight channels of drums and percussion quite soon, oh the glory! yes, one step closer to the illusion of a real professional studio and a legitiment music career...

1/9/03

i’ve been working my ass off all day to get to this point, so here they are now that it’s like almost 2am - three songs you might have heard already, but now nearly perfect in execution!

dictocracy - i had to change some words, cuz i had like a couplet of words that were worthy of trent reznor, i.e. dated teenage angstesque, know what i mean? like i knew it was a throwaway when i recorded it, but after six months, i just couldn’t continue to live with it. plus i’ve been saying fuck a bit much in some of the songs, so now there’s one less! so i procrastinated a bunch, and then a some more, and then came the night before our new years eve show when i finally jotted some higher quality pessimism down that now serves as the second half of the second verse. trust me, it’s much improved and gets the point across slightly more eloquently i suppose. also, i ended up remixing the entire thing, in effect making it more dynamic. you can now hear the keyboards and the bass, and overall the mix is slightly lower now (rather than a distorted stream at mixed zero) so the rhythmic dynamics now more cosistently propel the tune more along, basically it’s less muddy but i did turn up the noise!

my gift to you - well this time it wasn’t the words, it was the vocals and lack of quality thereof. i basically re-recorded a section, added layers, played with 50 different combinations of effects, dumped the vocals, redid them, played with effects some more, redid another track, before finally finding relative satisfaction, and then added some echo type effect on top of the mixed down vox. way too much trouble, but i didn’t want to give up and have a big flaw that would make me cringe left in the middle of the track, especially when everything else is so pretty and nice. anyway, this song is as close to perfect, and whatever my vision was, as i guess you can get.

one day you won’t be young anymore - ok, well we had a false start with this one a few weeks ago as i really wanted to share what i had been working on with this great big void. well here it is, with much better vocals on the parts where the vocals, shall we say, kinda sucked! mainly it just took me some time to think out what it was i that i actually wanted. however, the real challenge, mainly today, was getting the fucking effects to sound the way i imagined in my head. well, i didn’t quite get what i thought i wanted, but got what i got instead, which is pretty cool in itself. anyway, if you happened to fall upon my sight looking for porn or free downloads of mainstream acts, but are not so dissappointed as to try something from the local menu, then this is it! this is a quintessiential parae song, and basically sums up the parae sound. i am very proud of this one, as it was a real motherfucker at points to pull out. but i think that with this sucker, i managed to really create something rather consistently danceable (whatever that is), melodically pleasant (yes, pleasant schizophrenia), and sugarcoated with super nasty and bitter lyrics cloaked throughout. yes, here is my first number one hit of 2003, right! anyway, as long as someone enjoys it as much as my ego does, then i guess i’ll sleep ok.

so there y’all have it! BTW, the drum mics have been ordered and my credit card is nearly maxed out. but on the bright side, if my card is maxed out, then i can’t use it, ha ha! i figure we’ll drop four or five new finished songs by the end of january, or maybe the whole new record project if i stay motivated.

1/6/03

well, if yr a regular visitor, you may have noticed that i finally sat my unemployed ass down and learned me a bit of flash, or at least enough to do the little intro thingy now up! well i’m proud of myself!

coming soon - pictures of our disastorous 2nd show!

coming soon also - i’ll be reposting some updated versions of a few of the newer songs as i’ve continued to work on some of themover the past couple weeks. the latest one i posted, what was it... one day you’ll be a bitter old queen like me, or something, sounds much improved now that i rethought a bit of the processes. i should toss them up in a couple days or so.

coming not soon enough - the damn drum mics! i haven’t actually ordered them yet, as the set i wanted is no longer available, thus i have been examining options. however, i did receive the 8 channel pre-amp i need to actually do my thing with the drums, so we’re one step closer. our new cymbals should be

coming soon more - new material will be up soon!

BTW - for those who are interested in downloading material from the ALTERNATE collection, get them now, as i’ll be pulling most of the mp3s down in order to make room. it’s hard to believe that i’ve already filled up my 150 mbs of space on the server!

1/3/02

OK, so we played our second show as a band on new year’s eve here at the mountain “lodge” with DJC. we had a pretty good turnout that we quickly alienated! DJC went on at around 11:30 and rocked her electro-clash shit, and then after playing ABBA’s Dancing Queen on the ol’ turntable ‘round midnight, we went on at about 12:15. Well, we were all pretty sauced up, except for erin, and tommi was uh, well had that look in the eye that just speaks a thousand words. i should have some pictures up soon, so yeah. needless to say, we took about 45 mins to play a 25 minute set, and at one point weren’t even all playing the same song (due to my lack of communication abilities!) anyway, we recorded the whole painful experience on my VHS and maybe at some point down the road i might get some of the less hilarious moments digitized and posted here unless we dramatically improve. regardless, it will be fun to laugh at in 20 years i suppose!

in the mean time, here are the pictures - finally - from our first show back in october. unfortunately they’re not all “action” shots, but they’re what i’ve got!

archived news 2002

archived news 2001 ... ancient history - real old shit