Day 5 - Austin Saves the Day!

12/30/04 @ Trophy's

The repair shop called at about 10 AM to let me know the van was done. Brad, the other tow truck operator, had apparently gotten up extra early to work on it so we’d be able to leave town as early as possible, because they knew we had to get to Austin the next day. We made a quick stop at the Waffle House (Affle Hose) and then got driving.

It was great to return to Trophy’s in Austin. It’s not on the famed Sixth Street, but it’s very close to downtown and they don’t charge a cover so it is slightly easier to convince people to stop by the show. We played an acoustic set there last May, which was fun, but we were looking forward to doing an electric set this time. The staff at Trophy’s – Colby, Ellie, and Matt – are great people and really made us feel at home. If I lived in Austin, I think I’d be a regular there.

Only one other band was on the bill: a “junkgrass” band called American Graveyard. Their style of music was quite a bit different from ours, but the lineup worked out surprisingly well because they had a ton of energy on stage and they really seemed to have a blast doing their thing. I think our bands just have a very similar attitude, and we struck up a good friendship right off the bat. American Graveyard’s instrumentation was unique – throughout their set we heard guitar, mandolin, banjo, violin, harmonica, and some very cool improvised percussion instruments including a suitcase bass drum and a tree-like thing that had a bell on the top and other “branches” of instruments (one of them being an empty Jack Daniels bottle). They kicked the night off at around 9:00 and kept it rocking till about 11:00.

Our set flew by pretty quickly. We were all itching to play after the previous night’s debacle with the van. The crowd appeared to be having a really good time, and they were EXTREMELY generous with the tip jar that Chris from American Graveyard passed around during our set.

After we were done playing, the guys from American Graveyard invited us to a bar down the street called Ego’s, where there was more live music. Chris somehow got us in without a cover, which was incredibly cool (thanks Chris!). The band playing was called Two Hoots and a Holler and their brand of music was like a cross between swing and polka with a little bluegrass mixed in. The place was pretty small, and it was completely packed with people. We quickly discovered the small dance floor and had an absolute hoot (no, two hoots AND a holler) dancing till bar time. I have to send out a huge thanks to Chris, Jim, Conrad, Doodle (whose wife’s name is Wendy Lou!), and [ shoot, I can’t recall the drummer’s name.. what was it, Billy Joe?!… ] of American Graveyard. I hope we get to hang out with them again sometime soon.

It was also great to see a couple of friends of ours who had relocated to Austin. Dario, who went to high school with me, and Jim, who went to college with all of us, made it down to the show and then to the party at Ego’s. Coincidentally, Jim, who is a comedian, had recently run into and met the guys from American Graveyard at one of his gigs, so they knew each other prior to our show together.

We stopped over at Jim’s for a couple of beers, and then headed back to the hotel. We walked over to the 24-hour Whataburger right across the street, but it was drive-through only – d’oh! They didn’t let us walk-thru (we even tried a pathetic synchronized jump on the car sensor) so we had to go back and drive through with the van/trailer… but, it was worth the extra hassle to be able to stuff our faces with greasy fast food at the end of the night.

Day 4 - Foiled by the Van

After checking out of the hotel, we drove to a cemetery at the north end of Canal Street. Sherri was interested in seeing one of the famous above-ground New Orleans cemeteries, so we wandered around in it and took some photos. The weather was, again, absolutely perfect and it was neat to check out the old tombstones and statues.

Then we hit the road for Houston. We made a stop at a music store in Lafayette, Louisiana, to pick up a few things we needed (speaker cable, bass strings, hi-hat clutch, etc.). We continued on the road, but shortly after we crossed the border into Texas, the power steering in the van stopped working. Mike was driving and he got the van to a gas station, where we refilled the power steering fluid and all the other fluids, and tried to troubleshoot what was going on, with the help of a guy named Mike who was hanging out at the gas station. The van seemed to be running slightly better, even though the power steering still wasn’t right. We called the club to let them know we were slightly delayed, since our stop at the gas station took a while.

Once we got back on the highway, though, we noticed the headlights getting dimmer and dimmer. The battery gage was way low too, so we pulled over at the next Rest Area which, thankfully, wasn’t far away. I called Triple-A to see if they could tow us to Houston (it was still about 100 miles away and AAA-plus covers towing to that distance). They said they probably could, but we still didn’t know what to do about getting the seven passengers there. Plus, the tow truck wouldn’t get to us for at least another 45 minutes.

It became apparent to us that there was no possible way for us to make it to Houston in time for the show at the Sidecar Pub. This was extremely disappointing, because Ben and the people at the Sidecar really worked hard to make this show happen. Plus, we played at the Sidecar Pub a couple of years ago and it’s just a really cool place that we had been looking forward to revisiting. The disappointment of missing out on a great show just added to my extreme bitterness/rage toward the van, which goes back to the first tour we took it on in May of 2003 when the engine blew out. And let’s not even get into the whole “rear end” issue.

When the tow truck arrived, the driver, Earl, took a look at the engine. He quickly determined our problem: a broken tension pulley. The belt was so loose, it wasn’t even turning. He said they’d be able to fix it relatively quickly in the morning at the local shop, in Bridge City, Texas, so they towed the van there on my Triple-A membership. Since, as we discovered, Triple-A doesn’t cover “utility” trailers, it only covers “habitable” trailers (thanks a lot, guys), we had to pay to get the trailer towed to a hotel. But, with two tow trucks, all of us at least got a ride to the hotel, so that worked out okay.

Useless but interesting fact: You have to cross a bridge to get into Bridge City.

Day 3 - New Orleans, LA

12/28/04 @ Dixie Taverne

I got up at about 11 AM, and since everybody else was still sound asleep, I decided go to scope things out around the hotel (I got to the hotel so late the previous night that I had no clue what the area was like). I went outside and it was AWESOME – sunny, I’d guess around 65-70 degrees, absolutely perfect. I lounged by the pool for a little while, and then Sherri stopped by and we decided that we should probably get moving if we wanted to “see the sights” before it was show time.

Everybody had different things they wanted to do, so we split off into groups with the plan to meet up in the French Quarter for dinner at around 6:00 PM. Mike, Sherri, and I walked over to the French Market and had breakfast, did some shopping (the wide variety of colorfully named hot sauces provided us with plenty of entertainment – we got a bottle of “Brand New Asshole” hot sauce for Ben), and then met up with Morgan and Taylor. We stopped at one of the countless frozen drink places for a bit of liquid refreshment, and struck up a conversation with the bartender, whose ex-wife was from Wisconsin. After finding out we were in a band playing in town that night, he immediately guessed correctly that we’d be at the Dixie Taverne. Right on! Oh yeah, his name was Weeble.

Then we met up with Ben and Allison for a classic New Orleans dinner at Felix’s on Bourbon Street. We ate enough jambalaya to kill a small horse and then hit some souvenir (junk) stores before going to the venue to set up for the show.

If today’s story sounds like a boring description of a tourist’s trip to New Orleans, never fear, the interesting part is about to begin.

We showed up at the club at 9:30 PM for load-in. Jen was bartending and a guy named Darin was working at the door. There were a few people sitting at the bar, including a really loud guy who was obviously very intoxicated. He kept daring people around him to punch him in the face… Unfortunately, nobody obliged (what better way to start the night than with a good ole bar fight?).

They told us we could pull up onto the sidewalk and just park there, but there was already a big white truck parked outside the front door, so we sort of double-parked and unloaded everything into the bar. Then, Ben took the van and trailer and parked it on the sidewalk a little ways up.

We were scheduled to play first, so we started setting up on stage. While we were setting up, the drunken guy fell of his bar stool not once but twice. He could’ve used one of those shirts they sell in the shops on Bourbon Street that has “If you can read this, please put me back on my bar stool” printed upside down on it.

A few minutes later, I went to use the bathroom, and while I was in there I suddenly heard somebody yell “CALL 9-1-1, THERE’S A MAJOR ACCIDENT RIGHT OUT FRONT!” I ran outside to a horrific sight: All of the cars that had been parked in front of the club were smashed, and the white truck that had previously been in front of the club was in the crash, turned sideways in the middle of Canal Street. Two (possibly three) cars were completely totaled, and one of the totaled cars had been pushed into our trailer.

MIRACULOUSLY NO ONE WAS KILLED. The drunk guy (yup, you guessed it, it was the wastoid who couldn’t stay on his bar stool) was the only person involved in this crash, all the other cars were just parked out front with no one in them. Apparently he was injured, but he survived and I am absolutely amazed that he walked out of that one.

Of course, all of the cars involved belonged to patrons of the Dixie Taverne, and the “totally totaled” car that got pancaked into a tree and then hit our trailer belonged to Jen the bartender. Obviously that put a major damper on the spirits of everyone at the club. But, they still wanted us to continue with the show so we did. It was just creepy to have a crime scene – it really looked like a war zone out there – right outside.

By the time we finished playing, the totaled cars had been towed away and our trailer was “freed” from the accident scene. The front left side of got pretty dented, and the left wheel well was completely dislocated from the trailer. It was a terribly disheartening sight, since the trailer is really REALLY nice and Ben just got it two weeks ago. Darin (who had been working the door and thereby monitoring the accident scene the entire night) was a mechanic and very kindly offered to take a look at the trailer to make sure it wasn’t structurally damaged. By an amazing stroke of luck, the trailer was still safe to tow. Darin helped us patch up some of the dented side at his shop, so it would still be weather-proof. He really went out of his way to help us… It never ceases to amaze me how people who just met us can be so generous.

The other band, Debe Queso and the Violators, did a great job of rocking the place till bar time. They had a lot of fans who were all extremely friendly and who truly seemed to LOVE to party. Even after the unfortunate events of the night, we couldn’t help but jump into the mosh pit that was going on during their set.

After the show, Ben, Allison, Sherri, and I went back to Bourbon Street for one last time. It wasn’t as hopping as we expected it to be at 2:30 AM, but maybe the Tuesday after Christmas is the “off season” or something. Regardless, we found a bar with some music and got our dance on for a while before calling it a night at about 5:30 AM.

Day 2 - Lots of Driving

We didn’t leave Nashville until about 2 PM, and spent most of the day driving. It was a beautiful day and the difference in temperature made even the eight hours in the van much nicer.

By the time we got to New Orleans, it was about 1:00 AM. We wanted to try to do some promotion for the next day’s show, so Mike and I went to the Dixie Taverne with CDs and flyers while the rest of the crew went to check in to the hotel.

Right from the start, I liked the Dixie Taverne. There’s no question it’s a rock bar. You walk in the front door, and the stage is right there, front and center – next to the bar itself (you could order a drink from on stage if you wanted to). It has a jukebox full of good music, band stickers covering the front window inside and out, a good assortment of old show posters, etc. The attitude/feel of the Dixie Taverne reminded me of the old O’Cayz in Madison.

Since it was a Monday night at 1 AM, there were only a few people left in the place when we got there (bar time that night was 2 AM). We got a warm welcome from Jennifer, who booked the show and was bartending.

After a couple of drinks, some loud tunes from the jukebox (although the jukebox skipped on Social D’s “Ring of Fire” – D’OH!), and a few shots of Bourbon (3 for $3 was the Monday night special), we had acquainted ourselves with everyone in the bar and invited them to the show. The regulars at the Dixie were a really friendly bunch of people, and they seemed excited to meet us out-of-towners and tell us about New Orleans. Several of them were also musicians in local bands so it was fun finding out what they were all up to. We weren’t sure if our efforts at promotion would actually wind up bringing anybody to the show, but we sure had a good time and felt very welcome for our first venture to New Orleans.

Day 1 of Southern Tour

Springwater Supper Club - Nashville, TN

Did you know that there is a full-scale model of the Parthenon in Nashville, TN? I was unaware of this fact, but the Springwater Supper Club, where we played last night, is just down the street from this American replica of the Parthenon. COOL!

We arrived at the Springwater at about 8:30 PM. Ben and I ran inside to scope things out and find out where we were supposed to load in. Until this point, we didn’t know who else (if anyone) was going to be doing the show. We met the bartender, Mike, who told us there would be a couple of other bands… Then we met the other bands and found out that we’d be the last of three bands to take the stage. Good plan – After 8 hours in the van, unwinding and listening to some music before unloading and taking the stage sounded like a grand idea.

The Springwater Supper Club is a neat little place. Okay… I guess some might place it in the “dive” bar category, but let’s just call it a quaint venue with the necessary amenities to hang out and have a good time. These amenities would include the beer bar (no liquor!), a pool table, a friendly group of regulars, and of course the stage and sound system. It also has a nice sized porch which I imagine is a great place to hang out in the summer -- the wall adjacent to the porch has those huge windows that open the place up to the porch in summertime. I also imagine the place is a lot more pleasant in the summer because, with the windows shut, I believe it was THE SMOKIEST bar I have ever been in.

The part of the club with the stage was completely decked out for Christmas. There were lights everywhere: dangling from the ceiling, covering every wall, all over the stage… and everything in the room was covered in tinsel! Very festive, and it was funny as the night progressed to see everyone walking around with the tinsel in their hair and stuck to their clothes.

There are a lot of great things about touring, but one particularly exciting wildcard that always comes into play is that you never know who is going to turn up at the shows in different cities. You, of course, invite everyone you know within a 3-state vicinity of the venue you’re going to be at, but a lot of times you don’t get to personally talk to anyone beforehand. The invitation might go out in the form of an email or voice message, but often you never make contact with anyone in that city, leaving you to wonder if anyone will turn up specifically to see your band. At this show, we were surprised by our friends Will, Mike, and Francis, who also came to see us when we played in Murfreesboro, TN. They also brought a gaggle of friends, making the night way more fun than expected.

The music started at about 9:30, with a Nashville band called Blue Fades. They played an interesting mellow mix of tunes. Following them was a three-piece Nashville rock band called Blacks and Blondes, who definitely knew how to rock. It was an interesting mix of music over the night, and by the time it was our turn to play we were definitely pumped up and ready for the tour kick off show.

The show itself was a lot of fun, in spite of some small technical difficulties. There were only two microphones, so Mike and Ben shared one. From what everybody said, my mic wasn’t working…. There was no monitoring system so we really had no idea what the mix in the room was like, but that’s alright. It felt so great to PLAY, and the excitement of being at a new place we haven’t played before, far away from home, just added to the energy and fun.
After the show, we cruised over to our hotel, which was right in the heart of exciting downtown Nashville (o Priceline, what would we ever do without you?). What a city – I only wish we’d had more time to explore the seemingly endless music stores and venues! As we checked into the hotel, our friend Will got some info from Tim the concierge (seriously, if you saw them talk you’d think they were old friends!). Tim was very helpful and didn’t mind the fact that every time we walked by him, someone would enthusiastically shout out “TIMMY” in the Cartman voice.

A bunch of us then decided to venture out for some food, so our official “Guide” and Nashville native, Justin, showed us the way to his favorite local Waffle House. Ah, the Waffle House! What a wonderful, wonderful haven for drunks to convene at the end of the night. And the waitress was SO nice, even while putting up with the shenanigans of our rowdy, hungry group. These shenanigans include (but are not limited to): Playing the Waffle House songs on the jukebox in loop (one song was played no less than THREE times – “special lady… waffle house lady!”), referring to the waitress by a different name each time, mingling with the other drunken patrons, etc. If you’re from Wisconsin, you’ve probably seen this scene played out at local Denny’s more than once…. ‘nuff said.

At the end of the night it was time to crash… We walked into our hotel room to discover the heat wasn’t working and it was FREEZING cold. It was a chilly night, but after the excitement of a long first day and fun first night of the tour, I slept well.

Merry Christmas!

I hope your family doesn't get too dysfunctional and that Santa brought you everything you asked for.

Wow, I'm still sick. This cold ain't shakin'. I didn't even feel well enough to drive back to Milwaukee last night for Christmas Eve at my Aunt's house. I really missed spending time with them. I just kinda shut myself in, got packed for the Southern tour and watched old Sopranos episodes from the third season On-Demand. That's probably my favorite. I just hate Ralphie sooooooooo much. I like Annabella Sciorra, though. That season's a winner.

I also finally saw Jingle All The Way and while it sucked for an Arnold movie it had some funny moments. Jim Belushi is never gonna be his brother, but he still makes me laugh. Sinbad vs. Arnold? That was pushing it.

Oh well, I feel a little better today. I'll post something here the next time we have internet access so we can let everyone know how much fun we're having carousing in the Southland. I heard it's cold down there this year, looks like I'm gonna have to cut up some Taun-Tauns and sleep in them for warmth.

I'm not really into all the gooey shit that goes along with "goodwill towards men", but I hope everyone's having a good Christmas or whatever religious or secular celebration you decide to have. It beats working!

True Holiday Diversity

Looks like you can find it in Florida. It's an excellent example of the Free Exercise Clause in action. That's an encouraging solution.

Madison is absolutely Cromwellian about public Christmas displays. White trash, religious Christians (specifically Evangelicals), and fat people are the last group of people that "enlightened" Americans feel free to relentlessly ridicule. I admit, I do it, too. Is that called 'reverse tolerance'?

Oh well, this shit's been chewed to death on talk radio alone. If it makes some people happy to put up a Jesus thing in the public park more power to them. If they want to put a big fat Menorah, a naked statue of Zeus, or an upside-down cross, I don't really care. I think they have the right to celebrate in schools and in city halls whatever the fuck they want.

It's back to the whole point of "Intellectual Terrorists" from Radio Free Earth (was that a seamless plug or what?), I thought diversity was about the celebration of differences not the homogenization of them.

This is news? Isn't there a war on?

This story makes me sad. These people love that little deer, but you know the DNR is gonna win. You can't fight the government.

But, really, who cares? It's a deer, don't drunk men all over the northern part of the state shoot these things all the time for fun? Why is killing one okay and not the other? This is the number one story on my Madison newsfeed today? To quote Lewis Black, "Are you fucking kidding me?"

This Cold Sucks

Man, what an awful time to get a cold, right when there's too much shi-ite to do for Christmas and getting ready for our Southern tour next week. I've got the sniffling, sneezing, coughing, aching, stuffy head, but no fever as far as I know.

I stayed up way too late last night too. I went to a show at The Annex and I had a good time. It was $10 all-you-can-drink, so I enjoyed myself, and there was a decent crowd for a Wednesday. The bands were Sand, which is just starting with a new lineup around here in Madison, they were acoustic rock with some keyboards (which always is a nice touch as long as it's not that pussy-ass organ sound which always makes me think of 70's UK pub rock, fucking Rod Stewart, somebody off him already, willya?) and Willis from Oshkosh. They kind of have an indie thing going on, ah a little, not so much, they flirt with it but it's mostly straight ahead.

Seems like everybody's got an indie thing going on now. I'm glad, though. Dear Jack White, please save us from nu-metal and banish it to Janesville. Thank You.

Sending out press releases and mailings to newspapers is frustrating a lot of the time. You throw a lot out there and hope one or two pick up. That's probably my least favorite part about this whole thing. It's fun when you get an article, though.

However, I think reviews are more powerful than show previews. When you read an article about a band, they're usually boring. So, when you see a new band that you haven't heard of, you're like, "Why the fuck should I care what these guys have to say? I don't even know if I like their songs yet."

Yeah, reviews are more key, because people read reviews to specifically see what's new and ummmm... hot. Even though it's lame to rely on someone else's opinion to create your own, it's kind of par for the course. We all do it. We all get excited about something or go into something merely because we read a good critique of it. It's so affecting of our enjoyment of art. I wasn't interested in seeing Alexander because all the reviews said it blows or for some reason I'm not supposed to think that The Killers are as good as those David Byrne-wannabes in Franz Ferdinand, because Rolling Stone says so (even though I find The Killers infinitely more enjoyable.) Well, fuck Rolling Stone. When's the last time they talked about Meat Loaf?

Alright, I'm just bitching at press media now, the difficulty of creating a story about your band that you can hook music writers with, and the futility of letting criticism ruin your enjoyment of something. But, that's the nature of the beast. As soon as you learn how to take the good parts of criticism (the self-satisfaction that someone gets from an "expert" agreeing with them) and not take the bad parts (guilty pleasures, going into something with your mind already made up), please let me know. I'd love to do it. I'm sure plenty of bands who have given me their CD that I haven't written a review of in Maximum Ink probably think I'm an asshole for not writing about their band too.

Plus, did I mention I'm sick? Not as sick as Wendy was yesterday (the doctor had to amputate) but sick nonetheless.

The Spirit of Christmas...

...lives on!

Mainstream Media Gangs Up On Indie Artist?

Noooooooo... who woulda thunk it?

All you armchair ethicists out there, check this story about a singer whose fan club "cheated" to get her on the radio. Yeah, they lied about a song to get on the radio, but it's no different than anything anyone at a major record label does EVERY SINGLE DAY. Make sure you read Steve Albini's classic "Some of your friends are already this fucked" article if you want a little quick insight into the world of major labels.

Yes, the artist's buddy that worked on the fan club exploited the tools at his disposal. Yes, he lied. And I know, that never, ever, never happens in the entertainment industry. Oh. No.

Did it need a big article in The Tennessean? Unsavory promotional efforts go on every day. Nashville is a major label music town (we'll be there in six days, woohoo!) maybe they're trying to make sure that someone who has fallen out of favor with the labels in Nashville doesn't get too popular. Is there a big indie (not alt)country scene? Or do the editors at The Tennessean just don't like the idea of a patriotic song on the radio?

Anyway, it's fucking lame that this story made a major metro newspaper. It feels like a hit job. 17 people in a fan club were requesting this chick's song and lied saying they had a connection to the military. Nice detective work everybody. I'm sure The Tennessean does an excellent job at exposing the way the music industry chews up and spits out thousands of naive and innocent souls every year.

I hope the reporter who wrote this story gets a face full of balls.

Parting The Red Sea

I felt like Charlton Heston on Saturday because our show at The Red Sea was tits, yo. The other two bands, Kid Knuckle (get a website, mofos!)and The Ugly Fat Kids were a lot of fun, energetic, and punk as fuck. It was just a great vibe all night long, everybody was in a good mood, it was an early show so nobody was piss-wasted or surly and I enjoyed the music. Probably the most fun weekend up in Minneapolis so far this year, I think.

Wow, I just realized how dirty the title of this post sounds.

The Red Sea is interesting too because it seems like the least likely place for a rock show. It's connected to an Ethiopian restaurant and indeed, most of its regulars are East African immigrants. So, when you walk in, you might think you're in the wrong place. Nope, it's the right place. But there's a great stage in the back room that's just made for a party. It's funny that it's suburban pasty ass white rockers on the side of the bar with the stage and East African immigrants on the side with the pool tables, but no one blinks an eye. That, my friends, is a cool setup. Kinda like The Big Horse Lounge in Chicago and how it's connected to a Mexican restaurant. The only difference is that The Red Sea is bigger, friendlier, has decent sound, and cheaper beer. Well, Mexican food versus Ethiopian food is a toss-up too. I love 'em both.

Anyway, I had a good time. Everyone today was like, "Isn't it cold up in Minneapolis?" Ummm.... yeah. We live in fucking Wisconsin. Can you feel the difference between -3 degrees versus -6?

Unusually, there weren't too many hipsters out this weekend. Maybe the cold fogged up their glasses. There was one frado in a black shirt and white tie but I'm not sure if he was a Mod or actually thought it looked good.

Fox never fails

to find new ways to exploit people. I love it. It's like the network executives decided to use all those awful shows that they talk about on The Simpsons or used to on Married... With Children and turn them into reality.

Reality shows suck ass anyway, though. Survivor was fun for a couple of years. I guess people see something in The Apprentice when they can fit a camera in the same room as The Donald's massive toupee-chowing ego.

Dana Stevens wrote a pretty good article in Slate about the problem with reality television and too much nostalgia-mining and she echoes a lot of what I've been thinking about culture. Music, TV, films- we're not just taking the ideas or character archetypes of the past and repackaging them, we're trying to recreate them. Retro can be a lot of fun, but it's also kind of sad. It's a longing for something that never was. I guess Pleasantville covers the same territory (albeit it focuses a little too much on the same tired themes of sexual repression.) And with retro music, so desperate to sound like The Who or The Cars or for Christ's sake, AC/DC, without any of the personality or the charm that made it fun in the first place. It's like how when you used to hi-speed dub tapes for your friends, the copy never sounded as good as the original, or a Xerox isn't as crisp. You ever see Multiplicity?

I'm just rambling now, about the same shit I always do. This Who's Your Daddy? show probably won't be as disgusting as it sounds, and that kind of disappoints me. The more vulgar and exploitative of a poor orphan's wish for a real family it is, the more people will realize how sick their schadenfreude really is.

Well, maybe not. Did you ever rent Faces of Death? Morbid curiousity can be healthy, I think. It's hard-wired in our brains. The process of seeing how other people die can help you figure out how not to repeat their mistakes. It's like slowing down when you drive by a car accident. I always say that I don't do it, but I do. Do I want to see what happened? Of course I do! I am not uncurious.

I'll probably watch Who's Your Daddy? too. Fuck, remember this guy? And on a side note, doesn't he remind you of Mark Belling? C'mon, maybe a little?

Area 52

Once again, the Twin Cities turns out to be an island of coolness in the frozen tundra that is the Upper Midwest.

We stopped by this musicians' collective on both Friday and Saturday nights and it's one of the sweetest places I've seen in The Cities yet. After the buck wild and fun-as-hell Thoughtcloud show at The Terminal Bar on Friday we checked out the open jam at Area 52. It's this top floor of a warehouse and it's absolutely monstrous (there was even a movie screen in there showing porn! Awesome.) made for some trouble as I did some drunken self-indulgent free-style rapping with Tony from Thoughtcloud that was completely unneccessary, but fun nonetheless. It was also great to see Nick from the always excellent Filthy Divine. Last time I saw him he was buck naked in an Eau Claire hotel. Ha. Anyway, it was a lot of fun to jam with him.

Everybody at the place was super cool and thank God it wasn't just a bunch of hippies noodling and playing bongos (which was my total fear.) It was metal, punk, and indie guys and girls. A real eclectic mix and a really interesting place. It was cool to make so many new friends. Plus, we saw an excellent band there called Toast who had an absolutely devastating bassist.

Phil from RockWatch was a great guy. His site covers the Minnesota music scene. A good resource for bands looking to tour up there, because there's a lot of Minne bands listed on the site that you can connect with.

This kid...

... is gonna have some kinda story when he or she grows up and goes to school.

Would you believe this if you saw it in a movie? I wouldn't. A woman is murdered and her baby is stolen from her body... alive? Admittedly, I'm no professional gynecologist (even though I do freelance work), but I never figured that you could kidnap a baby from the womb. That's like a sci-fi/fantasy plot device!

I directed the news at a television station while we were installing the Amber Alert system and I have to say that it's one of the best integrations of law enforcement and broadcast media that I've ever seen. We should be wondering why it's taken us 50 years of television to get it going.

Love Shack Burns Down

Oh no! The real "Love Shack" burnt down. The B-52s are great, I'm even willing to forgive them for their appearance in that awful The Flintstones movie. Kate's song with Iggy Pop, "Candy" is one of my favorite getting-out-of-prison love songs. I know we all have one of those.

Is there a real life Rock Lobster too?

Kinda disturbing article

I despise violence that's not involved in video games, film, or music- but is it just me or are these guys total pussies? I even think the guy who wrote the story is a pussy.

What made this law student motherfucker better than the poor bastards who got shipped off to 'Nam and couldn't make it to Canada? Or those National Guardsmen and women that didn't shirk their commitments and the contracts they made and are serving in the sand right now? Charles Rangel was talking about instating a draft because an all-volunteer military seems over-reliant on minorities and disadvantaged people. Look at the rich twats run away when there's a draft. And now he's a successful Canadian lawyer, good for him, I hope he can live with the blood on his hands from the kid that died in his place. It's one thing to protest and oppose the war, it's another thing to be a total douchebag.

Rokker Records Party

Wendy and I went down to the King Club last night to check out the party for Rokker Records, which is the publisher of Maximum Ink's label where he's putting out some material from some of Madison's classic metal and rock bands. We thought it'd be a good place to hand out some fliers and sample CDs for our upcoming show there on January 8th.

Ran into Darwin from the Skintones and Brad from Droids Attack! and got to chat with them for a little while. I guess Droids is playing on Monday at the Glass Nickel. There's gonna be a lot of cool shows next week (when am I going to do my frickin' Christmas shopping?) and it's always nice to see a little support from other musicians on the battlefield.

I'm glad we went. It was a great shinding. First of all, whose not gonna love free beer? Second, the place was packed to the tits and totally rocking. I finally got to see Last Crack, who I've been hearing about since I moved to Madison. They'd already broken up by the time we got here, but they reunite every once in awhile and I can see why their fans are so diehard. They're an absolutely excellent live band. Tight as shit. Buddo's got that metal scream down fucking pat. Sweet show and a lot of fun.

Wendy, our buddy Jeff, and I then hit the pizza place on State Street that used to be Sal's. It's called Pizza di Roma or some shit now. Anyway, two slices of the Feta and Spinach for me and I was in goddamned Heaven. The people in the cubes next to me are paying for it today, though. You know it's bad when you have to give yourself a courtesy flush!

All's well...

...that ends well.

I think they were hoping to bury Cheech Marin's career. Was that a gimme?

Late fees dropped?

This is some kinda story.

Those mothertruckers tried to charge me $75 because one of my "friends" forgot to return Mario Kart 64 for 18 months. $75, when you could buy the damn thing for $30 at Wal-Mart. Maybe, I'll actually be able to rent there again.

Anyway, this is good news, but let's face it, Blockbuster still sucks. Too expensive, no porn, and way too many copies of the newest Wil Smith shitfest instead of a broad selection. Are there any good movie stores on the West Side? It's Hollywood Video or Blockbuster, I'd rather use BitTorrent and watch it on my computer.

consonants

I seem to remember an Onion article displaying the title "Vowels deployed to Bosnia."
Yeah, Wausau was the bomb-diggity. Let's hope Minneapolis whoops as much ass. There are enough Elvis Costello glasses in that city for people to see straight to the party even if they're wasted.
What is it about booking clubs in Dallas and Chicago that turns so many people into assholes. It is a select few that resist the temptation. I know a certain drummer (who remains blogless :) that used to say, I might as well flush these press kits down the toilet cuz at least I'd know where they were going. Anyway, despite the verbal abuse, we are going on the road starting next weekend in Nashville and taking no prisoners in the South. I hope they like cheesefucking Lone Star guzzling yankees down there!

Wicked Wausau Party

What an absolutely sweet Saturday night at the Scott Street Pub in Wausau. I gotta give it up for that crew, they know how to do it up right and they treat us awesomely. Did I say this before? Try the fucking Portabella sandwich. I'm serious. We played with The Baddowns who are really nice guys and a cool band who had a fantastic song selection.

We had three people onstage trying to vie for the top spot in the Beer Challenge- yet none could defeat me and I walked away as champion once again! Alright, that's really not that great of a feat and I was drinking from a cup while everyone else was drinking from a bottle. But should I really be penalized for ordering more intelligently?

It was good to see some friends that we haven't seen in awhile. Including the original lead singer for Splyne Drive. I didn't know they had a Mukwonago connection. But I do now. I learned a long time ago that it's a Mukwona-centric universe, so I should have seen that coming. It is a small world, after all.

That deserved a fucking chortle.

Anyway, it was a great time. I guess some of my mother's family moved there at the turn of the century. Not this century, Stosh, I'm talking about the 20th Century. The Kryshaks? Krizak? You know how those Eastern Europeans spell shit, they'll add consonants to anything. So, I dunno what the proper spelling of the name is. But I can always feel my Polish blood burn whenever I enter the city limits and I can't wait to come back there on February 12th.

Gimme a liter of cola.

This "Restaurant Rage" story also reminds me of that scene in Falling Down.

Macropenis

Do they have a similar procedure for people suffering from macropenis?
I can't believe they killed Dime. I know so many people who have been influence by his playing, including myself. Speculation is that some crazed Pantera fan was off-ing the Damage Plan dudes because he was still pissed about the break up. Why not someone more deserving, like Gary Cherone? Just kidding, I don't think anyone needs to die because of how much they suck ballz.
Let's hope nobody has it out for us because we changed drummers or changed names. Damn. I remember calling the Alrosa Villa in Columbus for a show date last time we went out East.

Can anyone believe that it is almost Christmas time? I would like to take this opportunity to express my enjoyment of Christmas. Merry Chrismas, everyone. Doesn't it feel really good to say Merry Christmas to people? I'd be happy even if they said Happy Hanukkah or Happy Kwanzaa or whatever back to me, as long as people are celebrating something. It is frustrating living in a city that is so small, but often thinks of itself as bigger than it is. People make such an effort to not offend each other's beliefs that they forget how to celebrate their holidays and be cool with everyone else celebrating theirs. I am going to make a special effort this year to be particularly festive and anyone who wants to party with me is welcome to!
And hopefully the parking police in this town will make a special effort to grow up and stop being such cocksuckers. Double park in Chicago or New York? Nobody gives a fuck. They know you got something to do. Madison, they'll give you a $100 ticket and have your pants around your ankles before you can whistle that banjo part from Deliverance.

Finally...

...a shred of hope.

Ohmigod, they killed Dimebag!

You bastard!

I know I was talking about Lennon's murder and the price of fame yesterday, but Dimebag Darrel from Pantera and Damageplan wasn't John Lennon-famous by any stretch of the imagination. I just listened to Vulgar Display of Power yesterday too. Unbelievable. It also shows that gun violence isn't limited to hip-hop culture, either. I know everyone gave lip service to that idea before, but I doubt anyone really believed a punk or metal show was as dangerous as a hip-hop show. There just didn't seem to be as many incidents.

But this is the biggest (at least in the Mainstream Media's eyes) rock and roll tragedy since the Great White fire in Rhode Island. That fire affected affected how clubs all over the country deal with pyrotechnics (almost all indoor venues disallow any pyro now) and if I was a betting man, I'd put money that this will make metal detectors as ubiquitous at hard rock shows as they are at rap concerts.

Is that necessarily bad? Well, clubs have used the cost of metal detectors and extra security as an excuse to cancel hip-hop themed nights, would they do the same for rock and roll nights? Also, will this give headbangers an excuse to come to concerts packing heat because they think they "need" to protect themselves? (I know that everyone has a right and an instinct to self-defense if they're threatened, but guns and alcohol are a decidedly bad combination. ie, the Old West? Would we rather have gnus at a concert or booze? I know what I'd take.)

It's a sad day for metal. "Dimebag" (used to be "Diamond") Darrel was an awesome guitarist. His riffing will be sorely missed.

Believe the word.
I will unlock my door...
And pass the cemetery gates.

Christmas Carolers must die.

I've got "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" wafting through the cubeways of my office because we can hear the caterwauling of the carolers singing outside in the Mall.

Why is this the season of "peace on Earth" and "goodwill towards men"? Shouldn't that be all the fucking time? Do we need a special excuse not to be assholes to each other?

Then, there's Santa and his tiny, pointy-eared minions extorting good deeds from children in exchange for gifts. Does St. Nick's therapist suggest leaving Ritalin instead of coal for the bad kids?

John Lennon Anniversary

It's been 24 years since Mark David Chapman murdered John Lennon. I have a hard time believing it's been that long. I actually remember that day. Or just the actual event of hearing that he had been shot told to me by my mother.

He said that he did it to become famous. That's kinda fucked up, isn't it? Plus, there's the whole Catcher in the Rye in his pocket thing, but I really don't know what the Hell that's supposed to mean. How did Holden Caulfield influence him? Did he think Lennon was a 'flit'? Did it make mental instability acceptable? Should we ban J.D. Salinger like people wanted to ban Marilyn Manson after Columbine? Anyway, people always mention that the book was found on Chapman's person, but no one really analyzes it well. And I'm not in the mood to attempt to here.

That's neither here nor there. But the dangers of fame is part of the price celebrities pay. They always bitch and cry about the paparazzi but without tabloids, they wouldn't make nearly as much money. Does someone deserve to be a millionaire just because they're a good actor, musician, or writer? Really? They deserve to be rich and famous over the guys that are fighting and dying overseas right now? The people who are risking their lives, like firefighters or police? Artists, even more than their art, have become a commodity. Musicians and actors weren't the idols to the extent they are before the advent of mass worldwide media, now people worship them, they worship the idea of being famous more than the work itself. The risks and the loss of anonymity seem to be acceptable costs of the benefits of a life that makes millions of dollars, though. Just the fact that you never have to work again!

Think about all the people who go through the drudgery of a shitty job that they hate every single day just to support their broken homes and child support for the kids they never see and their ex-wife's new boyfriend. They've got nothing to lose. They worship at the feet of these celebrity demi-gods and dream of living their life of glamour, being well-liked, of being important. These people listen to shitty music (Jessica Simpson? Hello!) and see shitty movies (what happened to Nic Cage?) just to feel like they're a part of that life, not because it's great art.

Alright, I'm getting off the subject. Here's to you, John Lennon. You're the "smart person"'s favorite Beatle. Too bad about Yoko.

A better human being than I

Tipster turns down $40,000 reward

Well, either they're that good of a person OR they're so wracked with guilt that their Tell-Tale Heart conscience won't let them keep the money.

I prefer the latter.

Motley Crue reunites! Who cares?

Here's a link to the story:
Motley Crue Reunites

I was at their last reunion tour in 1998 and they were a little underwhelming. Vince let the audience do most of the singing and I've never seen saggier tube tops in my life. They're releasing another greatest hits package? That would be the third one and they haven't had any hits since 1991! Anyone remember Generation Swine or Hooligan's Holiday? Yeah, that's what I thought.

Everybody's gotta make money, I guess. They should all marry Playmates to try and keep themselves in the spotlight like Tommy Lee has.

I love Motley Crue, I really do, it makes a brother wanna cry.

Good weekend

Both The Minglewood on Friday and the Elbow Room on Saturday were a lot of fun.

We played with a cool band on Friday called Catfish Haven. If you're into a blend of sixties rock with indie, they're definitely one to check out. Good singer (reminded me of Joe Cocker, but Wendy and Ben said Kurt Cobain... they're totally wrong, though) and tight rhythm section. Everybody at The Minglewood is always really nice, you gotta love that place- A head shop with live music! Plus, the art on the walls is great. It's a cool performance space. I gotta give it up for the hippies on that one. It was fun to see and talk to peepz we've met before in Rockford too.

Saturday was a blast in Michigan. We played with two bands from Tejas, Slick 57 and The Von Erichs (their site isn't googling for me, but it's cool they're named after a professional wrestling family), and Smashbandits from Detroit. Those guys were ready to rip it up onstage and off. The Detroit metro area has been a really slow build for us, we're still working on building our crowd and scene out there. It's going kinda slow because we haven't played with many area bands that have a draw, but we seem to be getting a great response from the people who are AT the show, so it still seems like a town where we can do some damage. We just need to find a better way to get people out in Detroit. Yeah, that was today's "no-shit" moment, brought to you by Mike.

However, we did have an awesome time, made some new friends, and got fairly intoxicated. The bands were all really good and that made it great. When you play with good bands, notice how people tend to have a better time? So, the quality control at the Elbow Room is good. All the bands were a good fit, the performances had a shit ton of energy, everybody got a cracker with EZ-Cheez delivered to their mouths like it was Communion (Thanks boys!), and everyone went home safely.

The only thing that people had to worry about was Wendy and I drunk calling random people in the middle of the night on the fogtastic drive to Battle Creek (where surprisingly we didn't eat any cereal.) I pretended I was Brian Johnson from AC/DC for a good 45 minutes (not even singing, just talking. Did you ever see the Jim Breuer AC/DC "Hokey Pokey" skit?) and my voice was fucking shot on Sunday, ha. I'm surprised Ben didn't slit our throats.

I would have.

Trailer for new Dr. Who!

Booyah! http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/doctorwho/

We can get into the various reasons why Doctor Who is the greatest sci-fi show ever later. Right now, we can just thank the White Guardian for the fact that the new series is on the way.

Kubrick's growing on me

So, I'm at the gym, I forget my headphones in the wash, so I have to use the cross trainer without my headphones. It takes me five minutes to figure out the closed captioning, but I eventually got it working. Anyway, there's not that much on so I just turn to American Movie Classics and they were showing the Stanley Kubrick Lolita from 1962.

First of all, although I know that everyone has a hard-on for Kubrick, I've never been as excited about him as everyone else. Full Metal Jacket had some great moments, but I think R. Lee Ermey and Vincent D'Onofrio had a lot to do with that. Yeah, 2001 is good too, but I have a soft spot for sci-fi and Arthur C. Clarke. Alright, and everybody loves Dr. Strangelove but it was built up too much for me by the time I saw it, that I knew everything that was going to happen. Anyway, he always seemed a little aloof and self-important. Plus, Eyes Wide Shut turned sex with a couple as hot as Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise into the longest two and a half hours of my life. So much nudity and carnality and so little appeal to the prurient interest! That's a crime.

Anyway, I saw the 1997 version of Lolita, and I thought it was kind of your standard desperate man in love with an indifferent girl story, even though Adrian Lyne is pretty good at making a scene feel lusty. It's effective at making you contemplate the sexualization of adolescents (which seems to be getting earlier and earlier) and to understand the effect of sexual trauma on young males (which I think is downplayed too often and kind of a double standard- think about this Florida teacher, if she were a man who took advantage of a girl, like what happened in our high school with the Psychology teacher, people would call her a sicko- like Humbert Humbert in Lolita, but they're not. She's a hot woman who took advantage of a teenage boy. His friends are probably proud of him.) Anyway, the Lyne version of the story is pretty good at graphically confronting these things.

Kubrick's version, however, is really funny (most of the people in my generation just think of Peter Sellers as The Pink Panther, that's probably worse than thinking Mike Myers is only Austin Powers!) and remarkably good at making you laugh uncomfortably and squirm at the characters while resorting to few obviously sexual visuals (while still sexually charged.) It shows the absurdity of James Mason's obssession and that's what makes it great. You feel so nervous watching Mason and Sellers interact. And it hurts to watch Sue Lyon's fairly sophisticated skank treat Humbert like total dirt(Dominique Swain was a great skank too in the 97 version, but she seems a touch too sexually calculating, like a she-bitch, there's not enough victim in her. You feel more connected with Humbert than you should for the story's sake. He's an old dirty bastard, he shouldn't be totally sympathetic.) While you can say that Adrian Lyne was a little closer to the plot details of the novel, Nobokov wrote the screenplay for the 1962 version! I think the spirit was more faithful and less blatantly salacious. Plus, you see Frank Langella's schwanz. If I live to be 120, I hope never again to see the dong of the guy who played Skeletor in Masters of the Universe's wang.

The fact is, the adult male fascination with jailbait IS darkly humourous. There's a thousand jokes about protective fathers. Why are they so protective? FOR A GOOD FUCKING REASON. And the fact that children are more bombarded with sex now at an earler age than ever (and they are, trust me, I'm not a prude by any means and I also don't think there was ever some kind of 50's Utopia where people always developed appropriately. I don't think it's the content of TV or movies they're being exposed to, it's the sheer unescapable amount of advertising. We're the ones that said "anything goes", sex sells, we buy into it, children copy it before they know what it means) just makes this more prescient. Kubrick gets to the crux of this ridiculousness brilliantly. And this was 1962! Anyway, I could go on about this for days, but I'll spare you. I gotta get some rest, anyway.

Maybe the center is the new edge.

The story of my life...

An article clipped from Yahoo!: Germans think they're well-hung - but they're not

Wait, I have a lot of German in me... but I guess most German women don't! (Ba-dum-bum)

That reminds me of a long time ago when I was snooping around in one of my friend's drawers (the furniture kind that holds the other kind) and I saw that he had a package of regular condoms and a package of Trojan Magnums...

and the Magnums were still in the box while the regular ones were used. I think they were just there for show and tell. I guess everybody needs a little moral support sometimes, but I'm still gonna make fun of him for it.

More on the hunter murders...

The story made it to this week's Time magazine. Check out the article here. It talks more in depth about the differences between the white and Hmong populations in Minnesota and Wisconsin. It's an issue that should be discussed. Mostly homogenous populations don't like to talk about ethnicity. After all, when you're hardly ever exposed to a different ethnic group, what does it matter?

Like where I grew up in Mukwonago. There was one black guy that went to our high school. Race was never an issue because that one black guy had no trouble integrating into a clique, he was popular, and nobody even cared that he was black. The reason that there wasn't any racial tension wasn't the fact that Mukwonago was so fucking enlightened, but the fact that there wasn't a larger black culture at the school. There were no competing social groups. Race doesn't enter the equation, really, until there are distinct cliques that can ome into conflict. So, no one really needs to discuss race or ethnicity. La Crosse was like that a lot, even with the fairly significant Hmong population. Madison is somewhat like that, too.

Maybe the Time article will help contribute something to the conversation that we should all be having. It's not a matter of sensitivity at all, but of pragmatism. If we're too afraid to broach the subject, how can we hope to beat it?

Sunday Blahs

The concert was fun at The Chancery. I felt a little goofy on Saturday for some reason (and I wasn't even liquored up!)

The acoustic thing is cool, I like doing it, but I think we need to work on making a sold 2-hour set. We probably have about an hour or so of material that looks and sounds great when we play unplugged. It might be worth really working on an acoustic set if that's something we planned on doing all the time.

I think that's part of the greater issue: When you're working on a live show, to what audience and venue are you suiting it for? When people go see a show that they expect to be an original concert, they expect to see 30-40 minutes of your band's music if you're the opener, and about an hour of material if you're the headliner.

When you're in a bar whose used to cover bands, they expect at least 2 to 3 hours of music and they usually don't care if it's cover or original (some of them do, but most are just looking to fill time with "live entertainment".)

We've been lucky to be able to play a lot of different places by having a more diverse set, being flexible, and having a bunch of covers that we can throw out when we run out of our A material, the fact that we're not too stuck up about what we have to play to be able to get into a venue. But sometimes I think that it might be hurting us to learn and work on stuff that's not our own, because we're deviating from the process of writing or fine-tuning our music to make it better.

That's what an acoustic set feels like sometimes, are we taking away time from being the best electric band we can be by concentrating on something that's not our specialty? Probably not, because some acoustic versions of songs take on a life of their own. But it's better to make sure that the material we're taking the time to work on sounds as good as it can and it accomplishes what we do best.

Here's an example. I think learning "Time in a Bottle" would be awesome for an acoustic show, but unless we're gonna make it our own, it's just not worth the effort and the time to make it sound great and our own. We only have a finite amount of time between working, living, trying to promote, etc... we have to focus on making the 45 minute show (which is probably the category of venue and band that we should be probably trying to fit into) the most intense and very best we possibly can, then maybe stretch that time into something longer and with a different energy at another venue. The problem is that the venues in the smaller towns that demand the longer shows pay a lot more than the venues in the cities. At this stage of the game, that money can be important to keep the rockstar lifestyle afloat. Less competition, heavier drink sales, more appreciation, I don't know exactly that is, but that's the way it goes. I guess to keep doing what we do, we have to keep balancing between having longer sets at some places, shorter ones at others, acoustic here and electric there, but how do we make sure we get maximum impact at each one?

That's the shitty part to figure out, I guess.

Acoustic Sweetness Tonight

Well, I finally did find a sound system and picked it up today. Thanks to the people that contacted us and offered to help!

I think tonight will be fun. I like acoustic shows because we hardly have to do shit to set up. When you're in a band, 75% of what you do is haul crap around.

I think some of the clubs that have house drumsets, guitar and bass cabinets, amps, and the like are the ones that have it really together. Sure, the musician might complain because he or she can't get their 'distinctive' sound (which in a small club will probably sonud bad anyway), but it helps because instead of all the setup and tear down you can focus on meeting the people who came to your show instead of bringing the fucking van around the front and racing to get your gear off the stage before the next band is up. Plus, the soundguy knows how to run the house system, knows how to make the drums sound great, knows the proper volume level of the guitars for the room, etc... AND there's less shit laying around to get lost.

The idea is to keep the patrons entertained so they sit around and drink some more, right? Well, 45 minute set changes aren't really ideal for that, but they're great for boring the shit outta the nice people who paid $5 to watch your band play and too long of sets are excellent for driving out the fans of one band while the other band drags on...

Sorry, don't mean to be cynical today. I'm in a good mood. I think the crapola weather might be getting to me. I think Wisconsin (in all of its flyover cow-tipping glory) is a great place with definitely some of the coolest, most down-to-earth, no bullshit people anywhere, but I sure as fuck hate the cold. People migrated here? Why, was it too warm where they were from? That's okay, there's a lot here that makes up for the cold. But sometimes I still grab old cans of hairspray and go outside and shoot them in the air hoping that global warming will come to Wisconsin faster. Hey, it looked warm in Waterworld!

Are we all idiots?

Check this out. Heidi Klum is McDonald's new spokeswoman. What the fuck? Is the world on PCP? She says she enjoys eating healthy and well, but also a glass of wine and french fries every once in awhile. The article goes on to say Heidi Klum is curvaceous... I can't disagree with that remark. But I wouldn't call her exactly muthafuckin' Rubenesque. If she sucks down french fries on a regular basis you can be damn sure she's on her knees purging in the Kohler an hour later.

Do we really need a supermodel spokeswoman representing one of the largest contributors to obesity in America? Can the world of advertising fuck with women's self-esteem even more? Yes, please, let's make girls think even worse of themselves because they eat at McDonald's and don't have Heidi Klum's ass... can we possibly make it any harder to get laid?

On another note, this day sucks balls, because I'm have to work today instead of laying around at home nursing my Thanksgiving food hangover AND I have to track down a PA system for our acoustic show tomorrow night. Which means I have to call every fucking music store in Milwaukee and see if they rent. Half of them already said no because I'm from outta town. Christ, I'm just trying to get a powered mixer and some speakers, it's not like I asked to have sex with your daughter. Gimme the fricking PA, already.

Happy Thanksgiving, yo!

Hope you guys enjoy your Tofurkey and don't have any family fistfights!

Wow, this band is madder than Hell

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I just knew it

Now, they're saying that there might be a racial element to the deer hunting murders. I thought about that. Gun season means that guys who like to kill things will be drinking and their necks might get a little red. That's fine, there's some great things about being a redneck when it comes to hospitality, earthiness, lack of hubris, etc... there's something to be said for the "salt of the earth", but not when it comes to shooting the mouth off with racial slurs.

Of course that doesn't justify anything. But it's like in Die Hard 3, when Bruce Willis has to carry that sign in Harlem saying that said, "I Hate <derogatory remark about black people>". What does one expect? This dude is probably just using this as an excuse to why he snapped and garner some sympathy for being a minority (especially one that Uncle Sam we screwed over and sold out in 'Nam, just like the Kurds in Gulf War I.)

That's not the point, though. When are we going to stop with this kinda shit? This Vang guy is probably as guilty as sin, but the thing is, when someone says that the victims were whipping racial slurs at the guy, we all kinda expected it. This shouldn't even be an issue, but it is. I've seen ignorance and prejudice against the Hmong population firsthand when I lived in La Crosse. It goes beyond jokes.

Northern Wisconsin isn't 1862 Mississippi, these people have just as much access to education and the Internet, TV, culture, whatever, as anyone who lives in any large city, there's no excuse for it. I'm not saying that it's their fault in the slightest, but if they did throw out a bunch of slurs, could their deaths have been avoided? Could they have staved off the wrath of a madman just by not being stupid?

The coolest-looking Xmas movie ever!

Santa's Slay starring Goldberg as a killer Santa! Awesome. If you don't believe me on how sweet this looks, check out this delightful Christmas picture.

I haven't seen a good cheesefest in awhile, and this one has Sonny from The Godfather, himself, Mr. James Caan, Robert Culp (remember the FBI Agent from The Greatest American Hero?), and my ex-girlfriends, Rebecca Gayheart and Fran Drescher. Anyway, I just thought I'd share that tidbit because all my friends want to go see all the Christmas pussy-fests like The Bipolar Express or The Incrediblamebles.

Waukesha RiverFest Cancelled

Here's come disappointing news. They had a record crowd this year (which I would like to think is due to our show there on Friday, ha!) It was our first big festival and it was a chance to play with bands that were extremely influential to us (Sponge and SevenMaryThree, well, at least Sponge was very influential, too bad they were piss drunk when we met them.) Plus, we got an air-conditioned trailer with free beer in it (I'm trying to figure which was more important to us!)

So, it's too bad they're not having it again, but thanks for a great time this Summer.

What is going on Up North?

JS Online: Details emerge about rampage that killed 5 hunters

Every year a coupla hunters get whacked accidentally, but this is downright terrifying. At first, I thought he might be someone who was used by the CIA or something in Vietnam because he's from Laos and now he's a crazed killing machine, but he's only 38 so he was 9 when we pulled out of Saigon. I guess he's had some "military experience" but what would cause him to crack like that?

The wounded hunters had to put his tag number in the dust on the window of the back of an ATV. It's like a movie, this guy is crazy.

My birthday

Wow, I'm 28 today. Guess I'll never be a true rockstar. Dead by 27 was an idea for an album name that never made the cut. Too grim for us. Too obvious, really. We're more clever than that.

Maybe we'll have fun tonight. I'll let you know.

Guess who met Art from Everclear on Wednesday? Yeah, that's right. I accidentally talked shit to him too. You have to admit, Songs From An American Movie Vol. 1 was kind of a pussy album. He said Vol 2 was the one he liked better. Yep, thanks for keeping it real, Art. The show was awesome and they are a great live band. We'll hafta post the pictures.

Take The Geek Test

If you're looking to see just how much of a knob you really are, The Geek Test is for you.

I know some people who might score pretty high on this. Myself, I scored a 39.44773%, which puts me into "major geek" range, but comfortably out of the "complete geek" category. Anyway, it's a cool way to blow twenty minutes. [Who is this twenty minutes person? -ed Never mind.]

Something we could do with stupid people?

Yahoo! News - Birth Control Darts May Target Kangaroos, Koalas

It would totally give hunters something to do in their off-season. Darwin would be proud.

Dr. Diamond David Lee Roth?

CNN.com - David Lee Roth training to become EMT - Nov 16, 2004

That is just about the funniest shit I've heard all week. Maybe he should put on that doctor's outfit from the "Just a Gigolo" video.
Now, I adore DLR as an artist, entertainer, and all-around hedonist. Sometimes I think he's batshit crazy like when he did that Las Vegas act or sometimes I think he's borderline moronic like when he got arrested for buying pot in Central Park for $10.

But would you trust Diamond Dave with your life? Christ, this a guy whose nose used to be nicknamed 'Jack Frost'. Okay, I don't know that for sure. I hope he doesn't do any high kicks in the ambulance. Don't you think there's at least some kind of STD you could get from him performing CPR on you?

Muse last night

Got back from the Muse show in Milwaukee last night a little after Midnight and I think it's easily one of the best performances I've seen all year. Even better, a scalper got us tickets for $10 on the way in. So that meant, NO TICKETMASTER FEES. Awesome. Also, we ran into one of our friends from the Madison band, Polymorphous Perverse, which has got to be one of the sweetest band names out there right now. They're a very cool group, check em out if you're into techno-metal. It was sweet running into others Madisonians in the basement of The Rave. I'd never seen a show there before, and I don't know if I'd go to another one- the stage is really, really short, so it's hard to see the singer. However, that didn't stop the show from being way sexcellent.

The lead singer's delivery was absolutely spot on, nearly flawless. He shredded both on guitar and keyboards. He didn't say a single word to the audience, there was no bullshit or pretense, they just played. The bass player's head bobbed with every single beat of the night, I don't think he missed one. Either his neck is made of steel, or it feels like hell this morning. The drummer said thanks a coupla times near the end of the set.

They opened with "Hysteria" and covered most of the songs off of "Absolution". The beginning was ballad-loaded (it was a Sunday night, after all.) The crowd went crazy for "Sunburn" but the real kicker was "Butterflies and Hurricanes", when they hit it on that one, people really got into it. And the bass player was doing some impressive two-handed tapping on that tune. It was one of the show's highlights. That picked up the energy for the end of the set and when they launched into "Plug-In Baby", everybody was juiced. (It was mainly a hipster crowd, so a lot of people were too cool to rock, but by the end they'd shed some of their more-fashionable-than-thou facades.) They closed with "Stockholm Syndrome", and I really thought they'd encore with "Muscle Museum", but no dice. They didn't come back out, which was weird, but I liked the fact that they really didn't play the rockstar card. They didn't need to do all of that audience pandering with their crowd. They knew that the audience was there to listen to them play the songs. When I saw Metallica, James talked like he was still in those therapy sessions from Some Kind of Monster... which was cool, but I don't think it woulda been necessary. Plus, when I went to go see Yo La Tengo a few weeks ago, their in-between song banter made them look kinda dumb. I guess it's better to shut up than to say something that makes you look stupid. Wow, there's some advice that I should take.

On the opposite end of the spectrum was the opening band, The Zutons. They played the particular brand of 70's English pub rock that I've never had much of a taste for. Think The Faces, Free, or Rod Stewart. Just more of the same retro-rock. They kept on referring to the audience as "Milwaukee" and I hate that. Every once in awhile is okay, I guess, but otherwise it's just so dumb-sounding. Thank you for remembering the name of the town you're in. We're happy you're not a complete idiot and that you can pronounce the title of the city where people paid money to see you perform, so you can stop referring to us collectively, please.

Worst example I've ever seen of that was Sammy Hagar accidentally saying, "Thanks so much, I love Michigan!" Fuck you, Sammy. Like I didn't want to kick you right in the firecrotch beforehand.

I saw Paul McCartney at his show at County Stadium in 1993 actually take a Wisconsin flag out and wave it at the audience. He hadn't been to Wisconsin since 1964 when the Beatles came to Milwaukee, so it's not like he's some massive Wisconophile. We should whoop his ass anyway for writing "Silly Love Songs". Well, at least Linda was better than Yoko...

...but not much.

Racine with The MAHP

I feel like I just read a Goofus and Gallant strip for music venues. If Friday night was Goofus then George's Tavern in Racine was definitely muthafuckin' Gallant. We get there early to drop off our stuff (after a delish lunch at one of those excellent Chicago Golden Nugget diners) and the barstaff and the management were doing everything to make the preparations for the show as nice and easy as possible. These guys not only had a great setup (good sound, nice stage, stiff drinks, hot bartenders, plenty of audience room) but they had a superb attitude. I would come back there any night of the week because it was an absolute blast.

The MAHP was definitely one of the best locals we've played with recently. Mark has a fantastic voice and his energy and attitude made it a pleasure to play with his band. They're fab. We'll definitely be with them again. It was fun getting up to sing "What I Got" with them and their Young MC to Tone Loc medley was brilliant. I also enjoyed the cameo made by Uncle Brett's buttcrack. You really had to be there.

The crowd was very cool and they actually were watching! You know how sometimes people are just wild because they're wasted or just paying attention to be polite and it's too loud to talk so they need something to do? Well, the people out on Saturday night were really paying attention. You could see them listening to the words, nodding their heads, laughing at the jokes, and participating. They were really into the show. Getting the most out of all the aspects of the performance. Just a great vibe.

This weekend was good for us, I think. I think moralizing is a good word for it. Especially after the van gave our poop chute a good rogering this week. We really got in front of a lot of new people on the I-94 corridor and they really dug us.

Haha, after the show, Uncle Brett and I were fucking famished, so we're driving down Highway 20 looking for grub wherever we could find it. We end up at this truck stop which had a 24-hour salad and soup bar (which actually was only marginally disgusting, so it was considered an excellent find (I actually enjoy congealed soup because it's always so salty)) we sit down and make a joke about "looking for lot lizards" (for the uninitiated, I'm talking about truck stop prostitutes.) Well, these two girls walking past turn around and says something about "I've worked here for years, did you say you guys were looking for 'lot lizards'?" The smile on her face totally made us realize that she was offering exactly the kind of trouble that we were not looking for. So, we mumbled something about 'yeah, right on, just kidding' and returned to our rotting lettuce. Anyway, from what I gather, if you're looking for a good time, check out the Iron Skillet on the Racine I-94 exit.

Chicago with Shooting Blanks and Gone All Summer

There were good and bad aspects about the show at Lilly's.

The good: Shooting Blanks and Gone All Summer are two very cool bands. And we love to play with them. Their energy is more infectious than gonorrhea, their songs are funny and catchy. The crowd at the show was great and receptive (and good-looking) crowd. I also think everybody played like champions. (Shooting Blanks had a fill-in bassist and he was right on.)

The bad: Lilly's is a good example of how not to run your music venue. It's in a hot-shit area of Lincoln Park and actually is a pretty cool place (awesome balcony and nice ambience) but the stage is tiny and the sound is somewhat less than great, bordering somewhere between pooptastic and craptacular. We get there, the tap was broken, so no tap beer and bottles were $5 while mixers were $6- also, no drink specials for the bands. Right away, the bartender pissed off the other bands (we didn't get there until 9:30 thanks to our flat tire (which I'm not mad about anymore, by the way... I've grown as a person.)) bickering with them about the PA system. So, the crowd had to deal with five-dollar drinks, a $6 cover for crappy sound, and not much of an alcohol selection. Look, I understand that shit happens, the beer cooling system can break, the acoustics of a room might not be awesome, but the excuse "well, that's the way things go in the city" is bullshit. That's not the way things go. We're trying to attract an audience of alcohol-purchasers into your establishment. We need HELP from the bar. You'd like more people to come into your bar because of live music, we'd like people to want to come there to see our band. What about offering an on-the-spot drink special? What about giving everybody a deal on the cover to make it more attractive? Between bands, people were going to the bar on the corner to drink. Fuck, I went to that bar three times during the night because I couldn't afford having any more in Lilly's.

I don't like to talk shit, but let's be honest. The more unpleasant a venue makes things for the people who come to see us, the less chance they have of coming back. That's bad for business on everybody's end. I've gotta hand it to our friends and it's a testament to them that they stuck it out the whole night and got into it for the bands. Thank you. The show ended up being a great time (it really did, there was a lot of energy), but it was in spite of the venue, not because of it. It was really a lot of fun, but with the energy, the people, and the atmosphere, it could have been an awesome one.

Just got my Everclear tix

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Ain't No Party Like A West Johnson Party Cuz A West Johnson Party Don't Stop

This week was full of nostalgia (and going out, the only night I missed was Tuesday!)

First, we had our 435 W. Johnson reunion dinner on Sunday night. (There was a time when Sunspot lived in a house with five other people (expanded to about fifteen over a coupla years.) About once a year, most of the people that lived there will get together and shoot the shit at this sweet Chinese buffet on the West side of town (the one by Midvale and University that seems to change names every few months.) Anyway, so that was Sunday and we proceeded to reminisce (about the multitude of times the police visited, barfing party stories, disgusting pranks, whatever...) it's a way to keep everyone's friendship fresh.

If you'd like an example of the things we'd do at the house, here's a link to the Wisconsin State Journal article that they wrote about our last house party in May 1999.

So, I also find out that my old bunkmate Jeremy is the next shoe to drop, he's getting married. And so is my friend, Robin, who visited last night, she's getting married next June. So the wedding count goes up again. Wow. I just got over five weddings in the past month, I hope everybody decides to hold off on these weddings for at least a little while. And gimme some time to fucking save up.

Robin did have the quote of the night. She said that she was reading an interview with former Milwaukeean and Boogie Nights' Roller Girl herself, Heather Graham, and in the interview, Ms. Graham said that she was looking for a "stable guy in his 30's that's down to earth, but still thinks the band has a chance." She said that completely reminded her of me. So, I figured I should call Heather Graham, except that I'm not 30 yet.

Does it really seem to people like we're holding onto something that we shouldn't? I don't think so. We have just as good of career jobs as anyone that I know and at our last few shows we've been fucking on.

Did you ever see Mumford? There's a character in that movie that has such a low opinion of himself that he gets turned down even in his own sexual fantasies. I'm not gonna be that guy. If you haven't seen the movie, check it out. If you're a Jason Lee fan (as I am), his performance is excellent.

I saw more old friends this week than I have in awhile and the one thing they keep repeating is, "Wow, Mike you haven't changed at all." Is that a good or bad thing? Am I still the same dude I've been forever? I was hoping to hear a "dude, you've totally changed, you're A LOT cooler!" or "Wow, you've changed, you look great."

Oh well, that's not that big of a deal, I just want to make sure that people don't think I'm an asshole, I guess.

Flat Tire on the Van?

Damn it! Once again, Ford Motor Company comes through and their van sticks it right in Sunspot's ass. One of these days, I'm gonna head to Detroit and find the grave of that douchebag, Henry Ford, and spit on it. Not only was he racist and anti-semitic, but his vans have consistently slammed us in our collective keisters.

I don't give a shit if he invented the assembly line. Yeah, it took a real fucking genius to figure that one out. Thank you Henry. Thank you for creating millions of shitty jobs where people learn only one selective repetitive skill, and then when the factories go outta business, they're shit outta luck. I realize that production becomes a little faster and more efficient, but you created a class of workers that are completely dependent on you! They can't do anything else. I know that aspect might not be your fault, but Christ man, you should have thought about it, for the PR alone.

Plus, your Econoline vans break down more than a menopausal divorcee watching Lifetime.

Next time, we're buying Japanese.

Scary shi-ite going down by Sunspot HQ

I'm having a hard time believing that this poor woman was murdered less than a mile down the road from our house.

I'm a big live and let live guy and I try not to be too political about things. But is there any reason that these guys shouldn't be executed? If this happened to your family member, wouldn't you want to find these guys, torture them, and shoot them in the head? Or find someone to do to them what they did to her? Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth?

They had a celebratory dinner after they killed her! If that doesn't scream electric chair, what does?

I'll settle down. I'm not some arbiter of justice, or much qualified to judge much of anything, except maybe a nude beauty pageant. And I'm not really qualified for that, I'd just like to do it.

But in our society, what's scarier than prison? At least for middle class whiteys? Nothing. Except maybe for zombies. And not the 28 Days Later explainable zombies, where the endings are happy. I'm talking George Romero-style zombies and the end of the world. That's scary. But with prison, it's the way inmates have to worry about being raped, beaten, the racial tension, the intimidation. Someone I know that went to prison took a knife to the chest as a group of 7 men tried to gang-rape him in the shower. He survived and he fended off the attack, but how long could you live in a place like that? Waking up terrified every day that someone wanted to kill you. Constant fear. People don't even live like that in the Middle East. I doubt that Martha Stewart's prison is like that, but I don't think she's the norm. I hope, when they're in the pen, that those guys get a dose of the terror that their victim received.

I just feel so awful for that lady. They found her body just a short way down the street from our new house. A really short way. It's an anamoly, I know, but it's still upsetting. It would be awful anywhere, but it feels like a David Lynch movie here.

My family is a bunch of lushes

Went to a wedding this weekend in Oak Creek (southern Milwaukee suburb) on Saturday night and click on this sentence to see about the DOUBLE MURDER the day before at the place where the reception was. Totally fucked up.

Plus, there had to have been the most sexually aggressive females I've ever seen. It was like partying in a Def Leppard video. More on that later.

Who let the Polacks out?

I'm not the world's biggest metal guy anymore (I'm not into a lot of new heavy stuff, because most of em can't write a song to save their fucking life.), but check out In Flames. If you like heavy metal, you'll be glad you did.

I got to hear some new music from our friends in Milwaukee, Random Maxx, yesterday and it's killer. Those guys can harmonize like a muthafucka.

I also went to the WAMI Seminar yesterday at Shank Hall in Milwaukee. They mostly talked about tips for recording. It was alright. We won $100 at Uncle Bob's Music Center because we entered "Scott Bakula" into their CD Roulette where it gets judged by a panel of "experts" and they talk about ways to improve the song. We always pick a tune that we think is gonna blow them away and then proceed to forcefully be given a new asshole, but they were actually complimentary this time. That's weird.

Anyway, we're gonna use that $100 on porn.

New Song

Hopefully the new song will be finished this week. It really is fun to work on and perform fresh material as well as the hits. Can't wait to get back to Chitown and Racine is always a not-so-sober good time!

The Mission last night

Great show at The Mission in Stevens Point last night. They're down to earth, cool, and unbelievably supportive of original music. EGO STROKE OF THE NIGHT: Driving into town and listening to FM90, the student radio station with the biggest signal in the Midwest, playing one of our tunes and giving away tickets to the show last night. It was completely random when we turned it on. Wendy and I were half-asleep and bucked up immediately. Jeff from the radio show, Club Wisconsin, fucking rules and he knows all the Wisconsin bands out there, ya gotta respect that. Anytime you hear something like that, it really pumps you up, to know people are out there pushing music like yours. It gives you a little more hope. Plus, it lets you be slightly self-indulgent in the van for a few minutes.

Long drive home last night (we decided not to party because I have to be at a wedding in Milwaukee tonight) but we always have Coast to Coast to keep us awake.

It's so fucking easy to be worn down. By work, by playing, by driving, by the complete implausibility of what you're seeking. One of my friends asked me one time, "if you wanna be successful in music, why would you stay in Madison?" Fuck you. I know plenty of people who took off for the coasts as soon as they could. We're the ones who are still on the road. We're the ones who didn't quit. I'll most probably live somewhere else one day, but it'll be when I want, not because I'm seeking some bullshit Pollyanna 'better life' in the big city away from the cowfuckers.

You can all just kiss off in the air,
behind my back see them stare,
they'll hurt me bad but I don't mind,
they'll hurt me bad, they do it all the time.

The Femmes didn't move anywhere, did they?

Wow, sorry about that, kinda had to vent there. Of course, I'm not trying to be unrealistic. I understand where the major media markets are. I just don't think you have to be one of the bands that moves in order to "make it". Of course, Rainer Maria did (one outta fifty.) Paris, TX was halfway broken up and living between Milwaukee and Arizona when they got signed. They just got their music in front of the right people. I think you need to build your audience before you move into the next level. You need "boots on the ground" who are ready to watch you and those peeps need to be in each city you travel to. It's just as difficult to develop that when you're in a big city as it is when you're in flyover land.

Think about it, like in the election on Tuesday. The MoveOn.org and Citizen Change people were all over, driving people to the polls, double-checking they got out and voted, sending emails, making calls, etc... It's not like elections are won and lost by the magic of American people just wandering into the polls. There are teams motivated to get people out to support their side. EVERY PERSON COUNTS. It's that fucking ground operation that makes things add up.

Just like a show, every individual person that comes is important to making a successful night, whether there's 200 or 20. And it's our job to bring each one of those people out, through any means necessary. Why do most bands fail? Because they get signed before they built their audience. It just happened to a Wisconsin band not too long ago. We're still developing ours. Ya know, maybe we'll never get enough people into our music to sell a million CDs, but that's okay. At least we won't have any illusions, we know what it takes. Now, let's see if we're smart, hard-working, and lucky enough to get there.

I'm dying here

Just a little tired at work and not feeling like doing any work. Went to the Annex last night for their $10 all-you-can-drink thing again (which is AWESOME, by the way, but I didn't really indulge... that much. Shit, I was home by 12:30 and eating that awful Bean Burrito Especial from Taco Bell- did you know that burrito alone has 600 calories? I know that a half-pound is a lot of burrito, but 600 calories? That's a 1/4 of what you're supposed to eat in a whole day and I wasted it on that burrito- but it's pretty good with Fire sauce) and saw a very cool band, called Awesome Car Funmaker. They had a lot of energy, cool keyboards, choreographed jumpkicks (of course I'm gonna like that), very self-referential (in a indie Darkness sorta way), about as PoMo as you can get (but surprisingly, not obnoxious about it, mostly...) Anyway, I think they capture The Strokes, Killers, Hives kinda thing, basically any band that has a 'The' before their name. I think that the 'The' is kinda cute, it harkens back to 60's music and I like a lot of 60's music.

Hmmm... I think that's part of the trending. With all the 'The' names for the rocking bands and all the folksy duos. Think about a lot of the music that's out now, like Belle and Sebastian or Big Buildings. It's all that cutesy shit that was cool in the 60's. It's like Mellow Gold or AM Radio Classics.

Maybe the alternative movement got too serious for everyone, so they had to step back and get all goofy. I mean, dumbasses jumped on nu-metal right away to get away from being serious, but those are the kinda people that like whatever's on the radio. The rest of the movement held on for awhile, but maybe just got too old to care and they wanted music to bring them back to a time when it didn't make them think, didn't challenge them. Sure, we can wrap it in some intellectual trappings, but it's still Captain and Tenille with slightly better words.

I like it, but I'm trying to figure out why I like it. Music sometimes moves you viscerally (Muse is totally doing that for me lately, the new Megadeth does too) and sometimes it pulls at your heart (Two Cow Garage) and sometimes you just like the words (Franz Ferdinand has cool words, but something about their production bothers me, maybe it's the background vocals I don't like), sometimes you just dig the melody (like that Tatu song, yeah, I know they're fake Russkie lesbian teens, but that chorus is absolutely undeniable.)

Am I too obsessive about having to like things for a reason?

Speaking of cutesy shit, I've been listening to Future Bible Heroes all morning. What a great mellow disc, I think I like it because the girl's voice is pretty and sad.