something small

"For I am poor and naked amid the vortex of humankind"

limewire girl.

Tonight we did a small meet and greet before the show. The girl who had won the meet and greet had bought our new CD, and I asked her friends (she brought 4 friends with her) if any of them had bought the CD....they had no problem saying that they downloaded the CD (their candid nature was amusing) and that comes has no surprise when you take into consideration their age, combined with the costs of CD's these days. Although one of her friends proudly claimed that she was indeed a "Limewire" girl, but it was this same "Limewire" girl who jumped at the chance to say that she had bought the Motion City Soundtrack CD the first day it had came out....I thought that was funny, we called her out on it..in a humorous way of course. Although, kudos to her for picking up the new MCS, we're having a good time with them so far. Also, I just saw Perry Ferell on a Pontiac football commercial singing with 50 cent and someone else...strange.

goings on

Hello, I'm writing from a Best Western in Madison Wisconsin. I haven't done much of anything today, I think the weather is having an affect on people's moods. Everyone is kind of shape shifting around the bus, becoming a part which ever seat the sit in, it's all very languid and lazy. So, in my own efforts to break the intertia, I walked to the fitness center and lifted some 20 lbs. dumbells and ran on a treadmill for like 10 minutes, a short burst of motivation that ended after I realized how bored I was. I've been reading a book called, "The Idiot", for a while....one of the problems I have when reading anything fairly involved is that I have a hard time retaining the information...it's frustrating. After I finish the book, if someone were to ask me what it was about, I would have a hard time recounting anything that goes beyond the basic plot...i always forget the metaphors, even if I am lucky enough to recongize them while reading. I remember vaguely, in first grade, a story we were reading and a question that followed...after the story was over, we were asked what the story was about, and I could not get the answer, and it became so obvious once the teacher told me what it was about...the story was about someones birthday. Although, I couldn't figure it out until someone pointed it out to me...that event probably serves as a pretty accurate microcasm for how I work today. I have a hard time getting the point, so to curb that handicap, I recap each chapter with a visit to sparknotes.com and I make sure I didn't miss anything relevant to the plot, or to the character development. In this book, there are two characters (Myshkin and Rogozhin) who represent Christ and the Devil respectively, thanks to the sparknotes, I can make sure things like that don't slip by undetected. Anyway, whatever, the book is good so far. Jacob and Dave and I watched a TV show today that was about the M theory and the existence of parallel univserses, which Jacob has recently touched on in his blog. I have a hard time wrapping my head around that kind of thing, it takes too much of a scientifically imaginative mind I suppose. I am more interested in the internal realm I suppose, more so than the external, maybe that's why I'm reading Dostoevsky and not Paul Davies. Dave is going to carve some pumpkins today, Robert and Josiah witnessed a hawk take out a rat, and tonight we'll probably order a pizza and watch the Red Sox do thier best to keep themselves in the running...it's good to keep me distracted from myself sometimes. The tour started last night, and it was your typical first night of tour, everything was running behind, no time to prep..etc etc, ya know, good fun, and tomorrow we will be in Duluth, MN. Oh, also, in the productive time I spent online today, I found a video of this news story about a woman who made a whole house made of trash, old street signs, old computer keyboards, street lights, the link is on the side of my blog, the one that says "environment". Steven from Anberlin (it's good to hang with those dudes) really took me to town playing Halo 3 yesterday, I can't play that game, it's bad for my self-esteem and temper.

he is so you.

i leave for tour tomorrow morning, by now it takes me about 20 minutes to pack, not including me having to do laundry. i woke up with no sense of urgency at all. i went to barnes and noble and bought some seasons of arrested development, and then i went to best buy to purchase some CDs, yes best buy. Volume CD's, the independent store that was near by, closed recently, and this is the 2nd and final store in the chesapeake area to close....so what does that leave me? Best Buy, FYE (bleh) and Barnes and Noble...hmmm. If anyone knows of any good book stores in the area, let me know. Anyway, I bought the new Eddie Vedder CD (the soundtrack he did for "Into the Wild"), the new Down CD, and the new Weakerthans CD...that is a lot of new music to take, especially in addition the new radiohead, but whatever. I'm packed now, and I'm trying to figure out how to get a ride to the bus that is waiting, I need more friends....for rides to the bus :-) I bought a few new pieces of gear for my rig, and i've posted pictures. It's not too much, I need another line 6 unit, but they don't make the rack mounted versions anymore. Anyway, the new additions have made it easier for me, so I say it's worth it. We're gonna stop in Pittsburgh on the way to Grand Rapids, and in Pittsburgh I must eat at Permanti Brothers, they have one in Ft. Lauderdale, but it's not the same. I saw that movie Michael Clayton the other night, I love movies, especially ones that make you feel like the 9 dollars was worth it. George Clooney and Tom Wilkinson, also Sydney Pollack...ughh, so good. I don't have anything else to say, consider yourself lucky.

hehe.

hehe.

speaking of which...

so radiohead is releasing their new record on their own...it's available for free download and they are only asking for donations. apparently oasis and jamiraqui might do the same thing, and i'm thinking that if bands with the ability to do this continue to do it, it could change things, and change is exactley what we need right now. so go download the radiohead and then donate some cash.

maybe i've been bitter lately.....but come on

This is a book I saw in Barnes and Noble the other day. An essential guide to "emo" culture? sure, whatever sells right?. Surely you can, at the very least, understand why this would make me irritable. puke.

hey

Hey everyone! Quit downloading our record "illegally" or you will come under the swinging fury of the strong arm of the record industry!! http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7029229.stm. This kind of stuff blows my mind. I guess it was kind of silly that this woman thought she had a chance against the record industry. I mean, even though I understand the desire to get music for free instead of paying $15 for a (in most cases) mediocre CD, it is still regarded as theft right? (as a member of a band, you might feel that skeevy smile forming..hoping that maybe people will start buying records again!) The article mentions that most of the cases have settled out of court, but this lady had the naive ambition, or audacity to go to court, and pay a lawyer to defend the fact that she did "steal" property. These kinds of cases, or this topic in general is so interwoven with legitmate concerns on both sides, it's just a little more hopeless for the working man and woman, when (after years of ripping of artists and consumers alike) the record industry can win a case and charge this lady almost a half million dollars. Man, I bet she's cursing the day she found out the ease and convenience of KAZAA, she probably thought it was too good to be true, and it turns out it was. Certain people in certain places (in the past twenty years) have channeled and manipulated the way we purchase and gain access to music, the record stores (both chain stores and indie stores) have been the middle man, and with that middle man in place, all sorts of things could be done behind that firewall to make more money through clever marketing plans, offering extra material, visual additions, etc.(.which, maybe to the music fan, is an awesome thing, something tangible, an art that extends beyond the music)...and oh! how the internet has thrown this whole system into a whirlwind. Everything is accessible now, the middle man has been cut out. The combination of flash in the pan marketing and flash in the pan success, in addition with a revolutionary change in youth culture, one of disillusion, indifference, nihilism as well as blind passion...the artists are having to adapt, and a lot of these artists can't fake themselves in to a relevant position, and kids can pick up on that. What is selling a million copies on year, is not even selling gold the next, which is strange when you think about, this is something new. Where are the music fans? They are out there, and they still care, they are just hard to see because they are being buried beneath the hot trash of shopping mall centered marketing, which probably just adds to the void anyway. The artists and the fans have to find some way to communicate, to exist, to feed off of each other, and that will never be taken away by the courts, by downloading, or by record lables. The amazing thing about art is that there will always be a need for it, a desire for it. Anything that represents an escape from the grinding design of paycheck living, anything that breathes the beauty and clarity of a true existing soul into the air will never be ignored, destroyed or dismissed. And although there are vultures ready to exploit anything that shows potential to make money, they will never be able to take it completely away because somewhere along the way, they ceased to understand the essence of what makes art appealing to one's soul. Any kind of art (specifically music in this case) has to be able to stand up to much destruction in your typical mainstream. As rare as it is to find something worth your money..once something does show up on the viacom airwaves that transcends, it shines so brightly and it restores hope..just one artist, one band can do that these days. I'm sure that indie snob joe can go to town arguing how there is a whole scene brewing just below that surface that is chock full of culturally relevant artists, I think that test still has to be taken once the band that exists in an insulated scene is catapulted into a national and global arena and put up against the cynicism, scrutiny and indifference of a population jaded and exhuasted and over saturated with bullshit. It is very rare when a band cuts right to the core of a generation...the art is there, it just has to make its way through the trenches. Keep searching for it...find it, and embrace it. OK, I'm gonna go watch MTV..HA!

This is part of a review from pitchforkmedia.com...well put?
"Ten years ago, who would've guessed that emo would usurp punk as the genre du jour for angst-ridden teens. By the late 1990s, most fans of the genre's second wave were abandoning it. Many of the best bands had split up, while the handful that were left were moving toward a more straightforward pop rock sound. But just as it appeared over, the scene suddenly exploded, giving birth to an entire new generation of slick, generic, mall-store neo-emo. It's like the bartender yelled last call, the house lights came on, and then at the last minute, he decided to keep the club open all night serving Cokes."

So where does Mae fall in all this? hmmm, remains to be seen I suppose :-) Go get the new Foo Fighters and the new Iron and Wine!!!!

Bye byee!

Henry the Hank Rollins

Last night I got to see Henry Rollins on his spoken word tour...i've been lucky enough to see some pretty great shows lately, well, I guess just two, well, technically two, but the one show had Elvis Costello and Bob Dyaln, and now Henry Rollins. I was never a huge Black Flag fan..I liked them, but never loved them. My old band played a Black Flag cover, I think it was a song called Jealous Again. While driving around today, I put my I-Pod on shuffle..ya know, I wanted the I-Pod to shuffle all the songs on it. I have a 60 gig I-Pod, so i figure I wouldn't here the same band in the time that I was driving....BUT!! the first song was saves the day, and the 2nd song was another one by Saves the Day, and then a Beatles song came on, and right after that, ANOTHER Beatles song came on...I was pretty puzzled and annoyed. I bought the new Iron and Wine, and the new Pearl Jam triple disc collection of 3 shows at the Gorge in Seattle. I don't have much to talk about, although, Jacob asked me what I thought of how the evolution of our society over the past century or so has become increasingly obsessed with effeciancy and convenience, anything to save time, anything to get to where we are going as fast as possible, and I think it all ties into the the idea that "time is money" and it has infected our way of living. I am an impatient person, and I don't know why, it's infected me too I guess. We also talked about the idea of rebellion, and how it is a waste of energy if there is no motivating spririt involved. I think that the whole Gen X culture (whatever that means) is rebelling simply by their indifference, I can relate to that I suppose. When I think about it, there is nothing that shouldn't be questioned, and asking one question opens up five new questions, and if you keep going in that direction, you get to a point of helplessness, because you're only looking up. After all these questions, and no answers..and when answers do come along, they create another problem and keeps you anchored to the reality of how things work on a pretty mediocre level in regards to the human spirit. So am I saying not to question things? No, I'm just writing a blog.