Passover is soon, and Katey’s whole family is coming into town. She’s been cleaning and organizing like crazy, and I finally got the garden started. Very much looking forward to it.
Recorded the band Deep Snapper this past weekend, which was great fun. Their drummer is a grill-meister, and kept us well-fed. Was also my first session on the new Studer A827 24-track, which I loved more than life itself. I also got to try out the new Audio-Technica ATM450 mics, which are awesome. For less than $200, I get all the functionality of the excellent Josephson e22s, but for 1/10th the cost. Thanks, AT!
Tre Orsi shows w/ the Pig went ok, though we’re sick to death of the older songs. Will record our 7″ next month bust. After that, it’s off on a two-week jaunt w/ John Vanderslice.
Random links that made me happy today:
From the early 1980′s, a surprisingly non-alarmist WFAA piece on the Dallas punk scene. (Thanks to Good Music for Bad, Bad Times!)
San Francisco To Ban Plastic Shopping Bags (via Treehugger):
It looks like the supervisors acted after becoming frustrated with the California Grocers Association inability to voluntarily reign in the volume of bags they gave away, estimated at 180 million plastic bags last year.
The New Year playing “Disease” at the Touch and Go 25th Anniversary block party in Chicago, Sep 2006. That’s me running sound there!
Jesus, it’s been two days now and my neck is still sore from the Tre Orsi show at Secret Headquarters on Saturday. Before we played, I was more nervous than I’ve ever been before a show, and I over-compensated by drinking a bit too much while cramming the hastily-written lyrics into my brain. I had already downed a 24oz Corona at practice that afternoon, and was three St. Arnolds into the night when Flemmons offered to buy me a shot of tequila.
I watched almost all of Handbrake’s set, and felt a little dumb watching these really great guitar players do some mind-boggling stuff. I guess they’re like a slightly poppy Tank Tank — shit, I dunno. I really enjoyed it, though, and hopefully we’ll play some more shows together.
So, when it finally came time to play, I was functional, but just loose enough to get tripped up due to the low light and frigid cold of Secret Headquarters. I tuned my guitar twice before we started, but it went violently sour in between the last tweak and the beginning of the set. The first song was rocky, but we basically found our pace by the next song and ended up having a pretty good time.
Still, though, I woke up at 4:45 AM (after skipping out on the insanity of the Baptist Generals/Shiny house party) and couldn’t get back to sleep. Instead, I watched a few episodes of “The Sopranos” and converted the band web site to use WordPress. At least I did something kind of productive.
Two more shows this week, in Austin and Denton with the Paper Chase, then two shows with Hogpig after SXSW. Should be fun. At least we won’t be playing last.
I’ve never been much of a reader. Typically, I take in magazines, non-fiction, and a whole bunch of blogs. Rarely, if ever, do I sit down with fiction, but this year (thanks to a fall that is keeping me off of my bike for another three weeks) I actually managed to finish Faulkner’s Light in August. Yeah, it took, oh, maybe 18 months (I don’t even remember when I started it), but it’s inspired me to stick to a more regular reading schedule. Over Thanksgiving, I tore through Moneyball and The Areas of My Expertise.
Right now, in the “To-read” pile, Tower of Babel: The Evidence against the new Creationism is at the top. I picked this up at the MIT bookstore in September, and while it’s a pretty dry read (it is mostly an academic philosophy book), it explains a lot about the current war being raged against reality by Creationists/Intelligent Design proponents.
After a discussion on the dRc board, I realized I still hadn’t made it over to Strawberry Fields (terrible name! The 4th “Strawberry Fields” shop in Denton in the last 40 years, according to Martin Iles), a relatively new “media” store at the corner of Oak and Bonnie Brae (former site of el Pariente). So, I walked down there last night to have a visit and walked about with about $70 worth of stuff.
The book selection is pretty small; there are a lot of Loompanics and drug-related books there, with a smattering of underground and “alternative” fiction and some political stuff. I picked up The Zapatista Reader, a reprint of an old Smith College text called Native American Anarchism, and The Diary of a Teenage Girl.
If the book selection was small, the music selection was teeny-tiny (maybe 50 titles or so), though it was mostly good-quality stuff. I picked up Danielson’s Ships, which I should have snaked in Hasselt, but there ya go.
The DVD rental selection is, again, small but pretty good, and their rental plans ($25/mo for unlimited rentals, or $2/vid for days) are definitely reasonable. Anyone who hasn’t seen the Cane Toads documentary would be well advised to drop by.
Katey mentioned the other day that it’s weird that we’re not going to see The Ex on their current US tour, and Jessica Hopper’s rundown of the Chicago show has only made me more Ex-sick. Granted, we just saw them in Chicago in September during the Touch and Go festival (and had breakfast with them! WTF!), but hey! I saw 4 shows of their last US tour! They are the greatest band I’ve ever seen!
Personally notable music-related factoids, 2006:
I did buy quite a lot of records this year, but being old and bitter, I’ve missed out on a lot of stuff currently all the rage in the blogger/college radio DJ circles. Oh well! It should come as no surprise that a lot of these are reissues and retrospectives. My favorite records of 2006, in no particular order:
Not at the top of my list, but still pretty notable:
Older stuff I picked up this year and played a whole lot:
The “No thanks” pile:
The “Didn’t Get Around To It” pile:
Most played songs (according to iTunes):
Live shows:
Katey and I traveled to Chicago this weekend to respectively work/blissfully attend the Touch and Go 25th/Hideout 10th Anniversary block party. It’s hard to find the words to describe just how life-affirming the event was, but I will just say ’twas one of the three best weekends of my life, right between ATP 2002 and The Ex 25th Anniversary in Amsterdam.
Highlights:
After Seam’s set on Sunday, I hustled over to Subterranean to sound check Shearwater. The show was hit-and-miss: they sounded great (thanks to the return of the upright bass), but there was tons of chatter in the back and most of the band were nursing colds. Still, they received an encore, we drank beer, and the IPB, his girl, and his brother all showed up and a fine time ensued.
Flew home the next day, and whaddya know, I bought some records @ Good while waiting for Katey’s flight to arrive:
In the studio: last night, did some vocal overdubs and rough mixes for Four Days To Burn, who will have a 7″ out on the Dada Drumming label soon. Tonight, finishing up the Tommy Hernandez record, with Rob G producing, for Right Place Records.
Leaving Thursday for Boston, where I’ll see the Willard Grant Conspiracy, Chris Brokaw, and Curtis Harvey, then start the Shearwater/Magnolia Electric Co./Bottomless Pit dates.
Get back, then practice practice practice for the first Tre Orsi gig (30 Sep @ RGRS w/ Bottomless Pit and Magnolia Elec. Co.), and do some recording with The Great Tyrant, Hogpig, and some band from Brooklyn.
Then sleep.
Whew.
Put it about 70 hours at UNT in the past week, including two overnight stretches. There’s more to come this week, I’m sure, as I slept all day yesterday to recoup and am now a day behind.
Also managed to record a few songs for Ft. Worth-based doom/sludge metal band, Four Days to Burn. They’re the first real metal band I’ve recorded in a long time, very much in the Southern Lord vein, with two singers, one growling, the other screaming. So much guitar, these guys! Very simple setup on this one: guitars and bass together in the iso room. MD421′s on the guitars, an M88 and KSM141 on the bass. D112 on the kick, SM57 on the snare (!!!), double-mic’ed toms, spaced KM84′s pretty high overhead, and TC40k’s on the floor, delayed 22ms. Vocals were the SM7 and a distressor. We tracked 7 songs and mixed two of those for a 7″ on the Dada Drumming label, who are also supposed to release a Great Tyrant 7″. I suppose I’ll be recording that as well.
Received a letter from Touch and Go today with details re: the 25th anniversary thing. They’re so organized, honest, etc — just so damned admirable.
More practice this week, then a session starting on Sunday. After that, sleep, I hope!
Via Denton ex-pat, Lani: The Monks on Beat Club, 1966.
Back from the Shearwater/Court and Spark tour. Overall, the times were good. C&S were hella-friendly, the shows were mostly good. The tour-ender @ SHQ in lil’ D was actually quite awesome; I would have settled for passable, myself but the people turned out and a good time was had. Also a bonus, I was in bed by 11:30, and that was after sorting out the money and saying goodbyes, etc. Some exciting things are on the horizon because of this tour, details of which will be revealed later.
Records bought on this tour:
Ripped from others on the tour:
Also stopped at the MIT bookstore and ended up with Prisoner’s Inventions, Tower of Babel: The Evidence against the New Creationism, Chomsky on Anarchism, The Computers of Star Trek (for my brother), and the Russian Criminal Tattoo Encycolpaedia (for Katey).
And finally, in the spirt of list-making, the Top 25 Most-played songs in my iTunes library: