Undependence Day

Happy belated birthday America. I spent the fourth hanging out in Middletown, which is not somewhere I would normally be excited to go to, but it was fun nonetheless. Especially with Serene and Joey and Emily and Erin and Morgan and assorted friends and relatives and pets thereof. And of course, copious amounts of Corona and Hefeweizen, a ping-pong table, and a pool.

Back up a day. July 3rd kicked July 4th’s ass all over the place. Didn’t do a whole lot during the day, other than hang out with Joey and Quinna at Aroma’s, and play some geetar with Joey, but when Serene got off work, we went down to Berkeley for a visit to Comic Relief (my first time at their new location). I picked up books to fill a couple gaps I’ve been waiting to fill, and also got the Collected Sequential and Goodbye, Chunky Rice.

Then we made our way into the city, to meet up with Nicci, Sherri, Matt, and Rachel at Cobb’s Comedy Club in North Beach, to see Hal Sparks do a stand-up set. The opening act, by local comic Kevin Katoaka was damn funny, followed up by a mediocre set by Chris Bono. Then Hal came out and pretty much rocked the house for at least an hour. It was a nice long set, with surprisingly fresh bits on a lot of topics that get a lot of stand-up play.

The sets at Cobb’s ended pretty early, and we made our way to….dare I admit it? Yes, a gothic themed strip show. It was pretty disorganized and ghetto, with a rickety looking pole on the stage and some pretty shoddy DJ work, but whatever. Tellingly, the most interesting person there was the guy who looked like a pudgy Andy Warhol in vinyl pants, who had a good 20 years on everyone there, agewise. It was a very young, very mixed crowd though, male, female, gay, straight, you name it, which I’m guessing is rather uncommon….(We even invited Hal Sparks, since he was wearing a Suicide Girls belt buckle that evening, but alas, he didn’t show).

Mmm….what else? Not a lot, really. I’ve got tons of comics on order that should start trickling in to my mailbox. More about those as they arrive. The Airliner/Mixedtape split EP is coming along nicely, but probably won’t be out for a while still. Nothing’s finalized, mixwise, but we’re getting pretty far along with our respective tracks and remixes. I’m also thinking about freshening things up around here. This design is over a year old, and while i still rather like it, I’d much prefer something new. And a new design might bring some structural changes I’ve been considering….but more about that as I come to it.

More later.

Day Six/Seven

More Cheese Blintzes and hash browns for breakfast. Good times.

Serene went off to visit her Grandpa on Friday, and Joey needed to get some work done for his latest web client, so Emily and I went out to the University district to do some browsing and shopping. I finally found a new CD store (you’d think it would be easier here), and an all-used CD store, and picked up the new Sleater-Kinney (limited edition with DVD), Daedelus’ Exquisite Corpse, and Jawbox’s Jawbox and For Your Own Special Sweetheart. Also went over to the University District branch of Zanadu comics and snagged a copy of Penny Century #6 and a bunch of Palookaville comics.

University Street in Seattle is packed with little boutique clothing stores, and I could easily go broke shopping at them. Well, if I was the type to spend $62 on pants and $112 on a sweater. But it seems like there’s tons of outlets for small-run designer t-shirts in a variety of styles. One shop we stopped at even had a few Tokidoki shirts in stock. There are also some pretty cool used/vintage stores in the area, and I snagged a Duck Hunt T-shirt at the Buffalo Exchange.

Later in the evening, it was back to Blue C Sushi for another excellent meal. There was a bit of a wait for a table tonight, so we went upstairs for some cocktails first. I had a Kappatini, which is essentially a cucumber martini. Soooooo refreshing. And we chowed down on the seemingly endless supply of sushi and tempura and noodles and puff pastries, and more cocktails (of course) before picking up a couple bottles of champagne and heading back home.

Saturday was the Sasquatch festival in George, Washington, at the Gorge Ampitheatre. Basically, the Gorge is a large stage set against the backdrop of the Columbia River gorge, and incredible view of dropped into the middle of some flat, ugly badlands in central Washington. It’s a pretty amazing place to see a show. We ended up arriving at about 2 or 3, after the first few bands had started, but we got there in time to catch the Arcade Fire’s set. They were pretty cool. I hadn’t heard them before, and they’re probably not something I’d listen to on my own, but they were inventive and energetic (especially the guy running around banging a crash cymbal wildly). Wilco came on shortly after, and played a long set with lots of songs ending in prolonged washes of noise and feedback. It was weird to see them in such huge venue, but it worked pretty well.

There was a bit of a break between bands we wanted to see, but the next act was Joanna Newsom at 7:00. I was excited to see her, but I was afraid this venue wouldn’t do her justice at all. Fortunately, she was on one of the smaller side stages, where we could get up pretty close and the sound was nice and clear. She opened her set by walking to the front of the stage, past all the mics and monitors, and singing as loud as she could into the audience, making eye contact with a lot of the crowd and getting everybody to clap along for her. Then she sat at her harp and played “Bridges & Balloons,” to overwhelming response. She proceeded through most of her album, as well as a B-side (from the “Sprout & the Bean” single) and an amazing new song that seemed to go on forever. The crowd was great, and everytime she asked what we wanted to hear, there were all sorts of enthusiastic shouts from the crowd.

The final stretch of the evening was Modest Mouse and the Pixies. I missed about half of Modest Mouse’s set due to being stuck in a food line for about an hour, but I could still hear them from where I was standing. I was surprised to them as a 6-piece band when I finally got back to the green with my cheeseburger. Whatever happened the good ol’ power trio days? Although the added cello and 2nd drummer were kind of cool…

Amazingly enough, there was a bit of a mass exodus after Modest Mouse’s set. Philistines. The setup for the Pixies took forever, and I’m convinced the front-of-house engineer was just showing off by directing the mixing over the PA (”OK check….check…Uhhhhhhhh….We can take down 250 a bit in channel 9….and boost about 2db at 1200 on Kim’s monitor….”). It was worth it when they finally took the stage though, sprinting through a tight set with hardly any full stops between songs. The setlist was a Pixies fan’s wet dream, with all the big hits you would expect, and a few great oddball songs. Nothing too out there though.

The 2-hour drive back to Seattle at midnight was a little daunting, but we pulled it off, mostly with Serene behind the wheel. We staggered back home exhausted, dehydrated, and totally spent and collapsed on the floor.

Not sure what’s in store for today. Serene & I apparently slept in until 2, and Joey and Emily had taken off somewhere. Not sure what they’re up to, or when they’ll be back, but we’ll see what the day brings, I guess. Might go see John’s friend Kyle do a broadcast for KEXP sometime later. We shall see….

More later….

Day Four/Five

Day Four passed mostly in a blur of borderline heat exhaustion. We went a few blocks from Joey’s, to the Hi Point Cafe for a late breakfast, followed up with a trip to Verite Cafe for coffee and cupcakes. (I’m totally becoming the need-three-cups-before-noon type here). Reed had to leave for the airport early in the afternoon, so he departed and then the rest of us napped and lounged around the house for a few hours.

After we were somewhat recovered and mobile, we headed downtown to the Honey Hole for dinner and a start to the drinks. The Honey Hole is an interesting, tiny little bar/grill type place with huge portions. I wasn’t feeling too hungry, so I stayed with the artichoke dip, and everyone else had garden burgers (two patties! Jesus!) and sandwiches of various sorts. From there it was over to Bar?a, a nice chill little lounge, sort of pseudo gothic, with huge pimped-out velvet booths, for a few drinks.

From there it was another exciting night of card and dice games and Hefeweizen at the homestead. Not too shabby for a low-key 26th birthday.

Today we went for a walk around the neighborhood for a while, ending up down at the Arboretum swingset. It was a pretty hellish walk back, due to the huge Seattle hills and California-summer-esque weather, but the heat has been a worthwhile tradeoff for how beautiful it’s been.

Joey and Emily went to see Star Wars this afternoon while Serene and I walked around Pike Street and the surrounding area (but not the eponymous market). I picked up a Ubiquity Records T-shirt reading “Music is the weapon of the Future” in a nice hand-drawn font, cream and brown, and some Forlorn Funnies comics down at Zanadu on 3rd. Went on a fruitless search for a CD store, with the goal of picking up the new Sleater-Kinney, and whatever else catches my eye of course, but we didn’t end up finding anything. So we just met Emily and Joey back at the car and picked up lasagna fixins’, which we are now preparing. Dinner tonight is gonna kick some fucking ass!

More later….

APE 2005

I spent a lot of time and way too much money at the Alternative Press Expo in San Francisco yesterday. But it was oh so worth it.

Highlights:

A Becky Cloonan Original, page 10 of Demo #11. My first piece of original comic artwork.

2 Color guides by Steve Oliff from the Epic edition of Akira. Pages 309 and 310 from Volume 6. These will be framed and hung next to each other soon.

And the rest of the haul: From top to bottom, left to right: Berlin #9 and 10, by Jason Lutes; Street Angel #5 by Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca; Slow News Day #3 and 6, by Andi Watson; A promotional print by Jeffrey Brown; Cerebus: Latter Days, the Last Day, and Rick’s Story by Dave Sim and Gerhard; Acme Novelty Library #6 and 12, by Chris Ware; Sparkle, a beautifully printed mini-comic by Frank Stockton; My Love is Dead/Long Live My Love by Paul Hornschemeier; I Am Going to Be Small and Miniature Sulk by Jeffrey Brown, both customized with small sketches; Hey 4 Eyes!, an amazingly detailed zine about all things glasses related (with cover by Derek Kirk Kim); the Snakepit Book by Ben Snakepit; and Daisy Kutter: the Last Train, by Kazu Kibuishi.

Sweet Jesus…breathe in….

Also, I got signatures from all three Hernandez Bros. on my copy of Love and Rockets Vol. 2 #10, from Daniel Clowes on my copy of David Boring (including some art customization), and on my copy of Clumsy by Jeffrey Brown (with more art customization).

Goddamn, that was a trip. I also picked up assorted pins and stickers, and saw sooooo much eye candy it was unbelievable. As fun as APE is, I’m glad it’s only once a year. My bank account couldn’t handle any more than that.

More later…

The Haul

Made yet another trek down to Amoeba Records on Sunday, and spent far too much time and money there, as usual. But I got a fat stack of CDs that I’m really happy with so far. The haul is as follows:

• Hrvatski: Irrevocably Overdriven Break Freakout Megamix
• Boards of Canada: A Beautiful Place Out In the Country (which I had on vinyl already, but picking up the CD for $4 seemed like a good deal)
• Boards of Canda: Peel Sessions
• Squarepusher: Maximum Priest EP
• Pole: 1
• Sonic Youth: SYR 2
• Christopher Willits: Pollen
• Channels: Open EP
• A Minor Forest: So, Were They in Some Sort of Fight? 2xCD
• Cex: Know Doubt
• Hood: You Show No Emotion At All Enhanced CD single
• Various Artists: All Tomorrow’s Parties 1.0
• Two Gallants: The Throes
• Stereolab: Transient Random Noise Bursts With Announcements

…hmm. I feel like I’m forgetting something.

(UPDATE: Yes! I forgot Jaga Jazzist: the Stix!)

Anyways, I also picked up a US Postal Service Letter Carrier jacket at Aardvarks’ on Haight when I was down there, so score! So stylish, with my reflective striping going on…

In other news, Fiona Apple’s new album, Yankee Hotel F… er, I mean Extraordinary Machines, (you know, the one that Sony won’t release because they don’t hear a single) hit the internet a while back, and I finally got a decent copy of it last night. Not bad, and definitely very pop, so I don’t know what Sony is thinking. Jon Brion’s production is nice, as usual. Nothing extraordinary, but very crisp and accomplished. I’ve never been a huge Fiona Apple fan, but after the teapot tempest surrounding this record, it was worth a listen.

Working on remix kits for a few people. Should be sending those out this week.

More later….

Ex Mass Roundup

Christmas was nice. Sedate, if anything, filled with Scrabble, tea, presents, family, and Nanaimo bars. My best scores in the gift department were a Marshall MXL 990 microphone I’ve been fiending after for a while, and Robert Bringhurst’s essential Elements of Typograhic Style. I’ve already torn through a couple hundred pages of the latter (100 or so on Christmas itself, much to the bewilderment of my family). Apparently, my Mom looked everywhere in the store for it, before being informed it was housed in the Art section.

My Marshall mic is soon to be joined by a few companions (2 Nady CM90 small diaphragm condensers, a DM90 dynamic kick mic, and assorted accessories), my gift to myself this year. I’ll finally have a decent selection of mics to record, say, a full drum kit adequately. Still haven’t set up Cubase or any other multitracker on my new-ish laptop, but I may do that tonight, post-blogging, so I can be prepared tomorrow when the first batch of equipment arrives. OF course, I’ve finally picked up a good vocal mic while I have a nasty persistent cough (seems to be an annual thing for me).

Oh what else? Picked up a bunch of good music through legal and illicit means in the last little while. Les Savy Fav’s Pop Frenzy Tour EP, the Blow’s Poor Aim: Love Songs EP and Jaga Jazzist’s A Livingroom Hush are some of the recent faves. I picked up a bunch of jazz discs too, including some Max Roach Trio, some John Coltrane (an album I only had on vinyl till now), and some Thelonious Monk. Every once in a while I just get into a bit of a jazz mood and have to pick up a few more albums, to expand my slim collection. I’m even working on an Airliner tune that has a pretty jazzy feel to it at the moment.

Speaking of Airliner, I have a new collaboration tune available, a three-way track between myself, the Celibacy Club from Washington, and rowboat from Florida. I might expand my section of it at some point, as I’m pretty happy about it. We’ll see. I need to finish my clothing EP first.

In more Airliner news, I’m looking to set up a website strictly for Airliner related business, but alas, the domain name I really wanted was taken. Anyone with ideas for a domain name that ties into the “Airliner” name, but isn’t something stupid like “airlinermusic.com”, feel free to drop me a line.

Oh! Saw From Monument to Masses again, finally, at the Bottom of the Hill. Their new material is quite awesome, and their next release should be plenty interesting. They’re threatening to play at the Tradewinds in February. Fingers crossed….

Um…yeah. That’ all, I guess. More later….

Bloated and Bored

I can’t remember the last time I was this full. I think this feeling is going to last for a few days, from the looks of it. Well, I’ll just have to make some room for veggie thanksgiving tomorrow night though….eh, holiday blogging is boring, so I’ll spare you.

Open Mic was fun the other night. I did Wilco’s “Pot Kettle Black” (which I’ve been listening to a lot lately) and re-attempted Elliott Smith’s “Happiness”, which I drunkenly butchered the week before (I already blogged about that elsewhere). But this week made up for that disaster, I think. It was kind of slow, due to the holidays, but it was a nice crowd nonetheless.

I finished re-reading The Crying of Lot 49 recently also. I enjoyed it immensely the first time, but I feel like I sppreciated it more the second, especially having more familiarity with Pynchon’s other works. It’s interesting to see some of his obsessions carry over to other books. I’m planning on re-reading Gravity’s Rainbow again sometime too, but that’s a pretty hefty time investment, I don’t get to read much anymore these days.

Oh! Almost forgot. I won Green Day tickets and Meet and Greet passes last weekend, which is funny because I don’t like Green Day. I owned a copy of Dookie for about a month when it came out, but it wore off on me pretty quickly. Anyways, I only won the tickets because Emily took me along when she was trying to win them, so the tickets found a good home with Green Day uber-fans Emily and Marisa. Unfortunately, the Meet and Greet passes were not transferable for contractual reasons. We were thinking of giving Emily my old ID (in which I have long hair and look rather less masculine than currently) and trying to pass her off as a transsexual, but decided it wasn’t worth the hassle.

Made a stop at Amoeba Records while in the city also, and got a pretty good haul for right around $50. I got Hood’s Singles Compiled and Compilations 1995-2002 pretty cheap, Fog’s self-titled (which I haven’t been able to rip…grrr!), M?m’s Summer Make Good, Son Volt’s Straightaways, the Freakbitchlickfly compilation on Violent Turd (featuring copyright abusing remixes and mashups by Kid 606 and friends), and Mates of State’s All Day EP. Good times.

Not a lot of music happening. “Sweater” is kind of stalled, due to my being somewhat disenchanted with it at the moment. It may be abandoned. I’ll listen to it again in a week or two and see how I feel about it. I’m trying to work on a collaboration track with Celibacy Club, but I need to give myself a crash course in Fruity Loops again to make that happen. That’s the problem with electronic music….there can be more barriers to collaboration due to software/hardware issues. Of course, in acoustic-based music, you can’t really collaborate with someone 2 states away anyways, so that’s a moot point. I did find some people locally who are looking to get a music project going, so that might open up some new musical vistas for the moment…

More Later….

Bring on the Cheap Beer

Ironically, the times when I’m actually living my life are the times I’m least inclined to write about it.

So I checked out the first day of the Last Record Store and KCRB’s Left of the Dial Festival, as it sure beat the hell out of checking out the other festival that’s happening this weekend. The one involving drunken accordion players and polka dancing…The show was fun. I have no idea who the first few bands were, other than not being all that great. Passable, but none too interesting. But it’s always nice to get a chance to see Little Cat play live. I was planning on picking up another of his CDs, but realized I only had $4 left, after the $5 admission fee/2 drink ticket charge. Drinking in a record store is a fun, yet dangerous thing. I can see it easily ending in financial disaster for yours truly. Fortunately, I’d already made two trips to the Last Record Store this week (more about that in a second), so I was able to keep, my urges in check.

I took Erin home after Little Cat, and we played the highly addictive Flash game Fuck It, a cross between Scrabble, Tetris, and Tourette’s Syndrome, for a while. I’m completely addicted to that game, but my high score is pathetic. Still well below 1000. Afterwards, I went back to catch the end of John Courage’s set, and was pleasantly surprised to see that their set up consisted of acoustic guitar/vocals, and double-strung folk harp. Nice to see something out of the ordinary….

I picked up a few CDs: on my first trip, I meant to pick up the Joan of Arc album, but it was late arriving, and I had to leave with Owen’s EP, Minus the Bear’s They Make Beer Commercials Like This, and Polar Bear’s Shorts Are For Warm. All excellent investments, I might add. I especially like the Polar Bears EP; it really captures a lot of the things I like about their live show, but with a greater clarity than I’ve heard either time I’ve seen them. I went back later in the week to pick up Joan of Arc, Dick Cheney, Mark Twain…; the jury’s still out on that one. When it’s good, it’s great, but there’s a lot of it that’s gonna need some time to digest. On the third listen, I was catching a lot of stuff I’d missed initially, and while this is definitely no Live in Chicago, 1999, it looks like it’s really going to reward close listening.

Oh yeah, and I’ve decided to kidnap Morgan’s cat.

More later. Lots of good comics came out that I might talk about. But I promise that a lot and don’t deliver. As if any of you care about my comic reading habits.

Unabashed Consumerist Frenzy

Yay, the weekend arrives. I don’t know what I’ll be doing with mine exactly, other than washing some dishes, perhaps playing some music, perhaps seeing a movie, and undoubtedly watching some Kids in the Hall. Good times. Certainly better times than working late on super busy days at the sign shop. Whoooooooeeeeeee.

I’ve got a lot of comics to read too. I just tore through the Sleeper: All False Moves trade, and the first issue of Sleeper: Season Two, which were both excellent, excellent, and excellent. I spent too much on comics on Thursday (after some enthusiastic upselling from my friendly neighborhood comics clerk), and I have a package of stuff coming from Mile High comics in the next few days. I’ll finally have the last issue of the Maxx! Hooray and rejoice! I also have or will have shortly: Transmetropolitan: Back on the Street, Powers Vol. 2 #1, Scratch #1-2, a bunch of Jamie Hernandez’s Penny Century comics, a couple issues each of Street Angel and Bi-Polar, Y: the Last Man #24, and X-Statix #24 (the penultimate issue?).

I also did a lot of piracy this weekend, swapping music and movies and software via firewire drives with Keith. My Mp3 albums folder is becoming pretty bloated, and that can only be a good thing. I also acquired some albums the old fashioned, retail-based way (Squarepusher’s Hard Normal Daddy, Son Volt’s Wide Swing Tremolo and Morrissey’s Viva Hate).

Yay consumerism.

I missed another From Monument to Masses show, which sucks quite a bit. I haven’t seen them play in soooooo damn long, and they’re gonna be jetting off to the Old World this summer, so I probably won’t have another chance until the fall. Ah well. Next time (he says again)…

More later, when I have something of interest to talk about.

Amoeba

Ah, Amoeba Music. Also known as “Mecca.” Went there last night, and spent too much money, but got a great haul for it. Almost everything I bought was $5, except for the 69 Love Songs boxed set ($27.99), the Joan of Arc live Album ($12.98, new), and one of my other used CDs that actually came to $6. But aside from those, I got:

• The Rum Diary: Poisons That Save Lives
• Oval: 94 Diskont
• Pole: R
• Oma Yang: Bang Bang
• Oma Yang: From the Heart of Jumbo Malaria
• Prefuse 73: the ‘92 vs. ‘02 Collection
• Funkstorung: Additional Productions

…not too shabby, if I do say so myself. 11 CDs for $83 or so.

Anyhow…The redesign is getting closer and closer. I’m gonna need to fix things up once the new version gets moved over here to the main directory, but that shouldn’t take too long. It’s still just the Big Blogger Export that I’m dreading. I’ve heard that the new version of Blogger complicates things a little bit, but I’m sure that won’t be the case forever. And I’ll always have my Blogger account handy, if I ever need to re-import anything.

Blah Blah…more later.