everything technicolor

shuts

2007-05-19T09:17:00.000-05:00

i'm moving my blog since blogger is poopy.
new blog = putay.tumblr.com

for realz.

2007-05-16T23:07:00.000-05:00

honestly, i think red heat is probably the most underrated schwartzenegger movie. i used to think that commando was the most underrated, but after watching red heat, i'd have to give it to the sweet ass walter hill russian/american buddy cop action movie. belushi is on top of the whole smart ass american cop thing. it's got the requisite 80s half-synth / half orchestrated score (that comes off like a tough russian national anthem), underlying homosexual themes (dudes powerlifting in the russian bath house and then fighting in towels in the show, belushi and arnold talking about how it's okay to like each other at the end) and it was timely in that it capitalized on how americans hated russians during the cold war and then tried to exploit that relationship with 80s films (see rocky iv). rocky iv is too busy with dicola and stallone and fury to fully realize the whole russian/american token 'can't we all just get along,' but red heat nails it. it's not politically correct and belushi spends most of the movie telling arnold about how awesome america is, which is ironic since his character is an idiot. you spend the whole movie watching what is essentially martin and lewis except you can't figure out which one is supposed to be the comedic sidekick.

someone finally ported the old 90s tracker program i use in dos so that it works mac os, which means i'm going to probably destroy the earth soon with jams of doom.

up down left right

2007-05-14T07:53:00.000-05:00

the top secret protomen thing is finished. it's gonna be rad. 28 weeks later was supertough. i want more.

circle one: yes or no

2007-05-11T07:16:00.000-05:00

this weekend is going to be awesome out of the sheer fact that i'm going to do as little as humanly possible. it's nice to have a weekend where you have absolutely nothing planned.

when may started i decided, partially out of my dentist appointment experience, that i was going to spend the entire month without any candy/sweets, coke type drinks, or fast food. so far, i've stuck to it and it's ridiculous how much better you can feel just by cutting off fast food. i've been sleeping better and able to get up better. my stomach hasn't been freaking out as much lately. i'm going to stick to this diet for a while since it's working. it's not so much a lose weight thing as much as a 'fast food is full of horrid death yet we feel compelled to eat it anyway.' it seems like there are lots of people around me lately who have had to deal with cancer in their families and i got to thinking it's really silly how we just lead ourselves right down that path by filling ourselves with garbage our whole lives.

i'm going to try and schedule a physical in the next few weeks. just watch them tell me i'm diabetic. ha.

shut up putay

2007-05-08T22:20:00.000-05:00

jess and i went to see spiderman 3. the first half is marginally entertaining but still the most overbearing, over-use of computer crap i've ever seen. then the movie spends about five or ten minutes in saturday night fever meets high school music. everything after that is just you, the viewer, watching $300 million dollars flush down a toilet. i hope this movie makes $300 billion dollars in revenue. there's a story on boingboing now about how the hollywood hills are actually burning in a giant brush fire. i hope that all of the money in the world goes to spiderman.

awesome sweet things i did last weekend for realz

2007-05-07T12:02:00.000-05:00

1 watched cal cook 100lbs of crawfish in our backyard.
2 ate crawfish.
3 decided crawfish are, physically, kind of nasty.
4 heard four jams from the new chromeo record.
5 realized that chromeo are, in fact, amazing-er.
6 heard two jams from the new bjork record.
7 realized that bjork+timbaland=tough jams.
8 beat lost planet, first video game beaten since nes.
9 watched how i became the bomb at grimeys super sale.
10 bought hall and oates h2o on vinyl at aforementioned sale.
11 played jams at springwater.
12 during said jams, lots of girls dancing got naked.
13 during pulp, some assbag threw a cup of beer at me.
14 set out to one day break the face of said assbag.
15 slept in a hammock.
16 realized that my life is mostly fantasy.
17 but tough fantasy, like the cover of a novel about vikings, not wussy fantasy like care bears or some crap.
18 maybe a little bit like care bears.

sad

2007-05-04T15:15:00.000-05:00

rip new order. their last record was total crap, but none the less, sad news.

2 legit 2 quit

2007-05-04T12:07:00.000-05:00

i've been in this weird state of indifference to just about everything for the last few days. i don't know how i feel about it. i bought the jodorowsky box set and started to watch his movies and they're all blowing my mind one after another. el topo ended and i was like, that's the most ridiculous thing i have ever seen and then the holy mountain starts and completely erased el topo's high score on the crazy spanish art films that blow your mind high scores. i didn't finish it because i passed out due to extreme exhaustion. ugh. i woke up at 4am this morning. i worked on jams.

there will be naps tonight.

vegetables

2007-05-03T11:52:00.000-05:00

possible is the opposite of impossible. i don't think i'm going to make it to the weekend.

don't make me cut you man

2007-05-02T12:04:00.000-05:00

two complaints.
1
spiderman 3 cost $500 million dollars. of course people are going to turn on it before seeing it. it's one of the biggest movies coming out this summer and it's about a comic book. for half a billion dollars, it should cure aids. honestly, how could you ever rationalize spending that much money on a movie, let alone the third movie in a series. it's mind numbing to me and i'm sure the movie is just overloaded with computer magic, but seriously, why? according to wikipedia, die hard cost $28 million. i don't remember any computer business in die hard (except when theo using the computer to open the vault and when they ask the asian dude from flower drum song for the code and he says no and hans blows his brains out, literally) but it's still more coherent, funny and exciting than 99% of the crap we have to watch nowadays, not to mention that there isn't a single action star today who can hold a candle to 80s/90s bruce willis. instead of making bloated old spiderman 3 or curing aids, they should just start genetically engineering the next wave a action stars. don't give me no vin diesel either.

2
patrick wolf has no business crying to the press about being asked if he's gay when he releases record covers like that of the magic position, while also naming said record THE MAGIC POSITION. it's such a weird record. i've only listened to it once through, but it just struck as being so weirdly structured. i want to listen to it again.

it's tuesday, people

2007-05-01T08:19:00.000-05:00

last weekend we had thunderclean; it's an annual ritual where some of the people who live in thundercon participate in cleaning said con. we're getting better at it every time we do it. i'm mostly glad that the first floor isn't just rooms full of crap now.

i went to the dentist for the first time in 5 years yesterday. a word of friendly advice slash common sense: don't wait for 5 years to see a dentist. it's among the dumber things i've done and now i get to make an appointment with the oral surgeon to yank one of my teeth out. it's a wisdom tooth, but seriously.

cal and i will be djing this weekend at springwater (saturday). before our set of imported wham b-sides will be cantasy famp and the fork hunts. also, it's lucy's going away party before she moves to LA forever. so come on out and wake me up before you go go.

go timber down

2007-04-27T11:59:00.000-05:00

the last king of scotland was entertaining for about an hour. engaging, rather. the story of idi amin isn't so much 'entertainment,' i suppose. forrest whitaker has been one of my favorite actors for a while. it was nice to see him win an oscar; he is very good in the movie. i just don't like narratives that splinter off and blur into chaos. i saw a documentary about amin that he himself commissioned (he even scored it with an accordion) that was a really interesting companion to the story of his regime. the documentary is obviously heavily watered down and built to be pro amin. it was good not so much as information about amin the ruler but about the power of disinformation, which is relevent today.

i'm in the process of concluding this thing i'm working on now (that's vague on purpose) and i'm about to start working with peter on his cross of lorraine record. i've been all over the map with that in terms of doing it or not doing it; i ultimately came to terms with doing it solely to let go off any pretenses i have with my own stuff. i want to use every instrument and every amplifier and all of the microphones in every key and every time signature. the thing i'm finishing has been really cathartic in a way because it was all music that i didn't write; i could look at it subjectively only in arrangement and objectively in every other sense. it sort of opened me up tonally. i'm looking forward to working with peter because it's completely unknown and i'm in this mode right now where that feels more comfortable than anything else.

today is national administrative professionals day.

2007-04-25T07:18:00.000-05:00

"I just never thought it was going to work at all," Mr. Halberstam said of Iraq during a public appearance in New York in January. "I thought that in both Vietnam and Iraq, we were going against history. My view — and I think it was because of Vietnam — was that the forces against us were going to be hostile, that we would not be viewed as liberators. We were going to punch our fist into the largest hornets’ nest in the world."

times

2007-04-24T19:34:00.000-05:00

today i bought the new dntel. yesterday i wrote a song with my acoustic guitar. it was the first song i've written with a guitar in probably two and a half years. i don't know where it came from; it just popped into my head and i wrote it down. it's probably nothing.

big fear

2007-04-20T17:16:00.000-05:00

i'm sure that time machines will give us the answers we need.

today i hate country music so much. sorry.

2007-04-19T12:11:00.000-05:00

"As I travel around, I have never seen a president and a vice president more disliked in more places than George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. The Bush-Cheney team, by its own hand, has undermined its ability to talk about American principles in a way that foreigners will take seriously. They have moral clarity and no moral authority. Foreigners just have to say 'Abu Ghraib' or 'Guantanamo' and that ends the discussion. It also lets the foreigners off the hook.

"I think Barack Obama has the potential to force a new discussion. For now at least, he has a certain moral authority because of his life story, which makes him harder to dismiss. And while he is a good talker, he strikes me as an even better listener. [And] it seems to me that the strongest case one could make for an Obama presidency right now is rarely articulated: it is his potential to repair the broken relationship between America and the world.

"I believe that what has propelled Obama's candidacy up to now -- more than anything -- is that many Americans have projected onto him their hunger for community, their hunger for a president with the voice, instincts and moral authority to make it so much harder for foreigners to be anti-American or for Americans to be anti-one-another." -- N.Y. Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman in today's edition.

abba greatest hits tape vol.2

2007-04-19T08:09:00.000-05:00

i can't handle all of the crap that's going on around me right now. around us, rather. the virginia tech thing has everyone polarized, especially working at a college. cops are everywhere now just in case. it seems sort of silly but not really when you think about it. it's not enough that there's already so much tension in the world that we have to worry about some kid with a student visa killing his classmates because he can't find a girlfriend. foxnews has a cool little school massacre logo with a crosshairs behind it. and everyone has the 'nbc news'-branded photos of the kid doing old-boy poses with a hammer. it's too much. i don't know why this kid couldn't listen to nickelback and shop at the mall. i don't think he really made an effort to fit in to our american way of life. what a jerk. he's more famous than charles manson now. so he's got that going for him.

yo let's blow work off

2007-04-18T12:37:00.000-05:00

i bought menomena and nine inch nails yesterday. work was such crap, i had to stop at grimeys and retain some joy before going home. so i did. i like both records; the latter has become sort of guilty pleasure (as a band) but the new record is his most interesting (sonically) since broken came out in middle school and healed all of my puberty-laden woes. i didn't care much for the last two records, but this one is full of noise. it's more daring i guess. i was berated in my house (in my room) last night for listening to clipse. i tried to defend it but gave up. oh well.

i have lots of work coming up in the next few months. i'm doing a cinco de mayo show with german castro and the fork hunts at springwater. there's also gonna be a split with german castro and myself. i'm finishing up the top secret protobits thing (hopefully in the next two weeks or so).

braps, dude.

halves

2007-04-17T12:06:00.000-05:00

i am having a terrible day. and it's only noon. i feel so worn out. i wish i wish i wish.

federales

2007-04-15T22:06:00.000-05:00

mabby dabs. today was a fall day. all the way. the fall guy. lee majors, hanging on to a helicopter. i bought lenkman, dylan and the clipse on saturday. there's a clipse beat where they sample someone running their hand across piano strings with the sustain held out and then they chop the sustain up and repeat it a bunch of times. it's beautiful. i was thinking abou the idea of sampled music. lenkman samples a lot too, which makes this weird parallel between his music and clipse music. folk music and rap music. it's all music. i listened to bob dylan for a long time last night. old topical dylan. cept for blowin in the wind. that song makes me burn. probably cause of that scene in forest gump where jenny is singing it naked on the stripper stage. i can't handle that. i wasn't made for those times.

unleash the beast, everybody come on.

buck up, man

2007-04-14T22:46:00.000-05:00

sirens are going off. but in the distance. last night i went to the middle tennessee anime convention, in a marriot hotel, to watch the protomen play. what a bunch of weirdos. i helped devin work the video stuff. the show was good. lots of kids dressed up like pikachu or whatever the crap you call it. after the show we danced up a little dance party with toto and kavinsky and then went up to the 11th floor, where we drank all of the booze in the green room, ate all of the pizza, played jenga, made fun of 40 year old anime losers talking about television actors and playing with transformers toys, ate veggies with dip and then drew on the walls of the hotel with sharpies.

jams plus sampler equals super effed up jams. i'm gonna do a black metal split with german castro. i can't wait to paint my face like a demon and make blood jams.

pretty lady

2007-04-12T07:15:00.000-05:00

rip kurt vonnegut. i bought a sampler. samplers are fun. last night we went to see grindhouse, which was pretty rad. kurt russell is tough as hell. planet terror was pretty much the best zombie movie i've seen in a while, but the tarantino half was by far the best. the car chase at the end is ridiculous. for reals.

impetus

2007-04-06T07:35:00.000-05:00

yesterday was exhausting. i got to work late. i forgot my lunch. i forgot to take a vitamin. i had all kinds of stuff to take care of. above all of that, i didn't really want to be there. despite stomach grumblies, i went to el palenque with my friends and then we went to see the decemberists. the crowds in nashville are getting more and more aligned with the crowds of, say, jimmy buffet concerts. i can't really tell if this is because emo culture is kind of stalling out and the long-standing, shorts-birks-abercrombie culture is filling in the gaps, or, if i'm just out-growing that whole scene. i don't feel like i ever gravitated towards any scene in particular, just groups of friends. it's tough to describe it. it's harder to watch it. there were far too many devil horns up in the air at the show last night. when i think of devil horns, i think of, oh, slayer. i don't much think of colin meloy.

the venue was complete crap. i've never been to city hall before, and i'll hopefully never go back. wall to wall people, no order, no easy way to move around (it took about 4 songs to go to the bathroom and get back through the crowd of people). then after the show everyone filters out through two doors. the venue has no real parking and uses a giant, uneven grass field ($5 per car) that has no set lanes to get out, so it's a free-for-all destruction derby.

but it was worth it just to see the perfect crime and the mariners revenge song encore with the giant whale on stage. we were pretty much agreed that the opening band, all smiles, wasn't so good. i found out this morning that the lead singer is the guitar player from the late grandaddy. hmmm.

don't call it a comeback

2007-04-04T07:21:00.000-05:00

last night my eye was all bloodshot and jess was complaining about it. when i got home and looked at it in the mirror i noticed i had this thing on my eyelid. she said it was a stye and near-dr. ben trappey pseudo-confimed this. it's not hideous looking --it mostly feels like i've got an eye lash in my eye- but the picture on the wikipedia page about styes looks terrifying, so we went to cvs to get some stye drops (that's really what they're called). while i was there, i saw that they had eye patches, so i got one of those in case my eye falls out or whatever. i spent most of the night learning how to give myself eye drops (never done this) and wearing my sweet new eye patch around the house. i told jess that she had to call me apache putay when i wear the patch. i tried to take it easy and watch the good shepard last night, but that all failed when i started putting together a really lofi recording setup in my bedroom and then we had tornadic doom weather outside. today we're supposed to get donuts for b-fast, but, as of yet, no donuts.

nubs

2007-04-02T13:39:00.000-05:00

the sweet thing about working with a southern-born, righteous hillbilly redneck (i'm not slamming him; he'll tell you this himself) is that sometimes he'll buy a new charlie daniels best of compilation cd and bring it to work and blast it at the desk next to yours. let's hear it for pseudo-biblical vengeance.

danke

2007-04-01T16:17:00.000-05:00

thanks for coming to the show. it was a fun time. lots of magic moments for sure. with the door and merch money i bought a guitar and an agogo. let's hear it for the power of jams and your money.

please don't die

2007-03-30T07:48:00.000-05:00

why is the world so messed up?

it's f-in raining outside

2007-03-28T12:07:00.000-05:00

work is a monster beast today. and the rain isn't helping. i got some free sweet tea, so whatevs. lcd soundsystem charted at no.46 on the billboard top 200, which is pretty amazing. it just goes to show you that, in lieu of arcade fire hitting no.2, indie rockin dudes and dudettes are more into crying than they are into dancing. modest mouse is turning into freakin weezer or some crap. i guess we should have seen that coming with their jams showing up on american idol and freakin kidz bop. i can't hate them for it. they've got johnny marr and that counts for something.

RAMO!

2007-03-27T21:43:00.000-05:00

i'm putting out a new ep on soundmachine and you can buy it friday at the basement show. it'll be cheap, like $4 or $5. definitely no more than $5. it's all blue and fueled by the power of my 707. come out and get crunk with me and the robots.

new jam + info here.

alala

2007-03-26T12:03:00.000-05:00

it's awesome that anna nicole being dead for a month from overdosing on pills is bigger news than a bunch of british soldiers being held in iran. the guardian uk is reporting that iran wants to charge them with espionage for allegedly boarding an iranian ship outside of iraqi waters. espionage, in iran, is a death sentance. this is terrifying. the entire world hates the USA, except maybe the british government but they probably do too since we dragged them into iraq. the UN, comprised of all the of the countries in the world, hates iran; the nukes thing, the president defying everyone, etc. the whole conflict in israel last summer was scary because everyone was on pins and needles, not so much about the conflict itself but about the idea that if iran had gotten involved, the UN and the USA would have to get involved, and then it's WWIII. the iranian president seems like the kind of guy who isn't going to doing anything unprovoked; he also seems like the kind of guy who would destroy an entire continent if he had to. it's just funny that in typical USA style, blonde hair and giant breasts are way more important than impending world conflict.

also, i found out this weekend that laguna beach is scripted. sorry africa, i've got nothing for you.

pere ubu hair products

2007-03-23T11:40:00.000-05:00

i think tonight i'm going to try and watch the new ninja turtles movie. i really like the first live action movie a lot. the second one is ok, but not as good as the first. it does have vanilla ice. does anyone have a smoke machine i can borrow for next weekend? i got some plans.

slams

2007-03-22T11:50:00.000-05:00

"I don't like scenes. Scenes are always filled with terrible music... I'm not looking to make friends. I'm looking to buy records that I like, and listen to them."

amen. i used to think that i hated going to shows, but really it's not that. i hate mingling. i hate the time that passes by while you're talking and i'm thinking about sort of half what you're saying and half what i'm going to say in reply. sometimes conversation is good and there are a handful of people that i really adore talking to, it's just that pressure to live up to some expectation that makes me feel solid terror. some people are really good at that sort of mess, but i'm not.

yeah

2007-03-21T18:20:00.000-05:00

i really think that the james murphy effect is vastly understated in popular and indie music. i think that may be partially his fault, since he seems pretty humble about what he does. he isn't 'all over everything' like you'd maybe expect him to be. this could be a byproduct of being on a label that he runs, so he doesn't need/want/have a giant press PR machine, but whatever. i'm interested to see where his new record charts. someone great is the best thing he's ever done. it's incredible. i listened to it a lot today at work, and it never got boring. i just kept replaying it. i think it's the holger czukay / can ideology; write something that grows like a pulse that people will hear and want to hear more of when it's gone. jams that never die. which is ironic, since the lyrics seem to be all about reflecting on death.

Rue Morgue Review

2007-03-16T15:03:00.000-05:00

Rue Morgue March 2007

Makeup and Vanity Set
The liner notes on Charles Park give thanks to John Carpenter and Dario Argento, and the influence that these two genre masters have on Makeup and Vanity Set's music is undeniable. Recorded with synthesizers and tape decks "at night," the album drips with the dark, synthy sounds and and creepy beats of 80's Italian and American horror, and could easily serve as a sountrack replacement to Phenomena, Fright Night or even a Nightmare on Elm Street sequel. Sadly, the artist's creative juices run dry about three quarters of the way through, but there's still more than enough deliciuosly dark material here to satisfy your cravings for a classic gore score. Tailor-made for those nights when the dance floor drips with blood!

AVL
four skulls out of five

i always felt like charles park was stronger on the second half, but what do i know. 'creepy beats' is the best definition of music ever.

Wabbs, Dude

2007-03-15T08:31:00.000-05:00

i'm at work and for once we're actually slow. ugh. the milliseconds are just ticking on by. i couldn't sleep last night. again. two nights in a row. so now i'm in this weird awake/zombie limbo. i wish i could crawl under my desk and take a nap. that would be awesome. everyone is really standoffish today. i was driving in and it was still dark out. there weren't any cars on 18th ave, which was unusual. i bought a tr-707 on ebay. hopefully it will show up in the next few days. i got jams to work on. if i'm feeling really really productive, there might be an ep for the show on the 30th. really really really maybe.

I Can't Never Sleep

2007-03-14T00:11:00.000-05:00

i'm apparently in the current issue (#65) of rue morgue magazine. they did a review of charles park. i haven't had a chance to read it or anything as i have no idea where to buy this magazine locally, so these dudes might be slammin' me or whatever, but who knows. either way, i'm in a magazine with the creepy dude from phantasm on the cover. that's gotta count for something.

Michael Jackson's heartbeat recording by Dr. Eric Chevlan digitally processed in the synclavier

2007-03-12T11:44:00.000-05:00

i like the idea of michael jackson far more than what he is or who he is. i can't imagine how fresh it would have been to be hanging out in a superstudio making bad or thriller with him and quincy j. that studio must have been the equivalent of the death star. seriously. i think the liner notes are key. the idea that they had someone monitor his heart and then play it on a synth and make a jam out of it (smooth criminal, no less) is tough as hell. and not in a 'hey dudez, let's get my heartbeat on the jam' kind of way, it was probably in a 'hey, let's call in my personal doctor and pay him a standard rate and then have a technical heartbeat synthesis specialist come in, pay him a day rate, and have him lay down some heartbeat tracks, dude.' michael was probably wearing a sequined t-shirt in the back playing with a chimpanzee or something while quincy was turning knobs and programming bad on his linn drum. seriously. it would be like putting a copy of 'american gigolo' in your dvd playing and climbing into your tele.

I'm Not, Actually

2007-03-11T19:01:00.000-05:00

so, we went to see 300 like everyone else in the world and it was pretty bad; it was thoroughly entertaining to watch, but a mess of a movie. jess bought me a copy of punch-drunk love at best buy for $6. it was awesome. we looked at giant HDTV sets since i'm thinking about buying a new tv. my old tele has a nice green wave across it. i have been enduring it pretty well until i got this fancy video game system that looks hella crappy on it.

i'm happy that it's warm outside.

Wolf Blitzer

2007-03-10T11:11:00.000-06:00

i filed my taxes for the first time ever in my life this morning, through the power of 'the net.' all taxes previous were filed away by my dad's tax attorney. it wasn't that tough. i'm fat and old now. i'm a taxpaying dude now.

Charlie Daniels Super Hits

2007-03-09T12:26:00.000-06:00

daft punk in california this summer. who wants to go? nobody leaves me comments about anything, so leave some. the weather is incredible today. i've been driving the battle wagon around all day listening to jams with the windows down. after about ten years of not really hearing it, i went back and listened to nevermind by nirvana. the first cd i bought was in utero. considering all of the time i spent listening to them, i was really unaffected by cobain killing himself. i remember feeling kind of weird about it, but it wasn't a big deal. lots of kids had shirts with his face on them and all of that, walking the halls like zombies, eternally eulogizing a guy who hated everything except for heroin and who probably never anticipated being a post-mortem billboard for teen angst and rebellion (or at least healthy t-shirt sales). still, listening to that cd was a weird experience because it was kind of unaffecting. i really always liked the less-famous songs off of that record (if there were any) and i always skipped over teen spirit. i still feel like drain you is the best grunge song ever made, much more so than teen spirit was. i don't know. it's kind of like that period of time, in my life, is sort of encapsuled and severed from the rest of me. it's detached. i don't know why.

They Drew First Blood,

2007-03-08T07:13:00.000-06:00

the title track to first blood, that rolls over the credits, is so awesome. it's a tender ballad. tenderoni. i need a haircut. i want rumble fish mickey rourke hair. something i don't have to deal with so much. i have lots to do today; the only thing i really want to do is lay in bed and sleep a while. i couldn't sleeeeep last night, which was more annoying than anything else. i want to watch the sandlot right now. things used to be really easy.

i started fleshing out this new jam last night and i had that usual, post-honeymoon phase 'i'm starting to hate this' feeling with it. i have a quick turnover when it comes to me liking jams that i'm working on. i played with cal's found in the junk accordion and attempted to make a little waltzing kletzmer jam that somehow blobbed around in 3/4 and ended up cut to pieces into 4/4 before i quit without saving it. sometimes i like that feeling where you're in a car that's on fire out of control down a hill. when you know you'll just keep messin' but you won't save it. kamakaze jams.

PYT

2007-03-07T12:01:00.000-06:00

i bought the new !!! last night. it's pretty dang good. they got less jammy and more song focused. i also spent some time recording hihats on some new jams last night. i'm trying to lean on midi as little as possible and have things a little looser. right now i want to nap very badly. i still need to get a bass and new tubes for my amplifier. tuuubes. might be nice recording some guitars and such. i wanna make a sonic youth record in my bedroom. without listening to it while i make it. temporary deafness, norman. i do have lots to do and my body is shutting down as of late, telling me to slowww down but i can't because there's just too much to care for. jess is maybe going to get a new job working for a pharmacuetical company in franklin. fingers crossed. i have to go ride in my chariot of fire now.

McGrizzle

2007-03-06T07:30:00.000-06:00

last week was really tough. hopefully this week will be much much much much better. yesterday i bought some jams at grimey's jams-house; i bought the remastered electric light orchestra jam that just came out, which sounds great but the art is ruined by a bunch of usual janky 'remastered edition' layout crap. the other jam i bought was drums not dead by liars. i'm 'getting used' to it. i'm trying to get more fleshed out guitars and arrangement stuff, instead of the tetno garbage that i usually fill up on. i'm embracing my inner holger czukay. i'm cool in the pool.

up the dates, dudez

2007-03-01T11:25:00.000-06:00

it's been a long while now. i've been hella busy. my birthday was sunday. we went to shoneys. it was awesome. i had the buffet and a coke. we talked about everyone who has died from our graduating high school classes. it was great. we're still building studio le thun'de con. i'm also knee deep in top secret remix work. i'd like to get crackin' on my new jams, but there just isn't time right now. i got an xbox360 for my birthday. it's fun. i'm pretty sure i saw shabba doo from 'breakin'' dance-jogging down wedgewood the other day. i have to go back to work now.

yams

2007-02-22T07:14:00.000-06:00

yo peeps. this week has been flying by and i've been freakin busy. this sunday is my bday, dudez. i haven't gotten any cards yet. my room is kinda cleared out now since we converted the 2nd floor of the 'con into a functional studio space. it's nice having a room that you can actually walk through without tripping over a pile of midi cables and synthesizers stacked up to the ceiling. jean-paul moved in and lives in the old windowless blake room. he participated in the building of hawk's nest v5 or 6 or whatever it is. he'll be part of the bike gang as soon as he gets a bike.

today i'm going to see a lecture about lacrosse, which, i'll admit, i know nothing about, so it's good that i'm going and kind of, maybe, absolves me of any guilt over going solely to get the free lunch that's provided. vanderbilt is going to hook me up with sweet lacrosse know-how and a club sandwich. best job ever.

i'm done with lost. seriously. every chance they get to make it tough again, they blow it. it makes me sad because the first season was the best season of television i've ever seen.

i'm full on predicting that britney spears will be dead before 2008.

beano 2

2007-02-19T08:13:00.000-06:00

MAKEUP MIXTAPE III
23:40

TABLE OF JAMSTENTS:
YELLE - SHORT DICK CUZ (TEPR REMIX)
TEPR - MINUIT JACUZZI (DATa REMIX)
TEENAGER - ALONE AGAIN (VAN SHE TECH REMIX)
GAMEBOY/GAMEGIRL - SWEATY WET/DIRTY DAMP
KID SISTER - DAMN GIRL
KAVINSKY - WAYFARER
SEBASTIaN - GREEL

DOWNLOAD IT.

yo i got it

2007-02-17T07:45:00.000-06:00

i got the poison peanut, dudes. i checked the lid for the 2111. i had a pb&j the other day. i'm as good as dead now. and i was going to buy a bass today. it's my day off and now i got salmonelas. dang it.

i got tons of crap to do today. and no time to do it. and it's snowy winter time outside. i think i'm gonna get all crazy and not shower today. just cuz it's cool to be filthy and whatnot.

i'm sick and tired of hearing about famous lamers flipping out and getting all jiggy with the drugs and alks. honestly. we should round them up with a giant net and hurtle them into space. towards the sun. like the nukes in superman IV.

sometimes it's really tough

2007-02-14T22:58:00.001-06:00

i don't always get it the first time around.

dear,

2007-02-07T17:08:00.000-06:00

check out arthur baker. he's tough as hell. he looks like a roadie for slayer, but he produced 'confusion' for new order, produced 'planet rock' for afrika bambaataa, and wrote the score for beat street. in fact, if you watch the video for confusion, you can see him in the studio mixing it up and then taking the tapes straight to the club. he's my cool dude of the day. planet rock was the one of the first hip hop jams that got nationally big, and is really just a jam made out of two kraftwerk tracks. if that's not enough, he helped hall and oates mix 'out of touch.'

lost is back. i have to go listen to the cars.

abba

2007-02-06T16:40:00.000-06:00

there was an article online that i was reading during lunch the other day about from a basement on the hill that sort of made me want to go back and re-listen to the record. it's a weird record that i sort of half-listened to when it came out just because it was the final record but not really the final record because he didn't finish it before he killed himself and blah blah blah. then a lot of distressing crap came out saying that his family pretty much went crazy censoring a lot of the songs that dealt with darker themes and that there really was a double-album's worth of material that got filtered down into one awkward record. wikipedia, using this source, kind of elaborates on this:

"David McConnell, who produced 7 of the tracks that appear on the album with Smith and thus was present during some of the recording process, was not consulted during the mixing, nor was he asked for the extensive "three years worth" of notes made by himself and Smith while the album was being finalized. The producer also noted that the track "Ostriches & Chirping," a short instrumental made from sampling and looping the noises made by a toy bird, had nothing to do with Smith and was something that McConnell had recorded by himself. Smith most likely did not intend for this song to be on the album. When asked what he believed the late Smith would think of the released version of the album, McConnell said, "I don’t think he would have delivered {that} record. The record he would have delivered would had more songs, would have had different mixes and {been} a little more in your face."

it's really i guess most disappointing that smith was such a junkie; the whole jon brion fall out thing. but that isn't saying that the released record isn't a total loss. i can remember listening to 'last hour' and feeling like he'd really written and perfect song. a lot of the songs are just hard to listen to because of how blunt the lyrics are about drugs or how wrecked he was, or just the fact that some songs are full of lyrics that make no sense or seem pretty trite compared to the rest of his songs. the 'ostriches and chirping' thing is just ridiculous. i hadn't heard about that. the thing that resonates here is that no one knows what he would have released in the end. he took so long to work it out, he may have never released anything at all. a lot of people at the end just figured he was going to overdose and die and no one really expected him to stab himself to death with a kitchen knife. i like the last line of the wiki article:

"The possibility remains that a collection of unreleased material may someday be released. However, due to the aforementioned contractual obligations, all of the remaining material is the property of Interscope, making a release unlikely without a boom in the popularity of Elliott Smith's music."

if you go to the wikipedia page for smith, scroll down through it and look at the pictures of him from when he first enters the recording business, to the last picture of him on the cover of magnet just before he died and look at how dramatic the change is. you could argue that being more and more popular made it harder on him and he self destructed with drugs and finally suicide. i think he was probably musically on par with the lennon and mccartney. i think people with that much inside of them can't live. they just work on through whatever hell gets put on them until something they can't work through ends up in front of them, be it a needle or a gun or whatever.

yams

2007-02-04T08:44:00.000-06:00

so this morning i woke up and went to take a shower. we have this little jambox in the shower now that cal found amidst the got-junk treasures he brings home everyday after work. it plays tapes and cds, so i was all ready to take a shower and listen to 'here come the warm jets' by brian eno when i found that the cd player is all messed up now and won't play cds. with the cassette tape still working, i opened the door and grabbed the nearest tape, which happened to be stevie b. stevie is pretty much the king of freestyle jams. he pretty much dominated everyone else. so as i'm showering and listening to sweet drum machine sup girl jam after the next, i started thinking about how freestyle music really doesn't get the respect it deserves. nobody ever namechecks a freestyle artist. i think freestyle jams are perfect little pop songs; they don't overstep what they're aiming to do, they're uptempo, they're short, and they're all about trying to mack on girls. if i could go back in time and make jams i'd do freestyle because in my mind that must have been the coolest crap ever. just a bunch of dudes in white leather high tops and sleeveless shirts hanging out in the studio cooking up sweet jams all day and then cruising for girls at night. and then writing more jams about the girls they picked up the night before when they went out after writing jams about picking up girls. etc.

ahgs

2007-02-01T12:11:00.000-06:00

it's a freaking litebrite, people. the taliban are back with 80s childrens toys to conquer the great western world!

and then,

2007-01-30T11:50:00.000-06:00

Excerpt from Pitchfork Media review of Ed Rec Vol. 1, written by Tim Finney:

"Ed Banger's best performer is SebastiAn, who contributes bleepy, glitchy EBM disco filtered through a production sensibility that's three parts Depeche Mode circa Black Celebration and one part Autechre, which is the same as being all parts Nine Inch Nails remixes. This is a reason to like him, in case you're wondering: he may be as enamoured with mid-range blare as Justice, but you get the impression that Sebastian's aggression is a bit fey and girlish too, like he's hoping you'll notice how prettily he grits his teeth. On the whole, his labelmates could afford to be more girlish: currently their wide-eyed ambition is held in check by a certain air of male jocularity, which reveals itself in the wild mood swings between stomping noise and overly fussy digital editing. No-one here is interested in sounding polished or professional, which is fine, but I could wish for a slightly more feminine touch at times (and no, Uffie doesn't count). Like, how much better would anthems like "Waters of Nazareth" be with a diva squealing over the top? Give me that over another monotone rockstar performance anyday."

This is a good example of what is wrong with indie rock posturing music critics. I feel like Pitchfork Media would love it very much if they had the sway over independent music that MTV has over mainstream music, but they don't and this lovely piece of shit is an example why. Walmart has an annual gross profit revenue of over $300 billion dollars and that puts them in a position to dictate wholesale buy prices to the manufacturers of the goods they sell. MTV operates in a similar way; they became so big and so set into American culture that records labels had to start catering to MTV's needs to get what the record label needed. Walmart and MTV are just big business that got there by milking American culture and exploiting supply and demand. Pitchfork does the same thing, but nobody calls them on it; they get a pass because they discovered Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.

The music reviews they post are complete shit about 99% of the time. I've read whole reviews that spend paragraphs about absolutely nothing related to the record in review. That's alarming, especially when their site is touted as much as it is. As time goes by, it seems like all direct avenues for music journalism have gone straight into the toilet: MTV, Rolling Stone, Spin, AP, and now Pitchfork. As the excerpt above illustrates, the reviewer dances around actually having to describe and write about SebastiAn at all by simply, and pathetically, name-dropping a bunch of other bands. He doesn't even bother to qualify them either, simply invoking the classic piss poor music review device of 'a mix of...' I like that he added that his assumption actually IS a reason to like him, which is hilarious because it's a little like saying 'i know what i just wrote makes absolutely no sense, but he's good and you should like him.' The rest of the paragraph wanders off, offering insight into how the review perceives, in his mind, the artist's dress style. He offers two incredibly vague references to the sound of the artist, "..stomping noise and overly fussy digital editing" before wrapping the review up with an odd half-committed juxtaposition statement and a reference to a "monotone rockstar performance" being his preference if given an alternative to the music he was reviewing.

It's funny how far gone the entire entity that is Music Business has come. I have absolutely no idea where it is headed, but it seems like all facets of the industry have turned sour just as much as the average music consumer has. I wouldn't want to go back in time or anything, but I just don't understand why the focus has shifted so far away from actual music. It's gotten so sleazy and self-important that it seems like none of it has to do with music. Unless it's Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.

Back to work.

ABC/BBD

2007-01-23T12:07:00.000-06:00

last night i saw pan's labyrinth. it was good and original but really unsettling. a good chunk of it was really hard to look at. belcourt movies always end up having a lot of the 'stare at the floor' time in them, like the vincent gallo cannibal sex movie that zack dragged me to back in the day.

today my ipod freaked out and lost it's mind and now just rapidly skips through all of the jams without playing anything. anyone ever have this problem? i did a hard reset, but it didn't do much of anything to fix it.

tonight we're going to see smoking aces, which will probably be crap but i've got a bunch of free passes for it, so whatev.

take on me by aha 2000

2007-01-17T12:10:00.000-06:00

at work today i saw gnarls barkley dressed in trench coats walking through the east nashville lafayette ghetto.

ahem

2007-01-10T17:16:00.000-06:00

it's always a good day when you hear elliott smith on the radio. no matter what kinds of horrid crap your day can pile on you, elliott smith always makes it better. at least for me. god bless WRVU and college radio. i've been trying to get myself back into music making mode lately really to no avail. i'm not worried about it because i always do this. i work really hard and make a plethora of new jams, release something and then take a music vacation where i stop and start a bunch of ideas but really in a meandering kind of way where nothing is tied together. it's like finger painting or something. i don't know. i'm trying out new methods of recording and mixing. i want to do something different.

jook

2007-01-07T21:25:00.000-06:00

jess and i saw children of men last night and i cried for probably the last twenty minutes of the movie. alfonso cuarón pretty much rounds out a year full of movies by innovative young directors making movies that run circles around everything else. the best movies out all year were all by new directors or at least underappreciated newer directors: little miss sunshine, hard candy, brick, the science of sleep, etc. i was pretty blown away by children of men. it's technically one of the best movies i've seen period. the shots and editing are all incredible. well worth going to see.

you can only be skeptical of the direction modern films are heading. especially when devendra banhart pops up as the soundtrack to shit ass horror sequels.

die hard 7: die toten hosen harder

2007-01-06T08:33:00.000-06:00

oh shmackle. it's been a busy week. the new job is good. i have a desk and files and a computer and access to my own little array of office max knick-knackery. i have a work van that i get to drive all over nashville. i meet lots of crazy deer-shooting country parts supply salesmen who handle the vandy accounts. i like it. yesterday i worked at vandy and then went to work at my old job (which i still technically have). it was kinda rough and i was dragging like crazy, but i made it. i'm kinda almost the master of shifter cars. i've still got a few things to learn with it. this post has been mostly worthless. i just wanted everyone to know that i'm still alive.

odio crecer para arriba

2006-12-31T08:22:00.000-06:00

i bought a car yesterday. i have car payments now. buying a car is the most drawn out process ever, but i was okay with it because the muzak in the showroom seemed to be set to the real genius soundtrack. i was signing papers and 'everybody wants to rule the world' came on. and they had a popcorn machine in the back. so all was well. it's a stick shift and i learned how to drive it last night in the parking lot of the bellvue mall. i learn fast. i must go to worky now and listen to the mastodon cd wes loaned me.

thank god that america, by the power of freedom and democracy, was finally able to kill saddam and close the books of the war on terror

2006-12-30T08:01:00.000-06:00

look at that picture. i just well up with tears of sweet democratic joy when i look at it. does it look familiar? i really was hoping that we, as the most powerful nation on the face of the planet and of the galaxy, could somehow upstage the lofi, homemade quality of the iraqi beheadings. seeing as how we replayed those over and over again on national television, we should have expected that saddam hanging from the noose of justice would probably get lots of sweet airtime. we should have trumped it up more: we could have made it like a gameshow with lots of lights and filmed it in las vegas with howie mandell and the judges from american idol. we could have gotten remote interviews with all of the celebs on their feelings about winning the war on terror and the designer fashions they wore for the occasion. and then we could have prepared something similar to the gauntlet from american gladiators, only way cooler with lots of camera angles and kills shots. it could have been like the running man, and arnold could have come down from LA and joked about how saddam 'won't be back,' and second graders across the nation would have been rolling on the floors in front of their television sets laughing with their families over hardees or arbys or micky ds. howie could have gotten on the phone with the mystery guy up in the booth and made saddam a deal. and we could have fed him to dogs or had him fight ninjas or something cooler than hanging; it's so boring. there's no pizazz; there's no bruckheimer. it could have been bigger than the superbowl when ray lewis ran out in the opening minutes with the ravens and screamed 'let's get these motherfuckers!' on national television. that was entertaining. i mean, he killed a bunch of people and got off scot free just in time to proclaim, on tv, in all of his (and our) american glory, that he would get those motherfuckers.

but no. we had to string him up in a basement with a bunch of dudes jocking my style. i bet more planning and duress went into wardrobe and execution (pardon the pun) than our whole drawn out iraqi war part deux. i want posters of dead hanging saddam in every mcdonalds in the continental united states. i want kids with dead hanging saddam hoodies. this is our chance. we've got $9 trillion dollars worth of iraqi war debt to pay off. if that picture up there is what we get for $9 trillion dollars, we all need to head on down to walmart and stock up on supplies and move to mexico.

if we're going to be paying taxes on that for the next century, we might as well get a sweet commemorative hooded sweatshirt out of it.

merry jamsmas

2006-12-24T19:26:00.000-06:00

makeup mixtape no.2

tracklist:
1 intro - rick ross - hustlin' / grandmaster flash - superrappin'
2 brice lee - spam (yuksek remix)
3 yuksek - composer
4 john blair - momma said shut up (edit)
5 justice - let there be light (dj discrete's black light mix)
6 datA - paste back

playtime: 22:21

download it and slamdance your christmas tree

xmas eves, dudes

2006-12-24T10:42:00.000-06:00

last night i ended up at a smokeless bar called the sportsman tavern over on prospect with kate and zach. they had a bar full of regular christmastime drunks and hopefuls who were chattering up and shouting and cheering each other into oblivion while the three of us found a table and caught up about everything and anything. they had a jukebox full of george jones and conway twitty that kept everything nice and nashville for me. i left feeling kind of aimless, not so much about kate or zach but about myself and just my connections with ohio. it's chilly outside today and they're expecting a snow/rain mix tomorrow. i can't predict the futures but sometimes i wish that i could.

home

2006-12-23T17:12:00.000-06:00

today i broke up a bunch of wood at my dad's office and helped him trash it all. he's trying to find someone to lease a space on the first floor and the previous tennant left a bunch of riffraff lying about. it was fun. after that we drove home and i ate two sandwiches. dad and i (and my sister jill) watched the frank gehry documentary that sydney pollack made last year and then i took a shower. post shower i had some conversations with the 'rents and now i'm trying to find a way out of the house to downtown cleveland to do something snappy and fun. there's talk of a show and some catchin up chitter chatter. i just want to walk up and down the street doing the funky chicken smoking a pipe. either that or go see rocky VI, which my mom vetoed as, and i quote, she is "all rocky-ed out." no love for stallone from mamma putay.

thangs

2006-12-22T10:33:00.000-06:00

my flight out last night was delayed by 2 hours because of weather being terrible everywhere in the US other than nashville and cleveland. my flight was scheduled to leave around 720pm central time and i arrived in cleveland around 1130pm eastern time. twas rad. i read through two magazines and listened to phil oakey and moroder jams for a good long while, so i was okay with it. there was some crazy awesome dude with a rocker perm and an amish style 'i listen to lots of sweet rockin' beard in front of me to board the plane. i liked him. he may have been more jimmy buffet than godsmack, but who knows.

my computer is making a crazy freaking noise right now. i think the fan in my computer is freaking out a little bit. gross.

it's thursday

2006-12-21T09:31:00.000-06:00

i got the job. i work for vanderbilt university now. in a real income job, making more money than i've ever made in my life. tonight i fly home for four days for christmas. the last two weeks have mostly been a blur.

nintendo wii + jams

2006-12-18T15:08:00.000-06:00

since a couple of weeks ago, when it was revealed that wireless wii controllers work off of common bluetooth chips, people have started writing scripts that allow you to receive the bluetooth via your laptop, assign the variables to midi language, and then assign midi controls to really anything that accepts midi control. this video demos using the remote with ableton live. this is pretty slammin, mostly because the wii controller acts on an x, y and z axis, meaning you get up, down and left to right but you can also roll the controller to the left or to the right as well. this reminds me of people in the late 90s wiring up their palmpilots into usb-to-midi convertors and using the x/y axis like a theremin. just another example of the wii being the smartest game system ever.

oh dears

2006-12-18T10:03:00.000-06:00

keep your eyes open, matthew. an incredibly long week ends and a new one begins. jacki, my magical boss, called me this morning and told me she was at the store and had accidentally scheduled us both today, so i could take the day off if i wanted. so here i am, with the day off. last night i was telling jess that it would be amazing if i had the day off today because the last week had been so full of chaos. i was working everyday, sick, walking to work, trying to makes ends meet with the small amount of cash i have, borrowing her car to drive to vanderbilt for interviews (which hopefully i'll know more about later today), and then the weekend --more work and freeman christmas dinner on sunday night. all in all, i'm pretty wrecked, so jacki's call was like winning one of those scratch off lotto ticket things you get at mapco. i did a little dance, threw some clothes in the washer and listened to some music while internet multitasking, which is still in the process of being completed. there's a new leaked justice jam online today, which i found and stashed online.

justice - phantom (extract)

it's pretty fresh. there's a crazy vocoded vocal thing happening, which i wasn't really expecting. i like it, but i still want to hear all of it. stereogum put up a link to a digital short from SNL featuring justin timberlake pretty much parodying himself in the form of a mid 90s sup, girl jam extravaganza. mostly not work safe. link.

i've been mining through hoards of old putay jams from the years as i was cleaning up and found a spool of cds from back in the day. old putay jams come in all different shapes and sizes. the really old stuff from middle school and high school is pretty rough because all i had my trusty dos machine and some computer speakies. the stuff i made post freshman year of college is more interesting to me because i started to understand how to work and make things sound more interesting but in a way that clearly shows i still had no idea what i was doing. i prefer working in a place that i'm completely unfamiliar with. this record i made in a week or so i guess when i lived in university courtyard. the first track wass made from aaron copeland off of the bathroom wall. the last track was for my grandparents. the little clickies in several of the tracks come from the bass keys being clicked and clacked on my dad's old pushbox accordian.

polska ep.
1vasc
2linus leeds in '83
3stop making music
4felm
5you are beautiful

odd.

happy christmastime for realz

2006-12-17T00:29:00.000-06:00

this is my favorite contemporary christmas jam. it kind of always has been, even with the onslaught of sufjan jams (which are all very good too). leave it to a beatle to cook up some slammin fresh synth tones and some sleigh bells. the top two things in this world that make me want to break out the snowy winter magic dance: watching home alone and jumping on the bed to wonderful christmastime.

paul mccartney - wonderful christmastime

rewind it!

2006-12-14T19:37:00.000-06:00

best albums putay bought in the year 10,000,006 are:

clark - body riddle.
anything released on ed banger.
girl talk - night ripper.
jackson - smash.
the knife - silent shout.

i'll be the first to admit that 2006 was, without a doubt, a shitty year for music releases. thank the lord for chris clark, who actually lived up to the hype. i picked his record up in LA after months of not being able to get it in nashville and it still sounds new everytime i hear it. warp still managed to put out two good albums this year despite testing the waters with a bunch of new signings in the experimental post rock art band category. ed banger pretty much owned the year though. every single they put out was priceless and/or timeless. and the knife became the sonic david lynch band with their new record and everyone knows how awesome david lynch is.

tomorrow i will find out if i have a new real-money job or not.

lowering the bar in television

2006-12-13T21:22:00.000-06:00

ugh theraflu. sickness. it smells like nice warm cider but it tastes like that awesome vomit aftertaste. nice and ripe with a good bite to it. i cooked it up with a microwave and a half dirty coffee mug. my car is still dead and my legs are getting stronger. i've been walking around in the early december heatwave. it made me feel sick like flu sick but i'm sure it's just a lot of fuss over nothing. tomorrow morning i have an interview at vanderbilt university for a real type job that pays well with benefits and real live working wages. i'll wake up early and take jess to work and borrow her car and drive to the inteview. i don't like suits. they always make me feel sort of semi-official. like being 65degrees on december 14th. i guess we'll call it winter by default.

i can't listen to vince guaraldi in this weather.

and please no techno

2006-12-07T11:18:00.000-06:00

makeup mixtapez, dude.

tracklist:
fox n' wolf - in yr underwear
new young pony club - Ice Cream (Thee Bang Gang Deejays remix)
zongamin - bongo song
yuksek - break ya
skatebård - love attack
scenario rock - skitzo dancer (justice remix)
goose - british mode (jester remix)

download. mp3. 31:27.

in honor of my car being dead and having the day off to prep resumes and look for real jobz, here's a mix i made this morning in my pjs. something jumpy for the day. put it on your podz. get on with it.

golden

2006-12-07T02:21:00.000-06:00

oh goodness. eating mcdonalds at 2am and drinking powerade is the worst idea ever. right now my stomach is all bloated and my body is pulsing like i just got an adrenaline shot. worst feeling ever.

oh craps

2006-12-05T20:25:00.000-06:00

i like walking. i stopped in the park and wandered around the dead trees. i'm supposed to buy a new car sometime this week. i have no idea how i'm going to pull that off. i'm broke.

argz, bro

2006-12-05T07:22:00.000-06:00

my car bit the dust yesterday. it did have 142,000 miles on it, but it still makes me sad to see it go. she was the best space car a boy could ever wish for. and now i have to get twenty jobs so i can afford car payments and insurance. i have to walk to work now. ps it's 30 degrees outside.

terror

2006-12-03T21:54:00.000-06:00

oh david. don't do it that way; you'll never make a dime!

don't copy that floppy!

2006-12-02T08:47:00.000-06:00

fox'n'wolf, from sweden! here's another euro duo with tough jams and tougher press photos. seriously. i've also been rocking the skatebard a lot. this guy is mostly slammin. the first jam on his myspace is pretty rad. the other band worth rockin is crystal castles. nintendo in the blender!

skatebard - data italia
crystal castles - xxzxczx me
www.foxnwolf.net (check the 2nd live video and the mp3s)

things from this week

2006-12-01T15:09:00.000-06:00

philip glass, pipe tobacco, peter matteson, nintendo, freezing cold, james stewart, alfred hitchcock, photographs and the bible.

honestly

2006-11-29T07:53:00.000-06:00

we all love timmy t, but seriously. this video is freaking terrible. watching timmy t sup, girl in this video is painful. it's really the most awkward thing to watch ever. plus he looks like he's a good ten years older than she is, which makes the swingset scenes unintentionally creepy. the spoken-word breakdown is by far the best. after watching that, i'm pretty sure that timmy t at one point worked in a salon. his videos get slightly better. "over and over" at least had a high enough budget to get him a tough jeep. the whole time i'm watching these videos, i'm thinking that it's like someone gave JT from 'step by step' a record deal.

also, if you search out the timmy t tags on youtube, you'll find videos of the present day timmy t standing in various places thanking his myspace friends and telling the camera to click on the add button to add him to your friends.

handclappps

2006-11-27T23:28:00.000-06:00

human league - love action.

today i got heaps done. i'm pretty much demo city on the next vanity shmat record. so far it sounds like death comesto matteson making an all acoustic covers album in the room next to mine. i wanna play some more shows. anyone?

don't be silly, bro

2006-11-27T08:12:00.000-06:00

tough.

we're going up against electro rock; we got a score to settle

2006-11-26T18:15:00.000-06:00

last night jess and i went to see the fountain. without trying to explain the movie very much, i really liked it. the idea of having three connected storylines using the same characters in different time periods was pretty interesting. i feel like it's the most realistic of all three of his movies in terms of how it's made. it's also nice to see a science fiction movie that doesn't use laser guns and flashy future scenes. it leans on spirituality and religion just as much as it does on science which i found to be kind of refreshing. today it was 65degrees in nashville, which is freaking ridiculous. yesterday we saw al gore at the movie theater with his family and i wanted to high five him for global warming. "dude, don't fight it! we get to wear our flipflops in november, bro!"

slammin' girl

2006-11-25T09:50:00.000-06:00

ready for the world - oh sheila

new edition - cool it now

the second video is pretty much a dramatization of how i used to mack the ladies back in the day.

there are no terry richardson photos i can post that don't have filth in them

2006-11-22T20:34:00.000-06:00

take that frown and turn it upside down.

oh goodness

2006-11-21T13:42:00.000-06:00

i need moogs and a talk box. stat. i've got lots of crap to take care of. i keep crossing the days off. cal bought a wii and i'm fairly sure it's the most future i've ever seen displayed at one time. it's like jeff bridges came in and beat dillinger on the light cycles in my living room. what's even better is watching people play it. it has that stupid DDR quality to it, but at the same time you get the feeling that something just got reinvented.

i got the fever!

2006-11-18T08:06:00.000-06:00

oh dears

2006-11-11T12:34:00.000-06:00

laguna beach is the best show ever made. whoever pitched that show should win the nobel prize. for awesomeness. honestly. you can forget all worries when you watch that show. it heals you. i bet that show could erase all of the aids out of africa. we shouldn't spend money (what money?) on vaccines for africa; we should just put laguna beach-playing televisions over there. really big ones. i'm going to do that when i get rich. either that or adopt a nice handbag baby like madonna did. eh, it probably won't be chic anymore by the time i make it real big.

go here and listen to the first jam. that jam is the new oh sheila. my next record is going to be nothing but sup girl jams. i'm going to get in my time machine and go back in time for like 2 years to make it and then i'll be back here with the masters and some sweet couture 80s clothes. you'll never know that i was gone because i'll set the time circuits for like a minute after i left.

also, i'm going to prevent 9/11 and hurricane katrina. with tapes of laguna beach.

sometimes we're all undead zombie jam makers

2006-11-06T21:54:00.000-06:00

makeup and vanity set live halloween death jams mp3

recorded live at WMTS 88.3FM on october 29th 2006. thank you to steve steven cross for taping it and having me on to begin with.

tracklist:
station id jam via 1983 from pbs
the first two minutes of halloween III by alan howarth
halloween III theme by alan howarth
money (lojac version) by tigarah. remix by pustiback
buio omega (main title) by goblin
pursuit by makeup and the vanity sets
zombi 2 theme by fabio frizzi
the horror by makeup a la vanity shmets
no one gets out alive (james murphy bass guitar outro version) by makeup y vanity system

total running time: 29:14. mp3. 29mb.

just cuz, you can download the other WMTS set from april here, dudes.

christopher walken hair

2006-11-03T08:47:00.000-06:00

listening to abel ferrara curse takes all of the jarring qualities out of those words. i'm being asked to do lots of remix work lately. actually lots of work altogether. i like being busy. i can't ever stand still for so long. i always need movement.

the juan maclean - tito's way (lindstrom and prins thomas remix).mp3

this is a fierce lindstrom remix of tito's way, which was the only jam i liked off of the juan record. the thing with lindstrom is that he sort teeters with me between making really tough jams and making coked out disco jam band crap. this remix is good because he effectively makes a goblin jam out of the original song. the new chord progression over the vocal is straight suspiria.

jess and i caught the prestige last night and i can't recommend it enough. christian bale is the most watchable actor working today. and david bowie's best work since basquiat and freaking labrynth.

i will have my glory day in the hot sun

2006-11-01T09:55:00.000-06:00

my phone be dead. you can call me but i won't answer suckas. i'm going to have to start working on new jams soon. i thought i could take a break, but i feel like i'm dying now. dance party was good, if good means multiplying the amount of people there by 10 and making them happy instead of crankasses. the power supply for my drum machine may or may not be sitting in some vegas craphole. that's pretty lame. if anyone in vegas finds my drum machine power supply, i'll be your friend forever. i have to go navigate the himalayas for a new phone made out of yak hydes and tree bark.

hot shits, bro

2006-10-31T17:54:00.000-06:00

in few hours...
DEATH DISCO HALLOWEEN DANCE PARTY
AT CAFFEINE IN NASHVILLE (on demonbreun/music row)
MAKEUP AND VANITY DOOMJAMS
WEAR A COSTUME! FREE BEER!
BLOOD AND KNIVES!
NO TECHNO!

LIKELY STARTING AROUND 11PM.

makeup y vanity disco tonight

2006-10-29T08:31:00.000-06:00

i'm playing on the radio in nashville tonight.
88.3FM WMTS. on a show called fascination street.
short commentary and then halloween jams.
if you aren't local, you can stream it here.
it should get started around 9-930pm.

ja.

hope done rode

2006-10-18T11:42:00.000-05:00

12 days, 4 shows, and 60some hours of driving later we're back from las vegas. thanks to everyone who came out to see the shows. we broke things and jumped around. pretty much all of the pictures i took are here.

ps. i'm not a dj.

don't cut bro

2006-10-12T14:11:00.000-05:00

all tour pics can be found here. flickr is crap, dudes. last night we played the knitting factory and people came and we were vigilant. also, in south central LA, i'm now regarded as the king of tetno jams. i've got a posse of tough dudes now. i have to go eat twizzlers now.

oh blogs

2006-10-11T13:37:00.000-05:00

i'm in california now. it's sunny and warm. you have to walk a lot here. we walked for a long time last night. i wandered a little by myself and it sort of came back to me what it was like to be here a few years ago. it's kind of an alone feeling i guess which is odd because there are people everywhere. i missed all of the thai restaurants out here. tonight is our first show on the west coast and i'm kind of nervous. we saw the venue last night and it's pretty massive. i hope people come and enjoy it.

sweet battles

2006-10-08T11:40:00.000-05:00

burn down the earth. last night was fun. now we travel west across the country in a van full of insanity. pictures are here soon.

also, the science of sleep is now my favorite movie ever. see it if you can because it's worth it.

snap

2006-09-27T18:05:00.000-05:00

oh i forgot that i really don't give a shit about politics. sorry. i have 800million freaking things to do in a short short amount of time. i'm maybe gonna be on the radio this weekend talking about jams and how to make crunchy techno beats when i give away all of my secrets on the steve cross radio hour of power. i feel like my stomach is caving in right now. it's not the most pleasant thing in the world. i drank some milk of mags and it calmed me down a little bit but i still feel all woozy inside. i have to sit with jon while he masters my new jams, make 3 or 4 live sets for the tour shows, finish up the set for the 7th, buy some crap to wear at the show, work and get healthy again. ugh.

sweet nep, dude

2006-09-25T10:07:00.000-05:00

watching this guy, the son of mike wallace (and the stepson of the president of cbs news), interview bill clinton on fox news (you can watch it here) and ask him probing questions about not catching bin laden and preventing 9/11 is hilarious for several reasons: if for nothing else, clinton makes it painfully obvious that wallace is not as smart as he is, nor is he prepared to ask a question like that and back it up. while clinton answers the question at length, wallace offers no rebuttle or even response other than "i didn't think this would set you off on such a tear." i would almost liken this sitting down face to face with a man and asking him why he let thousands of people die. it sounds so harsh when you put it that way, but really that's what he was saying; why didn't you do more to stop it? everyone is buzzing about clinton getting fired up, but i really think that wallace is the true star of the interview. he's smug. he stammers through his responses to clinton asking for validation during his response. when he quickly detours the interview to ask clinton about bin laden, the appearace of a foxnews agenda becomes almost worthless when wallace looks like the needle was just yanked off the record and it's obvious he wasn't prepared at all for clinton to respond. while fox is touting this thing like street justice, they come across less like murrow and more like geraldo, especially since wallace looks like clinton is kicking him in the shins as they go through the questions. i'm really impressed with clinton here though. the quotes from the interview out of context are definitely going to hurt him, but he stood his ground and didn't get up and walk off. i really feel like clinton was the end of how politics used to be in the white house. we're all sort of drowning in neo-politics and number crunchers and it's no wonder that right wing media is going after clinton now. he's an easy target because he's behind the scenes now and they can spin it however they like AND they can recycle this shit when hilary runs for president.

secretly i really would have liked to have seen clinton punch wallace's teeth out. and i think clinton would have wanted it that way too.

also, this.

not-hotlanta

2006-09-23T11:18:00.000-05:00

a few things before i go to kroger to buy hard sinus/cold drugs and become like the undead: last night i went to atlanta for the second time, to see ladytron and css. i went with cal and stefanie and met up with stefanie's sister and her parents. yeah, her parents went to see ladytron and her mom went to peaches and threw up the shocker so shut it with the eye rolling parents crap. the show was like a crazy apocalyptic death dream (?), mostly because i was feeling sickly and i took a bunch of drowse (ie. drunk) inducing cold medications before driving in a car for 4hours to get there. css is basically a bunch of girls and a guy from brazil who make disco jams. the lead singer of the band, this girl, was like a coked-out 14 year old thai girl doing hip thrusts and jumping into the crowd to make sex dance with the people (who were pretty much all in shock). this brings me to the second point of this post: scene kids in atlanta are LAME. there were a lot of dudes there anxiously awaiting the gap-commercial ladytron, drinking beers and scoping out the hot chicks. a lot of them were doing the 'robot,' because, of course, there were keyboards on stage, so obviously. as the show went on the crowd started to wear on me a lot, probably because i was feeling sickly and the crack-tylenol wore off. some dude next to me kept elbowing my ribs during his 'raise the roof' dance routine. and of course ladytron's live show made the whole thing feel a death synth version of the wicker man (the old one, dudes.)

after being burned alive in a giant wicker man sculpture, we left and proceeded to drive home (4hours to murfreesboro with stefanie, then 40min to nashville with cal passing out in the passenger seat and me driving his suv trying to stay awake). we got back by 3am and my head felt like it had been hit with a hammer and this morning i'm feeling like jumping out the window. all in all, it was worth it.

hope rides west tour

2006-09-20T21:26:00.000-05:00

next month! pusti jams in los angeles and las vegas! opening for the protomen tour of doom!

Oct 7 2006. 9:00PM. at THE END, Nashville, TN.
The Protomen
Lazerman and the Non-Commissioned Officers
Makeup and Vanity Set

Oct 11 2006. 9:00PM. at THE KNITTING FACTORY. Hollywood, CA. (All Ages)
The Protomen
Makeup and Vanity Set
Pop Noir

Oct 12 2006. 10:00PM. at THE SILVERLAKE LOUNGE. Los Angeles, CA.
The Protomen
Makeup and Vanity Set

Oct 15 2006. 8:00PM. at THE CHEYENNE SALOON. Las Vegas, NV.
The Protomen
Makeup and Vanity Set

--
there may be one more date added in vegas as soon as it gets pinned down. it's the protomen and friends and myself in a little bus zigzagging across the country!

steven segal is the best guitar-playing celebrity

2006-09-20T08:47:00.000-05:00

just in case: there's this website that basically scours the waves of indie music mtv, or mp3 blogs if you will, and then compiles the jams they've posted on a day to day basis (maybe even more often than that). this is good for several reasons: you can keep up with all of the current buzzed out shit and name drop it in a crowd and everyone will be all like 'yeah, i heard about that' and you can feel like you're truly part of something. you can also use it to find that really awesome nameless song you heard on WRVU. either way, it's a good thing that will help your cred more than tight jeans and a swoop haircut.

ps. swoops and jeans will never be less important than i-told-you-so cred