she mouths the words please...

...to the poster on the ceiling

Things I Like Vol. 2

So today being erroneously bored I decided to figure out what I enjoy, so I can do said thing.

1. I like listening to music, but more so with other people. When listening is a group effort it's better (only if the group is on the same level musically however, frustration ensues for everyone involved otherwise)

2. I like playing Wii. Who doesn't.

3. I like making stuff. Which probably stems from the whole music thing but "creating" things is fun. I dunno why. When we're kids we play with Legos. Then some of graduate to making tables and other things we enjoy. I can make pasta art...

4. I like to dislike things. Let's face it, it makes you feel cooler even when you're not. Especially if you're around someone else who dislikes the same things as you. In my opinion disliking the same things is more important in human interaction than liking the same things.

ex.
Subject 1: "I like Mr. Deeds."
Subject 2: "Me too."

vs

Subject 1: "I hate country music."
Subject 2: "Me too, I hate the way all the songs are about the same things."

The reasoning behind disliking something is much more interesting than the reason you like something.

5. I like stuff animals. No really, I do. Actually to clarify, I like the giant stuffed animals like the monstrous plush creatures found at the Disney Store parents buy for their children than, if Mickey were to topple onto Junior, the kid would be history. Those things are awesome.

Of course, that's not really an action, I just felt like putting that in there. I like being spontaneous like that.

Things I Like Vol. 1

These are pretty much my top 5 favorite song lyrics ever.

And oh, I've been dumb
I've been perfectly beautiful,
lain on my back buying lovers with stealth.
But I'm sick of you all,
I'm sick of opinions,
I'm sick of this war I wage on myself
-Nerina Pallot, "Idaho"

Maybe nothing lasts forever,
Even when we stay together,
I don't need forever after,
It's your laughter won't let me go
So I'm holding on this way.
-Sheryl Crow, "My Favorite Mistake"

No one I think is in my tree,
I mean it must be high or low.
That is you can't you know tune in but it's alright.
That is I think it's not too bad.
-The Beatles, "Strawberry Fields"

Sometimes I just can't help but cry
When I think of what we've become.
Like a stranger lost in the night,
Forgetting all where he has come from.
-Burlap to Cashmere, "Eileen's Song"

Can't think of a fifth one. I'll have to come back to that later.

The True Meaning of Summer

I've officially caught up on sleep. Last night I went to bed around 2ish. I woke up around 4 this afternoon. Ya...I slept for 14 hours straight. Not only did I not do anything yesterday worthy of that much sleep I got a perfectly reasonable amount of sleep the night before. I blame this really bizzare dream I had probably around 12ish. I was running around this Guitar Hero looking dungeon that strangely enough was attached to a shopping mall. After running around for a bit this little door opened up and the people I was with plus me went inside and got sucked down into some secret chamber. For the next week or so we kept trying to escape from this nefarious suspiciously Guitar Hero themed dude who was called the Reaper or something, kinda looked like Gene Simmons with the face paint. Anyways it came down to where we were in this video game and he had built his stats up and we were just little dude running around and him chasing us and hopelessly dying. Finally he tried to capture another couple but they discovered a way out and got out. So when all my friends and I tried to escape through the same door we ended up in some strange mini-game of Dance Dance Revolution like button pressing. I pressed a combo of buttons which ended up erasing all the data to the game and the dream ended with the nefarious dude sulking out the back door. -WEIRD-

Watermelon Are Squared?

Sooo...I'll leave you with this disturbing image. This really exists, no hoax. Watermelons are grown in cubes in Japan to maximize efficience, also they can be stacked. Go figure.

You Know You're an Elitist When...

So there's some musical cliche's that must be addressed.

#1 Any references to cowbell. Seriously, everybody's heard it or read it on some T-shirt. It's to the point where you don't need to have seen the original SNL skit to know what it means. That just kinda defeats the purpose. That and people wishing to affix social kudos to themselves usually blurt it out at random times. Seriously, stop. We all know (for better or worse) what you're talking about and it's kinda lame.

#2 Placing Captain Geech and the Shrimp Shack Shooters in your band influences (or any for that matter). Granted, this one is less so because of the lesser knowledge of this reference in regards to affluent popular culture but to anyone who has seen That Thing You Do several times it gets old very quickly seeing this fictional band being placed in every MySpace band influences. Seriously, if you're gonna be clever and still quote That Thing You Do put down Del Paxton. Now he's a real player.

#3 Making ANY sort of reference to turning ANYTHING up to 11 (this excludes quoting the actual line, any quote from Spinal Tap is in fact not only instantly relevant but also expected). It's incredible the number of musicians who are not familiar with Spinal Tap. Any self-loathing musician with any degree of decency has seen this movie and in fact can probably quote 70% of it. Due to it's once clever appearance in popular culture and the apparent elevation in stature to anyone who references 11 in conversation within musician circles suddenly everyone in the world has began to affix this connotation to virtually anything under the number ten. This isn't helped by the mere fact that Guitar Hero also makes much reference to this. This is probably one of the most heard quotes I hear and yet when I ask most of these people have absolutely no idea what it means let alone what movie it's from. Seriously, pod malfuctions and Big Bottoms win points with musicians, not tired references.

#4 Calling John Mayer a great guitarist. He's not. He's good. But he plays licks. And his time is terrible. Go cry now.

#5 Saying you hate the Beatles because they're popular. Usually people I meet who say this generally haven't given time to actually listen to the Beatles and form an opinion. They just hear people talk about how great the Beatles are and instantly, in an effort to indie-fy themselves staunchly say the Beatles are the worst thing that happened to music. Stop listening to Death Cab and get over the fact that your favorite musicians probably have just as much talent in playing their instrument and singing that the pop princesses with their Pro Tools and autotune do.

More to come, I'm really too tired to be angry. Which defeats the purpose.

Summertime

So it's summer time and that means the return of blogging. Why do productive things when I can steal internet like some internet ninja and blog. I mean really. Right now it's 12:45 Central and I really still don't have any idea of what time it is. Two nights ago I was up for 23 hours driving back from Virginia and ended up sleeping nine hours starting in the 8am. Went to rehearsal then went back to bed for another 8 or 9 hours (normally 16 hours of sleep per day means you have a problem). I need caffeine. Watch this video while I'm out.

$1 Radiohead

Oh yes.

Tour of Duty

So I thought it would be exciting to give everyone a picture tour of what I've been up to the last couple months. Too bad no one took that many pictures.

A Place I call Mine

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The Belmont Heard Round the World

So I'm pretty sure no one heard of Belmont ten years ago (the cool people anyways, and they're the people that matter, right?). Then we had Miss Teen or something like that win. Then the NCAA. Then Melinda Doolittle. That was all fine, but recently in my rather horrific splurges into TV land I have seen even more press. Namely, TRUE LIFE: a show on MTV and a reality TV show, NASHVILLE, on some network channel. The last thing at the beginning of this year I would have thought to happen to Belmont was to make it on to actual pop culture channels. It's only slightly weird because one of these girls lives in the same apartment complex as me and the other I had Music Theory I with. Oh well, they're famous and I'm not, so I'm not complaining.

Kung Fu Train Blues

When you think the blues, you think about Stevie Ray Vaughan, Buddy Guy, Muddy Waters, or Robert Johnson. Visions of delta flats, Chicago, and that episode of Metalocalypse when the band goes to the South to learn about the blues come to mind. But no one can forget the most important of bluesmen. Of course I'm talking about Steven Seagal. Steven Seagal's lastest blues album Mojo Priest (you can buy the album here) contains such hits as "Love Doctor," "Alligator Ass," "She Dat Pretty," and "Talk to My Ass." I'm not even making this up. Let's be fair, Scarlett Johansson is doing a Tom Waits cover album (heck, for something that ecclectic it might actually be good). Well we're about to hit the two week timer on school. That's depressing.



Yeah...I don't remember his movies being good enough to warrant a musical career.

Lube

I'm sure you're all reading this because of the title of this entry. For some reason while awaiting my $1 frozen pizza is dying in the oven I had a view of "I Love the '00s." (try and say THAT out loud). Actually the thing I was thinking of occured in the 90s but I still want to see how many people try and say '00s. Remember the Jiffy Lube wise guy? That guy was awesome. Back with radio was king (<== Sandi Thom reference) I know some of our readers were too young for him, but that's ok, I'll allow it.

Murder at 2001

So this morning around 3 I come home to half the people in my house up, which usually isn't the case. A quick check up with one of my housemates and this is what went down. So two people were involved, one being the other housemate. What they ended up doing was putting flour in pantyhose and putting the pantyhose on their heads and swinging them around trying to tag each other with flour in the ends. Somehow they ended up smashing heads and they ended up going to the emergency room and Julianne ended up getting stitches above her eye. Never a dull moment down on 2001.

Scare Tactics

Folks, I've been in some scary places. Downtown Nashville at night. Franconia at night (the parts of DC where you die, for those not familiar with District of Columbia topography), and now somewhere out in Columbia, Tennessee. We pull up to the place we're playing, litterally surrounded by cow farms (oh, and our competition for the crowd was a dirt track race and a rodeo). This place looks like a tin roofed ranch house. We walk in and there's rebel flags on the walls, pictures of naked ladies hanging in the bathroom, and cafeteria styled seating with folding chairs. If anyone has ever seen the movie Roadhouse, this place made that bar look classy. At least you could bring your own liquour. I didn't have a camera so I didn't shoot a picture, but I wish for everyone's sake that you never go to wherever the heck I was.

Living Among the Stars

I have decided to become an internet star. Sadly I've been sitting in my room watching VH1's top 20 internet stars and all of them, though I'm sure 80% I've probably seen via YouTube or some sort of media medium. Pretty much all of them have some sort of celebrity status and more importantly a couple are really, really rich. That and they played a lot of Jamiraquai during the episode. Cool. Update, Lonelygirl15 was #3 (never actually knew what that was until now) Star Wars Kid was #2. I'm cringing to think of what could have possibly topped him. What's continually ironic is I'm putting this down in a blog while pretending to pretentiously mock it. And #1 is.....Numa kid. Who remembers that? I don't. That was before the internet. And Futurama.

The Fireworks Failed to Impress

So happy July to everyone in cyberspace, just in case you didn't notice it was July or something. England was so foolish. All of this could've been theirs, but their traded it for weak tea and taxes. So no America for them. Now their just filled with regret over missed relationships. Or something. The weird thing about being a musician is things come in waves. A couple weeks ago I was about to die from everything I had to play for. This week I had only one gig, so I'm trying to stay productive. So I've been shopping for groceries at discount prices, cleaning, making potato carvings of Saint Jabanezer. Oh well, it's time to make spaghetti.

The Dribble

Sometimes I feel like the pop references I insinuate complete goes over (or under) the heads of the people around me and really, without the aid of the internet, usually leads to awkward silence as levels and levels of explanation insue. 10 points for where the title of this blog entry points to (hint, it's a movie).

I swear I had something interesting to say but I'm too hungry to say it. Instead listen to this.

Sandra McCracken: No More Tears

The Life of a Rockstar: Postlude

So I have just enough caffeine in my system to go into detail of the events of the last week (or something like that, the days run together) before I go take a 1,000 hour nap. So after Cadaliac Ranch (still have no idea how to spell that) we got done playing around 2:00 at which time I discovered my car had gotten towed. Two hours and $105 later I had my car and went home (which took another half an hour). Sadly I had to be up around 8:00 to get my gear that I had to load onto another bandmate's car because mine had be carnapped. After getting my gear and recording for 8 hours I went to a friend's house to rehearse for another studio thing we'd be doing the next day (not only was she helping me out by singing for this project but she made me an incredible dinner. She's awesome). Anyways, done with that around 10:30 after finishing up some other work I had to do for a couple other things I had going on I ended up in bed around 2:00. Up at 8:30 again to record, then thankfully I had a 6 hour break. From 6-8 I recorded with forementioned girl for forementioned project, left there to immediately get to a gig and played from 8:30-12. Got out of there at 2:00 and after the long drive back got to bed at 2:30. Up at 5:30 to get to a church out in Hendersonville (35 min drive, for those not in the greater Nashville area) and played until 1. And drove back. And I'm going to die.

Oh and the chorus to a song of Paisley's new album 5th gear called "Online" goes like this:

Cause online I'm out in Hollywood
I'm 6 foot 5 and I look damn good
I drive a Mazerati I'm a black belt in karate
And I love a good glass of wine
It turns girls that I'm mysterious
I tell them I don't want nothing serious
Cause even on a slow day I can have a three way
chat with two women at one time.
I'm so much cooler online.

That's why Paisley is awesome. And it's so true. That's why it's funny.

The Life of a Rockstar: Interlude

Holy crap it's 2:20 in the morning and I have to be up in 3 hours. The last 3 days I've had a combined total (assuming I get 3 hours tonight of sleep) of 12 hours of sleep.

The Life of a Rock Star

So tonight I'm playing down at the Cadaliac Ranch which will be from about 8-2 after getting things loading in and back home. At 9:30 I have to be at a recording session for an EP which will run until 6. From there I have a rehearsal from 8-10. Then recording again from 9-6, another recording session from 6-9, and then another gig at the Bunganut Pig from 9-1. Then up at 5 to get to a rehearsal at a church at 6:30, playing from then until 12. So if I sound tired, that's why.