Friday, September 30, 2005

Searching for a heart of gold, and I'm getting old.

Man, I haven't watched MTV in a long time...So, while waiting for the most intense drama available over the counter ( Red Sox v. Yankees ) to begin I decided to kill the time watching some. I really can't believe how bad it has gotten. The content sucks. The message sucks. The format sucks.
Kids today are being taught to be fucked up. If you watch MTV all you see is horrible teens that get away with murder on stupid ass documentaries. You see dumb ass kids doing lots of drugs. You see these teeny boppers that are probably to young to drive participating in dating shows and talking about sex like its the same as eating ice cream or something. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't an angel either, but I had the common sense and decency to keep what I did "out in the streets", out in the streets. I didn't bring it home and didn't rub it in my parents or any other adults face. It seems today they have no sense or respect. Shit, if I acted like some of these kids do I would have gotten my ass beat down Mike Tyson style by my dad, and that's no exaggeration.
Moving on, The Real World is still being made? Are you kidding me? Dude, do you realize that this show has been around for 15 years! I remember being in my room and watching that show and thinking," wow, not living with your parents and living with friends is pretty cool. Julie is so hotttttt." That was her name right? The girl from Alabama. That's another thing about the old MTV - aside from Eric, everybody was pretty damn normal looking. Now, they only allow super models on that shit show. Seems kinda silly or stupid.
When the Real World first started out it was cool because it was this experiment - what will happen when we put these seven different people from seven different places in one house? that was a great idea. Now, the experiment is over because the people you get on there are so not genuine and seem way to happy to be made to look stupid. Whatever.
Times are changing. I know thats about as stale a cliche one can use but it is soooo damn true and I feel old.

*done

Monday, September 12, 2005

*Jonesing*



I hesitate to call myself a musician because it didn't come natural to me. I really had to work at it, especially since I started so late - 19, and because I think a musician is someone who knows his/her instrument better than most and can read and write music. But for the sake of this conversation I will refer to myself as a musician and I will hope that any real musicians that read this won't be offended by me calling myself that. Here is a brief story, a "musical journey", if you will.

I bought my first bass guitar about a week after I picked one up for the first time in my life. I had been aching to make music for a couple of years I just didn't know what instrument to play and the bass felt right. Really, the only reason I actually went ahead and bought it was because a couple of friends had a band that I used to get high and listen to at their practice space. After their bass player got committed to a mental hospital and gave up music I saw an opportunity to learn to play and play in a band. To my amazement it worked out.

We started off as a really bad punk/cover/grindcore band. We did it just for fun mostly but then started feeling good about it. We played our first show and it went so damn bad that it literally broke us up for a week. Everyone quit the band that night in the parking lot. It was funny. The next day though we were on our way home from the show in the van and the guitarist, Baeden,my best friend, and I started writing this song with our mouths....meaning, he made the guitar riff sound and I did the bass line . It was so weird and amazing. We got really excited about it again, the band I mean. So excited that when we got back to the drummers house we set up and played the song....Just like we did with our mouths....We later named that song Tomorrow's a Big Place
because the day before we asked this hot chick to come to the show and she said," I don't know, tomorrows a big place."

But that's part of the reason I am writing this...It was like that. Writing songs was so easy and they all had stories behind them....Anyways.

A month or so later we got another guitarist...His name is Jay. After we got Jay we took off. Around here we were the band. We just had something. Of coarse, at the time, I didn't think so. I never felt we played as well as we could have, but that is because I'm a fucking retard.




The shows got better, more and more people came out to see us. We recorded a few records, did some tours - mostly the southeast but we did do one U.S. tour and a tour of Japan and had a 4 month tour of the U.S. planned and a tour of Europe before we broke up.




Fast forward to today. Continent, the band I started with the drummer after The Ladderback, my first band, broke up, recently parted ways...or actually I quit the band. I quit because I am in school and don't really have the time to dedicate to band. This is bad. This is really bad.

It is impossible to convey how important making music was to me. It was my psychologist. It was my medication. It was my escape and my release. It was the one thing that even though I wrote with other people, I could actually say was all mine. My band mates were my brothers. It was much like a marriage. In fact, I learned more about interacting with people and working as part of team in the band than I ever did elsewhere. Man, it was just everything to me.

Now I'm in a weird place. I feel like I am missing something. There is this big hole where something really vibrant and spiritual and emotional used to be. The fucked up thing is, I made the choice, and I felt, and still kinda do feel, I made the right one. It was time to move on... not quit...move on. I really want to believe that. I want to believe I make a better fan than a musician. But I don't.

I feel like I have so much more music to make. I constantly have ideas and feel like if I stood on my head gallons and gallons of music would pour out of me. I have this heavy feeling like there is something I need to get off of my chest. It breaks me down everyday. I NEED TO PLAY. I just wish I had the time. I wish I could find the people. The people that would make me a whole musician again.



I want to be inspired and inspiring again. I want to feel the way I felt when I knew we played our balls off and made everyone their feel like they just saw something special. I want to come home from a practice space this winter with my ears ringing and totally excited about a new song we wrote that people will lose their shit over. I want to feel all of that again.

I never wanted to become one of those adults that thinks of music as something to have on only in the background. Something insignificant or unimportant. Its not. There is a song that you remember for every fucking major episode in your life. Songs are mile markers...They are like the rings of a tree. They mark a certain part of your life and stay with you forever. Something like this will never be unimportant to me. I understand that there are things that mean more to people and should mean more to people....but it goes beyond that with me.

Its a total headfuck when I see bands on M2 or Fuse that my band played with....or hear my friends band mentioned on those channels. It could have happened to me, but it didn't. I was close, but not close enough. Don't get me wrong, I did a lot more than a lot of people get to do and I am satisfied...I just want more.

Its just so damn depressing to be sitting here when I actually do get some free time...I'm constantly thinking that I should be playing....and trust me, I feel the need. When I had a rough day at work it was all that kept me from breaking stuff. I mean, there is nothing more therapeutic than screaming at the top of your lungs into a mic over loud ass heavy music. The vibrations from my amp, the ringing ears, the beers....It all just made so much sense. It felt so good.

shut up, Danny...




Saturday, September 03, 2005

unreal...


This is a caution sign common in the southwest...it warns of illegal immagrants crossing.i heard about it on a morning talk show recently....a california highway patrol officer who didnt want to be named was asked when shown a sign of a deer crossing sign," if you see a deer in the street should you swerve to miss it?" , the officer replied," no, you should go through the animal because most accidents that happen because of animals in the road happen because somone tried to swerve out of the way." the person then showed him this sign and asked," so, would the same be true for this sign?" the officer replied," um, well, by law, yes. " what would you do?

Thursday, September 01, 2005

We all have our own story of Bourbon St.

I've been to New Orleans...
My band was on tour and we were supposed to play a show in Mississippi but the girl who set it up flaked on us. I never wanted to go to freakin Mississippi anyway. In my personal opinion, Mississippi and Alabama are the worst places on the planet. I never ever wanted to go there....ever...so when the chick told us that the show wasn't happenin (she just said there was a show so that our guitarist would come there and bone her, and we know this for sure) I said,"so, on to Bourbon St." I was really happy when everyone said," hell yeah, lets see some tits!" we were 5 dudes spending 24 hrs. a day in a cramped Yukon for a week at that point, what do you expect?

We pulled into New Orleans thinking it would be dead being that it was the middle of the week and the middle of July. We walked from our hotel, the Holiday Inn, to Bourbon. That was a scary walk...no doubt....The lady at the front desk even told us to take a cab.....and thought we were crazy white boys for wanting to walk there. not cuz it was too far cuz it was only a couple of blocks...but because it is such a dangerous city after dark. Especially for tourists.

So we walk anyway. See the scary people and don't even blink. We walked by a large group of these people without incident and thought "everything is good." Then we turned the corner off of Canal St. and saw her...Bourbon St. and all her glory and much to our satisfaction, it was crazy party time. Our eyes lit up like a bunch of country bumpkins walking around in NYC for the first time. There was music and liquor pouring out of every place we walked by. It was so freaking loud and alive.

We start feeling hungry and decide to get some grub in 'ole Emiril Lagasse's place. We ate great and decided it was now time to get really shitfaced. The first bar we see has a bunch of bare tittied college chicks runnin round screaming about how drunk they were and knew that that would be our first stop. We asked for shots and got test tubes. It didnt look like a lot of alcohol but damn, did it ever mess us up. Feeling good we continued on to another bar and then another. With our money starting to run low we decide to do what we came here to do...see boobies.

As either you know or can imagine, there are a lot of places to choose from. We eyed this one place that had scantily clad ladies on a balcony tossing beads down with a one free beer ticket attached. It was a no brainer...that was our place and what a place it was.

We walked in and it was really dark and really loud. We walked in like we owned the place. Like our cocks were the biggest on the planet and these girls were going to fall at our feet....in reality we probably looked like the biggest dorks that ever walked into the place. The atmosphere was amazing. The perfect tittie bar...just enough grime, just enough class, and one free beer.

We sat at this table that was at the front of the stage and had a pole right there. So hot. One of the guys saw an Asian chick dancing when we first came in and asked her to come over and my bandmate jay a really "up close and personal dance" at the table. We had no idea he was going to do that so when she came over and climbed onto our table and put her ass in the air like 10 inches from jay's face (and mine cuz I was sitting right next to him,thankfully) we were really shocked. Don't know what we thought would happen there....duh.

Eventually we drink all of our cash away have tipped our asses off to see boobies, so we were about to call it quits...

Right as we were getting up a group of the "talent" came to our table and sat with us. It was boners galore...what were these chicks doing we thought....we gets to talking and next thing I know one of them is asking what we were doing in town and the someone responds," we're a band...you might have heard of us we are called third eye blind." the dancers totally buy it and start asking us for coke (not the soft drink) and weed and asking if they can come to our hotel. we played with em for a while and almost had come with us....but then they woulda saw we were full of it so we decided to quit while we were ahead.

We walked back to our hotel completely destroyed financially and totally drunk...we got lost...our 15 minute walk took 2 hours....how do you get lost on foot when you only have to make one left turn I will never know. we got back to the hotel room and trashed it.... I have video footage of that night that I will never let my kids see, that's for damn sure.

the next morning, we got up...went to a bagel place and then went on our way....but the one city that defined that entire tour, and in a lot of ways, that whole band experience, was New Orleans. Theres a certain magic there that can't be faked or replicated....If you haven't been there I feel bad for you....its a great place.... if you have been you know exactly what I am talking about and probably have your own crazy story of New Orleans.

It sucks this happened.


p.s. i was wasted when i wrote this so sue me if it goes to fast.