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| FROM THE GALLERIES |
The Gas and the Brakes Botch's Collection (2008) |
| I'm A-Twit |
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This is Natalya. She's one of my best friends in Portland! She's really sweet and really intelligent and kinda crazy and very emotional and a very fun gal. She's an honor-roll psychology student with a thing for goth fashion (and cleavage) and she likes kitty cats and sushi and blueberry vodka with Coke!
Last Christmas everybody was poor, so we decided to do, like, "no money" gifts. Like, making stuff. I wasn't sure what to make. I can make breakfast; I can make a solid argument; but I don't really make "stuff" or "things". But then, with only a week left before Christmas, a musical melody struck me -- well, more of a theme -- and it instantly occurred to me that this was a very Natalya-esque theme (to my mind, at least). A short little piano piece was composed and notated immediately. True inspiration!
Sadly, my compositional vision outstripped my actual performance talent and I could not play the piece well. I figured I had a week to work on it constantly -- and then I practically sliced the tip of my thumb off, severely hampering my ability to practice. On Christmas day I presented her with the score and s-t-u-m-b-l-e-d through the ditty, promising her a recording soon. Well, I underestimated my perfectionism (as well as my poor rehearsal ethic) and it ultimately took me over 5 months to present her with the final recording. But I finally did it! And now, with her permission, I get to share it with you. It's a caprice!
"Natalya"
by Adam Alexander
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THIS WAS ONE OF MY FAVORITE ALBUMS OF 2009.
I'm listening to it now and it always kicks my ass. Makes me think of classic Black Sabbath and classic Slayer at the same time, but with vocals closer to the oceanic bellowing of post-metal and the gloomy drone of goth. This album simultaneously relaxes and invigorates me.
My favorite tune on this beautifully and creatively packaged 4-song disc is the opening title track:
"Beneath The Solace" by Anon Remora |
 Anon Remora
Beneath The Solace |
Fabulously wealthy, he was given free reign to indulge every unusual whim, many of which were an attempt to reclaim the childhood he felt he lost. He built a zoo and an amusement park to entertain children at his Neverland Valley Ranch. He hideously reconstructed his face in an attempt to erase the perceived ugliness his father cruelly teased him for. Worsening things, he developed the skin-discoloration disease vitiligo, which further eroded his self-image; in the ultimate attempt to hide it, he took drugs which removed all his pigment, effectively whitening one of the most famous black men in America. He then became addicted to the post-operative pain-killers, an addiction that blossomed and stayed with him all of his life.
Of course, I have a good idea why the disc appeals to me so much. It actually took me a few listens and some comments from friends to realize it, but Crack The Skye is strongly reminiscent of the classic recordings of Black Sabbath, my all-time favorite albums. Mastodon is certainly more layered with its multiple guitars alternately arpeggiating and riffing, as well as the nice vocal variety that comes from having three singing band members. But even apart from some "sounds like Ozzy" comparisons, Crack The Skye has that special feel that evokes that early Sabbath gravity and drama.
It probably doesn't hurt that I've had sex to the album, too. Twice. To hear tunes and peruse a cool website, check out www.cracktheskye.com.
Everyone who knows me knows that my all-time favorite band is the original Black Sabbath. What I've never really discussed is the curious situation by which I discovered them. As an early teen, I was listening to everything my friends were, which mostly consisted of a lot of hard rock like Aerosmith and Guns 'n' Roses. At some point, however, someone recommended a joke rap song by Anthrax called "I'm The Man." So I picked up that cassette, on which was a cover song that completely kicked my ass and would lead me to my hallowed tune-smiths: "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath."
Now I'd heard of Ozzy Osbourne and seen "OZZY" carved into school desktops. I knew him as the guy who bit the heads of bats and doves, and was apparently satanic, and had a song that made kids kill themselves. But I had no idea that his solo career had emerged from an earlier band, a concept that greatly intrigued my novice music-listening self. And what a name his former band had! BLACK SABBATH. Why wasn't this carved onto desktops? My curiosity much aroused, I went to the local department store and picked up my first Black Sabbath cassette, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (of course). That first listen was magic. The title track opened the album and was graver, more artful, and more desperate-sounding than the cover I'd heard. Gorgeous.
Suffice it to say, I eventually picked up every Sabbath album. I realized that they were truly the godfathers and creators of heavy metal -- anyone who claims that Led Zeppelin or any other band created heavy metal is not a true metal fan and doesn't know what the fuck they're talking about. It eventually became apparent that many metal acts had done cover versions of Black Sabbath at one time or another. Sabbath was the bible of metal, a common ancestor of every thrash, doom, stoner, and death metal act around, and it's not surprising that a great many bands would pay tribute to them.
You can almost put together the entire Ozzy-era Sabbath catalog through covers alone. I haven't quite done that, but I have compiled a nearly two-hour collection of MY FAVORITE BLACK SABBATH COVERS!
There are actually quite a number of Sabbath tribute albums out there, usually produced by a record label to showcase their acts. I bought a stack of them to sift through and choose the best, but I ended up disliking a lot of what I heard on many of these albums. Some featured all black metal bands, which involved a lot of screeching and up-tempo interpretations. Others were simply bad. In the end, about half of these songs come from tribute albums and the other half from the individual albums of the various interpreting artists. Enjoy!
I know, it's been three weeks. I just haven't been in a "blogging place." Let me catch you up.
Um. Well, I got a cavity filled. As in a tooth, not butt sex. I'm not into that.
I explained once before that I am sometimes plagued by songs that get stuck in my head for days. Usually it's a song I really like. Occasionally it's a song that, sure, I like, but I don't enjoy it so much that I want it stuck in my head all the time. For the last four days. As I am trying to go to sleep. First thing when I wake up. Doing push-ups. In the shower. At work. While eating. Trying to read. I should sue!
Imagine my surprise when I opened the mail yesterday and found another mailing from Nielson, this time containing a booklet for recording a week's worth of television viewing -- and $30! Amazing! I was so appreciative, I immediately filled out the whole week's television viewing in advance (nothing! nada! zilch!) and used the "additional comments" field to reiterate that while I still don't/can't watch television, I am only too happy to keep taking their free money.
I have convinced my band, I Disagree, to start learning and performing some cover songs. In addition to being great crowd-pleasers, a well-chosen cover hones our musicianship skills. It's an exercise in learning and interpreting someone else's parts, as well as crafting the song's dynamic path as a band. And they can be fuckin' fun as hell!
That said, whenever I start examining the vocal lines of prospective covers by our favorite artists, I'm struck by just how many of these rock vocalists are tenors, i.e. the highest singing range a man can have. Nearly every song we/I have considered covering was sung by a tenor, including the works of Tool, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Journey, Radiohead, Pink Floyd, and nearly all of the Beatles.
Christmas is a time for reflection, especially for people like me who have serious personal and social stigmas about the holiday. Also, if you're like me with a taste for blasphemy and all things infernal, you might take a moment to lambaste this most revered of seasons with a shameless tune of mischief, humor and spite. To my unsaved brethren, I offer you a tune written by my best friend Charlie and I, and preserved with a cheap 4-track cassette recorder in our roach-infested Brooklyn shit-hole, circa 1996. (Our friend Ethan was also present for spontaneous percussive demonic vocalizations.) I've tried to clean up the white noise and equalization as best I could. Enjoy!
"Christmas In Hell" - Download
performed by Adam & Charlie
I haven't been very lyrically inspired of late, and perhaps arguably not as musically or compositionally inspired because of it.
Granted, I'm reading Atlas Shrugged, which is, like, twelve million pages long (if a little preachy), and sometimes books can dominate my mental space. I write lyrics in-between when I'm reading things; otherwise what I'm writing may be confused with what I'm reading, in some weird way that only I understand. The point is, mentally, I don't want any steaks or chicken curry on the stove when I'm trying to bake some cookies in the oven.
Last Sunday had two events that I could not help but correlate insofar as they were great disappointments of what I had hoped to be cool events. I had been looking forward to a gig my band, I Disagree, was scheduled to play down the street at the Hawthorne Theater. It was only a Sunday, but we were finally on the marquee outside! I had printed up several dozen flyers with our logo brazenly displayed for our bassist, Skot, to put up in the area. From the beginning we agreed that flyers did little in the short term to get people to come to gigs, but that through repetition they can help build name recognition and eventually get people to come to one of our shows. Especially if they see our name on a marquee!
But first, I had learned of a comic book convention in Portland that afternoon which was supposed to also feature a lot of toy sellers. Great! Right? Right? Well....
Who is Chris Mulvey, the self-proclaimed Bastid? The guy who used to date my wife's former best friend? A fellow Transformer fan? A noble and honest police officer? A great lover of trashy underground internet memes? Yes, he's all of these things. I haven't even seen the dude in years. The one time he managed to stop by our Brooklyn apartment, I happened to be so hungover I couldn't even get out of bed, much less show off my TF collection. Yet, through the magic of the interweb, Dollface and I still keep in touch with Chris. He's a class-act.
Bastid, this one is for you. (With apologies to Neil, Burt, Carol, and E.T.)
"Heartlight" performed by Adam Alexander on an out-of-tune piano (Download)
Enter a 9 square foot Slayer "Seasons In The Abyss" poster!
And this is where everything comes full circle. My extensive ruminations on the fine art of lying (part one, part two) began while writing the lyrics for a new song for my band, I Disagree. At the time I was reading Shakespeare's Richard III, whose villainous title character is a consummate and very practiced liar, describing himself as "subtle, false and treacherous" in his very first opening monologue. Here's the tune:
"The Fine Art of Lying" by I Disagree (Download)
You say you want to see a video of my band, I Disagree, performing a song? OK, I can do that. This is from our show last week. The song is called "Fire Is Good".
I'm ready to tell you about the band I am singing for, because we finally settled on a name I love: 
Our 6-song self-produced demo is now available for listening and downloading from our MySpace page (myspace.com/idisagreeband), or you can just download the entire "I Disagree" demo as a zip file. (UPDATE: We finished an album. Go listen to it and buy it.)
Go listen! Add us as a "friend"! All that shit. Also, feel free to take a stab at describing what kind of music we are. I plan on stickering demos with this description: For fans of Soundgarden, Tool, Alice In Chains, or System of a Down. Maybe. No one who's heard us thinks that's an unfair description by association, but they are less quick to agree when I suggest that our genre is grunge. Apparently, "grunge" has some stigma for some. Well, in my opinion, if grunge can encompass Alice In Chains and Soundgarden, then we're in there. That said, I'm eager to hear what others think.
My first real piano. It's a starter piano, very used, a little beat up, it won't be tuned for another couple of weeks, but it plays nice and it's mine. Now when I hear the upstairs neighbor's new dog clickity-clack-running around, or the guitar studio in front practicing "Hey Joe" for the zillionth time, I can think to myself, "Jus' you wait, muthafuckas. Beethoven p'ano waltzez in tha crib, an' shit!"
Naming a band is hard. Oh sure, if you don't much care you can totally pull anything out of thin air as a band name, like Cripplesmith, or Teddy Pentagram, or Writing A Letter To Grandma. But I want a band name that is actually representative of the music and the personnel that is creating it. Something completely unique, yet easily remembered by people in an elevator pitch. In truth, you really have to be unique these days, because if you even suspect your idea might already be in use, chances are that you're right. The internet has killed any mutual ignorance that might existence between two bands in two different parts of the world that might share the same name. The struggle to be unique is greater than ever.
My band played its first show over the weekend under our working band name, but they are asking me to brainstorm new ones. They like my song titles (like "Zombie Apocalypse", "Outracing Nova", "Your Mephistopheles") and they are hoping I can come up with something equally clever... preferably this week. I had suggested "The Fate of All Men", but while they liked it, they thought is was overly dramatic and not fun enough. I had to agree. What now?
I don't need suggestions — I wouldn't use them anyway. But what was the most difficult time you ever had naming something? Your cat? Your novel? Your pet name for your private parts?
A few years ago, my friend Charlie and I collaboratively imagined an apocalyptic end-of-time good vs evil battle at the turn of the millennium in Times Square between Michael Jackson and Prince. They were magical, you see, arising from beneath the street via some upward spotlight, their unbuttoned shirts whipping furiously in the hurricane-strong winds blowing around them, respectively purple and white auras bathe them, and then a howling match begins.
Hees! and Owawhuhs! and J'mons! and Whoos! and the glass of the giant Coca-Cola display in Times Square would shatter, and then lightning would start shooting from their hands, like two Sith Emperors but slightly less pale, respectively purple and white bolts flying forth, creating lots of bright sparkling explosions not unlike a rock concert or music video. Surprisingly soon, Michael launches into that Haitian-voodoo-possession-except-with-robots dancing thing he does, and this deals several devastating blows to Prince. But Prince whips out that guitar that's shaped like that symbol he was named for a while and he puts it between his legs (like it was his dick, see? get it?) and starts playing these crazy amazing fucking axe licks, crazy stuff, he is a really under-appreciated guitarist, and Prince ends his raunchy solo where he, like, jerks off the guitar. At Michael. Devastating blows.
I am enjoying my new job quite a lot. I like the atmosphere, the co-workers, the work ethic, the social value of the product, and the work I am personally doing. It is a refreshing feeling to care about your job. And since it's 17 floors up in the middle of downtown Portland, I have a wonderful metropolitan view outside my window. This picture was snapped with my camera phone while sitting at my desk. You get the full city thing, with a little park nestled in there and the distant mountains to remind you you're still in Oregon. Ah, the city. I never get tired of skyscrapers.
First, an object at rest. The last Friday in October was the final day of my short contract stint on the Nike campus here in Portland. Since I didn't start my new full-time job until the following Thursday, that gave me five full days of layover time. And it was wonderful. I think I slept in until 11am everyday. I got fucked-up, read books or comics and watched movies. I stayed away from the computer. I took walks. Hung out with my lady. It was deliciously lethargic.
Gradual acceleration. The start of any new job in the tech industry usually has some period of orientation, wherein one becomes familiar with the environment, the technologies, the company, and so forth. This was the case as well for the my first two days. I played around with a new AJAX-based mark-up language. I used the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street movies series as my datasets. (With eighteen flicks between them, there is a lot of data there.)
Did you hear? Amazon is now selling MP3's without any DRM on them at all! Honest. Of course, this is intended to compete with iTunes, which has DRM all over the place.
What? You don't know what DRM is? That's hard to believe, but I'll explain it real quick: DRM (for Digital Rights Management) is technology that they put on a piece of music to restrict how often it can be copied or on which devices it can go. "Oh, that doesn't sound too bad," you say. Let me put it this way: all those songs you bought off iTunes will not play on anything other than an iPod. If you ever decide to go with another MP3 player, you'd be screwed. Same with a lot of other previously-existing online music stores. MP3's, by contrast, can be copied and played on any system.
I think we can all agree that the music industry is completely fucked-up these days. Many people are downloading all of their music for free off the internet, which most agree does not help the artist if they are relying on album sales to earn a living (not for their income, mind you, but just for their continued value to their record company masters). In retaliation to online music file-sharing, the major record labels (via the RIAA) have responded by treating all potential customers as potential criminals. Their reactionary tactics include suing people they suspect of illegal downloading, often with little or no evidence, often using the extortioner's "it will be cheaper for you to settle than fight us" approach. They've also promoted copy-protection (DRM) on legally purchased digital music and CDs, with effects ranging from limiting what you can do with your legal purchase to installing damaging software in your computer. Underlining all of this is the fact that many people feel that mainstream music sucks these days and/or feel that CDs are too expensive [link].
I'd like to offer some thoughts on this broad topic. Hopefully it will avoid the semblance of an unfocused rant.
Friday was a great day. I got my first real paycheck since moving to Portland, and I got my first Monster Pretender in the mail, Wildfly. His soft Pretender shell has that familiar plastic smell of so many forgotten infant toys, I immediately wanted to put him in my mouth. (It was suggested that I wash him first.) And I was able to share the news of this acquisition over drinks with some new people that I found through the Oregon thread of the TFW2005 message boards. Got drunk and had a great time!
Saturday was hangover day. Initially, this involved nothing more strenuous than lying in bed and reading the rest of the Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane series, a comic I highly recommend to anyone. After the queasiness subsided, we drove around, trading in unwanted CDs and DVDs for new (used) ones, buying new comic books, eating at Burgerville (best fast food burger joint ever), getting our real license plates for our car, and watching the Zeffirelli Hamlet starring Mel Gibson.
I "auditioned" to do vocals for a fledgling death metal band today. That's why I'm talking so quietly: my throat still hurts a little. I over-exerted myself this time, but I believe that I can find a groove where it won't be so taxing.
You may be interested to know that some of our favorite Transformers are death metal musicians. Windsweeper, for instance, plays drums in a very brutal band. Looking at his box art there you can plainly tell that his arms can move lightning-fast and are capable of the most vicious blast-beats.
This was my last weekend of indulgent, jobless freedom before I start my new job tomorrow. It was a very excellent weekend, too, thanks to my loving Doll of a wife, replete with many treats both mentionable (breakfast in bed, Star Wars, comic books, expensive dinner) and unmentionable (swanky hotel, hubba hubba and, I tell ya, hubba). I can say no more.
On the topic of weekend activities, I recommend that you do not waste your time viewing Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. It is not so much "bad" as silly, dumb, illogical and pointless. The movie is simply too unsophisticated for anyone older than 9 years of age. By subtle contrast, the film Ghost Rider is, in fact, bad. Very bad. The stupidest movie I have seen in memory. Fit only for stupid 9 year olds.
I got some new computer speakers. They are so awesome, I think about them randomly when walking down the street and I smile warmly. I highly recommend the Creative Labs I-Trigue® 2.1 Speaker System (3300). They sound great with everything from Fantômas to The Alan Parsons Project.
Back in late 2001, after my former band, Brompton's Cocktail, had finally finished self-recording our full-length CD -- incidentally, the biggest mistake we ever made -- we got it professionally duplicated in the smallest quantity available: 1000. Between then and our last show in early 2003, we had apparently sold or given away only 400 of them, far fewer than I had hoped. I thought it was more, honestly, until I very recently procured the boxes from their festering purgatory in the bassist's apartment. So here I was, suddenly, with 600 CDs of a now-defunct band, and an upcoming move to Portland. UGH.
Around the same time is when I finally got the finished CDs for The Monster Project, which I also got professionally duplicated, though I only got 400 of them. While I was consciously erring on the side of "too many", I thought that all the Godzilla fans on our mailing list would take at least 200-300 of them. To date, I've sold 12. Sure, I've given away a bunch to band members and some online Godzilla fans, but I was slightly hindered by the fact that the last remaining Godzilla news site that used to announce our gigs went belly-up back in March. So, no promotion. I'd have taken out an ad in G-Fan, the quarterly Godzilla fan magazine, but I was told that Godzilla's Japanese zookeepers, Toho Studios, paid attention to the mag and that if they found out what I was doing they might sue me. So, I've been quietly promoting it on this site and hoping that something would happen.
I came to New York City in the mid-90's under the impression that there was a musical "scene" that fostered new and different types of bands and music-making. I imagined that New Yorkers sought out fresh and exciting acts, and that the majority of NYC bands were actively striving to creatively distinguish themselves from mainstream commercial pap.
Sadly, I quickly learned that this was not the case. Most NYC bands were playing the same tired shit (boring punk, boring ska, boring 'rock'). The bands I met didn't place a high value on uniqueness, and any musically adventurous act was viewed as a novelty. Sure, there was the "downtown" noise jazz scene, full of overblown saxophones and people scraping piano strings with metal rods, but that scene is too insular and aloof: the Beatles would not be considered adventurous enough to play in those clubs. As a last wedge, I found that almost no one sought out new local acts; they showed up to see their friend's band play, tolerated without curiousity the preceding performers, then took off to parts unknown.
For me, it was crushing, both as a musician and a music-lover. I wanted to find and love lots of new bands. I sought them out, following hyperlinks in club websites to sample any new group I could find. I wanted to find adventurous acts that I could coax into playing shows with my art rock projects. I wanted to hear something new, and I wanted some shred of validation that NYC's scene was not completely without a pulse. In the last decade, I found less than 10 local acts that truly entertained me while inspiring me as a listener. The best of them is The Benzene Ring.
You're at a rock show in a basement dive bar in the East Village of Manhattan. The band playing, Brompton's Cocktail, plays a strange rock style where every song sounds stylistically different, but they all sound kinda Beatles-meets-Sabbath. They're dressed up as doctors and surgeons. Halfway through the show, the singer/guitarist puts down his axe, the band starts playing a cheerful vamp reminiscent of Sesame Street, and two whorish surgical assistants bring over a small white-table-clothed table, a baby doll, a bucket, and a big knife.
The most massive update to this site EVER! Botch's Transformers Box Art Archive now also features...
Does anyone recognize these chords? At some point when I was futzing around on the keyboard, I started doing arpeggios of these two chords (D-flat major, F minor). Immediately they sounded familiar, not just to me but to many people for whom I have played them, yet no one has been able to place it. And this isn't exactly the sort of thing you can google. Yet.
Several listeners, including myself, suspected it was from The Neverending Story, but I watched the movie and can tell you the mystery chords are not from that film. (If you haven't seen this movie since you were a kid, don't rewatch it, just treasure your childhood recollection, it's better that way.) Still, it's highly suggestive that so many people mentioned this film. For some reason I feel like it's from some 80's movie, something that's science fiction but feel-good inspirational, like Cocoon or something, and while everyone just stands around with a look of wonderment, these chords repeat, and this happens several times throughout the film. I feel like I saw this on HBO as a kid. I feel like those two chords, layered heavy synth swells, repeat over and over whenever something fantastical or dramatic happens.
Does anyone have any ideas?
First, here are some things that really suck right now:
Getting sick on the weekend blows, blows, blows. And it sucks. Such a waste. Here it is, Monday now, and I'm still sick at home with the common cold, but of course it's difficult to enjoy the day off from work because I'm sick. At least I'm prepared:
HOW TO BE SICK AT HOME
by Botch
So what music do you listen to while you're jogging or working out? For me, it's thrash and peripherally similar sub-genres of heavy metal. Of course I love metal of all types across the spectrum, but there's something about thrash, the middle child between speed metal and death metal, that gets my heart pumping, my head banging and, well, it's great for lifting weights, too.
Here's my current favs...
 Persistence of Time Anthrax |
 The Sound of Perseverance Death |
 Cowboys From Hell Pantera |
While I am guilty of listening to what I like to consider a broad spectrum of music genres, there is no question that in my heart of hearts and mind of minds, the music that resonates with me the strongest and most intimately is heavy metal. Fittingly, the foundation of my metal soul rests in the genre's godfathers and inventors, the immortal Black Sabbath. The first time I heard Black Sabbath, though I was only 15 or 16 years old, my immediate thought was Where have you been all my life? I have listened to the first eight Sabbath albums (the Osbourne era) perhaps hundreds of times. And at the centerpiece of these albums lies what is and might always be my favorite album of all time, their sixth effort: Sabotage.
Sabbath's earliest albums are certainly more raw and undistilled, and I love them for what they are. However, with Sabotage, guitarist and primary composer Tony Iommi spent an unprecedented year crafting a work chock full of not only killer riffs, but a great deal of stylistic variety and expanded song structures. "Symptom of the Universe" starts as a driving flat-five headbanger, but crescendos into a bluesy acoustic outro. The omnipresent keyboards of "Am I Going Insane (Radio)" feel just as at home on this disc as the relentless guitar and screaming vocals of the opener, "Hole In The Sky." Both "Megalomania" and the album's closer, "The Writ," come in around the nine-minute mark and are unpredictable but natural in their evolution. The album is truly a considered work from beginning to end.
I love slasher movie franchises. I'm not exactly sure why. It has something to do with the transformation of the killer, already a colorful figure in his masks and surreality, into something of a cross between an evil clown and a supervillain. You spend the whole movie rooting for the garishly implausible killer as he systematically executes every bad actor who commits a horror movie faux pas (going into a room without lighting, having sex when they should be babysitting). In the end, though, we see the monster cleverly dispatched just in time... only to return, like any good supervillain, in the next outlandish installment. Between revolving creators, interpretations and degrees of talent, it's so like a comic book I can hardly stand it.
Having watched and exhausted all the Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers movies, I have decided to plunge into the Hellraiser franchise. Dollface and I just watched Hellraiser III: Hell On Earth. It was sufficiently different in plot and tone from the previous two films, though equally gory. More importantly, it pretty much solidifies Pinhead as the real star of the show. We even finally get his full origin story, so far as I can tell.
So, this Saturday is the final performance of my musical baby, The Monster Project. We've done some new recordings recently, and I still have to mix and master them and put out a complete album of our body of work, but as far as live performances go, this will be it.
The reason for bringing the project to a close is twofold. One, our percussionist/sfx member and my longtime collaborator, Chris Carroll, is moving to San Diego at the end of the month. In addition to being an integral part of the ensemble, he is the staunchest supporter of the project, and it feels wrong to continue without him or to replace him, especially with only one more year left in my NYC tenure. But secondly, I simply feel that The Monster Project has accomplished all that it set out to do.
Yes, it was a very musical weekend, but let me tell you why. On Saturday I attended the listening party for the forthcoming new album of my favorite brutal technical death metal band, Suffocation. It was held at a heavy metal bar called Duff's in my Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg. Most everyone there was clad in black clothes, tattoos and various piercings. Out of about 100 or more people, you could count on one hand the number of people wearing glasses besides me, but one of those people was Suffo's lead guitarist, so I was in good company there. (The secret truth is that metalheads are generally a really nice bunch; songs about Satan and stabbing people in the eye are just their aggressive outlet.)
I got into Suffocation a couple years ago after seeing their video for Surgery of Impalement. Killer heavy but mind-numbingly technical composition, I was all up in dat shit. Since then I've seen them live a couple times, which is even more fun than listening to their albums. It's pretty easy to get people to go with me... once. Their curiosity about this completely alien form of music that so absolutely commands my respect is enough to rope them into attending a performance, but after that, they are more than sated on the experience. They can say they'd attended a death metal show, and that it was awesome, but there's no need to ever do that again. So for this listening party I had to rope in someone new. Delightfully, it ended up being my friend Sam, who has a degree in orchestral conducting and is a real wolf when it comes to the ladies. He was definitely impressed with the music he heard and, well, its total commitment to what it does. He's going to go see them with me next time. Hail Satan! He also enjoyed ogling all the women in their tight black fuck-me clothing. Hail the Dark Lord!
One of my former NYC bands, The Invincible Doctor Psyclops Invasion, a cinematic spy-rock outfit, is having a reunion show in August as part of a going-away party for the drummer and founder, my good friend Chris Carroll. I decided to take the opportunity to give a final update and face-lift to the band's website, including making both our two lo-fi albums available for listening. The site also lets you send encrypted emails to people and there's a little DHTML puzzle. I'm really fond of it, and the music as well.
Additionally, since it was so lame before, I updated the "Botch's Bands" page on this site to Botch Makes Music and showcased selections from the four lo-fi albums I've recorded during my time in NYC. I'm in the process of putting all these albums up on CDBaby, and several of them on some of the digital download sites. I'll let you know. (Start the hype!)
Being a somewhat fanatical music-lover, I'll try most anything. Somehow or other, I knew there was a Barbra Streisand album called Guilty that was produced by Barry Gibb of the Bee-Gees. Now, I know Streisand has a great voice, but previously the only recording I had that featured her was Neil Diamond's duet with her, "You Don't Bring Me Flowers." And while I do consider the Bee-Gees an underrated band, I don't actually own any of their music. But the combination of the two aesthetics? I'll give that a try.
It turns out that Guilty is Barbra's best selling album ever. And I know why. The title track, "Guilty," is catchy. Very catchy. In fact, I've had it in my head all fucking week. I woke up to it this morning. I have spent the week diluting Barbra and Barry with Nirvana, Sade, Tomahawk, John Zorn... it's no use. Damn you, Barbra! Damn you, Barry! And damn track two as well, "Woman In Love," because that's in my head, too, with her glorious voice ringing out, the talented bitch.
In case you don't know, I direct a musical group called The Monster Project. We do "art rock" arrangements of monster movie themes, e.g. Godzilla, Dracula, 80's slasher icons, etc. For example, listen to our version of the overture to Godzilla vs Mothra.
Anyway, we performed last weekend. Two 30-minute sets with a brief intermission. We even distributed a programme for the audience. Over 40 paying attendees. It was really well-received. I play with some great guys, too — a septet, we are — so it's always fun just to hang out.
I suppose for some of you, this last weekend was about celebrating the birth of the Easter Bunny or something. For me, it was just another weekend like any other, complete with ups and downs.
On Friday night, I had a long practice with my piano trio project. It's just bass, drums, piano and vocals with me covering the latter two. We have not yet been able to decide on a name for ourselves. I like "The Three Drink Minimum," but they think it's too long and, if we're playing bars, potentially confusing and off-putting. I also like "Smoke" as I'm trying to pick something evocative of the dark lounge music we think we're playing. But that got shot down, too. In a band where the pianist loves art rock and the bassist loves Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, it's hard to pick a name. Any suggestions?
Like the title says, I'm unexpectedly busy with two shows this week. First off, The Monster Project is playing Wednesday night in Brooklyn. We do rock arrangements of Godzilla and other monster music. The pieces encompass everything from trumpet and clarinet to heavy metal guitar and theremin. Click here to hear our demo version of Godzilla vs Mothra. Anyway, we're playing at Galapagos in Williamsburg, if you're interested; more details and samples can be found at www.TheMonsterProject.com.
In addition, my old art rock band Brompton's Cocktail is doing a secret pre-reunion show at the Continental on Friday at midnight. Our good friends in The Benzene Ring (prog emo) had a slot open up and we decided to fill it. We're still planning on doing a large-scale reunion show (this performance will only be 30 minutes), but this warm-up should be fun. You can visit www.BromptonsCocktail.com for mp3's and stuff. If you live in New York, you should definitely come to one of these shows and say hi to me!
My wife and most of my friends appreciate my diverse tastes in popular music. To give an idea, I have at least 5 albums each of Herbie Hancock, Sepultura, the Cardigans, the Cure, Metallica, Michael Jackson, Radiohead and so on. And for the most part, everyone respects the breadth of my tastes. Well, I'm going to go one further. I'm going to tell you that I think George Michael is a really great musician, and you should check him out.Right now, my wife is rolling her eyes. She knew this was coming. I've been listening to a lot of George lately. But what does this woman say when I tout the quality of his albums? She asks: "Are you gay? Do you want to have sex with him?"
They're very different, these two albums, but between the two of them, I think they give a good snapshot of my current musical mood.
The first album is Stevie Wonder's Journey Through The Secret Life of Plants. Perhaps you've never heard of it? Not surprising, considering it's out of print in America. This double album is the soundtrack to an obscure movie of the same name (minus Stevie's possessive prefix). This album was released in 1979 at the end of the most highly revered period of Wonder's career. It is a strange, moving, diverse, experimental and passionate collection of songs. Much of the album is instrumental, making full use of the 70's-era electronic innovations to craft eloquent and interesting sounds and effects. Other parts of the album are more traditional, tuneful departures, such as the only hit off this collection, "Send One Your Love." As exploratory as the two discs are, you never lose that special, soulful vibe that is unique to Stevie Wonder.
I'm going to go against type here and say that I really just don't like rain. Oh, it's fine and pleasant when it's outside and I'm not, but I hate having to be in it. I know I'm gloomy and morbid, I know I dress in black often, I know I am full of hatred and bile, and I know my totemic animal is aquatic, but the truth of the matter is that rain just gets you wet. Overcast days are wonderful; rainy days suck.
Tonight is the first practice for The Monster Project in eight months. The hiatus (after only one show) was filled with recording a CD of our répertoire, mixing said CD, and transcribing/arranging new material. (We're going to be doing a medley of selections from The Land of the Lost and selections from Godzilla vs The Smog Monster, probably my favorite G-flick.) Because rehearsal follows so close upon the workday's end, I brought my bass and suitcase of equipment to work this morning. Through the above-mentioned rain. And the 20 minute wait for an E train. This made it the perfect morning for listening to The Cure's Disintegration.
I love heavy metal. No matter how many different styles of music to which I listen — and my 500+ CD collection does span a wide variety of styles — I keep coming back to metal. It truly resonates with me more than any other sound, and I mean "resonate" not just spiritually; the actual feel of the vibrations, the rhythms, the bass-heavy chunking and the orderly chaos of its change-ups all feel fucking great in my chest, my gut, my ears, my head. And last night was the best such resonance I have ever experienced.
Because last night, I saw Testament in Long Island, and it was The Most Fun I Had Ever Had At A Concert, Period. I head-banged with my whole body for nearly two hours.
My first exposure to Queensrÿche was catching what I believe was the premiere of the video for "Empire" on Headbanger's Ball. As a young metalhead, I already leaned toward the more creative and stylized metal, so with its crisp riffs, precision lead lines and the singer's flawless tenor, the song immediately grabbed my attention. When the vocals dropped to a rapid bass monotone at the end of the first verse — the song's real hook — I was sold.
I picked up the album, Empire, and every Queensrÿche release that preceded it. I went and saw them live (with the mismatched Suicidal Tendencies in support). You could definitely call me a fan. But, as with many bands (especially those that I only owned only on cassette), I eventually put them down for a long stretch as I searched for new obsessions. However, I have a tendency to resurrect old interests, and for the last month I have been listening almost exclusively to Queensrÿche again (no longer on cassette, I got the CDs). Usually my obsessions are climaxed and purged by some sort of event or presentation, so here we go with my complete Queensrÿche Discographical Review.
I get songs in my head. Bad. Which is to say, they replay all the time, for days, from my first waking moments in the morning through my struggling efforts to fall asleep at night (so difficult with all this racket). And sometimes these obsessions/persecutions drive me to interesting lengths.
The record-holding song is "God Only Knows" from the Beach Boys album, Pet Sounds. Six days that tune played over and over in my head. I memorized all the eloquent words, of course. I sung it in the shower, practicing my falsetto in order to duplicate Carl Wilson's angelic tenor. I learned to play it on the piano. As I walked down the street, I sung it to myself, timing the pace of my steps to the tempo of the music. I thought listening to the recording seven times a day would help purge this need, but it only reinforced it. By the fifth day, poor Dollface was singing it to herself at all hours as well, cursing my name.
