New Songs
Monday, June 30th, 2008If anyone is interested I have recorded and posted some new tunes recently on the myspace. They are “Crushing Blows,” “Instrumental #1,” and my own rendition of the Joiner Inners classic “Thunderless.” Enjoy!
Archive for June, 2008
The Black Crowes at Hershey Park
Monday, June 30th, 2008I went to Hershey Park on Friday to see the Black Crowes. They opened for the Dave Matthews Band. To me this seems totally backwards although i understand i suppose if you want to disagree with me. Perhaps the Black Crowes no longer have the stature of the Dave Matthews Band but there is no question as to who is the better band. On friday night the Black Crowes came on and played eight songs worth of real legitimate rock music. They played 5 songs off of their incredible new record Warpaint a couple of classics and a cover. They all drank Becks the whole time and during one song Steve Gorman, the drummer, strapped on a marching band bass drum with the idiot face of George Bush on one of the heads and beat the hell out of it with a mallet and a tambourine. All good things. I was a little upset they werent given the opportunity to play a slightly longer set but regardless of how much time they had they rocked and that was all i could ask for. As far as the Dave Matthews Band is concerned i will only say a few words. They have become a weird band. They dont seem to care anymore. they are playing all the same songs they played last year. They stop for several minutes between each song so the set has no flow. and they still havent figured out that the song they wrote for the Mr. Deeds soundtrack is one of the worst songs ever written because they are playing it every other show on this tour. If you dont care anymore Dave Matthews Band stop playing shows. Beer is too expensive and bathrooms are too far away at these stadium shows for me to really enjoy myself anymore. and dont ask bands that are better than you are to open for you. Youre just embarrassing yourselves.
New Job Redux
Tuesday, June 24th, 2008I got a request for an update on my new job. My update is that i no longer have that job. I am not going to say that i got screwed because the guy that fired me was too nice for me to get too upset about it but i will say that i was misled. I dont think its worth it to go into the exact details about what happened. I have put it behind me. My issue is that i quit my job at Gartner, which i hated but was a secured position, to work at Yale, took a pay cut and then got fired. So now i have no job. while i would like to feel really stoked about not working i feel anything but. I feel like i have hit a gross number of dead ends in my job search, I send out dozens of resumes everyday and fail to hear back on a lot of them. Is this customary practice in the business world? I have no idea. It seems like it might be. I almost had a job working at another Barnes and Noble but that fell through as well. I would love the opportunity to blame somebody else for this but because it isnt any single persons fault i will blame myself. One, for being hasty and two, for being unable to cope with the depression that would wash over me every morning when i woke up and realized i had to go to work at Gartner. which sucked because i always looked forward to the moments that surrounded my daily decent into hell. I liked getting coffee every morning. I like listening to talk radio. When i got to work and after fighting my way past the awkward nod hellos and mindless sports chatter with people i didnt really care to know I liked sitting down at my desk blowing on my coffee scrolling through the New York Times online, opening my email, when it was fantasy football season, checking on my league. I also liked going home. I liked packing up my gear as quietly as i could and slipping out like a ninja so i wouldnt have to say goodbye to anyone or exchange plans for the evening. it really made me happy not to care what people were planning on having for dinner or whether or not they would try to make it to the gym. So, i liked walking silently away from these major annoyances and getting into my car and blasting some tunes so loud that it disturbed anyone who might be having a conversation in the parking lot. These are things that i liked that made my working life remotely bearable for those 18 months. here is what i didnt like: being told what to do by someone who has no idea what to do, being the only person who is held accountable for anything, writing me up for being late even though i was never late because the other idiots in my department who were always late might get mad because they got written up and i didnt, being asked to do work other people were supposed to be doing but didnt feel like doing, having to come up with a new plan for lunch everyday, having my calls monitored by someone who doesnt know what he is supposed to be listening for thus negating the whole purpose of a call monitoring system, office wide birthday parties, birthday cards from executives i had never met, and the notion that Gartner isnt trying earn my love by feeding my for free once a week. Listen up corporate America. if you want to earn our loyalty and our respect this is what you do. Hire people that know what they are doing, fire people who dont know what they are doing. Stop being passive aggressive slobs when it comes to disciplining people and dont try to buy my love like you by love from a toddler with company branded presents and free pizza. I am not a two years old. I am also not an idiot. I said before that i blame myself and i do. I wish i had handled everything better. and every other second of everyday that has gone by since i quit Gartner do i wish i could go back? yeah i do, because it was work and not working for someone like me, details details, is not ideal, especially when you have to pay rent and for food and gas. But i think i can land on my feet, or rather i know i can land on my feet. i think i will be ok and next time, if i get a job in a similar environment as Gartner i will try harder to stay positive. It doesnt feel like this post has an ending…
Album #5
Tuesday, June 24th, 2008Pacific Ocean Blue - Dennis Wilson So what if it just came out on Tuesday. Pacific Ocean Blue is not only the best solo Beach Boys record it stands toe to toe with Brian Wilson’s best Beach Boys material and fights it to a draw. You will never and have never heard a song like River Song in this or any life. What a tremendous release this is. I had been trying to buy cassette and vinyl copies of this off of ebay for years but have always come up short. The new two disc legacy edition makes me so glad that my first experience with this record is with some of the best remastered sound i have ever heard. Everything just jumps out of the speakers and sounds like magic. I am only up to record #5 on my list but this is by far the oddest record you are going to see. I dont mean odd as in unlistenable but odd in that it makes me like boogie rock. Odd in that i takes these ballads that are almost vomit inducingly cliche and turns them into gut wrenching musical confessions. Odd in that it would sound even more odd if it were not so completely over the top. I was hoping when i saw that they were finally re-releasing this record after being out of print for 20 years that it would be as amazing as it is. I went in with as high expectations as i could make myself have and it does not in anyway disappoint. The second disc, his unfinished 2nd record titled Bambu, is even weirder than the first but it equally lovely and Taylor Hawkins, of the Foo Fighters, perfectly catches the essence of Dennis Wilson when he sings over the track Holy Man, a track which Dennis Wilson never got to sing vocals on before he died. I really cant say enough about this record except get it and live it.
Twas Windmills & The Mucho Hysterico Tour
Tuesday, June 24th, 2008We performed three shows in a week and by the third show i hated all of our songs. As i type this i am humming some of our songs in my head to see if i like them and i dont really like them which is ironic because i wrote them. Is that irony? The difficulty i am having with this group is that i have no idea what our sound is supposed to be. It was easy with the Joiner Inners. It should all sound sort of like Guided by Voices or Superchunk or Pavement or Sebadoh or Chavez if we were feeling saucy. I dont know what this new stuff is supposed to sound like. I dont know what i want it to sound like. I really just want the songs to be good and i dont know if any but one of them are. there is a chance i am being to hard on myself and i can accept that. it just really bothers me that none of these songs are clubbing me in the throat with goodness the way the Buildup did and the way You and Yours and Combination of Things did. The old Three Way Duel stuff grew on me and i think all of the Joiner Inner stuff i great, even the stuff that is terrible i think it is all fantastic. I dont know about the Twas Windmills. Oh and if anyone has not yet heard my sure fire cure for a pulled muscle in your back then here you go, you can give your thanks at a later date: 12-15 advil in a 3 hour period, 3 beers (I drank 2 Harpoon Summers and a Michelob but feel free to experiment with whatever you like), play an outdoor festival show and then wheel your amp back to your car two blocks away. Next day when you wake up, no more back pain.
Tim Russert 1950-2008
Friday, June 13th, 2008Tim Russert died today of a heart attack. I was listening to Mike and The Mad Dog while i heard it. I am watching MSNBC now which is nice because he worked for NBC and there is a never ending flow of people available reflecting on what Tim Russert meant to them. Tom Brokaw and Brian Williams have almost lost it on several occassions talking about their friend. Sunday wont be the same without him.
Twas Windmills Announce Mucho Hysterico Tour !!!
Monday, June 9th, 2008Saturday June 14, 2008
Rudy’s Bar
321 Elm Street, New Haven, CT
w/Sex & Death USA
21+, 3.00 cover….it is always worth it….
9:00pm
www. myspace. com/rudysnewhaven
Thursday June 19, 2008
Daniel Street
21 Daniel Street Milford, CT
w/ The Lonely H (WA), Sikamor Rooney, Tripstone, & Twas Windmills
$5 Cover
8:00pm SHARP!!!
www. myspace. com/localtakeover
Saturday June 21, 2008
Ideat Village @ Pitkin Plaza
747 Orange Street New Haven, CT (Next to Koffee on Orange)
FREE!!!
Show starts at 12 Noon but Twas Windmills goes on at 4pm
go to www. ideatvillage. org for full band list and more information on Ideat Village
A Combination of Things
Saturday, June 7th, 2008This gas thing is starting to freak me out a little bit. Its not that I really mind all that much paying 4.30 for gas but its the way that it has been presented us. It feels like only one in a combination of shades that have been systematically lifted off of the way we had been living for several years. Yes there was a war in Iraq but it never effected us adversely, unless you had a loved one over there, but for the most of us it never came that close to effecting us on any kind of personal level. But then the housing crisis came and the economy slowed down, and the government sent us $600 for free in the hopes that we wouldnt freak out when the gas prices hit 4 bucks and a lot of this was due to the amount of money that we have been ceaselessly pumping into the war. It seems like one thing after another after another is starting to go wrong or not wrong precisely but backwards. It isnt the end of the world but I am starting to see that at some point there will be one. Global warming and record amounts of tropical storms, hurricanes and floods. and on top of that we have to live with David Cook as our American Idol!!! Its all just starting to get to me i guess.-> The new Spiritualized album is pretty good, its a grower. The new Weezer album is very bad.-> I liked Indiana Jones 4 but Shia Lebouf was sort of a mistake and the scene where he swings on vines with a bunch of monkeys is perhaps the worst scene in the history of cinema.->Celtics in 6-> Im writing this on a Mac and for whatever reason it doesnt register when i make a new paragraph.-> I havent read a good book in a while any suggestions?-> and finally good work to the Democrats for finally getting their act together and picking a candidate however in my current state of mind I dont have very high hopes for November. I think America likes crazy people and John McCain might be the craziest. Imagine if he makes Mitt Romney his running mate? they would spend all of their time smiling insanely at each other reminiscing about what it was like when they both believed totally different things than they do now and comparing the taste of the Republican teet!
