How Does It Know?

I am feeling much better this afternoon. I should be ready for life tomorrow.

This past weekend, in addition to getting sick, I attended the wedding of an old old friend. He’s the same age as me, but we’ve known each other since 6th grade. This was sort of the “unofficial” wedding, as there is the “official” one later in May in NYC (where said friend lives).

The wedding was nice and all, and it was great seeing old friends who have mostly moved all around the country. But a striking thing was how popular a dress color for the ladies brown was. Wife wore a brown dress and wasn’t really sure if that was OK for a wedding or whatever. But it turns out almost EVERYONE wore a brown dress, or some accent of brown (a sweater for example). Strange! All the guys wore suits, of course. It’s a no-brainer. But I must say I particularly like my suit. Though it seems I’ve gained some weight since last year.

The end.

Good stuff happening on the musical front, folks. I’ve already mentioned that Dan and I and Ian recorded some demos up in Lansing at the end of December. Well, I’ve taken those demos, and layered on some more parts, and chopped up and restructured a couple of the songs to make them more song-like, and added some awesome new guitar lines and bridges and solos and such. It’s all sounding great and I’m still totally excited about the project. After a couple more practices, and maybe some drum practice recording/arrangement in Dan’s basement (I recently purchased a souped-up new laptop for portable music recording, along with a new USB 2.0 audio interface* that is sounding AWESOME so far; I love that my entire recording setup is portable, and doesn’t even require a power outlet if my laptop battery is charged up), we might be ready to head back up to Lansing for round 2 of the actual recording process.

I keep meaning to write an entry about the way I came about the final structures for the 2 songs I felt were too long or repetitive (basically, I had three good parts for each of them, and just strung them together in sequence; doesn’t make for such a great song that way), and I will do so soon. Basically I made myself some nice visual aids that really helped.

Anyway, that’s about it. I’m glad it’s Friday. Another hour of work and then relaxation. And probably some more music fun in the basement studio this weekend.

* People have said I should’ve gone for a FireWire audio interface due to its faster speeds, etc… BUT! If you’re a PC laptop user, you’re stuck with a 4-pin FireWire port (which doesn’t provide power), as opposed to a 6-pin FireWire (which DOES provide power), which means you’re always going to need an available electrical outlet. Mac users win on this one, since Apple’s laptops provide 6-pin connections. Therefore, it’s USB 2.0 for me.

RIP Snickers (family dog); 1992-2008
Snickers, our family dog, was put to sleep this morning. He was ~16 years old. Still quite sharp in the mind, but suffering physically, and otherwise becoming incredibly difficult to deal with. I am told he had an Arby’s roast beef sandwich (his favorite food) for dinner and breakfast the night before and morning of, and was allowed to sleep without his cone on his final night.

Dan and I recorded with John in Lansing this weekend. Ian, a new friend, joined us on bass and got the hang of the songs really well considering the not knowing him before. The drums sound great. Too bad we’ll have to redo some of them once I change the song structures a bit and add bridges and whatever. But yay for progress!

Y’all should check out It Came From Detroit… It’s a documentary about the Detroit garage rock scene, by one of my oldest friends, James Petix. While I don’t exactly care that much about the Detroit garage rock scene, I’ve seen the rough cut of the movie, and it’s excellent. It was previewed last fall at the Detroit Film Theatre and drew quite a large crowd. Check it out.

Pretty much just taking a break from a busy week to post about a TV show I saw this week about the brain and related topics. Curious, on PBS, covered a lot of topics, like a guy who’s missing his corpus callosum, studying frame by frame (of video) how a fly avoids things like flyswatters with such a small brain, the Ellsberg Paradox, and everyone’s favorite, robots. I particularly liked the show because of the topics covered AND the fact that it wasn’t cheesy as all hell. Some of those shows kinda go over the top to be cutesy in explaining things, and while that may be what gets the general public interested in seemingly boring science topics, it’s not really my style. I can’t think of a particular example of a show, but a while back PBS was airing a bunch of science shows and they were gonna choose one to actually air regularly, and several of those were really really bad.

In other news, I’ve been seeing some of the guys from the band lately, but in non-band, couple get together type dealies, which has been nice.

Goodnight, and may you continue twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom!*

* Sorry, I’m watching the Simpsons.

On Wednesday night, Dan and I headed to the Royal Oak Music Theatre to see our ex-band-mate Adam’s band (Murder Mystery) play a show. For those of you who haven’t heard of this place, it’s a pretty big venue where pretty big name bands play. I found out that on Wednesday nights they do a local band lineup, which I think is pretty cool for such a large venue (considering some upcoming acts are George Clinton, Steve Vai and D.L. Hughley). That’s what this was, and Murder Mystery was headlining with a couple other bands and a solo artist.
For those of you who haven’t BEEN there (like neither Dan nor I had), the place is really big, and the crowd that an indie rock show draws on a Wednesday night isn’t all that great. Even when personal favorites Canada are playing in the penultimate slot. So the place did look pretty vast and empty in most places, but it was fun nonetheless, and had the venue been say, Lager House, the place would’ve been packed. Dan and I agreed that had we played this type of gig, we’d have done a decent show, but drawn no kind of crowd at all. That’s just how we rolled. Not on purpose, though.
Anyway, the sound was kinda bad due to it being pretty empty and the ceilings being high… really bassy and boomy and echo-y. Kinda reminded me of the Morrissey show I wrote about earlier in this fine blog. I mean, everyone played fine, it was just the acoustics of the place. Overall, it was pretty cool to see Murder Mystery on such a big stage (which probably was the size of my high school auditorium’s stage, which I got to play on for Battle of the Bands ‘96 and ‘97) and still maintain the energy they have whilst being spread across many feet.

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Some upcoming topics: a real explanation of the “How Does It Know?” title; news of me finishing the partially complete tLH EP myself in a Song of the Month fashion; vocal booth progress.

Check out this awesome one-off collaboration with Detroit rapper and friend Big Now. It’s Waiting For Machines, with an extra added bonus verse at the end. I’m impressed with how he was able to work in all the song titles from Tenille into a coherent rhyme! Awesome.

Also, I’ve been sort of lyrically challenged as of late, so September’s way late Song of the Month is instrumental. Luckily, it kinda works as an instrumental! Awesome.