Archive for June 2005

Tom Brosseau, a wonderful singer, playing at the Hideout in Chicago.  If you hurry you can download some of his MP3s over at Songs Illinois.

Finally got around to uploading some of my pictures from the Wired NextFest this past weekend at Navy Pier…

Sarah Dandelles playing catch with Lois last night in Winnemac Park…

Snapped with my cameraphone this afternoon on the Red Line…

I’ve been collecting Philip K. Dick books for about 20 years.  I thought I had all ~45 novels but I was going through my collection last night, straightening out the shelf, and much to my dismay I seem to be missing a few: "The Cosmic Puppets", "Time Out of Joint" and "Radio Free Albemuth".  Those are all novels which I vaguely remember loaning to some person or persons but can’t remember who.  Looking at the online bookographies there are a couple of others I don’t have as well: "Gather Yourselves Together", an early novel I never knew existed, and "Cantata-140" which is just "The Crack In Space" under a different name, so therefore I don’t really need it.  There are tons of short stories I don’t have too; I really need to get the 3 thru 5 volumes of the Collected Stories books if I want to make a dent in those.

They have a talking PKD robot-head at the NextFest at Navy Pier, how far out is that?  I’m going to try to have a lil’ talk with him this weekend.  Whee!!  God, I love living in Chicago.

Why don’t I use the "more" section of this post to keep a list of my collection?  It’ll seem totally anal and stupid to anybody but a fellow PKD fan, but what do I care?

Read the rest of this entry »

YAY, the album is done!!!  Well, it’s recorded and mixed.  Now we just have fifty billion other things to do like: get it sequenced and approved by the powers that be at Drag City; splice the tapes into the right order; send those tapes out for mastering; decide for sure on the title; determine the artwork; get the credits and thank-you’s figured out, then actually get the layout done; send that layout out for printing; get the master back, listen to it and approve it or send it back for changes until it’s done, and then whatever else I’m forgetting.

Oh yeah, and it’s also REALLY GOOD.  Heh.  Almost forgot to mention that part.  :-) We mixed down all fifteen songs; all of them are good enough to release and will be put to use somewhere even if they won’t all fit on this album.  ‘Cuz they won’t, but it’s nice to know that none of ‘em are gonna stink up the joint and it’ll be a difficult choice instead of an easy one.

I might be able to give y’all a lil’ sneak preview at some point here, but we’ll see.  :-)

Time to listen to my CD of mixes, and then time to get me some fuckin’ sleep!!!  No, wait… one more happyface!  :-D

Que bonito es no hacer nada, y después de no hacer nada, descansar

Me and Will Clinger, the host of Wild Chicago, one of the greatest shows ever.  We were at the Chopin Theatre attending a performance of Sketchbook 5; Eric (who took this picture) directed one of the sketches.  If you go to the performance on Monday (the 20th) you’ll get to not only see that play, but also see Eric play some of his own music between sketches!  I’m pissed I won’t be able to go myself, but oh well.

EZ grabbed my camera for a shot with me and the Ditty Bops last night at the Hideout.  They put on a great show (again!).

I can’t believe it’s Friday.  Is it really Friday?  I am so looney right now, I shouldn’t be blogging but oh well, here I am.  In case you haven’t been following things around here, we’ve been recording my new album off and on for the past few weeks… we just pulled three really intense days of work at North Branch, and finally finished all the tracking today (=yesterday).  The whole day was reserved for my vocals and boy howdy, I sang my ass off, for twelve hours straight!  There were a whole lot more vocals to be done than any of us imagined, it was pretty mind-boggling.  I wonder if even half of those harmonies and overlappey things will actually end up on the record?  We’ll find out next week when we go back in to mix the thing.  Three days I believe, and then god help us we’ll be done.  With the recording.  Then there’s everything else that has to happen before it can be released, but let’s not think about that now please!

I’m half-sick right now… I’ve had a weird throat thing cooking up for the past few days, with really painful swollen glands on my neck.  It never really affected my singing thank god; I’m not hoarse, it’s just hard to swallow.  Whatever, I have a weekend to recuperate, and all I have to do next week is sit there and use my ears.  Piece o’ cake.

An empty storefront on Belmont…

Custom Showers on Belmont…

Dr. Dog at Schuba’s…

Tonight was good times!  We had this kid Emmett Kelly in to do some electric guitar on a few songs.  He was AWESOME.  He went over some of the parts I did (badly) during the guitar-a-thon of a few weeks ago, and also laid down a bunch of fancy stuff I’d never be able to do in a million years.  So between him and Hasbrouck and me, that’s just one whole mess o’ guitars.

Lindsay was supposed to come by after that to do some backing vocals but she kinda forgot so I just did ‘em all myself.  Boo-ya!  It was for the best though, ‘cuz we had so much work to do.  I did vocals from 7:30pm until 1am, lead and harmony vocals on six of the seven songs we’ve done so far.  I’m going back on Sunday to finish the seventh, and then next week we’ll be at North Branch to do tracking on the second batch of tunes (eight of them) before mixing time for all fifteen tunes.  (A few songs will get the axe for sure, but that’s how many we’re working with.)

Everything’s sounding better and better every day, such excitement.  I also think I know the album title now, but I’m not going to tell y’all yet.  Rian and I are in agreement it seems but I’d still like to live with it for a week or two before I decide for sure.

Oh shit, I hate it when that happens!!  I just wrote a nice blog entry and then accidentally fat-fingered it into oblivion.  What I was saying much more eloquently than I’m about to right now, is that the recording is coming along great, we had Lindsay Anderson and John Hasbrouck come in last night for Wurlitzer and guitar parts, respectively.  Rian and I are both (finally!) getting really excited about how everything is sounding… it is a little agonizing to be working this slowly relative to how we’ve done the other albums, but things are really starting to come together now.  There are one or two more days at Mayfair this week, then next week we have three or four days at North Branch, then the week after that it’s mixing!  And we’re done!  Will keep y’all posted inasmuch as that’s possible.

p.s. I owe so many damn e-mails it’s not even funny, can I use the recording as an excuse?  No?  Okay, it’s just because I’m a horrible person…

p.p.s.  Due to the album-recording I’m going to have to miss Eric’s opening next week at the Sketchbook festival… he’s directing one of the short plays and will also be performing as in-between-the-plays-music the week after next, which I will also have to miss out on.  Oh well, hopefully I’ll at least get to see the play some other night.

(Stupid rant deleted — boy I really need to put a note on my monitor that says "do not feed the trolls"!!  Plus, my response was even stupider than the stupid shit I was complaining about.  Which pertained to my having said a lot of stupid shit on the web, so… heheh.  The shoe fits!)

I took a bunch of (mostly crappy) cellphone pics at the Kraftwerk show… which was amazing!  I still can’t even believe I got to see them play live.  Fuckin’ KRAFTWERK right there playing their music like thirty feet away from me!!!  I’m just… I can’t even talk about it.  ::sob::  I’m so happy.  I’ve only been waiting for that show for 23 years, dude…