Crickets Chirping

Somebody tried to sign me up for SufYawn’s mailing list. Why not put me on Iron and Whine‘s while you’re at it? Your pathetic wussy taste in music makes me SICK.

Saw The Science of Sleep friday night. I highly recommend this movie. Great premise: a guy who has dreams and reality inverted. Great story with lots of hilarious dialog (“It’s like Noah’s Ark, but for Vegetables!!!”) and some (for me at least) unexpected twists. Michel Gondry is a friggin genius, in case I haven’t said it before.

Been listening to Mason Proper. I highly recommend this band. Listen to the MP3s linked from 3hive, then check out this live recording at WOXY. I’m really impressed that they pull all that shit off live. I figured it was AutoTune and a bunch of other Studio Magic (TM), but it sounds like they’re the real deal. I would love to see this band play here in Austin.

After last year’s dustfest I was somewhat reluctant to attend ACL 2006 but I’m glad I did. It was much more tolerable this year and I saw some great music.

* Massive Attack had the coolest light show I’ve ever seen at ACL.

* The Shins were much better at Stubb’s on friday night. I heard a lot of people telling me they suck live, but the Stubb’s show was incredible. The ACL show blew. I guess it’s really hit or miss with them.

Jose Gonzalez played for only half an hour, which was a real dissapointment. I don’t normally go for the guy-and-a-guitar acoustic thing but that song Heartbeats is really haunting and beatutiful.

Muse is easy to dismiss as something like Granddaddy doing Radiohead covers, but this three piece fucking mopped the floor with every other rock band I’ve ever seen at ACL. The day before, Ben Kweller had to stop in the middle of his set due to a nosebleed. I am convinced he had a premonition of how hard Muse was going to rock and the sheer intensitity of this vision caused his brain to rupture. Favorite quote from ACL, which I heard after Muse played their last song: “You know, I didn’t get it before but I think now I understand why women want to fuck rock stars.”

* New Pornographers actually had Neko Case with them this time, which was nice since I don’t think I saw her with them when they played SXSW this year. Unfortunately the new keyboard player was kind of annoying and ruined one of my favorites, “Fake Headlines” with her totally out of place piano noodling.

* The Flaming Lips had to have the entire ACL crowd at their stage. It was soooo packed, standing room only all the way back to the Heineken stage. Ben Harper was supposedly playing elsewhere at the same time but I don’t think anybody besides him was at his show. They have a very bizarre live show, with lots of props and confetti. And this time, fake blood too (in a show of empathy/one-upmanship to Ben Kweller’s nosebleed).

Tom Petty had to stop his set due to rain. We seized this opportunity and moved up closer to the stage after the wussy fans retreated for dry cover and we got a much better view for the second half. He’d already played a couple of songs before we got there so I don’t know if he played that “let’s roll another joint” song but I was looking forward to that one.

* Indicates that the artist/band made critical remarks regarding Republicans and/or the Bush Administration

Always wondered that myself. Cameos: Ted Leo, Devendra Banhart and Pitchfork.

Last night went something like this:

Turns out the name “Jamaican Space Agency” didn’t sit too well with some people so now the band is called Triple Word Score. I’ll spare you the details but it was the direct result of somebody calling somebody else a “Word Nerd.” Never mind the fact that none of our songs have words, or that there are not three but four of us.

Anyways Mike, our drummer sent this out today. I figured I’d spread the news here as well:

There’s an annual after-Eeyore’s party (4/29 SAT) at Gardens of the Ancients and Triple Word Score is gonna have their 1st gig!

TWS is mike-drums, sean- guitar/bass, lane- bass/guitar, jeff- guitar/keys

We play around 9:30 or so and there are a lot of bands. This is an all night, cool party, no dogs please. Bring a musical instrument for one of the campfires. There’s a really nice outdoor stage and beer and prob a lot of food as the night wears on. Donations or fees of 5-10 are the usual.

Directions from central austin: take 290 east past 183, go left on springdale rd (don’t speed), “T” go right, “Y” go left, “Y” go left again- 4806 yager ln on the right. If you pass the house you hit parmer ln and you went too far.

I know guitar center is evil, but I don’t feel much better about going to pawn shops because 99% of that shit is stolen. And the mom and pop music stores have screwey hours and they’re never open when I’m in the mood to shop. So I go to guitar center.

First I check out the basses, always hoping but never actually seeing a Rickenbacker for sale. Until yesterday.

Oh it looked like a piece. Of shit. The bottom pickup was exposed (you can’t see the wires in this pic, but they were poking out). The finish on the neck was all gunked up like the previous owner blew cigar smoke on it every day since 1980. It was dented, scratched, nicked and generally pretty beat up. But I hardly ever get the chance to play one so I plugged it in.

And it sounded beautiful.

What a deal!

I don’t know what I would do with the money I could have saved with such an investment.

Why are Ricks so expensive? $999 is pretty cheap for a 4001, even a beat up one.

I know, I know. I should just go to Bass Emporium if I want to get a new Rick.

Instead of shelling out a zillion bucks for a sketchy rick I got a deal on a scratch and dent VOX wah pedal that was out of the box. I had to take it apart and make some minor adjusments but now it sounds good.

All you ever didn’t need to know about wah pedals.

Welcome Springtime – a wonderful mix put together by Matt at You Ain’t No Picasso, one of my new favorites in an ever-growing stable of mp3 blogs.

It’s got ELO, Apples in Stereo, Belle and Sebastian, Bright Eyes, The Vines, Apollo Sunshine and a bunch of happy springtime music from lots of other great bands. Download it, then prepare to tap your toes and smile.

It’s hard to come up with a band name. Here are some candidates we went through for a new band I’m in.

“Werewolves on the Moon” – You know, like they’re permanently wolfed-out since it’s always a full moon on the moon. Had to shoot this one down with a silver bullet because there are too many bands with wolf in the title already:

• Faceless Werewolves
• Guitar Wolf
• Peanut Butter Wolf
• We are Wolves
• Wolf Colonel
• Wolf Eyes
• Wolf Parade
• Wolfmother

“The Nouns” – could be a catch all for the “The ___’s” cliche. A bit too ironic though.

Then there’s “Pilots” which fits into this phenomenon I like to call “Indie Rock Career Day” – for example:

• We are Scientists
• Editors
• Engineers
• Postal Service
• Mathematicians

Then there’s the age-old tradition of bands who names suggest they are from somewhere they are not.

• Boards of Canada are from Scottland.
• What Made Milwaukee Famous is from Austin.
• Jets to Brazil doesn’t sound Brazillian. I bet they never even played there.
• Brazillian Girls are from New York
• Architecture in Helsinki is from Australia
• Face it, Asia had no trace of asian influence whatsoever.
• Of Montreal is from Georgia.

It is this last category into which our name I think we’re going with falls:

The Jamaican Space Agency

We’re obviously not from Jamaica, and we don’t play Reggae either. I just like the way those three words sound together and the acronym sounds cool too: The JSA.

Picture a mission control room full of Rastafarians dressed like engineers from a 60′s NASA film (short sleeve shirts and ties, thick black frame glasses and so on). They’re tending to oscilliscopes and radar screens, and some are staring up at a large monitor in the front of the room. It shows not a rocket on a launch pad but a stack of amps on a stage. Smoke billows out from the bottom of the amps and the ground rumbles as the band launches into a song that doesn’t sound even remotely Jamaican.