Category: tunes

Music. Bands. Songs. Concerts.

Posted on

I feel like I deserve a beer tonight

Stop the ride. I want to get off.
Friday! Friday! Friday! I feel like I deserve a beer tonight. For a week well-done or something. Yeah, or something, I need a beer for “or something.”

Slow week in the writing department, breakneck week in the working department to blame. Pulling late nights every night so far, becoming all too accustomed to coming home from work, relaxing, computerless, for an hour or so while I eat dinner, and then hopping right back online to do this and that. I’ll tell you what, as brutal and unceasing as it’s been – I really do feed off it. Somewhere deep down, I find a perverse enjoyment in feeling important – the age-old sin of pride festering right in my puffed-up chest. My mouth complains about working long hours half because I don’t like it and half because I want others to hear it. I’m just a braggart at heart… someone who’s trying to avoid letting the fact that he’s got a big head show outwardly. Always feigning humility, I hope it works. But really y’all, isn’t “feigning” just a precondition for humility? It’s a conscious thing, not an inborn one. So, while I do hate it, I do love it. Figure that one out.

I’m still somewhat surprised that the crew over at PF haven’t written up the Most Serene Republic album. I’ve about worn the grooves off the thing (I know, grooves are old-school, but it’s a good expression), and I’m wondering if they’ll dig it as much as I do. It’s one of those fantastic, but relatively unaccessible LPs. Things like the Arcade Fire and Bloc Party are not only super, but arguable fit for commercial consumption. Things like the Most Serene Republic, however, really aren’t. The style isn’t consistent enough, and those used to happening-packed 3min pop nuggets may get confused with the meandering and often seemingly aimless song structure. But… none of that matters to me. That album is the toppermost of the poppermost, as John would say. If you’re interested, you can get a good idea of what to expect from this sample clip. I’m not afraid to make the halfway call and say that the race for 2005 is so far neck-and-neck between this and the Architecture in Helsinki album. Oh, and in case you’re really interested, I figured out how to direct-link to 1min clips of every track on the album. Yeah, that’s right – no one is safe from my “View Source” javascript reverse engineering mojo.

If you keep up with my travels… you may recall that I was supposed to be boarding a plane for Shanghai today, but I’m not. I canceled the trip. Sharaun’s first real appointment at the baby-doctor is this coming Thursday, and they told us they’d be doing an ultrasound and listening to Lil’ Chino’s heartbeat. For a while, I was actually considering missing that. Can you believe that? Thinking about it now, I don’t want to miss that for the world. I’m going to try and get a cellphone recording of the heartbeat while we’re there – and knowing me it’ll be online the next day. I remember when I was in middle school, I paid entirely too much for a still-sealed copy of John & Yoko’s rare “Unfinished Music No. 2 : Life With the Lions” LP on the avant-garde Apple offshoot, Zapple. Since the music hadn’t ever been issued on CD at the time, I simply couldn’t resist the urge to completely ruin my investment by slicing through the 25 years old cellophane and putting the virgin plastic on the turntable for it’s only spin while I recorded it to tape. The LP sucked; sucked bad. All John’s whacked out Zapple stuff did. But there was one “song” that stuck with me. Called, appropriately, “Baby’s Heartbeat,” it was a recording of their (sadly later miscarried) baby’s tiny heart swisha-woosha-swisha-wooshing blood through his tiny developing body. I thought it was fascinating. I wonder what I’ll feel when I hear Lil’ Chino’s… part of me thinks I’ll be stricken dumb with awe, while part of me thinks I’ll take it in stride. Whichever it ends up being, I’m ultimate-glad that I chose to stay home for it.

It’s 11pm now and I came back here to try and write another couple paragraphs, this sentence is as far as I got.

Goodnight.

Posted on

wheelchair love is cool and all

Summer summer summer, turns me upside-down.
Today I’ve got a lot of images, some of them big. At first, I considered shrinking them so that those of you with smaller screen resolutions wouldn’t have the site layout being all messed up – but I decided at the last minute that I didn’t really care. So, hope you enjoy this Monday’s entry.

What LP sets my heart a’ pitter-patter these days and nights of summer? This week, it’s a little gem called Underwater Cinematographer by yet another Canuck collective – The Most Serene Republic. Lead croon has a very Gibbard-esque voice, and you can even sometimes hear strains of Gibbard’s work here (Death Cab, Postal Service, etc.). But I don’t want to pigeonhole the band… as they definitely have a varied sound… and really kickass drumming at times. Plus, they scream courses… which for some reason, I love. You give me a studio full of people standing 10ft away from the mics screaming a ragged course at the top of their lungs, and I’m going to buy your album. These guys did it twice, and in a less-freaky way than the Polyphonic Spree’s saccharine-cult mantra version (which I also totally dig). Survey the scene for yourself here, headphones required.

This weekend Saturday was bliss. I swam all day in the pool at Pat’s house, ate some grilled hamburgers, and then ended the night by watching the hotly anticipated remake of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

Sounds great, doesn’t it? Yeah, it totally does… I wish that’s how it actually went down. Here’s the real story:

This weekend Saturday was bliss. With weather.com reporting the high that day at 108° F, Pat had called and asked if Sharaun and I wanted to come over to his place for some swimmin’ and grillin’. Sounded like perfect summer fun to me, and it would actually be the first time I’d be able to confidently go swimming without fear of death. I headed over, wifeless, due to headache, around 2pm. Shortly thereafter, we were in the water. Together, we balled our fists and shook them at the summer swelter, symbolically, of course, by drinking cold beer and lounging in the tepid pool. Hour by hour we defied the shimmer of heat on the horizon, beer cans amassing at the pool’s edge at an alarming pace. Before I knew it, 6pm had arrived and more folks had shown up for the cookout. Oh, and I had made an even trade: swimming in the pool for swimming in a drunken haze. Stumbling inside, I managed a burger and a half before laying down on the floor for some rest. Waking up, I wasn’t in any shape for a trip to the theater… so Sharaun took me home where I crashed on the couch alone. I missed the movie, which really bummed me out. I woulda done better for my day by drinking a little less and making the movie… but I guess it all worked out OK. I still had a nice summer day, and my liver got a workout.

You guys wanna hear some crap? Sharaun got her degree right, her Masters in Education. Spent extra time and extra money at school to get that graduate degree. Right now, we’re still paying that thing off – as graduate tuition is like 3x normal in-state tuition. Anyway, she got this degree while we were back in Florida, and would we have stayed in Florida – she could’ve immediately started working at any public school with a Florida teaching credential. We, however, did not stay in Florida; we came to sunny California – for my job. Upon arriving, she learned that her two Florida-earned degrees didn’t hold much water here on the West coast. In order to begin teaching, she’d 1st need to apply for an emergency credential (good for three years) and then take some test. She passed the test, a yawner that most high-school grads would do fine with, and scored her emergency teaching credential. And, for the next two years she applied and interviewed at every school district around. Despite the news’ constant blathering about California’s “teacher shortage crisis,” she wasn’t able to land a job to save her life. Finally, a long-term substitute position was her foot in the door and she scored a full-time position. And, for the past three years she’s been teaching on that emergency credential.

Now we’re caught up to the present, and her emergency credential is expiring. Thing is, the process by which out-of-state degree holders earn “real” credentials is insane. There are a couple options, all of which will cost us considerable amounts of money and her considerable amounts of time and stress. The constant between the options is this test she has to take, the CSET. Far from the high-school yawner described above, this is a comprehensive test which covers a variety of topics – and is not easy in the least. Y’know, I can talk about it all I want and you probably won’t get the proper appreciation for the level of absurdity I’m trying to convey. So, here, painstakingly excerpted from the practice tests online, are some of my favorite questions that California kindergarten teachers are required to answer to obtain their credentials:


I feel like I should know this – but I don’t. I think I could make an educated run at it, but I don’t know it for sure. Oh, I have a bright yellow notebook at home that contains all my notes from 9th grade World History with Mr. Hines – it’s likely in there… but it didn’t make it from there to in my head with any sense of permanence. Here’s another:


Double-header here, fit better with the layout. Re: 43, the Radical what now? I swear I never even learned this. I couldn’t even come up with a good educated guess on this one… does that make me stupid? That second one has got to be a trick right. Even if I had ever heard of this thing, all these would sound right to me on test day. You know, you don’t learn California history if you don’t go to primary school in California… Let’s see what else we got here:

Using my knowledge of geology?! What the… oh yeah, because I would have, of course, studied geology extensively in my pursuit of a degree in teaching elementary school. And here we go:

OK, now, for real. Shut up. Just shut the hell up. These things are making me more and more angry as I go along. Soon enough I’m about to jump out of my CSET desk and jam my two #2 pencils in the proctor’s eyes. This test is so stupid. And now… I’ve saved the best for last… my personal favorite:

Oh. My. Word. What the crap? What class, exactly, would’ve prepped me for this question? Music theory? Every person aspiring to be a teacher in California must be able to read music and identify melody, rhythm, and form. Stupid-ridiculous.

Were she the graduate of a California college, with or without a masters degree, none of this would be required – none. But because her degree is from out of state, she has to jump through innumerable hoops before she’s declared “fit” to teach the budding young’ns of Northern California. I’m all for holding teachers to high standards, but this crap is pretty ridiculous to me. Sure it’d be great if all our teachers, K-12, knew how to prove the Pythagorean Theorem – but I’m pretty sure you can handle 3rd graders just fine without the knowledge. Whew! Now that I’m done venting…

That’s it. Nothing more. Until tomorrow, goodnight.

Posted on

one night in a hurricane

Give up, dreamer.
Wow guys, I wrote tonight. I actually wrote. I also watered the parched trees in the backyard. Last year, I finished the sprinklers in the backyard specifically so I wouldn’t have to hand-water the trees. Problem is, in finishing the pavers I had to break some of them… and I never fixed them. So now I’m back to hand-watering. One tree’s dead, one definitely hurting. The smell the water makes when it hits the sun-baked dirt just reminds me how hot it is here during the day… I don’t know where the weeds get their water…

The other day I caught a story on digg (the new version of which, looks excellent, by the way) about the Flaming Lips releasing a new album in on online-only format. The article was interesting enough, then in the comments someone said, simply, “Best modern band.” To which the next poster replied, “Actually the best band this instant is Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.” Which I found hilarious enough in itself – that someone is willing to make a blanket statement that not only acts like you should already know (the “Actually…” bit), but unequivocally tells everyone who the best band is “at this instant.” At that precise moment in time, should every hearing-enabled organism in the universe attend a band-off comprised of every band in the universe, CYHSY would be the hands-down winner. Not to mention the fact that PF had barely finished penning it’s glowing review of the group, no doubt where said enlightened reader had learned of them five minutes before posting (as I did). Some of you may say this is my bitterness at people digging “my” music, hopping on that train. But no, I’m trying to make fun of this guy. Anyway, it got me thinking…

“Right now, the best band in the entire world is a band you will never hear.” That’s what I thought. Indie-elitists would be crippled by intense multiple orgasms if they heard of a brand new band that was not only completely amazing, but was also the definition of underground or little-known. That got me thinking: How could I combine both these qualities and craft the perfect indie band? Then it came to me: Create a great band, an excellent, stupendous, sublime band – that no one, aside from gushing critics, will ever hear. If you get really creative about it, you don’t even have to have a real band – since no one will ever hear them anyway. You just invent a band and start raving about them… their varied influences and emotional lyrics, their powerful musicianship and defiance of convention, and their notoriously elusive import EPs. I can almost hear the indie kids popping hard ons in their corduroys now. Eventually, someone would say they’d heard them, at a friend’s roommate’s place, on a crackly podcast of a French radio show that played the EP one night in a hurricane – something huge and mythic. People all around would know someone who heard they were about to sign, or were playing a secret gig under and assumed name down in Deep Ellum next week. Then you could say, much to the chagrin of rare 7″ seekers everywhere, that: “Right now, the best band in the entire world is a band you will never hear.” It’s genius.

Yesterday, Sharaun was watching some show on the MTV, and there was a plumply young lady running on the beach. She was talking about how she’s going to school and “studying marine biology” so she can “hopefully swim with and train dolphins one day.” I didn’t want to be the one to tell her, but I think there are a lot less dolphin-training jobs out there than there are people who want to train dolphins for a living. My brother wanted to be a dolphin-trainer once… or maybe it was Shamu. Either way, I remember we used to make fun of him for having a new passion each week. For a while, he had a hand-drawn picture on notebook paper, tacked to his bedroom door, that said something like “Shamu Riders Only” on it. The next week, it was Bigfoot flying through the air, complete with a debris trail in classic sfumato, its huge knobby tires inches from coming down on a crudely illustrated burning schoolbus and it read “Monster Truck Drivers Only.” Monster trucks gave way to fireworks-making, which waned right as Civil War Reenactor waxed. Man did we give him a hard time about that. But it’s good though, shows he had interests, shows he had goals – even if they were ever-changing.

Really though, at some point in life, who didn’t think it would be cool to be a professional Shamu rider? There’s a difference though, between that and majoring in marine biology with hopes of riding dolphins. I’m not sure, but I just don’t think there is a big market for dolphin-riders. Just like majoring in hospitality in hopes of scoring one of those Travel Channel gigs where you fly around the world and review posh hotels… I can’t say for sure, but it’s probably not going to happen. And kids, I’m not telling you not to chase your dreams – maybe just make them a bit more attainable, eh? If there’s only one guy in the world who’s job it is to test the satisfaction-index of different condoms with different women – there’s likely a large line of prospective replacement candidates. Just count the Shamus in the world, then count the number of people who ride those Shamus on a weekly basis, and figure in the Shamu-rider turnover. Yeah… not lookin’ as real as it was before right? On the other hand, there must be hundreds of Bigfoots… and I’m pretty sure those guys don’t really need degrees…

Mmmm… finished early tonight, 9pm. Calling it good and putting it on autopilot. ‘Night.

Posted on

good enough forever

....purrrr....
This weekend I was a cat. I did all the things cats normally do, and nothing more. I ate all that was put before me, full or not. In my spare time, I slept. I slept without guilt, often thinking that I might be coming down with something, as tired as I was. In between eating and sleeping, I used the toilet, and in between those – I played. I played at a city park with my family, throwing frisbees and reading in the shade. I played at the waterfall park too. Man, it was an awesome weekend… relaxed to hilt, at ease to the nines. On Monday, my pop and I tried, unsuccessfully, to program his car’s built-in garage door opener to open his garage door. It’s the second time I’ve tried to make one of those built-in things work, and from my experience you’re just better of using the transmitter that came with the opener. Tonight (being as it’s still Monday), we’re going to meet up with Ben and Suzy and the family for fireworks in the park. I’m excited, I love fireworks.

The Bleat is what I aspire to as a “personal” blog. Posting every day without exception, each day with compelling comment and colorful, interesting wordplay. The ‘I’ -less style of writing is good, and I’ve even caught myself slipping into it the more I’ve been following the page. The guy writes for a living (and must do so all the time, considering the amount of content he regularly posts), so he kinda has an unfair advantage out of the chute. My paycheck, however, comes from doing something completely unrelated to writing… so you’re gonna have to weigh that when considering the quality and quantity of my material. Owell, I dunno if I’d enjoy writing for my food anyway – I’d have a huge fear that I’d “dry up,” like I know I tend to do when things get busy.

My dad isn’t active in the music scene, neither is Sharaun’s, nor anyone else’s parents that I can think of off the top of my head. In fact, you expect old people to like old peoples’ music. They have radio stations dedicated to music as the aged remember music. A child of the 60’s? Tune into Kool 105.9 to get your dose. Standards your thing? Lock KSWG 104.7 on your dial for the best of the swingin’ 50’s. What I’m getting at is that, at some point in their lives, peoples’ tastes in music get encased in ice. No longer are you stalking the aisles at the local record shop looking for your next favorite album, no more keeping up with what’s drawing the critics’ praise or riding the underground buzz. At some point, what you already know is good becomes good enough forever. I wonder when that point is? Right now I can’t imagine keeping one eye peeled for the next groundbreaking record. Is it just that, at some point as you grow older, the current generation’s music changes so radically from what you were weaned on that you simply can’t grok it any longer? What makes people turn away from discovering the new hotness? Maybe it doesn’t happen as much with die-hard music lovers, the kind of people who’ll bed an LP for a week and then leave without offering even a cigarette or phone number. The real users and abusers. Who knows.

11:11pm. Sharaun alseep on the couch, me in the back room writing and listening to music. We’re back! It feels good too… I can’t lie. Although I have to go into work tomorrow, it’s good to be home sleeping in our own bed. And now, I think that’s exactly what I’ll do…

Goodnight.

Posted on

gettin’ out of town

I dunno... somehow I got from minestrone to this... go figure.
Half-day at work tomorrow, haven’t really told anyone – just gonna sneak out. Hope to be putting road behind us by noon, speeding along the nine-ish hour journey from the kiln-hot weather of Northern California to the will-it-or-won’t-it rain toady clouded uncertainty of Northern Oregon. Already tonight I feel better for getting off my ass and finally beginning to tackle some of the domestic duties that my laziness has been roadblocking. I got the dishes done, and am only typing now as a “pause” between vacuuming and sweeping then mopping the kitchen. Still need to pack up and stow the camping gear, that’s to-be-done, oh and unpack the suitcase from NYC – just shy of a week from returning. The goal is to return to something that’s not an insurmountable disaster but a maintainable tidiness. And I’m only writing now in between tasks, to let the sweat settle.

I’m always late paying my bill to the city, y’know, the one for water, sewer, and trash service. It’s forever one month in arrears. The way I figure it, it’s not my fault. They only accept the most outmoded form of payment: the once viable now laughably analog personal check sent through the stone-age holdover that is the US Postal Service. I can’t be held responsible if I’m expected to collect my mail in a timely manner, open it, comprehend it, and then reply with some scrap of paper that I have to write on with my hand. C’mon folks, gimme something I can log-on to, something I can click through, whatever verb I use to pay this bill I want to it to have an ‘e’ and a hyphen preceding it. For God’s sake I learned to write a check in the mandatory “Family Life” class they made us take in 9th grade, and they were already out of style then. Get with the times, get hip, save yourself the processing costs. You are the sole bill I can’t auto-pay online. So anyway, tonight I paid it… some $200 of back-owed fees. It’s a wonder the nice garbage men still collect at our curb and we get fresh water when we turn the tap.

New music, let’s see… what am I listening to? As I mentioned yesterday, this Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! album is great. Funny thing is, I checked their webpage – and their most recent show was with a band called Dirty on Purpose, which I immediately recognized as a name I’d seen before. Turns out Ben’s bro’s band, the also-Brooklyn-based Autodrone, has played with Dirty on Purpose several times in the past. While doing this research, I learned that Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! played a show in NYC this past Monday – the very day I was in NYC bumming around with nothing to do. That Knitting Factory must be a popular place, I see Autodrone and Dirty On Purpose have also played together there before, and apparently the ‘drone were set to play there this weekend before the avocado incident. Hindsight is 20-20 y’all. Anyway, back to the Clap (chuckle) – you have to, must, just gotta check out this track (Flash required). In other tunes, I also grabbed the couple new tracks from the post-Unicorns outfit, the Islands, since PF tipped me off. Not bad.

Hey. I just realized I never ate dinner. I mean, I had several handfuls of Wheat Thins around 6pm, but… that’s not really dinner. Man, I love some Wheat Thins. But now I’m sitting here and it’s 11:30 and on TV Barney is talking about mozzarella pizza in Mayberry… and I’m hungry, I want some food. The smart man would ignore this and go to bed – sleep is a sure-fire cure for hunger. But me, I’m rummaging through the pantry… considering a can of Minestrone soup… or maybe some Rice-A-Roni. I think I’ve settled on the Minestrone, Sharaun’s reminding me, “It’s eleven-thirty at night baby,” yeah… I know. I’m hungry.

Independence Day holiday in the USA this weekend, don’t expect posts Monday or Tuesday, if the come they will be unexpected.

Goodnight.

Posted on

there is not nobody out there can play like metallica

No reason, liked the image.
This weekend I was walking along the coast, looking for driftwood that was dry enough and not-chemically-treated enough to burn for a fire later that night. The weather was the typical bay area coastal gloom – moderate temperatures with the sun hidden behind a gray blanket above, and a fine mist drifting on the air all around. But it wasn’t gloomy at all, I rather enjoyed it. Sharaun and I walked hand-in-hand for a bit, away from the group, and it was almost like we were alone. There was no one else on the entire beach, not a soul. At one point, the place went silent between two waves, just for a second, but it was a remarkable absence of sound. Usually it’s the constant crashing of waves, must’ve been some odd off-timing to create the gap – but it was the most memorable sound of the walk. All sorts of things flash through my mind, I play out scenarios where we’re trapped wherever we are… and being trapped on that beach at that time seemed pretty OK to me.

The men’s restroom at work has polished tile walls. Wait… wait, just stick with me here, I swear I’m going somewhere. Anyway, it’s got these bone-colored polished tiles, so polished that you can see your reflection in them when you step up to a urinal. The way the place is laid out, there are three urinals and three stalls. The rightmost stall wall is directly adjacent to the leftmost urinal. Now, if you were designing a bathroom, you would probably step back and look over your drawings and say “It is good.” However, you would be wrong – and I’ll tell you why. The stall partitions do no go all the way to the wall. There is probably a good inch, maybe more, of space between the wall of the stall and the actual smooth, polished, mirror-like wall. You see where I’m going? No? Lemme ‘splain.

I walk up to the urinal to turn back the Starbucks I rented earlier in the morning. Let’s say I choose the leftmost urinal, for argument sake. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me, someone has entered the restroom earlier and chosen the rightmost stall in which to pinch their loaf. So I walk up and prepare for the pee, all the while keeping my eyes honorably focused in front of me. In front of me. Where the damn polished tile is playing a scene reflected right from the stall next to me, the horrid vision escaping through that gap between the wall and barrier that should separate our two private acts. I try to take my eyes away, but where to look? I can look down, but it’s still in my periphery. Any movement draws my eyes to the scene, unbidden by my brain. This is not some watery, frosted-glass-looking reflection that is thankfully obscured; this is a live HDTV feed of the business end of what’s going on in that toilet. I mean we’re talking I-can-read-the-tattoos-on-your-ass DVD picture crispness folks. It’s bad news, it’s bad planning, it’s just plain old bad. This is why I stay away from the 3rd urinal. Well, that and the fact that it’s mounted a good 3″ lower on the wall than the “normal people” urinals. Midget-compliant, or something. The horror.

We have nothing on our walls. Not pictures, not paintings, not even a different color than the original white that came with the virgin house. Over the course of the three years we’ve been here, we’ve spent countless dollars which could’ve instead went to put things on the walls, to make the place feel more lived in. We have no furniture in the front room. Hell, we still call it the “front room” because we don’t do anything in or with it. It has no function. The biggest open space in our entire house is nothing more than a wide, wide hallway between the front door and kitchen. I don’t know what to chalk this up to, but I have some suspects. First, laziness. We are just lazy. Second, Sharaun’s unreasonably high standards for anything which will be displayed on our walls. Honestly, I think finding one or two items every three years may be the pace at which we have to move based on her insane requirements. Third, the notion that money will be better spend elsewhere. As time passes though, I’m beginning to wish we’d spent more time “homey-ing” up the house. Sometimes it feels empty, like we’re always poised to pack up the lot of it and hit the road. I want more things on the wall, more places to sit, more color. Oh, and I want less rampant mess… but that’s a function of my marriage and completely inescapable.

You guys may or may not know that I “run” several different websites. I put the word run in quotes because I honestly do little to “run” them at all. I wrote them at some point in my life, and for the most part they are now on autopilot… their tired and trite layouts and designs in a state of atrophy, embarrassing to look at. There are sites all over this domain, those linked from the root and those not. Those that are “done” and are never touched, and those that are in a constant state of “working on it.” Anyway, the page I’m most ashamed of is my Question Mark & the Mysterians page. The thing is appalling. I think I did the layout in high school, no kidding (however, I may be wrong as the oldest copy I can find on the Wayback is from 1998 and says “since 1997” on it). I changed the layout early along in college, converting the thing to some form of CSS style management. The site is really disgusting to me, but I’m not willing to go and give it a remake. Thing is, it’s consistently one of my biggest visitor-getters, and it also generates a large amount of e-mail. And that’s what I want to talk about, the e-mail.

People are retarded. No, I’m serious. People are straight-up retarded. Sure, the site is hideous – but there is still plenty of good information to be found there, and it’s relatively easy to navigate despite it’s abominably ugly shell. Despite this, the retarded masses insist on mailing me with any question they can think of – regardless of whether or not it’s answered on the pages. I’ve long stopped responding to any mail generated by the site, but you’ve got to check out some of these gems… they consistently crack me up.

Subject: who are they?
the mysterions

Subject: Bass player
What were the names of the musicians that help record “96” tears..

Subject: hey
hey question mark and the mysterians you are a good group you play good music where do you all go when you all on the road do you all go to buger king do you all go to wendys do you all go to pizza hut do you all like buger king do you all like wendys do you all like pizza hut i do i like buger king i like wendys i like pizza hut at buger king i like those whoppers do you all like whoppers thats what i get when i go to buger king is those whoppers there is nothing like a whopper boy they are good

Subject: 96 tears
dude you must have gotten your hands on that song by now, if not i can give an mp3.

Subject: 96 TEARS 45
DEAR WEB MASTER , I HAVE A 45 BY ? AND THE MYSTERIANS. SIDE 1 IS 96 TEARS,BLUE “ABKCO” LABEL, MANUFACTURED BY ABKCO RECORDS INC. ,MONO , # 4020 , (XRQ-75039) , ABKCO MUSIC INC./MYSTERIAN MUSIC / ED ARGUILLO BMI , TIME 2:57. SIDE 2 IS “I CAN’T GET ENOUGH OF YOU , BABY”, BLUE “ABKCO” LABEL , (LINZER/RANDEL) , MANUFACTURED BY ABKCO RECORDS,INC. , MONO , # 4020 , (XQR-75040) , SATURDAY MUSIC , TIME 2:00 .

Subject: hey (same sender as above)
hey question mark and the mysterians what you all have been doing for me i have been playing with my playstation playing with my radio playing on my computer playing with my bose watching dvds on my tvo and watching tv on my tvo i am sorry i have not send you guys any emails thats because i got other rock and roll stars to send emails what bands do you all like do you all like white snake judas priest acdc van halen motley crue scorpons night ranger billy squier billy idol tom petty and the heartbreakers the cars duran duarnboston the police phil cooins bad company queen aerosmith pink floyd led zeppelin kansas foreigner black sabbath blue oyster cult bon jovi def leopard fog hat sammy hagar iron maiden kiss mega deth men at work metallica ozzy osbourne styx twisted sister stevie ray vaughan skid row def leppard quiet riot ratt poison winger guns n roses lover boy lynyrd skynyrd queen asia genesis meat loaf molly hatchet so tell me all of these rock and roll bands which one do you like and which one you dont like do you like all of them or you dont like all of them i like metallica there is not nobody out there can play like metallica because they are to good they play alot of good songs they are just to good

Subject: Your music
Please have a look at the attached file.
—————-
Viruses found in the attached files.
The file mp3music.pif: Virus identified I-Worm/Netsky.J. The attachment was moved to the virus vault.

Maybe the loud colors and disjointed layout just attract the stupidheads. Who knows.

Goodnight.

Posted on

chin on chest

I have no home.
Monday night and I’m up late, in one of those don’t-want-to-go-to-bed moods. Listening to a new album by a group called Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! that is really rubbing me the right way. Reminding me of the Arcade Fire, although they don’t sound much alike at all. I’ve got the blinds pulled up and the window open, inviting the cool night air into the room, along with all the sounds of late-night suburbia: the teenage neighbor boy arriving home from wherever his coming-of-age took him this evening, the occasional chirp of a cricket, and sprinklers spraying to life in the distance. In some ways, this is better than sleeping to me; but I do love my sleep. It’s nice; it strikes me as the first time in a while I’ve had the luxury of sitting here with nothing to do but write and listen to music. Work tomorrow will be busy, but not so terribly demanding that I go to bed ASAP. So I’m gonna sit here and do nothing for a bit, because I can.

5:30pm on Tuesday and I’m dozing off on this call… the action of my head dropping forward waking me from a moment of rest. I don’t know why I’m so tired lately, but today I have an agenda. Immediately after this meeting, my last of the day, I’m gonna run to the gas station. I’m gonna fill up the truck, and fill up my new little two-gallon gas can with an oil/gas mix for my new two-cycle blower. Then, it’s back home to mow the lawn and use that newly gassed-up blower. After that, I want to finally unpack my suitcase and do a proper level-setting cleaning job in the kitchen, y’know, catch up to where I should be. That’s what I want to do, I’m hoping I stick to the plan. Lately, there’s just not enough time. Neither of us have time really… Sharaun comes home from her day that begins at 4:45am and just wants to crash. I’m severely unmotivated for some reason, and have been feeling more tired than usual – I think I may have a sinus infection that’s been lingering since my last trip to Taiwan. Complain, complain, complain… I’m sure it makes for exciting reading. My apologies.

While I didn’t get a chance to TiVo it, because I only learned of it yesterday morning at work, I did read the text of last night’s Bush address in full on the internet. And while I concede it was indeed a well-crafted speech, I still find myself coming back over and over again to Bush’s “new” agenda of tying the war in Iraq to the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Fine, there are “terrorists” in Iraq, and “terrorists” flew planes into our buildings. I simply cannot understand how people don’t remember that the #1, unquestionable, unmistakable reason President Bush gave this country for going to war was the purported “fact” that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Whether or not ending an evil regime or freeing a tyrannically ruled people or waging the global ware on terror are noble and just causes for a war, they are not the reasons America voted for war. When did that become OK? You know, I’m not one of those calling for the immediate withdrawal of troops, at this point that’s pure folly and will only lead to anarchy. But I am also not one of those people who have managed to seamlessly transition from supporting a war against a country who presented a real threat by having weapons of mass destruction, to supporting a war to end an evil dictatorship and free a populace, to supporting a war that is just the “… central front on the war on terror.” I respect our soldiers and the job they do. But, as a nation, I do believe we were lied to, and manipulated by the administration with regards to the justification for the war.

Here’s my random one-sentence thought roundup paragraph. Friday noon we leave for Oregon, doing the long drive once again. Spending the long weekend at my folks’ place, looking forward to the time away from work and this abominably messy house. The crabgrass is back in my lawn, I noticed it’s return today… and it’s back in force. This time, however, I decided I’d turn to my friend the internet to find a solution. Looks like I can get some stuff and totally kill the bastard-weed while we’re in the early days of summer… so I plan to act fast. I imagine it like I’m swooping in at the last moment to rescue the lady tied to the tracks, just before the train bears down on her. Downloaded and messed around with Google Earth tonight, and found it really really awesome. It’s a free download, and it does some amazing stuff.

Goodnight my friends, goodnight.