Rough month. Don’t wanna make it seem worse than it is, but August is the worst, the way I’ve been working the last couple years. At least I made a realistic effort to break out of it this year instead of just thinking about it and doing nothing or hoping for some kind of long shot that might never happen. I could still get a call from the places I applied, but I made it through summer so I probably won’t think about that again for another few months.
Checked out the makeshaft recording studio of a fellow local musician/recordist. I’ve mentioned him before by name, but given the current state of internet privacy, don’t think I should again for the time being or any further details of his operation as he’s dodging some bill collectors. Nothing too drastic, but it was somewhat…nice to talk to someone in a similar situation to me but slightly (or much) worse financially, because he still manages to do things like breathe and walk around. Which is inspiring. He also still gets some things done with music. Remember getting things done with music? Hm.
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Something with music
A small piece I made for a project George Korein came up with called One-Finger Piano. I guess if enough people do one it’ll come out as a comp.
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RIP Jon Cook
I wrote about Jason Noble of Rodan dying before and going through a backlog of news I found that Rodan’s bass player also died in February. I don’t know what to say about it except I’m going to listen to his other bands I didn’t know about.
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Youtube, Vimeo & bookmark management
Cleared out my “Watch Later” list. I had to make a point of it. Vimeo wasn’t as bad but it’s the same thing, it gets like hoarding. Stuff from over a year ago, sometimes really random bullshit. I’ve tried to make it a regular practice to clean out stuff. I was using Pocket (f.k.a Read It Later) but I was a little too obsessed with cleaning that out cause it tells you how long each item has been there so if you got something from 10 days ago you feel like a total failure even tho it’s like 10 Ways to Hack Your Toothbrush and none of that shit is important or you would have read it right away. Gotta be some middle ground. And it wants you to sign in now so it’s backing up your bookmarks in “the cloud”. How bout NOPE. And Pocket is a dumb name. Can we have no dignity? I’m going to tell people I’m “pocketing” blog posts? Fuck you.
Anyway, sometimes I upload things to Youtube. I had a problem with the sound not syncing so I deleted some and put them on Vimeo. There’s a bunch more I haven’t bothered with. But now I tried with a longer one and it tells me I need a pro account and I’m not dealing with that right now so I tried Youtube again and it seems to work better now.
Here’s one from the Trail of Dead at Maxwell’s:
I should get to the others. I don’t usually bother trying to do videos anymore because every motherfucker does it now and they’ve probably got something better than me. But sometimes I can get something good cause I’m not looking at the screen.
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Shadowrun Returns
Played this all month since I had no money to go anywhere. Backed the Kickstarter last year and I was excited then but it took them way longer to finish they originally said and I almost didn’t care anymore. I just thought the idea of Shadowrun was so cool when I used to play the RPG from the books, I was OK with giving them money to make something new with it and I don’t even need to play the thing. Finally got to it and they did a great job. It’s on Steam but I got the downloaded desktop version with the first campaign on it and played it to the end. I never played the console game and don’t get into RPG console games in general so to me it seemed like a mix of the ideas from the tabletop books and the really good old Sierra games like Police Quest. Loved it. I hope I can use my character in future campaigns. I’ve thought about Shadowrun more than I’ve played it, I could go on all day about the different character archetypes. It was really good to be able to get back into it. I went with a Human Adept this time. More of a sane thing to identify with. I’ll stop.
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Podcast roundup
Last month I mentioned that Marc Maron interviewed some musicians and it was a little awkward, but I really hadn’t listened to the Thom Yorke one yet. I just assumed that would be the worst, but it might be the best Thom Yorke interview ever. He just did Maynard James Keenan too and that went pretty well too, totally down to earth. Man these guys have mellowed out. Not in a bad way, but some of the old interviews with these guys were actually hilarious they were so difficult. The John Cale one great too, altho he seemed to think that one was awkward went it wasn’t I don’t think. Maybe he read my post and started getting self-conscious. I still tend to think of writing on the internet like it’s yelling at the TV sometimes. This is a good filter to install in your brain, famous people: “Is this person talking to me like I’m supposed to hear it or are they yelling at the computer with their keyboard?”
I’ve been catching up with the Black Tribbles podcast and went all the way back to May. They did a cool episode about Ultraman and Frank Miller’s Martha Washington series. I read the original Give My Liberty series when it came out and thought it was great but then I gave up comics for a while. That’s one I need to go back to. Too bad Miller has lost his mind but what can you do. I like all their movie episodes too, but I have not see one movie all summer. I don’t know if I’ll ever catch up with TV shows so I haven’t listened to most of those episodes.
The MetalSucks podcast with Greg Puciato of Dillinger Escape Plan got into some stuff. Interesting that the site is based in NYC where most of the writers live but they got these guys from Texas to do the podcast. Get some different perspectives.
Also Mike Hill’s Everything Went Black needs a general mention. I might not agree with everything on the show, but I’m over boycotting everything I don’t agree with 100%. Like I had this period where I was into some crazy stuff and I had friends who are even farther out and it got too much and I had to go full straight science, nothing else. Couldn’t deal with anything. Now that things have settled down—I said this about Buddhism too, which may not have been clear—I’m not part of another religion now, I’m just not angry about it all the time. You can’t put people that go to a chiropractor or an acupuncturist or who read their horoscope in the same category as people who want to teach creationism in schools. It’s not that big a deal. It also comes up in the WTF with Maynard that people who make art worth paying attention to usually believe in some non-rational things. I’ve just been getting back into agnosticism, not formally but just being able to see it from that perspective again. And I’ve been inspired to get into shape by some of these Metal dudes. It’s really been positive, getting back into Metal. I was really more into the nihilistic side of Punk. There’s a lot of Punk vs. Metal discussion on this show. He’s a little older than me so it’s a little more real for him but it’s something I think about a lot. Younger kids might not think about it at all, I dunno.
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So I logged into the new Myspace
I actually tried to delete some the old songs I had posted, but there seems to be no way to do that? So I updated the profiles. So what. If it seemed useful again I would use it, but it does not look that way, and it doesn’t seem like anyone else is really using it. I don’t know what they’re going for. But anyway, my old profile mix came back. That’s something. So they only deleted all of the blogs and pictures and videos. So I was wrong. Sorry, Myspace.
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More final words on Maxwell’s
Uh, Justin Timberlake played a show at Maxwell’s even tho it’s closed, just cause he can. Apparently, that guy can just do whatever he wants. He’s got some money or something. I had no idea. Whatever, I don’t hate him. Anyway, here was a nice Yo La Tengo at Maxwell’s retrospective post that didn’t get reblogged over on tumblr. I had some other thoughts about all this I can’t really sum up right now. But I mentioned the Maxwell’s closing to my recordist friend and it barely registered with him. I was surprised it didn’t seem like that big a deal to him but he’s a little younger than me and I think it might be like when CBGB closed for me. I never actually went to a show at CBGB. I had been to the place and I would have liked to see the last shows there, but I didn’t make it and wasn’t really devastated. I understand the historical significance but it was never my place. Maxwell’s wasn’t really my place either, but it seemed like it could be my place. Like I was going there as a newbie in the early 00s, but I was going to go back, and it was going to be “my place”. The regular hangout. That’s what it felt like. Then I’d be just like the rest of the regular crowd. Now I’m never gonna be like that regular crowd. There could be a new hangout, but that’s a different dream. There’s nowhere to back to for that particular thing. That’s why I’m a little mad about it. But I didn’t really fit anyway, I’m wired different. It was like I was trying to sit at the wrong lunch table and I’m too old to keep trying to do that. But it was a good distraction for a few years, I don’t know what I would have done. %
#1 by Jim on 2013.08.31 - 08:29
I may be causing some controversy cosigning the radical right-wing views of Thom Yorke.
#2 by Jim on 2013.08.31 - 10:22
The new Shadowrun is also a lot like Bloodnet.