its already mid july. incredible. what have i been up to? um...
jody and cassidy's wedding shower / backyard party at greg and hannah slamen's house.
through the sparks at the nick. a lot of people came out for that one. i drove a drunk guy home in his car. i also did a projection for the show. alison and i drove some meth-head girl to the waffle house.
the twilight screening back yard party at greg and hannah's house a week later:
greg and hannah put up a big cotton background that i had bought for the TTS show. they screened / played an ac/dc concert, the 5 min comedy scramble "randy whetstone" we worked on last fall, monty python and the holy grail, a big chunk of blondie on new year's eve '79, the concert for bangladesh, and as we were leaving, they were playing the concert for george.
we want to make this a regular thing. lots of fun. lots of empty tall boys. and the best part... one of their friend fried a turkey. don't knock it.
i did a lot of rehearsing last week for a show with john strohm and 2 back to back shows with through the sparks. also, in the past few weeks, alison has gotten me HOOKED like a rock monster on the ABC series, LOST. now that the sopranos are gone and jericho is in limbo, i needed a new drug.
the week before last, i went with alison to see jello biafra at bottletree. this was a BIG DEAL for bottletree, and to a certain extent, the booking agency start-up known as secret history productions, spearheaded by leah (of redblondehead) and brian teasley. if bottletree is china, secret history is taiwan.
i had seen jello speak and FSU in the fall of 1991 when i had barely turned 17. he was booked by a friend of mine, the ever elusive political genius jeff draughn, who had actually given me my initial political education in the late 1980s. when he spoke at FSU, he talked for a mindblowing 4 hours. it required an intermission, but it was also rabid, informative, detailed, funny and galvanizing.
this time around... the older and heftier jello was still talking about oil. and corruption. and energy. and iraq, and a president named bush. it was very odd to see jello for the second time... basically sidestepping the clintonian 1990's... to hear him in an updated scenario. we watched him for about 2 hours and then split... we had assumed that we had seen most of his spoken word performance... two bands were scheduled to play later that night. here's a pic that i stole of my friend andi with fat jello at bottletree. so... anyway...
APPARENTLY, JELLO BIAFRA ENDED UP SPEAKING AT BOTTLETREE FOR OVER FIVE HOURS.
jesus. ok, moving on...
the 4th of july was pleasant. alison and i watched lost, went shopping for blank media of all kinds, and went to the (finally) apple store at the summit to check out the incredibly surreal and dreamy i-phone. then i had to do some rehearsing. after TTS rehearsal we went down to southside to see the fireworks, in what must be the best location in southside to see them.
a lot of her friends, and some of our mutual friends were there...
this past weekend, i rode up to chattanooga with alison and hannah, and did a last minute interview / podcast for the band. they couldn't get there any earlier, so they asked me to bring some live tracks from their cd release show... the podcast went pretty smoothly i suppose. it will be posted this friday. i also started reading an interesting book called the future of music, published by berkley press.
friday night we played jj's bohemia in chattanooga, and we followed a sad (sucky) indie trio and a retro / noisy, but entertaining band that reminded me of a mash up between the doors, the mc5 and the stooges. the staff was nice and the "mixed" kinda redneckish crowd was eventually won over by our set. and that dude with the glass eye got some action from the back section. i'm sure of it.
there were also some interesting characters outside. we all stayed up late drinking box wine, then got up and went to the aquarium. actually, alison, greg, hannah and myself. the rest of the caravan went on to athens, ga.
we got to athens about 6pm on saturday and checked into a startlingly posh 3 bedroom suite that included a balcony, washer/dryer, dishwasher, flat panel tv's in every room, including the bathroom. quite hilarious. all weekend, hannah took a bazillion photos. i lurve her camera.
the show with strohm went well as did the TTS set. great sound check... no crowd to speak of... one thing that was amusing were the massive number of individually designed make-out rooms back stage at the 40watt. i'd never played there before. tons of couches and rooms backstage as well as out in the main venue. the corners of the venue were decorated like unique retro living rooms. the guy who runs the place bought us dinner and made sure everything went as planned.
we got up late in a rush and unloaded the gear from the venue on sunday. had some diner food and headed home. not bad for one weekend. the only disappointment was the low turnout and the fact that 13 ghosts didn't play robert j.
this week i'm watching more episodes of lost (trying to catch up) and i'm working on compiling footage for the spots cd release show this saturday night, as well as future material for TTS shows... probably in late summer / fall. also... my mom essentially won her case against a complete cocksucker named david broom. i hope his head explodes in a microwave. i hope for his sake, we never cross paths.
and lastly... i'm making plans to go to (possibly) london, nyc and los angeles in the next several months. this week and next i'm also enrolling in some computer / design / programming courses at samford. i'm also buying a gun. more later... jody and cassidy are getting hitched.