shawn avery

so... i haven't made a journal entry since the end of april. i've been super busy. so much so that i actually pondered hiring a HS kid to do errands for me this summer. this is gonna take a while to update. i'll try to stick to just the facts and provide some links and photos here and there. might as well start with may '06... very interesting stuff. my two musical projects are going to merge for an evening... artwalk 2006...

thursday ... the spots played for the alabama independent moviemakers networking party. it was just three of us playing and we really didn't play anything all that interesting until the end. but the end was worth it. its hard inventing music on the "spot." it was very humid, but it was a good time. i picked up mary jane from the airport at 11 and we went to marty's for a few mins. friday ... i watched the bridges midday set in 145 degree weather. they played about a 20 min set and did a cool medley that included the "i've got soul but i'm not a soldier" line by the killers. all of their songs are hits. its stupid. their harmonies were super tight. they had some kind of issue with an acoustic for a second and i think nat blew a speaker... but they rebounded nicely. they'll probably be like taylor hicks soon... a talented local act that blows up big and then forgets my name. they are playing at the railyard this weekend. ran some errands and went s...

i went to see the strokes at sloss furnaces. this is the 2nd time i've seen them. the 1st time was at 5 points music hall. my friend daniel and his band cutgrass opened the show. it was the early fall of 2001 and the strokes were at their zenith of buzzworthiness. it was a blisteringly great set. not so much the case at sloss. i haven't really liked anything they've done since the first record. the sound at sloss is notoriously horrible. the only reason anyone plays there is the surreal, intesnse industrial aeasthetic of the tin-roofed concrete hall. they tool a while to get on stage... julian seemed drunk. the crowd was listless. luckily i spent most of the time talking to a group of friends and wondering around the premises, which are quite interesting at night. (note): a year from now, in may 2007, i'll direct, book and organize an under-attended, under-appreciated two day music festival at sloss, which will take place in two different areas of the sloss site, ri...

check out this killer vid from missing persons. this is 1983 . the casual listener was unaware that the singer was an intellectual playboy bunny, the drummer was/is considered one of the best and most technically proficient of his generation, and the guitarist got a gig with frank zappa in his teens. pop rock is sly like that . here's the video for words . i hate it when people disable embedding. welcome to the nascent ingredients of my pop sensibilities: we are dropping a track called "night" and replacing it with an early contender for the record, "goodbye." ashby calls it his funeral song. i know... we are so upbeat. i'm writing a treatise on the year 1982. more mention of missing persons later. i'm still working this out in my head. its kinda like therapy, but instead of focussing on childhood angst, i'm looking more at the quirky bands that shaped my 7 year old brain.

some peeps in phoenix are making a movie... and great photography, and my boy matt is throwing down some great artwork... all my luv goes out to him. a lot of my west coast (phoenix, LA) friends are going to coachella... i'm jelaous. but its all good... i went to the 1st and 2nd coachella in '99 and '01. its been exactly five years since i last shaved my head, so last week i went and did something stupid and shaved it again. yucky. i look like a rat. some people dig it, most probably not, but my hair grows fast so whatever... got a "web" friend that i was out of contact with for a while... and now we are chatting again. its good, cuz they are beautiful and so am i. kim captured my shaved head on film. hmmm... let's ramble... single lines : the senate is trying to dismantle FEMA the weather today in bham is incredible there's an art festival in linn park tomorrow caldwell park, across from my cribb, is in full effect spring is good kim is cute the record is...

i'm sending out my props... welcoming veda evelyn riggleman into the world. she was born on april 12th at 12:30pm at oakland mercy hospital in detroit, michigan. her parents are my dear friends kristen and casey riggleman, who i haven't seen in years. they also have a son, isaac. i'm gonna see them asap. also... it is becoming apparent that i have an important choice to make. and it is surreal.

well will you look at that. two postings in a week. i've decided that since i get half of my comments from emails from here and the other half from comments from myspace, i'm going to try to integrate the two. its great to be able to post blogs that have been subscribed to on myspace... but it sucks that there's no real / coherent format for blogs on myspace. i'll figure it out. if you haven't already noticed, the site has been halted for the 452nd time. i have ONE MORE EDIT to finish, which will be done by thursday night. I HOPE. as of this friday night, if the cosmos is on my side, we will have v 1.0 of our record on disc. what does this mean? it means a week or two of listening on every possible system and taking notes... at that point we will go back in the studio and make the needed tweeks in order to get it to sound good in the "real world." since we are leading up to the mastering process, i've been listening to alternate media lately. cassette,...