shawn avery

through the sparks is heading to austin once again for sxsw. this will be the 5th year in a row that through the sparks has played sxsw, and the 2nd time i've played with them. we will be there very briefly... from friday morning until sometime sunday, but i'm hoping to fit in a worthy sxsw experience. starting with flatstock : details /// among the other events i'd like to see... phantogram show on friday the 18th at the filter magazine day party, the fader magazine party... haha tonka... and i'm sure i'll see some unexpected gems. when i went to sxsw in 2007 i had a list of bands i wanted to see... but ended up not seeing very many of them. however i discovered st. vincent and the rosebuds along with a few other impressive bands. this year will probably be no different. i just really want to see phantogram. below is the show poster for the sxsw benefit show through the sparks is playing. there are 4 benefit shows all together.

first up... found this fake vintage ad campaign this morning. love this kinda thing. retro is my deal. also this is technically my first blog post of the decade. i found these images on what has become my go-to site for design oriented images, designspiration.net - this site is closely affiliated with my favorite blog, iso50.com . so i finished up the year at a very low-key year year's eve party in crestwood, in the midst of a crazy winter storm. the winter has gotten quite intense so far this year, with no less than 2 ice/snow storms, with one more on the way this week. more non sequiturs... my car still has a dent in the truck from 10/29/10 that i'll hopefully get fixed this week. still not moving forward fast enough with the synthesizer production muzak stuff. last month however, i did finish the artwork for the new through the sparks singles compilation titled "almanac (mmx) year of beasts." the idea behind the design, is to present an anti-album cove...

this was a weird event in my child hood. by the mid-80's i had witnessed numerous day and night launches in my back yard in central florida. it always impressed my how easy it was to see something in the air, that was actually launching off of the north east coast of florida. obviously, the entire planet to some extent remembers this, but its strange from a floridian male's point of view. we all wanted to be astronauts... until this happened.

so, i've become less active on this invisible blog/journal thing. that's cool, it happens. over the past year or so, i've finally warmed up to the ever changing interface of facebook. actually the newest update looks horrid, but whatever. in an effort to streamline my overall online-ness, and in order to keep my adult add oriented musings to a minimum on facebook, i've decided to use a more appropriate means of frequent, random blurbs posts. i'm going to the dark side. twitter. i'm not totally excited about it, but just as i think people should act and dress their age, i think people should use the right means of communication for the job. i find myself constantly deleting posts from facebook, in an effort to not overwhelm folks on my friends list. i'd also like to be able to post something and know that i can just leave it there for further reference, be it a video, a link, a phrase, an idea, etc. so, i'll be starting a twitter account on 01.01.11. m...

today the new through the sparks album finally officially gets released. its been complete for about a year, and was released digitally back in march. the physical release is based on the artwork of merillee challis and chris lawson, with addition graphic design by vic denali. it has been released as a digipak in the states and multiple online outlets. i didn't play on the album, but i've played pretty much all of these songs live and feel connected to them that way. although it took 3 and a half years between albums, through the sparks is already putting the final recording in place for a release of 2010 singles and are well into recording another full length that should be out by the end of 2011. not too shabby. we are playing a cd release show for worm moon waning this saturday at bottletree with rubys and sunny so brite. this show will signify the end of an era and the beginning of another for through the sparks. the new line-up is pictured above. the album cover and relea...

ok, so i really don't have anything to write about anymore. anyway... i just spent half a day trying to get my stupid saab started. turns out the battery just needed to be disconnected and reconnected. now its running. to celebrate, i put in my cassette copy of lusicous jackson's debut ep , in search of manny . their video for daughters of the chaos is below. what a quirky, incredibly indie ep that was. ever since purchasing my saab, i've been revisiting the glorious, low-efficiency world of cassette tapes. for the majority of the past 10 months, when i've decided to dive into my high school bin of cassettes, its been rush albums, home made tapes, or the cars album, candi-o . i also spent some time listening to the first missing persons album, a few yes albums from the 80's, some prince, van halen's women & children first and some assorted classic rock. a few days ago, i reached into the bin and grabbed a new handful of tapes. included in these: lou...

i've been playing a few shows lately at bottletree. here's a video clip from a show in early august with the greenleaves, playing our set closer written by brad lyons. and here's some pics from a show with through the sparks on 9/24. that was a pretty crazy closer- "friends in low places" was performed as an encore along with taylor hollingsworth and a few guys from the chad fisher group. i played another bottletree show with rubys last week, but i haven't seen any pics from that one yet. coming up in late october, i'll be playing bottletree yet again with my 4th (!) band... electroliner.