11/29/4

Has it been a week? Last Sunday I recorded drum tracks for most of the APR songs, then on Monday I cut-and-pasted my way through the parts I got right, assembling a few of the songs more perfectly than I could ever actually play them. Then I recorded even worse guitar tracks, compounded by the fact that I borrowed Sam's guitar, but no distortion pedal, so I had to just slam the gain to the board to fuzz it up. Somehow, Monday night I still had time to rant on here about SUVs.

Then I worked a few days and left it alone. On Friday I edited some of the guitars I'd recorded, then on Saturday I made a trip to Mike's for his old bass amp with a blown tube, since Adam's wasn't working (I think it's the input, which got damaged and poorly repaired last year). I put down bass on one song, and immediately edited it into the mess, again better than I will ever play it in the real world (I'm a much better engineer than musician), so I could lay down the vocal as well and get the thing mixed that night. The results are just about as aggresive as I could hope for the song.

So, check out my demo of Little Friends, that Brian and I wrote around Mike's lyrics, which I describe as "a mysogonistic rant equating sperm to bullets."

After resting last evening, I spent this evening putting up the latest photos of The Band on their site. But I didn't make last week's mistake of missing Henry Rollins' Harmony In My Head show on Indie 103.1, which is always the best two hours of my week. They've been on the air almost a year, and I still can't stop hyping the underground cool of a station actually owned by Clear Channel. Weekday afternoons you get Steve Jones of The Sex Pistols spinning 70's glam and early alt-rock, Wednesday nights you get a metal show, Friday nights you get techno hosted by The Crystal Method, and Sunday nights you get a reggae show. That's not to mention the rock en espenol, the punk, Nina Blackwood's New Wave Nation, rockabilly and surf-punk on The Watusi Rodeo, obscure imports on Passport Approved, a local-music show, and the silliness of Camp Freddy.

All these specialty shows (which are only one or two hours a week each, except Jonesy's Jukebox) are in between a format that the radio industry calls "modern gold", but I call a variety of things rarely, if ever, on the airwaves. In simplest terms, it's alternative rock. All of it. They play the latest from the big names (U2) and the underground (The Mooney Suzuki), 90's grunge like Nirvana and Soundgarden, 80's synth and alt like Depeche Mode and The Smiths, punk from X and The Ramones all the way back to Iggy And The Stooges. When was the last time, if ever, you heard The Velvet Underground on the radio?! And did that same station give you The Buzzcocks, Dead Kennedys, Love And Rockets, R.E.M. and Screaming Trees all within the same hour you got the newest from Probot and "Mass Destruction" by Faithless?!

The beauty of the internet is, anyone in the world can check it out!

Best of all, 7 to 9 on Monday nights, Henry Rollins plays WHATEVER THE FUCK HE WANTS, and believe me that can vary widely! Within one set of songs you may go from Billie Holiday to a gay, German death-metal band. He dredges up the coolest and most obscure weirdness from all across the musical (sometimes that's even debatable) spectrum. He has yet to play anything from before the 20th century, like Mozart, but he's touched base everywhere since. Don't miss it!

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