Music Hates You

Sebastien Grainger may be alright after all.

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I actually really enjoyed Death from Above 1979, but the Pitchfork-axis jungle telegraph was all het up about whether or not Sebastien was a colossal prick or not.   

I stumbled across Sebastien’s solo MySpace page today.   I have always thought he was a fantastic drummer, and I tried to model my duo group (with Zaxx from Music Hates You, alternately called Inkfist, James Dean Death Guitar, or something else) as a cross between DfA1979 and Emotional Legs era Leaving Trains.  

I am particularly feeling the symphonic Cheap-Trick-meets-Built-to-Spill pop of “American Names” and the Big Star/Sparks stomp of “I’m All Rage.”  Check out the naked telecaster sting of the intro contrasted with the sweet string section in the chorus.  Really lovely.  

The solo album comes out in early 2008.  I’ll snag a copy as soon as I can and let you know what I think.  

In the meantime, I hope to see more pictures of his dog. 

Sebastien's dog. 

Back with Music Hates You

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I got back to Atlanta on Wednesday, got to bed at two a.m, or so, then was up the next morning and back to the Day Job. Hi, boss! Eight a.m.? No Problem!

After work, I met up with Music Hates You and we went back to Atlanta to play the Drunken Unicorn with Hope and Suicide. It was good to be home- MHY hadn’t done a lot of publicity for the DU show on the outside chance that I might have been delayed coming home and they would have been forced to cancel, so, the show was kind of sparsely attended. The lovely gentlemen of Zoroaster were there, except for Dan, because he never comes to our shows. Dave and Eric from Doomsayer were also there. It felt like a proper homecoming.

I would guess that there were between 7 and 10 thousand people at the Furs’ Costa Mesa show, and there were between 7 and 10 people at the Drunken Unicorn. Oddly, I was totally alright with that. “Become attached to action, not the fruits of action.” It was good, deeply satisfying on a fundamental level, to play with MHY last Thursday. It was nice to peel the lid back and let some “Hell, yeah!” fly out.

There was some of the usual craziness later, only more so. Some things don’t change. I got two hours of sleep and was back at work on Friday. Yep, I am home.

Who do you want to make your stuff?

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and are you willing to pay the difference in price?

This is footage shot inside the Zildjian plant. They make thousands of cymbals a week. Amazing technology for making perfect cymbals:

and this is Robert Spizzichino, artisan cymbal maker from Italy:

I like Spizz’s cymbals a lot, but they’re not durable enough to be Music Hates You cymbals…

Maybe if i played more of this kind of stuff:

Keep the X in Xmas

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There’s a thread over at The Velvet Rope about the toxic effects of Christmas music, and what the worst Christmas song of all time might be.

I have no strong opinion of what the worst might be.  I tend to hate all of it.  I am not a big fan of the Holiday, honestly.  My brother was trying to make some sense of his Seasonal Malaise over at FDL, last night.  God love him, I haven’t forgiven the holiday for being a heaping pile of materialistic shit.  Part of this stems from the fact that we rushed home from my tenth Christmas on our Fair Planet so that my folks could finalize their divorce papers on December 26th.

I can’t imagine what lawyerly soul thought that was an excellent date to euthanize a marriage.  Seriously.  Couldn’t wait until January 3rd?  WTF?

In the meantime, my XMas music solution is to go over to the iPod playlist called “All Melvins, All the time.”

Back out on the road

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I honestly don’t know what got Willie Nelson so het up about it. Maybe it’s just because I am sick… again, and headed out on the road for four second hand smoke-filled days. And not to Benissa and Madrid and Brighton. Tonight is Spartanburg, South Carolina. Tomorrow is Winston-Salem, North Carolina. After that, Wilmington, NC and Charlotte, NC.

It’s gonna be fun, I am sure… it’s just that right now only one nostril is working properly (why DO they switch?) and I have about zero energy.

No rest for the weary, I guess.