The New Album Compels You, It Whispers 'Hand Over The Ten Dollars'

This weekend was great! I saw Wilco at Slugger Field on Friday. It was the first time I had seen Wilco and also the first time I had been inside Slugger Field. The band was just outstanding. Wilco is one of the few bands I have seen that can play which such understated intensity as to make you feel like you and everybody else in the big baseball field are listening to them play in a tiny little club. I had been a sort of indifferent to their new album, and now that I have seen many of those songs live I feel as if I understand them a little better. I don't have any pictures because I didn't take any, but I think like half of the people that read this blog got to hear most of the concert over the phone. So, you experienced it too.

Loren, Jeremy, his wife Julie and I went to Rich-O's in Indiana on Saturday night. I ate a whole pizza (we each ordered individual 11" pizzas) and drank way too much, which was okay because I was not driving. There is nothing interesting about that except that it made me notice that on the occasion that I drink a lot (which happens next to never) I always seem to crave parmesan cheese. Like, last night at the bar I was literally unscrewing the top of the Parmesan Silo and dumping a mound into my hand and eating it. The stuff tastes incredible.

Okay so I guess now that I read that paragraph back I realize that a craving for parmesan cheese is not really very interesting either.

Allow me, if you may, to use the rest of this post to catch you up on the band--it's been sort of an exciting time for Paradigm. We are finally done with our second album--we've got like twelve hundred copies of the bastards, just sitting around in our apartments. We have shows in Carbondale and Lexington this week, and we will sell them there, but we are going to wait until our release show on Nov 2nd at Headliners to sell the new ones in town(PLUG PLUG PLUG). We're starting to play shows all over the south, which has helped our crowds in Louisville because we don't play in town nearly as much as we used to. We also have a distribution deal from ropeadope records in the works, and before you get excited, it's not really like a record deal, because they're just taking our albums and selling them online, and then doing some basic advertising around the Northeast. Its not like the traditional deals everyone tells you to avoid--no tour support or royalty checks or recoupable advances or anything like that.

Also, last week we got #2 for 'Best Original Band' in the LEO Reader's Choice poll. This doesn't mean a whole lot, or at least as much as it used to, because we think the results got skewed a bit by the fact that you could vote online. This basically means you, the band, can send out a bulletin on Myspace to your three thousand friends or whatever and they can all vote. Thus, a couple basically unknown rock acts beat out people like Wax Fang, of whom is pretty much considered the next My Morning Jacket. Also, a lounge act beat out the Liberation Prophecy in the Jazz category, which we found ridiculous (really, they're like the SNL skit with Will Ferrell and Cheri Oteri. They beat out a group whose album has NORAH JONES SINGING ON IT) but that's the way it was and so there. I think it came down to whoever had the most friends on Myspace. We have a TON, so you can see why we did so well.

So anyway, we got to go to a big reception dinner thing, just like last year. They pass out free food and alcohol, and you basically just walk around and mingle. This time, there was also an improv comedy group that performed and a belly dancer group after that. I thought it in bad taste to be standing around with a boner at an awards ceremony, so I went outside when they went on.