Eggshell Twist

I thought this was cute--in searching around the internet today for the holy grail of snare drums, I found one of the most interesting descriptions for a drum I had ever seen, which was obviously done by taking a description of the product in another language and then hitting the 'translate' button:


Ludwig Supra-Phonic Snare Drum, Bronze 3X13 Inches (LB553)

The Ludwig Supra-Phonic Snare Drum features chromium-plate metal eggshell twist that offers a brilliant, stinging, and crispy go form in a mould on a throng of masterly soda water and jazz hits of the utmost particular decades. The Supra-Phonic snares ar marvellously antiphonal, a lineament that's farther enhanced by their triple-flanged hoops. The 6-1/2" rich edition produces rich, juicy intone and outstanding acoustic projection. 10 attic lugs, by the agency of a P-85 throw-off. A various beat that's hone in spite of styles ranging from symphonious to scene of action sway.

All product descriptions should be like this; I don't really know what any of that means, but I want it.

In Rainbows

Yesterday I downloaded Radiohead's new album 'In Rainbows.' Many of you know about the deal by which you get this album: you go to their website and decide what you want to pay them, and then they email you a link to download all the files. You can put nothing in the amount if you want to, or you could put like 500 dollars or a thousand dollars.

I chose to give them the equivalent of ten dollars. Not to say I couldn't have gotten it from Brian, who downloaded it on Wednesday, but I decided that my payment would be a proverbial middle finger to the RIAA. I think a lot of people felt like this too--if there weren't so many good bands involved with major labels and thus the RIAA, I'd look into boycotting their music entirely. That Radiohead did what they did outside the confines of a major label was pretty ballsy. Plus, it looks like they made a lot of money, too--1.2 million downloads in the first day or two, with the average donated amount coming in at around $8.50 a person.

This is a huge deal for me, especially considering what I was always told in music school: when you sign, labels give you a big chunk of money to live off of, and you have to pay it back with the insignificant 12% royalty you agreed to in the contract. Essentially, you don't really profit from this system unless you either sell an unbelievable amount of albums, or invest all of the advance money and find a way to get yourself dropped from the label. It's also pretty well known that majors are sustained by their biggest sellers, and if Radiohead can be successful selling albums on their own, maybe some of the other big acts can be successful as well. I am hopeful for this because I like the idea of being able to bend the rules of the game once you've played it well enough.

As far as how I like the album itself, I've only really listened to it twice, so I'm not going to make any judgments. The one that sticks out to me so far is 'Weird Fish/Arpeggi.' I'm also kind of into 'Videotape' although I hear it is not quite up to the live version.

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.

Thrust, Parry, Riposte (from 2005)

I was cleaning out some files on my computer tonight and I came across a little personal journal folder that was hidden away in one of the folders I kept the stuff for my poetry class in(contest: try to write a journal entry that contains a more mangled run-on sentence than the one I just wrote. Can you possibly manage? I dare you I double dog dare you). This particular entry was dated Sept. 18th, 2005, which makes it almost two years old. It's sort of funny and if nothing else is a neat little time capsule.

***

Long ago, okay three weeks ago, I signed up for a fencing class. Why, you ask? a couple reasons. One was that I for some reason felt the need at the time to sign up for as many classes as possible (no seriously, they're not letting me take any more) and that was a one credit class that met once a week, with no homework. Bingo. Also, it meets on Friday. Friday is my one day with lots of free time, which is nice because if I am too spent at the end of fencing class, I can go home and nap.

Today was the first day I actually went to class. Why didn't I go the first friday? I was sick. why not the second? I couldn't find the gym. That should tell you quite vividly as to how in shape I am.

The instructor didn't believe me, but she let me make up the missed classes anyway. while the rest of the class was learning the jump lunge, I learned the basics, via the grad TA, who was sort of a drill sergeant and kept yelling at me when I wasn't pointing my foil directly at his head. "At my HEAD, okay? not my chest. my HEAD."

I found it easier and easier to rationalize doing so the more he yelled at me. If there is one sport that I figure everyone would be a big nerd in, it would have to be fencing. Must every PE class imply the title "Intro to ROTC?" You could tell he had played a lot of Dungeons and Dragons or Magic when he was younger, and in going into the training I took a lot of solace in that assumption, but he still managed to turn out to be a jackass. I bet all of his D&D friends thought he was a jerk.

So, in the course of an hour and forty minutes, I made myself learn the positions: on guard, four position, six position. Don't ask me what they mean, I just know how to do them. I learned advance and retreat and thrust and parry and riposte and jump-lunge and all of that crap. it was a lot for an hour and a half, even 'boot-camp,' the graduate assistant, had to admit.

-as of yet, we still have not learned the "Laugh, And Then Jump Off Something" move.

One girl was particularly helpful (and cute) with teaching me how to disengage, and didn't even so much as yell at me when I hit her in the vagina (it was an ACC-I-DENT) twice.

-the incident subconsciously reminded me how long it has been since I've gotten laid. And also that my next lay would probably not be that girl.

I've Been Talking To The Wall And Its Been Answering Mee-ee (Oh-Dahlin', HOWWWW I Miss You)

Ok, so I thought I would take the opportunity to post about the apartment Jacke and I moved into recently. The new place is a 100 year-old house on the north side of Bardstown road (on a side street called Tyler Parkway) and it sports an awful paint job, a charming porch swing, and an adorable courtyard in the back. It has a ridiculous amount of floor space. You don't get any pictures yet because I don't have any, and the place is not clean enough yet to warrant taking them. Rest assured once I get them I will post them here.

It has been a strange, stressful move for the both of us, but in my case it will be rough because it marks the first apartment that I have not been dying to move out of. Every other apartment I have lived in, due to either the people or the place, has given my pretty obvious clues in one way or another to say 'time to go.' The apartment I have been living in for the last three or so years has not really done that so much. There are annoying(and sort of borderline-tchochke) things about it, of course, but for all those things, it is a clean, inexpensive, easily managed place in which I immediately felt at home from the moment I moved in. This new place has not exactly done that for me yet.

Also, it is a stylistically different apartment in that it reminds me more of Old Louisville than it does of the Highlands. There are some nice, cozy things about it, but also some quirky, nonsensical things (like wallpaper in the kitchen. Why wallpaper? When is wallpaper ever a good decision?) and some completely ridiculous things like kitchen cabinets built into the wall that are made to be inconspicuous by being covered up with......you guessed it, wallpaper! Have you ever said to someone 'I bumped my head on the wall because you left it open'? Well, I HAVE. And it made PERFECT CONTEXTUAL SENSE. Also when you are using the bathroom (#1, standing) you have to watch yourself at work, because there is for some reason a medicine cabinet right above the crapper. Sitting down is not better, because the sink console, while a nice console, is directly in front of the latrine--when you sit, the cabinet handle balls are literally inches from your head. For this I count myself fortunate to have kept off the 60 pounds I lost in high school, because if I didn't there would probably be no way to drop the kids off at the pool. I wouldn't fit. It is also fortunate that I don't have very many overweight friends, because I would feel uncomfortable inviting them over for dinner.

As a side note, we have a CREEPY ASS BASEMENT, which is used to watch movies and play video games in. Also, free use of the washer and dryer(!) which is in a big room that seems to scream "I WAS MADE FOR YOUR PING-PONG TABLE, BABY!" and so we are currently looking on craigslist for one.

It is going to be difficult for me to adjust because the new place is not a modern apartment whatsoever and it does not lend itself to things I like in furniture, such as lighter wood tones and clean, straight lines. The symmetry in many of the rooms is not exactly correct. This bothers me on a fundamental level. For example, Jacke's room was an addition to the place, and we have decided that it was a poorly constructed one because the floor bears no pretense of being level, and thus there are a bunch of triangles all around the room where there should be parallel lines. I think that if I had this room, I would go bat-shit crazy in about forty five minutes. Jacke seems to love it, though, ostensibly because it has the antique look of a doll-house (as in, one that was constructed by a second grader) and so I just don't ever go in there.


****
I've been listening to lots of old Elvis Costello lately--really, what I've been listening to has been all over the map and it has been like this for a while, but in particular Costello's song 'Human Hands' from the Imperial Bedroom is often playing on repeat in my car. It was brought back to my attention by my friend Loren, who has a cover version by someone named Sondre Lerche, a younger Finnish guy that is starting to gain some popularity in the States, albiet limited popularity. Loren asked if I knew any Elvis Costello or had the original version, and so I guess I sort of rediscovered the tune after a night of listening to my old E.C. and The Attractions records that were gifted to me from a high school English teacher. The tune reminded my not only of how brilliant a lyricist Costello is (he and Dylan are playing here on the same bill in October. Can you even imagine?) but also of the people I am missing and how I am missing them; you might be one of those people I am thinking about. Actually, you probably are. Maybe you will get a call soon telling you exactly how much I am missing you. Yes, that sounds good. Many of these calls will be long overdue.

Thanks, Nice Package

Yesterday I got a package in the mail containing 15 random CDs. I have no idea who sent it to me. My address is written in pen, but it is written on top of a sticker with contact information for four record labels based out of Manhattan and a logo, of which I originally thought was a rose but on further inspection turns out to be the head of a pig in purple sepia-tone.

Here are the albums the package contained:

1) The New Pornographers--Mass Romantic (2003)
2) Pavement--Wowee Zowie (Re-issued 2006)
3) Pavement--Sordid Sentinels (Re-issued 2006)
4) Love Of Diagrams--EP (2006)
5) Stereolab--Fab Four Suture(!!!) (2006)
6) Shearwater--Palo Santo (2007)
7) Dead Meadow--Shivering King And Others (it says '2008' but I do not understand that because it is not 2008 yet)
8) Blonde Readhead--23, autographed by the members of Blonde Readhead (2007)
9) Voxtrot--Self Titled (2007)
10) Ratatat--Classics, which says 'Promotional Use Only' so there's no date on it
11) Electrelane--No Shouts No Calls (2007)
12) The National Boxer--Self Titled (2007)
13) The Early Years--Self Titled (2006)
14) Cat Power--The Greatest (2006)
15) Lavender Diamond--Imagine Our Love (2007)

The pattern here is of course that all of these CDs were released by the labels on the sticker, and are all fairly new. One of the companies, named Matador Records, is a label I have bought music from before. So, I thought that maybe they were sending stuff to me for being a 'preferred customer,' or maybe as a promotional tool. On the other hand, these are full albums, and I should be the last customer to be considered 'preferred' by Matador. I bought two Blonde Readhead CDs and a Barbez CD from this group of labels three years ago, and one of the purchases was from iTunes.

Maybe someone I know in New York works at Matador now (or maybe not--maybe a bunch of people have all been getting these packages in the mail. Maybe you have too!). I know Brennan Delaney lives in either Brooklyn or Manhattan, and after not hearing from him for a year and a half, he popped up on Myspace the other day and asked for my email and snail mail. That was Thursday, though, and the package came on Friday. He would have had to overnight it.

Anyway, strange little ordeal, but at least I have lots of new music to listen to. I didn't even know Stereolab was still together. The last I remember, the singer got hit by a bus.

It Is Maybe Stolen

Oh, man. I really lost my phone, like, I think it's really gone this time.

You might be someone I've been meaning to call. Give me a day or so.

You Were Wearing A Red Sweater, Immediately Afterwards We Were Attacked By Ninjas

E: Hey, Jacke?

J: Yes, buttface?

E: Remember when you asked me a while back if I had ever had a raunchy dream about you, and I said 'no,' and you got really embarrassed because you had and you just expected me to have had one?

J: Yeah?

E: Ok, well, we're even.

J: Allllllllll riiight! Chickachicka bow-wow!

I Like Hot Pants Simply Because, What You See Is What You Get, Hit Me Now

Earlier today I was asked by a studio-mate if I wanted to play at a benefit on June 2nd at a place called LaRouge. Normally, I would balk at the words 'La Rouge' and 'Do you want to play' being used in the same sentence (for reasons that have no business being explained here), but this particular show is different. The benefit is for a guy who lives in town who used to play trumpet for James Brown in the sixties and seventies. I don't know his name, but ostensibly he is old, diabetic, blind, and in a wheelchair. The studio-mate, Thomas, asked if I could put together some musicians to play three songs, two of which he would sing on and then one which the band would play by itself. I told him that Paradigm could probably do it, but I made sure to call our old saxophone player first and see if he was into coming down from Indy to play. He was.

I guess I kind of feel like sort of a backstabber for not inviting Myron to play, but our old saxophonist is better suited to playing funk, and besides, Myron has been playing terribly as of late. That in itself is not anything new, but I'm beginning to think the situation is making itself worse. Instead of just rolling our eyes when he misses a cue or a head, we have now taken to glaring at him or doing the 'shake-head-while-making-eye-contact' thing. When we do that it seems to make him lose confidence even more, and by the end of the gig or rehearsal, he's looking at us like an abandoned puppy and won't do anything unless we shout at him start playing again. I cannot have this sort of thing happen in front of somebody who has worked with James Brown.

The rumor mill also has it that Maceo Parker is going to be at this benefit. Needless to say, I've been practicing a ton lately and listening to lots of James Brown. I also bought three or four Maceo Parker solo records, and I've been listening to them too. Interestingly enough, the first two solo records Maceo made in the early nineties feature Larry Goldings and Bill Stewart(both are heavy bop players), and both at the time were about 23 or 24. I never thought I'd ever see myself write this, especially seeing how I idolize both of them, but the playing is ok. Not great, but okay. When you listen, you think 'wow, tight band' but you do not think 'geniuses.'

Show Me The Way To The Next Sushi Bar (Oh, Don't Ask Why)

Last night members of Paradigm (everyone but our keyboard player) played at a sushi bar called Maido. Maido is an odd place because the design is meant to make you think you are in sort of a hipster art gallery, rather than an authentic Japanese restaurant. Sushi bars in this town are sort of like that--very few of them do the traditional layout. They mostly look like art galleries and nightclubs, which seems pretentious, but I guess it's better than having fifteen places in town called 'Dragon Wok' or whatever.

Anyway, it was the first of what would have hopefully been a weekly gig where we would work for free sushi and beer and then eventually make our way up to recieving actual money. We set up outside on the patio where there is a tiny little stage. Everyone was pretty enthusiastic about how we played, except for someone who called the cops on us four times. It was always the same guy, and evidently nobody knew where he was calling from, because the owner of the sushi bar told us he knows almost everybody that lives in the surrounding houses and most of those people are okay. Here's a timeline of the events:

1) 8:30--start by playing stevie ray vaughan covers. Cops show up, ask us to turn down.

2) 9:30--start playing Stella By Starlight with brushes. Cops show up, ask us to turn down.

3) 10:00--stop playing. Order sushi and start eating. Cops show up, shrug their shoulders and ask us to turn down.

4) 10:30--have a beer with owner and waitresses on an otherwise empty restaurant patio. Cops show up, get out of the car briefly, shake their heads in confusion, and leave.

There's nothing more frustrating than knowing you are playing quietly and being told you are too loud regardless. So the gig was kind of a wash in that regard, but on the positive side, a guy showed up with a sketchbook and decided to sketch a picture of me playing. I did not know this was happening until afterwards, when I sat down to my sushi. The guy came up with the picture, and said 'From one drummer to another, dude. Thanks for the solos.'

So, for your enjoyment, here it is:



I was, of course, completely flattered. You might think to yourself ''I think he drew the head too big,' but you would be wrong. The head is about the right size.

**

Many of you know of my recent and borderline-unhealthy obsession with early Stevie Wonder. Tonight, in order to get anything at all done, I had to literally pry myself away from the his collection of videos on YouTube, and in particular, this video:



It's interesting enough to see Bootsy Collins in an interview, even if his comments are a lesson in complete banality. 'He was definitely funky! I mean, you can't cut that with a knife!' Thanks, guy. Pretty stock answer coming from such a pioneering bassist, but you have to wonder what kind of vanilla question he was asked in order to come up with that response. I imagine the situation: some keener white guy in a House Of Blues t-shirt(Clint Eastwood, maybe?) sitting on the other end of the camera, his first opportunity to meet and talk to the great Bootsy Collins. Star-struck, his mind racing, he asks the only thing that comes easily: "So, Mr. Collins, do you believe that Stevie Wonder was.....funky?" He probably used those air quotation things with his fingers:


.....was he funky?