Ha, fancy that.

I have a show tonight with the boys at the Bistro in Hayward.

We play 8:30 - 9:15, and there's no cover charge.

I know it's a bit of a hike from  here, but if any of you happen to be in the area and feel like a pint, you should stop by for some...

: O "la la la..."

Hooray!!! The grail quest for a new bassist has ended.

/drum roll

BENJAMIN STRANGE has agreed to join our merry band of miscreants.

He recently transplanted himself to our fair port city from good 'ol N'Orlins. Apparently, he prefers his water in a bay as opposed to around his ankles...

...welcome to dry land Ben!

Is unsolicited sniffing with the intent to woo illegal?

It should be.
( Read more... )

as of 8am this morning...

A wouldbe fan just told me that my music was "adult contemporary."

Direct quote:

"...a mix of adult Toriesque contemporary with the little bouts of dissonance. Really original!"

I am, apparently in the same category as Michael Buble...and, and...and another dreaded Michael....

...Bolton.

/sob

I need chocolate.

Scratch that.

I need to go home and write a song about heroin using only 2 chords.

Then proceed to go out to a dive bar, get blisteringly drunk, start a fight and then get incarcerated on charges of sex with a minor.

As much as it costs, there's something very comforting about having an "on call" sound engineer.

If *IT* doesn't work.

Then I just call him.

Morning, noon or night.

He picks up the phone.

He speaks the words.

I do what the words say.

And then...*IT* works.

Magical, isn't it?

I paid my dues hunched over Tascam 4-tracks and barely functioning P.C.'s with over-taxed, wheezing CPU's.

That was the old me.

The new me delegates...

...and enjoys every, blissful, second.

Ha.

Here's a second lecture he did on "Time Management".  Also very cool.

This is spiffiness...my Mom just sent it to me.

It's funny.

I'm straight.

But when I listen to Martha Argerich play there are moments when I really feel like I am in love with her.

On some deep, dreamy level it feels like I've kissed her, lain down on cool sheets with her and listened to her heart beat and know her scent as if it were home.

When she plays she is the love of my life.

Those are the best musicians, the priests and priestesses who summon something from another world in you.

I'm going to go see her perform next March at Davies Symphony Hall if anyone is interested in joining me.

She barely plays here, in and around SF, so it's an extremely rare and exciting opportunity...if you like this sort of thing.

For those who don't know who she is, here is the wiki link. She's hailed as one of the world's greatest living pianists.

I was Sonseeded...

...I can't decide whether my eyes or brain hurt more.



This was sent to me by my musician friend Kevin Ian Common of "The Common Men".

They're a Sacramento based group.

We met in college and were in a band together...
( short jaunt down memory lane... )

I finally finished this song called "October Girl".

It's this cabaret/Hollywood musical style, celebration of quirkiness and dark satire.

I started it 2 years ago?

It kind of just got put on the back burner and then, ironically, this month made me remember it existed and how much I liked it.

So I finished it.

It turned out so well it's going on the album.

Ha.

I love serendipity.

: )

( Lyrics... )

So this weekend I was awoken by the cops knocking on my door at 11:30pm.
( Read more... )

Got something I didn't expect, but liked.

Got something I expected to like, but didn't.

How bizarrely satisfying.

( babble, babble, babble... )

Just got this in my inbox.

All you need to know about this picture is:

1. My travel companion, Doug, and I got blisteringly drunk in London one night.

2. We stayed up until 4am, wandering the streets, laughing ourselves wobbly, imagining sketch parodies featuring "Rare Subterranean Horses", which Doug concluded roamed the tube stations in the deep of night.

3. Doug has way too much time on his hands.

I'm reading the weather report and having a hopeless fantasy.

Actually it's more like a visceral urge, or something.

I want to curl up in an over-sized, cable-knit sweater with a cup of Voges hot, sipping chocolate next to a fireplace and stare out a window at a wintry landscape, blanketed in snow. The wind will clack the black tree branches against the window as the warm, honeyed light from a fireplace makes my cheeks all rosy. I am reading a yellow-leafed antique novel from the late19th century about something terribly scandalous, probably "Anna Karenina". Ravel's "Gaspard de la Nuit" and "La Mere L'Oye - for 4 hands" are playing softly in the background.

/shakes fantasy from head

The closest thing we have to snow in this part of NorCal are Slurpee's at 7-11...

...stupid Mediterranean climate.