i don't know what happened here, this post got erased and replaced with spam.
dumb. i guess this post was about how my life might be changing forever cuz they might not let me have my vacation time for the shins tour.
or something.
it all worked out.
wow. well, i guess someone at the sf weekly must love us. i only hope we can live up to their expectations...
apparently, rogue wave is the best next big thing in the sf weekly's best of san francisco 2004.
It seems like only yesterday that we fell in love with Rogue Wave's debut CD, Out of the Shadow, a collection of frontman Zach Rogue's bedroom recordings that melts contemporary indie rock into '60s and '70s sunshine pop. Come to think of it, it was only yesterday that we fell in love with that disc. In less than a year, though, Rogue has led his assembled band -- multi-instrumentalists Pat Spurgeon, Gram Lebron, and Sonya Westcott -- onto nearly every stage in the Bay Area. Together, the members of this Oakland-based outfit have retrofitted Shadow's songs, added countless more to their repertoire, and attracted a following that most acts work years trying to gather. Most recently, the musicians signed with indie juggernaut Sub Pop Records. This summer, in addition to releasing their Sub Pop debut, they'll be the tour-opener for the biggest band in indie rock, the Shins. It wouldn't surprise many around here if, by fall -- just a scant year and a half after playing its first show -- this band were bigger than Jesus. Catch Rogue Wave on the small stage now, or pay the price (literally) when it's selling out the Fillmore next Christmas.
so then, the fairy lands and we drive into port townsend and walk around on the beach and on the grass and past some quaint little shops. it was so relaxing and just what we all needed. i laid in the grass and stared at the sky. thinking about awesome sauce. we had some kind of super kick ass dinner at this little italian cafe that is megan's absolutely favorite-est restaurant (bloodshittingly good, to use her words). man was it kick ass, i ate and drank so much. once we were all good and stuffed, we headed back to the fairy. i love riding fairies. that was about all that happened worth mentioning on that day.
last nite was pretty awesome as well. i went to see the good old shindersons @ uc davis. the decemberists also played, they put on a pretty good live show.
the shins, on the other hand, kicked out the jamz. the kids were loving it. crazy sing alongs and crowd stomping encores.
i think i was the oldest person there besides the band.
afterwards, i met up with marty and dave for drinks at the 6th street tavern.
i could taste the humor.
we are going to be trouble on the road i can already tell.
maybe you come see rogue wave on thursday may 20 for bike to work night @ DNA lounge? we play @ 9:15.
then you could also come to our mission creek music festival show @ cafe du nord on monday, may 31st with some other bands i can't think of right now.
you can look here to find out i suppose.
do you want to know our tour dates with the shins? we're leaving june 2!
well, you can find that here
love,
gg
well,
i definitely shook off my blahs. friday was lunch with eli at her house. bloody maries. mmmh. off to subway guitars to get a new back up guitar for the tour. i got another tele with 2 humbuckers. it rules. it may become my main guitar. don't ever go into subway guitars in a hurry. that fat dawg guy is crazy. he'll try to make fun of you, but don't let him.
me: hey, i'd like to trade in this weird rickenbacker thing i got from you.
fat dawg: sure! i'll take that back. this is a great guitar. what happened?
me: it's just not a good back up guitar for me. i need something more tele like.
fat dawg: thats stupid to have 2 of the same guitar, why don't you get something different?
me (having been to subway several times before and not in the mood to be belittled): when i break a string onstage at the fillmore, change to that ric, and have to reach back mid song to turn up the volume and re-EQ my amp, i decided it would be better to have 2 of the same.
fat dawg: oh, so you're bragging now?
me: i'm, just being honest. (he didn't get my "hey ya!" reference)
fat dawg: silence
me: i brought you a CD of my band like i said i would.
fat dawg: oh, thanks! i'll enjoy it even if i don't like it.
me: ok.
and that was the last bit of lip i got from him.
i wasn't trying to brag, but i needed him to understand that i'm a working musician and don't need to be berated for my lack of apprecation for esoteric, hard to play guitars. i just need a solid backup to take on tour.
anyhoo...
saturday we flew to seattle where megan from sub pop picked us up. we met up with our other awesome sub pop friend, tony, and went to lunch in alki. kick ass. then, one of my favorite parts of the trip: we hung out in tony's new living room, listening to music and talking. a couple ipods, some cds, a lot of good geeking out. i love these folks. i feel special. then dinner with more sub pop folks at shanghai gardens. and then my favorite, KARAOKE!!!! the bar in seattle, i can't remember the name, but they encourage the audience to sing along, which ranks this establishment very high on my list of karaoke spots. plus, the karaoke DJ is a short quiet, asian man that loves to get up and do a few numbers himself every hour or so. almost a rainman type, so loveable and friendly. turns out, only pat & i are brave enough to get up and sing. so, over the course of the nite, we dueted on such classics as 'footloose', 'love shack' and 'say, say, say'. it was a beautiful nite, filled with tofu, singing, makers mark, and wonderful new friendships.
sunday, we headed to port townsend, a little town across the bay from seattle. we rode on a fairy, i mean, ferry. and megan told us the story of springer, the little orca whale that lost its family and ended up following the fairies, dammit, i mean ferries, around like surrogate parents. eventually he was saved, but not before he befriended a piece of driftwood that he used to play with and scratch his body to relieve the itch from the skin disease he had acquired while away from his "pod". so megan says she wants to write a children's story about it. which would be rad, especially if the piece of driftwood was anthropomorphic (with human characteristics) and named 'stick'. so i suggested the children's story be entitled 'springer and stick'. after a moment of silence, we all fell down laughing.
shortly after, while standing at the aft of the fairy, i came up with a new kind of sauce. awesome sauce. i am not sure exactly what it is yet, but most likely it is orange in color and chocolate flavored (zach's idea). we'll see how that goes. sometimes things come to me in the strangest ways.
ok, that is part 1 of this several part bloggishness.
please bear with me. you know you love it.
gg
today is blah. blah. blah. today i am trying not to freak out about how many things i have to do before i leave for the tour.
another show on our tour with the shins just got added in ventura on june 2, which is rad, but it means one less day of work and one less day to get ready. thats OK. i can deal.
this weekend i go to seattle to see sub pop, next weekend i go to little rock for my sister's wedding, next weekend after that i go to new orleans for the tape op conference for the third year in a row. then i fly back and head directly to cafe du nord where we play our mission creek music festival show. 2 days later i'm on the road for a month.
why in the world would i be complaining? dumbness. fear of not getting it all done mostly. but i know it will get done, cuz it always does.
wow. life is cruising and today i feel like i'm just along for the ride.
i will be back in the driver's seat soon.
holy moses, coachella!
go HERE!!!
and download these jpgs and then convert them to mp3. its brilliant! who would have ever thought!
you'll freak out. i am right now.
if there was no beatles, it would be pixies.
on a related musical note,
did isaac brock really back his car into a cop car the other day?
you know what? it doesn't matter. its music, its art. its what we love and it isn't that important whether its taken literally or not. its like not knowing exactly when to use apostrophes, so you just leave them out.
we still feel the same. do you really need to know if there was a sexy sadie or a happy jack? music is fiction too.
can you learn to be a better drunk? and is it even a good idea?
i love the new modest mouse record becuz it makes me feel.
is there so much beauty it can make you cry?
even if things end up a bit too heavy we'll all float on. OK?
e-mail is only half real,
golden gram
it's been in my head for years now. ever since one of the first times i rode BART. there is this building you pass on the way to the west oakland stop from 19th street called the glove building. somehow i started thinking of it as the love building and then i imagined there must be a company that runs the building and it would of course be called the love building company. so that is my new company, LoveBuildingCompany. it is some kind of update to ClubSafeParking i suppose, but it's not a physical place or company. yet. it exists in my mind and my heart. aww. so, keep that in mind. its a meme. its meta and cyber and virtual. let it float around your brain and think about love building company. it is positive. it will bring people together eventually.
i saw kill bill vol. 2 last nite. i suppose i should have seen vol. 1 first, but i really only went cuz my friends were going and in retrospect i don't think it would have mattered.
call me crazy, but i don't care for quentin tarantino films.
his scripts feel really awkward and forced. sometimes its funny and on purpose i think, but mostly it just made me feel uncomfortable. the dialogue is just bad a lot of the time, and if it is supposed to be bad on purpose, it doesn't make it any less bad in my mind. but what bothered me most was the females. they were total male fantasies. it seems really obvious these characters were written by a dude, cuz i had trouble believing they would say and do the things they did. i felt it was a fairly misogynistic film. i know it is supposed to be kitschy and retro and all, but i guess i just have a hard time watching men oppressing women in any form. yes, i know she kills him at the end with her silly 5 finger death exploding heart trick (which, by the way, was totally braindead foreshadowing) but that didn't make up for the rest of the movie. did i ruin it for you? aw. did you really think she wouldn't? you saw the first one right? he shot her in the freakin' head.
it seems like quentin tarantino has made a career of rehashing movies that weren't that good in the first place and marketing the kitsch as something new and cool. seems to me that what is cool about watching old kung fu or russ meyer films is that they had no idea how ridiculous it was. to do it now seems socially irresponsible. and really lazy. make your own damn movie.
go rent beyond the valley of the dolls or enter the dragon
jeez, listen to me today. so sensi rock. maybe it was that death cab show the other nite. maybe i should move to portland...
this weekend i go to chico to play acoustic rogue wave for our friends, toby and val, wedding. is that good english? i don't care.
now i'm going to go eat @ house of nanking with a hot and saucy friend of mine. awesome.
happy friday and have a great weekend.
hi everybody,
today is my birthday and my theme song for the day is fluke by mates of state.
it just keeps coming on random on itunes. crazy! it makes me want to climb up on stage with them and play tambourine, oh wait. i do that all the time.
last nite i saw the thermals, ben kweller, and death cab for cutie at the fillmore.
that was rad. the thermals were slamming. i didn't care too much for ben kweller, but death cab made up for it by totally rocking. i had no idea they rocked so hard live. i got a big sweaty hug from ben gibbard afterwards and then headed over to sadie's for honky tonk nite where i had too much makers mark and forgot some stuff i think. today is my birthday and i came to work @ 11:30 and you can bet i'm going to be leaving here soon. you can also bet on how old i am. how old do you think i am? you're probably wrong. no really. you are.
i wish i could talk to my blog the way ajax
does, but then i'd be ripping him off and that is not cool. you know what else is not cool? that dude didn't even blog today! on my birthday! jeez. well, thats his loss really.
jury duty is over. the LA trip is over. i am exhausted and refreshed. i am eating a cherimoya, my new fruit of the month. i am back at work and it is strange.
tv on the radio kicked a lot of ass, every show we played with them was packed and by the end of the night there was no question why. lately i have been surrounded by the most amazing people and it is making me feel more amazing too. i guess i could write some about the trial. it was an asbestos related lung cancer case. the dude was a smoker for 35 years. by the end of the case, we were not convinced and we sided almost unanimously with the corporate defense. surprising you may think, but not if you had listened to the 2 weeks of testimony of teary eyed family members, "unbiased" experts and slick lawyers. i am all for taking down corporations, but for the right reasons. i was fairly insulted by the drama the plaintiff's lawyers tried to create. so that was that. i did get to see how the systems works (or doesn't) and i'm glad i did it. i learned a lot, mostly about how insecure and selfish people can be. it's fun to watch people thinking they are hiding their motivations and prejudices from you with their "brilliant arguments." rogue wave continues to prepare for our tour with the shins and the release of out of the shadow on july 13th. we are crouching tiger.
love,
gg