Shows

Beulah in FL

 

Your eyes don’t deceive you, Beulah plays Florida in May. I’ll probably go to Jacksonville at least and word is St. Augustine is booked as well, we’ll see. I guess this means I’m going to have to get around to giving Yoko a bit more time. I miss the crazy production of the first two, and, yes, I think the songs were better as well, but maybe Yoko will grow on me. She did on John Lennon, and they quickly ended up naked on an album cover.

And speaking of desicions, I really enjoyed a recent New Yorker article about modern man’s enemy: choices. Hopefully before the next French Horns show I will have chosen a more beautiful and trustworthy guitar amp, like this Music Man. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I need to hide under a rock for a few days.

Twenty Nine

 

Yesterday was quite an amusing afternoon. Immediately after work I hit the mall to treat myself to a used Xbox so I could finally play my copy of THPS 2X (think of it as the widescreen director’s cut of 1&2) that had been sitting around for months. Andrew planned a little surprise party at Satchel’s for me and the pizza was brought out with candles that merely fell over when blown upon

[Steve w/ 29 crown on playing guitar]
Steve at Satchel's 2003 | photo by Andrew Chadwick

Andrew, Josh, Tanya, Lynn, Tricia, Jeremy and Juliet made it and I wore a Lynn-crafted construction paper 29 crown…with red glitter spots! Two older gentlemen played various songs, mostly from the 40’s/50’s, on banjo, piano and trumpet, and it added the perfect amount of ridiculousness to the evening. Before leaving I rushed up in front of them for a photo op and ended up being cajoled into playing a song. I played You Belong To Me and goofed most of the lyrics. As we got up to leave I made one of my best/worst puns. They said something about church music and asked if anyone wanted to hear Olivia Newton-John, to which I remarked, "Let’s get hym-n-al".

We went back to my place and Andrew had secret pie! of banana cream, no less. I’m sorry all my friends couldn’t be there and apologize to those I didn’t tell. You’ll be excited to hear I already opened the disco level and, thanks to Natalie, we’ll be seeing Airplane on DVD soon.

I missed you in Henry’s Dress…

 

Don’t end up having to say these words. See Josh, Joe, Tanya and I rock Friday’s Cover Show (Wayward Council) as the one-and-only Henry’s Dress. I’ll be the one providing the head-bopping beats.

Wayward Council is next to Recycled Bikes near the corner of University and 8th St W. No, I don’t know what time it starts, how much it costs, any other details of importance other than I should show up sometime to play. Well, supposedly, other acts include the Jesus & Mary Chain and Operation Ivy…

Lately I’ve been listening to a lot of France Gall.

Signal dropped off as the clouds rolled in

 

A packed Common Grounds and I saw Holopaw, Iron and Wine and the Fruit Bats last night. Holopaw is on tour with a ridiculous amount of equipment, and it’s great to see them at home..sort of (most of them aren’t in G’ville anymore). I’m happy how the CD came out with great sound, songs and John’s awesome artwork. The Fruit Bats were a nice surprise, very 70’s California country-pop (but from Chicago) with tight 2-part harmonies. A nice evening of music all-around, as always spoiled by standing for hours in a tight crowd and coming home smelling like smoke at 2:30.

If you’re an amateur recordist or just curious how audio is transferred to vinyl, here’s a nice introduction to vinyl mastering.

Summer Summer Summer

 

I shall use this space to announce the creation of Gainesville’s newest, hottest, most superlative pop band, the High Five 4. After a month we’ve managed to record several demos, dishearten a drummer, miss out on the best possible opportunity to play our 1st show, and have one song described as having “Teenbeat goodness” by Paul, among other accomplishments. “We need a ride home!”

Alexander Pony is the tentative name of Mario & Alex Lopez’s collaboration and it has some sweet songs so I’m pretty excited to be helping them perform several of them live in mid May. I like what my friends are putting together lately.

The Masters of the Hemisphere played Common Grounds in support of their great new album Protest a Dark Anniversary and per usual the show devolved into a drunken heckle-fest. Still Josh and Dan managed to coerce them to play a song of theirs I’ve never heard, evidently called “Glory Hole”. Now, I’ve never doubted their originality, or tact, but it sounded an awful lot like another song called “Glory Days” and was a little blue. Any bands bringing the pop to Gainesville can expect a welcome from me.

Rocking Lately

  • Talib Kweli & Hi Tek “Soul Rebels”
  • April March Lessons of April March
  • Rumors of Paul moving back?
  • Sampson Servo-170 amp
  • Radio shows with Dan
  • Java & class GridBagLayout
  • XHTML, PNGs and Mozilla 1.0
  • Freelance work
  • More rocking than sucking

Sucking Lately

  • My efforts to save money
  • Delta 44 on NT
  • Cable-routing nightmare
  • Running out of room
  • Dan’s luck
  • Writing lyrics