in class all week

ok. back to work

the coral - magic and medicine



ok stuff. if you like the kind of music belle and sebastian make and late 60's folk rock and psych, you might dig this album. some of it can sound "bar rock" at times, but i think that kind of music was popular in the 60's also. uh oh. i'm feeling the urge to skip tracks. a bad sign. i initially liked this cd for the first 30 seconds, but it's beginning to wear thin.

hated it!

chris clark- empty the bones of you



ooh. another warp title! more downtempo electronic to meditate to (or write code to, in my case). not as minimal as req (see below) and not as hip-hop oriented either. so far i like this a lot. think boards of canada but not as boring, but just as eerie. first iPod worthy title of the day!

two snaps up!

req - car paint scheme



warp is one of my favorite labels out right now (anti-pop, boards of canada, broadcast, etc...) so this cd caught my eye. so far it's just what i would expect from that label. avant gard electronic minimalist downtempo breakbeats that you could rap to while smoking a phat blunt or bumping it in your ride (kids, "ride" is what you guys call "whips" these days, no thanks to jay-z) if you wanted. one thing i notice about hip-hop related forms of music is that the english are great at making beats while in america, we've lost touch with our innovative hip-hop music making skills, but we can rap our asses off. i like this CD a lot, but i don't know if i'm entirely into this stuff on it's own. maybe if REQ collaborated with sunspot jonz (see below) they both might have a masterpiece to talk about. on one track we got another cockney MC (Kid Acne) flexing his "skills". a hundred times better than the overhyped two years ago, english rapper, the streets, since this chap can actually rap on beat. bloody good, but still a bit cheesy (the english shouldn't rap...sorry). overall. this is a great downtempo album.

two snaps up!

sunspot jonz - don't let em stop you



i've slept on the whole living legends crew. some of the stuff i've heard by them so far has been pretty mediocre (as most modern rap, no matter how "underground" it is, seems to be these days). i have a problem with a rap crew that proclaims themselves legends, so already sunspot has started off on a bad foot with yours truly. KRS ONE, Kool Keith, Rakim, Chuck D, De La Soul, Q-Tip, The Roots, Antipop Consortium, etc... have earned the title "living legend" from their legacy paved by goundbreaking hard work. well sunspot jonz calls himself a living legend, so lets see if he deserves the title. i'm already on the third track and getting bored. boring beats, boring flow that i've heard a million times before. "legend"? don't make me laugh.

hated it!

Nellie McKay - get away from me



this lady looks like kathy lee gifford or something on the cover...but what's this? a parental advisory sticker? what the... ok i got to check this out! so far it sounds like the kind of vocal jazz you hear on NPR after 7 pm. pretty relaxing stuff, but not what i normally listen to. usually i hate this kind of jazz unless it's sung in french, otherwise it reminds me of the theme song to Fraser. i'm still trying to figure out where the curse words are. whoah.. the third song is a rap song. she has some weird accent..like russian or french or something... she's actually not bad at flowing. o she said "motherfucker!!" rad! and at the end of the song you hear here say "aww shit". this is some crazy shit. all over the board..oh here is the french song!!! still not exactly my cuppa tea, but i got to give it props.

two snaps up!

Truby Trio - elevator music



the title of this album is pretty accurate... electronica meets elevator music. elevator music you can dance to? a little disco here and there. is that a good thing? i started skipping tracks after the fourth song to see if there was anything good on this piece-o-plastic. a bad sign.

hated it!

i will be reviewing various cd's throughout the day that i've never heard before

and did i mention?




the buzzcocks were the greatest punk band

that's all i've been listening to this week

new-ish radio dept. ep


great stuff.

get it.

i wouldn't mind commercials so much if more of them were like this

record collecting fa... er... um... freak



so a few months ago tower records had this huge sale at their warehouse. the first hour was for employees only. luckily niki is an employee so we were second or third in line, and once they let us in i couldn't believe all the amazing stuff i was finding (and makes me wonder...why is tower hiding all the good shit in storage and keeping their stores out of the loop). dan from tonevendor isn't an employee, but we let him sneak in anyway.

so anyhow, i first walked over to the LP section since i still listen to that medium (and at least once a year i get invited to dj somewhere...and it's way more fun to spin wax than aluminum/plastic) and found some crazy 60's garage/pop reissue records. i hadn't heard of most of the stuff i was finding, but i grabbed everything (since they were a buck a piece) all on 180 gram vinyl...later it turned out that some of the stuff i scored were of bands you would find in the nuggets box sets...surreal!

later on i made it to the cds and couldn't believe my eyes...it started with a tall dwarfs cd, then something by the terminals...and it only got better from there (the clean, look blue go purple, two flying nun compilations). niki ran into suresh, who is the neighborhood expert on kiwi-pop (and the lucky one who found a bats rarities comp..the bastard!) and found the flying nun records goldmine and kept advising us to "get this and get this and get this and get this..." before we knew it, we had 15-20 flying nun titles, most of which were of bands neither of us had even heard of before. well, most of the stuff turns out to be david kilgore side projects (you would think every band in new zealand required vocals from the dude)...anyhow..slowly but surely i've been getting through all the cd's and last night i happened to put on "what happened to ray" by the great unwashed... amazing stuff.. very clean-esque (dave kilgor's first post-clean band..get it? the great unwashed..hahahahah!). great stuff!

and the moral of the story....

50 cent was robbed of the "best new artist" award at the grammys last night

reason 4,080 for not letting you co-workers know you are in a band



you get these kinds of emails from that other guy who plays guitar and wants to jam with you all the time:

Hello,
Some of you might have heard me mumble some stuff about a redesigned acoustic guitar. The guitar sytle is called Kasha. Named after Dr. Kasha who is some sort of scientist that has a great interest in acoustics. So he redisgned the guitar to maximize volume, and tone. Apparently, this guitar will produce the first fundamental harmonic on the low E string, which is normally impossible with acoustic guitars. Think of it like a Chello producing the famous "wolf" note. Here is the web page www.boazguitars.com. Boaz is now the official Kasha guitar maker, meaning he still works with Dr. Kasha on new designs. Boaz guitars are about $12,000, but he does give lessons to begginers that will produce the latest Kasha guitar design called the "Clarita Negra" for about $1,800. The lesson includes all of the wood, glue, tools etc... it’s the good brazilian/indian rosewood, and euro spruce.

I forgot to mention,
Last night I stopped by Guitar center on my way home, but the custom knobs looked like crap so I didn’t get them. Anyways, I was thinking about that tremelo/vibrato effect that I was looking for (simulates a whammy bar). They didn’t have anything at center that was cheap anyways, so I went to Steve's and ended up getting the BOSS PS-5 with the expression pedal. It does exactly what I've been looking for, except the tone isn't quite as rich as natural tone, but its cool and now I can do psychedelic whammy stuff.

I just stopped by your desk, but you weren't there. So I took a look at the Ei tubes. They look exactly like the ones I got except they are not gold tipped.

I really doubt the "gold electroplating" helps all that much. Take a look at the groove tube/sovteks of the same size. The Ei's use maybe 1/5th of the amount of metal, way cleaner design.

I compared the JAN tubes I have with the new Ei power tubes I bought , and they look about the same. The JAN's might be slightly better made.

At first I tried the Ei pre-amp tubes with the old JANs, and it was an extremely noticable improvement in tone over the groove tubes (more of a dynamic tonal range so to speak). When I put in the Ei power tubes, the sound was a bit tighter crisper, but I think that has to do with the fact that the JAN tubes were about 5-7 years old.

nothing



last night munia (my other band) played at old ironsides. we had this old guy working the sound who kind of reminded me of that "company computer guy" skit on SNL ("you don't know what you're doing...MOVE!") which i thought was kind of funny. i didn't take the guy too seriously, but figured he knew what he was doing sound wise so i did what i was told (to a certain extent). i'm used to playing places where the band will set up, and the sound guy (if there is a sound guy at all) won't tell you anything and you don't find out until half the room has emptied out and/or after the show that "the guitars were way too loud and hurt my ears" or "all i could hear was bass guitar" from friends, so i was happy to get the levels right before anyone showed up. chris, on the other hand, was really offended by the dude. i don't know what to say. i keep telling him to chill. we sounded good and we'll probably be invited back, so there shouldn't be any hard feelings.

obscenities on tv are the least of this country's problem



first janet (it's "jackson" if you're nasty...i'll be recycling that joke again and again) now this?

thank god for internet...

nigerian email scams, now this?



seriously. if you have 7Mil to give me, you better be able to afford your own email domain

Ref. Number: 919347/749-0
Batch Number: 3566465021-0TA/03
CONGRATULATIONS!!!!

Attention Leon,

We are pleased to inform you of the result of the Lottery Winners International program held in Dominican Republic on the 25TH NOVEMBER 2003.

Your e-mail address attached to ticket number G276017-487 with Serial Number 493-678 drew lucky numbers 7-28-87-65-69-73, which consequently WON in the 1st category, you have therefore been approved for a lump sum pay out of US$7m (SEVEN MILLION
US DOLLARS)

CONGRATULATIONS!!!
Due to mix up of some numbers and names, we ask that you keep your winning information confidential until your claims has been processed and your money Remitted to you.

This is part of our security protocol to avoid double claiming and unwarranted abuse of this program by some participants. All participants were selected through a computer ballot system drawn from over 20,000,000 company and 30,000,000 individual email addresses and names from all over the world.

This promotional lottery program takes place every three years and is being sponsored by Bill Gates, President of the World Largest software.

We hope with part of your winning you will take part in our next subsequent stake that will be held in December 2003; US$20 Million to be won in the international lottery.

To file for your claim, please contact our Fiduciary/Processing Agent
Dr.Marcus Winston OF CROWN INVESTMENT COMPANY office in CANADA, who is
our accredited representative for the processing and legal documentations of your claim. You can reach him on: email address:marcuswinston101@yahoo.com

Please be aware that the Paying Bank will Effect Payment Swiftly upon satisfactory Report, Verifications and validation provided by our processing Agent; that would be designated to your file. Remember, all winning must be claimed not later than 12th of March 2004.
After this date all unclaimed funds will be included in the next stake.

Please note that in order to avoid unnecessary delay and complications kindly remember to quote your reference information in all correspondences. Furthermore, should there be any change of contact information,

Please inform our Agent as soon as possible.

Congratulations once more from our members of staff and thank you for being part of our promotional program. Note: Anybody under the age of 18 years is AUTOMATICALY DISQUALIFIED from this and subsequent lotteries.

Yours Sincerely,

Mike Leroy.
Lottery Coordinator


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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if i have kids i want them to be british



tonight i'm going to try out as a bass player for some new band jeff is starting. i have no idea what the music is like. i'm thinking mellow. i want to use my big muff π if it sounds right. hopefully it works out!

full weekend

friday

• free mumia practice


• finished recording new frenchmen demo


• recorded pastels cover with niki on 4-track as the first step to our new cover band "crush groove"

saturday

• went to amy's house to mix down demo


• played a show at the brainwash with munia


• obessively listened to frenchmen demo the whole ride home (i love it!)

sunday

• lazed around most of the day


• cleaned apartment


• registered for a dope ass mixer at macy's


• finally ate at the new mikuni's by my apartment. i love sushi

http://www.lovethefrenchmen.com/cgi-bin/emAlbum.cgi

places i've been in the US


create your own visited states map


kinda sad