I Fall To Pieces

Dance, Monkey

2012-01-24T23:06:00.003-05:00

I've made you a gift. I made you a gif. Guys what am I doing?

Forever.

2011-11-29T22:48:00.004-05:00

Dear Henry,

When are you going to get off your ass and get a real band?

Love,

America.

Matt and Melissa Got Married

2011-09-01T20:04:00.005-04:00

I was Matt's Best Man. I was asked recently if I was really the BEST man and I asked her if she really wanted to find out. It was a regrettably short conversation. This is my speech for Matt. He was pleased, if he was honest about it (and I have no reason to believe he wasn't. Love you, bro).

Hello and thank you for coming. One of my favorite quotes is from the great American movie "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," which goes, "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." This is a very important quote because facts get hazy as time passes, but the gist of this story is basically true.

I have known Matt for 13 years, and during most of that time he never drank. He didn't like it. He was one of those kids who says, 'It's like they made it taste bad on purpose.' So this had to have been fall 2006, and Matt and Melissa had been texting each other in the way that young kids do, and that was kind of cool and all, but she was living in Seattle and Matt was living with me in Brooklyn. There's
that little problem of DISTANCE.

Matt, Gary, Phil and Sam went out to San Francisco for Halloween to visit their friend and Matt and Melissa had arranged to meet up while he was there. Romantic, huh? Beautiful city. Magic. I hear nothing from Matt the whole week.

Matt comes home and he's kinda groggy and tired in that post-vacation way. And I say, "Hey dude, how did it go?" And he says, "Well it was a blast. I got my tire stuck on the Golden Gate Bridge and almost killed myself. But it was pretty cool."

"So how's Mel?"

"Oh, man. Well we met at some bar and I spent the better part of a night downing whiskeys to get up the courage to kiss her. I got totally hammered."

"You don't drink."

"Right."

I think the lesson is that Melissa drove Matt to drink before they even started dating. Please enjoy your evening.

drops mic, exerunt

Could There Be More Work? (New Work pt. V)

2011-07-02T12:24:00.004-04:00

New songs for you on a summer's day!

--------------------

The Devil Drives a T-Bird

Cancer Conductor

International Creeping

Here Come The Goyim*

Tune Yards

He's Undressing You With His Eyes (But So Am I)

Chinese Takeover (So Many Whites)**

Hired Tomorrow, Fired Tomorrow

A Delight But A Dilemma

Love Letter to Fucking Up***

Shitty Bangs

Wood from Elephants

Summer is for Lovers****

The Germans Speak to Me

Soundtrack to Kickball

Casket for a Viking Funeral*****

Trash Night Stands******

The Cards Speak in Metaphors

Shitty Luger

Grandma Tommygun

Unsocial Butterfly

--------------------

*This is a song about bikes, a subject I know little, if anything, about.
**This is a song about the trade deficit.
***This song should not be as emo as the title suggests. This is also about the trade deficit.
****I'm sure this song already exists somewhere.
*****This should be a sea chanty, but not sound like The Decemberists. I don't know how that's supposed to work, musically, but I think it can be done.
******Courtesy Melissa B

FUCK YOU

2011-06-21T22:44:00.002-04:00

Hey Richard,
I saw your photos on flickr from Hillstock 2011. I was wondering if you would allow us to use one or two of your photos (sans watermark) for an article on pro.billboard.com we’re more than happy to give you full credit for your photos.

Thanks!
--
XXX XXXXXX
Multimedia Editor
Billboard Pro
XXX.XXXXXX@Billboard.com
212.XXX.XXXX

A New Post on Identity, at 12:45 AM

2011-06-15T00:45:00.006-04:00

I finally took two pictures of Scout I'm happy with. Years of her being a Sphinx have ended, as far as I can tell. Sometimes you you can only attack a problem after solving a smaller, simpler problem (cf. Smallpox vs. Cowpox), and sometimes you can only succeed after a bloody mess of attrition (cf. Stalingrad, or Napoleon in Eastern Europe). This was a combination of the two (cf. That monkey from Futurama realizing that the hat goes on the head). I dunno, I feel like I've been on a hot streak, portrait-wise. These are they:

and

I gave her the one of the hair flip, because she liked it so much (as far as I could tell) and she also lent me her scanner so I can finally do a too-long-in-the-works website update and let me fuck around with her Mamiya 67 (!!!!). For this I was, and am, thankful. The only other Polaroid I have given away is to a Devil Whose Name I Dare Not Speak, because I believe in the Hail Mary and because, as I wrote at the time, "...If I give you this, I have nothing left." I was out of ideas, and it was a last ditch effort to make an impact on someone I thought I cared deeply for.*

Because I am so vain, I signed the hair flip, "To Scout, w/ love, RGIN, 6/12/11." The "RGIN" being a signature that I have not whipped out in MONTHS. I am not too far away from endorsing cheques with an "X." I sign tax forms and NDA's with a series of squibbles and malformed circles. I have no autograph. Not in the awesome Marty McSorley way, anyway. But I was able to sign, with a permanent marker, on an item that was literally one-of-a-kind, my name in a way that is both legally acceptable and historically accurate.

What does this mean? I guess it means that,

1) I have my priorities straight. That is to say, for day to day garbage and paperless transactions my "X" is good enough. When it really matters (frameable documents, depositions and immigration papers), I can become a legal, law abiding citizen on demand.

1a) That means I'm clutch.

2) I don't do enough things to warrant that kind of focus as a signatory. I mean, I have release paperwork in the pipeline that doesn't need that kind of performance. This bothers me, and I can't expand on that more without being completely insufferable (thank you for bearing with me).

3) Robert Crumb was right, and I shouldn't REALLY believe in autographs.

*I mean, I'm really curious where she is though so, "...thought I cared deeply for," is a little glib and melodramatic, but whatever. Bear with me.

Yet More New Work (New Work pt. IV)

2011-05-21T01:14:00.005-04:00

I wasn't in the proper state of mind to continue this song title nonsense. I am now.

--------------------

Date With Myself

Partner in Crack

Stuttering Darth Vader

The Edie Sedgewick of Nebraska*

Lesbians and Ghosts

A Delightful Weekend of Promiscuity

A Grand Rascal

Cheat You Fair

Mystery Veils the Desert

Monsters of the Past

A Hatchling

One Man Gay Parade

Black Santa

She Sleeps

Enough with the Hate Speech

I blew Up Your Body but You Blew My Mind

A Short List of People to Not be Trusted

The Forbidden Third

Wine and Sex and Love

Left Handed Monkey Wrench

The General would be Proud

I Need a New Person to Cause Me Pain

Christmas in My Lungs**

--------------------

*Attr: Ron Wax
**Attr: Olivia Drusin, but you know what they say about good artists borrowing and great artists stealing.***
***Stealing from myself 2011.

Interview IV, Henry Crawford, Take 2, 1/13/11

2011-02-28T17:17:00.009-05:00

Full disclosure: This is the second time I interviewed Henry. The first time, I threatened to purchase a bottle of bourbon, get him/us drunk, and talk about the life, and the music, for the hours until we blacked out or ran out of things to say. I made good on my threat. Nothing was taboo – I wanted stories, he told stories; I wanted him to name names, he named names. My plan worked so well that I didn’t press record on the machine. I assure you all that this lost interview was the finest and best thing I had ever done, and that the world is less for my blunder. In any instance, this is the second interview with Henry Crawford, at a diner in Park Slope, over a sensible, sober meal of tuna melts, cheeseburgers and watery coffee. This is presented as he returns to New York this week after six months in Chicago. As usual, most of what follows is true.

Rich Gin: So this is the second interview with Henry Crawford, talking about what it’s like to be Henry Crawford, living in Chicago and all that entails, and I think in the interest of thoroughness we’ll start back at the beginning and mention Cool and Unusual Punishment and power through that piece of information. So, Cool and Unusual was you, Jack [Greenleaf], Scout [Pare-Phillips], and Ian Cory…

Henry Crawford: …and for a brief time, Kenda Zapasodi. But that was very [brief], and Scout didn’t get into [the band] until about two years in. We were around for four years. I don’t remember how she got [in the band]. I think Jack just wanted another guitar or something and Scout was… there….

RG: A warm body to strap a guitar to.

HC: Right. But she ended up doing other shit, too. We were “Young Indie Band,” [she played] a glockenspiel. What else did she do… glockenspiel, keyboards, and sang. We [played] one or two of her songs that have since disappeared.

RG: You guys recorded though?

HC: Kind of. We recorded and EP that barely exists and think Jack Greenleaf, Eli Sidman and I are the only people who have it.

RG: And then where did The Mighty Handful come from?

HC: It was born out of frustration… Jack wrote most of the songs for Cool and Unusual except for one or two and I started writing more songs near the end – we started doing Uptown Drunks. At the last Cool and Unusual show we debuted Uptown Drunks and then Jack Ferencz and I started getting close and [The Mighty Handful] came out of a desire to front a band and be in a fast, loud band – to be in a band that wasn’t trying to do whatever was popular in 2006. In our minds we wanted to play in a punk band, but we ended up being a pop band, essentially.

RG: Do you remember what the reception was for Uptown Drunks?

HC: Of course. We were playing for our friends; it was really good. I think that was our second-to-last song and it was my first time playing guitar and [after] Jack Ferencz and Sam [Caravaliga] came up afterwards and hugged me and said, “That’s an amazing song,” and for a while after Sam was trying to convince me to let Tetsuwan Fireball play it and I was like, “I don’t think that’s gonna happen.”

RG: I recall someone saying how uncomfortable it made parents…

HC: Up until that point, we were in 8th or 9th grade – actually I was in 11th grade when I wrote that song – but up until that point we were barely teenagers and that was the first song that any of us had written that had anything to do with drinking or sex to a bigger degree than, “I have a crush on this girl,” [even though] that song’s about that too. I think at the first Mighty Handful show Aviva [Tilson’s] parents were like, “That song’s inappropriate; you shouldn’t play that song,” and we thought that was awesome.

RG: And then you had to play it every, damn, time…

HC: Right, then we played it for the next two years…

RG: I’m thinking about the reaction of the Handful at their end, and of Bad Teeth and you’re playing your first shows outside of Chicago as Small Wonder; you come here and a lot of people know all the words to the songs – do you think important validation of what you do? To have that kind of sing-along, audience participation?

HC: With The Mighty Handful and Bad Teeth it was definitely me writing songs that everyone could sing and I wanted to write these big anthems and with Small Wonder I’ve been trying NOT to write big songs as much – to write songs where the verses aren’t just build ups to the chorus, or the bridge isn’t just a chant.

I was watching this David Byrne interview where he said the venue you play in affects the kind of songs you write and I think that’s true. When I was in bands that would play a show every single week it was more about, “What can I do on stage while playing these songs? How will this song compliment Shea Stadium?” Now with Small Wonder we’re much more interested in recording so it’s, “What’s this song going to sound like when it’s mixed?”

RG: About recording – Sam [Caravaglia] was still making noise two years, a year and a half ago about trying to get signed – like that was something to strive for. Is that still a reasonable goal to have?

HC: Not realistically. I feel like if you get signed you’re probably going to do worse than if you’re NOT signed. I mean it seems like all you get from a label now is distribution and maybe a little bit of money. Still, I like the IDEA of being signed because if you get signed you can say you’ve “made it,” you’re a musician now. I mean we’re much more professional now than when we started but in my mind we’re still just kids playing music in bands.

RG: But your influences are just “Kids playing music in bands.” That has to mean something too.

HC: Yeah, that’s true. There’s a sort of Peter Pan complex with rock music in general. But as for getting signed, I feel like the sensation of being [in a touring band] now is basically the same sensation as hearing your song on the radio [used to be] in the 50’s. At least that’s the way I imagine it; the feeling of, “It paid off.”

RG: You talk about Small Wonder being more interested in recording, or at least being a more finished product. And of course being in a band is collaborative but… how much of Small Wonder is collaborative? Because with this band – they’re all your songs.

HC: Well, Small Wonder is a lot more collaborative than Bad Teeth because Bad Teeth, barring a few moments in a few songs, it was pretty much, “Do what I want, or I’m going to yell at you.” I wanted Bad Teeth to be the Henry Crawford Song and Dance Routine. Also with Small Wonder it’s Jack [Greenleaf], Ian and me, and since I started playing music I’ve been playing with Jack and I’ve known what Ian’s doing the whole time as well and I feel like there’s a certain amount of kinship between the three of us. So I definably feel like there’s a lot of collaboration but at the end of the day, if I bring in a song Ian will say, “What do you want?” So it’s collaboration but in the end the [choice] is on me – if I don’t like something we don’t do it.

RG: Talk about the relationship between you and Greenleaf. I kind of think of you two as brothers.

HC: I’ve known him since… Remembering a time that I wasn’t really good friends with Jack is very hard. With anything he was either “there” or I’ve placed him into it. Although Jack is the king of placing himself into stories – a master. The thing about our relationship is… No matter how proud I am of a song, Jack will say, “Oh. It’s alright.” And I’ll say, “Are you kidding? That’s the best thing I’ve written!” And he’ll say, “Yeah, I’ve heard all your songs. I set the bar higher.” It gets frustrating sometimes.

RG: That’s a good friend.

HC: Exactly. He’s also the type of person who’s able to make himself give a shit about things. Like, with The Mighty Handful, if we played a bad show it didn’t matter. Like, after a show I’d be like, “That was really fun! People were having a great time!” and Jack would say, “That was the worst thing I’ve ever done. I’m ashamed.” And he would give me all this shit.

RG: Well he was the one who wanted everyone to be in tune.

HC: Yes. He was the one who bought a tuning pedal.

RG: That was the end of The Mighty Handful – when you guys started tuning between songs – because it took fifteen minutes for everyone to get their shit together.

HC: And I never wanted to be in tune. I liked us better when we weren’t in tune. ‘Coz that’s Punk.

RG: Right. Let’s jump around and break things.

HC: If you’re out of tune it doesn’t matter if you’re playing the right chords.

RG: Or if you play loud enough.

HC: I think Oliver [Kalb] said about Starscream that no matter what they played they had that perfect volume where everything sounds like the greatest thing you’ve ever heard. They could just be playing feedback but it’s so loud it just gets into your bones.

RG: I think it’s also that electronic frequency they live in – that spectrum of sound. Speaking of which, talk about – I phrased this before as competition between bands. There were a lot of people making music in your peer group. Was it like the Spanish Influenza – you just woke up one day and everyone was doing it or was it slower?

HC: It’s funny – when I started Cool and Unusual, the people I was a friend with [before the band] I don’t talk to anymore. The people who came to those first shows I haven’t seen in, like, five years. The way I became friends with Sam was his band. And then I met Felix [Walworth] and Eli Sidman through The Floor is Lava. I think the only person I can say I saw “become” a musician is Oliver Kalb. And Felix to a certain extent. When I met Oliver it was like, I was the one who wrote songs, but he was the one who could play any song off any album. He was the campfire guy. I think after he started hanging out with us at our shows that ego kicked in and he said, “Fuck, I can do this,” and he started Women [the band] and started writing twenty songs a week.

RG: How many shows did Women play? I only saw them once…

HC: Not many. They played a fair amount for a band that was only around for six months. But nobody came to any of them. Women shows were always empty because Oliver didn’t care to make connections [with people].

RG: I asked this question last time and I don’t remember your answer, we were so bombed. Is there a Henry Crawford character you filter your songs through or is it straight from your brain or experiences to the page?

HC: I mean, obviously not everything I say in songs actually happened. I say a lot of shit. By the way, the last interview would have been slurred by drunkenness; this one will be all [mumbles with his mouth full of tuna melt]. I think it’s less the Henry Crawford character, which there definitely is, but it’s more about the characters I create for the people around me. Like, this year I got really into the idea of using [consistent] motifs when singing about a person, lyrically. Like, when I sing about XXXXX XXXXXX I usually refer to her as an angel. Like, “Your Angel Clothes” is about XXXXX. And songs about XXXXX all have similar stuff about bones. I like to think that someone who doesn’t know me personally but listens to my songs could glean something about my personality from them.

[Editor’s note: I had originally welcomed Henry to name names and drop names. And he did. However, I didn’t bother to consider the second parties’ reactions. I am a male. I am insensitive. I am a jerk. Therefore, I’ve bleeped the names. Rest assured, when we all die, and the aliens go to the tapes, they can put the names back in. But until then, only the people who know the stories can know all of it, and the people who don’t… well… do your research yourself.]

RG: To that end, and this is Ian’s question to you – are you worried that your songs are too specific? That your songs are so tailored to a certain group of people that you limit your audience.

HC: I said this last time you asked this question, but I think most songwriters are writing about their personal experience and there are very few who are writing for everyone at all times – like, maybe Dr. Luke. But when it comes down to people who are artistically inclined, as opposed to someone who wants to make money, they’re writing about their own personal experiences. But I also think that so many personal experiences are so universal that even if you put the girls’ name in a song, or your own name in a song, people will automatically substitute their own. They’re going to fill in the blanks.

RG: So now you live in Chicago – for now – and a lot of your songs are, at least in my mind, very New York-centric. Do you find that Chicago has influenced your productivity or your subject matter in a way that is different from New York? And this is specifically in reference to [your songs] “Same Flame” and “As We Were.”

HC: I think it definitely has. Even that Bad Teeth song, “New York,” [and] “Same Flame,” are about how New York thinks it does all this shit but it really doesn’t do anything – like it’s boring here. And going to Chicago has made me realize how jaded that is. It’s not true at all -- It’s more like I wasn’t doing anything. Or I wasn’t doing as much as I could have been doing. If I had wanted to go to a show every night I could have.

I never thought of “As We Were” as being about New York. I always thought of it as about being scared of change. But I think that relates to [my life] in New York in the end. I think the thing Chicago made me realize is all those songs I wrote about feeling sorry for myself and being like, “New York sucks and there’s nothing I can do about it,” felt good to sing, but they weren’t saying anything. It made me want to write songs that mean more, or carry more weight.

RG: Gonna throw another Greatest Hit at you here. I had five songs I thought were worth talking about in detail. The first one was Uptown Drunks, which I won’t make you re-hash, but the second two were “St. Daniel Johnston” and “Trichotillomania,” and both of those are kind of joined in my mind. I guess if you could talk about those two in the abstract a little…

HC: Yeah they were written within a few weeks of each other. That whole album, or EP, or whatever – Daguerreotype – was written right when I first started dating XXXXX and when I was breaking up with XXXXX and having to deal with her. For instance, I don’t know if you noticed this, but on “Again and Again and Again,” there’s this loud bang in the middle of the song – just a [boom]. And that’s XXXXX slamming the door and walking out of the room while I was recording a song that’s about her. She got furious at me and smashed the door closed. And I was too lazy to record the guitar track – kind of like the Facebook bleeps on [Oliver’s album] “I Floated Up To Heaven.”

RG: But thematically, that’s the sort of thing you have to leave in there.

HC: Yeah, it’s a good story. I feel like “St. Daniel Johnston” and “Trichotillomania” are the two strongest songs on the album. “Trichotillomania” is a song where I can never tell anyone what it’s about because I don’t even know myself. I don’t know what I’m talking about most of the time in that song. I’ve thought about it being about someone obsessed with being the good guy or being pure or clean. Y’know [like in the song], giving up smoking or sex or drinking.

Well, XXXXX was doing that at the time; she decided to give up smoking and drinking and sex. I was like, “That’s stupid. Why bother? You’re not actually making yourself a better person.” And then “St. Daniel Johnston” is about XXXXX, and having no idea what was going on with her when she was on tour. And the [answer] to [the lyric] “Are you suck/are you well” is, “I have no fucking clue where you are.” And I was walking about the desperation of wanting to know; being cut off and trying to mend the ties.

RG: Let’s keep going with this thread. Talk a little about “My Mortal Hands.”

HC: I wrote that song because I got really angry with Jack Greenleaf one day. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard his song, “The Ocean.” He has this really great acoustic song, “The Ocean,” and it just happens to be to the tune of “A Baby for Pree,” the Neutral Milk Hotel song. And I stole the melody from “The Ocean” and he’d say, “You stole my melody,” and I’d say, “Well you stole it from Neutral Milk Hotel,” and he’d say, “No, mine’s in 3.” So that really frustrated me that he would say that all the time. And so I said, “Fuck it. I’m gonna take a Neutral Milk Hotel song and write it in 3 and he’s gonna see how annoying that is.” And then I started playing with the chords from “Naomi” and I realized I actually had a song for it. And that [song] is where the whole angel-thing with XXXXX comes from – “You are an angel all dressed in white.”

RG: You wanna tell that story on record? About crashing prom?

HC: Oh yeah. Well, when I was first getting involved with XXXXX, it was pretty early on after meeting her; we were hooking up a little bit, and I had a thing for her, and it was her prom night. And I was like, “I really wanna see her on her prom night,” because I’m That Dude. But I was with Oliver Kalb, and I was a little bit ashamed about wanting to see her on prom night. Because [the idea] seemed a little pussy.

RG: Well, you wanna see people you care about at their best, right?

HC: Yeah. So, I’m walking with Oliver and she had her prom at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, so I’m kind of inching our way there, like, “Oh! Let’s go this way!” And we finally get to the botanic gardens and he says, “Hey! Isn’t XXXXXX XXXXXXXXX’s prom here?” And I say, “Oh right! What an amazing coincidence! It’s XXXXX’s prom too! Let’s call her up!” And so I call her and they come out and we’re talking and XXXXX and I are kind of standing off to the side talking in whispers, and she was wearing this really magnificent white dress, which was her mother’s wedding dress, I think, and that’s pretty much the end of the story.

Interestingly, on MY prom night I was wearing an all-white seersucker suit and where XXXXX was sober at her prom I had [consumed] a half a bottle of whiskey before mine, and been kicked out for being too drunk. So I saw XXXXX that night and she said, “You should go home or you are going to die.” I was like, “Alright.” That’s what the third verse of that song is about.

I was always a little ashamed when we played that song, because I felt like singing about prom was showing your age. For a long time I didn’t… I don’t really like singing about computers. I never want to talk about computers or the internet in a song because I feel like it takes away the timelessness of the song. I mean it’s timeless if “You’re writing me a letter.” Of course, in fifty years computers could be such a fact of life that singing about them seems natural and in some future time it’ll be you and I saying, “Goddammit I wish they would stop singing about hover cars in that song!”

Like, I have this song, “Weights.”

RG: I don’t know this.

HC: It’s alright. But it has this one verse about inviting people to shows, and trying to get people to come to your shows because you’re really proud of your band. And it has this line, “This isn’t a party/this is a march, this isn’t a phone call/this is a call to arms.” And I don’t call people about shows, I always send out mass texts. And I knew I didn’t want it to be “This isn’t a mass text/this is a call to arms,” because that’s so lame. I think it’s important to be able to send a song to some guy [who was born] seventy years ago and not have anything he wouldn’t understand [in it].

RG: Do you think of yourself as a showman?

HC: Yeah, I think so. Like, I’m not like Sam – I don’t do the hand gestures; that’s awesome when he does that, but that’s never been my thing. I don’t think of myself as the ringleader of a circus, y’know, in that sense, or like Freddie Mercury. That said, there are people who move MUCH less than I do onstage. I think theatricality is important – if you want the crowd to be into it and like it then you have to show that you’re into it and that you like it. You can’t let it all rest on them. There’s something that Charlie [Dore-Young] said… he said much less eloquently but he was like, “If you want them to dance, then you have to dance, if you want them to sing you have to sing, if you want them to cheer you have to cheer. You have to do whatever you want them to do.” Actually, I think the way he said it is, “I hate it when bands don’t dance and they want me to dance, but I’m not gonna dance if they’re not gonna dance.” Some Charlie Dore-Young-ism.

RG: Talk about “¿Quien es?,” which I really love and I can’t say enough, and I’m thinking specifically of “Terror of New Mexico,” which is in my top 5 songs of last year. I think the thing I said and I want on the record is the only music I really care about these days is the stuff my friends put out. Anyway, talk a bit about “¿Quien es?,” the origin story and specifically about how different it sounds from everything else.

HC: Making it electronic was part of this dream I had, but part of it was also that my guitar broke. I was playing guitar and I broke two strings on it, and I didn’t have any money and I was too lazy to buy strings. My choices were, “Well, I can record an album with only three strings on my guitar,” and there’s one song I wrote that’s just that – I don’t know, have you heard “Like Tom Waits”?

RG: No. Oh, wait, is it on your Tumblr?

HC: Yeah. I had listened to this interview with Andre 3000 and he said the way he writes lyrics is he sings in baby talk, and then writes it down. David Byrne also did that on “Speaking in Tongues,” apparently. And I said, “That sounds cool, I should try that.” And it ended up making no sense, obviously – I think one of the lyrics is, “Is there nothing to help us helter skelter home,” [or at least] that’s what it sounded like. So anyway, I had no guitar, and I decided to experiment with MIDI, which is something I had been meaning to do anyway, because I was sick of depending on Jack Greenleaf for drum [sounds]. I said, “I’ll teach myself how to program drums!” which I’m still really bad at. I can only do [beatboxes in a very slow, ponderous way].

I think the first song I did was “Worth Dying For,” and when I was finished I was actually really proud of it, so I kept going [with the electronic direction]. And the interesting thing about making an electronic album is that I’d never done it before so I had no idea what I was doing, so [the result was] I had the same prolificacy as when I first learned how to play guitar – write a song every day because I’d learn a new chord and be like, “Fuck yeah!”

So I wrote “Worth Dying For,” and then I wrote “¿Quien es?,” because I had this dream about writing an album for Billy the Kid that was electronic, and I woke up and decided to do it. Then I did some research on Billy the Kid and discovered some things that [I could relate to]. And “Paulita M.” was me trying to write a fast song. It was just fun to make synth tones because each new sound was completely new to me and I had never done it before.

It’s the same thing I like about [being in] a three piece like, Small Wonder; you’re so limited by the personnel [as in Small Wonder] or the medium [like Garage Band] that to do something interesting you have to be really creative and try things you haven’t done before to fill out the sound.

RG: How do you see Small Wonder playing out? Cool and Unusual was four years, the Handful was two…

HC: My bands are getting progressively shorter lived. Bad Teeth was one year. If that.

RG: Do you see Small Wonder being around for a while?

HC: The thing I told Jack and Ian when we started was, “No matter what happens, I am Small Wonder. If you guys quit or if I leave Chicago, Small Wonder will keep on going and I’ll just get new people.”

RG: “If I fire you…”

HC: Right. I got so sick of it being to the point where people would say, “Oh! You’re in the Mighty Handful,” and we had started a new band. Even during [the] Bad Teeth [era] people would still e-mail us asking if The Mighty Handful wanted to play a show. Even last Monday at the Silent Barn show some guy was like, “Does Bad Teeth want to play a show?” Well, Bad Teeth doesn’t exist.

RG: Do you see your solo stuff as a feeder system for whatever band you’re in? Do you run your songs through a solo show and then pick the ones that play big and move them to Small Wonder or Bad Teeth?

HC: I guess so, but it’s not that I tested them out on the crowd. It was more like I play them in my room by myself, and if I felt like rocking out when I’m done then it became a Bad Teeth song. Now it’s more like my songs are my songs, and it doesn’t really matter. [When I was in] The Mighty Handful it was pretty much like all the fast songs were Handful songs and if it’s not fast then it’s a Henry Crawford song. With Bad Teeth, if a song got me pumped then it was a Bad Teeth song – it could be slow, but it had to get me pumped. With Small Wonder, if I can do a song and not have it sound muddled – if I can do a song with Small Wonder then I want to.

One thing I’ve been trying to do is experiment more. Instead of taking a song and doing it the way it’s asking to be done, changing the song so that it can be done a different way. Like, “As We Were” was originally this fast-paced, boppy song and we [made it slower with Jack playing the riff on bass], which totally changed the form. “Oracle” was an acoustic song and we changed it and put in the Weezer bass chords. I wanted to take my songs and put them through the crazy fraction machine, like on your elementary school worksheets.

RG: Are you ever worried, and I guess you’re not, about the personalities you write about becoming upset that you’re writing about them so distinctly?

HC: I try not to think about that. You know “Set the Bone”? That one really worried me because the end, “It’s easy to sleep when your dead,” is an Of Montreal song, and the reason that’s the lyric is because that was XXXXX’s answering machine [message] when she stopped talking to me. So I’d call her and she wouldn’t pick up and I’d have to hear, “It’s easy to sleep when you’re dead, it’s easy to sleep when you’re dead,” and I wanted to kill myself. Whenever I’d get sad that song would get stuck in my head and I’d be like, “What is this? My life is a joke. This sucks.” And I just decided that it would be really cool to have that as the end of the song.

And on [the album] “Big, Big City” there’s that song that’s supposed to be spoken word [“On the Subject of Birthdays, But Not Really” –Ed.]. That one really freaked me out because the line before that song is, “I didn’t really want to fuck her, I didn’t want to be a fucker,” and I didn’t want XXXXX to think that I was just trying to fuck her. I was really worried she’d take that song the wrong way. That’s really the only time I’ve been worried and asked myself if I really wanted to say [what was in the song].

That song “Henry We Can’t,” I think I only played it one at a Bad Teeth show – the whole thing is supposed to be a duet between me and a girl who’s supposed to be XXXX about me trying to hook up with her and her saying, “We can’t,” and me being a wise-ass; “Henry we can’t, no you mean we shouldn’t. If we wouldn’t we couldn’t, but here we are.” That song is a pretty uncomfortable song if you were involved with my life at that point, but I really like the idea of making people uncomfortable with a song.

RG: “Anyone,” uncomfortable, even the subject matter?

HC: Well especially the subject matter, but yeah, anyone.

RG: You’re trying to do 30 songs in 30 days on Tumblr. Is that sort of production – that sort of product churn – is that where you’re at creatively? That you have so many things to say that you can just whip them out – or is it just something you’ve taken on to see if it can be done?

HC: It was sort of an exercise, but at the same time I want to get to the point – and I’m not there now – where I’m creating music that no one else has created; like a totally new sound. And I thought that if I produce something every day, just push out everything, eventually I’m going to come up with one or two songs that sound different from everyone else’s songs. I don’t know if I’m [succeeding]. I think “Psychosomaticon” is different…

RG: It’s certainly different within the context of the series. It really sticks out. I guess the takeaway is that your hit can come at any time. Did that one feel good when you wrote it?

HC: When I finished writing it I thought it was a pretty good song, but everyone else is going to make fun of me [for having written it]. And then I sent it to Oliver and he said it was the best thing I had done. Then I started listening to it more and decided it really was [pretty good]. I was more excited about this other song I had written the day before – I thought it was so much better than “Psychosomaticon.”

RG: To that end, what you’re experience with things that you think people will like versus the things they actually like? I mean, of course you make art for yourself, but do you think your instincts are in tune with your audience?

HC: Generally I think they are. You know, sometimes there are songs that I don’t think people will like and then they really like it. And then… there’s a song… “Your Other Plans,” there’s a lyric in there that I really love but that’s a song I get made fun of for writing. Oliver thinks that’s a bitch song. I can’t tell which songs are really great, but I can tell which ones people will really like. Like, “Raised by Wolves,” that was a song I knew [Bad Teeth] were going to open with, and eventually everyone will start doing the howling part. I think that was one of Bad Teeth’s goals, to have everyone do it at the same time.

“I am Wildfire,” I wouldn’t have expected people to like that as much as they did. I thought it was a good song, but people seemed to latch on to that song. That’s what I mean – that song is very personal, very specific, about a lot of things – the beginning of that song is basically verbatim conversations that XXXXX and I had, or all stories about XXXXX and I meeting. People have attached their own meanings to that song; like some kid out there is thinking, “Yeah, Henry was there with me and stole my life, what the fuck?” Because the [kinds of things that happen in that song] happen to everyone.

RG: I guess we’re pretty good with this interview, and I like to think this one is better because the first version would have torched a lot of bridges. There’s this question that’s staring at me from the page and it’s kinda pretentious and weird but… is there a God in Henry Crawford songs?

HC: That is a strange question.

RG: Yeah. I don’t know why I’m stuck on this.

HC: I mean, I think so. I’ve never been a particularly religious person, but the idea of God is the thing that keeps me from having a major existential crisis at all times, because I’m not one of those people who can accept that life is meaningless. It’s an argument that Ian Cory and I have a lot, about whether faith is a good thing. And I’ll say, “Faith is a good thing, whether it’s faith in God or something else.” And Ian is a realist, “No there’s no proof. If there’s no proof, then why brother….”

I think there’s a God in Henry Crawford songs, but I think the Henry Crawford character puts more faith in God than I actually do. There’s this Isaac Brock quote I think about a lot. Someone asked him a similar question and he said, ‘I don’t really believe in God, but “God” is the most powerful thing you can say.’ No matter who you are, the word “God” resonates. You could write a song called, “I Hate God,” or take “God Only Knows,” if the lyric was, “Your mom only knows,” it wouldn’t be all that great of a song. There’s a certain resonance God has with people whether they believe in him or not.

Something, Something, Crisis, Opporotunity

2011-02-01T01:23:00.005-05:00

So, to quote the immortal intro to the video for Voices Carry, "What's with the hair?"

So, my dad is going in for literal, capital-B Brain Surgery.

So, it's actually Deep Brain Stimulation, a treatment for Parkinson's Disease, wherein they basically put a pacemaker in your head.

So, that pacemaker is supposed to level you out, I guess, and make the lows a little less low, and the myoclonia (fancy Greek for the twitches, basically) a little less extreme.

So, they had to shave his head, because otherwise you get hair caught in the tectonic plates when they screw your lid back on or something like that.

So, this is obviously a big deal for me and my family.

So, it's a big deal and I'm going to Los Angeles to be with everyone while it happens.

So, I mean, solidarity.

So, I shaved my head.

So, wouldn't you do the same thing?

Universal Remote, Universal Control

2011-01-24T16:02:00.004-05:00

Leg Sweeper, Dead Herring, 1/22/11

I do not need to become Death to be The Destroyer of Worlds.
I have the power of the mind.
I am your blood.
I am your soul.

Interview III, Starscream, Part I, 12/13/10

2011-01-21T19:10:00.010-05:00

Starscream are an 8-bit band from New York City featuring George Stroud on drums and Damon Hardjowirogo on various and sundry electronic devices. The first time I saw them was at the Sixth Street Community Center (and the first time seeing Radiates as well, but that’s a different kettle of fish) and they probably popped my 8-bit cherry. It’s fair to say that Starscream occupied a very specific niche within the all-ages group of bands between 2007 and mid-2010. They were the first to leave New York City to tour, they were the first to have serious quantities of merchandise, they were the first to play to large crowds that were not affiliated with the Brooklyn scene.

This is part one of a two part interview with Damon and George about Starscream, what it’s like being a young touring band with a specific sound and what it means to sell out. As with the interviews with Random Child and Earth Defense Force on this blog, it’s sprawling and lightly edited and very much in their own words.

Rich Gin: So I’m here with Damon and George from Starscream – Hi guys.

Damon Hardjowirogo: Hey!

George Stroud: Hello!

RG: So, back-story part of this; you guys basically do stuff that’s completely different from anyone else that I shoot, in that you guys do 8-bit stuff – how did that come about?

DH: How did we get in to doing 8-bit stuff? My friend’s older brother, my friend Dave Feldman, who I used to skate with a lot…

RG: Related to Matt Feldman?

DH: No, a completely different Feldman family. I used to skate with him a lot – his older brother was in this band – still is – in this band called The Depreciation Guild. They do 8-bit shoegaze stuff using a Famicom and [Dave] took me – I had no idea it was 8-bit or anything; I just thought it was pretty cool and wanted to go see it -- took me to go to Blipfest ’06 and that was the first 8-bit show I ever went to.

RG: Where was Blipfest ’06?

DH: I don’t remember the venue; it was somewhere in the Wall St. area at an empty space that was being rented out before it got turned into something else and it was really awesome. But even after that I didn’t really have an idea of what 8-bit was, I just knew that I liked what was going on there. And at that show I met Peter Berkman from Anamanaguchi and I started listening to them and started putting together what [8-bit] was.

RG: Now George did you and Damon skate together?

GS: Yeah.

RG: So you guys are buddies from way back.

GS: I think, actually, the first 8-bit I heard was Anamanaguchi’s “Airbase,” [Damon] sent it to me.

RG: And that was it? You just said, ‘We wanna do this too’?

DH: Yeah, before we decided we wanted to [start a band] George told me he was getting his drum kit back from his old house in New Jersey – You were how old; 14 when you moved here?

GS: Yeah, right before high school. I didn’t have my drum set for two years.

DH: And I had missed playing music; I had played in some shitty bands in middle school, I played bass and we wanted to do a Lightning Bolt rip-off or something like that and I said, ‘Y’know what, I’m garbage at bass, we’re going to a lot of 8-bit shows, maybe we should try it out.’ And George found a copy of Little Sound DJ, the program we use, on Craigslist and a couple of weeks later I found a copy and we just sort of moved on from there.

RG: The one thing I noticed about you guys, and this occurred to me a while ago, is that your organic part is the drums – usually the drummer is trying to hold everything together -- unless you’re one of those drummers that drives a show. So you have these machines and rhythms that aren’t going anywhere – they’re kind of stuck so George how does that work for you – is it basically like playing long to a click track?

GS: Oh jeez… well, of course it’s always going to be on time because of the way the tracks are in the tracker. I dunno, I guess it’s KINDA hard…

DH: Yeah people bring that up with me all the time they say, ‘I don’t know how George keeps up with that shit, I can’t play to a track ever,’ but I think that this is the first serious project that George and I have had so I think it’s all we really know, especially George who basically learned drums doing this. So it’s kind of the norm for us, whereas other people are sort of amazed about how he does it.

RG: So by falling in with Anamanaguchi and the 8-bit bands, you sort of already had a built in audience when you compare to the other bands [your peers made].

DH: It was kind of weird – the path that a lot of bands that do chip music have followed is they start within the insular chip music scene and then realize they need to go out and play with other types of musicians whereas we had our first show with Fiasco and other local punk bands and we kind of worked out way from the punk scene into the chip scene and to most people who come to chip shows we sort of come out of nowhere.

RG: Do you remember what year that was, the first show with Fiasco?

DH: That was 2007… October?

GS: Yeah, October 7, 2007. And we got Atlas DJ

DH: Yeah, you got it in August. I got it in September. We’d been a band for a month.

RG: The first time I saw you was…

DH: March…

RG: March ’08 over in the East Village.

DH: Yeah it was the community center on 6th st.

RG: Going back to the community thing. You have this group of 8-bit bands that you can get pulled [onto bills with]. How do you think that’s impacted your growth as a band?

DH: I think it got a lot of people to hear our music who normally wouldn’t because a lot of the people who go to [8-bit] shows aren’t concert goers but they are into chip music for one reason or another and try to support the scene, so I think that gave us a fan base. I think most of the other bands we were playing with wouldn’t have access to [those fans] and from there it [just grew].

RG: So who is your audience then if your crowds are made up of people who don’t really go to shows?

DH: I dunno… I feel like our audience is a bunch of 16-year-old girls.

GS: On ecstasy.

RG: Really.

DH: No.

GS: Well they were in college.

DH: That was recent. That was weird. That was at Hampshire College.

RG: What was the show like?

DH: It was their Halloween party. And it was in a tent outdoors and it was freezing and it was a bunch of girls on ecstasy really scantily dressed and grinding on the [subwoofers] in 20-degree weather.

GS: At the first song ten of them rushed the stage…

DH: I don’t think they knew we were a band because we were playing in the DJ tent.

RG: You have also toured – what were those first tours like?

DH: The first tour was with Anamanaguchi, they wanted us to come along and support for them throughout that tour. Earlier that summer we went to England on our own and that was pretty much a failure, but it was fun. We played one show for our friend’s birthday party and that…

GS: …Kicked ass.

DH: He got an 80’s metal band back together called Witchfeind. They were great.

GS: The drummer had a 20-piece set…

DH: And they were all really old and their wives were selling their t-shirts and that was pretty unreal. And then we had two other shows in London and one in Liverpool. The one in London was OK, but everyone who worked at the venue was an asshole so things didn’t go well and then 10 people came out in Liverpool. So that was kind of a bummer.

RG: Did you ever get any feedback from those England shows?

DH: I think the [Liverpool] show was the one that had nothing come out of it. We met some great people over in [UK], some really awesome ones.

GS: The other musicians were great guys.

DH: A few of them were from Germany and the following summer they took us to Germany. That was the second time in Europe.

RG: The other thing I noticed about you guys is that you were the first band [in this group of young New York bands] to have a merch table.

DH: I think we have that advantage because our friend Eric Sherman taught me how to screen print when I was in 9th grade. And I’ve just been really big on [silk screening]; making shirts for our skate crew and then George – when did you learn?

GS: 10th grade. When I was 15 or 16.

DH: Yeah he did that whole summer program at RISD.

GS: Yeah – got a little better at printing.

DH: A big thing in the chip community was to give your recordings away online and I really like that mentality but I also wanted something physical to represent the experience and the work, so we made CDs pretty quickly.

RG: Now that brings up a good point with 8-Bit Peoples and groups like that, and this is the conflict with me as a photographer, their methods of distribution are different from other media. In my instance, the only thing I have is the picture, and that’s the only thing I have to sell. 8-Bit Peoples is very much about… free love, basically – throw your recordings out into the ether and that’s how your work gets around. That mindset has its value, if I can editorialize for a minute in that I don’t think there’s ever been money in record sales unless you hit the gold or platinum standards. I mean, you make your money by touring and licensing and merch. What are your thoughts on that? I mean, if the culture of music today were different would you still prefer to have tangible records?

DH: Yeah! We’re actually working on that now. We’re gonna get vinyl pressed for the first time as a band in March. We’re going to be in the studio in a week and a half recording that and we want to press some old stuff to vinyl too because it’s something we’ve wanted to do. There’s just so much more room for art and packaging. We work with this really great artist, Asif Siddiky, who’s done most of our actual releases – not the ones we’ve put out ourselves.

RG: Does he do your onstage graphics too – your projections?

DH: No that’s my girlfriend, Jean. But yes, I would love to have real releases, to give you a final answer.

RG: There’s something to be said for desiring the object.

DH: Yeah, I mean my record player is broken but I still like to buy vinyl if a band has it because I like to support the bands. Even CDs – they break really easily and I look through my old collection and all the cases are snapped because they’re shitty jewel cases. Vinyl, yeah it gets warped in the sun but you still have these amazing sleeves that have lasted.
 RG: Yeah I hear that – part of the fun of it is trying to get your records home after a show without dropping them. I’m going to throw this open to the peanut gallery here. Jack Greenleaf, first time caller, asks, “Will they ever experiment with electronic sounds beyond 8-bit, or if they have already. I haven’t seen them in forever.” He offers parenthetically, “Also tell them Jack, Ian and Henry say, ‘Hi’.”

DH: George got a copy of Nanoloop 2.3 recently for the Game Boy Advance, which is not 8-bit, it’s FM synthesis.

RG: What’s the difference?

DH: FM Synthesis is 16-bit – it’s what you’d hear on a Genesis. It’s 16-bit so it’s a lot more developed but it’s also a lot easier to be corny, but the program interface is really fucking hard for us to learn.

GS: It’s really frustrating coming from what we use because it’s totally different.

DH: So that’s the biggest thing we’ve done in terms of trying other sounds. We’ve also messed around with a sample-based tracker called, ‘LGPT’ – it’s just called a ‘Piggy Tracker’ usually, and I had so much trouble playing with it after playing with synthesis trackers for so long because I had to find samples and then I had to control them whereas with synthesis I was just able to create sounds out of it, even if it was just limited to the one sound chip, I got to make my own instead of having to search for them. So that was really hard for me even though I liked the program.

RG: How does the creative process work for you two?

DH: I write most of the stuff, but half of the things I like best are usually half written with George, and then I pick them up and finish them.

RG: So you show up and say, “Here’s a bunch of loops I’ve come up with…”

DH: Yeah, kinda!

RG: In my mind, what Starscream “IS” is pretty set. I think, piggybacking on Jack’s question a bit, where does the growth come from? I mean you have this new tool, which sounds pretty neat – from 8-bit sound to 16-bit sound…

DH: I think a lot of the development of the new sound comes from using the Commodore 64, which is also 8-bit – It can only produce three voices, but the sound chip is a lot more heavy duty. It’s called a SID chip and you can get a lot of nice saw-wave sounds out of it and I’ve been running it through guitar pedals and a lot of the sounds coming out of it just sound like guitars instead of 8-bit stuff and I think that’s helped develop the sound.

RG: Can you give examples of things that people can hear now?

DH: The title track from out 8-Bit Peoples release, “Future and it Doesn’t Work,” opens with the Commodore 64 and the Game Boy. Both songs on “The Space Years” use it and almost everything on the next two releases [will have the Commodore/Game Boy combo].

RG: I recall making some comment to myself, which sounds idiotic now, to the effect of, ‘Those guys should run it through guitar pedals,’ as if you hadn’t thought of that. Ian Cory also asked something, and I think I asked a version of it, he asked if you’re worried about your sound being narrow based on the limitations of the medium…

DH: I’m not too worried about that yet – I keep finding the tools to be more powerful than I initially thought, especially when I listen to music made by people who have been doing it longer than us – like Bit Shifter and Nullsleep – the new songs they’re putting out, I don’t know what they’re doing with the program and I just have the belief that I have a lot more time left with [the programs] before I have to move on to something else, and I don’t think I’ll have to. I’m very happy with the programs.

RG: So recap your current setup.

DH: It’s the Commodore and two Game Boys and the Commodore goes through two or three guitar pedals.

RG: And at any given point all three are working at the same time?

DH: For the full-length we’re recording we usually have all three working together. Both “The Future and it Doesn’t Work” and “ The Space Years” have a one Game Boy setup, and maybe a few with the Commodore, but the newer stuff it a bit more full.

RG: Have you tried to work it out live yet?

DH: Yeah, it’s not so bad live, it just take a bit of practice because you have to use a fucking link cable to use two Game Boys at the same time. So it’s mostly having the right cartridges at the right time so you don’t have to stop the set.

RG: So you don’t have to give George a break.

DH: Right. He doesn’t deserve one.

RG: Right! And that takes be back to the first question about George being the drummer in a machine band – George, you can’t stop.

GS: Well we have long instrumental breaks, usually at the beginning or the end, but I’ve been doing it for a while.

RG: And you ride bikes, so you have stamina. What’s the difference between playing in an 8-bit-specific crowd, or a mathy crowd, and the other shows you play with those other [non-chip] bands?

DH: Usually the ones with the other bands are a lot more fun. But the 8-bit ones can be really, REALLY fun.

GS: But they’re generally older [crowds]…

DH: I don’t know that that’s a factor, I just like music as music, so I’m usually having a better time playing with other kinds of bands rather than 8-bit bands, even though I love a lot of them and I’m happy to have done the tours with them – I’m not saying I want to be disassociated with 8-bit, but I like going to a show with a diverse lineup, so I like playing in a show with a diverse lineup.

RG: So the 8-bit crowds, and I have a theory about that, and I’ve said it MANY times out loud, that as soon as you pay ten dollars for a beer you stop dancing because you don’t want to spill it.

DH: I dunno if it’s that as much as it is people who didn’t really go to music shows when they were younger so the don’t have the rage in them. Because it’s not a snooty thing, it’s more of a, ‘I’m not a person who really wants to dance right now,’ thing. But then there are chip shows that are complete ragers where people are going crazy, like, [dancing to] Trash80, this guy from Los Angeles who’s amazing and people go fucking nuts during sets like that. But I don’t know that there’s a way to [break down the demographics].

RG: I noticed when I was at the Santos show, Matt Feldman was the only one trying to dance and I just went and ran into him and suddenly people were like, ‘Oh! This is what’s supposed to happen!’ It’s sort of bad news when we’re the ones who have to start people dancing. What’s the largest crowd you’ve played for?

BOTH: Hampshire Halloween, probably.

DH: That was somewhere between five and eight hundred. I have no idea.

GS: It was a big tent!

DH: I don’t think they knew we were a band, I mentioned this before, We didn’t realize there were two tents – one that bands were playing in and one that DJ’s were playing in – the Alt-kid tent and the one that we were playing in. Some girl at the beginning of our set starts trying to hand me her fucking iPod, and I was like, “I’m not DJ-ing, I don’t know the song you have there… maybe if I liked it….” And then five minutes later there were 10 girls blocking George’s view of the audience; they just started dancing in front of him. That was really weird but we had a lot of fun.

GS: It was great because people were dancing all the way to the back of the tent.

RG: That’s crazy. I feel like some of the Shea shows have been up to a hundred people.

DH: The Shea shows can get pretty shit-festy.

RG: They get really rowdy. Apparently it’s gotten louder to some peoples’ ears too.

DH: Great! [Hampshire] was definitely our biggest show but I feel like Blipfest was close to that – 400 or 500 at Bell House.

RG: You guys are in college, right? You haven’t dropped out.

DH: Well, George can explain his situation…

GS: Well, I took a leave of absence, and it’s been a long one… so I guess I’m bordering on dropping out.

DH: I didn’t plan to take a leave of absence, but I had a mishap with a teacher and I made the best of it by focusing on music.

RG: You slept with her?

DH: Yeah. And it wasn’t good so she gave me an “F.” (Laughs) I won’t get into the real stories. It’s not NEARLY as interesting.

RG: You can lie to me. I don’t care.

DH: Then that’s what happened.

RG: When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.

DH: Yeah, someday I’ll believe it. Someone will come up to me and say, “Heard you slept with the teacher and failed out,” I’ll be like, “Yup. Fuck it. “

RG: …And I shot her husband too.

DH: But really, I only planned on taking this one semester off, but it looks like I’ll be taking the next one off as well. So a year – hopefully I’ll go back in the fall because I don’t hate school – I just want to focus on music, and also a lot of opportunities have opened up this semester that we’ve been working on and are almost done with.

RG: To that end if you and George have an indefinite period of availability are you going to try and push it and do a real tour?

DH: Hopefully! We need to learn how to drive.

RG: That’s a problem.

DH: Yeah it is a problem. I was taking permit tests in Santos today when I had nothing to do – online practice ones.

GS: Really? Was it hard?

DH: I did pretty well.

GS: OK!

RG: So you have to learn to drive before you can tour in this country.

DH: We were able to do out first tour because we got our friend from Kentucky to drive us around, and [my friend and I] don’t get to hang out much, so that ruled. That was actually our favorite tour we’ve done.

GS: And he had his friend [come along] who’s such an awesome dude.

RG: Where did that tour go?

DH: We had our own little thing up in Canada that George’s sister brought us up for, and then we met up with Anamanaguchi and we took a Greyhound down to Richmond, VA…

RG: That sucks…

DH: It was a weird Greyhound…

RG: There’s no such thing as a not-weird Greyhound…

DH: There was a guy trying to bathe himself in the back of the bus with a sponge and he kept trying to smoke cigarettes and he almost got kicked off.

GS: It felt short to us because the day before we had driven 10 hours to Quebec City.

DH: We met our driver friend in Richmond – which was awesome, because it’s 7 hours away from Lexington, Kentucky, where he’s from. And we went from Richmond to Lexington to Dayton, Ohio, which is still probably one of the weirdest cities I’ve been to, but one of the best show’s we’ve ever had. Then we were in Chicago for a few days – it was a short little tour.

RG: Leia Jospe says, “Ask them why they sold out.”

BOTH: (Laughter)

DH: I don’t think we can talk about it yet. I actually have no idea if we’re allowed to.

GS: No idea.

DH: Well, let’s say that we were offered an opportunity to show our music off to a larger audience. We wanted more 12 year-old girls at our shows with disposable income from their parents. We wanted to make babygirl shirts.

It’s at this point I realize that they are joking, and that Leia was making fun of an opportunity offered to Damon and George that is, in plain English, “Kind of a big deal.” We all decide it’s best not to pursue the conversation too much further but I assure you that the opportunity is definitely kind of a big deal, and really, really awesome. I pick this conversation up mid-point,

DH: But seriously, we talked to the So So Glos about this – they love playing all-ages shows because you have kids who are genuinely psyched on [your band] getting inspired and there is a little bit of money out there.

RG: And what else are you going to do? Are you going to sit around under your parents’ noses or are you going to go out and experiment with marijuana cigarettes?

DH: Exactly. I was talking with Pete from Anamanaguchi the other day about how cool it is that we’re approaching a post-sellout mentality. It used to be, “Oh, you sold your song to a commercial? Drag…”and now it’s like, “You’re making money doing music? That’s awesome!” This opportunity we can’t talk about – we didn’t know if we wanted to do it – it ended up being really fun and it’s going to allow us, financially, to do things we want to do. Now we don’t have to start a Kickstarter and bother the shit out of everyone.

RG: What emotions do you want your songs to touch upon?

DH: Nothing. Space.

RG: Well… dancing. Is that a goal? Is that something that you can definitely say you want to happen at a Starscream show?

DH: I want it to be visible that people spent their money [to come to our show] and they enjoyed themselves. There was one show we played a few weeks ago in Toronto, and it ended up being a lot of fun, but the venue was a bar and had lots of seating and people went to sit down as soon as they came in and it was obvious that they were going to camp there for the whole show. And I said to myself, ‘You just paid $15.00 to come to this show – you’re no experiencing it if you’re [sitting down]!’ I know that I’ve gone to shows and been stuck in the seating area and I haven’t had a good time. But I don’t know if dancing is the goal so much as it is wanting people to feel like they were justified in paying for a ticket.

Fun:Danger::Danger:Fun

2011-01-17T12:12:00.003-05:00

"Fun:Danger::Danger:Fun" is my first zine. It contains pictures from music shows in the Greater New York City area from 2007-2011. I will be selling them for $5.00 USD at various music shows in Brooklyn and New York City, or you can hunt me down on the internet and we can arrange a hand-delivery. Sorry, but I don't have the ability to sell out of state or internationally yet, but if there is enough demand I'll set up a web shop.

Still More New Work (New Work pt. III)

2011-01-15T18:44:00.006-05:00

These are more song titles for you to consider if you are listed among the people listed in the first collection of song titles.

--------------------

I Learned it From Your Sons and Daughters

Black Death Rode in on a White Horse

Radical Cheerleaders

Preview to a Eulogy

The First Day of the New Year is the Last Day of Your Life

Girls Don't Just Sit With You

The Saddest Sound I Ever Heard was the Last Train Leaving the Station*

Fight or Fuck

If I Fall in Love (Punch Me)

Last Bastion of Femininity in an Unjust World

Girl, You Can Do Better Than Her

Handball Court of Love

Nerd Circus

You're Like My Belt (My Pants Never Come Off)**

Only When I Poop am I Alone**

You Don't Love Me, You're Just Ovulating

I'll Be the Maharishi if You'll be My Sexy Sadie

Your Friend Seems Like Kind of an Asshole.

--------------------

*I think Sam either claimed this one, or I told him to write it.
**Henry might have come up with this one all by himself, but you know what they say about good artists borrowing and great artists stealing.

Thrills and Chills

2011-01-04T16:30:00.002-05:00

Watch as these young ruffians defend themselves from brutish and unfashionable security.

P.S. Nice snake mullet

A Late Holiday Greeting For You.

2011-01-04T01:03:00.001-05:00

Dear Friends,

If you know me you've known that I've sent out a Christmas letter to my friends and lovers every year since I left home for college. This year was slow in coming, mostly because I was down in the dumps for most of December and didn't feel terribly inspired. Here, after the Japanther show was shut down by security, is the Annual Richard Gin Holiday Letter. Away we go…

So I've always had an unhealthy awareness of my own mortality. It could come from having a glib upbringing, it could just be me and my self-diagnosed low-level autism, but it's true. I spent the better part of my youth absorbing information, going to museums, drawing, painting and generally living in my head. It's fun up there, but it's no way to live life. Recently, at least in the past few years, I've been going out more, meeting new and amazing people, having life-changing experiences, and trying to make up for lost time. This in spite of my nature of caution, preparedness, and awareness. This nature has kept me out of trouble (look at that sparking record!), and kept me safe out in the big bad, but it also has kept me from living without looking over my shoulder.

When my dad came out with his Parkinson's he wrote a letter to his friends explaining his condition, what they could do to help and closed with (paraphrased), 'When I die I want my body to be used up, broken and worthless. It's the only way to know you've lived.' So now I am 31, living alone, and using up my body. I can feel it. It's a funny time. My friend Ezra said when I was 27 or 28, 'Wait 'till you turn 30. Everything just hurts all of a sudden.' He was right, unfortunately. My right knee will probably need to be scoped in the next few years, I think my left shoulder is becoming arthritic, and I have to limit alcohol as the next day is harder to shake off, plus that asian flush thing REALLY isn't good.

Back to the beginning. The Japanther show at Lincoln Center was shut down by uppity (no racial code intended) security guards who wouldn't listen to the people who hired. them. Real GED cases, if that. A black belt or a month of crossfit does not teach you the ability to observe, or reason, or adapt (You know what they say about the wisdom of crowds? Well I've never seen anyone seriously injured at a concert in Brooklyn. A bloody nose is not an injury. You pussies). One of them even said, "Yo, I'm gonna crack that little fucker later…." He (the security guard) was probably 20, if that. The people he wanted to crack were also 20, if that.

As Ian and Matt started packing up, cursing, pleading with and then screaming at the knuckleheads to get out of the way* so their crew could help load out, I remembered that they are going to go play another show. It will be better. It might not be for a few days, or it might be later tonite in some back alley in the Bronx but they will go out again not to give it the old college try, but because there's nothing else to do. It's really all they know how to do at this point and this is how they're winning the war.

What does this mean for me and how do I reconcile the cautious me with the new, improved (if sore) reckless me? Well I guess I have to just spend every dime I have, every free second I'm awake making things. I have to use the last 31 years of learning, heartbreaks, triumph and setbacks to do what I do best -- make things. I made it into college because I could make things and I went to art school because the idea of sitting at a desk working for someone suffering from the Peter Principle would make me want to blow my brains out. Somewhere, though, I got too comfortable. I feel like I'm just learning how to make things again.

So my wish for this year, if you're still reading, is that you'll make things with me. Let's make great things. Let's make terrible things that we are ashamed of. This will be my year of moving the things I've done half-assedly for the last 4 years out into the world and I hope you let out all the things that you've made too. Let's be restless again. Let's go see the ponies backstage. Let's see how long we can push bogus authority until it falls. Let's stay up late and doodle and cuss and drink and tell fish stories and run as long as we can until our bodies are used up and we drop. Let's be enablers. Let's exploit each others gifts. Let's bring out the best of the worst and the best of the best in each other.

The holiday season is a time of singing together and talking and huddling through the dark winters with the ones we love. I hope to see you all before spring comes and we all shotgun out for the fresh air. I guess that's a backhanded, overly flowery way of explaining that we all have something to say, but sometimes it's best to say it together. And let's start by saying,

"1-2-3-4 fuck the cops."

Lets move on by telling each other how much we love each other. I'll start.

I love you all,
--RG

More New Work (New Work pt. II)

2010-12-12T13:23:00.006-05:00

I made some more song titles this morning. Here they are. Same rules apply, you jackals.

--------------------

You Jackals

G-Rated Bedroom Tapes*

You Took All of Me and I Feel Like Half a Man

I'm Fucking Innocent

The RIAA Took My Baby Away

Your Body Speaks in Tongues

Bubblegum Pit Girl

I Don't Care if the Cops Come

Pick Pt. 1 (Cloyingly Empty Genre Shifter)

1+1=1 (Pete Taught Me Math)

Tonight. You.

F/M=A

Pick Pt. 2 (Cloyingly Empty Gender Shifter)

So Heartbroken I Can't Drink Anymore

Praying for a Weekend Local Train so I Can Spend More Time With You**

Cat Sound

The Sweat Is In My Eyes (And I Can't See You)

The World's Most Beautiful Photobomb

Awkward Glances/Gateway Drug

Nancy Reagan (Just Say No)

You Can't Control The Wave

Don't Make Me Start It

You Have Better Options (But None of Them are Here)

Tony Twist Died for Your Sins

Stagebound Prophet

Why are You Looking at Me Like That (Should I be Excited)

My Spoon is Too Big for Your Bowl***

Without Fans Like Me None of This Would be Possible

We're Both Getting Older

Balkanization

San Antonio to El Paso by Car

Vigilante Justice 101

Icons

Let The Lambs Sacrifice

Indiana: Let it Go

Don't Play it Again, I Said.

I'll Smoke a Menthol if it Means Getting to Know You

Another Night, Another Awesome Time

The Two Great Boyhood Obsessions (Girls and Socialism)

Elvis Presley and the New Music of Today

More to come!****

-----------------

*This one is written. There are many songs like it, but this one is mine.

**This one is in the stages of actually having words. I was listening to Meat Loaf at the time.

***This is a 10 minute funk jam

****Again, not a song title.

New Work

2010-12-11T01:43:00.006-05:00

I either,

a) Want to start a band or

b) Become a songwriter in the manner of Jim Steinman.

I have written several song titles but no actual songs. These are those titles. Please do not steal them, or use them as inspiration for your own songs.*

--------------------

No Horse in the Race Between Good and Evil

Pro-choice/Anti-decision

I Don't Shave Because I'm Lazy

Spitballing

Soft Touch on a Heart of Stone

Battles with Bricks

I Wish You Were More Like My Mom and I Was More Like Your Dad

Doing the (Frustrated Owl)

Broken Noses and Bloody Hearts

Slowly I Turn

Andrea Dworkin Needed a Man (Like You Need Me)

I Can See Everything Behind Your Four Eyes

Big Gay Song

Henry Crawled From Kenosha to Missoula

14

If We Are Made of Stars Then Why Don't You Shine? (Moby is a Liar)

What Would I Be Like as a Dinosaur

You Can't Stand There (Unless You Dance)

(Parentheticals)

The Reburth of Western Civilization (Part I)

Ghost Train**

I Locked Up Your Number But I Have it Memorized

Theme Song to a Late Night Talk Show

Your Love Button Comes With a Launch Code

Asshole in a Wheelchair

Blackout Curtains

Theme Song for Minor Scandal

The Baffles

Crazy Ivan

Starting With The Ending and Working Backwards

When I am an Old Man I Shall Wear Black

Think of the Money and Put It In Your Mouth

Where The White Women At?

Paul Westerberg

I Spent More Hours Trying to Get Into Your Arms (Than I Actually Spent There)

Eyeblack

The Last Waltz of Ken Griffey Jr.

Victory Lap.

Start Making Sense

My Advice to You is to Kill Yourself

Pull Your Own Trigger***

Let's Talk About Getting More Drunk

You're Gonna Make a Mistake Tonite!

I've Lost My Keys Take Me Home

It's Not a Crime to Break Into Your Own House

Don't Tell Mom I Killed the Babysitter

More to come!****

--------------------

*Unless you are one of the following,

A member of Small Wonder,
A member of Breadwinner,
A member of Starscream,
A member of Antimagic,
A member of Bathtub Sailors,
A member of Fiasco,
One of the Jaywalkers,

Your name is, or contains the words, Charlie, Scout, Jack, Aviva, Dore, Olivia, Young, Devin, Andrew, Lily, Abraham, Martin and Jon. Also, anyone who feels they should be in this list but is not.

**This song must be about the G Train.

***You can't use this one. It's half-written.

****This is not a song title. This is the end of the article.

Keeping Score

2010-05-18T19:03:00.005-04:00

"So I know y'all know I ain't been around in a while..."
--Ol' Dirty Bastard

I saw Ol' Dirty Bastard before he died. I saw him a few months before he died, actually, which was amazing timing and tragic* as well. It was a Vice party and I'm pretty sure that if it wasn't in 2004, it was near the tail end of 2003 and he was just out of prison. Some fact checker get on that. That doesn't have much to do with anything except, well, y'all know I ain't been around in a while.

Last month was one of my heavy travel months and I made it to four states, six cities and two baseball games in three weeks. This sort of schedule is a rarity and it can be pretty entertaining, to be quite honest, but it can be a drag when you have someone** waiting for you back home.***

Quickie notes:

San Antonio looks like there was a major urban renewal movement in the 70's, and people started ripping down the old turn-of-the-century buildings... and then those same people realized that tearing down those quaint old buildings was a terrible idea and stopped. The result is a city that has modern-ish skyscrapers and convention halls sticking straight out of the middle of old SoHo-style warehouses (the kind that get gutted and turned into lofts and go for ten million in New York).

There is also a growing artist community, though (casual observation) suggests that it's of the outsider, old west, Neu Mexicana variety. San Antonio is filled with Austin overflow, basically.

Chicago is a city that I had been to before, though this was my first occasion with free time. I spent it at the Field Museum, which makes me a nerd. I also went to a White Sox game and while it looks like a cavernous dump on the television, U.S. Cellular Field (not pictured) is an excellent place to watch a ball game.

I'm working on a zine project with Ted McGrath based on some of my pictures from Los Angeles I made earlier in the year, and thought about doing the same thing for Chicago, what with the Batman being filmed there and all. Regrettably, Chicago is charming and open in the daytime and not at all gothy, and my schedule didn't allow much free-roaming at night. Oh well.

I don't have any great observations about Chicago except that it was very pleasant and warm and congenial in that Midwestern way. It is very comfortable with being an American City in a way that New York is not. I had a fine beefsteak dinner one night, and sushi for another, which went against my rule of not eating raw fish more than forty miles from the ocean. I also found myself near Columbia College and was looking out of both corners of my slanty eyes for anyone I knew. Small sample size meant that I saw no one.

Seattle meant that I got to visit my bestest friend and ex-roommate Matt Hollister and his girlfriend, < a href="nowebsitesorry.com">Melissa< /a>.

They moved away in January and while they are missed by many, many people, they don't miss us because they have a bitchin' view of this out of their front window:

Usually, my work visits center around family -- when I'm in California my parents take a day or a two to come visit and hang out in the off-hours.**** This time, I got to go out and cause trouble. And just lay around, watch sports and eat. And see WORLD FAMOUS TOURING MUSICAL BAND JAPANTHER

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

The fourth stop was California, and there are pictures from there as well, but I've not put them us yet because I am still busy, believe it or not. Working on this silliness, if you fancy a laugh. If you had told me five years ago that my attitude would have mellowed enough in my old age to be able to hack it with the National Broadcasting Company I wouldn't have believed you. Regardless, California will have to wait for another post (possibly Thursday).

*As tragic as someone so troubled dying can be, I guess. Still, he was a showman. Brooklyn Zoo opened for him and spent most of the time "WHUT WHUTTING" the audience and pretty much everyone was ready to rip them limb from limb. This was an audience of skinny white kids, by the way. When O.D.B. came out he immediately wrested the room back in a way that only the greats can.

**This is what Facebook calls being "...In a Relationship."

***Home is New York City. I feel fine saying that after 12 years. Sorry, Mom.

****You can do that sort of thing when you are retired.

Happy Tardy New Year

2010-01-07T17:24:00.004-05:00

So, many of you have wondered* where my annual Christmas bitch-fest was this year and truth be told it's because I didn't have enough venom stored up inside me to harsh your holiday buzzes (be they created with delicious eggnog or heathen manischewitz). Consider it a sea change in attitude for me coupled with the simple fact that I was pleased with my 2009 and didn't care to see it end, unlike the last three or four years where I have wanted to strangle everyone and everything.

A spot of good news and an auspicious event for the beginning for the new year:

New Year's Eve Day I had lost my Con Ed and National Grid bills somewhere in Park Slope. A few hours had passed between leaving the neighborhood and realizing they were missing and in my head I knew they were gone and lost forever, but I went back anyway to see if the could be found at any of the three stores I had gone into that morning.

My head was correct and they were lost and gone; probably on the bus, probably trashed, probably being used to break into my checking account (the argument in favor of paperless bill-pay begins here).

But a few days later, on January 2nd, a strange letter appeared in my mailbox with no return address, my name listed only as "Gin" in blue ball point pen. Inside was a lines piece of spiral bound paper with a grease stain on the margin.

"Hi Gin,

I found your con edison and National Grid bills on the bus(63) and I dropped it in the mail for you.

12/31/09
Happy New Year."

So there you go. Some good person not only put my bills in the mail for me, but wasted another 32-cents+ to tell me they had done so. If that isn't a sign of good things to come and the promise of a better future, then I don't know what is. Happy New Year indeed.

So in honor of you, stranger, who lives somewhere between Columbia St. and Ft. Hamilton in Brooklyn, NY, I have made a donation to the good people at This American Life. Why This American Life? It's free for everyone with a radio or mp3-ready device, generally non-partisan (but with a healthily progressive bent) and as far as I'm concerned, it's as capable of showing the power of the generosity of human spirit as your good deed did. Thank you for teaching us about life and love, again.

Happy New Year.

*None of you have wondered, and fuck all y'all.
+I don't know how much a stamp costs these days.

Rainy Day Activities Also Include Silent Ball

2009-12-13T13:28:00.002-05:00

Starscream let me watch them make their new shirts. Starscream is awesome.

(Other information: This is my film school boredom coming out again. Of course, why would I get a video camera, or a new-fangled camera that shoots video when i can just waste time making gadgets like this? It's not like such cameras are plentiful or anything. Still, I think this is cool. I suck).

Don't Fuck With My Play

2009-12-05T17:34:00.004-05:00

Shapes, Personality Crisis 8, 8/20/09

I actually don't know much about Shapes, except that they have a pretty loyal following and are out there playing almost every weekend (it seems). The second fact usually leads to the first, obviously. Fanelli, the lead Shape, has a pretty significant cult-following as well. They are also more hardcore than you would expect from someone so obviously glammed out. That's not a judgement. How's that for a boring write-up? Fuck, I never said the content on this blog would always be good or particularly enlightening. Fuck. Someone help me out here.

This group of photos also has shots of all the Little Angels, including sterling images of Devin threatening boys with his powerful sexuality. Examine, and feel your groin tremble.

I Heard You Missed Us; We're Back

2009-12-03T15:24:00.005-05:00

Devin & The Li'l Angels, Don Hill's, 8/18/09

I was going to neaten up two days of band deaths with a band birth in Devin & The Little Angels, a supergroup made up of Earth Defense Force and Jack Ferencz from TMH fronted by Devin Therriault, the howlin'est, swingin'est wolf I've met. Of course, this particular show was missing Jack and, well, they only played three or four shows in this incarnation -- Ian Cory is in Chicago, Jack F. is upstate, Sam is upperstate and Jonathan Betz is [scene missing]. Therefore, Devin needs a new band.

The result is the new incarnation of D&TLA starring Devin and a couple of guys I haven't met yet. They exist on MySpace here and wouldn'tcha know they're playing tomorrow at the Yippie Cafe. I think it's free -- a fair deal for memories that will last you a lifetime.

A quickie note about the picture -- Sam is the best guitar player for a photographer imaginable, and his knowledge of rock histrionics is vast and demonstrated often. Two observations,

1) Sam jumps no more than six times per show. Live your life and time your film count accordingly.

2) Sam has no (0) hang time. You know what they say about drinking slowing reaction time*? Monitor your drinking intake accordingly.

*"They say..."? It's science, bro.

Enjoy Them Old Man. They Will Be Your Last

2009-12-02T17:35:00.003-05:00

Ron Wax (Last NYC Show), Don Pedro's, 8/3/09

Two weeks after The Handful left us, Ron Wax bolted for Nebraska. Ain't got no money to pay the bills, you see. As a performer, Ron was one of the strangest, most charismatic acts I have ever seen and he wasn't seen often enough or by enough people. Before he left, we agreed to trade an envelope full of my prints for a silkscreen he had done and a poster he made for his show with The Hydes at Don Pedro's.

Ron had no phone at home and no cellular so he called me from a pay phone* and told me he had nothing to do and asked if we could make the handoff. He came to my house to deliver the things and he commented on a few of my vanity prints I have hanging on my wall -- He had been to Santa Barbara with Mercy Rule and cut a rattle off a dead rattlesnake he found in Mission Canyon. He told me about the time Mercy Rule supported Sleater-Kinney when they passed through Nebraska in the 90's. We shook hands and he rode off on his bike into the night.

He told me he would be back. I have no reason to doubt this. Ron is a gentleman hobo. He might also be a spirit, or something more complex -- the fifth-state of matter. Say his name three times and he appears.

*Make sure you read that last sentence closely. How many times in the last 20 years have you had a call from a pay phone? Seriously. Ron Wax is advanced.

Goodbye Bozos

2009-12-01T13:07:00.005-05:00

The Mighty Handful (Final Show), Shea Stadium, 7/25/09

They always played best when they didn't care about putting on a show. By the time the end had come their act was a known commodity and everyone knew what to expect, and so did they. The set list was basically the same as the last four shows and they ended with Uptown Drunks, which is still my favorite song of 2008 (Paper Planes is #2). Some people were crying because something so insignificant in the grand scheme can still have meaning. We were all young and beautiful once, and now we are old and tired and have other things to do. Toil. Death. When the house cut the PA, it faded up Born to Run, which seemed appropriate.

Somewhere in this anecdote is a comment on the changing of the seasons and the coming of autumn and then winter and then spring, when things begin again.

Earlier in the night there was an older guy floating around who looked like a NARC. He was taking pictures, but it was strange because no one had seen him before; no one wanted to engage with him because he looked like a NARC. As it turns out he was shooting for Paper Magazine for an article about Shea Stadium, which is all fine and dandy except he left before the main event. He couldn't have known.

The lead picture that accompanied the article ended up being a static shot of Museyroom, and there were a few shots of kids milling about and drinking or smoking. In one picture, Rich Toledo is sitting against the wall, alone, tired. He is wearing one of the twenty or so Mighty Handful shirts that were made by hand and sold before the first 741 show. I know it's Rich because I recognize him and I know the shirt he is wearing because he wore it to every Handful show. From the picture in the magazine, however, he's just some kid in a messy shirt.

Somewhere in this anecdote is a comment on defeat being snatched from the jaws of victory or the randomness of opportunity or how fleeting things can be.

Electric Revival

2009-11-30T14:57:00.002-05:00

Hello my darlings. It's been so long. How are you? How are things? How's your mother doing with the... unpleasantness? Oh! How grand! I've been doing so much since my last half-assed post in June that I've barely had time to sit and write pithy commentary about my own work, thank you very much, and I regret that I've left you in the dark regarding wherefores and whatnots and the particulars of the general thing.

I intend to get back into the swing of things by forcing myself to make a comment on a picture -- taken since June -- from my vast, incredible archives and I would be ever so pleased if the readership, whomever or whatever you are, would submit your personal favorites. An end-of-half-a-year review of sorts. I shall begin with the following,

Japanther, Whitney Museum, 7/11/09

I remember when Japanther didn't exist anywhere except on the page -- this is a well crafted legend at this point so there is no need to go into it here. There are old, shamefully bad pictures of them from my archives when they were playing to no one and still giving their all -- isn't that how it always is? Riley's hair was shorter then and he looked less jacked, Ian had fewer tattoos and wasn't married to his kit (in fact, I don't think there was a drum kit at all). The Marshall behind Ian had no graf on the face, though the name "Marshall" still read "Ma-." There was no telephone microphone.

This is from the Whitney Museum (obviously). I was down at Solar-1 at another series of shows and I was getting bored because a white man was rapping and I was actively looking for something else to do. Earlier in the week, Anita had suggested we all go uptown for the Japanther show. Y'know... for old times' sake. Besides, I mean, come on, how many times do you get to see Mega BMX-guy Darryl Nau doing quarter pipe tricks at the Whitney*? I hopped in a cab and went.

Going to this show was seriously a no-brainer -- regrettably I've passed on a surprising amount of no-brainers this year -- I have no idea why. Dissatisfaction with my work? More amusing things? Granted, a lot of those "more amusing things" have been amusing but it hammers home the fact that I can only do so much at a time. I'm not Satan.

*More on this: Japanther has played the Whitney before so if you are asked how often you get to see them play the Whitney, the answer is "occasionally," whereas the answer to the question, "How often do you get to see Mega BMX-guy Darryl Nau do quarter pipe tricks at the Whitney," is probably a shrug, or some kind of emoticon, depending on your questioners' format.

My Last Word On A Tired Subject (feat. Gary Fogelson)

2009-06-29T19:22:00.004-04:00

What follows is a re-formatted chat with designer Gary Fogelson of Fogelson-Lubliner and Gary Fogelson fame. Aside from being a stand-up dude who is recognized within his industry, he has many sound observations on the tired subject of free work and free-work-for-exposure experiences.

6:30 PM

Rich Gin: how often do you get asked to do free stuff

Gary Fogelson: rarely asked

Gary Fogelson: although we do some pro bono stuff for tax breaks

Gary Fogelson: "in kind" donations

Gary Fogelson: but that only works for non profits

Rich Gin: right

Rich Gin: such a curious thing, the differences between perceived value of photography and the perceived value of design and illustration

Gary Fogelson: people don't value photography because they think that if they had the right camera they could do your job

6:35 PM

Rich Gin: tough break

Gary Fogelson: too bad it's true

Rich Gin: Have you had this conversation w/ Jac?

Gary Fogelson: all the time

Rich Gin: lol

Rich Gin: life is unbearable

Gary Fogelson: it's a huge problem

Gary Fogelson: for photographers

Gary Fogelson: it sucks

Gary Fogelson: edit

Gary Fogelson: for photographers that want to make money

Rich Gin: truth bomb

Gary Fogelson: i mean, we wanted her to shoot a job for us but they couldn't afford her
so we ended up doing it ourselves

Gary Fogelson: and it was kind of wack

Gary Fogelson: i mean

Gary Fogelson: we got good stuff

Gary Fogelson: but hers would have been so much better

Gary Fogelson: but there's nothing we could do

Gary Fogelson: alo

Gary Fogelson: ha

Gary Fogelson: also

Gary Fogelson: flickr sucks for that shit too

Rich Gin: When I was first starting work in television, there was a spell where I was doing low-budget jobs, but people would still give you a token amount (which usually accounted for transportation) out of an overall respect for your time and because you are MORE LIKELY to have someone do something for you if it seems like you are making an effort.

Rich Gin: They got me through Ted.

Rich Gin: Flickr is an unfortunate situation, really.

Gary Fogelson: i mean

Gary Fogelson: people can treat flickr like a stock source

Gary Fogelson: and most flickr users are willing to do it for little compensation since they already took the photo and they're amateurs

Rich Gin: people DO treat Flickr like a stock source. You saw the shit in the NYT, right?

Gary Fogelson: digital cameras also suck

Gary Fogelson: no i didn't

Rich Gin: http://www.aphotoeditor.com/2009/06/25/nytimes-advocates-stealing-photos-from-flickr-to-decorate/

Gary Fogelson: yeah...

Gary Fogelson: i dunno bout that one though

Gary Fogelson: it's your fault for posting a high res photo

Gary Fogelson: that's why flickr is tarded

Gary Fogelson: for example

Gary Fogelson: from my POV, since i'm not a professional photographer

Gary Fogelson: if someone printed out a photo of mine and framed it, i'd be weired

Gary Fogelson: weirded

Gary Fogelson: but i wouldn't be banging down their door for some money

Gary Fogelson: because it's not my livelihood

Gary Fogelson: but that's how most of flickr is

Gary Fogelson: which causes this problem for the whole industry

Gary Fogelson: the concept of photography as open source or something

6:45 PM

Rich Gin: It's a tiring argument and discussion to have, I guess. I've had it many times myself. I just never thought to ask someone who makes visual stuff for a living

Gary Fogelson: yeah

Gary Fogelson: it's just a value issue

Rich Gin: "visual stuff" /= photography

Gary Fogelson: right

Gary Fogelson: also

Gary Fogelson: i think people also look at photography differently than design because photographers are
"just" capturing images that already exist

Gary Fogelson: (not my opinion)

Rich Gin: true

Gary Fogelson: as opposed to designers, artists, etc who are making it up from nowhere

6:50 PM

Rich Gin: semantic point: I think the use of "capturing" to describe the manufacturing process of photographs is lame. It's like you're a kid in a field hunting for butterflies or some shit.

Gary Fogelson: that's sort of my point

Gary Fogelson: although it depends on the photographer

Gary Fogelson: in the case of the photographs i take, that's all i'm doing

Gary Fogelson: but not in the case of jacqueline

Gary Fogelson: or you for that matter

Rich Gin: You honor me

7:00 PM

Gary Fogelson: ha

Rich Gin: I should just become one of those dudes that sells sunset pictures on the boardwalk

Gary Fogelson: totally

Gary Fogelson: no shortage of sunsets

Rich Gin: like Thomas Kinkade without the shifty Christianity and franchising.

7:05 PM

Gary Fogelson: true

Rich Gin: I have to go talk to some food about this.

Gary Fogelson: okay

Gary Fogelson: have fun

Rich Gin: would you mind terribly if I blogged this? I need something to fill 1's and 0's with.

Gary Fogelson: nope

Gary Fogelson: i don't know what that means though

Gary Fogelson: 1's and 0's

Gary Fogelson: not "blogged"

Gary Fogelson: i'm familiar with that

Rich Gin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_numeral_system

Gary Fogelson: oh those kinds of 1's and 0's

Gary Fogelson: i'm familiar with those

An afterthought of sorts. There is never enough work to go around -- anyone working in a creative field or freelancing knows this, but asking people to provide work for free isn't providing a job. I had mentioned my past experiences getting into production work when I was first out of school; an honorarium for the worker to show appreciation for spent time. In retrospect, it's a remarkable thing how much you can get out of someone just for showing the consideration. That's where my real beef in all this is: The lack of consideration by a publication for the providers of their content. Their unwillingness to pay or claims of poverty suggest,

1) Evidence of their broken system (this is not even a controversial point these days).

2) Their lack of respect for their providers (we need stuff to fill space, but we really don't care what it is, otherwise we would go through the effort to get full cooperation of the best-qualified sources).

3) A lack of respect for their own product (see: #2).

I hope this will be my last public conversation about this, though I am sure it won't. I already have follow-up questions for other people in other industries about this same sort of thing.

That Just Happened

2009-06-10T23:40:00.004-04:00

Well it seems I was Flickr Blogged and it's like a valve has been released and people from all over the universe are visiting me now so.... Hello. Some background:

This picture is of Jack Lesser, guitarist from The Mighty Handful and bassist for Women. (Women. with a "." to differentiate from Women from Canada). Jack's bands, along with literally hundreds of bands in NYC, play on the all-ages circuit which includes shows put on by Todd P and Joe Ahern*. If you visit The Mighty Handful's Myspace page, you'll find links to bands like Banzai, Le Rug, Radiates, Michael Jordan, Consumer Feedback, Tunnel of Love, Antimagic and scores more. If you're in a position to visit them (you have an office job you hate, say, or are currently unemployed) and take a listen, I think you'll find something for you -- something to excite you or make you pause.

About me: This blog links to bands like this and people whose work I appreciate as well as a running commentary on my work in television and other media. It hasn't been updated recently in any sincere way (Twitter has a way of breaking things down, really) but this could change at any moment with a new job or a new experience.

Thanks for visiting and leave comments.

*At this point I'm more interested in getting content up than hyperlinking. Research and Google are your friends.

This is Just to Say

2009-06-02T14:48:00.003-04:00

To all,
The sirs and madams
who want to use
my pictures,

And have high hopes
and genuine wishes
of convincing me
to do so;

You should really have
cash
or check
in hand.

Anna calls her Isobel, but I call her Nancy

2009-05-21T15:20:00.003-04:00

The Hasselblad had to go back to her rightful owner (pictured), who came out of hiding to spirit her away. It was fun while it lasted but, y'know, life goes on. That thing was heavy. I'll be fine.

I'm on Twitter for some reason. I only need 140 characters to blog the way I do these days...

Land Shark.

2009-05-04T12:26:00.005-04:00

Hi. Go read someone else's blog for a while because it seems I have not posted in over a month. Michelle Lapid's Blog has pictures from a job I did in Atlanta (and betrays the secret identity of one of my clients) over two months ago. See if you can find me. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. Didn't I tell you I was in Atlanta? I really need to get back on this thing. Sheesh.

An aside; Tunnel of Love is making a return engagement to NYC this Saturday at 7pm. The place? Market Hotel. I've been at Cake Shop a lot lately and it will be good to go somewhere else.

In Local News...

2009-03-22T11:20:00.004-04:00

Just walked down Smith St. and watched the paps stalking our friendly local celebrity. They were trying to be so sly about it too -- standing on the corner with their phones to their ears (pretending to call, surely -- why would they want to give anyone else info on where they were or who they were shooting?). Playacting as if their job was important or high-intensity. When she walked past they would hurry along behind her on the opposite side of the street; it just seemed so unnecessary. Granted, I've seen celebrity hunting in Manhattan many, many times and it seems unnecessary there too but now it was too close to home. There's definitely a bad taste in my mouth.

AND YET THERE IS MUSIC

2009-03-12T13:47:00.002-04:00

IGNORE PREVIOUS BLOG POST ABORT DO NOT GO TO CRASH MANSION TONIGHT NO HAY BANDA -- THERE IS NO BAND.

Subsidized Fun for Your Entertainment in Post-bubble America.

2009-03-11T13:57:00.005-04:00

Dear friends and well-wishers,

This is short notice and I do not expect for my readership to have much of an impact. In the spirit of your boy Barry's gift to America (le Stimulus), The Mighty Handful (above and below, bellowing) have the following offer on the table,

"alright, here's the deal:

we (the Mighty Handful) found out today (Wed March 11th) that we have a show tomorrow night (Thu March 12th) at Crash Mansion at 11:00 pm
If we bring 20 people we get paid $300
we really want to record, we have no money to do so, this would be a really good kick in the ass

the point is we need YOU to come
it might not be all ages, I don't know, It's 10 dollars, but if you need us to I am willing to pay 5 dollars to you after the show
please baby?"

So there you have it. Your checkbook will be stimulated to the tune of five (5) United States Dollars and your ass will be stimulated to the tunes of The Mighty Handful. You know you want to go. It's tomorrow (Thursday). Thursday has been the new Friday for the better part of twenty years. Go. Drink. You pansy fuckers.

Oh Hello, I Didn't See You There

2009-02-14T13:04:00.004-05:00

Who up in this bitch likes clothes and getting paid? If you raised your hand, you might like to know that Mercedes Benz Fashion Week is here again. Of course, we are all now starving and dying because while there is no depression in Heaven, there is one here on Earth. Bummer. It is well documented that many designers are trying to reconcile the luxe loucheness of pretty birds in sparkly dresses with imminent doom, and one of the ways they cope is with PRESENTATIONS, where said birds line up or lounge about and wear said dresses.

Witnesseth, Exhibit A:

We are so bored,

Exhibit B:

The designers get their moment with the chorus girls,

Exhibit C:

The shoes are kind of cruel when the girls have to stand in one spot for a half hour,

Exhibit D:

You achieve a new level of intimacy with the process when the models and stylists start talking to each other in plain view,

A presentation, though classical in structure and effect, is nowhere NEAR as much fun as a runway show as the pace is slower and static, and the crowd hewn and refined to close friends, staff, and Important Tastemakers (Editors). You could say that a presentation "intimate." You could also say there are "fewer freaks." Tomayto, tomahto.

I've also noticed that the people working the shows, the support staff, the hair and makeup boys and girls, security and the media are all just happy to be here and employed. Count me among them.

While some designers opt for smaller presentations, others still use the fanciest trade-show venue in the World, The Tents. ON WITH THE SHOW.

Behold, a tiny space for all your hair and makeup needs,

A double-wide prepping area sub-divided to fit two designers' crews in at the same time (economies of time, space),

There are fewer cameras on the runway during pre-game this season, but they all end up in the same place (this has not and will not change ever),

The usual suspects are still in the front row,

I'm pretty sure the staff photographer for Nicole Miller pre-rigged the venue with strobes. I can't recall having seen that before, even though I'm sure it has happened at least once. In any instance he lit that space up like a motherfucking roman candle.

People still applaud the effort and time.

That wasn't so hard, was it?

INTERVIEW II, Random Child, 1/16/09

2009-01-29T13:33:00.031-05:00

In an ongoing effort to provide you, the reader, with valuable content, Richardgin.org and I Fall To Pieces are pleased to present this extensive interview with members of the band, Random Child, conducted on January 16th, 2009.

Jack Greenleaf: Wait, do you have questions and everything?

Rich Gin: Eh, I sort of wing it. So we're here with Random Child; If you could introduce yourselves.

JG: My name is Jack Greenleaf and I play guitar and keyboards...

Ian Cory: ...and bass...

JG: ...and bass.

IC: I'm Ian Cory, I play drums, keyboards and sing on the record, I mostly sing live.

Eli Sidman: I'm Eli Sidman and I play bass primarily but on the songs I've written on guitar I [also] play guitar.

RG: And you all know each other from previous bands?

JG: Well! There was this very serious band called Cool & Unusual Punishment. It consisted of me, Henry Crawford from The Mighty Handful and Ian Cory.

IC: And for a while, Scout [Pare-Phillips from Radiates].

JG: For a while we had Scout at the end. And [Cool & Unusual] was, like, pop music but Ian always had metal drums in the background. So I thought there was definitely some originality to it but also it just wasn't very good.

ES: I really liked it.

JG: Banzai loved it; Jonathan Edelstien thought we were the shit and, like, Max Coburn thought we were the shit.

Tola Brennan: That last show WAS the shit.

JG: That's Tola Brennan, by the way.

RG: Tola Brennan is listening, by the way, and kicking in his two cents. He is welcome to do so.

ES: I was in The Floor Is Lava for a long time as guitar player and then I was the bass player for Zinko Propolus, which was Tola's old band.

JG: I also...

ES: You played bass for Zinko Propolus for a show.

JG: I also played bass for The Floor Is Lava for one show...

ES: Two shows. At the very end. And then the last song of our last show.

JG: The last show [Calamity] Sam, like, dropped the bass and ran away. So I jumped on stage and played and it was like old times.

IC: Jack and I were in Tetsuwan Fireball for one show.

JG: With Henry [Crawford]. It was weird.

IC: And I was also - and still am - in Earth Defense Force, in the sense that Earth Defense Force still exists.

ES: You're on hiatus.

JG: The world doesn't need any saving right now.

IC: Yeah, it's OK; Obama's in office.

ES: In four to eight years you guys will come back out with another two songs.

IC: I was also in Somewhere There's A Fix and we were terrible.

ES: I liked it too! I've got those recordings I think they're good!

JG: They were a metal-core band. It's just the most upstate thing you'll ever hear.

RG: Taking it back to Eli saying he liked all these bands - who is your audience?

ES: For The Floor Is Lava - I feel like this whole scene started around the time when The Floor Is Lava and Cool & Unusual and Tetsuwan started. Before then there was The Hysterics, who I don't think exist anymore...

IC: And Fiasco was around as Stun Gun.

ES: They were pretty much just a punk band at that point.

JG: The scene at that time just wasn't as strong. I think Fiasco were making a lot of connections at that time. They were meeting Starscream; meeting people like Gavin from Consumer Feedback who's a really, really talented promoter.

ES: Yeah. I think the first show we ever had was in Staten Island and I think we got it from Consumer Feedback and that was with you guys and Tetsuwan...

JG: No that wasn't Consumer Feedback, that was Demand For Cheaper Money.

ES: Demand For Cheaper Money, yeah. Back then our audience was just our friends. I remember before every show the band would get together and go through our phonebooks on our cell phones and just call everyone we knew regardless of whether we'd spoken to them in two years and say, "Hey our band is playing a show! You should come." And then [if anyone] showed up [it] was great. Parents came.

JG: Parents are a great audience.

ES: The Floor Is Lava, had one 21+ show where a bunch of our teachers came which was cool.

RG: How did that go over?

ES: It was good. The venue was pretty shitty. We didn't sound great. But there were ten of our teachers and parents there, which was kind of nice. And then other than that it was just other bands. I mean, that was always the audience I always enjoyed playing to the most - my friends who were in bands. Because, you'd talk about what stuff you were writing over the course of the [previous] week or two and then you'd come get together for a show again and you'd say, "Check out this new song I wrote," and everyone would play their new stuff.

JG: Actually, I think the biggest audience was other bands. And I think that's still true. And I think that now that the scene is meshing with the Todd P scene in a way with Gabe Weinstock I feel like Fiasco is kind of taking the next step and not necessarily [leaving] this scene but also, like...

IC: Expanding...

JG: ...bringing them together a bit more. I think that's really nice. I think it's become much more like - you see the exact same people every time which I think is good and bad because there's always a lot of people, but it's also... y'know.

ES: At the shows I've been to since I haven't been performing, like, the audience is made up of the same people every time which is kind of cool because you go to a show and you know you'll see those twelve kids.

JG: You make friends and stuff.

IC: In terms of Random Child's audience in this scene I don't really know if we have one.

JG: I think with Random Child we have the same attitude we had in Cool & Unusual, which was, "Whoever likes us, likes us," and we don't really care. But right now we're in the process of trying to see what kind of people would enjoy it and we're just shopping around to everyone.

IC: From what I can tell everyone enjoys one part on the record.

JG: Everyone likes one thing.

ES: If not a song, then a part of a song.

IC: I was joking around saying, "Oh there's something for everyone," but there's also something for everyone to hate.

ES: Again, from what I've seen, the primary audience is other bands. I've played some stuff for Jonathan Edelstein and his friends, I mean [Jonathan] is in the band, but other members of Banzai and they all think it's really cool. And I played some stuff for [Calamity] Sam and he thought it was awesome. We tried to do something that no one we know who plays music has done before - at least that was an effort for me; do something that I haven't heard anyone our age do. So when I play those parts for people they say, "Cool! I never would have done that or thought about doing that."

IC: For me it wasn't a conscious attempt to write things differently, It's just that it's always what I wanted to do - the more metal sounding stuff - that I just never had a chance to do before. For me it's about finally being able to write whatever the hell I want.

RG: The only track I've heard is the one online - Angel of Dead New York - and it seems like it's either the opening for Side A or the opener of Side B. It's as if the song is setting up to lead into something else. So - ugly question - is this a song cycle or a concept album?

ES: The concept is chaos and, quite literally, random-ness.

IC: There are some lyrical themes throughout the record. It wasn't like I set out saying, "OK here's the next song in the storyline and there are this many characters and we're going to have a string orchestra..."

ES: And a boy who is deaf, dumb and blind.

IC: Exactly. And in the end we tear down the wall. It wasn't like that. The lyrics all kind of relate to similar things, except for maybe Illusions, which is our hardcore punk song.

ES: Which is the one that's probably the most tongue-in-cheek.

IC: The main song on the record in my opinion is the closing track, Plague, which is nine minutes long and has three separate parts.

JG: It is definitely embracing its ridiculousness. There's a part where Ian is just saying, "Mountains will crumble," - talking - over the heaviest riff you can imagine - just chugging. It's just Ian talking. He would say a line and [have to] back away from the microphone [because he'd be] laughing and we'd giggle for a while and then he'd go back. But you listen to it and it works.

IC: The idea running through the song is that everyone to some degree is fucked up. And not in the sense that I hate everyone, because that's not true at all, but more like everyone, even amazing people, wonderful, inspiring people have some side to them that's really ugly and really hideous and no matter what you do to hide it the really disgusting parts of your personality are still there.

ES: It's funny because I wrote all of Plague except for one part.

IC: Yeah, the Dream Theater bit.

ES: And for me the song has a totally different feeling. Writing it on guitar and listening to it in its entirety, to me it seems like the rise and fall of a band in nine minutes. It's got all these different parts and the sound changes constantly but it's all linked together. It gets exciting and happy and exotic and pretty and then it gets all heavy and chuggy and in the end it burns out like a really bright flash of light and then there's a little acoustic outro like, 'there's still hope.' The first time I heard it I thought, "This makes me feel like I'm in a band and having it form and then fight and then crumble."

JG: The main thing about this album - this band has been a lot of not really doing anything, not getting off [our] ass. We had songs [on the shelf] for years, where we would finish one part of it and be really proud of ourselves and never finish it.

ES: How long were we around?

JG: I don't think it really counts...

ES: ...Random Baby.

IC: There are two stages of Random Child - there's Random Baby and that was when we first started off with me and friends of mine who weren't really musicians; I was just really close with [them].

ES: And you weren't even really a musician at that point.

IC: I was more of a musician than anyone else. And the only remaining members from that time are Joey [Hurtado] and me. Joey is our other guitarist and he isn't here because he lives in Staten Island. Distance was a problem and scheduling because everyone just started getting really busy but we had a few riffs. What we used to do is take a riff and we'd jam on it for ten minutes and the other guys didn't know how to change melodically - they'd just be playing the riff and I'd just be drum soloing.

ES: I joined the band after this phase.

IC: Jonathan [Edelstein] joined then because I wanted to have another drummer and at that point it was like, "OK, if we're going to have Jonathan Edelstien from fucking Fiasco in the band, we're going to have to get our shit together." And we started writing the songs and it became quickly apparent to the people in the band who weren't musicians that they would have to leave. And so Jack joined and shortly thereafter Eli joined.

JG: The album is more of us trying to finish something and just the fact that we finished something is really encouraging. So [the album] is much more for ourselves than anyone else.

IC: I don't think people will like this in the, "Oh I love this album it's my new favorite band!" sense, although I think there will be one person in the world who would think that...

RG: ...possibly in Norway.

ES: Someone out there other than us will love every part of this album.

IC: I think most people will be like, "Oh wow!"

JG: "Oh wow, that's Ian!"

IC: "Oh wow, Random Child; this is really happening..."

JG: "Ian is that you? Oh my God!" It's like, "Yeah, mom!"

IC: Although [my parents] did sit through Somewhere There's A Fix...

JG: I liked Somewhere There's A Fix, but if I was a parent and heard that I'd be like, "Y'know you're not singing on key."

ES: "Put your shirt back on."

JG: Again, the songs are concepts, not really the album.

IC: I've already worked on a lot of material for the next record.

JG: I feel like this band has gotten its shit together so quickly and with all my other bands it's like, "Oh we'll record when we have money..."

ES: Wasn't your only practice space [in the early days] in the basement of Ian's house? Which you could only use one day a week?

JG: Yeah, Cool & Unusual could only practice at Ian's house once a week.

ES: And I think at my house you practiced twice. I think the fact that [we] have a place where [we] can go and rehearse is nice.

IC: I also always thought that the place where a band practices has a huge impact on how they sound. Cool & Unusual, we practiced in my well-lit, comfortable living room and we had this...

JG: ...well-lit, comfortable sound.

IC: And then The Floor Is Lava, they practiced in Eli's basement, which is a bunker - the most disgusting, war-zone kind of place and they came out and they sounded like a fucking G.I. unit. Just deadly.

ES: It's funny because we sounded awful in my basement but Random Child sounds pretty good in my basement.

IC: This is where we're supposed to be; it's just loud and angry...

JG: ...and gross and sometimes one of us isn't wearing deodorant because it's a Sunday.

IC: But for a week in the summer right before we went in to the studio we practiced every day and we got so good.

JG: And we never got angry at each other.

IC: It was amazing.

JG: This seems like instant band.

IC: Just add basement.

RG: Over the last six months or so a lot of the bands in the scene have been "muscling up" their sound live and in the studio. Talk about the sound in terms of album production because what I've heard has a high level of execution.

JG: Well, we recorded at GaluminumFoil, which is a studio in Williamsburg.

IC: So much fun. It was probably the best part of my summer - just going into the studio and it was just a blast - one, just playing the tunes and then having them played back.

JG: At first, I'll be honest, we were playing in Eli's basement and I was like, "This will be OK. I don't know if we're tight enough to do this... I don't know." And we went in and I thought it was really interesting to see the environment the audio engineer creates to make you feel comfortable and make you do your best.

ES: Yeah I've recorded at GaluminumFoil three times now: Twice with The Floor Is Lava and once with Random Child and I worked there for a month for an internship. The guy who works there is this guy Jeff [Berner] - plug to Jeff - he's just an incredibly...

IC: ...tall...

ES: ...skilled, very tall. I sort of jokingly challenged Jack to give [Jeff] the most ridiculous description of the sound he wanted on his guitar that he could think of - it was the keyboard! [Jack] told him you wanted the keyboard to sound like is was on a boat, alone, in the middle of a lake on a foggy night.

JG: And he did it.

ES: He was, like, "Oh, that's easy." And it took three seconds; he twisted some knobs and was like, "Try it now!" And Jack plays a big chord and says, "That's perfect!"

IC: We did that with the guitar too, we wanted it to sound like we're under water in a submarine. And he said, "Let me get my Fucked Up Pedal."

JG: It was really fucked up. I don't know what that pedal does - It just makes you sound like you're on a submarine radar.

ES: I give him so much credit though. He's good at what he does and he's nice and he knows how to give the band as much help as they want, he knows the things you want done without having to be asked.

IC: I was surprised. I came in and said OK, I want the guitar sound to be really heavy and sound like this record and I gave him Catch 33 by Meshuggah...

JG: And he listened to, like, 3 seconds of it and said, "OK, we can do that."

IC: We started playing Subjects, the first track, and I thought to myself, "This is the heaviest thing I've ever heard." It's ridiculous how quickly the most amazing parts happened. I felt good going in and when we finished the drums sounded awesome Jonathan's drumming sounded great my drumming - of course my drumming sounded wonderful.

JG: I think Jonathan drummed on the exact right track.

ES: Unfortunately Jonathan played on only one song because he had a dentist appointment. He said, "I'll come back," and by the time he came back we had finished.

JG: But he came back, which is really nice.

ES: We took a cab back to Ian's place and Jonathan rode his bike behind us...

JG: ...And I kept looking out the back window saying, "I don't think he's going to make it!"

ES: ...And he followed us for, like, twenty blocks and then he got lost. We turned a corner and he was gone and he was replaced by a huge black dude on a bike.

IC: Which just plays into the theory that Jonathan is a shape-shifter.

ES: I think the hardest part about this band is getting Jonathan to come out and practice. He's in Fiasco and Banzai and everything extracurricular at school and he's definitely feeding starving children in other countries every other weekend. It's just really hard to nail him down and his phone never works or he loses it.

JG: But he's always very, very supportive and very, very professional.

IC: I think he really digs the music. When he plays - there are definitely songs on the record that I wish he'd played on. I wish he'd played on Stasis. There were songs that I definitely should have played on, like Angel of Dead New York, I think I played that better than him.

JG: The thing is, since Ian's the main writer in this band, it's mainly Ian and us around him.

ES: Either doing things he says, or presenting things to him that he would appreciate.

JG: He's like a king.

ES: It's [his] baby. That's how I saw it when I joined the band. This isn't music I really listened to before, in fact most of the stuff that influenced Random Child I listened to after I joined the band because [Ian] gave me 5 CD's of homework to listen to. For The Floor Is Lava I just wrote whatever [I wanted] and because there were five people in the band we all got to say, "This sucks or that sucks," or ,"We'll use this but change this." Now, with Random Child, I basically do the same thing; I'll write something that I think is cool and show it to Ian and he'll say, "That's too light," or, "That's perfect; can you bring it down a half step."

JG: I think that's the reason we all get along so well; we're all on the same page and it's not democratic. It's totalitarian and it's great. And there are no arguments, really, because we all know what we're trying to achieve.

ES: And because I have no foundation writing music like this if Ian says, "That's terrible," I'm like, "OK! I'll write something new!"

JG: There are some riffs I wrote and I'd say to myself, "This is terrible. It's just me playing five notes fast and no scale," and Ian would say, "No! That's it!" and I have to just trust him. But it sounds good on the record, it sounds like it belongs there.

IC: I think going back to when we were recording Pilgrimage, Joey [Hurtado] - both Jack and Joey have very interesting limitations on guitar. Joey's not very good at playing chord-based music...

ES: ...He doesn't have a lot of rhythm with his right hand. He can do some really impressive stuff speed-wise and riff wise if he practices a lot and he actually does practice, which is amazing to me.

JG: Joey is someone who listens to metal. I listen to, like, Explosions in the Sky, which is heavy but... sensitive...

IC: That is a part of our sound though, more Mono than Explosions in the Sky.

ES: I totally appreciate Joey though, because Joey will come to a practice and I'll try and teach him a riff and I won't even know the names of the notes I'll [count off], "3rd fret, 4th fret, 5th fret," and he'll sit there with his Sidekick writing God-knows what and he'll be barely able to play [the riff]. I'll say, "How can we play this song he can't play this riff?" and then he'll come back two weeks later and be able to play it perfectly.

JG: Or he'll play it different and better.

IC: But there was a point where we were recording Pilgrimage where [Joey] couldn't do the folky, rhythm parts and Jack said, "I'll just do it," and then there's the part in Angel of Dead New York where Jack said, "I can't do this part with the fast picking," and Joey said, "I'll just do it."

ES: That was the fun part about recording. There was so little ego in the studio. We went in and there are some songs that Ian and I wrote and then every other practice Jack and Joey would learn a part of a part of a song, like, on bass or something. But once we got into the studio if one of us said, "I can't play this," we'd just pass the instrument off on to someone else. On Illusions, Joey said, "There should be a solo here." I had already done my solo on Stasis and I didn't want to solo again because I'm not that versatile; it was going to sound the same so I said, "Jack, you do it." And he was like, "Whhhhaaaaaaat?" and [he] took it and it sounds awesome.

JG: I still don't remember ever playing that. They keep telling my I played a solo on that song and I'm pretty sure I didn't.

ES: It's great because you basically took as many strings as you could grab as high up on the neck as you could go and bent them as much as possible and picked as fast as you could and it sounds brilliant. It sounds perfect for what the song is and you did it in one take and said, "Is that ok?"

IC: And it's over this riff in 5/4 where I'm singing this... metal-scat thing it's completely ridiculous but it works.

ES: And I told you whenever I play that song for someone and it gets to that part with the harmonics everyone's always, "That's so cool! Who did that?" and I say, "Jack Greenleaf," and they say, "Whatta G."

RG: This question might be ahead of its time, but is the goal for Random Child to become a live band? I know [Ian] and I were talking about this last night; about picking your spots, playing shows where you might get a different audience or people who would definitely appreciate it.

IC: Well I do want to play a few shows with the local bands. I'd love to play a show with Fiasco or Banzai.

JG: So basically you want to make Jonathan's life a living hell?

ES: If we could get a show with Banzai, Random Child and Fiasco it would kick so much ass and I think the people they bring would really appreciate it.

JG: I can't imagine The Mighty Handful and Random Child playing a show on the same [bill] because the energy is different and the ideas are different.

IC: I think if Random Child starts playing live then it will have that theatricality to it. I don't want to just play shows.

JG: There's so much theatricality to the music...

IC: The thing is, we kind of embrace the ridiculousness of it all...

JG: ...Embrace the melodrama.

IC: ...Because there’s nothing wrong with it.

RG: Well that's what metal is at it's best - with a heavy dose of absurdity.

ES: Yeah that's why Dragon Force sucks; because they think they're the best band ever and what they're doing is the coolest thing.

JG: I think in general when people take things seriously it becomes more fun but we're embracing the...

IC: ...Like, there’s a part where I'm just doing spoken word in a Norwegian accent and I'm speaking from the perspective of the black plague - it's kind of insane. But there's nothing wrong with being absurd.

ES: On the other hand, bands that don't take themselves seriously enough won't sound as good because they're obviously not into it as much. But bands who play that up too much like Dragon Slayer, remember them? From Staten Island? With the rainbow glasses...

IC: I left before they played because I was so pissed off at that show.

ES: This guy had an axe that his microphone was on and he - this big fat guy - wore a tunic and he wore this pink heart-shaped glasses and he walked around talking in this crazy accent like, "Zees glahsses ah made of drahgon glahs!" and he said something about unicorns like, "Unicorns ah mean zhey steal ahnd zhey rape." And there were three people there to see them and they were all wearing costumes. And then they were just bad. It was like Tenacious D to the negative tenth power.

JG: I actually think our seriousness is along the lines of They Might Be Giants because they take themselves very, very seriously and they're very professional and they write some genuinely heartbreaking songs. At the same time they wrote Istanbul.

IC: That was a cover; they wrote I Hope That I Get Old Before I Die.

ES: We were talking about movies earlier today and we decided that no matter how ridiculous the premise, so long as the movie takes itself seriously then it's going to be good and I think it's the same thing with being in a band.

IC: I think we're like the movie Battle Royal. In the sense that you're thinking, "Holy shit! What the hell just happened!?" When Jack and I first watched it I was so depressed [after] and when Joey came over and watched it he just laughed and we ended up having the best time because it was just a bunch of Japanese kids killing each other. And with Random Child you can be like, "That's really interesting and thought provoking," or you can be like, "This is the most absurd thing on the planet! They're playing in 19/16? Why are they doing that?"

ES: If the audience gets it and views it from one of those two perspectives it will be good. But playing shows is hard because it's hard to get everyone together.

JG: I don't see us being a live band for a while. I think maybe this coming summer, honestly. We tried to do it this winter break and we got together and practiced and we wrote new stuff and a lot of it sounded awesome.

ES: But then everyone went away.

JG: It's just distance.

IC: But once we get everyone together I want to play a few shows with local metal bands like Inswarm or Hull.

JG: Or more people I don't know.

IC: I just found this band Consider The Source; have you heard of them?

JG: I want to play with Krallice. Krallice are intense.

IC: I also have friends in other bands upstate from being in Somewhere There's A Fix. I wouldn't mind playing shows with Matt [Weinberg] - it would be a bit strange but I do want to branch out and see what the response would be from a scene that would be in to heavier music. It's kind of funny because here in the Brooklyn, Park Slope Indie scene we have parts where I'm screaming and we tune to drop-D to play doom metal riffs but then if we play with other metal bands we have arts where I sing cleanly over acoustic guitar parts. We're too heavy for the indie kids and too light for the metal heads.

ES: Like Metallica: Too heavy for the punk clubs, too light for the metal clubs.

[At this point, Ian is compared to Lars Ulrich and swearing happens. Tola plays music in the background to get attention.]

RG: I noticed at the last Vanishing Point show there were about 125 people and I didn't know 100 of them. Do you - and this is an question independent of Random Child - but do you notice that the crowds are composed of more people than there used to be?

JG: Yes. And the worst part of it is that I look at them and say, "What are the eight graders doing here?" I feel like, especially at the Old Stone House show; I mean I thought it was successful and we [play that venue for charity] every year - Henry [Crawford], Ian and I - Ian less so this year.

IC: My mom basically organized the last two...

JG: Your mom is the shit.

RG: That's going in the interview.

JG: Your mom is the shit. She's the one who made us dinner at every practice.

IC: Sometimes my dad would do it too.

JG: And your dad is really cool; He has some really cool stories that we can't tell here. But it's kind of like in with the new and out with the old. I'm interested in seeing what the younger bands are going to do and what the younger bands are going to be because I feel like there aren't any [younger bands] yet.

ES: I'm so afraid because those are kids who are inspired by us. That can't possibly be good. We're so half-assed to begin with. That's why Fabian [Kaupert] scares me so much. Because he's so into the music - I mean Fabian's bag still has a The Floor Is Lava flyer on it - his bag for school. And I love that he came to all out shows and was really into it, but I can't imagine someone seeing me play music thinking, "That's cool! I want to do that!" and then starting a band. It's like, "What awful spawn did I create?"

IC: I think Jetlag was like that. I thought, "Wow this is the band that Fiasco would inspire."

ES: I mean I'm inspired by Fiasco; I have such a low opinion of my own music.

JG: With bands like The Crayons and Runtime Error - I mean Runtime Error has members of Fiasco in it - but I mean, Jack Wolf and Lucio Westmorland [Ex-Care Bears on Fire] who are probably now going to inherit; we're probably going to leave and they're going to make [the scene] a big deal.

ES: It's actually really creepy too, because I used go to a Fiasco show and there would be all these freshman kids from my high school who I'd despise and I'd be like, "Why are you here?" and they'd say, "Well, we're groupies with Lucio. And Lucio was like, 'I'm going to a Fiasco show!" And so we did too."

JG: Lucio is the nicest guy on the planet. He has a whole studio in his basement now. That's where Women. are recording, The Mighty Handful started recording there and that's when I said, "[The Mighty Handful] have to get tighter." I'm such a band bitch.

ES: When they were younger - like, Care Bears on Fire; I don't want to talk shit about anybody - when those kids were younger they were bad musicians and they sounded like they were nine and ten year olds playing music.

JG: It was more like they were just doing it and not thinking about it.

ES: It's kind of weird because Fiasco was kind of like their den mother; taught them all how to dress and it pissed me off for a while because they weren't very good and they were kind of imitating these kids who were a couple of years older than them but now it's gotten to the point where Lucio’s drumming just blows me away; they actually have their own set of skills which is cool.

JG: And Jack Wolf has the best guitar tones.

ES: They've both learned to really appreciate what they're doing.

IC: We'd love to play a show with The Crayons.

RG: They were supposed to play last night. Wha' happan'?

JG: Knowing them, they're just really shy and really - "I don't think this is going to go well..."

ES: I was Jack Wolf's CIT for songwriting at Berkeley Carroll a long time ago.

RG: They need to work on the shyness thing because watching peoples' backs is really a bummer.

ES: Someone, probably Jack Wolf, decided it was too cold to leave his house yesterday.

RG: I will accept that explanation.

IC: I think Dexter Loos said that. I think Dexter would like Random Child.

JG: I love Dexter. His enthusiasm at first is shocking and you think he might be kidding. I love all those people who I rarely talk to but keep showing up - to any of the shows. I remember when I first went to Stun Gun, which was Fiasco in 6th grade...

IC: First band I ever saw live.

JG: I went to their show and I remember thinking, "I can't hear the vocals at all," because Jonathan [Edelstein] would just be, "[mumbles lyrics]."

IC: And then Lucian would sing and they would do Puddle of Mudd covers.

JG: They did She-fucking-Hates Me with Lucian screaming.

IC: Every time I think I'm doing something wrong with my life I remember hearing that and say, "It's ok!"

JG: You look at Fiasco and I'm just amazed at how good they are now and how hilarious they were before. Even early Fiasco every other song was incredible and then there was some stuff where you just [shrugs].

ES: All the really fast punk stuff that's two minutes long that they don't do anymore - they still have that attitude but they're never going to play those songs again.

IC: They're not going to play TK421...

ES: They'd play CBGB's and they'd do 20 songs in 10 minutes.

JG: With Modrocket - they’d always be with Modrocket and the Bones Royal. And then Mod Rocket went to California.

IC: And then Modrocket broke up.

ES: The old bass player of Modrocket goes to my school; I discovered her really weirdly. I was advertising Brooklyn music and Brooklyn bands, and of course on the internet you can ask people and see if they have certain things. I was advertising The Floor Is Lava and Tetsuwan and Fiasco and this random person was like, "Fiasco's really pretentious," and I said, "I guess... They're nice guys. Do you know them?" and she said, "Yeah I used to play shows with them all the time." Finally, I said, "Who are you?" She said, "I was in a band called Modrocket," and I said, "Oh! I was in The Floor Is Lava," and she was like, "OH SHIT! LAVA!" so we connected really randomly.

JG: I think the most inspiring thing is that Fiasco did what they wanted to do as hard as they could even when it was kind of shitty and now you read magazines with High Places and No Age - [Fiasco] loves No Age; they're one of [Fiasco's] favorite bands - and then they open for No Age and No Age love them [back]. I can't even imagine that feeling of one of your favorite bands really liking you.

IC: Like, if we opened for Isis or Opeth. My head would explode.

RG: You guys touched on this before how you regret the younger bands looking up to you - who were the standard bearers for you? Were there any?

ES: Tetsuwan. I mean, Tetsuwan started before The Floor Is Lava and eventually [Calamity] Sam became our bass player. I just remember Sam saying, "I'm in a band now." Back then Tetsuwan Fireball was fueled by Sam's irrational hatred of The Hysterics. I remember after each song during their first three shows Sam saying, "FUCK THE HYSTERICS!" And I remember at some point having to sit down with him and talk to him because people were getting genuinely upset; people from St. Ann's [School] were saying, "WHO'S THAT LITTLE FUCKER WHO KEEPS SAYING 'FUCK THE HYSTERICS?' THE HYSTERICS ARE OUR GREATEST PRODUCT FROM ST. ANN'S!"

I saw Tetsuwan play a few shows and I said, "I want to start a band!" I had known Jack [Ferencz] for a long time and we met Felix [Walworth] at... Camp years before and [Felix] was the world's shittiest guitar player when we met him. When Jack [Ferencz] met [Felix] at a party [some time later] he said, "I met that kid Felix again," and I said, "I don't know who you're talking about," and Jack said, "He plays the drums now!"

So we went to [Felix's] house and he clearly had no idea what he was doing at the time but because Jack and I had never played with a drummer before we were all said, "THIS IS AMAZING!" And Will [Tesdell] said, "I hear you've started a band, let me hear a song." He came back a week later with a full page of lyrics and said, "I'm in the band!"

JG: Cool & Unusual... We were different people because I was fat and [Ian] wore short khakis all the time - [Ian] still does. And [he] used to have only band t-shirts.

IC: I still do only wear band t-shirts. And at that time I was listening to Marilyn Manson.

JG: Yeah, all the band shirts were: Marilyn Manson.

JG: But the three of us were into Queen, Arcade Fire and Modest Mouse. Those were the only things we listened to.

ES: I have the recordings of them that I stole off Jack's computer and they're just three recordings of Jack, Ian and Henry screaming Bohemian Rhapsody at the top of their lungs. They're all over 6 min long.

JG: We do every single part.

IC: Before Cool & Unusual, my very first band in a practice situation was with Ludwig [Persik] from The Bones Royal and Good Omen and Alex Niemetz from Mod Rocket and Sandra Nazz from Modrocket and this kid Kevin Gannon...

JG: ...with Ian Cory in a room playing Led Zeppelin.

IC: We would just do Led Zeppelin covers and at that point I could do parts of Zeppelin songs but I couldn't play fast enough to play Rock and Roll. That's what made me get my shit together on drums because Ludwig was a really good guitarist and Alex Niemetz was good and Sandra Nazz was not that good of a guitar player.

ES: I said it before but in terms of inspiration for me it was purely the other bands who were around who were my peers; they'd play a song and I'd be, like, "That song is fucking awesome."

JG: I think Fabian is one of our peers - he's our age.

ES: I don't know. He's two years younger than me, a year younger than you. But at the time the bands that were popping up were friends of me and friends of [Jack Greenleaf]. I remember when [The Floor Is Lava] started, Tetsuwan was the greatest band ever and the songs they did we were always, "How did they do that? That's awesome!" That was back when Jonathan [Betz of Whiskey Crusaders and Earth Defense Force] still played drums for them. When we formed they were the coolest thing, and so everything was just [all of us] trying to one-up each other but in a really friendly way. There were very few egos there until later. It was always, "They did something awesome, we need to go back and sit in my basement for three hours and try and figure out something awesome that we can do."

IC: In Cool & Unusual we started doing weird time signatures first. We had a song in 13/8.

JG: And it was our most popular song.

ES: Odyssey?

JG: It was really catchy. You wrote this really strange drum beat and Henry, being simple; back then he didn't know how to play the bass as well so he would have little melodies but they were so catchy.

IC: The point I was going to make by saying I was in The Bones Royal is when I left The Bones Royal I was so angry and I said, "I'm going to form a band! And it's going to be with Jack and Henry and we're going to be great!" That [thought] became Cool & Unusual.

JG: See, [my experience] was totally different. We were all playing Halo and I was like, "Yo, [Ian] you have a drum set," and Henry was like, "Yeah I think I have a bass amp; I'll ask my dad," and I was like, "I have a guitar amp!" We walked over through the snow and played Another One Bites the Dust for three hours.

ES: I think I have a few takes of you doing that too.

IC: For me, my drive was to be better than The Bones Royal.

JG: I thought Fiasco had a lot of advantages because they started in 6th grade and we were [just starting in] 8th grade and we were [thinking], "Oh shit, it’s too late." I was playing guitar and thinking, "Wow, I really don't know how to play guitar." So I think that inspired me to be a better musician.

ES: For a long time my view of Fiasco was like, "Oh, it's Steve Buscemi's kid; he probably gets them all their shows; they're probably terrible." But when the Floor Is Lava record came out I was trying to push it on kids at Berkeley Carroll and [Fiasco] was selling their record and I traded with Julian [Bennett Holmes]. I said, "Do you want to buy this?" and he said, "I'll trade you for God Loves Fiasco." I went home and listened to it and I said, "Oh my GOD this is GREAT! They do know what they're doing! Forget it!"

IC: It's not all Soñar.

ES: It's not all Soñar, which is 20 minutes of feedback.

JG: Julian and Lucian's noise band it was just... the opposite of "light." It was just noise.

ES: Yeah and that was my impression of Fiasco before I heard Fiasco.

JG: It was great because before they got popular Lucian [billed himself] as Lucian Ray, which is his middle name, on everything. There was no connection [between Lucian and Steve, his father] until they got to the Todd P stage and then he put [Buscemi] back. Which I thought was really good and I think it's funny when people say, "Oh, well his DAD made them popular...." It's quite the opposite.

ES: And even if he is [Steve's son], they're still great.

JG: But, y'know, we could suck their dicks more right now.

IC: If Jonathan was here he would probably say that it wasn’t like that at all. The thing is, sitting here with the three of us, I already know what [Jack and Eli’s] opinions of Random Child are. I'd love to hear what Joey and Jonathan have to say about Random Child in an interview.

JG: I think if we take Random Child out into the community, where we're already familiar faces, we'll be accepted.

IC: People will say [sarcastically], "Oh man! It's a super group!"

JG: Yeah, like we thought The Mighty Handful was [going to be].

ES: Back when you were The Vision.

JG: Oh God we used to be The Vision.

RG: That's not as good as The Mighty Handful.

ES: I remember thinking that [The Vision] was the most pretentious thing of all time.

JG: I remember when Jack [Ferencz] told me, or it might have been Henry, because they way they got band names was Wikipedia. They would just click through until something cool came up. We were almost St. Elmo's Fire.

ES: I just remember how Jack Ferencz and Henry Crawford talked about how there was going to be eight people in the band and it was going to be awesome. And I [makes dismissive gesture]. I called Jack [Greenleaf] and asked what it was going to be called and he said, "The Vision!"

JG: I think it's interesting the growth that The Mighty Handful have gone through. It was a competition within the band at first. It was like, we wanted everyone to be in it and then we wanted no one to be in it and we wanted to kick each other out.

IC: And Random Child is the exact opposite.

JG: I don't know. I feel like now that it's just the five of us and Jessie [Goldberg, of Banzai] and Claire [Ardito] are this horn section that’s really professional and cooperative and really nice people. And I think we hold our own without them and with them we're better.

ES: Like when They Might Be Giants have a horn section at their shows they're even cooler.

JG: But I think with the familiar faces Random Child will be a success as a live band. The hard part is going to be getting that sound [live]. The thing about doing the recordings is that those are sounds we could never play live.

ES: That's the thing, doing this record and being in the studio - this is such a studio band for me, because The Floor Is Lava was all about performing and then we recorded because we thought it'd be fun. But with Random Child, when we joined the band, we were all like, "We're never going to have any shows; we might have one, maybe."

IC: We won a talent show though.

ES: We did, with only 3/5ths of the band there.

IC: And I was playing drums and singing.

ES: When I was writing [for the band] I was thinking, "When we record this it will sound really awesome." What's really cool is when we recorded it - we had all these overdubs and harmonies we never thought we could do live - but when we had practice a few weeks ago I taught parts to [Jack] and I taught parts to Joey and it sounded really good and I think we might be able to [play the songs] live.

IC: Also, a shout out to Dan Müller from InDelirium plays on the record. During the really slow part of Angel of Dead new York - he's doing the really ridiculous metal vocals.

JG: I was a great experience and in conclusion - IN CONCLUSION - We'll see [about Random Child] but we've all become more professional through the studio recording [process].

THE RANDOM CHILD ALBUM IS CALLED Treatment, AND IT WILL BE RELEASED IN SPRING/EARLY SUMMER 2009

PLEASE ALSO SEE INTERVIEW I WITH EARTH DEFENSE FORCE FROM JUNE, 2008

We Are Dangerously Bored With Our Sex Dawrf

2009-01-14T19:14:00.002-05:00

Dear Danielle,

I'm so sorry. I won't be giving your camera back, even if it is too hard to focus in the dark. I should have warned you this might happen. Are we still friends?

Regretfully,

--RG

P.S. Happy New Year. Was it good for you?

In California

2008-12-27T19:29:00.001-05:00

Everyone has an awesome car in California.

A Conversation

2008-12-24T01:41:00.003-05:00

"I saw y' taking pictures'a that sea lion pup. He washed up 'bout a week ago. Couple'a people were lookin' at him wond'rin where th' mother was. Guess he didn' make it."

"I guess he's just a meal for the rest of the beach."

"Maybe't's better that way."

News You Can Use

2008-12-18T20:05:00.006-05:00

In these troubled times it is important* to remember things like Up With People! For those who never bothered to track down what The Simpsons' Hooray For Everything! referenced, there is a handy trailer here. The trailer is for the upcoming feature-length documentary Smile 'Till It Hurts, which will premiere at Slamdance. This is important news because i worked on the thing and anticipation is VERY high on my end.

Further, I was named to the Park Slope 100 for 2008! I don't know what that means in the long run, but it's very flattering and thanks to OTBKB for thinking me a worthwhile figure in the lives of the Park Slope bands. I will be expecting whatever prize money to arrive in the mail shortly.

*As important as eating --Ed

Lookie What We Have Here

2008-12-09T09:56:00.005-05:00

Graffiti Monsters ended up on The Gizmodo, a Gawker-brand website I don't read! They also got my website wrong, which is a bummer!

I Even Have a Column in Ebony Magazine Called "Musings"

2008-12-08T12:14:00.004-05:00

I have often thought that if I were forced to get a tattoo I would get "LOVE" and "HATE" on the backs of my hands like Robert Mitchum in Night Of The Hunter. This would be film-wonky and would also disqualify me from ever working in an office again. While in the shower it occurred to me that I, as a pragmatic person, would be better served with a series of helpful measures tattooed, crib sheet-style to the inside of my wrist. Useful things like hand span, foot length, average stride, arm span, etc. Wouldn't that be helpful?

I Ask for so Little. Just Let Me Rule You.

2008-12-04T17:15:00.006-05:00

So Tod Seelie (All-Universe show photographer, citizen-of-the-world, man-about-town) and I happened to be at the same show, which I'm pretty sure is a first. It's always fun for me to see how other people judge/synthesize a shared experience. His results start here. Mine are here. Leia Jospe was also there, if we want to turn this into a discussion of how to fit three photographers into a three foot space, but as of today all her pictures are buried on Facebook.

Ruckus Brought

2008-11-25T21:42:00.002-05:00

"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."
JFK, Delivered at Rice University in Houston, Texas on 12 September 1962.

For those coming in through the front door, there are others here.

Julian

Jonathan

Lucian

It's An Oldie Where I Come From

2008-11-09T17:18:00.005-05:00

The Sleepies

It's a shame they don't allow smoking in bars. It's a shame that smoke machines are probably worse than cigarette smoke.

The Knockdowns

Also, happy birthday Corin Tucker! Please come back to us!

Whittier Pt. 2b: The Bucker Building

2008-11-01T12:42:00.004-04:00

Of course, once you return from a successful trip to an exotic place everyone wants to go. The rest of the crew loaded up to go on a tour of their own and this time I took the flashlights.

The Buckner was an arcology of sorts with a theater and a bowling alley and a general store and a tunnel system connecting the buildings to each other for winter safety. While the building we saw was mostly in ruins, the movie theater was in surprisingly good shape -- except for the collapsing ceiling -- and because the seats were intact, it had the most visible evidence that humans actually used the place and lived and played and worked there. We didn't find the bowling alley (we suspect it's in the basement) but we did manage to find the kitchens and galleys as well as the lounge on the second floor.

The damage to the building appears to be mostly man made. For example, most of the latrines have had their porcelain smashed to bits (bears do not carry sledgehammers). The copper and metals have been stripped, the fixtures redistributed and any infrastructure remaining falls from lack of support. Hardhats, while not able to protect you from, say an exhaust fan dangling from a single wire, they will protect you from smaller plasters and are recommended when visiting (again, know that you are breaking and entering when you visit so... leave your felons at home).

Buildings and cars tend to be anthropomorphized more than anything and it's easy enough to project a veil of sadness over the site: The building was built by the military but sold in to private hands so there is no money for cleanup or teardown and so it sits on otherwise usable land. Any sort of amusement or pleasure to be taken from it involves the destruction of the building bit by bit by half-bored teenagers, exotic forms of vandalism and clandestine activities (read: drugs, alcohol, sex). It's not even stable enough to be used as a tourist trap and eventually someone will be hurt or killed by falling debris or falling into debris and god knows what will happen then.

Whittier, Pt. 2a: The Buckner Building

2008-10-31T17:46:00.006-04:00

Here is a special Halloween bonus set of pictures from the Buckner Building -- the creepy abandoned building in Whittier. Remember that this thing is full of toxins including asbestos and lead paint, all of which continues to decay and decay and rot and blow around in the rooms so not only are you trespassing, you are risking long term health issues with extended exploration. Further, in some of the pictures you can see calcium deposits leeching from the beams and growing in the form of stalactites. Please note that as water seeps into the cracks in the beans and freezes it expands, weakening the structure. It was rightly pointed out that one modest earthquake could send major portions of the building toppling down.

Regardless, the amount of graffiti and man-made destruction is what you would expect for a building of this type and upkeep. There are no panes of glass in the window frames and the arctic winds cause what few doors are left to smash against their frames. The floors are icy and fallen beams and electrical systems lay on the ground with nails and wires sticking straight up; wear thick soles and walk gingerly. Because of the cold it was a challenge to keep my viewfinder from fogging up -- breath control did little good as the heat from my face caused condensation to develop.

I went by myself at first -- not recommended -- and made a plan to stick to the areas where a source of daylight was within ten feet. The decision was mostly practical as I had no flash on me and no flashlight to guide me. This limited me to the western side of the building and use of the rickety external stairs -- also not recommended. It must be said, however, that with the Buckner being the tallest thing in the area the views are lovely and unobstructed.

Whittier, Pt.1

2008-10-28T22:30:00.004-04:00

The drive to Whittier is comically beautiful with mountains so rugged it's as if they have been shaped out of the rock with a hatchet. The coastline is silty and the ocean is shallow and in some spots very still. So still that one can imagine no tidal influence. The runoff from melting ice and snow rushes down the sides of the mountains and into the sea.

Whittier is behind the mountains and is served by a one way tunnel that was, until ten years ago, accessible by rail only. You would pay a fee for the vehicle and a per-person fee and you would be taken two miles through the tunnel to the city of Whittier on the other side. Today, the tunnel is just wide enough to fit passenger vehicles and entry and exit times are scheduled hourly.

For those of you who knew I was making this trip, I may have overstated the status of Whittier (a bit).

The Lie:

Everyone lives in this big creepy building -- it's the first one you see when you GIS "Whittier, AK."

The Truth:

1) Not EVERYONE lives in the Begich Towers building. Only 80%. The rest live in Whittier Manor or in surrounding small buildings.

2) The BTI is NOT the creepy decayed building that one sees when Google Image Searching. That is the Buckner Building which was built to house soldiers and has a movie theater and a bowling alley and an amount of asbestos so large that cleaning and refurbishing the building is not cost effective. In fact, the cleanup needed to facilitate a teardown is so much that the building just sits and rots in plain view. The effect is much like the Ryugyong Hotel in North Korea -- a grotesque specter looming over the landscape.

Whittier was created during WWII to act as a port to ship goods from the lower 48 states to Alaska. The same is true today -- most of the freight that comes into the state of Alaska is sent in through Whittier and people make good money loading crates on to rail cars when the ships come in.

Cruise ships also stop over in Whittier and there is talk of expanding Whittier's industry to be more supportive tourism.

Help Me, Alex. Help Me Help You

2008-10-06T17:09:00.005-04:00

I'm going to invent the genre of "Classic Punk" to occupy the same niche as "Classic Rock," as in 'we've come to change the future of Classic Punk forever,' or 'they sound very Classic Punk.' They'll hate me for it, but I want to think Consumer Feedback lives in that space.

Further,

Dear Knitting Factory,

Why come you don't turn no lights on for the afternoon shows? I know the lights exist physically -- I can see them with my naked eye and I've seen them turned on in the past. Are you saving that much money? Are you comfortable with your lack of effort? Is there an image of slapdash fuck-it-all-ness you're trying to maintain? Are they broken? For God's sake don't try to make things look cool -- that would break my heart.

Sincerely,

Richard Gin

P.S. I look forward to you moving to the current Luna Lounge space and somehow managing to make the lighting worse. See you next year!

Yes, I'm Ready For Some Football

2008-09-07T17:47:00.004-04:00

This is the Patricia Field HSN Line launch show. I think all those words, when used in that combination, are vivid enough to clue the reader in to the content of the show. This particular show has all the hassles of Marc Jacobs on a micro level; the delays, the overstuffed venue, makeshift backstage, belligerent weather and none of the payoff -- certainly not in blown-mind count or in sheer what-the-fuck-ness. Of course, the modern New York fashion show is a grand act of artistic shibai anyway, so any value found in the show itself is the result of missing the point entirely.

The Edison Hotel Ballroom is a dismal place near Times Square. I imagine the good people in charge spent a great deal of time trying to get the old people smell out.

HSN's presence meant that there were pockets of pre-lit action where I could just post up and wait for the river of human oddities float on by. I found their setup to be a little clumsy -- from a civilian standpoint, anyway. I support and respect their scorched earth/brute force style of lighting.

The process of prodding and primping fantastically beautiful people and the organization of individual stations is similar to working in a high-level restaurant. This particular backstage was oppressively hot and the misting air conditioner wasn't helping matters in the slightest.

Any show with a name designer is SRO. This is a given. The expanded coverage for HSN and the manpower needed to cover the show the way they did (multiple hand-helds, multiple talent crews, at least two end-of-runway positions, a jib and two Steadicams) meant that most optimal viewing positions have been a) thought of and b) taken. Sometimes it's best to just give up.

You Soon Realize You're Not Sufficiently Advanced For Your Situation

2008-09-05T15:21:00.006-04:00

Uptown parties have girls in costumes and red carpets.

Downtown parties have girls without costumes and performance pieces.

Uptown parties have well dressed people and well-lit situations (so you can see how well dressed they are).

Downtown parties are in the dark so that you can act too cool to care that a TV crew is right next to you while in fact you're REALLY trying to evesdrop on Stephanie Seymour from the shadows.

Uptown parties feature people who will snicker behind your back or make cutting remarks to you face in the spirit of glib oneupmanship.

Downtown parties feature people who will threaten you with their sexuality.

Basically the whole week is an excuse to bust out antiquated (70's-era) notions of uptown/downtown new york scenes; as an old acquaintance of mine once said (foolishly on many, MANY levels), there's 'nothing good above 14th street.' The truth of the matter is that any given person will go to any given event so long as there is enough liquor/tiny burgers to last through the evening and/or enough photographers to take their picture. Everyone loves to dress up! Everyone loves to see naked people dancing (or doing anything, for that matter)! Fashion Week is a biannual bacchanal celebrating the cavalcade of human oddities that you marginalize every day -- like the notion of your own mortality -- in order to make yourself function. No one can live like this all the time. It would be too fantastic.

Eat When Offered; Drink When Free

2008-09-04T17:43:00.002-04:00

The best explanation for the allure of Fashion Week comes courtesy of L Magazine (yes, the freebie) when they said, paraphrased,

'There's nothing New Yorkers love more than a party they're not invited to.'

This seems a little Sub-Woody, maybe, but it's basically true.

This particular press line goes for another ten yards to the left and right of this picture.

If you see a pretty lady, take her picture. In my head it doesn't seem right that this bunch is chimping instead of shooting.

By eating the hors d'oeuvres, you lighten the load of the waitstaff. In turn, they will visit you often. I've never managed to develop a taste for fois gras.

It's the second (and third) best time of year for letchery after the first day of spring.

'Tis Better To Be Regionally Famous Than Internet Famous

2008-09-01T11:59:00.003-04:00

One of the things I forgot to mention is that the Reading Eagle followed us around and took copious video and photographs of the production crew. In this instance, "production crew" is meant to include the producer (crucial) and cameraman (crucialer). I did manage to squeeze myself in to a printed picture though and I have diagrammed it for you, the reader, below,

This picture is not mine -- obviously -- credit where it is due, but I couldn't find the credit.

As for the video, you can spot me ~~gracefully~~ gracelessly going "over the boards" to escape the rampaging Yuengling wagon and the panicked team of stallions careening down the street.

You Know What I Keep In The Lining

2008-08-29T08:42:00.006-04:00

One of the simpler joys of television production is that you get to be a tourist on the company dime, unashamedly going places that are more of the hoi polloi than the hipster douchebag fucks [I] usually cavort with. This is how I made it to the top of the Empire State Building without having to wait in line. This is also how you end up on one of the pedestal lookouts on Mt. Washington (I realize this corollary is a little wanky, as there are no lines for the pedestal lookouts on Mt. Washington, but follow me, would you?).

You also tend to eat well -- especially when doing food shows -- or at least eat uniquely. Here we have the Primanti Brothers' flagship location in Pittsburgh. The sandwich has a meat, a cheese, a cole slaw, a tomato, a handful of french fries between italian bread. It's a sandwich designed for truckers who would take them to go. Pretty soon everyone (specifically stoner college kids) started consuming them, as is the case when something utilitarian becomes bougie (cf. Underarmor and those ridiculous telephone earpieces).

Let it be known that nothing we've eaten this trip has been particularly healthy. I've been trying to cram salads and fruit behind (or in front of) every meal, but I'm still left feeling logy and listless and gross. Granted, I've not done a good of of taking care of myself for the last month or so anyway, so the effect is compounded.

An Observation:

The North Side of Pittsburgh is BEGGING for gentrification! Not only is there a charming, colorful area called the "Mexican War Streets", but there are old man bars that only need Ms. Pac-Man to become destinations! There is a YMCA with a bitchin' sign (picture to come) that will provide a tasteful amount of transient low-lifes and charming brownstone row homes that lack only kooky white artisans to make them complete! I suggest that we (my peers, and my only occasional readership) buy a block of these homes and do them up right so that by the time the NEXT real estate crash comes, we'll be goddamn gajillionaires.

Later, BUFFALO.

All I Know Is "Ball" and "Good"...

2008-08-27T23:23:00.003-04:00

I'm in Reading, PA right now. It's 11:30 PM and I've been working all day, though nowhere NEAR as hard as Dan has. One of the things I do when I travel is carry the camera and snap pictures that usually never see the light of day. Most of this is because time is the best editor, and... see previous statement about the light of day.

Seeing as how my last foray into liveblogging a job went to tits, I would consider this my first attempt to deal with a nightly schedule. Let the record show that no great art was made today. No great sights were seen; no great experiences had. Let it be known that downtown Reading is swimming with a sense of unease due to the roaming gangbangers debating (and in some cases not...) whether to flash signs at the camera or not. There are a lot of dudes with teardrop tattoos.

The closest I came to anything amusing was this sighting of what is clearly a rapemobile,

And this sign,

Hung at Jimmy Kramer's The Peanut Bar & Restaurant,

Which can be used to diagram MANY things, not the least of which is the morale of the crew at any given time. For those hard of sight allow me to transcribe, left to right, The Drunkard's Progress,

1. A glass with a friend.

2. A glass to keep the cold out.

3. A glass too much.

4. Drunk and riotous.

5. The summit attained. Jolly companions. A confirmed drunkard.

6. Poverty and disease.

7. Forsaken by friends.

8. Desperation and crime.

9. Death by suicide.

It's kinda neat in a T.G.I.Fridays in Hell kind of way.

I mean, I guess the bookmobile is kind of interesting for the, "WHO BOTHERED TO SPAWN THIS WRETCHED CHARACTER DESIGN?" question.

Tomorrow we are off to Pittsburgh.

9 to 5

2008-08-25T11:39:00.004-04:00

This is a sampling of the people related to me. The poll has a margin of error of +/- 5. The short story is that my brother got married (he and Jenny are in the center and scattered throughout the collage). Yes, I shot my own brothers wedding and no I don't recommend it -- working a family event means you don't get to enjoy it as much as you might if you were just, say, drinking or entertaining babies or eating (in that order). However if you are the type of person who hates his or her family, this new form of practical isolation might be good for you and might endear you to them.

The long story is that I've been trying to hold working office hours to get the film done. This means that there is no film from Antimagic and Talk Normal at Silent Barn, nor is there any film from [All Nines] and Japanther from last night (8/24/08). I am behind, and I've been neglecting my precious, precious blog. This is going to get worse before it gets better -- I'm off to Redding, PA (Huh?), Pittsburgh (PA) and Buffalo (NY) this week for a food show or somesuch. Details are sketchy at best. All I know is that the Redding Phillies and Pittsburgh Pirates are in their respective towns and I will get to see my long lost friend Ashley and her flock of children in Buffalo.

Then, Fashion Week, Season 8 -- The Return.

Motion To Previous Question

2008-08-12T20:03:00.003-04:00

It seems that I remembered how to do things correctly and now I want to shoot with film more often. What's that about hubris? Real scans WILL BE DONE, but that WILL take a while. Gimme a week or two.

For those who come in through the front door on the Blog, the rest of them are here and there will be more going up shortly.

Brute Force Works Sometimes

2008-08-08T15:15:00.004-04:00

So my refrigerator died, which is a dumb way to start a post about concert pictures. Anyway, my refrigerator died which means that I had to clean it out so the little men who took it away would not hurt themselves before bringing in the NEW refrigerator. In my cleaning I found fifteen or so rolls of long-since expired Fujipan 400 and I, never being one to leave an expensive stone unrolled (or whatever), decided to shoot Fiasco's goodbye show at Market Hotel.

Long story short, I realized I should probably do a clip test because God-knows how long I've had that film in the fridge and who knows how well it's held up. Plus I have no idea what I'm doing in general (fun fact!).

This is the clip test. Scans of the real deal to come soon. Or not. I have to shoot my brother's wedding so that will take up a lot of time.

It's Not Like I'm Posessed Or Anything,

2008-07-31T22:46:00.003-04:00

I just do...

...My...

...Job

--Pete Townshend.

Overheard in Brooklyn (Two Parts)

2008-07-27T21:28:00.002-04:00

An earnest conversation overheard at Bar Tabac,

Girl 1: ...and so like, Sasha was like, going to McCarren Pool last week for a free concert and I was like, why...?

Girl 2: A concert at McCarren Pool?

Girl 1: They do free shows there. It's in Williamsburg.

Girl 3: (earnestly) Have I met her? Is she a hipster or a fashionista?

An earnest conversation overheard at Bar Tabac (II),

Boy: Johnny was always kind of a hipster. He just never had any hipster friends.

Website Updated

2008-07-05T17:23:00.006-04:00

The Main Site has been updated! After some code twiddling and image winnowing there is now a "Bands" gallery. I suspect that particular unit will see frequent and intense updating. Above is Antimagic, who are clearly celebrating this development (no endorsement of Richard Gin or richardgin.org is implied).

An Observation

2008-07-03T10:38:00.003-04:00

When considering Jason Giambi's Nice Guy 'Stache, the Yankees sucking, Madonna getting involved with ballplayers, a black man running for President of the realm and the NKOTB reunion, one must arrive at the conclusion that the 80's are back! With a vengeance!

INTERVIEW I, Earth Defense Force, 6/24/08

2008-06-25T17:52:00.016-04:00

What follows is a conversation with Earth Defense Force, conducted on June 24th, 2008.

RICHARD GIN: We are here with Earth Defense Force, Ian Cory, Calamity Sam, whose Christian name I do not know, and Jon Betz. Would you guys like to introduce yourselves?

IAN CORY: I'm Ian Cory and I play drums.

CALAMITY SAM: I'm Calamity Sam. I play bass and sing.

JON BETZ: I'm Jon I play guitar.

RG: Thank you for coming on guys. So Ian, where are you from; how did you start?

IAN: I'm from Park Slope -- do you mean start with the band or start playing drums?

RG: In broad terms.

IAN: I started playing drums when I was in 8th grade and I'm graduating high school in two days.

RG: Congratulations.

IAN: Thank you. I started playing drums because of Jack Greenleaf and Henry Crawford from The Mighty Handful; the three of us are very good friends. The three of us were going to start a band and we did. We're no longer together.

RG: That was Cool and Unusual?

IAN: Yeah, and that was the main reason I started playing drums and I've always been into music. Back when I played video games a lot I would play levels over again to hear the music because I'm that much of a nerd.

SAM: What levels?

JON: Final Fantasy VII, right? That had the best music.

IAN: Yeah! Final Fantasy VII had the greatest music.

SAM: I like Zelda more.

JON: In terms of game play or music?

(Laughter)

IAN: I was more of a Playstation person. I never really had that Nintendo experience until recently.

RG: Sam, your turn.

SAM: I live down the street in Brooklyn Heights and I knew Jonathan through Alex Lowchy and we formed Tetsuwan Fireball [which existed] up until last year. Pretty much the way [Earth Defense Force] started was our old drummer, Alex Doyle, had to go to college so we got Ian to fill in on drums with Tetsuwan Fireball and for a second Jack [Greenleaf] and Hank Crawford were also in the band.

RG: That was the Cake Shop show, right?

SAM: Yeah and that didn't work out very well, so it was pretty much an aborted experiment and so we had a series of really horrible rehearsals that ended with me and Jonathan coming out [to Brooklyn] and just wanting to kill ourselves. After one of them I went to Jonathan and said, "That was the worst rehearsal! I can't do that again," and Jon was like, "YEAH!" and he pulled out a handle of Jack [Daniel's] and I was like, "If we stay in this band we're going to become alcoholics." So we're like, 'let's kick everyone out,' except for Ian and we did. And that's how Earth Defense Force came about.

RG: OK, Jon?

JON: I'm from around Brooklyn and I play guitar in Earth Defense Force. [We didn't know what to expect from] the first rehearsal and so I was like, "I'm going to take this song from a really long time ago." It was probably the most nutsy song you'll ever hear -- and then we just realized we just have to make music that doesn't make any sense.

IAN: That was "Number 41."

JON: Right. It's about Tetsuo Shima from Akira

RG: Sam, I know the old Tetsuwan Fireball best and that was a really "poppy" band, and those sensibilities show through with the two tracks from your single, "Kindergarten Gymnastics" and "Time & Time Again," but those two songs are definitely harder in terms of production and content.

SAM: Yeah, it's all about balancing the two out -- sometimes in rehearsal we'll just layer on parts and parts and parts and it just wont make sense after a while and I'm like, "Hey, shouldn't we have a verse and a chorus part?" and a lot of times these two will be like "NO! NO! We can't do that! It's selling out!" Not those words exactly -- but then it sort of falls into that because it's a matter of habit. You can't expect the listener to swallow everything. So you do it in short spurts.

IAN: And sometimes you just have to force it down their throats.

RG: Do you all come to rehearsal with a set of ideas or lyrics or melodies and bang around? Talk a bit about the process.

SAM: Yeah.

IAN: Somewhat.

JON: I think out writing process is really rhythmically heavy. With a lot of the songs Ian will have this rhythm figure in his head and then we'll simply throw guitar over it; add parts to it, but it's really rhythmically heavy because we're getting more into odd time signatures.

(The interview is interrupted by a laborer, who is working on construction next door. In the original audio file the sound is quite intense and bothersome.)

JON: The noise is because we're actually building our fortress next door.

SAM: For the sake of defense.

RG: So Earth needs defending then?

ALL: Yeah!

IAN: Very badly.

RG: What super powers do you bring to that battle?

SAM: We don't have any super powers, but our villains are several. They include "Uncle 5."

JON: He's a zombie pedophile uncle.

IAN: That's a new song in the works.

JON: There's a surgeon who cuts up his patients.

RG: From "Time & Time Again"?

ALL: Right.

SAM: There's the "Dada Destroyer" who...

JON: ...Eats children.

SAM: He's disguised as a teenager and runs amok destroying peoples' lives.

IAN: Through Dada.

RG: Was Earth Defense Force actually the first concept you came up with following the deaths of Cool & Unusual and Tetsuwan Fireball?

SAM: No. I was ready to keep doing Tetsuwan Fireball stuff and the stuff I write naturally is kind of, like, pussy and more like The Replacements and in the vein of, "Oh! I need to express my soul!" But then we just wrote the song "Number 41" and it became apparent that [Tetsuwan Fireball-style songs] would not do at all.

JON: With only three people in the band you don't have much room for guitarmonies and/or harmonies.

IAN: We make do with what we have though.

JON: We're not the prettiest motherfuckers in New York so we make up for it with anger and chaos.

SAM: Or like, we're the fat ugly girl at the prom who you end up sleeping with when you get too fucked up and at first it's not cool and you're like, 'my friends won’t like me,' but then it feels really good!

JON: And you can say, 'I had sex with the fat girl.' That's something I will say, I played in a nutty trio of people whose sole purpose is singing about pedophile uncles.

RG: You mentioned The Replacements as an influence on previous work. How did you find them?

IAN: I don't listen to them -- just Sam.

SAM: I found The Replacements in 8th grade through a friend of mine and I'd always tell people, "Yo, The Replacements!" and they're like, "The what?" And only recently there was this girl, Grace, and she kind of turned everyone on to The Replacements, but I was already there.

RG: Talk a bit about influences in that vein.

IAN: Well I bring most of the heavy stuff to the table. I'm a huge metalhead; that's mainly what I listen to -- although I'm fine with just about anything. When we started doing "Number 41" I was like, "Whoa this sounds like Botch!" and I started bringing these guys all the records of, like, Death, Dillinger Escape Plan, Botch, Converge, stuff like that. So those are mainly my influences: The tech-y, odd time signature, fast, aggressive stuff. It's not stupid heavy -- straight up death metal chugging stuff. There's a bit more art to it.

SAM: And Math.

IAN: Yeah.

SAM: I don't really listen to anything on my own that sounds like Earth Defense Force. I listen to Pavement and Television religiously. But Pterodactyl and Marnie Stern are two Brooklyn bands that I really got into this year and are the only things I can think of that sound vaguely like us.

IAN: Those are definitely influences.

SAM: Pterodactyl's guitarist was my physics teacher -- he feverently denied being in Pterodactyl for, like, two years and eventually [the truth] came out and I saw one of his shows. He's such a quiet person he's like, "Oh yes, physics. Today I'm gonna teach you about magnetism." Then I saw him on stage and he was, like, flipping out and going crazy and there's noise through the entire thing and I was like, "This is what we have to be like."

RG: What is your in relationship to the scene and other bands?

(Laughter)

RG: This is a serious question!

JON: None whatsoever! To put it bluntly...

SAM: We're probably the most anti-social band.

IAN: Well I still hang out with guys from other bands. Since I used to be in another band with the guys from The Mighty Handful and I'm friends with them I’d say I have the most contact out of the three of us. I like those guys. They're great people. I'm not a huge fan of their music because they're not really my thing. They know that about me. It's like, whatever, they do what they do well and I still go and support them when I get the chance. I used to be more connected to the other bands but lately I'm more focused on my own material and working on my own music and... getting... good.... I spent enough time socializing and being like, "Yay! Let's go party with the other bands!" It's not for me.

RG: The question wasn't directed so much towards The Mighty Handful as much as the scene in general and how dense it is.

All: (Various mutterings and laughing about "The Scene.")

IAN: We've got this joke rivalry with The Mighty Handful.

SAM: I thought with Tetsuwan Fireball we were really ingrained with "The Scene" and then we had kind of a falling out... well, I did... with most of those kids. So... I'm sorry. For the past few months I don't know it's like we've been asleep and all this stuff is happening without us. And now it's like, we're going to college...

JON: ...I should be in college.

SAM: So it's like, everything has this weird timetable and it feels like it's all ending so it doesn't really matter.

RG: The feeling that it's ending -- Does that weigh on the choices you make?

SAM: I think it gives us more freedom.

IAN: Yeah, a bit more.

JON: We can be as much of an asshole on stage as we want. We won't be seeing half the people I guess. Not that we want to be assholes, but that we aspire to be.

SAM: It was like, when I was in 9th grade my plan was to start a band and we'd play a bunch of shows and get a lot of hype and then when I was a senior I'd get signed so I didn't have to go to college. Obviously it didn't work out that way.

RG: It's a sound plan!

SAM: But now it's not happening that way and now it's like...

JON: Reputation is on the bottom of our priorities. Put it that way.

IAN: We do what we want.

JON: We do what we want and it doesn't affect the writing process at all.

SAM: I think it does. If I had another 4 years in Brooklyn I'd probably be in another band in addition to [Earth Defense Force] but this [band] is, like, [for] kicks...

RG: So then college plans take you far away from each other?

SAM: Yeah but we'll stay in touch. We'll do Postal Service stuff. We'll send 8 tracks and shit back and forth to each other.

IAN: I imagine we'll come back together during breaks and try to learn the material again. That's why we need to record.

RG: Talk about recording and access and technology and ultimately release and distribution. How did you put together your single?

SAM: In May I was interning at Newkirk Studios, which is where we recorded Tetsuwan Fireball's first album. It's a small studio and it's run by this guy Ben Rice who's in a band called Surefire . They're kind of a Led Zeppelin/70's rock thing. But he's like the chillest guy in the world he looks like a 20-something roadie for The Rolling Stones. So I interned there and he just gave us a really good deal. His thing is just that he'll record anything and he was very open to trying our kind of stuff, which he hadn't done before. One of his lessons to me as his protegee was, "Listen Sam, people are going to come up to you and ask you to record them and you're not going to know how the fuck to record a death metal band but, goddammit, you just got to give it the ol' college try and put yourself out there!"

IAN: and the recording process was really great. I mean, we got there, set up the drums, I had a lot of fun messing up on "Time & Time Again." It took me like, six tries to get that down...

SAM: He's being modest. He's a total pro.

JON: He played with the click [track], goddammit!

(Laughter)

JON: The only teenager in park slope to play with the fucking click!

IAN: We just jammed out the bass stuff and the guitars -- there are two guitars.

JON: Yeah I pretty much played the same parts with two guitars. And then I slightly changed one of the guitar tracks by playing something a little different... but not enough that you would notice up front so that it sounds like a mistake. But I thought that was kind of cool. I was listening to a lot of Blood Brothers when I was [recording] and they do the same thing -- kind of doubling, really. But then there'll be some moments where it's like, "oh that was really cool!"

SAM: Now he's being modest too. Jon's recording style -- I remember from Tetsuwan Fireball -- is that he would stay up the day before and think of fifty-million different parts to overdub and he'd be like, "I have one or two things," and we'd think, "Cool this'll be quick," and he'd be like, "Uh... no. 15 more guitar tracks."

IAN: It wasn't that bad this time.

JON: No, it wasn't.

IAN: He kept himself contained to some degree. The biggest thing we have in terms of guitar tracks is in "Kindergarten" where is breaks down into the slower post rock part of that lead with big reverb and that guitar part is, like 3 guitar parts.

SAM: And then the lyrics I just made up in he booth.

(Laughter)

RG: Your live show is quite similar to your recorded output.

JON: It was very different with Tetsuwan Fireball because our live shows were a lot heaver and also a lot more sloppy and our album was really...

IAN: ...Pretty...

JON: ...Clean cut, which is good, but if you can't really live up to the album your recording it's kind of a joke. Especially with a band like Earth Defense Force and the energy we have -- you got to keep it simple and put your balls to the wall and rock out.

RG: How do you go about finding shows? Finding all-ages venues seems to be kind of a trick.

SAM: I mean, yeah I'm kind of the one who does booking on this. I mean there are places. There's the Knitting Factory, Cake Shop.

IAN: Don Hills.

SAM: Yeah, Don Hills. We've kind of built a rapport with all these people because they know we can bring enough kids.

JON: This kid Kabir Kumar got us this gig on Saturday so props to him.

SAM: It's tough, but you just send emails like any other band.

IAN: Yeah, there's Southpaw and we were going to play Southpaw last weekend but things just really didn't work out. We were going to play it; we should probably try booking it for July actually.

SAM: The best places are the ones that don't treat you like kids. Whereas Southpaw has, like, all-ages matinees so you kind of feel like you're being used.

IAN: And you don't get paid.

SAM: You don't get paid which is a real drag.

JON: Well you get pizza. I enjoyed the pizza.

RG: You don't get a door cut at Southpaw?

IAN: That's the thing that Steve is kind of known for.

SAM: But pretty much the second you're in a band you realize you're never going to make money and every scent you get you're going to lose instantly.

IAN: Like, the money we got from the Knitting Factory show we spent two days later on recording.

SAM: Being in a kid band sucks -- the whole thing in general about promotion and shit. But you gotta pay your dues.

RG: You say, "Being in a kid band..." and I don't want to call you guys a kid band...

IAN: I've always found the term insulting.

RG: As someone who has a fine grasp on ethnic slurs and dirty jokes and what is and isn't offensive I can say I don't want to call anyone a "kid band."

SAM: You can call us "cunts" too.

RG: It's a good mic check. Is there anything besides "kid band" that you think you'd rather be called? Or are you just a "band" at this point?

SAM: Ian doesn't like it but I personally like it. I think it's good because kids play rock 'n' roll better than adults. Period. Just because you get jaded really quickly. I mean, Jonathan and I had this discussion a few days ago I asked him, "Are you gonna go to college for music?" and he said, "No," and I was like, "Why? All you do is practice all you do is music shit," and he's all, "Musicians are, like, the most unhappy people in the world."

JON: I actually play in a few other bands who are like, "professional musicians" and I'm kind of hip to, like, playing clubs at midnight and they're NOT that great. It's glorified -- I mean you, pretty much have to pay for your car back because I play upright bass; if you have equipment; you gotta pay for a 5 dollar beer. And there's no after party! Because everyone wants to pack up their stuff and all these guys got to go teach the next day. It's not that great.

SAM: Nope. Kids are better. They play like they're going to die the next day.

JON: And then they party like they're going to die the next day.

IAN: Sometimes they play like they don't give a shit. That's my experience. I mean, in Cool & Unusual -- ask any of us -- we could not get our shit together. It was like, "I don't even care anymore." And we got sick of that really fast. I understand where they're coming from. I just don't like being referred to as a kid band. Nowadays I don't like being referred to as a "kid band" because now I'm about to graduate high school.

21:57 RG: Right, at this point you can say you ain't kids.

JON: Look at this moustache, man!

JON: I don't look at us like a "kid band," I look at us as people... trying to save the Earth. I mean come on. You can't be a kid. You gotta have your stuff together. You gotta be organized. You gotta come to rehearsal on time and I mean that's the most important part... so I don't know, man.

RG: Where can we get the single?

IAN: You can get it for free.

SAM: Yeah you can get it for free on Myspace, http://myspace.com/defendthisplanet, and if you come to our show on Saturday -- North Bergen -- we're going to hand it out for free. And we're playing with The Mighty Handful, Radiates and Tinselfish.

IAN: There's some other band too.

SAM: I think it's "Every Bunny's Invited."

JON: Right, some stupid fucking name.

IAN: If they turn out to be cool people, we're sorry.

SAM: I mean, if they have "bunny" in their name then maybe they like Echo and the Bunnymen so that'd be cool.

JON: Or maybe they just like pink bunnies and shit.

SAM: Band names. Band names are tough. You can tell someone's first band by their band name. "Every Bunny's Welcome" -- definitely their first band. Tetsuwan Fireball was our first band name and that is a shit name.

JON: I wanted to change it so many times.

IAN: Nothing is as bad as Cool & Unusual Punishment. That is the worst band name ever.

RG: It's... young.

IAN: Yeah, see? That's a kid band. Cool & Unusual was a kid band. I'll admit to that. We treated ourselves like kids, y'know... and it worked out.

SAM: Like, everybody's done with their first string of bands. And I felt like that was the elementary school phase. Where you just learn the dynamics and stuff.

IAN: Now we're all in middle school and hate each other.

SAM: Yeah we hate each other. But we have a better idea of how a band works.

RG: The one thing I remember about High School graduation was the urge to escape. Is that feeling inside you guys even though you live in New York?

IAN: Yeah.

JON: Well I'm going to college in NY.

IAN: I am very, very hyped on getting out of here, personally. I'm going to Chicago for college. It's still a city environment. I want a break, from these people and the scene – I mean, these guys are cool.

SAM: I kid of feel the same way; I'm kind of sick of everyone just doing the same shit all the time. On the other hand I feel like this is just when things are going to break and I feel like something good's on the horizon for everyone in Brooklyn right now. And I just went to a show at Death By Audio and I hadn't been there before and I was like, "Shit! why haven't we been playing these places? What the fuck have we been doing the last 6 months?"

JON: Rehearsing.

RG: Is there anything you want to take back?

JON: Like, what we said or...?

RG: Basically.

IAN: We regret nothing.

SAM: I regret everything.

RG: What are your upcoming dates?

IAN: Saturday June 28th in North Bergen, NJ and Saturday, July 26th at the Knitting Factory Old Office. Hopefully this time if we do well we'll get moved up to the second stage.

SAM: They never let us... we played the main stage and we brought 100 people and they still didn't let us move up.

A Song of Dispair

2008-06-24T09:04:00.005-04:00

They came full bore like Mongols from the east following the scent of blood and there was panic in the room as they counted and played. "This will be bad; such sorrow, such sorrow," someone said aloud, though that someone was probably me. That which I had not read in histories I had seen before -- the broken dreams and shattered skulls and bloodied limbs strewn about pell mell like tinsel on a Christmas tree. And the distended faces of the wailing and the rending of garments! Women lamented and huddled by the cold steel walls, and the dust rose as the invaders beat and stomped in time and chanted themes of intimidation and slaughter.

Michael Jordan -- a name fit to boil blood and steam the innards of the weak and infirm. The tales of woe handed down from block to bock rang true in our primitive minds and animal urges took control: TO DANCE, to scream and shout and experience the suffering and horror of generations past; the denial of self -- the hivemind. Would we be bold enough to beat back the savage display of carnal, base ritual or would be assimilated into their ranks, any past remnants of our culture swallowed like the children of Saturn.

The promise of our survival was short lived. Some fell to the floor and struggled to stand only to fall again, weak as a fresh foal before the butcher and timid as a three-legged sheep before wolves. Those that fled -- God save them -- were left to sow their crops amongst the pitious cowards and fancy-boys who lay like fallen busts in orderly rows in the garden with their clove cigarettes.

When it was over we were converted -- we were helpless to protect ourselves from their will and succumbed to the raging sea. In the silence that followed there was peace and the sun shined behind us and a songbird twitterchirped in the rustling trees. They had gone. We looked on each other with shame and disgust -- we looked at ourselves and felt soiled -- unclean.

Michael Jordan raped us.

2008-06-14T09:35:00.003-04:00

An anecdotal thought based on comments made by Robert Wright, by way of Rob Haggart (whose blog you really SHOULD be reading, even if discussions of signal-to-noise ratio lead to moments of doubt).

I was basically told during the Photo 101 phase of my schooling that the professors had 'seen it all -- empty swings, pictures of pouty friends, and the roll of film taken in your dorm room an hour before class,' and that 'those things are OK, we aren't going to judge you on that content, and you need to get them out of your system so you can go on and do REAL work.'

To this end, Robert Wright writes,

...The confluence of technologies of digital photography, the www for sharing, a boom in consumer credit allowing amateurs to purchase gear that only professionals would have bothered with in the analogue days, all of this has brought an unprecedented number of photographers into the arena at exactly the same time and often at the same phase, that early discovery phase that used to go by fairly unnoticed in art schools around the country.

It's true that you're always trying to grow through your work, but at the same time I like to think I managed to have my most larval development out of the public eye. Those pictures are embarrassing.

An Open Letter

2008-06-13T10:11:00.002-04:00

Dear Bands,

Can I just pretend that last Sunday never happened?

Sincerely,

Richard Gin

Does Auda Serve?

2008-06-08T23:30:00.002-04:00

I carry twenty-three great wounds all got in battle.

Seventy-five men have I killed with my own hands in battle.

I scatter, I burn my enemies' tents.

I take away their flocks and herds.

The Turks pay me a golden treasure, yet I am poor!

Because I am a river to my people!

View And Response: Kate O'Brien's Portrait Of Amanda Palmer

2008-06-05T22:01:00.005-04:00

This portrait of Amanda Palmer by Kate O'Brien reminded me of a little Valentine's Day incident last year wherein I was lured into attending a "Happening" in Ft. Greene with the promise of exotic and swarthy companionship (shall we say).

The location: It was seemingly a squatted factory of the kind that was so popular Pre-9/11 with poor college students and reprobate young adults; red brick and crooked floors and exposed beams. Paintings were on the wall in a fresco style and they were poorly done, garish and ugly. There were several floors of the party and several rooms per floor and at least one corner of each floor had a makeshift bar with tiki lamps, christmas lights and cheap off-brand liquors and cans of watery, warm beer. Also on each floor was a stage whose boundaries were marked on the ground with reflective tape. Naturally, there was a band playing each stage in a different musical style. The crowd was young -- perhaps underage -- and enthusiastic in the way that young people are when they are allowed outside of the house and horny and drunk and drugged.

So the Girl I was with (who shall remain nameless) and I couldn't figure out what to do. Some of our more resilient traveling companions (the idiots that took us there) went off in search of booze or weed or both. Some of the others lingered against the furthest wall from the action in hopes that death would come swiftly and painlessly. The Girl and I looked at each other and slipped off past the throngs of sweaty, bepatchouli oiled college freshmen and we stumbled downstairs to dance. And we danced close... very, very close... to swingin' oldies and sweet soul music for what seemed like seconds but was more like hours and the room stopped spinning and our buzz wore off and we both realized that -- hey -- we were both huddled for comfort because we were fascinated by each other, true, but also because we were trying to protect each other from sweaty, bepatchouli oiled college freshmen. Time to go.

I grabbed her hand and we headed back upstairs from the room we had left hours before. As we fought up against the current of stumbling girls in awkward heels I heard the sound of a broken piano and a female voice singing in a strange affected English contralto.

"Fucking bitch thinks she's Amanda Palmer!" I turned and said to the Girl.

"What?!" She didn't hear me.

I turned back to find the exit. Of course it was Amanda Palmer playing a solo show on a broken piano on Classon Ave. with about sixty rapt post-teens sitting cross-legged on the floor like kindergarteners waiting for story time.

I turned and whispered in the girl's ear, "We need to go. Now."

We Go On After Some Lip-Synch Chicks.

2008-05-25T19:16:00.006-04:00

So I think I might put a moratorium on covering Battles of the Bands, not just because we need to think of peace in these troubled times, but because they are no less weird than they were when I was a misguided youth. Disparate acts, three song limits, a harried and hurried pace that serves no one (least of all the showcase bands) and varying qualities of M'sC succeed in keeping everyone off balance and looking for the exits once their friends' sets are done.

Frankly, this particular BoB was doubly confounding, mostly due to the latter awards giving-portion of the show where the majority of gifts and trinkets (Golden records?! Pieces of paper!?) seemed to be given to the A&R, MGMT side of the production rather than to the bands themselves. This brings me back to my original confusion with the Blast:Beat program and where the money goes, where the money lies once it gets there, and who OWNS the bands' music and who ultimately runs the promotion -- something that their website never cleared up. If I remember properly, my fwiends over at Only The Blog Knows Brooklyn described it as seeming like a '4-H Club for kids in bands,' a criticism which seems valid sonically -- meant literally, "as I say it in my head it makes me laugh" -- as well as in practice.

Stream of thought bulletin: While poking around the internet we arrive at Blastspace.com, the ground-level Facebookian arm of the BlastBeat.org website. PLEASE LOOK AT THE UPPER RIGHT BUTTON WHICH FEATURES "COCA-COLA BLASTBEAT." I ain't sayin' there's something sinister going on, but this...

...should be enough to remind anyone of the awful Coca-Cola budding filmmaker commercials they show at the movie theaters during "The 20" or whatever the fuck it's called. It should remind the oldsters of Up With People being sponsored by Gilette. It should definitely make any self-respecting punk give pause.

It occurred to me, and I said as much to Hugh Crawford, that the history of Rock Music is written by the bands whose gumption and spit determined their destiny rather than the whims or skull scratching decisions made by talent fair judges. In fact, the only two acts I could think of at the time were Stevie Wonder and James Brown, and a suspicious search of Wikipedia (sue me) quickly showed those examples to be wrong. Now, the only one I can think of is Kelly Clarkson (sue me).

Creepy Corporate Overlording aside, all of this is the ball-hording way of saying "so what?" Yes, a trip to Ireland would be a major, life altering experience for a group of teens who might not have had the privilege of traveling outside the United States, and seeing the competition might inspire even greater things from those involved but the failure to make the trip in this particular instance isn't in the ballpark of worst things to happen. The Sub-20's music scene in New York (you can call it "Kidcore" if you want, but that's bogus and sad) is too dense and rich -- and too competitive and talented -- to hold anything less than the best the age bracket/genre can provide and by extension... you know what Sinatra said. Further, the support group of enthusiastic Post-Teen bands whose song structure and public attitude implies reckless juvenilization is there to lead the way and provide access, instruction and perhaps most importantly, a valuable crossover audience:

An audience with money.

This is meant as consolation to all the bands that lost, whatever form they took. My favorites included.

They Only Played To A Few Hundred People In Their Lifetime, But Those That Heard Them Immediately Formed A Band

2008-05-19T10:47:00.005-04:00

Greetings to those of you visiting through the Flickr back door. As part of my value-added content, I would like to point out that the additional photos of The Mighty Handful from the 17th of May, 2008 are below. However I encourage you to read the following notice to discover how you, the reader, might be able to impact the life of a misguided youth for the better.

With the possible exceptions of cash paydays and booty calls, there's very little pleasure in finding something out on short notice, and with that in mind I am happy to report to you (a week in advance!) that The Mighty Handful (my favoritest) are playing The Big Stage at the Knitting Factory on Sunday the 25th. Now, the Knitting Factory -- shitty lighting aside -- is a brand-name venue which leads to its own level of fun-ness. Amplifying the fun-ness further is the fact that this show is a Battle of the Bands. Great. Boosting the signal to tsunami-like levels is the promise of a trip to Ireland for the winning group and an invitation to an international battle of the bands.

SO WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR YOU?

If you care at all about the fate of these young turks (and you should at this point, especially seeing as how I won't shut up about them), then you will purchase tickets, go to the show and support them with all your might. For just ten (10) United States Dollars -- that's just $1.68 USD a day from now until Sunday -- you could change the life of a poor, Park Slope youth whose debaucherous promise is held back by a sensible Park Slope upbringing. If you have any questions regarding this matter it is in your best interest to contact the band directly as my details are sketchy at best.

Tickets are available through Ticketmaster, which is no longer an issue because the 90's are over and Pearl Jam lost.

But don't take my word for it. Let them tell you, in their own words, why you should go:

So we won that random battle of the bands.

TURNS OUT THE FUCKING PRIZE WAS
A SHOW AT THE KNITTING FACTORY.

If we win, we will go to ireland to compete against other high school bands from all over the world.

COME AND SUPPORT US
MAKE US FAMOUS
WE LOVE YOU ALL<333

SAME RULES APPLY:

BRING INSTRUMENTS
BRING CONFETTI
BRING GLITTER
BRING ANYYYTHING.

A Cruel Observation

2008-05-15T16:13:00.002-04:00

Following my stint in New Orleans, I visited George and Lauren and we went to have an enjoyable day at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival.

Lauren: There are a lot of lamb-kebab stands here.

George: It seems a little harsh.

Me: Maybe lambs like irony?

Lauren: I wonder if they recognize the smell of... themselves.

Me: They all smell much better while cooking than they do when they're living.

George: That's gross. We should go look at the herding dogs now.

Me: Good idea.

Our Patron Saint of Awesome

2008-05-06T14:54:00.004-04:00

This is Lazy Lester. Follow the link for the bio, but the short form is that he was playing the Ponderosa Stomp and he made himself available to anyone who wanted to talk to him about anything at all. He was prone to drop wisdom on the people heading off to the Stomp.

"You girls shouldn't smoke," he told two ladies as they walked by. "It makes you look trashy."

Chris and I decided he is just one of those musical people who has a song pulsing through him every moment of every day. That is some variation on a banjar he is holding. Chris and I wanted to purchase versions of the shirt he is wearing (basically, the shirt off his back) and he invited us back to his hotel room to do so.

"Hang on," he said. "Let me see if my wife is up or if she's asleep."

She was asleep, naturally, but not for long as Lester woke her up to help him find us shirts. We begged her pardon for the intrusion but she just laughed it off as though it happened to her all the time.

New Orleans: Or, How I Learned to Love Being Able to Dump My Cards and Live with the Hotel Firewall (Part I.)

2008-05-06T12:34:00.006-04:00

I was sold on Cafe du Monde long before I had ever been -- two decades of hearing about how sticky the floors got in the late afternoon (after a full day of powdered sugar getting blown onto the floor by the gulf breeze) meant that it was a pilgrimage I had to make.

The menu follows from memory,

Cafe au lait, cafe latte, beignets, milk, chocolate milk.

There might be more, but not much more.

Fried dough with powdered sugar and coffee is as advertised -- a calorie, caffeine and sugar bomb of awesomeness, which served me well seeing as how I had arrived at 7:30 in the morning.

The cavalcade of deliciousness in the picture above cost four dollars. The water was best used to wash off your fingertips. I do not recommend wearing black.

On The Road Again

2008-04-27T18:52:00.004-04:00

I will be in New Orleans for this event and I'm a little bummed that I will likely be locked in to covering The Mighty Hannibal ONLY and not be able to get to ? And The Mysterians or Roky Erickson. Not that I don't want to cover Hannibal -- it's just that the bill itself is INSANE and it would be a shame to miss most of it for work-related reasons.

Oh yeah. I'll be in New Orleans this week. Please let me know what's up besides the Jazz Festival. I also have, shall we say, the ability to post images remotely, so I will try to do some semi-live blogging for the first time. I've also also had custom earplugs molded. I intend to do a macro of them at some point soon.

Snatching Defeat From The Jaws Of Victory

2008-04-12T15:16:00.006-04:00

Breaking News: Rocky doesn't beat Apollo Creed, Truman defeats Dewey, and The Mighty Handful finish third (out of six) in the Battle of the Bands at Bard. They received a gift certificate to the Virgin Megastore with a value of twenty-five (25) United States Dollars. The sound system failed (after numerous microphone dropkicks), the drums fell apart, and Greenleaf bloodied himself. The principal, however, was apparently furious about the confetti. In the end, all is right and well in the universe.

Unfortunate Song Juxtapositons, Pt. 1

2008-04-08T17:19:00.003-04:00

Medium: The radio.

Song: Love Is Here and Now You're Gone

Sung By: The Supremes

Action: Driving down Central Park West in the crew van.

Treefallinginthewoods, Treefallinginthewoods...

2008-03-29T11:29:00.005-04:00

(Ari Up and the new Slits configuration)

So Ari Up and The Slits played Don Pedro's (still the worst venue in Brooklyn, though the basement at The Charleston is a close second in pointlessness) oh... a week ago at this point, and what should have been a welcome home party for Dead Dog and Shellshag and Stupid Party and Bad Blood (that's everyone on the bill) ended up being marred by an aging lady whose sense of entitlement and divatude is misrepresented as "punk."

One way or another, and for the benefit of those closest to me in the situation I won't name them, Ari managed to get a few of my friends kicked out of the bar and when they left, all THEIR friends left. A few baseless claims of offense, a bogus wounded sense of pride and one hair-flipping-teeth-sucking-on-stage-on-mic tantrum later, and The Slits are playing to an empty house with a few Japanese Brooklyn College Fanboys (the worst kind) and some older holdouts from the original scene -- basically Ari doing Slits karaoke by herself defiantly in an act of pure narcissism. So I was torn because -- hey -- how often do you have a name band all to yourself? But then again, my loyalties always end up with the people I know and the bands they're with. The Slits don't know me from Adam except for the guitarist, Michelle, who is a lousy advertiser in that I had no idea she was in the band (seriously. I still can't wrap my head around how I didn't know that).

(Michelle has a really long cord, allowing her to escape to freedom)

Now, one could say that Ari Up can be excused as just another holdout/true believer who has done a lot of drugs in her past, and that anything she does or says that offends should just be dismissed as the effects of a life of living the dream. This also lets her off the hook. One could go the other way and say that she's Ari Up and who the fuck am I to criticize her, considering her history and all that she comes with and why should she care what I think? Well, that's kind of the point, isn't it? I mean, the medium is the message and if she wants to prance around in a shitty empty bar in the border-country of Brooklyn then God bless her. Let her stay there. It keeps the rest of us from having to listen to her.

(This way leads to madness)

I Feel Like I'm Moving Further Away From It.

2008-03-27T12:22:00.006-04:00

It's been almost a week since I shot Radiates and because I am old and my memory fades easily, I'm having a difficult time recalling details. Seeing as I'm left with impressions, I have managed to make the lamest music review since that time that Chris Ott reviewed the Slanted And Enchanted reissue for Pitchfork with the [awful], scanned, hand-written pages.

As we might (or might not) remember, being young means curfew and the promise of swift and brutal justice at the hands of parentals if curfew is broken. This is not all together unjustified as The City is a horrible place full of crazies and situations that would put Young White Girls In Peril. In short, I get the point. This leads to a certain problem for young bands that draw the last straw and go on with the post-curfew slot in a three-act bill: You have no one to play to, or the number of people has decreased to the point where the room is half empty. Sad story, bro.

Please recall the Ideal Gas Law, which can be used to show that the pressure of a gas (particles) in a small volume is greater than that of an equal amount of gas (particles) in a large volume.

Because the Ideal Gas law is expressed as an equation (PV=nRT), you can also determine how small a volume has to be to achieve the same pressure with fewer particles. Of course, people don't react in the same way that a gas does -- they'll go where the want to. It's up to the band to make them want to go. With that in mind, I think this illustration makes sense:

I call it Gin's Ideal Crowd Law.

In practical terms:

We Are In Great Danger

2008-03-25T22:24:00.002-04:00

I am typing this on a borrowed laptop, which reminds me that I need (need) to spend money and get one for times like this. Also, DIA wi-fi is mondo sketch and its webvertisements are sending Firefox into fits.

I've had my flight bumped three times (we were originally supposed to be in the air at 3:30 MT and have now been pushed back to 10:30 MT). I had dinner (corn dogs) and drinks (beers) with Danny and Nina and Ezra last night. When we left at 12:00 AM (MT), I was still waiting for my pictures to come out of the Sputnik photo booth (having taken the pictures 30 minutes earlier). I had explained this delay away as part and parcel of the color process. I should have seen this as a cause for alarm and a sign of impending doom.

More later.

I'm here for Microwave Cookery No, wait. Coping with Senility.

2008-03-24T03:56:00.001-04:00

Oh. My. God. The. Slits.

Details to come; a Radiates review first, then Antimagic, THEN The Slits.

After I come back from Denver.

Jesus.

DO YOU WANT THE LAMINATE?

2008-03-23T13:28:00.005-04:00

Playing back to the 'too young to care' feelings from previous entries and offering all ages chiptune madness for all ages is Starscream -- 8-bit plink-pop for you and yours to enjoy unapologetically. Perhaps, upon hearing them, you would feel the urge to surf the willing crowd or bruise your neighbor with you hips and elbows. All of this is encouraged. One should also take special notice of the floors buckling under the strain of three classes of teenagers pogo-ing in unison and retreat to a more load-bearing part of the building; such is the urge for people with the burden of debt.

I was at the Knitting Factory last night (3/22) and continued to be rendered inert by the lack of FUN that bands seem to be having once they escape college. Everyone wants to be in a band, but no one wants to be a Rock Star. There are exceptions to every rule (Tunnel Of Love -- I'm talking to you...) but overall I yearn for showmanship; for bands to engage with the crowd; to push BACK when the pit swallows you up; to let the pit swallow you up.

To have a pit in general. I guess it's hard to dance when you're protecting your seven dollar beer. That's a serious investment these days.

Multiple Post Day (Pt.2)

2008-03-22T18:22:00.002-04:00

OK, so plans have gone tits up -- Flickr is being, how you say, a motherfuckingdouchebag and is not working. So the slowly leaking TMH and Starscream and Radiate pictures are going to be leaking even more slowly. Standby.

Multiple Post Day (Pt. 1)

2008-03-22T14:59:00.004-04:00

I'm back from Pennsylvania (at the Cannondale Plant) and Delaware (at the Dogfish Head Brewery). Not much to say about that other than we escaped from Delaware by boat (see above), which I would like to believe lent a certain prison-escape-ambiance to the end of the trip. Obviously I am delusional and tired.

Dogfish Head beer has, shall we say, certain alcoholic properties that are above and beyond most beers. I like to drink beer and became confused and disoriented after having no more than my regular serving of said liquid. Also, they sponsored one of the Punkin Guns from last season, giving me another chance to be self-referential on this blog. Oh well. Cannondale Bikes were pretty neat, but it was an odoriferous tour and shoot and everything was loud and squealy or windowless and air-tight so it made for a clammy, sweaty affair.

Upon my return, I shot the Handful (links down there somewhere. You know who they are at this point) and Starscream and Radiates at their (the Handful's) insistence. This proved to be a strong call.

Double reminder: ANTIMAGIC TONIGHT

Antimagic, at the Knitting Factory, 8PM. Be there, be square.

Onward and Upward

2008-03-16T23:20:00.004-04:00

The Mighty Handful show on Saturday disappointed me because of my friends. Because of their lack of commitment to excellence I am/continue to be alone in my age group and in my appreciation of said band. I also made new friends with Dulaney Banks (just scroll down. I don't feel like hyperlinking myself) and was told to check out Calamity Sam's next show in April; the discussion of the particulars and wherefores went something like this,

Sam: Hey Richard Gin, I'm Sam.

Me: Hey dude. 'sa pleasure.

Sam: You're here for the Handful?

Me: You know it.

Sam: Yeah, they were in my band... ...supposed to be in my band.

Me: They ditched?

Sam: Yeah.

Me: Bastards.

Sam: Totally.

Me: They dropped you like Gary Young, huh?

Sam: Yeah! Exactly! Awesome! You should come shoot my band?

Me: Right on.

Sam: Yeah. We're better than them.

Me: Word. I'm on it.

END

Anyway, that should be interesting.

NEW THOUGHT:

True to form and as I suspected, the Lord Has Provided. I'll be away for the next work week in Pennsylvania and Delaware for... ...work and will likely not be updating or blogging in the mean. Hopefully this will be because I am having breakfasts across from the Holiday Inn Express at a Waffle House. This of course means no pictures for a while followed by a frantic upload on Saturday and Sunday.

Fuck it. How about some news you can use:

BEHOLD THE MAJESTY OF ANTIMAGIC

Antimagic, Ted McGrath's non-Savonarola-based project (featuring both members of Savonarola) will be at The Knitting Factory on Saturday the 22nd of this month. I will be there with bells on. Doors at 8, apparently though I'm sure that is subject to change. Past instances where Ted's solo-projects were found to be belligerently oppressive have been relegated to the past with hidden Smile-ish sub-melody. It will rule.

Following the next weekend I will be in Denver for two days (as of now -- these things change) and will hopefully be dining or drinking irresponsibly with Danny and Nina, whom I have not seen in... since they moved to Denver. Or before that. I think I missed the going away party for some reason.

Now, I rest.

He Said Captain, I Said Wot

2008-03-15T20:23:00.002-04:00

Dulaney Banks don't need press from me -- any germane facts are on their Myspace (linked to; above. Please visit) but I'll boil them down for you nonetheless. Guy and girl are a duo that sings folk and spirituals and songs about murdering them wot done you wrong. They ~~are~~ will be legally able to busk in the subways once they turn eighteen (18) because they won a permit through the MTA Arts For Transit/MUNY audition. They are not yet 18, so they have no permit.

This is insane on several levels, most notably of which is the fact that they should not be performing in the subways for any reason other than for fun; they should be making the circuit through your usual medium/large touring venues with a proper sound system. Not to give short shrift to the Dulaney half (it's a great skill to do all the heavy lifting through one guitar, it's a wise man who knows when not to play), but to call the Banks half's voice "mature beyond [her] years" is an understatement and an absurd joke.

A Dramatization:

Jack: You're going to shoot Dulaney Banks?

Me: Oh yeah.

Jack: They're great, right?

Me: Yeah. I went to their Myspace link. I was like, 'who is this girl and how did she steal Nina Simone's voice?'

Jack: Yeah.

END

They are fantastic.

Own A Piece Of History

2008-03-14T12:15:00.004-04:00

In the continuing spirit of plugging my friends' shit in this blog in the name of goodwill and glomming on to people and personalities who are far more socially advanced than mine, I offer the following news you can use.

This is Ted. This picture of Ted is as old as the ones of Bill and Nick and Dana, so please see the comments on those pictures for timeline information. Also, I don't think this particular picture is very good, though it gets both of us in the time we were in.

THE BIG NEWS:

Ted has been featured in Print Magazine this month, the one with this cover,

As one of their 20 Under 30 profile. I personally think 30 Under 30 has a better ring to it, but that's not the point. Can't be diluting the talent pool, can we? The point is that you, while celebrating the careers of a gaggle of young upstarts, can own an image made by me, Richard Gin. Please see the screen capture, below.

That image is, of course, THIS image,

Only cropped to hell, desaturated and therefore inferior to all the other profile pictures which capture artistic rapscallions at their most gloomy/moody/contrasty/artistic. As you can see, Ted was having two (2) milkshakes before they were popular. Ted chose my picture of him because his mom liked it. I think she said it was one where he didn't look too weird. I am paraphrasing.

Also in this issue and also in this article on dashing young men and demure young ladies are profiles of Phil Lubliner, stand up dude and commissioner of my fantasy baseball team, and Gary Fogelson, man about town and stand up dude. I will not post pictures of them because I have none, nor was I involved in their profiles. Gary and Phil are active dudes, and have various and sundry satellite projects and sub-domains that are worth checking out and are awesome.

The magazine itself is available now at your local magazine deployment concern and you should make it the bestest selling issue of Print Magazine, like, ever.

To You From Failing Hands We Throw The Torch

2008-03-08T14:30:00.002-05:00

It's bad news when a new venue treats its lighting design as an afterthought. You can tell things are wrong when the drummer for The Orion Experience is stretching, trying to tilt the par cans over his head off of him with his drumstick. I mean, honestly; you have ten lights pointed STRAIGHT DOWN to slash the soundproofing on the back wall and no edge lights hitting the front of stage. You have one row of fixed cans at the front of house with deep amber (!!??!) gels on them dimmed to about 40% -- a dimmed tungsten light is warmer than a tungsten light at full power so the result is a warm light... with a warming gel on top of it. Net result is a color temperature somewhere around 1900K.

WHAT FUCKING GOOD DOES IT DO TO LIGHT THE BACK WALL?

And there are sidelights with no punch on stages right and left gelled BLUE. This post is incoherent and choppy and rambly. I'm furious. I mean, the building is just over a year old. Someone -- a loved one; a caring friend -- should have told the owners to hire a LD to set something reasonable up. It's not like the old Luna Lounge where you could understand a converted bar slapping up a few lights because people couldn't see shit; this was a ground-up install that should have taken into consideration EVERYTHING and they dropped the ball. What should have been a quality medium/small venue in Brooklyn becomes just another bar with a stage attached. You shouldn't have to worry about making your own separation happen when your subject is on a fucking STAGE.

Something To Du

2008-03-02T14:29:00.008-05:00

I have had a difficult time explaining why I like the Mighty Handful so much. Most of my thoughts are scattershot and age-ist of the "talented enough to be good; not good enough to care" variety and don't do them justice. The pleasure might be in the thrill of discovery -- those precious few months you have where the secret is yours to share with everyone and anyone who will listen.

Most of the seminal bands I've enjoyed in my life were discovered a few years (or more) past their sell date; The Who, The Replacements, all of the NY post-punk bands. There are notable exceptions (including Pavement, Sleater-Kinney, Neko Case, and all the new [bands] out there that sound like them), but my music has historically been acquired a day late and at a bargain price in the resale bin. Some of this was due to (my) date of birth, some due to the inevitable decline that bands go through once they stop having hard-ons for anything that moves and embrace the rapidly advancing twilight of middle age.

The Mighty Handful are nowhere near that place, so they seem fresh and new even as they chatter amongst themselves and realize that Oh Domestic Me! sounds suspiciously like Tangled Up In Blue. Developmentally, they are at the time and place where small steps are giant strides; They are tighter than when I saw them two months ago, and though Aviva keeps slinking off to the side to avoid the carnage (live, they are 5/6ths Keith Moon) they have developed the good common sense to not tack her solo song at the end of the show; the previous result led to a, "...and this is my adopted daughter Margot," sense of unease as the rest of the boys packed themselves away.

They're playing Southpaw on the 15th and I intend to go out of loyalty and curiosity and to take my "adult" drunken friends who look at me like I'm chicken little every time I start muttering about how absurdly great "Uptown Drunks" is. First one on the train gets the best seat.

Stage Diving 101

2008-02-24T15:07:00.004-05:00

Stage Diving Etiquette 101

Intro:
So you've decided to join our feathered friends (and bats and squirrels) in the sky through the act of flight! Congratulations! The choice to sacrifice your body and equipment through the impulsive and destructive act of stage diving can be a rewarding and entertaining experience. I've cobbled together this primer to help you through the process. Band-mates should have no fear! I've taken the time to include portions and positioning for them as well. Please note the handy guide numbers in the upper left corner of the images.

1) Ascend.
While common stage dives (off a stage or the more simple "crowd surf") can be enjoyable, a true epic stage dive should be executed from the highest point available. In this instance, our hero has chosen a conspicuously well-placed rolling staircase to the left of the stage. Ascend as high as comfortable, but note that the higher the platform, the more awesome you will appear. Bonus points for continuing to play while preparing to plummet.

2) Pose.
Make sure the crowd sees you! We all know the rhetorical question regarding the tree in the woods. Here, the bassist has taken the "notes become bullets" a.k.a. the "...because of the wang" pose. Several paying customers are already laughing with joy as he readies his body for immortality. Band Note: At this point, you should still be playing at top gear, oblivious as to the throngs of women and young girls no longer eye-fucking you.

3) "The Four Winds."
With mind cleared from distraction and body poised for certain doom, one must cast one's mortal being into the abyss with righteous fervor and a complete disregard for the young girls in the front row. What's more, your band friends have noticed you for the first time in months! The drummer expresses joy and jealousy as he is locked behind his cruel metal cage. A proper guitarist will show no interest in the goings on around him or her, but will instead seethe inwardly as the ill trim in the front row has suddenly developed a taste for "bottom end," if you know what I mean.

4) Landing.
Never assume that someone will catch you. Extending your arm to brake your fall will usually lead to a broken wrist and will lead to an end to excellence, so be prepared to tuck and roll. Use the crowd to increase your coefficient of friction and slow your now-bruised body -- like a bowling ball into hapless pins. It is at this point that the drummer has cocked his arm in an "Atlanta Tomahawk" position to deliver a frustrated drumstick to the head of the bassist. This is custom and one should always be prepared to deflect a stick headed for an eye or an orifice.

5) Momentum and the "Last Resort."
If you are out of audience members to collapse into, the guitarist or lead singer is usually the last safety and one should use any and all gymnastic means to use him or her as a brake. Our bassist has cleverly used the neck of his instrument to hook into the kneecaps of the guitarist as a Navy jet hooks into the cable on the deck of an aircraft carrier. Note that he has tucked his chin down to shield his eyes from the drumstick, which has found its target -- a bruised forehead is better than a bleeding eye.

6) Injury, Recovery and Hospice.
Pain! Pain is fleeting, and death is for the weak. You are alive and you will recover thanks to modern 21st Century medicine and the finest health care system that your parents can provide! Take a breath to fill your lungs with life-affirming oxygen and to clear your mind of suffering -- those are not twins you are seeing, mouthing incomprehensible words as you lie prone on your bruised coccyx, but rather the pretty freegan from two towns over who has a 40 year old canadian boyfriend. You're seeing double, friend! Band mates: Now is the time to elevate your concern.

7) "The Checkdown."
Like a boxer that has just been knocked down, it is best to walk through a checklist in your head while on the ground -- if you're on the floor, there's nowhere lower to go, so you avoid further injury due to collapse. It is recommended to take stock of one's limbs from the bottom up: feet, legs, hips, chest and head. It is now appropriate for other band members to abandon their positions and rush to your aide. At this point, the show is effectively over and no more music will be played. All that is left is for the stage diver to milk his feat for all it's worth.

8) Results.
The last step involves regailing the hero for his feat of daring. Audience members should applaud and those of the opposite gender should become sexually aroused. Band mates should stand about and deliver the line, "are you ok?" in as dispassionate a manner a possible. A traditional response should be something along the lines of, "I need a [drink/drug/whore]," but feel free to improvise! After all, YOU sacrificed your body like a virgin to Pelé, YOU have the right to demand offerings of your choice.

(Stupid Party at Java Studios, 2/22/08)

The Audio Department Confounds Project Runway Viewers In General

2008-02-21T14:51:00.004-05:00

Did anyone besides Ally see my back (ass) in last night's recap episode of Project Runway? There seems to be some discussion that you might be able to see me molesting Jillian or Kit or some such in the background. A telltale sign would be a 6'2" tall half-asian with a black harness swaddled around his rippling body; lean with sinewy muscle and tense with strain from labor. There should also be a California Flag patch sewn on the harness between his shoulder blades which appears to wave in the breeze as he dances through the motions of his profession with the precise grace of a jungle leopard stalking his prey.

This Bores Me.

2008-02-18T22:44:00.005-05:00

February has been a slow month for me work-wise. I've taken to shooting shows more often in order to keep my head out of my ass and get myself away from Photoshop -- the longer I fiddle around with selection tools the more likely I am to do something totally fucking [stupid] like selectively colorize everything.

In this spirit, please do let me know what's out there for the next few weeks. I am actively soliciting interesting bands to shoot. God bless my friends, but they only play so often. Bonus points if you play at a venue that is not totally fucking [stupid] when it comes to lighting.

Hi-V to The Choke, Knife Fight (bros) and WLWL for putting together a game group of bands to suffer through the conditions at Don Pedro's (the worst venue in Brooklyn).

Late Hi-V to Crystal Stilts, Silk Robes (bros), Vivian Girls and My Teenage Stride for making my Valentime's Day less [stupid].

Audio Department Confounds Nation With Its Sexuality

2008-02-14T10:04:00.005-05:00

From the comments for The Onion's TV Club breakdown of Project Runway's 11th episode,

RE: I'm going to marry Jillian
by Clownfucks

And she's going to wear overalls and do my laundry.
10:04 PM Wed February 13, 2008

RE: I'm going to marry Jillian
by Me too

as long as I occasionally get to come over for some hankey-pankey.

Umm, that garter thing she was wearing when she was jumping with excitement? HOT! (Fierce)
10:13 PM Wed February 13, 2008

RE: I'm going to marry Jillian
by idiot wind

Jillian's little garter-thing (at first I thought it was a gun holster under her dress, like in the movies) was indeed extraordinarily sexy, but then I realized it was probably just one of those microphone-thingies to hear what she was saying.
11:15 PM Wed February 13, 2008

RE: I'm going to marry Jillian
by dove

I'm going to continue thinking it was a gun holster. because jillian just seems like the type.
6:01 AM Thurs February 14, 2008

Bondange is so hot right now.

The Truth About Chinese New Year

2008-02-11T17:00:00.000-05:00

In China it is custom to celebrate the Lunar New Year to unleash a bevy of demons and hoojibs upon mankind in an effort to clear the human species of the old and infirm thus ensuring peace and prosperity in the coming months. In a curious coincidence, the recent motion picture "Cloverleaf" violently and clearly dramatized this annual feeding, whose drama and chaos has bloodied the fields of the Old Country for thousands of years.

The annal blood orgy begins much in the way the Spaniards begin the running of the bulls -- the elderly (below) are herded into narrow passageways and alleyways.

The savage beasts involved in this cruel display include Lions (below) and Dragons. This young lion is held in place by his cruel master. It is custom to starve these specters for months before hand. In tradition, this cruel treatment is meant to build resentment and a taste for human flesh. Recall that the origin of the ritual was to thin the proverbial herd -- a necessary task when crops are small and the mouths many.

When the signal is given the creatures, crazy with hunger, are released into the crowd. The dragon, above, has burst from his chains and has set down into a crowd of elders. Soon the streets will run as red as their traditional crimson toques.

Lions hunt alone or in pairs. There is little evidence that the creatures have a predilection towards teamwork, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Scientists have observed that they have a keen sense of smell but poor eyesight, even in the blinding mid-February sun. The two lions (above) have taken a classic "Two In A Room" formation.

Oh no! An elder Fung Wah Lion (below) has caught my scent! Only by standing perfectly still will I be able to survive. Like a shark, a Fung Wah Lion will beat at a prospective target with his wild maw -- the slightest reaction by the target means the target becomes a meal.

Some brave men hide beneath the mantle of a dragon in order to escape its wrath. It is well know that Dragons require tiny parasites to clean themselves as they are unable to bend backwards.

Each year, a Snack King (above) is chosen to be the final morsel offered to the hungry beasts. It is said that if the creatures are too full, spent on the fat and sinew of their prey, to eat the Snack King, a great disaster will befall the community. This years' Snack King awaits his fate.

The two dragons shown above are enough to sweep a street full of one hundred people clean in minutes -- dragons are notoriously neat eaters, and their excrement smells of fresh plum tomatoes.

It is tradition for men of marrying age to take to the streets to kill and behead a lion in order to impress a mate. Custom calls for a boy -- now a man -- to parade with the bloody carcass of the creature held over his head until his arms burn with acid. Only then will he be suitable for a bride.

(Above) A young dragon escapes. He is lured with a Snitch tethered to a golden staff. If left to his own devices, the dragon would lay waste to the pack of Boy Scouts fleeing from his howls. Fun fact -- J.K. Rowling borrowed the idea of the Snitch for her popular "Harry Potter" stories!

This boy longs for the day that he too will be able to take a chance and snatch himself a lion's head for his prospective bride.

It seems our friend has tired! Will his display of daring and strength mean he will be able to find a suitable mate? Only time will tell.

At the end of the day, dragons and surviving lions are led through the streets to their enchanted chambers. The creatures become docile as the warm goo of human entrails slosh about in their gullets. A dragon has three stomachs -- one for soft tissues, one for fluids and one for bones and other hard matter. The lions have one stomach but their metabolism processes nutrients faster, thereby allowing them to feed constantly. They will be kept in darkness until the next new year when a cruel but necessary rite of passage -- the culling of the old and the triumph of the young -- is conducted in cities and towns throughout the world.