saturday there was a halloween party at the go go and it was pretty fun. i had a pretty classic pre-party ennui but once the music started going i started dancing to near-full abandon and ended up having a totally necessary time, at times. ML made a mix tape and put on a lot of not-exactly popular stuff, like three dwarves songs, butthole surfers, al “he’s the king” hirt and other weird garbage and it made me really happy. lots of people were dancing and circle-pitting and being fun and rowdy, no bullshit. i poured an enourmous bucket of water on a couple making out on the dance floor, and that was pretty good, but the best part was when “word up” came on and someone switched the “w-o-r-d up!” chant to “w-o-r-c-e-s-t-e-r up!” (so that the new chant took up two rotations of the old chant you see). really perfect. good costumes too– matt carroll was gordon cooper, his favorite astronaut. if you don’t know matt carroll, you cannot imagine how much work was put into making the suit absolutely perfect, down to the last stitch (matt, can you send me pictures?). sarah scales was one of the child catchers from bedknobs and broomsticks, two drinks was the green hornet, macoe was a cop stripper, and marge magazine was jean grey, and perfect as well. as for me i was an aztec jaguar fighter, one of the people that dresses up like a jaguar and fights annually in the village square, to appease tlaloc, the rain god. this is not an ancient ritual, this is a contemporary custom. little andrew was a bear dressed as a bunny, and made an *intense* haunted house in the barn with real chainsaws, people grabbing you, panicky attempts to open doors nailed shut, trap doors, fire poles, and pant-wettings. really awesome.

tonight is halloween proper and i’m trying to get over to downhill mansion, to spend another in a long line of shared halloweens with nicky revs, and twist his arm into going on a free vacation to las vegas with me (don’t ask).

fujichia: always halloween.

tonight i went to see this was hypersection at “the grind” at clark university, and obviously they were awesome, this time they had booklets with lyrics for which i drew pictures. this was the second time this week i’ve gone to a show at this particular venue (calvin johnson opened up for old time relijun on sunday or monday), so let’s paint the picture. it’s underneath the cafeteria at the liberal arts college, it used to be a bar, then it was briefly a coffee bar, now it’s only for shows, foosball, pool, ping pong, and one arcade game (a cross-company fighter with too many buttons). the walls are sparsely decorated with framed posters that are exactly the nightmare dorm room posters you buy at the on campus poster sale: jim morrison, the rat pack, john belushi wearing a sweater that says “college” on it. it is, in other words, an embarrassing place to be. both shows were similar, in that there was an interesting act opening for a pretty staid rock band that had trappings of experimantation but no excitement (tonight’s band, which i neglected to mention, was enon). i left well before the ends of both shows. great shows i’ve seen at this location include link wray, dick dale, frank black & the catholics, deltron 3030. i’m always trying to get the kids booking shows to book me and pay me well, but it’s only worked out once.

today i woke up crazy but less crazy than the night before anyway. took a long while to make a plan to get some food but it finally came through, and i went and got a nice sandwich and ate it over at lilah’s work, picnic style, splayed out on unopened boxes of textbooks with her boss walking around not saying anything to me. eating really helped out, and i realized that sometimes when i get stressed out i don’t eat as much as i should and this leads to greater (and weirder) stress. i also shaved, and took a shower, and went on a bike ride, and a walk, and hung out with some friends, and said when, and spent time alone by choice. from shabby to not too shabby in just a few steps!

quarter comics are ten cents this week at the store for some ill-conceived halloween promotion so i got a handful of miscellaneous archie-brand comics, some cracked magazines and a mad from the 60s with no cover. i like some of the artists in cracked, and they always do a pretty good monster issue every year, and daniel clowes used to draw “the uggly family” under one of the best pseudonyms ever, but it’s also really bad, a traditionally unfunny ripoff. after reading the two crackeds and getting acclimated, the mad magazine was ultra-brilliant. like, space-baby good. as my friend ikey coen said, it’s like being high, and someone says something funny, and you convince yourself that you must have misheard them because what they said was too funny to be humanly possible, and you have in fact somehow pierced a veil. macoe and i rolling on the floor laughing, and macoe likes to laugh, but still– rolling on the floor.

uh-oh! tough stuff with some big soul-searching and mind-looking going on also fit-having and last night i simply could not sleep and andrew tried to knock me out painlessly with a phonebook and it almost worked. worry worry worry about too-thin-style spreading and needless sacrifice, and how i always want the worst option within viable parameters. also apocalypse.

tonight come see this was hypersection at clark university. tomorrow, terribles at ralph’s.

fujichia: aggravating beauties all

i could really use a digital camera. does anyone have an old one they’ve obsoleted by a recent digicam purchase? one they want to donate to strange ventures?

boy, i sure didn’t want to go play a show last night… taking the bus from providence, and the subway to the show, then walking in the rain with all my gear alone… but once i got going i had a great time! thinking to myself on the bus about and listening to bascom lamar lunsford. took the t, and sat next to a lady who chatted me up about basement shows. she was not a punk and had no idea that people opened their houses up to strangers to see live music, and that going on tour with your best friends when you practically can’t play the guitar at all is a sustainable summer project. if you’re reading this, lady, thanks for turning my night around! got to the show and noah britton was already playing some deep-voiced funny numbers about a variety of subjects, including a heartfelt song about wesley willis. it seemed like everyone was his best friend, which made me, a stranger, a little nervous about following him, but then he told everyone i was worth listening to and they fell for it. i eschewed the microphone as i am sometimes able to get away with doing, and had a really good time. everyone was fun, and played along, and talked back in positive ways. after me was a band called “archaeopteryx”, a mathy headbangy bass/drums duo. they totally ruled and i danced danced danced and called out for rush songs during pauses between. also, they knew me from mp3.com, a forum on which i used to post songs! it was such a great thing– they were psyched to catch up on my progress since the site went down three years ago! after the show was a college party with kegs, and little plastic cups, so small that everyone that wasn’t totally wasted already just hung around in the hallway near the beer getting constant refills. it was a pretty ridiculous scene, but it was really fun to goof off and be playful and tell kids to drop out and live while they still think they can maybe get away with it. positive vibe zone!

today i did some drawings for this was hypersection, for their lyrics / backstory booklet. i drew a drawing for t-shirts and it’s so good i think i’m just going to make it without asking, of a man with a dog with a snake coming out of its mouth coming out of his mouth, ultimately eating a hexagon. zzzzzzt!

not writing for days at a stretch makes me feel like a real heel, or at least a heel-dragger. the show at as220 was kind of a drag- i feel petty saying this but i didn’t get paid and it’s a bummer, especially considering i had to take a bus to get to the show. and because the show cost money (and wasn’t pay what you can) lots of my friends couldn’t go, so it wasn’t even like it was a really fun time. the other bands were ok but not my cup of tea- a weekend warrior alternative rock band, a guy who i recognized from that diary comic “spaniel rage” that i like, in which he’s kind of a dink to the author, and who sang way cutesy songs, and a lot of them, and a band that was ok but, well, just not my cup of tea. the band’s guitarist was alternate-universe lee from the body- similar (though less-beautiful) beautiful bobbed hair and the same glasses and a beard. i sold 2 cds, so i’m out a dollar from an $11 bus ticket. i guess i can’t complain.

the show was on wednesday, and i decided to stick around providence to see dad smith’s band social serkle play on thursday. it was their third show and i thought they were good. dad smith is a classic grouch and especially about worcester and i thought it especially good that the people in new band were bizarro versions of worcester characters. the drummer in his new band looks (and has the same first name as) jeff, the drummer in his old band (and was even wearing a ccr shirt) and the singer looked and acted a lot like kessler. dan l’s band 13 knots also played and it was fun just to watch dan furiously attack the drums. he has more of a jazz style than a hardcore style, and it really makes the band.

tomorrow i’m recording french in action for their upcoming tape release and i’m pretty excited about it. i’ve been trying to get french in action to change their name to something in french (ideally “oui, c’est vrai”, which is written on the drums), and this will give me more oppurtunity to put the screws in. my reasonings are threefold- 1, “french in action” is too easily turned into “french inaction”. 2, it would be great to give the audience something in french to yell back at the band (macoe sings in french) and “oui, c’est vrai” is perfect (it means “yes, it’s true”). 3, having a foreign language name when you actually speak that language would really slap the face of bands that have names in languages they don’t actually speak (which i feel used to be more common than it is now but whatever). the other reason i’m psyched (besides the fact that i like the band and am excited about the tape) is that my payment for my efforts is the recording of the proposed album “rue de mauvais garcon“.

tomorrow after the recording i take a train or possibly a bus to boston to eat those good sandwiches, hang out at regeneration for a while, then play a show at allston basement dot com with archaeoptreyx and friends of noah britton. come on down, there’ll be beer i guess!

fuijchia: bad dreams with you in them but you play a benevolent role. twice!

i’m playing a fun show in allston on novemeber 12, at a basement with tumble cat poof poofy poof and the terribles. if you want to go, email me and i’ll tell you the address. or just go to http://www.fujichia.com/[mymiddlename] and input my actual middle name and the details will be made apparent.

went to that tumble cat show at the shed two weeks back and michael the shed confronted me about ditching a show the month previous, for which there was even a flyer with a drawing of me on it (see it in the new (and incomplete) flyers folder). what can i ever say but the truth so i told him that i simply wrote the wrong month down in my book! so i felt like a sap and not for no reason, and they threw me on the bill for the next week’s can kickers / ampere show. there were already 4 bands, but i usually play a short set, so no big deal. come the day before the show, been raining all week and flooding in the area, i’m worried but also (it should be stated) mad, on account of matt coe’s news about the stage production of dracula going on the night of the show. now matt and i are both dracuphiles, the biggest we know, and last year we found out too late about a local production of dracula, and it was a bad scene. i vow to swallow my bitter pill and play the show, but come the next day it’s dumping rain, i start thinking the show might be cancelled (on account of the shed being semi-outdoors), i can’t get in touch with the fellows, and you know what? i go to dracula instead. i’m beyond debating whether or not it was the right thing to do, and beating myself up about it. BUT i am planning a “dear western mass, i’m not such a bad guy” show, for free, with me, the terribles, and possibly this was hypersection. there will also be cookies, and if, at the end of the show, you aren’t satisfied, well, you can punch me.

as far as the dracula play went, a bunch of us went and obviously i had a good time. i sat between kpars and mary wilson and there simply could not be an unpalatable sandwich on such bread. the adaptation was peculiar, very renfield-heavy, but only two acts, each consisting of a mere two scenes! to say that the guy playing renfield was over the top is accurate but also stupid, as that is what the character renfield has always been, whether played by tom waits in the coppola dracula, or dwight fry in the immortal tod browning version. while i enjoyed all the attention (and monologues) given the character, i found the actor was simply not especially fun to watch in his over-the-topness. the dracula was merely adequate and the supporting cast was cursed with british accents that changed a few times over the course of the night. the scenes of note were two in number: one- renfield, pursued by dracula, tears the set apart to reveal a secret door behind a bookcase, but it seemed more as though the actor himself was so freaked out and carried away that he broke an important part of the set in an effort to escape his fictional tormentor. two- dracula is backed into a corner as the sun is rising and starts talking a mile a minute, and it’s unclear if the character dracula is nervous and telling lies or if the playwright developed entirely new rules for dracula to obey, by which the normally fatal exposure to sunlight isn’t actually the end-all be-all. after the show matt and i discussed our plans for next year– staging separate productions of dracula– mine featuring dracula as a sort of tragic hero, dealing with his lot in life with as much honor as possible, matt’s a more or less conventional gothic horror.

it rained for a few days in a row and when it finally lifted on saturday it was a crisp clear night with a big moon ripe for trouble of some variety, and verily, some pretty great trouble was achieved.

fujichia: the moon is not entirely to blame

let’s see… lots of catching up to do often means glossing over the best sorts of things there are: minutiae. well, let’s see if we can’t divide and conquer the wheat and chaff aliike, making cereal from one and packing pillows with the other.

coarse:

does anyone have a lot of little buckles? the reason is obvious- i really want to make my own mall goth gauntlets. are there any ex-goths out there with excess accoutrements? for that matter, does anyone have any unwanted hot topic gift certificates? everytime i go to the mall with someone i make us go to hot topic– it’s fascinating- like a car wreck, or a weed, or a lizard. everyone hates but i love the baggy bondage pants. also indie goth, rockabilly trance, yo metal, and the other “oogle” subcategories.

yesterday’s show was nautical almanac, fat worm of error, pleasurehorse, and hepatitis youth, at some funny place in olneyville where every band got their own room. hepeatitis youth played outside- i guess the venue runners didn’t want them to do what they wanted to do, so carlos decided they would play their boringest set- all alying on the ground occasionally hitting instruments. but i liked it. fat worm of error got all spangled up in sequined hot pants and the like and made flippy floppy the way they do, squishy and farty and fun, with way downtuned guitars and bass bending every note and barely barely barely clinging to a rhythm and a melody, and always with a throb and a shake. really good set. pleasurehorse played some digital noise from his laptop, into which fed a couple different controllers- a drawing tablet with two stylii, a big red knob, a number pad, and a mixer. usually i can’t get into laptop stuff but this ruled. it was almost breakcore. james amoeba got really worked into a froth at one point and came this close [] to elbowing me in The Area Not To Be Elbowed, but didn’t, so no harm no foul. nautical almanac closed the night off and was kind of a noodley drag.

today and tomorrow i’m trying to get back to worcester with my stuff. call if you have any ideas.

i’m back in providence now but i’m moving back to worcester sometime this week i think to make steady work on the idea “store“. providence honey drippers, i’ll be still always around to wine and dine and sign and pine for and shine for and mine for good ideas [for].

i went looking for headphones this afternoon and i inadvertantly interrupted little andrew in nap formation. he told me he had no headphones at all, which i found peculiar, but he was giving me a real skunk eye from the get-go so i made my polite retreat from his chambers. come dinner, he asks me if i woke him up to ask him something and if so what? i explained my earlier rebuffing and he laughed, saying he had headphones close at hand at the time and i should know not to trust “sleepy andrew”, who is a scoundrel and a fabricator. then we imagineered a plausible scenario in which little andrew and his gang are in some hairy predicament and need a crazy idea of the sort crazy enough to work (and no more or less crazy). so they lull andrew to sleep and wake him up and diabolical schemes float like wine down the throats of the poor chumps in the way of this incidental moriarty.

here is what we know about this mysterious “sleepy andrew”:

casual readers and internet-only knowers will think that all i do is go to music shows but it’s not true. yesterday i wrode a fine interstate bus and jon knapp bought me two funny drinks. today i took a nice walk through worcester to my mom’s house, i visited walczak and lilah and sarge madigan at work, i got a nice free lunch at the college, and i pointed out the window of a car at three businessmen peeing against a wrought-iron fence and yelled “swordfight!”. also i went to shows today and yesterday so here’s that in such order:

today was fat day, usa is a monster, kites, eloe omoe, and a band whose name i didn’t catch. fat day is always great, playing fast crazy music with high-pitched vocals and electronic beeping hats. i tried to explain it to my mom and i told her that a lot of punk rock now is people being cool, but there was a time when punk rock left room for zaniness and fat day still has that very important time. eloe omoe was not great. i had seen their name around a lot and then i was reading the sun ra biography and i realized that eloe omoe was a clarinet player in the arkestra. “fuck!” i said to myself, and other expletives as well when i realized that this dude was still playing crazy music, and instead of resting on laurels and playing jazz clubs (or rather, higher-end experimental music venues) he was playing weird messed-up noise shows in basements and illegal mills. but then then i realized that there are two eloe omoes- the one that played in the arkestra, and the one that’s a boring freeform bass-drums two piece. waa waaaaahhhhh! the band whose name i didn’t catch played next and i liked them- another two-piece, and the guitarist played a totally sweet flying v guitar and way thrashed. but not “he thrashed” as in “he ripped all over the fretboard in a stunning display of guitar acumen and daring alike” but “he was like both a piece of wheat and the thing that the wheat meets between the field and the silo”. kites was up next and as it has been recently, it was a real religious sound. even ML said so and he’s both noise-hesitant and religious! his set was like the last one i saw of his, but it looked like something went wrong halfway through and he unceremoniously guided the ceremony to other realms. it was great- it got quiet– the sort of quiet things get before you give up, but from those ashes he rebuilt, and conjured new wraiths. he also thrashed in the above way but also he planted the wheat and was the wheat growing and getting milled and cooked etc., but not in regular order. see him on tour! get your wighat blown off! after kites the usa is a monster played and ruled. jimmy jamie bobby buckmaster was so psyched i could hear him smiling the whole time and over the loud sound the rock band makes no less! i bet the new album rules. i shoulda got it but i didn’t because sometimes i’m a chump.

as for yesterday’s show, it was the hyped-earlier this was hypersection jam-out at raplph’s. it was a hurricane katrina benefit, and a mixed bag, but altogether realy fun. the first act was a hardcore-ish metal-ish band that mike’s co-worker plays guitar in. why the “ish”es? well, as dad smith says, if you think you’re in a metal band, but nobody in the band has long hair, you aren’t actually metal. and fellas, your hair was too short for metal, and arguably too long for hardcore (and lacking other accoutrements). the lead singer was real grotesque- always flexing, with a hideous sneer on his face doing a mild headbang reminiscent of hans and frans. definitely enjoyable, and his parents were there. the drummer was of the gum-chewing variety, and had one of those goatees that’s a thin stand of hair coming from the center of your chin and that’s it. this was hypersection took the stage next in jarring contrast– skinny weirdos with kevin seconds eye makeup and heavy mad max fashions, pretending to be from the after the end of the world (and who could say otherwise?). they sounded really good, and also, like crass (which is good). i was totally psyched because (as previously stated) they were the first mystery band (chosen at random out of a pool of people who always wanted to be in a band) to play in public outside of the initial mystery band showcase. and they rule +1! after them was the commandos, an old worcester punk band that’s famous apparently in germany (as all old punk bands are famous in some pocket of the world or mind). how old were they? “we played here in ‘81, with black flag… before rollins was in the band.”. they were really great and a ton of fun. and they did a cocksparrer cover if you can believe it. long-term bands rule!

back to fat day for a minute and still on topic- i’ve been sitting on this gossip for a while but matt day did get married, and he did move to chicago! but the band is too important to break up, so he comes back monthly for band practice and recording! yes! fat day-you’re the best!

fujichia: the kind of apples we like