i failed to mention that me, GT, ML, Chi-Bri and little andrew formed a metal band for the mystery band show, and that the band is called incisor, and i sing. saturday we got together, had a two-hour practice session followed almost immediately with a show, and my voice is still blown out. after the show it was deep and funny/sexy, now it’s squeaky and cute. more so than ever i love hearing myself speak, and i’ve caught myself (for good or ill) expounding on subjects and holding discourse with a far greater profligacy than ever before. the band is super fun- two drummers, two guitarists, and me, howling as never before. looking to play out…
HBML t-shirts are now in stock at the store, as is the new snow ghost tape, which is totally totally awesome.
chloe, we were talking earlier about gastroliths and i couldn’t remember the word. the word is . also, as , they do, in fact, bind to arsenic (in two different ways) and could prevent a poisoning. especially at a time when arsenic was the poison of choice. ok.
this past weekend held two fine back to back shows- day one and day two respectfully of mystery band 2006. mystery band, now in its third year, is a fine worcester summertime tradition in which participants (pretty much every person in the extended friend group (friends and friends of friends) gets their name put in a pool, a pool from which names are extracted 6 at a time. people are informed of the groupings, which are now bands, and one person from each group is picked to organize the first practice. there are three practice spaces available for any of these bands to use, as well as a communal drum set and amps. each band has two months to come up with between 5 and 20 minutes of material, with the only stipulations being that neither covers nor large-scale (coarse) improvisation are allowed, and performances can not be a waste of time. this year, out of 10 or 12 original band groupings, 7 made it to the performance stages (usually losing or gaining a member in the process). i never directly participate in mystery band- it’s one of the few things in this town that i keep my hands out of, if only to prove to myself year after year that things can be successful without my involvement. and it is always successful! every time- every band is really fun and great, people gain confidence in performing and expressing themselves, and total positive life power is gained by all.
only ever continued past being a mystery band into actual banddom, but this year there’s been a lot of talk about continuing and i put a $100 bounty on the first band (mystery or ex-members of mystery) to make it to five shows ($120 if the band is fronted by johanna). no, i don’t have this kind of money floating around, i just know that when the time comes, it’ll be a price i’ll be happy to pay.
i’ve often reflected that it’s in leaving messages for other people on answering machines that i really shine- casually talking to a machine stand-in for a friend and half-expecting to hear them chuckle or interject, until the ridiculousness of the situation uncloaks and i try to hastily sum up or recap and the ridiculousness just keeps uncloaking down to the herringbones and bamboos and forever. today i recieved a good message that had the benefit of being cut-off by the machine in the middle of a pertinent part and the caller called back to continue (a wonderful zone). in the flustered ending, in which as previsously noted one realizes that one has indeed been talking to a tape for far too long and that hours later someone will try and transcribe or at least wade through your conversational hubris, and the urge to suddenly make nice + terse arises, caller left me with this: “hope your life is going up and down and you’re feeling everything”. what a dismount!
wednesday i went to providence with ML and sold rugs with bigfoot paul to incoming brown university freshman (a yearly gig three years running). it wasn’t as lucrative as past years, but we did ok, and then we (or i anyway) spent almost all the money on records (at srmageddon shoppe) almost immediately. but it was money easy-come and i haven’t got new records in a while. but all my money is to some degree frivolously earned and i didn’t even leave enough money left to order the one record i told myself i’d get to prevent myself from kicking myself later. bah. can’t win.
