tuesday’s deer tick show was pretty good- he was with jana hunter, who i had never heard of, but i’m out of the loop in many regards. some people had heard of her so hard they were starstruck, her having had an album out on the label run by devandra banheart, and as a result there were some people from worcester at the show i had never seen but because i had never seen them i assumed they were part of the entourage and didn’t really talk them up about anything. well anyway, she was great, and doubly great for trading me one of her albums for a handful of dice, a glow-in-the-dark skull ring, and a pair of sunglasses on the arms of which i wrote “who cares?”. deer tick was way goofy and theatrical, which i enjoyed, and alec k was, in my opinion, tech and boring. after having seen noise nomads the other night, every longhair i come across gets put through the hair-whip filter- do they ever whip their hair around like a windmill? if not, why bother? if you’ve been unable to infer it, alec and his accompaniest are longhairs i put in this latter category. anyway he makes spooky tim burton-y echo-drenched accordian music, so if that’s your bag, bag into it.

wednesday of course was phone book, bone zone, and the terribles at the flywheel. almost no one was there (adam hotcakes +1, josh tumblecat, one of the suchfun brothers, kpars, dooley) but it was still pretty “on”. bone zone did it in form. the phone book set was our greatest yet, i believe, because i was able to mic the amp and hence be loud enough in a not-tiny room for once. terribles were the only band (other than AKR, who we saw two nights in a row) to play on stage, but since there were so few people there, they shuffled way off to the side and demanded everyone get on stage with them, making a false tiny room. it was a great move because close proximity turns head nodding into body bumpin’, and it’s the body bumpin’ show i want to be at. the best part of the night was at the end of the phone book set we played louie louie, and the terribles jumped on stage and started playing it too, and MZ started singing (the black flag version, at his insistance and my ready acceptance). really perfect. yes, it was just like the sst video mike got where the minutemen, black flag, and members of other miscellaneous sst bands all do this. it was EXACTLY LIKE IT. special hello to phone book’s greatest supporter, a heretofore stranger from our last show who called the flywheel to see when we were going on and the guy who picked up the phone went to check and while the phone was off the hook she heard a song or two of ours and was bummed to have effectively missed us. lady! don’t be too bummed! this is a great story and i’m sure we played better in your mind at home than on stage. in any event we like western mess and we’ll be back soon i hope.

thursday i tried to rest as promised but rest no come.

friday halloween party at downhill mansion, which was pretty fun. amanda came back to town and dressed up as me and had nick coach her on my mannerisms, even dredging up a few that i had long forgotten. i was, as if i need to mention, totally psyched. dude bro and a handfull of other bands played, but what really clinched it for me was dancing around to a kpars mixtape which included flipper, tiny tim, hasil adkins, iron maiden, and a mess of stuff that i really thought was just coming right out of my brain. or right into my brain. anyway i felt connected, it was nice.

yesterday in keeping to form we had an incisor practice followed by an incisor show, in providence, at the big halloween party at jo dery’s house. we went on first, which was kind of a bummer, but still i got to play for people i wanted to play for, and we got a really positive response, so i can’t complain. teenage waistband and byron house also played and also, ruled. my costume was “archangel”- not the x-man, the samhain song. i couldn’t get all the facepaint off and now i’m sitting in the library with what looks like eyeshadow on, but if it worked for elvis it can work for me.*

tomorrow (monday) there’s going to be a dracula film fest at jon knapp’s house with lecture by yours truly. horror of dracula at 7:30, lecture “dracula: paths to beauty” by your humble narrator at 9:00, bram stoker’s dracula at 9:30, dracula (with bela lugosi) at 11:30. this lecture really means a lot to me. call or email for more information.

*this is not true.

the new HBML Fresh Garbage Journal is up- daily reports from the junk store. more regular than this old gal because i’ve already written a bunch and put them in the queue to be dished out one a day and that’s a trade secret between you and me and autonomous info-trolling FBI spiders.

the usaisamonster show was obviously awesome. there were some problems like: i got lost en route to the qvcc, on my bike, in the cold heavy rain for an hour on bad busy roads; all the bands except the terribles got lost; the show started late; not a lot of people showed up; i did inadequate publicity; renting a hall is expensive; the show was $7. i booked the show through dc-fiy, which was good in that i didn’t have to worry about getting the hall, the PA, and people to work the door, but not a lot of people = not a lot of money = we barely made enough just to pay for the hall, which combined with dc-fiy’s 40% cut would have left us with about $10 for 3 touring bands. skot (from dc-fiy) really really helped me out by taking the show as a loss and donating some money for the bands to keep going. all in all it probably would’ve worked out better to have just had a house show- it would have been easier, and without an entry fee more people would’ve come, ended up giving less money individually, and more in total. live and learn. dc-fiy, fyi, is still a great resource, still does a great service to the community, and still, i’m going to book shows through them.

how was the show beyond the logistical nightmare? well, good! usaisamonster is just a great, heavy, proggy band. i bought some of their tapes for the store, but only two of the records, which i realize now means one for me and one for jim and none for you. the terribles were great as always, animental played too long, and noise nomads was perfect. there’s a way i tend to look at performance, in terms of dedication to craft, and the body is a perfect example of this, where you might not be blown away by their technical skill, but you have to admire their dedication to honing a particular sound, and to that end, acquiring 60 square feet of amps- you know they aren’t just fucking around. it’s in this way that noise nomads rules. you can decide, objectively, not to like his music, but you have to admire that he is on tour playing it, you have to admire that when he plays he really goes for it, and you have to admire his hair, which he whips around perfectly and is as much a part of the performance as the amps. jeff, if you’re reading this, you have a big fan in me.

i’m at the college library right now writing because my room is too messy to work in (true) and i’m too easily distracted in there anyway, and my house is just cold enough that i end up getting up and walking around anyway. but it’s too damn hot in here and i still have metal neck and sore shoulders from headbanging at the show. big big show coming up saturday at pine st in providence, tons of bands (i think) plus me and mike and jim and matt z and brian’s sludgecrush band INCISOR. tomorrow at the flywheel it’s terribles, bone zone, phone book and alec k redfearn. tonight at forbes st it’s alec k redfearn and deer tick.

well, my proclivities at this point are fairly established- i was nervous / dreading the shows (tues/wed, prov/boston) but then i ended up having a really good time, surrounded by friends, but with enough strangers that i could still tell the old jokes. tuesday night in providence at pine st i opened up the show, had some microphone troubles and abandoned the microphone, then messed up a song really bad and got embarrassed. ryan said that i seemed more edgy and maybe that was because i was growing up, but i had to level with him that i just messed up really bad and it made me fussy. anyway i ended strong and that’s all people remember anyway, so the lesson is- stick the landing. by wednesday’s show i had practiced the song that i messed up and remembered what the real chords are, and i even had a new song that i wrote that morning, that i didn’t even mess up at all! the song is called “100 goats rule” and i wrote it for dan beckman to play, and having heard it he even said he would, the dear. again, singing with no microphone, shouting it out in my preferred manner. i was nervous because this time i played sixth in the eight-band show, playing right after dan beckman and lazy magnet as a sort of vaudevillian interlude between loud (the body, work/death, tiny hawks) and bouncy (lorna doom, mahi mahi). but i held my own in my own way, and i dare say that everything worked out. special big thanks to caroline for driving and john for loaning the car and then to the countess for driving the next day!

yesterday i rested
and tonight there’s that usaisamonster show and tomorrow i will rest again and sunday me and matt hallas are building more storage space at the store and monday i’m showing bram stoker’s dracula and giving a lecture on the subject (tentatively titled “dracula: strategies of being, paths to beauty”) at the firehouse.

oh yeah! and don’t nobody forget- this friday in worcester at QVCC (16 greenwood st)- USAISAMONSTER, noise nomads, animental, terribles. $7 or 6 with a can of food, sponsored by dc-fiy. usaisamonster rulessssssssssssss. doors at 6:00, show at 6:30, show must be over by 10. do it.

i finally sent out the rest of the posters for the rent club, and incidentally, the rent club is signing people up again, so get on it if you’re so inclined- three months of posters by jean cozzens, cybele collins, and george w myers, for $40, and the store gets to pay its rent and the artists get paid.

it’s been those first fall days lately, experimenting with wearing layers, taking walks just because, trying to not think about all the stuff there is to not think about. it was pars’ birthday last sunday and we all went big-ball bowling. pars and i took matt carroll’s scientific sports-that-involve-aiming advice and consequently did very good. well, not very good, but decent. you focus on your target, take a good look but not too long. then trace back with your eyes that path from the target to the ball where it sits in your hand, then choose a point on that line and watch the ball go through it. do not watch the ball, even after it goes through the spot. easy breezy, but let’s see you try and work it into a life lesson- i’d advise against it but who am i?

playing a show tonight at pine st in providence, the corleone showcase and sadly i have no new tricks up my sleeve except jim says my singing is better. tomorrow the show’s in boston where i at least have the dignity of not playing a lot.

working on a new website for the store, and to that end i have an ebayed digital camera coming in the mail. if anyone has an airport card they could donate, that would really help me out a lot.

there is something i find extremely intoxicating about the smell of warm wet pavement at night. riding home from the store yesterday i kept smelling so hard i started to hyperventilate a little. just to get out of the house i went with jim to da lat and suffered the indignity of ordering incorrectly, which i was unable to corrrect without losing face to my favorite member of the waitstaff there, the lady with the super-long wispy rat tail and hair color the color of strawberry candy. indignities only continued, as following the meal we decided to walk to the java hut, a notoriously cliche teen coffee house, where we were pressured to leave having not ordered a sufficient amount of food or drink. at this point we (and by this time we had accumulated mel and my new downstairs neighbor (and providence emmigrant) joceyln) went on a home invasion tour, showing up at various walk-to-able friends’ houses and demanding beer, which no one was able to provide, then moving on with the previous house’s occupants in tow. no wild times, no revelations, but sufficient to “wind the watch” as it were, stave off “that old feeling”, and pump a little fresh air into the system. for good or ill, you just have to get out of the house, regularly.

ug. catching up:

last night’s show was pretty great. it was at hampshire college, in a tiny little round building set off from everything else. JK, sheryl-ann and fire hazard all made the drive, and that made me really happy. phone book played, and despite playing in a small room, we still had amp problems. and by problems, i mean, i just wasn’t loud enough for jim’s wailing drums. if any amp wizards want to drop suggestions for cheap + loud guitar solutions, much obliged. but anyway it was fun, and folks got rowdy, i got tabletopped, my shoes were stolen, my voice is hoarse again, it was fun. and people even said they liked it! one nice lady even said it was “the greatest”, which warms my heart all the way to the very cockles. that’s right- THE VERY COCKLES.

jessica rylan played and it was great. it’s no secret that i’m a huge fan of hers, and she didn’t disappoint, first playing a bunch of songs on the guitar, then a synth piece. the guitar songs were good but the synth piece was phenominal. i got a mess of tapes, and the new record (on dennis‘ ultra eczema label) but that scoundrel george washington myers got the last copy of a tape i don’t have.

one thing (if i can sidestep for a bit and why not) that i have always admired and derived strength from is stories and instances of self-creation. in large part that is why i like monsters (esp. dracula and frankenstein). technology has always been fascinating to me for similar reasons- bearing in mind mcluhan’s central tenet that any tool becomes an extention of the self, greater and more specialized technology results in much more a more conscious application of mutation and a wider variety of new humans with different abilities, aptitudes, and idiosyncracies. jessica has always fascinated me in that 1, she builds her own tools, making the resulting extentions to her being hers and hers alone; and 2, her tools are less for communication than introspection, and because she has such intimacy with her creations (being the only person to know both what every transistor does and what each knob and switch does in relation to each other one), she is able to intergrate with them to such a high level that to see her play is to witness (and take part in) this incredible, seemingly effortless, transcendant moment. to see her play the guitar was an interesting perspective on a person i admire (and indeed the songs were sweet, funny, creepy, and enjoyable), but it was to see someone interacting with hundreds of years of guitar-based music, (all of which culminated in a feverish guitar-dominated 50-year blast), and in general, operating a piece of machinery. when she put the guitar down and got the synth out, it was really like an unfolding- a revealing, or actualization, of true self.

i realize i’m going all over the map here and this is really a separate topic almost, but there was an ad reinhart quote, something to the tune of how his abstract paintings were more about nature than even the most skilled landscapes, in that his paintings /were/ nature, and the landscapes were perversions of true natural beauty and subjugations of natural beauty to cultural mores. to me, this is the fake natural classical guitar vs the nature of a buzzing, screeching box and a humming human voice. i like fake nature, it’s still nature, and everything is all right under the sun. but i will take magic over entertainment (the thing vs. the picture of the thing) in a country minute.

jessica, if you’re reading this, hi! you should really consider making a halloween album. you could call it “monster rylan”.

tonight’s can’t show at hampshire (tonight!) has been moved mildly. message from gerge:

hey funky family ,

the Jessica Rylan show tomorrow
at hampshire has been moved from
Saga Dining Hall to The Yert (still @ hampshire
college.)  the yert is an awesome small round
building located across the lawn from the library.

playing and spraying:

Jessica Rylan / Can't (boston homemade synth/vocal
supreme genius)
Phone Book (Worcester 2 piece death/metal ft. Jacob
Berendes!)
Tarp (Conrad / Josh Burkett synth duo, amazing!!!!)
Prom Date / Fernando Diaz (puttin a hurtin on!)
My White Tee (m.mondanile dukes it out w/ himself!)

8pm, $5, all ages
@ the yert @ hampshire college
amherst massachusetts, 2006.

also there’s a show at the go go coming up-
Adam Frumhoff, Hope, Oak, Jimmy Jamie Bobby Buckmaster, Messy Constellations. out back by the fire or inside by the hot tea. Wednesday Night Oct. 4th 7:30pm

this is the second post-mystery_band show for the Messy Constellations, bringing them only three more shows (one of which has to be out-of-town) to the $100 prize i foolheartedly offered. walczak, parsons, time to step up your game. anyone that wants to chip in for the $100 pot, that would really halp me out. good cause.