the new phone books came today, which is really not notable.

when cool breeze was living with his dad and they shot holes in the wall with a revolver so they could run water pipes through to the other room, they stacked phone books next to the wall to catch the bullet.

i don’t know where the idea “to knock someone out painlessly with a phone book” came from, but it’s an idea i use often, often as an offer to a griping person. on two occasions there were actual tries which were neither painless nor successful, once on ML (by me), once on me (by ML), each time during an exquisite and manic personal romantical hell. i guess they were successful in that they added a fine amount of drama and camaraderie, with an avowed “you brought this upon yourself and i’d do the same in a flash” on the part of the bookswinger. i don’t not understand people that don’t understand this, but i can’t say i exactly trust them either.

speaking of trust and casual near-obliteration, there was a party at my house a few days ago and i was certainly (as mike t says) into the night. i rarely drink, and was even against it for a while, so on the occasions when i do drink (always in celebration, always with others) it’s a sacrament. in other words, i do a good job. i was wearing my phone book shirt, which features two duck-headed people having seriously tantric sex while rainbow sprinkles rain down on them, and i realized the connection between the band and drunkenness (and other things), which is abandon. at the party i was saying some wild shit but i stuck to it, didn’t back down, and it worked. similarly, phone book was a chance for me to eschew musical rules, guidelines and safety nets i had always used, and prove (to myself alone) that i could have nothing, keep going, and it’d work out, even if (and actually, because), at times, i looked like an idiot. i’m not saying that everyone should get shitfaced every night, but i do think that periodically facing reckless abandon, in a positive, creative manner, is good for a person’s developement, which is ongoing. that night i had a dream about a 4-color comic book that i knew i would draw in the future, full of complete nonsense, but the sort of nonsense i am not, right now, able to create. the pages clicked by in a rapid-fire slideshow fashion, as if i were a ghost flying through the book while the book was shut.

in a few days jim (phone book drummer) is moving to minneapolis to go to grad school. i’m bummed for me but mostly psyched for him. he’s got a new tape coming out, with a lot of weird beats and fake rapping. to quote: “za za ra za wa za za hand / zabba labba za understand”. jim rules. PHONE BOOK!

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Phone Book - Unlock The Inner Flute
bad tape from tantric rock act

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ok, so it wasn’t a tour as such, it was two days of shows that we didn’t go home during the inbetween of. but there was road food, there was hijinx, we made friends, we made enemies, we stole things, jeez, what more do you want from a tour? me and jim (phone book) made a bunch of merch, and he was right about how having an item with your band’s name it really solidifies a band: thursday jim made a bunch of stenciled stuff, like sports bras, painter’s jumpsuits, and size 60 men’s underwear; friday night we recorded a tape (which i’ll post mp3s of here soon, in the style); saturday morning i printed up some really crazy t-shirts- white with a funfetti background and a huge drawing of two duck-headed people having tantric sex. this last item i thought “now i am maybe going finally too far”, but i fought the thought, and like almost every time i have that thought and fight it (and win), it went over like candy bars. i’m not trying to be joey hustle, but we ended up selling enough shit with these two shows to get grills, which was a floating-point point in our four-point plan (which includes in this order: get a really loud amp, put out a 7″, and go on (a real) tour). ok, so how was the tour itself or the two shows or whatever it was? totally fun.

we planned to leave at “3:00″ which was a great move because that meant actually leaving at like 5 and getting to white river junction at like 7. we took two cars, which worked out great. six people, two cars, three bands (two of the people were in two bands each). the show in white river junction was at the main street museum, which is a curiosities museum dedicated to “exploring the margins of alternative curation.”. lots of weird artifacts both classically historical and ephemeral, all in nice cases. the town itself none of us could figure out- it seemed like everyone we saw was fairly well-to-do, but how their money came in no one could figure out. all the buildings were nice but there was almost no one on the streets, and when i say no one i mean the streets were poison-gas empty everywhere except the bingo hall. so with these things in mind, i have to say that the turnout was pretty decent. “tito and shark” opened up the night, featuring sam gas can wearing white pants white shoes and a white shirt (to match his ibook?), singing along but mostly just dancing to sample-based songs of his own creation. dungeoneers, phone book, and bone zone all played good. there was a really tiny stage that could only just barely fit the drums, which was cool. there were beers for everyone, people talked to us afterwards, we got some money for gas and what not, it was great. that night we slept over in the museum, which also ruled, as it is totally spooky with lots of taxidermy. at 8:00 in the morning MZ woke us all up playing an ethiopiques CD super loud. we packed up, walked to new hampshire for breakfast, then drove to brattleboro to try and find abby banks, opie, and king tuff.

opie turned out to be pretty hard to find, despite having a picture of him to show people, and as for abby and kt, we had no idea how to even start looking for them (beyond going to their houses, where they weren’t), so instead we got a basketball from the car and went to find a hoop. in our aimless wandering we saw a castle high up on the mountain and decided to find it, so basketball in hand we bushwacked through the trees until we were there. i remember talking to jeremy years ago about zen and meditation and all that, and how could you have a path towards a goal that is pathlessness and goallessness?, and his reply was something to the effect of you start along the path but the path gets hazy or becomes pleasingly impossible to discern. anyway if you want to have a good gooning afternoon, i recommend getting a prop and trying to find a way to use it, and let yourself get distracted, but don’t let yourself lose the prop.

anyway, having brought the basketball up the mountain, we waited at the castle until totally creeped-out kids showed up, then we asked them where a hoop was. of course, us being in the middle of the woods and them being kids, the directions were pretty vague, something like “follow the footprints until you get to a road, then it’s that road”, but it seemed sincere, and not “just go away”. naturally the path through the woods diverged in a million ways, but having nowhere really to go, we didn’t stress, and quickly found ourselves at, lo and behold, our destination- a basketball hoop (and not the one the kid tried to point us to, which we found later by accident and which wasn’t really a basketball hoop). we shot hoops for a little while until we realized that we were all terrible at traditional basketball, at which point the game became shooting with style from midcourt and “getting it close”. when this got old we went around the park getting the ball stuck in trees and then getting it out, and when we decided we should leave, we hucked the basketball in the direction we thought we should go, found it, hucked it, found it, hucked it, etc.. at around 3 we got back in the car and made our way to hampshire college in amherst, arriving a good 4 hours early for the show.

we hung out in the cafeteria for a good 2 hours eating a ton of food and trying to get people to go to the show, then met up with our contact (emma, the only phone book fan) and gooned around campus a bit before setting up. josh tumble cat was going to play with us, but he had to cancel, so emma got a local math rock band to fill in. in addition to borrowing some of our gear (which is fine, but what’s with arriving at a show expecting to borrow gear?), they took a really long time to set up, meaning lots of people getting aggravated waiting for the show to start (some of whom left), which combined with the fact that them and all their friends left as soon as they were done meant way less people around than if we had just all played first, which we should’ve done. the other things is that while they were playing we were really having a good time. we were dancing, we were having fun, we were positive movement, we were hyjinx, we were playing basketball, and i think they read this as a sign of disrespect. seriously, no harshing on the band, then or now- you were playing music, we were having music-enabled fun at no one’s expense. anyway, after they played dungeoneers with everyone shouting “dungeoneers!” at the end of every song, jamie waving a large bread knife in lieu of a sword, and their knight costumes all dirty and gross and authentic. phone book played in the middle, and i gave a little speech about tantra, “sky dancing”, and positive movement, and how if you move a little bit, even just flexing your toes inside your shoes, you will appreciate live music better. anyway despite the fact that telling an audience to dance is an inexorable faux pas, it worked, and while we played those remaining went apeshit bananas. at one point i looked up and everyone was making a human pyramid. i was psyched. bone zone closed it down with a blistering set, hampered by the fact that the acoustics where we were playing (the dining hall) were less than perfect. after the show we gave away tapes to anyone left, hung out a while while running out the momentum of our goof-off vibe, and headed home. 2007 forever!

today instead of band practice me and jim and ML got totally goofy and watched part one of the three-dvd tantric lovemaking box set their roommate got and left out “for everyone”. uh, first off, “goofy” ≠ “high”. but anyway, yes. also (as mentioned before), no. and most importantly, i know. it was cool in that way knowingly stupid and awkward experiences are cool, plus there was a lot of trippy new age computer kaleidoscope and embarrassing “spiritual” interior design, and anyway we got a lot of good material out of it. at one point they were talking about “sky dancing”, which is a syllabus-free dance for connecting with your personalness (or something), and i couldn’t help but think “this is a world without moshing, looking for moshing”. upon further reflection, i came to the view that the whole thing (spiritual sexuality for white people) is by and for people who don”t connect at all with music, looking for what happens when people who really like music listen to music. i guess now it’s “now who’s being trippy?”, but music is the healing force of the universe, right?

oh yeah, this weekend the phone book / bone zone / dungeoneers mini-tour (uh, i mean “tantric conference”) hits vermont and western mass. saturday at 8pm, at the main street museum, 58 bridge st., white river junction VT. sunday at hampshire college, somethinghampton MA, at, what, bong thirty?

last night’s show was fun- the dungeoneers (which is the terribles with mz on drums and new songs) ruled as can be expected, with costumes even. MC KC had a new jam that solid ruled– i wish she’d cut a tape already. the beats are occasionally herky, but the new shit is fully on point and with a catchy chorus even. uh, not to say i don’t like herky beats because i do. it’s cool and you feel like you’re watching someone from a million years in the future trying to accurately portray early 90s rap but filtering it through, like i said, many generations of awesome fucked future. ok, now i’m getting into that frequent territory where maybe i’m saying too much how much i like something and maybe i’m talking about the thing the person that does the thing doesn’t like about the thing. uh, KC rules. cut a tape, i’ll jeep it.

popocatepetl, i have to say, i was psyched about / ready to be critical towards, based on the fact that popocatepetl is one of my favorite volcanos, an active volcano which takes the form of a man once a year to walk the streets of mexico city with its wife, the volcano iztaccihuatl. so, a lot to live up to. anyway, they were a noise band and kind of a bummer in that they took a long time to set up and their set up included an altar and a costume change and getting way high, and in that you kind of got the vibe that they were like “let’s blow people’s lids by being freaky”, and once you get that vibe, nothing a person does is freaky, it’s just being on a haunted hayride in the daytime. no “goin’ for it”, reading artaud aloud during the first song, which set the stage for me not paying attention at all. the best parts of the set were both us: ML making fart sounds in the background with his marvelous armpits; nik perry, dog schmidt, and little andrew bumrushing the instruments beforehand while the band was out smoking up, and having more fun.

ok fair guy, so how was phone book? well, let’s be self-critical as though i’m not ever. phone book (which is my band with GT on drums and me playing guitar), is a creative band in the go-ahead style of enthusiasm over everything else, steady chooglin’ with natural rhythms, less about notes than shapes of sounds and their movement and density, in the vernacular of mid-tempo riff rock. as i see it, we are exactly as successful, show to show, as as much fun we’re having. is this a valid mode for a band? i say, in the eleventh hour, all things being valid, yes. and did we have a lot of fun? again, yes. there are still hesitations, times where one or both of us is/are out of it, self-conscious, and coasting. but in our moments, which we are finding easier and easier, there is no thought. which is, as dracula famously said, glorious. fa!

tonight there was a show at the go go, bone zone played new songs with a live drummer (jjbb), yoni gordon controlled in his hollow-bodied manner, ed’s band “a primitive and savage land” screamed it out for the green scare, and, holy shit, purple rhinestone eagle (kara’s old roommates from philadelphia, aka “the girl terribles”) totally ruled. mid tempo riffs! gnarly + epic = GNARPIC!!!!!!! not like i’m trying to be king quote over here, but in the words of the poet, “i was like, ‘holy shit!’.”.

ok, special bonus for all readers of long winded boasts and the other kind: here’s a picture of the original purtle, with disgusting neckbeard even! hail to the gooniest kid on cape cod!

tonight (friday) at stone soup (4 king st):

• MC KC (trutheatertheater, high society)
• popocapetl
• the dungeoneers (2/3 terribles, 1/3 bonezone, 1/1 regal pummel)
• phone book (fall down the stairs music)

8:30pm epic warm-up.