Snake Oil For Your Butt

Sometimes it strikes me how odd it is that people willingly pay for the privilege of stuffing themselves into a small room. Then, they permit other people with sadistic tendencies to aurally (not orally) assault them with technology that creates a sound whose only equivalent in nature would be standing next to an erupting volcano. Humans are a strange breed.

It's fun! But it's even more fun to be one of the sadistic bastards creating the noise.

I played my second show with Terminal Ready on St. Patrick's Day. It went well. Thankfully, our new sound was aggressive enough to hold up between openers Monolith and headliners This Means You, a pair of killer metal bands. They were heavy. You know the paradox: "If God can do anything, can he create a rock so heavy he can't even lift it?" Yeah, that's how heavy the rock n roll was that night.

My favorite quote of the evening.
Sound Man (finishing up a sound check): Hold on, let me see if I can get this odd rumble out of the mix.
Some Other Guy: What rumble? Shit, man. It all sounds like rumble!

It was an awesome night. I think the show put Terminal Ready back on the map, so to speak, for the local scene. It's been awhile since the band played here in Charlottesville. Hopefully, we can keep it up.

Hopefully, I can make some arrangement not to hold them back. My schedule will be unpredictable for awhile, being a new soon-to-be father. I think that's the first time I mentioned that here in LJ. I really don't update so much anymore. I have trouble breaking away from work to do it. Then, after work, I just don't sit in front of a computer, since I have to do it all day for work. By the time I post again, I'll probably be a father. Scary.

Anybody want to mow my lawn?

After a few weeks, the lawn is a bit shaggy. I'm leaving for several weeks for a long vacation and I had intended to mow it at the end of this week. However, not only is there a former-hurricane continuing the rain that started on Wednesday, but my lawn mower won't even start. If anybody has any goats they need to corral, they can do it in my yard while I'm gone. Although, if they eat krasota"s flowers, she's having gyros for dinner. Also, given the way it looks out there right now, the goats may want to have gills.

I had a great uncle in Florida who told me a story of how he went fishing in the Gulf and caught a mermaid. The mermaid said to him, "If you marry me, my tail fin will turn into legs and I will live with you on dry land. However, every full moon, you must agree to fill the bath tub, lock me in the bathroom, and don't you dare open the door.

My uncle agreed. He stuffed her in the fish well and headed back to shore. He found a justice of the peace and brought him down to the beach. It wasn't the most graceful wedding, because the mermaid flopped around on the beach, whipping her tail back and forth, throughout most of the ceremony, but as soon as the JP said, "You may kiss the fish," her tail slit into a pair of legs.

They lived happily together. She cooked him breakfast every morning and, just as she instructed, every full moon he locked her in the bathroom after filling the tub and dumping her in it. He would listen at the door, but never dare enter. He heard splashing and thrashing and grunts and growls and all kinds of strange noises.

Now, my uncle was a kinky bastard. He got to figuring that she must be turning back into a mermaid temporarily on the full moon nights and he really missed the novelty of her fish tail. He had gotten his fill of two-legged action and really wanted to take a peak at his unusual wife. One night, after filling the tub, dropping her in, and closing the door, he didn't lock it. When the thrashing and splashing started, he burst in the door. He screamed!

In the tub was a wet, hairy goat, bleating and screaming like a barnyard animal. It was a barnyard animal. The goat was bloodthirsty, too. She jumped out of the tub, lunging for my uncle. He swore he could hear it's goat voice crying, "I toOoOoLd yOoOoOu! DoOoOon't CoOoOoMe in here!" The fish-wife-goat creature tackled my uncle and bit his neck. He screamed while those devilish slit shaped goat eyes stared at him. While he was trying to push her away, he saw the gills on the goats neck, flapping and wheezing for air. He realized the goat could only breathe under water, so he held that creature. He hugged it close, avoiding the snapping teeth and crying like a baby, knowing he was killing his wife, but he couldn't suffer an abomination like this to live. What would the neighbors think?

Well, she died in his arms, unable to breathe out of water. He dragged her to the boat, drove out to the ocean, and dumped her. My Uncle is a strong man. He patched his wound and got on with his life. However, every full moon, he does turn into a goat. Unfortunately, he's not a goat with gills, or I'd invite him to stay at my house while I'm gone to eat the lawn.

In an effort to prevent the dog from terrorizing ez_mo's children with his enthusiastic greeting, I called him into my office. I'm standing, pointing to the floor at my feet. He obeys well enough, but continues beyond the spot on the floor and jumps on my swiveling office chair. 60 lbs of poodle balanced on a fairly small seat, spinning in front of my computer. Somehow, he managed to stay on the chair.

Which is totally unrelated to my fatigue today. The trip to Asheville and back was great fun. I like cities. I like mountains. I couldn't go wrong visiting a city on a mountain. Nor did it hurt that Tom Waits performed there.

The experience was utterly surreal. Not even Dead Can Dance had me wondering to myself before the show, "Is this really happening?" It did. He played a great set which included songs throughout his entire career, including all of my favorites from his latest album and "What's He Building In There?". He was spry and energetic, much more so than I would expect from a man whose voice sounds like a lawn mower. In fact, the guy looked downright healthy. My voice teacher will be disappointed (as an opera teacher, she can't stand his damaged voice). So, I did a little research and discovered that, despite the lingering impression that he is a hard drinking, hard smoking, down and out guy, he gave up that lifestyle in the early 80s after it almost destroyed him. He had become his characters too much, which is an interesting problem among artists, and had to climb out of that in order to do his job. I know it happened to Alice Cooper, too. I think it happened to Johnny Cash, to some extent. I bet there are many others. I wonder if it happens to the people in the big cartoon character suits down in disney land? I doubt it. Hopefully none of them consider that an art into which they might lose themselves.

Waits got married in the early 80s, quit smoking, started sobering up, and started a family. His music reflects the change, too, leaving behind the lonely drunk and introducing the bizarre experimental beast who explores more imaginative slices of life through his crooning and roaring over cabaret, hymns, and polka as much as the tried and true blues. That man continues to this day, but the lonely drunk persona still lingers on for many people, despite his discarding it like a jacket that no longer fits.

Anyway, I'm pleased to have had the chance to see him looking and sounding so good. Given the infrequency of his tours, this might be the first and last time I see him. I was slightly worried I might have been robbed of not seeing him in his prime, after having discovered his music so late in his career, but I had nothing to fear. This is definitely one to remember.

Assuming the magic elves responsible for crafting and transmitting the tickets to my mailbox are not three sheets to the wind in Copenhagen, the wife and I will have an evening with Tom Waits in Asheville. August 2.

!!!

I'm running out of must-see music acts. What's left? It just might be time to rent a suite of rooms and hang myself from the balcony irons after this show.

(of course I know there are some Waits haters out there who'd rather hang themselves than listen to him. but I thank you for not being in front of me in the ticketmaster queue. i'm pretty sure this show sold out in less than 30 minutes)

Although I don't think I formally announced it here, it's probably no secret to local readers that I joined Terminal Ready.

I'm performing with them live for the first time on Monday. Details here. If you'd like to see five grown men do unmentionable things to a long horn steer on stage, keep holding your breath. We prefer short horns. You gotta work up to the long horns. I suspect there will be more Rock and a lot less livestock (although it is Virginia), so forget everything you just read.

Also, happy birthday to Terminal Ready's originalspam! My tag team partner in keyboard sonic assault.

You can have your new films based on obscure comics, I don't want 'em. Go ahead, upgrade your computer with the latest sexy hardware and install an operating system nobody but you and that guy in the office basement who smells like Cheetos understands. Take your Arcade Fire 7" and deep-fry it with a cupcake. I just found out that Robert Fagles translated Virgil's "Aeneid." I'm totally cracking that book in November 06 when it drops. OMG retired Princeton professors are so hot! This is almost as cool as the time Michael Palma translated Dante's "Inferno" into English without sacrificing the terza rima back in 03. So fetch! I can't wait 'til November. Until then, I've got Plato's "Republic" to keep me busy. Richard W. Sterling and William C. Scott are blowing my mind with their prose. Nobody can render ancient Greek as crunk as these old Dartmouth professors.

I finally broke down and washed the dog, which is usually the wife's job. You can tell it's time to bathe Jericho when he develops stink lines. You know, stink lines. If you were to draw a cartoon picture of a stinky dog, you'd draw those wavy lines to depict the foul odor wafting off it.

Anyway, I can see Jericho's stink lines. I swear, sometimes I can grab a hold of those stink lines and lift the poodle clear off the ground and watch his legs scrabble in the air. Usually, by this time, the wife has bathed him. But she isn't here, so I let it go. Bad idea. While Jericho sat on the couch in the living room yesterday afternoon, one of his stink lines reached out and around the corner into my office to tap me on the shoulder. As if that wasn't enough, I left Jericho yesterday to go buy some new music and when I came back, he was weaving a web with his stink lines and capturing more flies than a spider. He was probably hoping a Virginia ham would wander into the clutches of his web, but I put him in the bath tub before it got any worse.

As for that new music.

She Wants Revenge: Great, dark pop music with killer vocal hooks from a guy who can barely sing. All of my darkest adolescent frustrations and fantasies rolled up in music. Yeah, it sounds a lot like Joy Division, but I like it.

Tom Waits "Alice": Pleasantly accessible for songs written during the Bone Machine era, reminiscent of his older works while retaining the contemporary junk yard band sound. He gives voice to a collection of kooky characters, some hilariously funny and some utterly tragic, in songs loosely based on Alice in Wonderland. If you could pick up a rock and find something beautiful under there among the ooze and insects, it would sound like this.

Tool "10,000 Days": I put this one in the stereo and it blew the hair off my head. It's going to take awhile to let this one sink in. There's very little that resembles any kind of traditional song structure, but I love listening to it. Lots of long trance-inducing juggernauts bumping and rolling over strange tribal-like rhythms. I can definitely hear Meshuggah's influence on them (Meshuggah opened for them during a leg of the Lateralus tour).

My hair grows fast.

There's no wife in the house. She's gone for a week. Just me and the poodle.

jericho_the_dog and I had dinner together. I ate off the floor and let him climb up on the kitchen table. We both agree his kibble tastes better with ice cream on it. We spent the afternoon rolling around in piles of moldy leaves and chewing on a squirrel carcass. That was pretty cool. Also, he's been trying to teach me how to lick my own butt. I keep telling him that that yoga asana is too advanced for me. He just keeps on doing it though. Show off. Tomorrow we're going to hit campus and sniff college girls.

Actually, tomorrow I'm giving a brief talk about how social networking tools like MySpace are being used by musicians for networking and marketing. It's rare that the rock star side of my life ever overlaps with my stodgy government contractor life, but the President of my company is very interested in the whole Web 2.0 thing and he's asking my office for a discussion over current internet trends. My coworkers thought my insight into how bands are operating online might be a springboard for brainstorming possible new ideas for our company. At the very least, it could help us win contracts with the U.S. government's poorly funded Department of Rock. Never mind, that office was rolled up into Homeland Security a long time ago.

I think it's been a month since I've posted. I got really tired after the Hedwig show closed. And I'm still tired. Maybe I'll complain about that more in detail later.

...just as long as it ends.

Last Hedwig show tonight. Amazing. It was a religious experience; bigger than the sum of the mere seven performers on stage. I swear we were channeling spirits from another dimension in which rock n roll drag queens reign supreme. Doing this show will easily stay at the top of my list of great moments in my life. It is such a thrill to be on the receiving end of a screaming, thundering, elated audience such as the one we ended with tonight. I could see their faces. Usually, I'm blinded by the stage lights, but tonight their smiles were so bright the spotlight was dim by comparison.

I wish I could do this forever. On the other hand, I really need a break. Time to relax. Time to take care of myself, my house, and my wife. And that goddamn pile of dishes in my sink. I could climb it straight to heaven, which I might as well do after this evening.