We're Going To Be a Band That Plays Shows Again Soon!

Arbi: hey z
Z: Hey Arbi.
Arbi: how come i dont get free rob g spam anymore
Z: Because we've been on hiatus.
Z: Because stupid James likes Obama.
Z: And stupid me had to go to stupid Sacramento.
Z: And stupid Gary and Bert are just.... um, Jews.
Arbi: o
Arbi: bummer
Z: Indeed.
Z: But we will be starting up again soon.
Z: We had our first practice in a long ass time last Sunday.
Z: And I think Gary has booked us at this place in the valley and is going to book a Brewco show.
Z: So, if you're in town you should come and get belligerently drunk.
Arbi: nice
Arbi: i feel pretty confident about my ability to do that
Z: I believe in you.

I feel fully confident that this man will do us proud.

Soooooo, we are going to start playing shows again soon, so be prepared.

DO Stop

Maybe it took a couple of things of wine to realize this, but Don't Stop is a pretty emo song and pretty terrible therapeutic advice. So, kids and friends, DO stop looking back until you can't recognize the details of your past. Then you'll be looking at everything through the soft lens of selective memory and will remember everything as fuzzy and happy.

Holden Caulfield thought about it way too early.

Don't be like Holden Caulfield.

" About all I know is, I sorta miss everybody I told about. Even Stradlater and Ackley, for instance. I think I even miss that goddam Maurice. Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."
-The Catcher in the Rye

Can't Quit (Don't Stop)

So, this is yet another song that I sent to James and everyone to listen to and with everyone's input, we were able to piece it together pretty damn well. We had a 40-fueled practice and put this song together. Be prepared to hear the difference between what's below and what we'll rock your faces off with at one of our next shows.

This is "(Can't Quit) Don't Stop."

You know it as "Don't Stop."

Mind you, this is a scratch track for me to mess around with harmonies and some stuff. Also, remember this is recorded with Audacity, which is open source and more importantly, has a significantly smaller memory footprint than ProTools. I can get about two mono tracks open in ProTools before I run out of memory. Plus, Audacity takes about 2 seconds to load as opposed to about 20 for ProTools.

So, I feel that Audacity's pros outweigh its cons or namely, it's one huge HUGE con for what I'm trying to do is that the tracks don't sync automatically. There is latency and unless you record an extremely short clip it's not going to sync, so you have to line it up manually and, if there are precision tools, I haven't bothered to find them. Plus, I like the slight temporal difference for the vocals... it's just on this song, for the guitar part, it's sparse and short and you can hear how off sync that part is.

(Can't Quit) Don't Stop

Take a moment and listen
To the sound of it all
Try to picture my thoughts now
Can't quit! Don't stop! Don't stop!

She's a silly sad girl
And that's her everslow clock
I'm addicted to her
Can't quit! Don't stop! Don't stop!

Don't stop looking back
At the tracks
Sealed in wax
Don't stop looking back
At the tracts that somehow you forgot to write

Ever murdered for profit?
Compromised for a buck?
It ain't bad so get off it
Can't quit! Don't stop! Don't stop!

She's a really rich lady
Not that I give a fuck
She could take up collections
Can't quit! Don't stop! Don't stop!

Dirty Daniel

So, now James is back and I'm gone. Soon... soon all of Free Rob G will be back in LA and ready to rock.

Well, the title of the song may seem a little autobiographical, but it's really not (though I'm sure I could find some connection to myself). The lines in the song were either going to be "Mighty Majnoon" (from the Iranian tale of lovers Layla and Majnoon, best known in the west as the story that Eric Clapton reminded Pattie Boyd of in order to seduce her away from George Harrison) or "Dirty Dreamcoat" (I mistook the biblical Joseph for the biblical Daniel). This may make more sense with the lyrics first.

Dirty Daniel

Every time I think about it, then I begin to doubt it
She sits on her oily throne, which begins to creak and "Mine," she croaks
And rarely did she grin so gaily, until the day when sons Israeli
Climbed up on Jacob's ladder and fell before heaven, but it didn't hurt

Them no
Head gold
Feet stone

Heart? No

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who'd been asked to leave that place of sand
Won't she? Won't she?

And if your boss men count to three
And you wonder just if history
Could be discreet. Accept deceit.

Mighty Majnoon\Dirty Dreamcoat\Dirty Daniel sits in his room, telling me stories of doom
Of salt and sand and marching bands, and the virus that has gripped his land
Split the desert, walk on through, this charade is enough for you
And please don't make me applaud, my praise is mine, it's kept for..

God no
Don't roll
That stone
Just yet

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who'd been asked to leave that place of sand
Won't she? Won't she?

And if your boss men count to three
And you wonder just if history
Could be discreet. Accept deceit.

Now this song is very referential and I tried to make it deliberately so. Going back to what I said in an earlier post, this definitely falls more on the scale towards the obscure. However, I enjoy it when I read something or hear something or see something that compels me to further research the topic. Regardless of the validity of that which is compelling the research it is at least serving a productive purpose by encouraging people to look into the topic further, which I think, at least in the way I see the world, is a good thing. Sorry if that sentence was convoluted, because I'm saying it while thinking of a a web film I saw today in the vein of "Loose Change" (9/11 conspiracy theories stuff) and while this does rehash a lot of the same things, it at least was captivating and interesting in a Da Vinci Code sort of way. And, furthermore, it did, in fact make me look up the events and the people that they were referring to. Some of my impromptu research made me agree with the movie... some of it (a lot of it) made me disagree... however, I liked the fact that it was referential, simply because it stimulated my interest and made me discover something I might not have discovered otherwise. OK, tangent's done. (If you want to see the movie, it's here... http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/)

The main theme of the song is the dream of King Nebuchadnezzar that the prophet Daniel (who's being kept in Babylon as a Jewish advisor to the king) not only interprets for him, but also recalls (the king had forgotten it upon waking, but knew it was important). The basic gist of the dream is that there's a big statue and the head is gold, the chest and arms silver, the torso and thighs copper, the legs iron, the feet iron and clay. And they represent all the kingdoms of the world. Then all of a sudden there's a stone and it rolls down and smashes the statue, then it grows larger until it encompasses the whole world. The stone is God. God is a stone.

So, that's the song. And here are two other facts:

1. The title of the text file I have the chords written in is percybysshe.txt
2. Originally all I had were the first two lines and here's what was at the bottom of the text file (the (were?) was added later):
   
   These are (were?) terrible lyrics and I am ashamed of them. I blame drugs.

Keeping with the list aspect, here are things I like about the song:

1. 1) The words.
2. The little "Them no/Head gold/Feet stone/Heart? No" 7th chord and vocal pattern.
   
3. The part at the end where I am reading from the Book of Daniel in reverse.

Here's what I don't like:

1. The rhythm
2. Everything else

So, Gary and James and Bert need to get in there and funky or rock or cha cha or riff it up brother and make it work.

Songs by Wikipedia(c): Atalanta

So, it seems like we've been on hiatus forever now. James is off exploring the world and supporting Obama and we're stuck here in podunk LA. However, I have been working on some music and last night sent him a bunch of scratch tracks I made. I'll post some of them here as well.

The original idea for something concerning the subject matter of this song was The Long Walk, a novella/short story by Richard Bachman (Steven King's pseudonym). I wrote a song when I was first living with Gary and Bert in homage to the short story, but the song was terrible. Almost as terrible as you would expect me writing a song in homage to a short story would be. However, I still reserve the right to base song lyrics on short stories by Steven King... Hollywood does it and so can I. Yet, this isn't that song.

I had a harmonica (Carter's harmonica, that is) and wanted to play with it, so I decided to write a song in C major (because that's the key the harmonica was in). I started just plucking the C chord and then picked up the harmonica and started blowing and sucking (yes, I deliberately said it like that to make you feel uncomfortable) and the first words that I thought in my head were, "When the people/Walked upon the land/She ran"

I decided to not have original thought and instead base my female runner on a figure from Greek mythology, Atalanta. The lyrics are below. They're from the perspective of a suitor that really, really loved her, but wasn't fast enough (there's probably some lame sex joke in there somewhere, but I'm too tired). Oh, also, in the song, the harmonica has a phaser on it in certain parts.

Atalanta

Back when people
Walked upon the land
She ran
She ran

O Lord, she ran so fast that day
Towards sentiments of promises
Of mine
I tried

She's Georgia <-born-> from Papa's scorn
She loved me once, my shoes are worn
She's off
I've lost

My feet are bloody
My mind still clear
She's running past
She's running past
She's running, she's running, running, running past (did she look back?)

When the people

Walked upon the land

She ran

She ran

They're coming now, I can't away

My love ran past and here I stay

She's gone

I'm lost

A Watershed Moment

First of all, thanks to all of you that came out and saw us last night at the Cat Club. I think it was a kickass show and we were all pleasantly surprised by how many of you showed up. Also, I hope you enjoyed our performance. I can tell you one person who certainly did... me. Not to make too big of a deal out of it, but we practiced this set (as we do with almost all of our sets) several times before and each time we played it (with slight changes and shifts in song arrangement and placement) I was happy with the result. Happy enough in fact, that I told James, Gary, and Bert that if we had had an audience there, I would have been happy that they heard it. So, basically the show wasn't a fluke, the good rehearsals weren't a fluke (even though James the Pessimist thought we might suffer from the dreaded "good rehearsal, bad performance")... we basically can now play a set and rock it if we so choose and all of the other shit that before might have influenced or messed up our performance (like nerves, it just being a bad night, or whatever) doesn't have a noticeable effect anymore.

So, basically, though this might seem trivial, I think it is a watershed moment at least for me, because now I will ask people to come to shows because I really think they will like what they hear. I'm not saying that wasn't true before, because I do think we were making good music, but we certainly have come a long way as a band. Whereas before you might come to the show not only to hear some music, but also to support us as your friends, NOW you should come because we're going to be good. I hope.

So, Bert, James, Gary, that was an awesome show and we should have many more to come. The rest of you, thanks for coming out; thanks for supporting us before this point and continuing to support us after. Some of you have been coming to shows since our "shows" consisted of us playing in the basement at Pike and I really appreciate it. I think it's finally starting to pay off now. Also, everyone should check out Seeing Blind who played before us and continued to rock at the afterparty and made me really jealous because their band has a cellist. Bert, you really need to buy that cello.

~Z

P.S. We have harmonies now. Kick ass job Bert.

Only Gary Shlifer could say it:

I just had to share:

"impersonate my nuts in your mouth sister sister.....dont get confused when ur seeing double after the deep dicking little suzie....get there girlie"

-Gary Shlifer