On a plane from paris to milan, where the bus and crew will catch up tomorrow....we're flying in a day early alone to do press and I'm looking, this very moment, at the staggering alien landscape of the alps beneath us....standing in security a half hour ago I turned to brian and said “what are we doing here? HERE?” What the fuck happened in our lives that we'd be standing in charles de gaulle airport at 5:30 am catching a flight to italy to be at mtv by 9? Reality check not possible on under 3 hrs sleep, sorry.
I'm encountering a strange problem; the more things happen the less I am writing in this diary.
I feel like I should keep these entries short and pallatable. I feel like I should choose and stick to one topic. I cannot stick to one topic. Fuck it. I'm also facing the very postmodern-feeling phenomenon of sitting down to interviews with european journalists who have this entire diary printed out in a white paper stack and refer to it as we are talking.
“Yez, zo you were having said a few weeks ago in your webzite diary zat....” Eek. It's wonderful, it's bizarre, it's every narcissist's dream come true. Now for the news.
We've now played six shows of the european tour (edinburgh, liverpool, amsterdam, london, gent and paris) and it's been a slow start but last night in paris was finally on fire finally. The crowd was wild, brian broke a cymbal, the acoustic guitar died so we played “amsterdam” on electric, in french, which I managed not to mangle, and we did two encores. Even though half of the shows have been sold out, there's been something off....hard to tell if it was tiredness, quiet crowds, who knows, some combination, but for some reason things were slogging a bit. Brian gets more frustrated with this than I do, he's a performance perfectionist. We've been testing out new material here and there and it's been hard to break from what's comfortable but it's good for us and good for the material...I'm in love with the new song called “me and the minibar” and we're tacking it onto the end of the set some nights. It's a solo piano song so brian either sits at his kit and listens or watches from offstage and I feel that weird freedom and lonliness of playing by myself again. No drummer to keep time with, complete focus on the two feet around me, but also an acute sense of something missing. I always think of the beatles leaving stage while paul plays yesterday on guitar, alone.
The brigade at all the shows has been brilliant...new friends showing up every night to make the clubs beautiful with their bodies and flowers and bizarre ideas and I only wish we had actual time to spend with people instead of the usual rushed hellos and you-are-wonderfuls and goodbyes.
We have a new crew member this time round...miss brianna, who is with us instead of whitney or em to commandeer the land of merchandise, along with the usual suspects: joel, our trusty and wonderful sound engineer and robert, our austin-powers-meets-dudley-moore-romanian-born-jew-family-moved-to-isreal-then-spent-teenyears-in-germany-now-residing-in-london tour manager. The accent is a work of art. We give each other endless grief and usually spend the hours after the show on the bus talking about nonsense and music and everything under the sun. Bri just came back from egypt, where she got stuck in one of the pyramids trying to indiana jones herself down into a hall that was closed off to the public. The new bus looks exactly like the last one, Falco, but we've named it Bill. The drivers name is Dirk, he's german, and we chatter in deutsch and he calls everybody sweetheart.
I took pains to make myself feel more homey on the bus this time around. This undertaking included packing
-slippers
-my favorite mug and tea collection, including ball strainer
-icecube (the polar bear. Miss Regina Spektor named him. Brian has been sleeping with him the past few nights because he has “needed him more”.)
-posters for my bunk (which I've just been stealing from each venue along the way. I got a really nice arcade fire poster from the melkweg in amsterdam
and
-my mouthguard, to prevent teethgrinding (at the insistance of my dentist and to everyone's nightly amusement....honestly, you haven't seen sexy until you see me with no eyebrows on and the mouthguard in. I look like a deranged fieldhockey player)
Edinburgh was gorgeous and I felt my scottish roots piercing through my nads like shrieking bagpipes. A brash lass came up to brian after the show and belted, repeatedly (with full scottish vigor): “GOO FARRTH AND FOOGGING ROCK!!!!”. I nearly wet myself with happiness.
Liverpool had an equally rowdy bunch and we dj'd after the set, enjoying being masters of the universe while the resident dj watched on in horror as we clumsily span muse together with the dead kennedys, goldfrapp followed by the stranglers followed by NIN followed by trail of dead followed by the killers (and many of these played at the wrong record speed....um, on purpose....yes).
We were dragged to the major club street after the gig. robert insisted that it was a rare anthropological phenomenon and good god was he true to his word. The temperature was close to freezing and there was an endless parade of staggering, falling-down-plastered liverpudlian girls wearing close to nothing buzzing up and down the street, shivering to death. Nary a coat to be seen. One of the strangest things I've ever seen. Teeth chattering, they all assumed a kind of hands-crossed-over-the-chest-clutching-opposite-shoulders-pose to ward off the biting winds that made them look a little like high-heeled, teetering corpses on some sort of purgatorial disco death march.
After sleeping the majority of our day off in amsterdam I found out, to my great joy, that one of my favorite newly-discovered bands,
...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead were playing at the Melkweg (where we were playing the next night). I jumped up and down with glee and headed over with the crew a few hours later. They were mindblowingly good...ah, finally to see some amazing live music, they swept the crowd into folds of majestic battledrums and washed our souls clean with guitars...I danced and headbanged like there was no tomorrow and I was only disappointed that they didn't play my favorite song from the new record (“worlds apart”...which I had coincidentally just played the day before on the BBC in london when they asked for a track, so good...). We met the band after the show and found out, with much rejoicing, that they were fans of the dolls and we toasted with pernod and decided that a night of dancing was in order. Somebody local knew a club down the street and we stayed up til four in the morning, health, lungs and voice be damned, laughing and screaming our storied and dancing our asses off to the cure and grauzone and joy division and madonna. This is what I fantasize about, and it so rarely happens. We vowed to play shows together and parted outside the trail of dead tourbus feeling like true comrades.
Speaking of comrades, who should hit belgium at the same time as us but mr. bush. In a truly inspirational act of god, we were greeted upon exiting the bus with a parade mob of protestors in Gent, voicing their hatred for Our Dear President. We dedicated a special version of “war pigs” to him that evening and hoped for the best. It's both embarrassing and inspirational to be an american abroad nowadays. Must remind all these europeans that millions of americans like ourselves don't support this man or his regime and we make no apologies....we just do what we can do, hope to steal back the cabaret and the country all in one fell swoop, why not. The whole planet. German neonazis marching in on the Dresden bombing anniversary, french neonazis torching memorial train cars that transported french jews to Auschwitz, more war and death imminent, people starving in darfur, british, french, belgians, italians,americans begging us for coins and cigarettes in the street, it's always been this way, there's nothing we can do, there's everything, there's nothing. The man next to me just asked if I would help him off with his suit coat, he can't reach. There's everything. Pick the herald tribune up again. There's nothing.
Thursday, February 24, 2005
Monday, February 07, 2005
02/07/05 - goodnight clocks & goodnight socks
It was one fucking magical thing after another this weekend. We had four shows in a row: New Haven CT, Philly PA, Providence RI and Portland Maine. The shows got more and more intense each night as brian got over his coldflu and we got more and more warmed up. Regina Spektor is my new hero and I can't wait to tour with her some more. She is just as amazing in person as she seems on record and I was onyl pissed that I never actually got to watch an entire set she played; since she was on immediatley before us we had to be getting ready. But what a soundtrack to hear through the walls, the girl is just on FIRE. We share lots of stories and made fast friends and she and grace, her tour manager, stayed over at my house on saturday and sunday nights after the shows. Saturday was a massive convergence: David J (from Bauhaus) was stayong over Saturday night as well (he was actually camped out here at the cloud club (pope sacrificed his bed) for the entire length of our mini-tour but we only got to see him that one night as fate would have it...he was in town becasue he'd composed some music for some Beckett shorts that were going up in a theater right across the street from us).
Anyway.....saturday night, late...still buzzing from the show and looking into my bedroom and seeing regina playing chopin on my piano while david j stood there listening with his eyes closed...delirious talks and hilarious jokes even though we were all ready to collapse was just......fantasy. life as it should be. all friends, all art, all music, all love, all the time.
This morning regina woke us up and we showed her the top floor of the house (a must) and we blew bubbles with the blue robot-bubble man i got for christmas and we ate muffins and drank tea and I gave regina a bunch of music I thought she would like....Peter Jefferies and Legendary Pink Dots and Neutral Milk Hotel (all of which she's never heard of). We agreed that The Arcade Fire was deserving of the attention. Then we sorrowfully parted ways. Regina left roses on the piano and David J left a little doll.
Having a support act like regina that I could relate to was such a breath of fresh air...I must say it can get tiring to play with rock band after rock band and feel like I have nothing to say to the railthin shaggy-haired brit-poppish singer next to me, even though we're doing superficially similar things.
The brigade performers blew my mind.......it's so amazing watching everyone getting more and more creative and confident and preparing more and more for the shows. Highlights included the gorgeous almost-naked girls in providence and portland who offered their bodies up as a sacrifice to the general public as blank white canvases, the cast of wonderland in new haven, the candy girl in philly (and pacofish the stiltwalking flag-giver-outer outside, who gave me my very own avril flag), the insanely gorgeous living statues in portland and providence and the 10-second date. It's working. It's happening.
Speaking of Avril, we fianlly finished editing the first installment in a new art form I call "Karaoke Verite". Nobody knows quite what to make of it (always a good sign), and so I'll let you judge for yourself and say nothing: http://www.dresdendolls.com/video (it's the video above coin-operated boy).
love
a
recommended reading of the week: "branded: the buying and selling of teenage america" - by alissa quart.
frightening and edifying. makes me want to burn down malls and hug all children.
Anyway.....saturday night, late...still buzzing from the show and looking into my bedroom and seeing regina playing chopin on my piano while david j stood there listening with his eyes closed...delirious talks and hilarious jokes even though we were all ready to collapse was just......fantasy. life as it should be. all friends, all art, all music, all love, all the time.
This morning regina woke us up and we showed her the top floor of the house (a must) and we blew bubbles with the blue robot-bubble man i got for christmas and we ate muffins and drank tea and I gave regina a bunch of music I thought she would like....Peter Jefferies and Legendary Pink Dots and Neutral Milk Hotel (all of which she's never heard of). We agreed that The Arcade Fire was deserving of the attention. Then we sorrowfully parted ways. Regina left roses on the piano and David J left a little doll.
Having a support act like regina that I could relate to was such a breath of fresh air...I must say it can get tiring to play with rock band after rock band and feel like I have nothing to say to the railthin shaggy-haired brit-poppish singer next to me, even though we're doing superficially similar things.
The brigade performers blew my mind.......it's so amazing watching everyone getting more and more creative and confident and preparing more and more for the shows. Highlights included the gorgeous almost-naked girls in providence and portland who offered their bodies up as a sacrifice to the general public as blank white canvases, the cast of wonderland in new haven, the candy girl in philly (and pacofish the stiltwalking flag-giver-outer outside, who gave me my very own avril flag), the insanely gorgeous living statues in portland and providence and the 10-second date. It's working. It's happening.
Speaking of Avril, we fianlly finished editing the first installment in a new art form I call "Karaoke Verite". Nobody knows quite what to make of it (always a good sign), and so I'll let you judge for yourself and say nothing: http://www.dresdendolls.com/video (it's the video above coin-operated boy).
love
a
recommended reading of the week: "branded: the buying and selling of teenage america" - by alissa quart.
frightening and edifying. makes me want to burn down malls and hug all children.
Wednesday, January 26, 2005
01/26/04 - Armageddon is Coming
We're on a seven hour (plus) drive from Phoenix, Arizona to Santa Barbara, California in a rented 15-passenger van. I've been catching up on email on my blackberry, Brian's mostly supine with a stiff neck from headbanging too hard last night during “war pigs”, Emily's been in the front seat with her hands glued to the laptop and her cellphone affixed to her ear, and Joel's been driving. It's a day. We just drove through a vast windfarm....miles long over hill and dale, creating such trippy visuals that I wanted to jump out and hear dark side of the moon at top volume. The hazy sunlight helped. Back home in Boston there's 30 inches of snow. I wonder if my volvo will survive the winter?
The Sundance Film Festival was incredible...the film industriy's equivalent to the music industry's South by Southwest. One long street in Park City, Utah (about an hour outside of Salt Lake) taken over for a week by the hip and the restless, genuine indie filmmakers swashbuckling aside A to D-list celebrities. We spent the majority of our three-show run there camped in the dressing room of the club. Some of the acts who played with us were fucking incredible. Saul Williams, who I had never heard of before, blew my mind. He was a fan of the dolls, which flattered me beyond belief. I got to see Ben Kweller live and tell him how much I loved the toothbrush record. The Kings of Leon hung out and looked very cool and skinny, and were very cordial. Most exciting was getting to see Nellie Mckay play...I was really intrigued by her debut recod (all piano-based songs slickly produced...called “doris day meets eminem” in her press release). We had been hoping to meet each other and finally got to grok on sunday night, which we all had off. She sparked a real chord in me, seeing her sitting at the piano, all alone. I couldn't stop thinking: “This is it. This is what I would be doing if I hadn't met Brian.” We were at a party altogether; us, Nellie and The Ditty Bops - who we hadn't seen since the last tour - and a photographer was trying to capture everyone together and seperately. And, as we realized by sharing later, both Brian and I watched Nellie, standing there getting her photo taken and both felt it...she just seemed so....alone. And we poured a little shot out of our proverbial forties onto the altar of rock love, once again expressing our deep gratitude...and disbelief...did we really even find each other? Are we that fucking lucky? We ask each other this question every other day or so and still are in awe of the answer.
I also found myself having a quiet moment of appreciation for my record label and the fact that they personally know me and Brian and are not so gargantuan and beurocratic that this happens: Nellie is a staunch animal-rights activist and PETA-supporter (it even states that on the back of her record) and her label, Sony, actually sent her a fur stole for Christmas. Unfuckingbelievable.
Last night we played to a packed house in Tempe, Arizona and had a blast. We played ping-pong and I came 20,000 points short of getting the high score on their Ms. Pac-Man (which, I'll have you know, is damn fine work) and walked up and down the quarter-mile alley behind the club a total of 9 times while warming up my voice, hearing the repetitive choir of dogs get all worked up from behind their respective fences, picking up oranges from the ground and trying to teach myself how to juggle and trying to figure out how anyone could possibly think that “Fuck” and “Bitch” scrawled in three-foot letters makes interesting graffitti.
Oh, and a billboard just reminded me. Armageddon is coming.
The Sundance Film Festival was incredible...the film industriy's equivalent to the music industry's South by Southwest. One long street in Park City, Utah (about an hour outside of Salt Lake) taken over for a week by the hip and the restless, genuine indie filmmakers swashbuckling aside A to D-list celebrities. We spent the majority of our three-show run there camped in the dressing room of the club. Some of the acts who played with us were fucking incredible. Saul Williams, who I had never heard of before, blew my mind. He was a fan of the dolls, which flattered me beyond belief. I got to see Ben Kweller live and tell him how much I loved the toothbrush record. The Kings of Leon hung out and looked very cool and skinny, and were very cordial. Most exciting was getting to see Nellie Mckay play...I was really intrigued by her debut recod (all piano-based songs slickly produced...called “doris day meets eminem” in her press release). We had been hoping to meet each other and finally got to grok on sunday night, which we all had off. She sparked a real chord in me, seeing her sitting at the piano, all alone. I couldn't stop thinking: “This is it. This is what I would be doing if I hadn't met Brian.” We were at a party altogether; us, Nellie and The Ditty Bops - who we hadn't seen since the last tour - and a photographer was trying to capture everyone together and seperately. And, as we realized by sharing later, both Brian and I watched Nellie, standing there getting her photo taken and both felt it...she just seemed so....alone. And we poured a little shot out of our proverbial forties onto the altar of rock love, once again expressing our deep gratitude...and disbelief...did we really even find each other? Are we that fucking lucky? We ask each other this question every other day or so and still are in awe of the answer.
I also found myself having a quiet moment of appreciation for my record label and the fact that they personally know me and Brian and are not so gargantuan and beurocratic that this happens: Nellie is a staunch animal-rights activist and PETA-supporter (it even states that on the back of her record) and her label, Sony, actually sent her a fur stole for Christmas. Unfuckingbelievable.
Last night we played to a packed house in Tempe, Arizona and had a blast. We played ping-pong and I came 20,000 points short of getting the high score on their Ms. Pac-Man (which, I'll have you know, is damn fine work) and walked up and down the quarter-mile alley behind the club a total of 9 times while warming up my voice, hearing the repetitive choir of dogs get all worked up from behind their respective fences, picking up oranges from the ground and trying to teach myself how to juggle and trying to figure out how anyone could possibly think that “Fuck” and “Bitch” scrawled in three-foot letters makes interesting graffitti.
Oh, and a billboard just reminded me. Armageddon is coming.
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
01/18/04 - "FUCK THIS SHIT" RE-VISITED
So, after being home for an entire two weeks and having alphabetized my tea and having scraped the lint from my electrc fan with a paring knife and so forth, i haven't been able to actually write (i think i've just over-exercised the organizing side of my brain...which weakens the creative side....at least, that's my lame theory/excuse). so instead,
acting as the productive adult that i've become (real health insurance!!! old silver fillings redone with white stuff!!!
financial planning!!! matching mugs!!!!) i finally set myself to the task of sorting through hundreds and hundreds of lyric drafts and
trying to do something with them. Without actually DOING anything, you see...it's a "sorting" process. Oh, bloody hell, yes i'm wanking, but it's a start.
Anyway, I came across this hilarious and rather revealing song, which i never recorded (i don't think), and the music to which I can barely remember.
And I think it will breathe it's dying gasp here, since i'm never going to work on it. it's time came and went.
It was an upbeat little ditty, the words came out fast and furious (not unlike "girl a") and the end, the "fuck this shit" part had kind of a major-key, grand finale feel to it....very broadway and sing-along (think "let the sun shine in").
Enjoy.
"Fuck this Shit"
(written around Summer/Fall 2003)
--Intro--
I’m going to finally write a song;
just once and only play this song
in very small intimate settings
where I won’t end up regretting it.
ok. all right. I’m going to finally do it.
ok. here we go. please know this will be very
difficult for me.
--verse one--
today I faxed the publicist and called up different fedexes
to see which one was open and still close to my apartment.
today I spent at least an hour
putting stamps on presskit folders,
including letters that I wrote to interested record labels.
i’m hoping if I do this now I’ll never write another song
about the boring fucking shit I actually do all day long.
--verse two--
I drove to needham to pick up the execution contracts
(I love that they’re called that) and I got more
minutes tacked onto to our cell phone plan.
I cut some checks: one to the photographer, one for the insurance adjuster,
one for merch and one for my piano teacher.
I spent a couple hours sorting
email into folders and I copied brian
on what I thought was important
and two times just to treat myself I made some tea and surfed the web
for live reviews of dresden dolls shows.
managers won’t be our friends.
booking agents hate our band.
we’re not new york and not LA,
the boston rock scene thinks we’re gay,
and at the end of every day
(it seems like every day’s this way)
we barely even get to play
and this is all i have to say…..
--grand finale--
I quit.
fuck this shit.
won’t somebody save me please?
I am being eaten by the music industry.
everybody sing:
FUCK THIS SHIT!
(la la la la la la)
FUCK THIS SHIT!
(la la la la la la)
FUUUUUUUUUUUUCK THIIIIIIIIIIIIS SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!!!!!!
acting as the productive adult that i've become (real health insurance!!! old silver fillings redone with white stuff!!!
financial planning!!! matching mugs!!!!) i finally set myself to the task of sorting through hundreds and hundreds of lyric drafts and
trying to do something with them. Without actually DOING anything, you see...it's a "sorting" process. Oh, bloody hell, yes i'm wanking, but it's a start.
Anyway, I came across this hilarious and rather revealing song, which i never recorded (i don't think), and the music to which I can barely remember.
And I think it will breathe it's dying gasp here, since i'm never going to work on it. it's time came and went.
It was an upbeat little ditty, the words came out fast and furious (not unlike "girl a") and the end, the "fuck this shit" part had kind of a major-key, grand finale feel to it....very broadway and sing-along (think "let the sun shine in").
Enjoy.
"Fuck this Shit"
(written around Summer/Fall 2003)
--Intro--
I’m going to finally write a song;
just once and only play this song
in very small intimate settings
where I won’t end up regretting it.
ok. all right. I’m going to finally do it.
ok. here we go. please know this will be very
difficult for me.
--verse one--
today I faxed the publicist and called up different fedexes
to see which one was open and still close to my apartment.
today I spent at least an hour
putting stamps on presskit folders,
including letters that I wrote to interested record labels.
i’m hoping if I do this now I’ll never write another song
about the boring fucking shit I actually do all day long.
--verse two--
I drove to needham to pick up the execution contracts
(I love that they’re called that) and I got more
minutes tacked onto to our cell phone plan.
I cut some checks: one to the photographer, one for the insurance adjuster,
one for merch and one for my piano teacher.
I spent a couple hours sorting
email into folders and I copied brian
on what I thought was important
and two times just to treat myself I made some tea and surfed the web
for live reviews of dresden dolls shows.
managers won’t be our friends.
booking agents hate our band.
we’re not new york and not LA,
the boston rock scene thinks we’re gay,
and at the end of every day
(it seems like every day’s this way)
we barely even get to play
and this is all i have to say…..
--grand finale--
I quit.
fuck this shit.
won’t somebody save me please?
I am being eaten by the music industry.
everybody sing:
FUCK THIS SHIT!
(la la la la la la)
FUCK THIS SHIT!
(la la la la la la)
FUUUUUUUUUUUUCK THIIIIIIIIIIIIS SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!!!!!!
Thursday, January 13, 2005
01/13/05 - Block
But I'm not.
But I think I am.
I don't know. Surprise.....
It's 3:30 in the morning.
What is it like? I wish I could explain. I'll try.
Ever since I was a teenager, I grappled with how and what and when and why to write music.
Songs would come, early on, and it was simple. There was no point. Just to write a song was a wonder in itself,
a reward in itself, to be played endlessly for an imaginary crowd who would sit, impressed and awed, all five thousand of them,
attentive on folding chairs in the living room between the painting of the revolutionary war and the fireplace.
And I would play for them.....so simple.
Then came the tapes. I can't remember exactly when it started....1990, I think. The industry had just started realizing that tapes themselves could be aesthetic little pieces of plastic and started marketing the clear plastic cassette tapes with neon squiggles and lines. Clear blue, clear pink....the one I started with was dark clear blue. I called it (later) "The Long Lost Blue Tape"...because I
gave it to someone to listen to, god knows why, and it didn't find it's way back to me till much later. But it was the first one: I wouldn't just play, just write, I would ARCHIVE. I would archive this thing happening. I would record every thought, every idea, every line for a song and the stream-of-consciousness-nonsense that spewed out with it, and then..somehow....later....maybe.....finish it? When? I never did. I never could. An idea was always an end in itself; a convenient little package and tangible evidence of What Could Have Been a Brilliant Song.
As the tapes filled up and the unfinished songs started numbering in the hundreds, I (reasonably, I think), began to feel slightly distressed. This system isn't working.
I went back to a journal of mine from 1998. I had finished college and was living in Harvard Square in a garret sublet for the summer.
The same catholic guilt, the same insane self-flagellation......"why aren't you doing? making? performing? recording? finishing anything? why are you drinking too much? smoking too much? fucking stupid people too much? wasting your time? not finishing ANYTHING?" This refrain was so typical by then that is was almost laughable. Yet here I am, 2005, sitting in my apartment, wondering many of the same things. And I've "accomplished" plenty. The feeling doesn't go away.
When I got to college things got remarkably worse. I stopped writing altogether. I don't know what happened. I was terrified. So disappointed that college wasn't the artists bohemian haven I has fantasized about, so disappointed that I had to start from scratch with a group of people I couldn't relate to, and I had no piano to go to without trekking across campus to a dank and sterile practice room open until 10 pm while genius #56 on one side pounded out Beethoven Sonatas and disciplined music student #85 flew through scale after endless scale on their flute/trombone/jaw harp on the other side. I had nothing in common with these people. I was so much better, I was so much worse. I didn't do anything right.
Not a moment of my life went by without the contemplation of the specter of the tapes that lay there, in a pile, intimidating, taunting, mocking me. So many of them. 20 maybe. Times ninety minutes. Each holding 20, 30, 40 ideas for songs I would never write or finish. I even tired to catalog, weed out the better ideas, listen and type comments into a document that I created in it's own special folder on my very modern Macintosh Classic computer. Nothing came of that. Now I have a modern Dell. It organizes and also tempts with an unending stream of communication that I could tend to constantly, sitting here as things unraveled and raveled, as crises appeared and ideas and people and fans and friends beckon with their loving and distracting correspondence. I have no self-discipline whatsoever. The idea of putting aside an allotted amount of time per day during which to check email or get online is unfathomable. It's all happening, right now. I want to watch. Now. NOW, godammit.
I can't imagine what life would be like if I owned a television, but I can empathize with the addiction.
So when I needed to create my course schedule for my sophomore year, I went to a music professor and a theatre professor and conned them both into giving me a full course credit for doing an independent "performance art" project. Of course, I did nothing. Three weeks before the end of the semester I got to work. I work well under pressure. I mixed the bets of the ideas together into a one-hour sound collage on my four track and superimposed and interview with myself on top. I interviewed my pundit from the dead, basically. "What about those old tapes?" "Well, she had an INCREDIBLE amount of potential as a songwriter, you see. She was wildly talented. But she never really got it together. Such a shame...." The soundtrack was played during the performance, which was attended by about 50 people (including the two professors, of course, who had to grade me). I strung a white sheet across the stage and stood behind it, with a slide projector projecting light against it so I was in silhouette. Then I took the 60 or 70 some-odd cassette tapes that I had found at various thrift shops and yard sales (mostly terrible things from the early eighties, and blank mix tapes of Unknown Origin) and began unraveling them, gradually hanging the yards of magnetic ribbon on a clothesline so the screen would be more more and more darkened and obscured. Then I lost my patience and hacked them apart, dramatically, with a hammer. Oh, I meant it. I wanted to crush those fuckers, Dead. The performance ended, accidentally early, when the sheet fell down and I stood there, naked, screaming that I never wanted this, that I didn't want to be talented, that I didn't want to be a songwriter with any fucking ideas, good or bad. I generally had a good old-fashioned healthy public temper tantrum freak out.
Both teachers gave me an A, but it didn't help. I was enraged. I had gotten away with murder, public wanking, and I was still stuck.
I could just let myself be, I suppose. I have been. Take a walk. Drink some coffee. Read a book. Answer the endless stream of email.
I did, I did all day. My calendar said "Day off. Write."
And there they sit, the new batch of brilliant ideas, crouching on the piano like little fucking demons, like unfinished book reports, like abandoned children who knew I was the mother. I can't sit down at the piano anymore, I'm just paralyzed with fear. Of what, I don't really know. I've never known. I used to think it was fear of success. God knows that's not true, nowadays. Bring it on.
Once an idea is finished, it's not an idea anymore. It's a song, good or bad. Possessing the secret weapon of a so-called brilliant idea feels much more exciting than following through, I suppose. Maybe that's it.
Maybe I'm actually lazy.
Maybe I really need more time off to do nothing but take walks and drink coffee and read books and answer emails and whack off, basking in the glow of existence.
I spend so much time on the road thinking about this moment, this free time, this window in which to create, and here I am. Sitting behind my computer, hiding.
One of my best friends, Joshua, once wrote and mailed me a letter. I was 18, and he knew about the song demons.
All it said was
"It is saturday morning and I find myself thinking: are you writing a song or fixing yourself a bite to eat?"
Oh, Josh, I'd be so disappointing to you right now. But my kitchen is immaculate, and I've organized my tea alphabetically.
But I think I am.
I don't know. Surprise.....
It's 3:30 in the morning.
What is it like? I wish I could explain. I'll try.
Ever since I was a teenager, I grappled with how and what and when and why to write music.
Songs would come, early on, and it was simple. There was no point. Just to write a song was a wonder in itself,
a reward in itself, to be played endlessly for an imaginary crowd who would sit, impressed and awed, all five thousand of them,
attentive on folding chairs in the living room between the painting of the revolutionary war and the fireplace.
And I would play for them.....so simple.
Then came the tapes. I can't remember exactly when it started....1990, I think. The industry had just started realizing that tapes themselves could be aesthetic little pieces of plastic and started marketing the clear plastic cassette tapes with neon squiggles and lines. Clear blue, clear pink....the one I started with was dark clear blue. I called it (later) "The Long Lost Blue Tape"...because I
gave it to someone to listen to, god knows why, and it didn't find it's way back to me till much later. But it was the first one: I wouldn't just play, just write, I would ARCHIVE. I would archive this thing happening. I would record every thought, every idea, every line for a song and the stream-of-consciousness-nonsense that spewed out with it, and then..somehow....later....maybe.....finish it? When? I never did. I never could. An idea was always an end in itself; a convenient little package and tangible evidence of What Could Have Been a Brilliant Song.
As the tapes filled up and the unfinished songs started numbering in the hundreds, I (reasonably, I think), began to feel slightly distressed. This system isn't working.
I went back to a journal of mine from 1998. I had finished college and was living in Harvard Square in a garret sublet for the summer.
The same catholic guilt, the same insane self-flagellation......"why aren't you doing? making? performing? recording? finishing anything? why are you drinking too much? smoking too much? fucking stupid people too much? wasting your time? not finishing ANYTHING?" This refrain was so typical by then that is was almost laughable. Yet here I am, 2005, sitting in my apartment, wondering many of the same things. And I've "accomplished" plenty. The feeling doesn't go away.
When I got to college things got remarkably worse. I stopped writing altogether. I don't know what happened. I was terrified. So disappointed that college wasn't the artists bohemian haven I has fantasized about, so disappointed that I had to start from scratch with a group of people I couldn't relate to, and I had no piano to go to without trekking across campus to a dank and sterile practice room open until 10 pm while genius #56 on one side pounded out Beethoven Sonatas and disciplined music student #85 flew through scale after endless scale on their flute/trombone/jaw harp on the other side. I had nothing in common with these people. I was so much better, I was so much worse. I didn't do anything right.
Not a moment of my life went by without the contemplation of the specter of the tapes that lay there, in a pile, intimidating, taunting, mocking me. So many of them. 20 maybe. Times ninety minutes. Each holding 20, 30, 40 ideas for songs I would never write or finish. I even tired to catalog, weed out the better ideas, listen and type comments into a document that I created in it's own special folder on my very modern Macintosh Classic computer. Nothing came of that. Now I have a modern Dell. It organizes and also tempts with an unending stream of communication that I could tend to constantly, sitting here as things unraveled and raveled, as crises appeared and ideas and people and fans and friends beckon with their loving and distracting correspondence. I have no self-discipline whatsoever. The idea of putting aside an allotted amount of time per day during which to check email or get online is unfathomable. It's all happening, right now. I want to watch. Now. NOW, godammit.
I can't imagine what life would be like if I owned a television, but I can empathize with the addiction.
So when I needed to create my course schedule for my sophomore year, I went to a music professor and a theatre professor and conned them both into giving me a full course credit for doing an independent "performance art" project. Of course, I did nothing. Three weeks before the end of the semester I got to work. I work well under pressure. I mixed the bets of the ideas together into a one-hour sound collage on my four track and superimposed and interview with myself on top. I interviewed my pundit from the dead, basically. "What about those old tapes?" "Well, she had an INCREDIBLE amount of potential as a songwriter, you see. She was wildly talented. But she never really got it together. Such a shame...." The soundtrack was played during the performance, which was attended by about 50 people (including the two professors, of course, who had to grade me). I strung a white sheet across the stage and stood behind it, with a slide projector projecting light against it so I was in silhouette. Then I took the 60 or 70 some-odd cassette tapes that I had found at various thrift shops and yard sales (mostly terrible things from the early eighties, and blank mix tapes of Unknown Origin) and began unraveling them, gradually hanging the yards of magnetic ribbon on a clothesline so the screen would be more more and more darkened and obscured. Then I lost my patience and hacked them apart, dramatically, with a hammer. Oh, I meant it. I wanted to crush those fuckers, Dead. The performance ended, accidentally early, when the sheet fell down and I stood there, naked, screaming that I never wanted this, that I didn't want to be talented, that I didn't want to be a songwriter with any fucking ideas, good or bad. I generally had a good old-fashioned healthy public temper tantrum freak out.
Both teachers gave me an A, but it didn't help. I was enraged. I had gotten away with murder, public wanking, and I was still stuck.
I could just let myself be, I suppose. I have been. Take a walk. Drink some coffee. Read a book. Answer the endless stream of email.
I did, I did all day. My calendar said "Day off. Write."
And there they sit, the new batch of brilliant ideas, crouching on the piano like little fucking demons, like unfinished book reports, like abandoned children who knew I was the mother. I can't sit down at the piano anymore, I'm just paralyzed with fear. Of what, I don't really know. I've never known. I used to think it was fear of success. God knows that's not true, nowadays. Bring it on.
Once an idea is finished, it's not an idea anymore. It's a song, good or bad. Possessing the secret weapon of a so-called brilliant idea feels much more exciting than following through, I suppose. Maybe that's it.
Maybe I'm actually lazy.
Maybe I really need more time off to do nothing but take walks and drink coffee and read books and answer emails and whack off, basking in the glow of existence.
I spend so much time on the road thinking about this moment, this free time, this window in which to create, and here I am. Sitting behind my computer, hiding.
One of my best friends, Joshua, once wrote and mailed me a letter. I was 18, and he knew about the song demons.
All it said was
"It is saturday morning and I find myself thinking: are you writing a song or fixing yourself a bite to eat?"
Oh, Josh, I'd be so disappointing to you right now. But my kitchen is immaculate, and I've organized my tea alphabetically.
Friday, January 07, 2005
01/07/05 - Winter in a Vacuum
It's been a rough week...on the way back from our new years' shows I started vomiting uncontrollably on the plane. Charming! Brian was the consummate band-mate, holdin the bag while the sympathetic flight attendants brought me tepid ginger ale. It made me remember being a wee lass, flying to our dad's every month adn often puking on the way. I used to be the type of kid who could practically vomit on command. On the way to the movies in the car, you name it.
Forget about boats. Luckily that passed with time. So, I thought it was turbulance, but no....I was sick the whole night with what turned out to be a nasty stomach flu. Brian contracted it 48 hours later and threw up all day at home while I scurried about trying to be florence nightingale, buying juices and soups and all-flora stomach enzyme supplements. He's on the mend, everything seems to be getting back to Dandy. I'm insanely happy to be home and able to hide in my cluttered apartment, brewing endless cups of green tea and listening to the humidifer.
The tour in Australia, which everybody keeps asking about, was unprecedented...... The band is, far and away, more successful in Australia than any other country and it showed... people were just incredubly enthusiastic and every show was sold out. My most memorable moments were a few public parks in New Zealand and Melbourne where I could walk, alone, and sit and think and stretch and lie in the grass, doing nothing and looking at trees that I wasn't used to. There wasn't time for much else, and when there was, I slept. The jetlag would just not go away...it hit both of us 2 or 3 days into the trip and by the last few shows we were practically falling asleep (in some cases, literally falling asleep) backstage. Coem to think of it, something ridiculous happened the last night of the tour, in Melbourne: we left soundcheck to go back to the hotel - which was a block away form the venue - to grab a nap. We arranged that Robert, our trusty tour manager, would phone us up a half-hour before stage time so we could get into costume and become functional humans before hitting stage. He called. We went back to sleep. The next thing we know, Robert's on the phone saying "Where are you? There's a crowd of angry Australians chanting 'Dresden Dolls! Dresden Dolls! Dresden Dolls!' Are you locked outside the club or what?" One of the most interesting feelings I've experienced. Sort of an actor's nightmare come true. Needless to say, it was one of the quickest changes in Dresden Dolls history and the first few songs must have sounded a little rough, as we had both been been fast asleep not 12 minutes before. That was also the night the keyboard decided to shut itself off during every other song. Shit keyboard. Made for interesting interludes.
The Brigade performers throughout the world have been astounding....highlights have included a bizarre performance art/mask piece to "Missed Me" in Strasbourg, France; The Girl Who Sews Her Lips Shut in San Diego; an action painter dressed as Jack in Brisbane and cigarette girls and a contortionist in Sydney. The forums have been seeing some action lately: there's one for prep and general networking (divided up by country) up at http://www.gothic.net/dresden_brigade/ and one for archiving photos and other stuff at http://ddbrigade.tribe.net/.
We're home for a spell and going into the studio tomorrow (with Sean Slade, at Camp Street) to record demos for the record. Seven songs in four days (Backstabber, Shores of California, wwwwwwiii, First Orgasm, Necessary Evil, Sex Changes and Delililah - and some of those are working titles) and I'm spending the majority of today changing lyrics like the little perfectionist freakazoid I am. One thing I am mystified by (and I'm sure there's a very rational psychological explanation for this) is the fact that it is invariably when I have a recording or a show coming up that the new music starts pouring out - demanding (and this is essential) that I ignore the actual work at hand and pay mind to the new ideas. It has to do with old habits of procrastination and focus, I think. Cleaning my bedroom was far preferable to doing my latin homework, which was far preferable to doing math homework, which was far preferable to actually going to school....so I would create odd systems for myself that involved skipping school so I could do my latin homework and would deliberately mess up my room so I could write songs. Does this make any sense to anyone else? The mind is a strange beast.
After the recording we're heading to Sundance ((www.ascap.com/eventsawards/events/sundance/2005/) for a few shows and then doing a short tour of California and surrounding environs, New England and then heading back to Europe til mid-march.
All things will be revealed at www.dresdendolls.com/calendar/index.htm.
love
a
recent great books: "Hey Nostradamus!" by Douglas Coupland and "Bad Seed" (a Nick Cave biography) by Ian Johnston
recent great music: kathleen edwards "failer" gripped me for a solid week. very straight ahed rock, but the lyrics...brilliant.
Forget about boats. Luckily that passed with time. So, I thought it was turbulance, but no....I was sick the whole night with what turned out to be a nasty stomach flu. Brian contracted it 48 hours later and threw up all day at home while I scurried about trying to be florence nightingale, buying juices and soups and all-flora stomach enzyme supplements. He's on the mend, everything seems to be getting back to Dandy. I'm insanely happy to be home and able to hide in my cluttered apartment, brewing endless cups of green tea and listening to the humidifer.
The tour in Australia, which everybody keeps asking about, was unprecedented...... The band is, far and away, more successful in Australia than any other country and it showed... people were just incredubly enthusiastic and every show was sold out. My most memorable moments were a few public parks in New Zealand and Melbourne where I could walk, alone, and sit and think and stretch and lie in the grass, doing nothing and looking at trees that I wasn't used to. There wasn't time for much else, and when there was, I slept. The jetlag would just not go away...it hit both of us 2 or 3 days into the trip and by the last few shows we were practically falling asleep (in some cases, literally falling asleep) backstage. Coem to think of it, something ridiculous happened the last night of the tour, in Melbourne: we left soundcheck to go back to the hotel - which was a block away form the venue - to grab a nap. We arranged that Robert, our trusty tour manager, would phone us up a half-hour before stage time so we could get into costume and become functional humans before hitting stage. He called. We went back to sleep. The next thing we know, Robert's on the phone saying "Where are you? There's a crowd of angry Australians chanting 'Dresden Dolls! Dresden Dolls! Dresden Dolls!' Are you locked outside the club or what?" One of the most interesting feelings I've experienced. Sort of an actor's nightmare come true. Needless to say, it was one of the quickest changes in Dresden Dolls history and the first few songs must have sounded a little rough, as we had both been been fast asleep not 12 minutes before. That was also the night the keyboard decided to shut itself off during every other song. Shit keyboard. Made for interesting interludes.
The Brigade performers throughout the world have been astounding....highlights have included a bizarre performance art/mask piece to "Missed Me" in Strasbourg, France; The Girl Who Sews Her Lips Shut in San Diego; an action painter dressed as Jack in Brisbane and cigarette girls and a contortionist in Sydney. The forums have been seeing some action lately: there's one for prep and general networking (divided up by country) up at http://www.gothic.net/dresden_brigade/ and one for archiving photos and other stuff at http://ddbrigade.tribe.net/.
We're home for a spell and going into the studio tomorrow (with Sean Slade, at Camp Street) to record demos for the record. Seven songs in four days (Backstabber, Shores of California, wwwwwwiii, First Orgasm, Necessary Evil, Sex Changes and Delililah - and some of those are working titles) and I'm spending the majority of today changing lyrics like the little perfectionist freakazoid I am. One thing I am mystified by (and I'm sure there's a very rational psychological explanation for this) is the fact that it is invariably when I have a recording or a show coming up that the new music starts pouring out - demanding (and this is essential) that I ignore the actual work at hand and pay mind to the new ideas. It has to do with old habits of procrastination and focus, I think. Cleaning my bedroom was far preferable to doing my latin homework, which was far preferable to doing math homework, which was far preferable to actually going to school....so I would create odd systems for myself that involved skipping school so I could do my latin homework and would deliberately mess up my room so I could write songs. Does this make any sense to anyone else? The mind is a strange beast.
After the recording we're heading to Sundance ((www.ascap.com/eventsawards/events/sundance/2005/) for a few shows and then doing a short tour of California and surrounding environs, New England and then heading back to Europe til mid-march.
All things will be revealed at www.dresdendolls.com/calendar/index.htm.
love
a
recent great books: "Hey Nostradamus!" by Douglas Coupland and "Bad Seed" (a Nick Cave biography) by Ian Johnston
recent great music: kathleen edwards "failer" gripped me for a solid week. very straight ahed rock, but the lyrics...brilliant.
Sunday, December 26, 2004
Sunday, December 12, 2004
12/12/04 - Air New Zealand
I am sitting on a plane, on the last leg of London to New Zealand. We've been flying for almost 24 hours straight.
My head is a right mess, and my body is exhausted. We've been touring almost non-stop since summer. I remember once reading studies about the effects of Rapid Eye Movement sleep interruption....when you deprive people of REM, they can't dream. When they can't dream, they can't subconsciously process their lives. Then they slowly go insane. I'm feeling something similar.
The endless travelling with no real time to stop and reflect (and more importantly, create) has stunted my mental state of being - which I only notice in flashes here or there, like an amnesiac confronted with a sentimental photo. I try not to be too hard on myself, but I get scared by the fact that I can barely concentrate on a mindless magazine lately. My brain is being reprogrammed to think in shallow, five-minute intervals.
Things have gotten even more complicated lately by the fact that Brian and I have such an intense relationship, and it's being put to the test on the road. We're often like an old married couple, bitching mercilessly one moment and then caringly wonderful the next, and the manic-depressive relationship cycle slowly but surely starts to wear me down to the point where I feel like shutting off completely just to avoid further conflict. We're possessive and jealous like lovers, without the obvious silver lining that carries most lovers through the night. This relationship is one for the fucking books, I tell you....it'll take them years to figure out what actually happened. We barely know ourselves.
We found out yesterday that “dimebag” daryl from pantera was shot, along with the others onstage in ohio, and we were just dumbstruck. Brian was hard hit, this was an old idol of his from high school. And we ask each other, as we always do: what the fuck? what is happening to people? But we know it's the same old question...it's been happening for years and we can only use it for what it's worth. We're here, this is it, and if we think we're heading to something bigger and better and brighter down the road, we're fools. Here we are, on stage, alive. End of story.
I hate plane food. I want vegetables.
We're barely able to believe what's going on in New Zealand and Australia....the album is blowing up and we're in heavy rotation on MTV and the national alternative radio station, triple j. Most of the shows are sold out. I'm not even sure what to expect. The last time I was in Austrlia it was 2000 and I was on my own, performing the Eight Foot Bride at the Adelaide fringe festival. I almost got arrested twice.
On a brighter note (I should tattoo “don't post under the influence of less than 5 hours sleep in a 48 hour period” to my left hand), I've developed a new art form that keeps me from feeling I am entirely creatively zombified on the road. Together with Manta, who came on the tour to do morning martial arts exercises (www.shintaido.org) in addition to being the offical tour videographer, we have been carving out the framwork of a revolution in bad taste and narcissistic media.
It is called Karaoke Verité.
It fuses the art of film with the kitsch of karoake and basically amounts to me making ridiculous lipsyched videos in my free time as a kind of emotional/physical travelogue. For the time being, I am using the music of other artists. You can take a stab. The first one will be posted by christmas, I hope. I hope she doesn't sue.
My head is a right mess, and my body is exhausted. We've been touring almost non-stop since summer. I remember once reading studies about the effects of Rapid Eye Movement sleep interruption....when you deprive people of REM, they can't dream. When they can't dream, they can't subconsciously process their lives. Then they slowly go insane. I'm feeling something similar.
The endless travelling with no real time to stop and reflect (and more importantly, create) has stunted my mental state of being - which I only notice in flashes here or there, like an amnesiac confronted with a sentimental photo. I try not to be too hard on myself, but I get scared by the fact that I can barely concentrate on a mindless magazine lately. My brain is being reprogrammed to think in shallow, five-minute intervals.
Things have gotten even more complicated lately by the fact that Brian and I have such an intense relationship, and it's being put to the test on the road. We're often like an old married couple, bitching mercilessly one moment and then caringly wonderful the next, and the manic-depressive relationship cycle slowly but surely starts to wear me down to the point where I feel like shutting off completely just to avoid further conflict. We're possessive and jealous like lovers, without the obvious silver lining that carries most lovers through the night. This relationship is one for the fucking books, I tell you....it'll take them years to figure out what actually happened. We barely know ourselves.
We found out yesterday that “dimebag” daryl from pantera was shot, along with the others onstage in ohio, and we were just dumbstruck. Brian was hard hit, this was an old idol of his from high school. And we ask each other, as we always do: what the fuck? what is happening to people? But we know it's the same old question...it's been happening for years and we can only use it for what it's worth. We're here, this is it, and if we think we're heading to something bigger and better and brighter down the road, we're fools. Here we are, on stage, alive. End of story.
I hate plane food. I want vegetables.
We're barely able to believe what's going on in New Zealand and Australia....the album is blowing up and we're in heavy rotation on MTV and the national alternative radio station, triple j. Most of the shows are sold out. I'm not even sure what to expect. The last time I was in Austrlia it was 2000 and I was on my own, performing the Eight Foot Bride at the Adelaide fringe festival. I almost got arrested twice.
On a brighter note (I should tattoo “don't post under the influence of less than 5 hours sleep in a 48 hour period” to my left hand), I've developed a new art form that keeps me from feeling I am entirely creatively zombified on the road. Together with Manta, who came on the tour to do morning martial arts exercises (www.shintaido.org) in addition to being the offical tour videographer, we have been carving out the framwork of a revolution in bad taste and narcissistic media.
It is called Karaoke Verité.
It fuses the art of film with the kitsch of karoake and basically amounts to me making ridiculous lipsyched videos in my free time as a kind of emotional/physical travelogue. For the time being, I am using the music of other artists. You can take a stab. The first one will be posted by christmas, I hope. I hope she doesn't sue.
Monday, November 29, 2004
11/29/04 - Berlin, GER
I went to my tenth high school reunion just before leaving for europe.
alcohol - 1
amanda - 0
Ah, not only did the good old days wash over me with an infinite sea of hi-I-hear-you're-doing-very-wells but I tasted the sweet taste of being hungover and ill in an airport. My late teens and early twenties all over again.
Thank fucking god they're gone.
I simply pray that I didn't do anything more embarrassing than my clouded memory can dredge up.
I did get to feel the re-creation of an ultimate High School Moment. I was in the ladies room of the trashy euro-bar
that housed the reunion, relating to some old friends the story of whacking off in physics(how, you ask? cleverly, and under multiple large, flowing, gothic skirts) while staring directly into the eyes of the ultimate heather-like volleyball girl who I considered my spiritual nemesis (thinking, as I achieved orgasm, something terribly arrogant along the lines of "you will never be free, you will never be free...."). As I finished relating the story in the reunion bathroom, a heather-like friend of the ultimate heather appeared out of a nearby stall and looked at me, flipping heather-yet-now-soccer-mom hair and said: "Yeah right", while rolling her eyes heavenward and storming out of the bathroom. Ah, right back at home. Of course, I took the opportunity to relate this story to anyone who was willing to listen for the rest of the night.
Several drinks later, I snogged the football-team-captain-freak-basher who used to make my life a living helln after a short discussion and mutual truce. A large crowd gathered around us in a circle and applauded. A very West Side Story Moment.
I've since emailed my friend M. to see if anything of a less tasteful nature occurred.
Writing it all here in my public confessional makes me feel better, but I'm actually pretty horrified with myself. There was my chance to put them all to shame with my newly-found adulthood and maturity and I probably came off like a loudmouthed and bloated fool. In my defense, the fog of insecurity in the room was so thick that barely anyone could see straight and the open bar didn't help. I'll make up for it in 2014.
Berlin is as I always experience it: large, empty, cold and hard to find.
I woke up at 5 am this morning and took a long walk listening to the Avril CD. I swear, it's like a disease. I've concluded that listening to this CD, the ultimate guilty pleasure, is about as punk-rock as it gets. The only true rebellion lies in doing the truly unacceptable. I also haven't been tempted to listen to ANYTHING on a walkman since I was around 18. I put my finger on this morning over breakfast: if I had bought this CD at 12, I'd be addicted, and wouldn't feel the shame of listening to such terrible, corporate, superficial over processed shite, because I hadn't quite turned into a music snob yet and was perfectly happy listening to pop that made me smile.
Nowadays, when I listen to the music I loved at 12, it brings me back to a very specific feeling. The feeling belongs very specifically to my twelve-year-old self, a direct nostalgic connection to a solid spot.
But by listening to Avril, I have actually harnessed the power of the twilight zone and am able to re-live being 12 from a fresh perspective. How common is that?
alcohol - 1
amanda - 0
Ah, not only did the good old days wash over me with an infinite sea of hi-I-hear-you're-doing-very-wells but I tasted the sweet taste of being hungover and ill in an airport. My late teens and early twenties all over again.
Thank fucking god they're gone.
I simply pray that I didn't do anything more embarrassing than my clouded memory can dredge up.
I did get to feel the re-creation of an ultimate High School Moment. I was in the ladies room of the trashy euro-bar
that housed the reunion, relating to some old friends the story of whacking off in physics(how, you ask? cleverly, and under multiple large, flowing, gothic skirts) while staring directly into the eyes of the ultimate heather-like volleyball girl who I considered my spiritual nemesis (thinking, as I achieved orgasm, something terribly arrogant along the lines of "you will never be free, you will never be free...."). As I finished relating the story in the reunion bathroom, a heather-like friend of the ultimate heather appeared out of a nearby stall and looked at me, flipping heather-yet-now-soccer-mom hair and said: "Yeah right", while rolling her eyes heavenward and storming out of the bathroom. Ah, right back at home. Of course, I took the opportunity to relate this story to anyone who was willing to listen for the rest of the night.
Several drinks later, I snogged the football-team-captain-freak-basher who used to make my life a living helln after a short discussion and mutual truce. A large crowd gathered around us in a circle and applauded. A very West Side Story Moment.
I've since emailed my friend M. to see if anything of a less tasteful nature occurred.
Writing it all here in my public confessional makes me feel better, but I'm actually pretty horrified with myself. There was my chance to put them all to shame with my newly-found adulthood and maturity and I probably came off like a loudmouthed and bloated fool. In my defense, the fog of insecurity in the room was so thick that barely anyone could see straight and the open bar didn't help. I'll make up for it in 2014.
Berlin is as I always experience it: large, empty, cold and hard to find.
I woke up at 5 am this morning and took a long walk listening to the Avril CD. I swear, it's like a disease. I've concluded that listening to this CD, the ultimate guilty pleasure, is about as punk-rock as it gets. The only true rebellion lies in doing the truly unacceptable. I also haven't been tempted to listen to ANYTHING on a walkman since I was around 18. I put my finger on this morning over breakfast: if I had bought this CD at 12, I'd be addicted, and wouldn't feel the shame of listening to such terrible, corporate, superficial over processed shite, because I hadn't quite turned into a music snob yet and was perfectly happy listening to pop that made me smile.
Nowadays, when I listen to the music I loved at 12, it brings me back to a very specific feeling. The feeling belongs very specifically to my twelve-year-old self, a direct nostalgic connection to a solid spot.
But by listening to Avril, I have actually harnessed the power of the twilight zone and am able to re-live being 12 from a fresh perspective. How common is that?
Thursday, November 25, 2004
11/25/04 - On Online Journaling
I can't help but find it just plain strange that writers of late have been asking: how does it feel to expose your inner life on your website?
What am i missing here? The way i see things I'm writing some pretty mundane observations about my everyday life in this band and
leaving the heavy shit for my own journals (to be published posthumously, of course, to save everyone a great deal of embarrassment) or
for ephemeral phone conversations and late-night conversations.
I've often wondered WHAT would happen I did indeed start chronicling my inner life for all to read. Would it make the music more
interesting? Less interesting? More or less revealing, or mysterious? When you give people pieces to the puzzle of your pysche, it can
often lead to more questions than answers.
Fuck this shit, I'm going to go to Avril's website and see how it's done.
(pause....)
Ok, so Avril's not really revealing very much. Perhaps Courtney Love's website will have some details more revealing than "We're on tour in Spain and it's awesome, the shopping here is kick-ass etc"
(must also confess I watched ALL the videos from the new record. Angry Avril!)
(pause....)
Courtney Love has no online diary on her website. Probably for the best. How about......Ashlee Simpson? Norah Jones? Fucking.....Diamanda Galas?
(pause. pause. pause.........)
This is a really deadend project, none of these women seem to be the online journal type.
Good god, is it just me and Avril?
(pause...........)
It would seem so. I checked the websites of Rufus Wainwright, Bjork, Liz Phair, Laurie Anderson, Nick Cave, David Bowie and Momus....
just the cross-section of folks that popped into my head. Momus has a great "daily picture diary". Bowie seems to post on
his message board with some regularity, mostly music recommendations. Not a lot of soul-baring going on. And why should they? They're
artists and they should be concerned with making art.
But isn't this the future?
This is art.
I really ought to go to bed. To make myself feel better about this whole process I will try to reveal some of myself. I've been listening
to Avril's new record all night. I can't tell you exactly why, but it sort of makes me feel like I am 15 all over again in a parallel universe. I'm so ashamed and
so proud of myself at the same time. I learned "Together" on the piano. We could never cover it. We can get away with covering Britney, but Avril would just
not be acceptable. It's like the difference between admitting you like porn (which is cool) and admitting you make child porn (which is not cool).
Cult of Personality/Reality Performance of Self Via Interweb as artform? I'm nostalgic enough about my own life and past to want to get away with this kind of crap.
I have kept every letter I've ever recieved. I need a bigger apartment to fit all the shit I can't throw away. I did screaming naked perfomance art in college.
I was THAT girl. Who has made their personality into an artform lately and done a decent job? RuPaul?
I'm not just saying this to be cool but the Avril record really disintegrates towards the end.
Amanda. go. to. bed.
What am i missing here? The way i see things I'm writing some pretty mundane observations about my everyday life in this band and
leaving the heavy shit for my own journals (to be published posthumously, of course, to save everyone a great deal of embarrassment) or
for ephemeral phone conversations and late-night conversations.
I've often wondered WHAT would happen I did indeed start chronicling my inner life for all to read. Would it make the music more
interesting? Less interesting? More or less revealing, or mysterious? When you give people pieces to the puzzle of your pysche, it can
often lead to more questions than answers.
Fuck this shit, I'm going to go to Avril's website and see how it's done.
(pause....)
Ok, so Avril's not really revealing very much. Perhaps Courtney Love's website will have some details more revealing than "We're on tour in Spain and it's awesome, the shopping here is kick-ass etc"
(must also confess I watched ALL the videos from the new record. Angry Avril!)
(pause....)
Courtney Love has no online diary on her website. Probably for the best. How about......Ashlee Simpson? Norah Jones? Fucking.....Diamanda Galas?
(pause. pause. pause.........)
This is a really deadend project, none of these women seem to be the online journal type.
Good god, is it just me and Avril?
(pause...........)
It would seem so. I checked the websites of Rufus Wainwright, Bjork, Liz Phair, Laurie Anderson, Nick Cave, David Bowie and Momus....
just the cross-section of folks that popped into my head. Momus has a great "daily picture diary". Bowie seems to post on
his message board with some regularity, mostly music recommendations. Not a lot of soul-baring going on. And why should they? They're
artists and they should be concerned with making art.
But isn't this the future?
This is art.
I really ought to go to bed. To make myself feel better about this whole process I will try to reveal some of myself. I've been listening
to Avril's new record all night. I can't tell you exactly why, but it sort of makes me feel like I am 15 all over again in a parallel universe. I'm so ashamed and
so proud of myself at the same time. I learned "Together" on the piano. We could never cover it. We can get away with covering Britney, but Avril would just
not be acceptable. It's like the difference between admitting you like porn (which is cool) and admitting you make child porn (which is not cool).
Cult of Personality/Reality Performance of Self Via Interweb as artform? I'm nostalgic enough about my own life and past to want to get away with this kind of crap.
I have kept every letter I've ever recieved. I need a bigger apartment to fit all the shit I can't throw away. I did screaming naked perfomance art in college.
I was THAT girl. Who has made their personality into an artform lately and done a decent job? RuPaul?
I'm not just saying this to be cool but the Avril record really disintegrates towards the end.
Amanda. go. to. bed.
Monday, November 15, 2004
11/15/04 - Portland, OR
We had a rainy day off and I spent a majority of it losing myself in the best bookstore I've ever seen (www.powells.com ). I picked up what I am pretty sure is my new favorite book - "Girl Culture" by Lauren Greenfield - an unvelievably beautiful and terrifying photo collection. Nothing like the real thing, but I found some online images from the book at www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0301/lg_index.html . Girls at weight-loss camp. Prom queens. Anorexics. Three-year olds in lipstick. Amanda Heaven. Look closely at the captions.
Then I joined forces with some of the folks from Fran Sanchez (the name we've finally settled on for the tour bus) and headed to Mary's Club, Portland's first topless bar, which is now a full-on nekkid strip joint. Not that I'm a massive connoisseur, but I've been to my fair share of tit bars and strip joints and this one was a classic. No cover, very cheap drinks, and decor that resmebled a cross between a 50's family Italian restaurant, a rec room and a FunWorld.
There were only three girls working there, rotating every three songs. There was no DJ, which was also a first for me...the girls just selected tunes from a jukebox that was nailed to the wall next to the stage. One girl was insanely thin, blond and boring. The second girl had complete control over the muscles in her tits (we spent all night trying to figure out whether they were faux or not) and did a wonderful trick of pretending to tug them into the air with invisible strings. But our favorite was girl number three, Carmen, who was tattooed from head to toe and looked like full-on suicide girl material, buddy holly glasses and all.
I've had two bizarre dreams lately.
In the first one, I was eight months pregnant. This was one of those intensely vivid dreams, in which I could feel every detail down to the scratchy pinch of my maternity-pants waistband being ever-so-slightly too tight. I refused to name a father. I'd say it was more of a nightmare, actually.
The next night made up for it. I dreamt that John Lennon wound up at my apartment and I tried to get him to cuddle. To my amazement, he was up for it. I was clumsily messing around with my cd player, putting on some mood music - specifically, I was checking to see which disc tray my Cathode "Sleeping and Breathing" cd was in, because I was sure he'd like it - but I wound up accidentally blasting the beginning of the White Album instead. John sort of tried to be nice about it, but his expression read: "Oh Please, Anything But This." After apologizing and trying to laugh about it, I switched discs again and what should come on but....the fucking White Album again. God, how embarrissing. I suppose this has some sort of traceable interpretation having to do with typical musician anxiety. When you're not the sort of girl who cares if the whole class sees a big bloody splotch on the back of your white skirt, you end up having fears like this instead.
I did wind up cuddling with John Lennon, and all was well.
Then I joined forces with some of the folks from Fran Sanchez (the name we've finally settled on for the tour bus) and headed to Mary's Club, Portland's first topless bar, which is now a full-on nekkid strip joint. Not that I'm a massive connoisseur, but I've been to my fair share of tit bars and strip joints and this one was a classic. No cover, very cheap drinks, and decor that resmebled a cross between a 50's family Italian restaurant, a rec room and a FunWorld.
There were only three girls working there, rotating every three songs. There was no DJ, which was also a first for me...the girls just selected tunes from a jukebox that was nailed to the wall next to the stage. One girl was insanely thin, blond and boring. The second girl had complete control over the muscles in her tits (we spent all night trying to figure out whether they were faux or not) and did a wonderful trick of pretending to tug them into the air with invisible strings. But our favorite was girl number three, Carmen, who was tattooed from head to toe and looked like full-on suicide girl material, buddy holly glasses and all.
I've had two bizarre dreams lately.
In the first one, I was eight months pregnant. This was one of those intensely vivid dreams, in which I could feel every detail down to the scratchy pinch of my maternity-pants waistband being ever-so-slightly too tight. I refused to name a father. I'd say it was more of a nightmare, actually.
The next night made up for it. I dreamt that John Lennon wound up at my apartment and I tried to get him to cuddle. To my amazement, he was up for it. I was clumsily messing around with my cd player, putting on some mood music - specifically, I was checking to see which disc tray my Cathode "Sleeping and Breathing" cd was in, because I was sure he'd like it - but I wound up accidentally blasting the beginning of the White Album instead. John sort of tried to be nice about it, but his expression read: "Oh Please, Anything But This." After apologizing and trying to laugh about it, I switched discs again and what should come on but....the fucking White Album again. God, how embarrissing. I suppose this has some sort of traceable interpretation having to do with typical musician anxiety. When you're not the sort of girl who cares if the whole class sees a big bloody splotch on the back of your white skirt, you end up having fears like this instead.
I did wind up cuddling with John Lennon, and all was well.
Thursday, November 04, 2004
11/04/04 - Back in the USA
We were in Montreal on election day. We played at the Cabaret Music Hall and then dashed back out to the bus to sit and wait and listen to a faint radio signal as state by state the results came in. We barely spoke. The mood was pretty somber. When the prospects started to get really dim, we seperated. There was nothing to talk about, really. Some went for walks, some stayed up and drank, toasting to the new dark ages.
I went to my bunk and thought about what it really meant that Bush was going to be the president. The damage to the environment, the lives that will be lost, the progress twisted. I cried for a little while.
I'll admit it outright. A part of me is looking forward to the challenge. Might as well embrace the new dark ages for what they'll provide us: fuel. This band, though not overtly political, did what it could in a very small way. We registered people to vote at shows. We voted ourselves. Could we have done more? Certainly. Is that our responsibility? Yes. And no.
We will do what we do best: express ourselves however we like, make art we love, be kind to each other and those around us, support creativity in all shapes and sizes....and try to infect others with the urge to do likewise. That, I believe, is the most powerful asset we, and all artists, have. More so than waving a flag for a candidate or a cause.
It's a time-tested fact. In dark and oppressive political times the artistic kilns of revolution and expression are set ablaze.
Let it begin here, my friends.
I went to my bunk and thought about what it really meant that Bush was going to be the president. The damage to the environment, the lives that will be lost, the progress twisted. I cried for a little while.
I'll admit it outright. A part of me is looking forward to the challenge. Might as well embrace the new dark ages for what they'll provide us: fuel. This band, though not overtly political, did what it could in a very small way. We registered people to vote at shows. We voted ourselves. Could we have done more? Certainly. Is that our responsibility? Yes. And no.
We will do what we do best: express ourselves however we like, make art we love, be kind to each other and those around us, support creativity in all shapes and sizes....and try to infect others with the urge to do likewise. That, I believe, is the most powerful asset we, and all artists, have. More so than waving a flag for a candidate or a cause.
It's a time-tested fact. In dark and oppressive political times the artistic kilns of revolution and expression are set ablaze.
Let it begin here, my friends.
Thursday, October 21, 2004
10/21/04
we're stuck in florida, and it's only about 12 days to the election. is it a sign? maybe we'll stay here and count ballots. anything to help the cause. "one for bush, one for kerry, one for bush....um, two for kerry, three for kerry....one for brian, one for amanda, one for noam chomsky...."
the tour has been wonderful and hard so far. touring in a bus for the first time has been a huge relief (no more schlepping our shit every which way every night and morning) but it leaves one with a feeling of complete impermenance. as if we're heading somewhere and never actually arrive. there's also very little space to spead out and make a mess, which i tend to need. at least every few days.
the local shows in the south have been pretty well attended and the people we've been meeting have been inspiring and beautiful. performers have just begun to emerge from the woodwork in different places and the brigade is gaining momentum. kansas city was a trip and a half...we flew in for one show to support pj harvey and sonic youth at a large theater. since we'd been getting radio play (a lot of it) we were astounded to actually play to a captive audience of about 2000 folks who were familiar with the album and completely into the show.....we'd expected to feel like an opener (with everybody sort of milling in and curiosly checking us out, at best). it felt incredible, quite a step up for our wee band. pj harvey cancelled (something having to do with a missed flight or a canadian border holdup). i was disappointed not to be able to meet her, but we did get to play a longer set. the folks from sonic youth were plenty friendly and had very kind things to say and share.
the baby porcupines that were vigorously mating in my throat region have called a truce and seem to be huddling together for warmth but threaten to get it on at little prompting (lack of sleep and lots of talking seems to get the little buggers going at it). i soothe them with herbal teas and try to keep my stress level at a minimum, which is difficult as that often requires ignoring everyone and everything around me to keep my head on straight. staying out of everybody's headtrips and problems while living in close quarters is not an easy task, and can feel downright insensitive at times, but it's pretty necessary to maintain your own sanity and protect yourself. my mom taught me that. hi mom! i love you!
i also was intrigued at somebody's post on the dolls' forum about the current meaning of cabaret, and thought i'd cross-post my musings here.
good morning, eveybody........
........................
i don't claim to be any sort of expert on cabaret or the weimar era. in fact, i probably hold my romantic views as fast as the average citizen...i associate the cabaret with a fantasy of an era that we can only be familiar with through books, films and other seond-hand impressions (and therefore, the romanticising of others) of a time that is now gone. however, the cabaret as an idea did not begin and end with weimar germany, even though that's the "classic" cabaret. christopher isherwood's novels and berlin stories, which were turned into a play, which were in turn turned into the musical "cabaret", which in turn was made into the joel gray/liza minelli film is a beautiful example of how post-modern this all gets....the story which feds the fantasy which feeds the story which feeds the artform which feeds the fantasy, etc etc ad infinitum. but there was also the cabaret of paris, the cabarets in new orleans, the vaudleville everywhere, the dadists, the beat culture of the fifties....the spirit of what cabaret means keeps getting captured again and again in different generations and places, it just gets tagged with a different label. for me, the concept of "cabaret" isn't the particular musical styling, it's the spirit in which it is created and brought into the world.
so when i answer these questions, i must be honest: i'm not trying to re-create the weimar berlin cabaret, i'm not trying to start a cult, i'm not trying to do anything excpet kick-start in other people the romantic fantasy which i've always had and i know many others share....to create a space, even just an hour or two, in which everybody and anybody can take part: a spot in a dull world which keeps getting more and more frightening where everybody bands together and makes alot of meaningful noise, where self-expression is demanded, where risk-taking is honored, where art is god and where the rules of everyday life and coduct are forgotten for a while.
some of us will read up on it, take all the christpoher isherwood books out of the libabry and study the dissonant chord changes of kurt weill, some of us will lock ourselves in out rooms and try to memorize the Dada Almanac, some of us will rent "blue angel" and watch it countless times" and write essays about dietrich's influence on the transgendered community, and others will simply come for the show. let posterity show that a very valiant attempt was made at some point in the early 2000's by a group of people, musicians, aritsts, performers and common folk to fight against the overwhelming ennui of the cultural climate. the folks a few decades down the road may find the same inspiration from our efforts.
the tour has been wonderful and hard so far. touring in a bus for the first time has been a huge relief (no more schlepping our shit every which way every night and morning) but it leaves one with a feeling of complete impermenance. as if we're heading somewhere and never actually arrive. there's also very little space to spead out and make a mess, which i tend to need. at least every few days.
the local shows in the south have been pretty well attended and the people we've been meeting have been inspiring and beautiful. performers have just begun to emerge from the woodwork in different places and the brigade is gaining momentum. kansas city was a trip and a half...we flew in for one show to support pj harvey and sonic youth at a large theater. since we'd been getting radio play (a lot of it) we were astounded to actually play to a captive audience of about 2000 folks who were familiar with the album and completely into the show.....we'd expected to feel like an opener (with everybody sort of milling in and curiosly checking us out, at best). it felt incredible, quite a step up for our wee band. pj harvey cancelled (something having to do with a missed flight or a canadian border holdup). i was disappointed not to be able to meet her, but we did get to play a longer set. the folks from sonic youth were plenty friendly and had very kind things to say and share.
the baby porcupines that were vigorously mating in my throat region have called a truce and seem to be huddling together for warmth but threaten to get it on at little prompting (lack of sleep and lots of talking seems to get the little buggers going at it). i soothe them with herbal teas and try to keep my stress level at a minimum, which is difficult as that often requires ignoring everyone and everything around me to keep my head on straight. staying out of everybody's headtrips and problems while living in close quarters is not an easy task, and can feel downright insensitive at times, but it's pretty necessary to maintain your own sanity and protect yourself. my mom taught me that. hi mom! i love you!
i also was intrigued at somebody's post on the dolls' forum about the current meaning of cabaret, and thought i'd cross-post my musings here.
good morning, eveybody........
........................
i don't claim to be any sort of expert on cabaret or the weimar era. in fact, i probably hold my romantic views as fast as the average citizen...i associate the cabaret with a fantasy of an era that we can only be familiar with through books, films and other seond-hand impressions (and therefore, the romanticising of others) of a time that is now gone. however, the cabaret as an idea did not begin and end with weimar germany, even though that's the "classic" cabaret. christopher isherwood's novels and berlin stories, which were turned into a play, which were in turn turned into the musical "cabaret", which in turn was made into the joel gray/liza minelli film is a beautiful example of how post-modern this all gets....the story which feds the fantasy which feeds the story which feeds the artform which feeds the fantasy, etc etc ad infinitum. but there was also the cabaret of paris, the cabarets in new orleans, the vaudleville everywhere, the dadists, the beat culture of the fifties....the spirit of what cabaret means keeps getting captured again and again in different generations and places, it just gets tagged with a different label. for me, the concept of "cabaret" isn't the particular musical styling, it's the spirit in which it is created and brought into the world.
so when i answer these questions, i must be honest: i'm not trying to re-create the weimar berlin cabaret, i'm not trying to start a cult, i'm not trying to do anything excpet kick-start in other people the romantic fantasy which i've always had and i know many others share....to create a space, even just an hour or two, in which everybody and anybody can take part: a spot in a dull world which keeps getting more and more frightening where everybody bands together and makes alot of meaningful noise, where self-expression is demanded, where risk-taking is honored, where art is god and where the rules of everyday life and coduct are forgotten for a while.
some of us will read up on it, take all the christpoher isherwood books out of the libabry and study the dissonant chord changes of kurt weill, some of us will lock ourselves in out rooms and try to memorize the Dada Almanac, some of us will rent "blue angel" and watch it countless times" and write essays about dietrich's influence on the transgendered community, and others will simply come for the show. let posterity show that a very valiant attempt was made at some point in the early 2000's by a group of people, musicians, aritsts, performers and common folk to fight against the overwhelming ennui of the cultural climate. the folks a few decades down the road may find the same inspiration from our efforts.
Tuesday, October 05, 2004
10/05/04 - HAAAAAAAAAAAACK
things are wonderful despite the fact that i have a cough and throat infection and feel like two baby porcupines are making love behind my mouth each time i breathe.
the european tour was magnificent. i hope to learn how to post the digital pictures i took while we're on the US leg of tour. London, Berlin, Brussels and Paris were all sold out and the euorpean people seemed to take quite a shine to the dresden dolls. the NME is already gossiping about us (surely a sign of imminent downfall), we've gotten rave reviews in the german, dutch and UK press and i'm generally feeling wonderful(except for the fucking porcupines. right now they are dry-humping).
Brian sliced his neck open with a broken umbrella handle in Berlin during a TV-shoot for a cultural show called Polylux. He was dueling the cameraman. We have it all on film. Six stitches, and a very sexy looking scar.
We've had a matter of hours, it seems, to come home and regroup and get our shit washed and good to go for our US tour, which is kicking off in Austin, TX this friday (go, porcupines, go! fly far, far, away!).
The schedule is pretty grueling but we have a new convenience of modern rock touring: the TOUR BUS, in which The Dresden Dolls and Count Zero (and after the NYC show: The Ditty Bops) will all sleep in little pods like larvae and get on ech other's nerves with our personal grooming habits. It's like camp, except people are hungover.
the european tour was magnificent. i hope to learn how to post the digital pictures i took while we're on the US leg of tour. London, Berlin, Brussels and Paris were all sold out and the euorpean people seemed to take quite a shine to the dresden dolls. the NME is already gossiping about us (surely a sign of imminent downfall), we've gotten rave reviews in the german, dutch and UK press and i'm generally feeling wonderful(except for the fucking porcupines. right now they are dry-humping).
Brian sliced his neck open with a broken umbrella handle in Berlin during a TV-shoot for a cultural show called Polylux. He was dueling the cameraman. We have it all on film. Six stitches, and a very sexy looking scar.
We've had a matter of hours, it seems, to come home and regroup and get our shit washed and good to go for our US tour, which is kicking off in Austin, TX this friday (go, porcupines, go! fly far, far, away!).
The schedule is pretty grueling but we have a new convenience of modern rock touring: the TOUR BUS, in which The Dresden Dolls and Count Zero (and after the NYC show: The Ditty Bops) will all sleep in little pods like larvae and get on ech other's nerves with our personal grooming habits. It's like camp, except people are hungover.
Wednesday, September 15, 2004
09/15/04 - "Father snores as his wife gets into her dressing gown...."
The idea of leaving my home for about three months of touring has me feeling miserable and ecstatic at the same time. While touring is wonderful in so many ways.....clubs, people, performing, ahhh, the limelight, ahhhh, the change of scenery, I have to admit it....it can feel like torture sometimes. Not because I don't enjoy it, but because it prevents me from doing the things that I want....writing, thinking and being alone. I am a homebody. I like to drink tea and read the paper and take walks and write music. I can't write on the road. Even if there was physical space and time carved out, I can't imagine plugging a keyboard into a socket in an empty room and thinking "ok. I have an hour." The only way I've ever written is spontaneously. Ride bike to store, have idea, ride bike home, cancel plans, write song instead. Taking that idea, jotting it down and returning to it the next day is about as effective as ligthing a cigarette you plan on smoking sometime next week. Once that shit it lit, you smoke it.
Then again, what am I writing for? Why am I being so fucking hard on myself? We have scads of material, plenty to fill up another record, or two, or three (well, the third record would probably sound like schlager)....so why can't I just let it go? I suppose in my own selfish way I just can't stand the restraint involved in touring life. there's almost no room for spontonaeity, which is the fabric of my existence at home. Seriously, I try to plan nothing. That way, if I am hungry, I eat. If I want to go for a walk, I go. If a song hits, I can write it. On tour, freedom of choice is narrowed down to what flavor sugared beverage this particular gas station has to offer. Splendid.
The other compoudning issue is this one: most of what I write is an outgrowth of the breadth of experince of my day-to-day existance. For a person like me, touring in close quarters with a bunch of friends and aquaintances and being surrounded by people 99% of any given day requires a certain level of patience that takes up a lot of energy. My mind doesn't spend time wandering creativly, it spends time trying to socially balance with the other humans. Even around people who I know very well, people who I love....it doesn't happen. My mind just doesn't function the way it does when it's alone.
Then again, what am I writing for? Why am I being so fucking hard on myself? We have scads of material, plenty to fill up another record, or two, or three (well, the third record would probably sound like schlager)....so why can't I just let it go? I suppose in my own selfish way I just can't stand the restraint involved in touring life. there's almost no room for spontonaeity, which is the fabric of my existence at home. Seriously, I try to plan nothing. That way, if I am hungry, I eat. If I want to go for a walk, I go. If a song hits, I can write it. On tour, freedom of choice is narrowed down to what flavor sugared beverage this particular gas station has to offer. Splendid.
The other compoudning issue is this one: most of what I write is an outgrowth of the breadth of experince of my day-to-day existance. For a person like me, touring in close quarters with a bunch of friends and aquaintances and being surrounded by people 99% of any given day requires a certain level of patience that takes up a lot of energy. My mind doesn't spend time wandering creativly, it spends time trying to socially balance with the other humans. Even around people who I know very well, people who I love....it doesn't happen. My mind just doesn't function the way it does when it's alone.
Saturday, August 28, 2004
08/28/04 - Back from Tour, August 2004
This one was more head-spinning than the last. I honestly had little idea what to expect this time round, and most everything exceeded what little I had expected. Chicago and all of the California shows sold out. All of the other shows were packed. Where are these people coming from? Did my mom send them all secretly?
Watching our fanbase start to organically grow without teeth-pulling is astounding. Seeing an audience so genuinely excited (about ANYTHING these days for christs sake) is about all I can ask for. I simply offer up my prayers to whatever gods are above (John? George? Nina? Janis? Klaus?) that my fragile little voice hold out as well as it has. The constant talking is killing it. After the San Fransisco show I had Pope design a tasteful "I WOULD ABSOLUTLEY LOVE TO TALK TO YOU BUT I'VE MOSTLY LOST MY VOICE PLEASE ACCEPT SIGN LANGUAGE AS AN ERSATZ FORM OF COMMUNICATION AND GRATITUDE" message on my forehead. (well, it wasn't QUITE that long).
The performers that joined us across the land were beyond amazing.
It started with Cirque Eloize www.cirque-eloize.com in Montreal doing some amazing acts with a huge aluminum wheel called the "Cyr Wheel" and some sketch acts (a sad note: Krin, the beautfiul girl who played the "Bald Ballerina" in the Wig-Juggling act had a terrible fall from a high wire in rehearsal last week. She broke both wrists and her jaw. We're all bummed).
Beautiful statues and strip-tease in Toronto (I especially loved the "White Wedding" strip). Excellent man-lying-on-nails-and-walking-on-glass acts in Detroit, handmade shirts in Minneapolis, and coin-operated hula-hoopers in San Diego.
San Fransisco and LA were tied for first.
LA produced a Puppet-Theater-Hoopskirt that housed Brian-and-Amanda marionettes, Swing dancers, Nothings-Shockingesque belly-dancers and an impromptu stage-crashing girl dressed as Holly Hobby On Acid who nearly caused us all death by flinging snake-stuffing-beads in all directions during "Coin-Operated Boy". Brian attempted to eject her by launching her face-first into the front row, old school style, after which she did not take the hint and bounced back onto stage....continuing to spray us all with snake-stuffing. Finally a bouncer came to the rescue and removed strange Snake-Twirling-Stuffing-Spraying-Girl from the stage forever. Brian and I stopped the song, shook the snake-stuffing out of my keyboard and did a small rain dance to dispell the rest of the bad mojo. We later heard her protests and declarations of "But it's ART, man!!!" Yes, it is art. It is also art if I shoot you in the arm. Remember the sixties?
San Fransisco boasted an entire puppet theater on stage, a group of three Serbian sisters singing the most haunting a cappella music I've ever heard, and an army of living statues. And enough flowers to bury a whole village with. It was a beautiful sight.
Portland was a pro-choice benefit and Brian performed an astonishing feat: Drumming with No Neck. He pulled it off splendidly and no-one ever noticed the difference. Seattle was awash in yet more living statues and performance artists and a beautiful hand-made backdrop of the Dresden skyline at night.
All of the performers were magnificent, and are now Honorary Members of The Good Patient Club. Congratulations, ladies and gentlemen.
The bands we played with were also unparalleled, especially Devotchka (with whom we played in Detroit, Chicago and Minneapolis). Fans of Wolrd/Inferno Friendship Society and The Dresden Dolls will cream over these guys. They have a hot chick playing Sousaphone...come on, now: www.devotchka.net.
If you have any photos from the tour, post them on the forum: www.shadowbox.net, we would love to see.
Meanwhile, how is Amanda? Amanda is tired and having an unusually difficult time kick-starting herself into action on this particular tour hiatus. I'm really started to dread the feeling that life is going to become a series of hiatuses (?) between endless touring and that real life will not resume for a long time. It usually takes me at least four days to unpack and clear out the shit from my head and floor and inbox. After that, it feels like a constant game of catch-up and I have almost no disclipline to carve out time to sit at the piano and re-connect with the self that writes songs. Although I did begin a lovesong for eminem last night. It sounds like one of those old blondie raps. I love blondie. I'm just bitching. I have my period.
Being recognized everywhere is also starting to make me wonder what life is going to feel like if we keep getting more and more well-known, which sort of seems inevitable at this point. I daily find it a shame that there is no published book entitled "How To Be a Moderately Burgeoning Boston and/or National Success in the Music Business". In fact, I am thinking about penning it myself. Chapters will include: "Boston Massacre: Facing the Hatred of the Boston Rock Scene", "That's Entertainment: Is Your Public Self-consciousness Running Your Life?", "We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful: Is Everybody Treating You Differenty, Or Are You Just Paranoid?" and "Mother Should I Build A Wall?: Helping Your Mom Face The Fact That You Are an Actually Legitimate Successful Adult and Don't Need Her Advice About What To Post On Your Web Diary". There will be an entire chapter devoted to working through the collision of Pride and Guilt when walking by a beautiful girl or boy wearing a Dresden Dolls Shirt and not wanting to seem full of myself (...so not saying a word and hiding behind a car).
Which reminds me of a hilarious story. A few months ago, before our big show at the Paradise, I was walking my bicycle past Newbury Comics on Newbury Street and a friendly-looking bloke in a patagonia fleece and a baseball cap shoved a handbill in my direction. Expecting a flyer for an in-store appearance by John Mayer, I was shocked that to see that it was for my own show the next night. He was a comrade! I looked him straight in the face (assuming that the eyebrows on the flyer he was holding and the real deal might click) and said "I'm actually planning on going." Didn't register. He went on about how great the band was and I stood there listening, feeling like I was in some bizarre twilight zone christmas past. Then I biked on, thinking: "Amanda, your life is most certainly about to get even stranger."
(and)
PUNK CABARET IS FREEDOM.
love
amanda
Watching our fanbase start to organically grow without teeth-pulling is astounding. Seeing an audience so genuinely excited (about ANYTHING these days for christs sake) is about all I can ask for. I simply offer up my prayers to whatever gods are above (John? George? Nina? Janis? Klaus?) that my fragile little voice hold out as well as it has. The constant talking is killing it. After the San Fransisco show I had Pope design a tasteful "I WOULD ABSOLUTLEY LOVE TO TALK TO YOU BUT I'VE MOSTLY LOST MY VOICE PLEASE ACCEPT SIGN LANGUAGE AS AN ERSATZ FORM OF COMMUNICATION AND GRATITUDE" message on my forehead. (well, it wasn't QUITE that long).
The performers that joined us across the land were beyond amazing.
It started with Cirque Eloize www.cirque-eloize.com in Montreal doing some amazing acts with a huge aluminum wheel called the "Cyr Wheel" and some sketch acts (a sad note: Krin, the beautfiul girl who played the "Bald Ballerina" in the Wig-Juggling act had a terrible fall from a high wire in rehearsal last week. She broke both wrists and her jaw. We're all bummed).
Beautiful statues and strip-tease in Toronto (I especially loved the "White Wedding" strip). Excellent man-lying-on-nails-and-walking-on-glass acts in Detroit, handmade shirts in Minneapolis, and coin-operated hula-hoopers in San Diego.
San Fransisco and LA were tied for first.
LA produced a Puppet-Theater-Hoopskirt that housed Brian-and-Amanda marionettes, Swing dancers, Nothings-Shockingesque belly-dancers and an impromptu stage-crashing girl dressed as Holly Hobby On Acid who nearly caused us all death by flinging snake-stuffing-beads in all directions during "Coin-Operated Boy". Brian attempted to eject her by launching her face-first into the front row, old school style, after which she did not take the hint and bounced back onto stage....continuing to spray us all with snake-stuffing. Finally a bouncer came to the rescue and removed strange Snake-Twirling-Stuffing-Spraying-Girl from the stage forever. Brian and I stopped the song, shook the snake-stuffing out of my keyboard and did a small rain dance to dispell the rest of the bad mojo. We later heard her protests and declarations of "But it's ART, man!!!" Yes, it is art. It is also art if I shoot you in the arm. Remember the sixties?
San Fransisco boasted an entire puppet theater on stage, a group of three Serbian sisters singing the most haunting a cappella music I've ever heard, and an army of living statues. And enough flowers to bury a whole village with. It was a beautiful sight.
Portland was a pro-choice benefit and Brian performed an astonishing feat: Drumming with No Neck. He pulled it off splendidly and no-one ever noticed the difference. Seattle was awash in yet more living statues and performance artists and a beautiful hand-made backdrop of the Dresden skyline at night.
All of the performers were magnificent, and are now Honorary Members of The Good Patient Club. Congratulations, ladies and gentlemen.
The bands we played with were also unparalleled, especially Devotchka (with whom we played in Detroit, Chicago and Minneapolis). Fans of Wolrd/Inferno Friendship Society and The Dresden Dolls will cream over these guys. They have a hot chick playing Sousaphone...come on, now: www.devotchka.net.
If you have any photos from the tour, post them on the forum: www.shadowbox.net, we would love to see.
Meanwhile, how is Amanda? Amanda is tired and having an unusually difficult time kick-starting herself into action on this particular tour hiatus. I'm really started to dread the feeling that life is going to become a series of hiatuses (?) between endless touring and that real life will not resume for a long time. It usually takes me at least four days to unpack and clear out the shit from my head and floor and inbox. After that, it feels like a constant game of catch-up and I have almost no disclipline to carve out time to sit at the piano and re-connect with the self that writes songs. Although I did begin a lovesong for eminem last night. It sounds like one of those old blondie raps. I love blondie. I'm just bitching. I have my period.
Being recognized everywhere is also starting to make me wonder what life is going to feel like if we keep getting more and more well-known, which sort of seems inevitable at this point. I daily find it a shame that there is no published book entitled "How To Be a Moderately Burgeoning Boston and/or National Success in the Music Business". In fact, I am thinking about penning it myself. Chapters will include: "Boston Massacre: Facing the Hatred of the Boston Rock Scene", "That's Entertainment: Is Your Public Self-consciousness Running Your Life?", "We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful: Is Everybody Treating You Differenty, Or Are You Just Paranoid?" and "Mother Should I Build A Wall?: Helping Your Mom Face The Fact That You Are an Actually Legitimate Successful Adult and Don't Need Her Advice About What To Post On Your Web Diary". There will be an entire chapter devoted to working through the collision of Pride and Guilt when walking by a beautiful girl or boy wearing a Dresden Dolls Shirt and not wanting to seem full of myself (...so not saying a word and hiding behind a car).
Which reminds me of a hilarious story. A few months ago, before our big show at the Paradise, I was walking my bicycle past Newbury Comics on Newbury Street and a friendly-looking bloke in a patagonia fleece and a baseball cap shoved a handbill in my direction. Expecting a flyer for an in-store appearance by John Mayer, I was shocked that to see that it was for my own show the next night. He was a comrade! I looked him straight in the face (assuming that the eyebrows on the flyer he was holding and the real deal might click) and said "I'm actually planning on going." Didn't register. He went on about how great the band was and I stood there listening, feeling like I was in some bizarre twilight zone christmas past. Then I biked on, thinking: "Amanda, your life is most certainly about to get even stranger."
(and)
PUNK CABARET IS FREEDOM.
love
amanda
Tuesday, July 13, 2004
07/13/04
we're headed into the studio today (camp street, with sean slade) to put "war pigs" onto magentic tape for posterity. there's been talk of using it on the next Rock Against Bush compilation...though i think a better idea would be to rent a red white and blue hearse during the Republican National Convention and blast it through speakers from the roof while driving around NYC. so many ideas, so little time.
the video for "coin-operated boy" is finished and it looks absolutely ridiculous, in the lovliest way.
it will probably be seeing the light of day on the site and in the world within the next few months.
it was an exhausting four days of shooting and the crew were just fucking heaven-sent...it was really an honour to be around so many people working such long, arduous hours for the glory of art. we couldn't thank these people enough, from the lighting crew to the extras to the people who just flew in to lend a hand with art and costumes or slather some make-up on or donate food...what an expereince. we're humbled.
favorite new music of mine.....
i've recently discovered Muse and it's love at first listen.
I've also been listening to Yann Tiersen. he's the composer of the "amelie" soundtrack
and has some great stuff up his sleeve: www.yanntiersen.com
i'm also re-re-discovering the smiths. i do this every few years. what an incredible band.
i recommmend "the queen is dead" or "meat is murder" for the uninitiated. the more i listen
to this stuff the more i realize that it must have had extreme subconscious workings
on my own writing when i was a teenager.
the video for "coin-operated boy" is finished and it looks absolutely ridiculous, in the lovliest way.
it will probably be seeing the light of day on the site and in the world within the next few months.
it was an exhausting four days of shooting and the crew were just fucking heaven-sent...it was really an honour to be around so many people working such long, arduous hours for the glory of art. we couldn't thank these people enough, from the lighting crew to the extras to the people who just flew in to lend a hand with art and costumes or slather some make-up on or donate food...what an expereince. we're humbled.
favorite new music of mine.....
i've recently discovered Muse and it's love at first listen.
I've also been listening to Yann Tiersen. he's the composer of the "amelie" soundtrack
and has some great stuff up his sleeve: www.yanntiersen.com
i'm also re-re-discovering the smiths. i do this every few years. what an incredible band.
i recommmend "the queen is dead" or "meat is murder" for the uninitiated. the more i listen
to this stuff the more i realize that it must have had extreme subconscious workings
on my own writing when i was a teenager.
Monday, July 05, 2004
Friday, July 02, 2004
07/02/04
i wonder how much of myself i'm really entitled or expected to reveal.
everybody sees something different, desires something different, everybody including my own various incarnations from day to day.
perhaps these posts would be more satisfying if they self-destructed within fifteen minutes of creation.
The truth changes the moment we utter it....we edit, we rethink, we press 3 and erase and record again...trying to find the perfect words.
sometimes i feel like a complete paradox. some people assume that i am this self-confident woman full of purposeful direction. but it's all relative. some of the most convincing arguments are borne of clever
overcompensation.
i have the sinking feeling that the more people know about me and my life (and the more fulfilled my little narcissistic fantasy becomes)the more danger i am in; yet the more opportunity i have to take it all and knead it like bread and pound it into something good, something worthwhile, something....useful...?
everybody sees something different, desires something different, everybody including my own various incarnations from day to day.
perhaps these posts would be more satisfying if they self-destructed within fifteen minutes of creation.
The truth changes the moment we utter it....we edit, we rethink, we press 3 and erase and record again...trying to find the perfect words.
sometimes i feel like a complete paradox. some people assume that i am this self-confident woman full of purposeful direction. but it's all relative. some of the most convincing arguments are borne of clever
overcompensation.
i have the sinking feeling that the more people know about me and my life (and the more fulfilled my little narcissistic fantasy becomes)the more danger i am in; yet the more opportunity i have to take it all and knead it like bread and pound it into something good, something worthwhile, something....useful...?
Sunday, June 27, 2004
06/27/04 - Mystery Animal
i've been packing deep into the night (we leave for paris in the morning) and out of the blue, this scrawny little little siamese kitten comes walking into my aprtment. how the hell this happened i don't know, but it must be a sign from god. .
I have no clue where she came from, but sh'es been hanging out with me, playing with all my underwear and banging into my feet for the past half hour. she has a sick meoul, very tortured.
I've named her Rattina Von Arnim. She looks like an albino rat.
oi
(she just stepped onto the keyboard and that's what she wrote. awesome!)
I have no clue where she came from, but sh'es been hanging out with me, playing with all my underwear and banging into my feet for the past half hour. she has a sick meoul, very tortured.
I've named her Rattina Von Arnim. She looks like an albino rat.
oi
(she just stepped onto the keyboard and that's what she wrote. awesome!)
Saturday, June 26, 2004
06/26/04 - Los Angeles, Avril Lavigne and 50 Cent
We had a schedule from hell: 48 hours packed with three shows and not enough naps for my taste.
After our show at The Viper Room (which was excellent - wonderful club) i headed around the block to collect myself. Towards the end of the night I went down to the little hotel bar with our manger for a nightcap (Brian was already in LaLaLand). I bumped into Avril Lavigne in the bathroom. Every single one of my mothering insticnts (coupled with my meglomaniacal insticts) kicked in and I started wondering....what could I possibly say to this girl that would be meaningful? I wanted to reach down her throat, grab her soul and give it a sound shaking.
She was trashed, however, and we instead talked about my eyebrows. I told her about the band. We wound up sitting across a table from each other and I swear to god, I couldn't keep my eyes off her. Here is this young pop starlet, only 19, and I feel like she represents the past and the future all at once. I wanted, at her age, to be in her position so bady...making records, being seen and heard, the focus of everyone's attention...but instead I was hiding out, more or less, stewing and fermenting.
And thank god I didn't get my wish, I think nowadays...if I had been in her position when I was 19 I'd be fucked right now. I wouldn't have learned anything about anything. I wouldn't have had a chance to live life, have "normal" relationships (hilarious, isn't that) scrape together rent, and generally fuck around trying to figure it all out. But I see here, in these mascara-heavy eyes peering at me through their purple cosmo: is she the future i've set in store for myself? This girl can't walk into a bar without everyone taking note and acting excited or desperatley non-chalant. She's famous.
And what are we? We just sold out our first show in LA, we're getting rotation on MTV, we're getting known...is this what I'm in store for? Avril looks so desperate in a way, sprawling across that armchair on her girlfriend's lap, screaming pop songs at the top of her lungs, knowing that the world and the bar is her audience, whether they like it or not. She's only 19. I was certainly drunk nearly every night back then. Good night, Avril...I hope real life comes to you in the form of a smashed cosmopolitan.
On another, even more ridiculous, note....50 Cent was on our plane back from LA.
I met him briefly and gave him our disc, which he seemed moderatly fascinated by.
I addressed him as "Mr. Cent" and he told me very graciosuly that I could call him "Fitty".
Apparently he has some new porn flicks in the works, and I will be strongly considered
if he is in need of an "intellectual, suburban white girl".
Onto Paris.
After our show at The Viper Room (which was excellent - wonderful club) i headed around the block to collect myself. Towards the end of the night I went down to the little hotel bar with our manger for a nightcap (Brian was already in LaLaLand). I bumped into Avril Lavigne in the bathroom. Every single one of my mothering insticnts (coupled with my meglomaniacal insticts) kicked in and I started wondering....what could I possibly say to this girl that would be meaningful? I wanted to reach down her throat, grab her soul and give it a sound shaking.
She was trashed, however, and we instead talked about my eyebrows. I told her about the band. We wound up sitting across a table from each other and I swear to god, I couldn't keep my eyes off her. Here is this young pop starlet, only 19, and I feel like she represents the past and the future all at once. I wanted, at her age, to be in her position so bady...making records, being seen and heard, the focus of everyone's attention...but instead I was hiding out, more or less, stewing and fermenting.
And thank god I didn't get my wish, I think nowadays...if I had been in her position when I was 19 I'd be fucked right now. I wouldn't have learned anything about anything. I wouldn't have had a chance to live life, have "normal" relationships (hilarious, isn't that) scrape together rent, and generally fuck around trying to figure it all out. But I see here, in these mascara-heavy eyes peering at me through their purple cosmo: is she the future i've set in store for myself? This girl can't walk into a bar without everyone taking note and acting excited or desperatley non-chalant. She's famous.
And what are we? We just sold out our first show in LA, we're getting rotation on MTV, we're getting known...is this what I'm in store for? Avril looks so desperate in a way, sprawling across that armchair on her girlfriend's lap, screaming pop songs at the top of her lungs, knowing that the world and the bar is her audience, whether they like it or not. She's only 19. I was certainly drunk nearly every night back then. Good night, Avril...I hope real life comes to you in the form of a smashed cosmopolitan.
On another, even more ridiculous, note....50 Cent was on our plane back from LA.
I met him briefly and gave him our disc, which he seemed moderatly fascinated by.
I addressed him as "Mr. Cent" and he told me very graciosuly that I could call him "Fitty".
Apparently he has some new porn flicks in the works, and I will be strongly considered
if he is in need of an "intellectual, suburban white girl".
Onto Paris.
Sunday, May 23, 2004
05/23/04
i found a new piano, finally......a yamaha. we're still getting to know each other, it's awkward, but going well.
things have been going along at an oddly calm pace, what for all that's been happening.
Lollapalooza has been confirmed, the "girl a" video is being aired on MTV2, and wait a second...
so we spend our days pondering what all this means. not being in any rush to be rich and/or famous, it's all a very interesting learning experience if nothing else. it's certainly a little strange, sometimes nice, and sometimes disconcerting to watch how people change. they glaze you with a faint air of celebrity and treat you differently. sometimes it's nice, sometimes it's just ridiculous. but we have each other, thank god, so hopefully no-one's head will get lost in this process.
i began working, finally, on a song i've had in my head for months. it's almost a play in itself....with lots of back-and-forth diologue.
it's a breakfast meeting between me, tori amos, courtney love, avril lavigne, bjork, pink, and liz phair.
it's hilarious.
i've been organizing...tyring to organize....tapes and minidiscs and thousands of hours and ideas and papers and unfinished songs galore, there's not alot of hope yet but i'm working on it.
i have the feeling the next record will be even odler stuff thatn the first record...and i'll just keep reaching back....by the time we make our sixth record we'll be arranging the songs i wrote when i was 12. then nobody will like us anymore.
i am in love with Regina Spektor:
http://www.petermu.net/spektor/
i haven't found a musician i am quite so excited about in years.
her disc "Soviet Kitsch" has been stuck in my head for two weeks.
things have been going along at an oddly calm pace, what for all that's been happening.
Lollapalooza has been confirmed, the "girl a" video is being aired on MTV2, and wait a second...
so we spend our days pondering what all this means. not being in any rush to be rich and/or famous, it's all a very interesting learning experience if nothing else. it's certainly a little strange, sometimes nice, and sometimes disconcerting to watch how people change. they glaze you with a faint air of celebrity and treat you differently. sometimes it's nice, sometimes it's just ridiculous. but we have each other, thank god, so hopefully no-one's head will get lost in this process.
i began working, finally, on a song i've had in my head for months. it's almost a play in itself....with lots of back-and-forth diologue.
it's a breakfast meeting between me, tori amos, courtney love, avril lavigne, bjork, pink, and liz phair.
it's hilarious.
i've been organizing...tyring to organize....tapes and minidiscs and thousands of hours and ideas and papers and unfinished songs galore, there's not alot of hope yet but i'm working on it.
i have the feeling the next record will be even odler stuff thatn the first record...and i'll just keep reaching back....by the time we make our sixth record we'll be arranging the songs i wrote when i was 12. then nobody will like us anymore.
i am in love with Regina Spektor:
http://www.petermu.net/spektor/
i haven't found a musician i am quite so excited about in years.
her disc "Soviet Kitsch" has been stuck in my head for two weeks.
Tuesday, April 27, 2004
04/27/04
something happened today that was horrible enough to write about.
so, in the wonderful time off i'd had of late, i've been shopping for a new piano-friend.
the old piano-friend is not a friend at all, it's a clunky old brambach grand piano from the forties (if you're on the mailing list, you'll soon get a post that i am selling it for very very cheap, i think). it makes sounds like a piano only with the greatest amount of convincing. and with a few months home before we go away for tour all summer, i finally have some time to write.
so i have been hopping all over topwn, going to this store and that, answering want ads, following sheisty leads on craig's list, looking for a new friend.
today i was driving down the street in brookline and passed a little piano store.
"o look!", amanda thought, "a little piano store! how nice! i'll go in there and look at their pianos, and maybe one will be my new friend!!!"
so i went in. and they had lots of pianos and i started tinkling about on them (as one does when one is testing out pianos). and the salesman came over.
i asked him, how much is this piano? and this one? is it new? is it old? and he answered my questions and then went back to surfing internet porn while i kept tinkling around and testing, looking for the friend.
and then i found a nice one, it was bright and loud the way i think a piano should be and i sat down to play it in earnest.
and i played it the way i have played in 12 other piano stores and places in the past few weeks: some loud, some soft, some very loud, some pounding bass to see if it reverberates nicely, the ending of truce to see if it rings, and so forth. and after i had been playing for a minute the man came back.
he said "you are playing this piano way too loud." and he wanted me to leave.
i was so shocked that i didn't even think to say "are you out of your mind, moron? I am here to buy a piano, let me play whatever the hell i want!"
but i was just humiliated, and walked out. and was pondering all these things in my heart when a moment later my cellular phone rang and it was the producer of our next record, who has been helping me to find a new piano by listening to some of them, and all of a sudden i burst into tears and couldn't stop crying for a few minutes. i was amazed. i hadn't really thought it was all that upsetting. but it was. it hit that old nerve, that deep old wound of childhood carved out when i was never taken seriously and told that the so-called music i was banging out of the household piano wasn't music at all, it was just...noise.
but then a wonderful thing happened.
my loving and kind friend brian viglione was driving by the area and saw my blue car parked and stopped to look for me. and i told him my sad tale of the mean man that made me leave the store.
and while i sat across the street and spied through the large picture window in the front of the store, brian walked in and did his best impersonation of Hunter S. Thompson trying to buy a piano, acid-flashback nervous twitch and all.
He completely freaked the guy out. And got his card.
i posted the address to send friendly hate mail, but have taken it off.
the poor guy got inundated and i think the point got made.
so, in the wonderful time off i'd had of late, i've been shopping for a new piano-friend.
the old piano-friend is not a friend at all, it's a clunky old brambach grand piano from the forties (if you're on the mailing list, you'll soon get a post that i am selling it for very very cheap, i think). it makes sounds like a piano only with the greatest amount of convincing. and with a few months home before we go away for tour all summer, i finally have some time to write.
so i have been hopping all over topwn, going to this store and that, answering want ads, following sheisty leads on craig's list, looking for a new friend.
today i was driving down the street in brookline and passed a little piano store.
"o look!", amanda thought, "a little piano store! how nice! i'll go in there and look at their pianos, and maybe one will be my new friend!!!"
so i went in. and they had lots of pianos and i started tinkling about on them (as one does when one is testing out pianos). and the salesman came over.
i asked him, how much is this piano? and this one? is it new? is it old? and he answered my questions and then went back to surfing internet porn while i kept tinkling around and testing, looking for the friend.
and then i found a nice one, it was bright and loud the way i think a piano should be and i sat down to play it in earnest.
and i played it the way i have played in 12 other piano stores and places in the past few weeks: some loud, some soft, some very loud, some pounding bass to see if it reverberates nicely, the ending of truce to see if it rings, and so forth. and after i had been playing for a minute the man came back.
he said "you are playing this piano way too loud." and he wanted me to leave.
i was so shocked that i didn't even think to say "are you out of your mind, moron? I am here to buy a piano, let me play whatever the hell i want!"
but i was just humiliated, and walked out. and was pondering all these things in my heart when a moment later my cellular phone rang and it was the producer of our next record, who has been helping me to find a new piano by listening to some of them, and all of a sudden i burst into tears and couldn't stop crying for a few minutes. i was amazed. i hadn't really thought it was all that upsetting. but it was. it hit that old nerve, that deep old wound of childhood carved out when i was never taken seriously and told that the so-called music i was banging out of the household piano wasn't music at all, it was just...noise.
but then a wonderful thing happened.
my loving and kind friend brian viglione was driving by the area and saw my blue car parked and stopped to look for me. and i told him my sad tale of the mean man that made me leave the store.
and while i sat across the street and spied through the large picture window in the front of the store, brian walked in and did his best impersonation of Hunter S. Thompson trying to buy a piano, acid-flashback nervous twitch and all.
He completely freaked the guy out. And got his card.
i posted the address to send friendly hate mail, but have taken it off.
the poor guy got inundated and i think the point got made.
Wednesday, February 25, 2004
02/25/04
with less than 24 hours to spend in my apartment between trips, it's very amusing to see what happens when i open the front door at 8 pm at night.
first i delete spam. i don't answer anything, i just delete the spam and leave everything else. it's like squeezing an overripe pimple.
i put on a bowie cd very loud and started running around yipping and putting clothes that were piled three feet high from the photoshoot we did the morning we left for tourm while simlulataneously
sorting out the real mail and throwing away pieces of trash on the floor and putting objects in places closer to their natural habitats while cleaning a dish or two while replacing bedding tour items to the bed and putting tour tea back on the kitchen shelf (i don't know why i have to do that, i'm just going to pack it again tomorrow).
i like running while doing this, not walking, it makes it seem like more fun somehow.
about a year ago i misplaced my favorite fountain pen, it was small and green and belonged to my mother once.
also about a year ago, i recieved a very strange gift from a friend of my landlord's who swept in for a visit; he had been in some tropical country and brought me a collection of long little plastic bags with different exotic spices. i do not cook. but these were not in jars, and i couldnt just THROW THEM AWAY so i bundled them up in a rubber band and put them on the shelf in the kitchen.
about a half hour ago i found that the bundle had fallen onto the counter and when i picked it up it leaked white and i found that a small mouse friend had decided that the coconut powder was a tasty dinenr and that's why it must have fallen and that is why it was leaking white.
and the green fountain pen was lodged into the bundle of spices.
i really love nights like these.
this last tour was astounding....people in all different cities love our band. i am constantly amazed how the word of mouth is getting people out of their living rooms and into clubs in the middle of nowhere.
first i delete spam. i don't answer anything, i just delete the spam and leave everything else. it's like squeezing an overripe pimple.
i put on a bowie cd very loud and started running around yipping and putting clothes that were piled three feet high from the photoshoot we did the morning we left for tourm while simlulataneously
sorting out the real mail and throwing away pieces of trash on the floor and putting objects in places closer to their natural habitats while cleaning a dish or two while replacing bedding tour items to the bed and putting tour tea back on the kitchen shelf (i don't know why i have to do that, i'm just going to pack it again tomorrow).
i like running while doing this, not walking, it makes it seem like more fun somehow.
about a year ago i misplaced my favorite fountain pen, it was small and green and belonged to my mother once.
also about a year ago, i recieved a very strange gift from a friend of my landlord's who swept in for a visit; he had been in some tropical country and brought me a collection of long little plastic bags with different exotic spices. i do not cook. but these were not in jars, and i couldnt just THROW THEM AWAY so i bundled them up in a rubber band and put them on the shelf in the kitchen.
about a half hour ago i found that the bundle had fallen onto the counter and when i picked it up it leaked white and i found that a small mouse friend had decided that the coconut powder was a tasty dinenr and that's why it must have fallen and that is why it was leaking white.
and the green fountain pen was lodged into the bundle of spices.
i really love nights like these.
this last tour was astounding....people in all different cities love our band. i am constantly amazed how the word of mouth is getting people out of their living rooms and into clubs in the middle of nowhere.
Saturday, February 21, 2004
02/21/04
head.......is.........imploding.
please god, let me remember why i am doing this in the first place.......
make....music.......
make......music.........
must...make.....music......
not to answer phone calls, send press kits and answer endless emails.
it's happening very quickly, and when is there time to pee and take a walk?
my beau has recovered, and all of you who have sent supportive emails and stories are a constant reminder of how humanity overcomes the wickedness of constant internet communique.
he came home form rehab a few days ago and wouldn't fate just turn i's wicked turn and have me going off on endless tour just when i want to bury my head in someone's chest and remain there for a few months.
it's funny, if i had a graph of where my head wanders when it has a moment to wander.
a few years ago it was turns of phrase and theatrical stage sets and songs and songs and the occasional gas bill.
now it's booking agent business agent manager tour rider email phone email when will i maybe have an hour to drive to lexington and visit my family and curl up in a ball and
the piano has turned into a poetic resting place for unlistened-to cds that i buy on a whim.
but that's a lie.
death cab for cutie's new cd "transatlantacism" has played on repeat about 5 times and the lyrics and melodies remind me that music is there, it's there....buried under a pile of business and triumphant after all.
please god, let me remember why i am doing this in the first place.......
make....music.......
make......music.........
must...make.....music......
not to answer phone calls, send press kits and answer endless emails.
it's happening very quickly, and when is there time to pee and take a walk?
my beau has recovered, and all of you who have sent supportive emails and stories are a constant reminder of how humanity overcomes the wickedness of constant internet communique.
he came home form rehab a few days ago and wouldn't fate just turn i's wicked turn and have me going off on endless tour just when i want to bury my head in someone's chest and remain there for a few months.
it's funny, if i had a graph of where my head wanders when it has a moment to wander.
a few years ago it was turns of phrase and theatrical stage sets and songs and songs and the occasional gas bill.
now it's booking agent business agent manager tour rider email phone email when will i maybe have an hour to drive to lexington and visit my family and curl up in a ball and
the piano has turned into a poetic resting place for unlistened-to cds that i buy on a whim.
but that's a lie.
death cab for cutie's new cd "transatlantacism" has played on repeat about 5 times and the lyrics and melodies remind me that music is there, it's there....buried under a pile of business and triumphant after all.
Sunday, February 08, 2004
02/08/04 - and life goes on.....
my beau is doing fine. it's been an excruciating process but bit by bit he started to move his hands, and then his arms, and now he's able to sit up and he is breathing on his own (instead of letting that odd loud machine do it for him) and he should be going into rehab any day. He still cannot talk but there is an odd device that they screw into the hole in his neck(yow) that acts like a voicebox that allows him to talk a little bit at a time. I go in and visit every day i can, when we're not out of town, the hospital has become some weird peaceful second home, the salad bar in the hospital cafeteria is actually not half bad....and sometimes at the cashier counter the cook puts a plate of the leftover ends of loaves of sweet breads for passers-by to sample.....poppyseed bread.....marble chocolate bread.....I try to entertain him by reading some of my favorite short stories (the happy prince by oscar wilde is one of my favorites and i always cry when i get to the part at the end where the sparrow dies). Hospitals are such a foreign real-life world to enter when you are doing things that seem so unsubstantial all day. What is booking a rock show or writing a script to a video compared to the task that is being performed by a man only a little bit older than me, here at my side, deciding whether to take the trachiostomy out or not? what the fuck? what on EARTH am i doing with my life? once again, why did i not learn how to do something practical, something that did not involve getting attention for a living, like...building suspension bridges?
and every day the future is piling up with a scheulde that i don't even really believe in (sort of like the way I don't believe that people REALLY believe in the apocolypse and the rapture).
it's 4 in the morning and i've been up all night coming up wiht clever ideas for the video that pope is going to shoot for "missed me".....it'll be excellent. we shoot at the end of the month between tours and i think we will put out a DVD collection of 4 or 5 videos this coming fall. that seems very far away and also right around the bend. fucking hell, i can't wait for spring.
my two new favorite records:
rufus wainwright "want one": awesome....radiohead meets queen. i think we might cover the first song.
Sufjan Stevens "Greetings from Michigan State": some tracks I can't stand, but the rest I love. Brian loves this one and got it for me.
and every day the future is piling up with a scheulde that i don't even really believe in (sort of like the way I don't believe that people REALLY believe in the apocolypse and the rapture).
it's 4 in the morning and i've been up all night coming up wiht clever ideas for the video that pope is going to shoot for "missed me".....it'll be excellent. we shoot at the end of the month between tours and i think we will put out a DVD collection of 4 or 5 videos this coming fall. that seems very far away and also right around the bend. fucking hell, i can't wait for spring.
my two new favorite records:
rufus wainwright "want one": awesome....radiohead meets queen. i think we might cover the first song.
Sufjan Stevens "Greetings from Michigan State": some tracks I can't stand, but the rest I love. Brian loves this one and got it for me.
Sunday, January 18, 2004
01/18/04
the past few weeks of my life have got to get shelved in my life history as some of the most poetically insane.
on new years eve, just as the band was hitting stage at midnight, my newfound beau (of several months and many late-night talks and drives)
left the club in fright and pain and has been in the hospital ever since, practically unable to move. he's been diagnosed with Guillain-Barre Sydrome.....basically an auto-immune syndrome whereby your immune system flips out and starts attacking your own body (specifically, your nerve endings). He was in a hospital down in falmouth, MA, for a while (where I went to visit every day and, hi there, met his whole family - what pleasant circumstances) and watched him go from sitting up and talking to hardly being able to muster a cough. Then they transferred him to St. Elizabth's here in boston, and he's been on a respirator, unable to do anything but blink his eyes (and move his hands and head slightly) for about ten days.
I go in every day, only allowed to visit for a few minutes at each time, and watch the drama, and feel an incredible sort of love for this person who i have just barely gotten to know.
Meanwhile, the band has just agreed to enter into a massive distribution and promotion deal with a large label and my days are spent endlessly negotiating points of contracts with lawyers and other music business folk. this strange breed of people who i am just starting to understand: the music businessman. music. business. music business. i am still grappling with this one.
so imagine, if you will, that i am driving down cambridge street at top speed, apologizing to my pissed-off drummer that i am going to be late for load-out, because there is traffic on the way to the hospital. i get the call from the label that we are working with that this lawyer is pissed at that lawyer because this lawyer said that that lawyer was lawyering in a not-so lawyerly way, and that a conference call is in order so that the lawyerly men and the parties they are representing can all have one big old lawyer-like party on the phone while the fate of my delicate little band and stupid songs for the next, oh, ten years or so, is decided.
i tell them i need forty-five minutes and pull up to the hospital. i run up the hill. i've watched the hill get covered in snow a few times since he's been in there. it's like a time lapse photograph. his beard is growing, they won't shave him. his hair is growing. he looks beautiful. this time i brought the recording of the zeitgeist show, to play for him on a discman and some huge headphones i rousled up from the downstairs apartment. i had played half of the set specifically for him, knowing i would record it and bring it in. there's a new song that i wrote for him, and a set of cover songs that i know he would love. i crept in, the room was empty and i said hello, and we stared at each other for a while, and fell in love a little bit more, and i played him my songs and he wept and i wept and then the time was over and i went back to the car and the phone rang and within four minutes of having been there at his bedside i am hearing ".....have to get on the same page about the it's very important that we all understand that plenty of concessions and considerations have been made in order to fully perhaps you don;t fully understand the magnitude of what has been negotiated whether or not is not the issue in any event the.....(insert sci-fi special effects music, a la spaceship landing, pan to close-up of amanda's head slowly imploding)....", as i drive at top speed to get back to the house where brian is waiting so we can get the fuck out of town to make it to our show on the other side of the state in time for soundcheck.
the past two weeks have been like this. but it could have been no other way. here i am, realizing that nothing happening with my future or this band is important. my small-minded litle fantasies have not been allowed to breed for longer than a few milliseconds. in the ciritcal care unit, i was walking by twelve people on death's doorstep.
but everything will be fine.
elliott smith's "either/or" has not left my CD player in two weeks.
on new years eve, just as the band was hitting stage at midnight, my newfound beau (of several months and many late-night talks and drives)
left the club in fright and pain and has been in the hospital ever since, practically unable to move. he's been diagnosed with Guillain-Barre Sydrome.....basically an auto-immune syndrome whereby your immune system flips out and starts attacking your own body (specifically, your nerve endings). He was in a hospital down in falmouth, MA, for a while (where I went to visit every day and, hi there, met his whole family - what pleasant circumstances) and watched him go from sitting up and talking to hardly being able to muster a cough. Then they transferred him to St. Elizabth's here in boston, and he's been on a respirator, unable to do anything but blink his eyes (and move his hands and head slightly) for about ten days.
I go in every day, only allowed to visit for a few minutes at each time, and watch the drama, and feel an incredible sort of love for this person who i have just barely gotten to know.
Meanwhile, the band has just agreed to enter into a massive distribution and promotion deal with a large label and my days are spent endlessly negotiating points of contracts with lawyers and other music business folk. this strange breed of people who i am just starting to understand: the music businessman. music. business. music business. i am still grappling with this one.
so imagine, if you will, that i am driving down cambridge street at top speed, apologizing to my pissed-off drummer that i am going to be late for load-out, because there is traffic on the way to the hospital. i get the call from the label that we are working with that this lawyer is pissed at that lawyer because this lawyer said that that lawyer was lawyering in a not-so lawyerly way, and that a conference call is in order so that the lawyerly men and the parties they are representing can all have one big old lawyer-like party on the phone while the fate of my delicate little band and stupid songs for the next, oh, ten years or so, is decided.
i tell them i need forty-five minutes and pull up to the hospital. i run up the hill. i've watched the hill get covered in snow a few times since he's been in there. it's like a time lapse photograph. his beard is growing, they won't shave him. his hair is growing. he looks beautiful. this time i brought the recording of the zeitgeist show, to play for him on a discman and some huge headphones i rousled up from the downstairs apartment. i had played half of the set specifically for him, knowing i would record it and bring it in. there's a new song that i wrote for him, and a set of cover songs that i know he would love. i crept in, the room was empty and i said hello, and we stared at each other for a while, and fell in love a little bit more, and i played him my songs and he wept and i wept and then the time was over and i went back to the car and the phone rang and within four minutes of having been there at his bedside i am hearing ".....have to get on the same page about the it's very important that we all understand that plenty of concessions and considerations have been made in order to fully perhaps you don;t fully understand the magnitude of what has been negotiated whether or not is not the issue in any event the.....(insert sci-fi special effects music, a la spaceship landing, pan to close-up of amanda's head slowly imploding)....", as i drive at top speed to get back to the house where brian is waiting so we can get the fuck out of town to make it to our show on the other side of the state in time for soundcheck.
the past two weeks have been like this. but it could have been no other way. here i am, realizing that nothing happening with my future or this band is important. my small-minded litle fantasies have not been allowed to breed for longer than a few milliseconds. in the ciritcal care unit, i was walking by twelve people on death's doorstep.
but everything will be fine.
elliott smith's "either/or" has not left my CD player in two weeks.
Monday, December 08, 2003
12/08/03 - The dresden Dolls Face the Long Winter
writing in a diary like this has become as frustrating as trying to write in my own journal lately, i feel like i have too much to say, so i just don't.
it's a typical night. the snow today has lost it's initial glory and stands piled hip-high in front of the door. walking along the sidewalk i have an angle into michael pope's window i never had before. brian and i sludged through the snow to the roxy to go the the newbury comics annual staff ball, ate a few pieces of shrimp, and left.
i saw a squirrel having a hard time on an icy vine outside the foyer.
i tried to resurrect an old song tonight and think i may have succeeded. the original title was "WWW.WWWIII" (clever, eh?)
the lyrics address a weird cross between stating frustration at the over-connectedness of the nation, the idea that the surface of the moon may become a battling ground for competing advertisers, and a call to arms for some mythical army of frustrated children who will cut every wire in the world so we can start the whole thing over again.
.....a passing aquaintance at the time i write it asked "what are you, a fucking luddite?"
in spirit only, i would be pretty lost without elecricity.
but it's fun to fantasize. it's not the electircity, it's the disconnection it forces.
i spend hours looking at the piles that are accumulating on the floor of my apartment and wonder if they'll maybe go away magically.
the piano's out of tune.
i have found some really really good music lately, however:
"stellastarr*" are fantastic....totally retro eighties/pixies/cure stuff dripping with hooks.
"iron and wine" gets my vote for most beautiful cd of the month. i'm not sure which disc it is, but there are only two, i think.
it's gorgeous guitar songwriting with almost cohen-brilliant melodies and lyrics.
i've also been digging this band from the south called "the fatales", the website is www.thefatales.com.
the cd is nowhere to be found, you'd need to order it off the web.
it really grows on you, almost NYCcool meets Radiohead meets Cabaret.
they seem lonely and i think we're going to play with them sometime.
bed is near
amanda
it's a typical night. the snow today has lost it's initial glory and stands piled hip-high in front of the door. walking along the sidewalk i have an angle into michael pope's window i never had before. brian and i sludged through the snow to the roxy to go the the newbury comics annual staff ball, ate a few pieces of shrimp, and left.
i saw a squirrel having a hard time on an icy vine outside the foyer.
i tried to resurrect an old song tonight and think i may have succeeded. the original title was "WWW.WWWIII" (clever, eh?)
the lyrics address a weird cross between stating frustration at the over-connectedness of the nation, the idea that the surface of the moon may become a battling ground for competing advertisers, and a call to arms for some mythical army of frustrated children who will cut every wire in the world so we can start the whole thing over again.
.....a passing aquaintance at the time i write it asked "what are you, a fucking luddite?"
in spirit only, i would be pretty lost without elecricity.
but it's fun to fantasize. it's not the electircity, it's the disconnection it forces.
i spend hours looking at the piles that are accumulating on the floor of my apartment and wonder if they'll maybe go away magically.
the piano's out of tune.
i have found some really really good music lately, however:
"stellastarr*" are fantastic....totally retro eighties/pixies/cure stuff dripping with hooks.
"iron and wine" gets my vote for most beautiful cd of the month. i'm not sure which disc it is, but there are only two, i think.
it's gorgeous guitar songwriting with almost cohen-brilliant melodies and lyrics.
i've also been digging this band from the south called "the fatales", the website is www.thefatales.com.
the cd is nowhere to be found, you'd need to order it off the web.
it really grows on you, almost NYCcool meets Radiohead meets Cabaret.
they seem lonely and i think we're going to play with them sometime.
bed is near
amanda
Friday, October 24, 2003
10/23/03 - The Dresden Dolls play CMJ and see Marylin Manson
Another journey down to New York City in our beloved Ludwig Van....
Brian and I got into a discussion about god-knows-what and missed the exit for 84 off the Mass Pike. Not only did we miss the exit, but we continued on for quite some time without realizing our stupid mistake, even we stopped for gas at a rest stop we had NEVER seen, and I know, because it had no pac-man, and all of the rest-stops on the pike between Boston and the 84 exit have pac-man, and I know, because I always play a game, and I'm getting very good. The club we played in in cleveland had a pac-man and i got to the 10th level and the club in st. louis had a pac-man (but with no sound) and i didn't do as well, but it was really nice that they had it, anyway...
anyway, we missed the exit something terrible and wound up all the way in new york, up north. we realized out stupid mistake and hit a full-on bad accident and calculated that it was very possible that we might miss our show. we spent the next harrowing few hours going completely ballistic in the van (we made up several good songs: "I want a Ludwig Van" to the tune of "I wanna hold your hand" was the most memorable) and arrived at the Mercury Lounge exactly ten minutes before we were supposed to hit stage. we barrelled in, set up, got dressed and were on stage, playing, fifteen minutes after coming in the door. not bad.
after the set we were given four free tickets to the marylin manson show across town. we simply had to go, there was no way around it.
I had never heard a Marylin Manson record album but Brian had, and I was very curious.
pope and manta were with us, so we piled in an automobile and headed to the roseland ballroom, to see what had become of The Youth of America.
surprisingly, the crowd there was not very Youthful, it seems that Mr. Manson has a devoted crowd of older fans but the young youth aren't very excited. he was a very good performer, full of energy he was, but the music was forgettable and the dancers weren't very inspired (though they were sexy, and had o.k. bellies, on the stout side, the way i like).
we secured a nice balcony table up top, due to our lucky special tickets, and manta brought out his large notebook and started to write, and gave me a nice marker and i got to draw on the other side, so i made some sketches of marylin manson and his dancers and another picture of the rock world, which was a sort of globe with flowers sprouting out of it interspersed with some searching, aching, war-weary hands stretching to some unknown goal. it was a nice set of pictures, brian admired them, and we were very cold up there and a little bored, as the music was monotonous and marylin manson wasn't very interesting anymore.
i explained to brian and manta the significance of the deaths-head skull that decorated mr. manson's stage podium (it was an insignia used by an especially brutal and bloodthirsty subsection of the nazi SS, called the "todeskopf" in deutsch...mr. manson's version had imposed mickey mouse ears atop the skull of the head. about as tasteless as you could get, and sort of funny, i thought, though had i been someone killed in a concentration camp, I probably would have been deathly offended). neither of them knew the significance of the deaths-head, and it made me wonder how many in the audience understood mr. manson's disturbing joke. he also arrived behind his podium in blackface, wearing a set of mickeymouse ears, i wonder if this was lost on anyone as well.
Brian and I came down from the balcony, fought our way through the crowd to the front, and made a kind of wild love among the crowd.
Then we left and went back to the mercury, where i promtly forgot to get paid for the show and we left behind more cool short black haircuts then we've ever seen in one small place in our lives.
i stayed up until five in the morning in the safety of my dear friends' house in hoboken, NJ, working on the details of our halloween show, which i am very excited about, we will be performing a little play based on popular culture.
Brian and I got into a discussion about god-knows-what and missed the exit for 84 off the Mass Pike. Not only did we miss the exit, but we continued on for quite some time without realizing our stupid mistake, even we stopped for gas at a rest stop we had NEVER seen, and I know, because it had no pac-man, and all of the rest-stops on the pike between Boston and the 84 exit have pac-man, and I know, because I always play a game, and I'm getting very good. The club we played in in cleveland had a pac-man and i got to the 10th level and the club in st. louis had a pac-man (but with no sound) and i didn't do as well, but it was really nice that they had it, anyway...
anyway, we missed the exit something terrible and wound up all the way in new york, up north. we realized out stupid mistake and hit a full-on bad accident and calculated that it was very possible that we might miss our show. we spent the next harrowing few hours going completely ballistic in the van (we made up several good songs: "I want a Ludwig Van" to the tune of "I wanna hold your hand" was the most memorable) and arrived at the Mercury Lounge exactly ten minutes before we were supposed to hit stage. we barrelled in, set up, got dressed and were on stage, playing, fifteen minutes after coming in the door. not bad.
after the set we were given four free tickets to the marylin manson show across town. we simply had to go, there was no way around it.
I had never heard a Marylin Manson record album but Brian had, and I was very curious.
pope and manta were with us, so we piled in an automobile and headed to the roseland ballroom, to see what had become of The Youth of America.
surprisingly, the crowd there was not very Youthful, it seems that Mr. Manson has a devoted crowd of older fans but the young youth aren't very excited. he was a very good performer, full of energy he was, but the music was forgettable and the dancers weren't very inspired (though they were sexy, and had o.k. bellies, on the stout side, the way i like).
we secured a nice balcony table up top, due to our lucky special tickets, and manta brought out his large notebook and started to write, and gave me a nice marker and i got to draw on the other side, so i made some sketches of marylin manson and his dancers and another picture of the rock world, which was a sort of globe with flowers sprouting out of it interspersed with some searching, aching, war-weary hands stretching to some unknown goal. it was a nice set of pictures, brian admired them, and we were very cold up there and a little bored, as the music was monotonous and marylin manson wasn't very interesting anymore.
i explained to brian and manta the significance of the deaths-head skull that decorated mr. manson's stage podium (it was an insignia used by an especially brutal and bloodthirsty subsection of the nazi SS, called the "todeskopf" in deutsch...mr. manson's version had imposed mickey mouse ears atop the skull of the head. about as tasteless as you could get, and sort of funny, i thought, though had i been someone killed in a concentration camp, I probably would have been deathly offended). neither of them knew the significance of the deaths-head, and it made me wonder how many in the audience understood mr. manson's disturbing joke. he also arrived behind his podium in blackface, wearing a set of mickeymouse ears, i wonder if this was lost on anyone as well.
Brian and I came down from the balcony, fought our way through the crowd to the front, and made a kind of wild love among the crowd.
Then we left and went back to the mercury, where i promtly forgot to get paid for the show and we left behind more cool short black haircuts then we've ever seen in one small place in our lives.
i stayed up until five in the morning in the safety of my dear friends' house in hoboken, NJ, working on the details of our halloween show, which i am very excited about, we will be performing a little play based on popular culture.
Monday, October 06, 2003
10/06/03 - the long road....
with only a few minutes to spare, i must be brief...but suffice it to say that the tour has been unbelievable. opening up for edward & entourage was a complete godsend, as we got to play for large crowds of pre-disposed doll-like-music enthusiasts. the responses from people have been fantastic, and we've sold a ton of records. we're very happy, and a bit sore and tried.
the road itself is long and full of bad, bad, bad coffee and little healthy nourishment. i long for the day when america's health craze finally makes it's way into it's extensive collection of seedy gas stations.
we have been blessed every single night with a story and a place to stay...
...in philadelphia we landed at a friend-of-a-friend's place, a wonderful photographer who just happened to live next to a manse that got destroyed in a hurricane just days before. photo shoot opportunity galore, and our lovely michael pope (filmmaker in residence in the dresden dolls van) took some super 8 footage. we'll see....
speaking of the van, ludwig has been fine, spewing some unknown smoky phlegm from the tailpipe every once in a while but otherwise just dandy.
we've got a few days off now, staying in st. louis with brian's aunt judy and uncle stan and their large doberman. they have a victrola and a spinet piano, and titus on videotape. it'll be a fine few days.
no other news of huge importance....one lovely little anecdote, though...
a few days ago we went (cringe, gulp) to the rock and roll hall of fame and museum in cleveland, where we had a show that night...our fine friends in world/inferno had mentioned that they waive the $18 admission fee if you're in a touring band, which they indeed did. (however, they wouldnt let us videotape and pope couldn't stomach it and went around the block for a drink.)
we ran around like idiots for an hour and worshipped at the altar of david bowie's coats, the zz top car, jimi's guitars, jeff buckley's diary, etc....and then had to rush out to make soundcheck in time.
on our way out the door, the white-haired spinstery lady at the admission desk hollered and waved us down ...they had found a press clipping and photo of the dresden dolls in the cleveland weekly paper and laid it out for us to autograph and leave with them.
apparently, we'll be eligible in 2028.
the road itself is long and full of bad, bad, bad coffee and little healthy nourishment. i long for the day when america's health craze finally makes it's way into it's extensive collection of seedy gas stations.
we have been blessed every single night with a story and a place to stay...
...in philadelphia we landed at a friend-of-a-friend's place, a wonderful photographer who just happened to live next to a manse that got destroyed in a hurricane just days before. photo shoot opportunity galore, and our lovely michael pope (filmmaker in residence in the dresden dolls van) took some super 8 footage. we'll see....
speaking of the van, ludwig has been fine, spewing some unknown smoky phlegm from the tailpipe every once in a while but otherwise just dandy.
we've got a few days off now, staying in st. louis with brian's aunt judy and uncle stan and their large doberman. they have a victrola and a spinet piano, and titus on videotape. it'll be a fine few days.
no other news of huge importance....one lovely little anecdote, though...
a few days ago we went (cringe, gulp) to the rock and roll hall of fame and museum in cleveland, where we had a show that night...our fine friends in world/inferno had mentioned that they waive the $18 admission fee if you're in a touring band, which they indeed did. (however, they wouldnt let us videotape and pope couldn't stomach it and went around the block for a drink.)
we ran around like idiots for an hour and worshipped at the altar of david bowie's coats, the zz top car, jimi's guitars, jeff buckley's diary, etc....and then had to rush out to make soundcheck in time.
on our way out the door, the white-haired spinstery lady at the admission desk hollered and waved us down ...they had found a press clipping and photo of the dresden dolls in the cleveland weekly paper and laid it out for us to autograph and leave with them.
apparently, we'll be eligible in 2028.
Monday, September 29, 2003
09/29/03 - aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh
we are going on tour tomorrow.
the last week has spun my head and i am not even remotely focused on what i am doing at this moment,
because i have 457 things in my head, all wanting to be thought about.
we have a nice blue tour van, we named him ludwig. ludwig van.
i am leaving The Machine at home, but if we're in the vicinity of a computer i'll check in and write about
what is happening to our little band out in the Big World.
xxxxxxooooooooooo
amanda
the last week has spun my head and i am not even remotely focused on what i am doing at this moment,
because i have 457 things in my head, all wanting to be thought about.
we have a nice blue tour van, we named him ludwig. ludwig van.
i am leaving The Machine at home, but if we're in the vicinity of a computer i'll check in and write about
what is happening to our little band out in the Big World.
xxxxxxooooooooooo
amanda
Saturday, September 20, 2003
09/20/03
i feel like an old, tired, dying sea sponge.
there has been no time for Fun.....all work, no play, not even any time to stop and wonder whether there will be a time later.
how difficult it is to be continually excited about everything that's going on with the band when all it amounts to at the moment is more and more work that seems less and less creative.
everybody keeps telling me that this is the artist's plight.
there has been no time for Fun.....all work, no play, not even any time to stop and wonder whether there will be a time later.
how difficult it is to be continually excited about everything that's going on with the band when all it amounts to at the moment is more and more work that seems less and less creative.
everybody keeps telling me that this is the artist's plight.
Wednesday, September 10, 2003
09/10/03
late at night, again, and i am here, sitting behind The Machine.
i had another one of my rare freak-outs this evening, where i look at the schedule, the list of things to do, and the reality of the next few weeks and say
"good lord jesus, i am not going to sleep much less have time to do things that aren't priorities like...sleeping." and playing the piano.
all of this business crap has dented the creative process in a nasty way.
instead of musical ideas floating through my head, there are income statement inconsistancies. something, i think, is Not Right.
i had another one of my rare freak-outs this evening, where i look at the schedule, the list of things to do, and the reality of the next few weeks and say
"good lord jesus, i am not going to sleep much less have time to do things that aren't priorities like...sleeping." and playing the piano.
all of this business crap has dented the creative process in a nasty way.
instead of musical ideas floating through my head, there are income statement inconsistancies. something, i think, is Not Right.
Friday, August 15, 2003
08/15/03 - The story of The Dresden Dolls & The Great Blackout in New York City
never have the dresden dolls endured such a night.
in order to understand the irony of the events that am i about to relate, you need the sordid history of the past few weeks.
there are several labels who have taken an interest in maybe signing our little band.
all of these labels have headquarters down in new york, so we have to do what is called "showcasing" - meaning, basically, that we will play our next show down in NYC knowing that these suits will be there.
we had this show booked down in NYC, on the 14th, with our fine friend World/Inferno Friendship Society at the knitting factory anyway....so there we went.
so here we are, holding our fragile little record in our hands, our record release date set, no label.....and we decide (goddammit) that we are going to put it our ourselves. money is the only issue, so we hit up everybody we know for a loan. and lo and behold: Eight Foot Records in born.
this means many scary things: we need distribution (to get the thing into stores....and this is VERY difficult for an indie band to get without a label). we need our own booking agent. we need our own publicist. we need a radio publicist. we need help.
so i spend about 15 hours a day on the phone and at the computer trying to figure out, once and for all, the key to unlocking the mystery that is the music industry (no answers yet, but give me a few more weeks, i'm working on it).
(on the side: we hired two part-time employees, got an amazing office space in chinatown for practically free, and will be putting out the call for interns - stay tuned).
so all these folks that i'm talking to all day on the telephone all want to see the band. and they're all from new york. and we have this impending show on the 14th at the knitting factory. how convenient! so our guest list ends up housing the potential radio promoter, the potential booking agent, the potential record reviewers and two representatives from major labels. (no pressure).
MEANWHILE, the artwork for The Album is done. done, that is, but not at the printer. the printer is down in new york city, on broadway, very far from our hometown of boston. and everything is wrong. the bleed is fucked up. the bleed? they can't download the files our designer uploaded to the web. we fedex the artwork on disc. they can't open the files. it takes forver. they make proofs. they need to be fed-exed up to boston. we are going down to new york anyway, for our Very Important Show at which Many Important People will be. so we'll just swing by the printers at 4 p.m. on the way to soundcheck and approve the artwork? sure.
at 4:15 p.m., after an unevetful drive down to the city, we pull up in front of 611 broadway, where our printer should be waiting, proofs in hand, for us to check out and approve for printing (the whole album , by the by, is now coming out 3 weeks behind schedule anyway, because of all the other fuckups and the deal with the label falling through.)
at 4:15 p.m. the fucking blackout hits new york. we double park in front of the printers and i assume that it's a fire alarm, and that's why there are mad heads standing out in front of the building. but nay. we find out about the blackout but assume it's a block-wide or even neighborhood-wide thing and at worst, a small pain in the ass. so we wait at the car, double-parked, for the power to come back on.
which it doesn't, and we eventually hear a "GET OUT OF THE WAY" coming from the loudspeakers of a police bus behind us.
so we do, and we find ourselves swimming through the chaos (no working traffic signals, lots of impatient new yorkers) in our trusty blue volvo station wagon, through throngs of people who have all been ejected from their placid air-conditioned cubicles....like a large blue trout in a sea of well-dressed minnows.
traffic is at a standstill, and we are mere block from the knitting factory. there is no cellular service so we can't get through to the other bands, the club, or greg and andrew, or guitar and bass player for this show.
i suggest to brian that he pull over and i go on foot to the club to see what's what.
the scene is chaotic, broadway is packed with people, traffic isn't moving and sirens are wailing from every direction. i must look very interesting to most commuters, running at breakneck speed in my slip and flapping sandals, eybrows running down my cheeks.
and there, lo, by candlelight in the front bar of the knitting factory, are sitting the 9 dignified members of the world/inferno friendship society, drinking ciders and chatting merrily, surrounded by the Good People of the Neighbourhood and lots of The Ejectees from nearby offices. it's a beautiful sight.
the beer is cold and plentiful and i run back to brian at top speed to tell him of the wonders i have witnessed.
we drive through the chaotic crowd at a snail's pace and eventually get back to the club. there's nothing to do but wait, we're pretty sure the show will be cancelled unless the power comes on damn soon, so we just drink and commisserate with our fellow musicians.
brian breaks out the acoustic guitar and the tambourine and we play through Side A of the first violent femmes record. then we move on to ramones songs, people join in and we move on to black sabbath and other miscellaneous covers.
we set brian's bowler hat on the ground and make a grand total of sixty-five cents from passing youngsters, whose mothers find us charming and send their children to us with alms.
it seems more and more likely that the power ain't coming back on, so we confer with wolrd/inferno.....shall we set up a street show?
so we set up a street show...brian drags his drum kit into the middle of leonard street and
accordians, saxophones, acoustic guitars and screaming vocalists jam out without the benefit of a public address system. world/inferno plays a good half hour set, we dance wildly. we discover that franz, the accordian player from inferno, knows "port of amsterdam", which brian and i had planned on playing....so brian tunes up the guitar, we clear off the make-shift merchandise table and i stand aloft, staggering slightly from the warm beer and penetrating sunlight & ruining my voice in one screetchy but heartfelt performance, successfully entertaining the crowd on the street, which has at this point grown to a sizeable 150 folks or so.
we sell 4 cds and a few people sign the mailing list, so we happily cut our losses and start
planning our escape from this dark pit of hell. mind you, it's 90 degrees and the car has no air conditioning.
it takes us close to 2 hours to get to the bridge - which is about 12 blocks from the club. the fumes are horrific, the traffic is at a standstill and we have no idea whether we'll run out of gas or not.
we stop saying "god, this sucks" after a while and just give each other pained but peaceful
looks, probably much like the looks of the terminally ill after they've completely comes to grips.
we eventually break out of the city at around 10:30....and we cavalierly pass by the first gas station we see because there is a line like a funeral procession and we figure we have enough to last us til the next one.
one hour later: we are stranded in the middle of connecticut, not an open gas station to be had, and approximately one tablespoon of gas in our tank.
so we pull over, put the drums in the front seats of the trusty blue volvo, and sleep in the back, on top of brian's suits and padded trap cases.
we wake, sore and covered with dew, at 5:30 a.m., fill the car, hit the road and head back to boston.....bleary-eyed, exhausted, aching, frustrated but strangely content.
so our Very Important Show For Music Industry Suits ended up being a Steet Fair For Children and Ejected Office Workers, and we don't know when, but hopefully it will be rescheduled.
funny, but oren (a good friend and fan of the dolls) was chatting with me the night before at my solo show at the zeitgesit. i was telling him of the nervewracking show in new york, what with all the suits and all, and he said "amanda, make sure you play for us, not the suits, please." and then he gave me a rock from the beach in glouscester. if he had only been on leonard street last night, he'd have been a very proud man.
it's possible that this was a sign from god that the dresden dolls are destined to run their own record label for ever and ever. who knows. anyway, no matter what it means, we still need a fax machine and a van.
pax
now, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
amanda
in order to understand the irony of the events that am i about to relate, you need the sordid history of the past few weeks.
there are several labels who have taken an interest in maybe signing our little band.
all of these labels have headquarters down in new york, so we have to do what is called "showcasing" - meaning, basically, that we will play our next show down in NYC knowing that these suits will be there.
we had this show booked down in NYC, on the 14th, with our fine friend World/Inferno Friendship Society at the knitting factory anyway....so there we went.
so here we are, holding our fragile little record in our hands, our record release date set, no label.....and we decide (goddammit) that we are going to put it our ourselves. money is the only issue, so we hit up everybody we know for a loan. and lo and behold: Eight Foot Records in born.
this means many scary things: we need distribution (to get the thing into stores....and this is VERY difficult for an indie band to get without a label). we need our own booking agent. we need our own publicist. we need a radio publicist. we need help.
so i spend about 15 hours a day on the phone and at the computer trying to figure out, once and for all, the key to unlocking the mystery that is the music industry (no answers yet, but give me a few more weeks, i'm working on it).
(on the side: we hired two part-time employees, got an amazing office space in chinatown for practically free, and will be putting out the call for interns - stay tuned).
so all these folks that i'm talking to all day on the telephone all want to see the band. and they're all from new york. and we have this impending show on the 14th at the knitting factory. how convenient! so our guest list ends up housing the potential radio promoter, the potential booking agent, the potential record reviewers and two representatives from major labels. (no pressure).
MEANWHILE, the artwork for The Album is done. done, that is, but not at the printer. the printer is down in new york city, on broadway, very far from our hometown of boston. and everything is wrong. the bleed is fucked up. the bleed? they can't download the files our designer uploaded to the web. we fedex the artwork on disc. they can't open the files. it takes forver. they make proofs. they need to be fed-exed up to boston. we are going down to new york anyway, for our Very Important Show at which Many Important People will be. so we'll just swing by the printers at 4 p.m. on the way to soundcheck and approve the artwork? sure.
at 4:15 p.m., after an unevetful drive down to the city, we pull up in front of 611 broadway, where our printer should be waiting, proofs in hand, for us to check out and approve for printing (the whole album , by the by, is now coming out 3 weeks behind schedule anyway, because of all the other fuckups and the deal with the label falling through.)
at 4:15 p.m. the fucking blackout hits new york. we double park in front of the printers and i assume that it's a fire alarm, and that's why there are mad heads standing out in front of the building. but nay. we find out about the blackout but assume it's a block-wide or even neighborhood-wide thing and at worst, a small pain in the ass. so we wait at the car, double-parked, for the power to come back on.
which it doesn't, and we eventually hear a "GET OUT OF THE WAY" coming from the loudspeakers of a police bus behind us.
so we do, and we find ourselves swimming through the chaos (no working traffic signals, lots of impatient new yorkers) in our trusty blue volvo station wagon, through throngs of people who have all been ejected from their placid air-conditioned cubicles....like a large blue trout in a sea of well-dressed minnows.
traffic is at a standstill, and we are mere block from the knitting factory. there is no cellular service so we can't get through to the other bands, the club, or greg and andrew, or guitar and bass player for this show.
i suggest to brian that he pull over and i go on foot to the club to see what's what.
the scene is chaotic, broadway is packed with people, traffic isn't moving and sirens are wailing from every direction. i must look very interesting to most commuters, running at breakneck speed in my slip and flapping sandals, eybrows running down my cheeks.
and there, lo, by candlelight in the front bar of the knitting factory, are sitting the 9 dignified members of the world/inferno friendship society, drinking ciders and chatting merrily, surrounded by the Good People of the Neighbourhood and lots of The Ejectees from nearby offices. it's a beautiful sight.
the beer is cold and plentiful and i run back to brian at top speed to tell him of the wonders i have witnessed.
we drive through the chaotic crowd at a snail's pace and eventually get back to the club. there's nothing to do but wait, we're pretty sure the show will be cancelled unless the power comes on damn soon, so we just drink and commisserate with our fellow musicians.
brian breaks out the acoustic guitar and the tambourine and we play through Side A of the first violent femmes record. then we move on to ramones songs, people join in and we move on to black sabbath and other miscellaneous covers.
we set brian's bowler hat on the ground and make a grand total of sixty-five cents from passing youngsters, whose mothers find us charming and send their children to us with alms.
it seems more and more likely that the power ain't coming back on, so we confer with wolrd/inferno.....shall we set up a street show?
so we set up a street show...brian drags his drum kit into the middle of leonard street and
accordians, saxophones, acoustic guitars and screaming vocalists jam out without the benefit of a public address system. world/inferno plays a good half hour set, we dance wildly. we discover that franz, the accordian player from inferno, knows "port of amsterdam", which brian and i had planned on playing....so brian tunes up the guitar, we clear off the make-shift merchandise table and i stand aloft, staggering slightly from the warm beer and penetrating sunlight & ruining my voice in one screetchy but heartfelt performance, successfully entertaining the crowd on the street, which has at this point grown to a sizeable 150 folks or so.
we sell 4 cds and a few people sign the mailing list, so we happily cut our losses and start
planning our escape from this dark pit of hell. mind you, it's 90 degrees and the car has no air conditioning.
it takes us close to 2 hours to get to the bridge - which is about 12 blocks from the club. the fumes are horrific, the traffic is at a standstill and we have no idea whether we'll run out of gas or not.
we stop saying "god, this sucks" after a while and just give each other pained but peaceful
looks, probably much like the looks of the terminally ill after they've completely comes to grips.
we eventually break out of the city at around 10:30....and we cavalierly pass by the first gas station we see because there is a line like a funeral procession and we figure we have enough to last us til the next one.
one hour later: we are stranded in the middle of connecticut, not an open gas station to be had, and approximately one tablespoon of gas in our tank.
so we pull over, put the drums in the front seats of the trusty blue volvo, and sleep in the back, on top of brian's suits and padded trap cases.
we wake, sore and covered with dew, at 5:30 a.m., fill the car, hit the road and head back to boston.....bleary-eyed, exhausted, aching, frustrated but strangely content.
so our Very Important Show For Music Industry Suits ended up being a Steet Fair For Children and Ejected Office Workers, and we don't know when, but hopefully it will be rescheduled.
funny, but oren (a good friend and fan of the dolls) was chatting with me the night before at my solo show at the zeitgesit. i was telling him of the nervewracking show in new york, what with all the suits and all, and he said "amanda, make sure you play for us, not the suits, please." and then he gave me a rock from the beach in glouscester. if he had only been on leonard street last night, he'd have been a very proud man.
it's possible that this was a sign from god that the dresden dolls are destined to run their own record label for ever and ever. who knows. anyway, no matter what it means, we still need a fax machine and a van.
pax
now, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
amanda
Saturday, July 05, 2003
07/05/03
it's been a crazy time for the dresden dolls.
last tuesday's sold-out bill att he middle east was a historic moment of bands colliding. World Inferno Friendship/Society made us dance and
i would like to personally hail Sleepytime Gorilla Museum as possibly one of the BEST BANDS EVER. amazing music, amazing people, amazing light show, amazing everything. sadly, we have one more show with them (tomorrow) and then they are going along on their merry way.
the knitting factory show (6/30) was wonderful, our friends Barbez were in top form and we played to a packed house.
last night i went to a family affair on beacon street to see the fireworks. there was a little girl there, 9 years old, who i decided was my new favorite person. she writes songs for piano (according to her, all in d minor) and stared of into space while we were talking to her father and said "dad....i'm feeling blank". her name is erica and i want to take piano lessons from her.
there is the upcoming show with the b52s to be excited about....the shelley winetrs project (the other opener) is fantastic, so we hope at least 5 or 10 people can afford the ticket price.
brian is sadly going bye-bye until mid-august but i'm scheduling some solo shows. i have no idea what i am going to play. some dolls songs, some yet-to-be dolls songs and some covers....i am taking requests.
we just scheduled our record release date!!!! (secret secret, so i'm only wirting about it here). it's going to be Sept. 26th at the paradise and the support is still getting worked out. we are jumping up and down!!!! we finally get to give our fucking record out!!!! yayyyyy!!!!!! (we love our record.)
i am also fantasizing about organizing a dance in the fall. at a high school gym. with streamers and local bands playing only early sixties dance music. we will play all girl-group covers. with back-up singers.
currently i am very much diggin' the Yeah Yeah Yeah's "fever to tell". i bought it to see what all hype was about. it's brilliant. go spend your money on it.
i wrote a good new song today. for the first time in ages. that's why i'm allowing myself to whack off in front of the computer all evening. i am also rewarding myself with a night out, the Fall is playing at the middle east tonight....
last tuesday's sold-out bill att he middle east was a historic moment of bands colliding. World Inferno Friendship/Society made us dance and
i would like to personally hail Sleepytime Gorilla Museum as possibly one of the BEST BANDS EVER. amazing music, amazing people, amazing light show, amazing everything. sadly, we have one more show with them (tomorrow) and then they are going along on their merry way.
the knitting factory show (6/30) was wonderful, our friends Barbez were in top form and we played to a packed house.
last night i went to a family affair on beacon street to see the fireworks. there was a little girl there, 9 years old, who i decided was my new favorite person. she writes songs for piano (according to her, all in d minor) and stared of into space while we were talking to her father and said "dad....i'm feeling blank". her name is erica and i want to take piano lessons from her.
there is the upcoming show with the b52s to be excited about....the shelley winetrs project (the other opener) is fantastic, so we hope at least 5 or 10 people can afford the ticket price.
brian is sadly going bye-bye until mid-august but i'm scheduling some solo shows. i have no idea what i am going to play. some dolls songs, some yet-to-be dolls songs and some covers....i am taking requests.
we just scheduled our record release date!!!! (secret secret, so i'm only wirting about it here). it's going to be Sept. 26th at the paradise and the support is still getting worked out. we are jumping up and down!!!! we finally get to give our fucking record out!!!! yayyyyy!!!!!! (we love our record.)
i am also fantasizing about organizing a dance in the fall. at a high school gym. with streamers and local bands playing only early sixties dance music. we will play all girl-group covers. with back-up singers.
currently i am very much diggin' the Yeah Yeah Yeah's "fever to tell". i bought it to see what all hype was about. it's brilliant. go spend your money on it.
i wrote a good new song today. for the first time in ages. that's why i'm allowing myself to whack off in front of the computer all evening. i am also rewarding myself with a night out, the Fall is playing at the middle east tonight....
Wednesday, June 04, 2003
06/04/03
brian and i had a nice rehearsal tonight.
a record company sent us some airheads in the mail.
a record company sent us some airheads in the mail.
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