Waco Girls // Bottom Chef // Party Plants // The Cocker Spaniels // S T I C K E R S // Spiked Punch, 12/13/13

showblog stardate...

We played a truly great show tonight. Me and Chris Wigington played in 3 bands --- Spiked Punch, Party Plants, and Bottom Chef. I was asked to play during Bottom Chef earlier in the show, and I was also informed that it was going to be a secret Waco Girls show. The entire bill in that regard was Waco Girls // Bottom Chef // Party Plants // The Cocker Spaniels // S T I C K E R S // Spiked Punch. It was a pretty special show --- there were people there and the bands got paid. Im not sure why thats important to me in my old age, but fuck it, it is so it is. Hey we are doing good. Get paid is a relative term, once the bands split the money up, but at least something to offset our recording. Hey we gotta eat too! My ears are ringing right now and even though it was pretty loud all night, its from one moment (isnt it always) where I spilled Joey's cymbal over on the ground while wrecking his drum kit. I never would have done it except Shane Wood was there and i just had to act the fool for that guy. The night I got arrested I wrecked the drumkit and he was there so its kinda an inside joke between me and him. Joey for his part told me if I did that again he would punch me in the face, so I assured him I wouldnt and I was sorry and I wouldnt do it again, and I didnt.

Spiked Punch practiced yesterday for the first time in a month and Eddy wasnt there, so we played the show without having practiced with him. We played everything perfect. Writing out a setlist and not playing Buddy Cop movie probably had something to do with it, but there was the perfect amount of nervous energy or something, because we were like fucking note perfect the whole show. It helped having Ricky and Casey rocking out in the front row. Ricky stood right in front of me and i was like "oh." Its easier to play a show with someone right in front of you like that, its like youre playing to a whole room because you dont really think past that person, but also you are on full on 100% front row energy. That band really needs to record, hopefully in January. Its comical how good we are and what we are doing right now I think we hit a spot that says "what crack were these guys smoking? these guys are from the future" because I think we really did that, mfuckers! I want to tour with that band this summer really badly.

Party Plants is recording right now, so we unloaded a bunch of shit at the studio with Paul Millar (aka Slugbug) on 4th street. Its some dudes house and his dads, they have it tricked out to only be a studio. It smells like gas on the side of the house in a way thats disconcerting, but the control room and the live room are both sick as fuck. there is a room with all mirrors, Paul said for Reverb. Genius. We start recording tomorrow at 2 PMish. Paul has a beautiful 1" 16 track tape machine and today, to all of our joys, a part came in the mail that allowed us to solve this minor but still noteworthy flutter issue he was having.
So we dropped some shit off before the show(to circle back, this is why we were using Joey's drums the whole night.) After the show, I went back there, had a beer, and we fucked around to try and get the perfect drum sound until 4:30. It was sick. It would have been a good date for my crush, kinda dorky, but arent you supposed to try and impress chicks, whats more impressive to a chick that likes music than having a beer and getting the perfect drum sound with me and Paul? Its kinda cliche, thats what I hate about meeting someone -- anything you do seems cliche, like "oh this is something about me! wow its like my hobby but its really filled with meaning for me, isnt that great?!" im the guy that digs music, get it? dude, that shits not gonna cut it, you gotta get some better looking clothes and some stuff from Ikea before you fall behind the heard. such a psychological trap....anywho, Im looking forward to this recording session, the show tonight was a big show for us....ppl were gonna be there, it was somewhat on our draw, at least we put the show together, but just we needed to play a show where afterwards we could have a consensus that we played well going into this recording session. Especially because we have all been stressing a little bit -- its kinda cool, its a flashpoint, but I think we bit off something manageable and I think we are gonna pull it off, so thats how you do it.
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so the rest of the show, i just wanted to blab about my shit, ha, thanks for reading this far, but I watched all the bands and everyone played really good. Stickers, all caps, all spaces, played their first show with a new drummer. he is still figuring out the songs but you wouldnt have guessed, you would have thought he was just playing real minimal. he has a good feel on the open high hat tension buildup. They are doing good, they just need to keep doing it. Thanks for playing with us!! Cockerspaniels killed it --- I have seen Alan like a lot lately playing with Big Bill, and his style in Cockerspaniels is pretty much the same, but it fits the music and the music is a different style. I dont know if those guys practice or if we are all juts getting old, but they were extremely tight. It was really good. Bottom Chef was a fucking wreck....I had no idea who was going to be in the band and it turned out to be Nick Hennies, Chris Smith, Chris Wigington, and me. I dont even know what we did but I talked a lot of shit into the muc for fun at the beginning of the set and tried to make Shane laugh. I think I got some fake laughter from the back of the room from one of my bandmates or something. We played "Makeout party" and "Style Points" (which is really a Coach song) and "Wah Wah" (the lyrics to the whole show were Wah Wah), and then i think that was it, and then the Waco Girls came on stage and kicked us off and those guys did a set. It was really noisey but at least they didnt break the PA this time!! Ha! There was a part where I was leaning on a monitor and I looked at Nick and groaned because I was gonna miss him and it was that time of the show where you think about how youre gonna miss your friend whose been a part of your life for like a while. But he is such a good musician that that moment was mercifully short, I let him know after the show. There was definitely a war whoop coming out of the stage at different points of the night. Anyways the whole show was just great, its the first time ive actually felt like i accomplished something tangible by putting a show together in a while.