Eating Apples In Your Room

This was our band in New York, one night about a year ago. 

Today Is The Day

Today is the release day of Saturday Looks Good To Me's fifth album "One Kiss Ends It All". It's been in the works forever and I'm so glad the world can hear it now.

Actually, for a little while you can listen to the whole thing right here all day for free forever.

And then when you decide you like it, you can buy a copy on LP, CD or cassette format from our homies at Polyvinyl over here.

Thanks to everyone who helped make this a reality and everyone who supports me and my music all the time. I love you!

Happy Birthday Ko!

"I Helped Them Feeling-Wise"

April doth arrive. I can't believe this documentary has finally arrived, too.

WEEKENDER/PT.2

AM SHELLS playing the fourth show last Saturday. Incredible duo of earth and wind.

LIFE LIKE MICRO FEST coming up in April!

and the eternal walk through the empty woods held in place by the constantly howling elements.

Morning Listening: Aaron Dilloway "Post Live At Coda Lunga" Cassette

I wrote a review of Dilloway's noise masterpiece Modern Jester about a year ago, but I didn't really touch on how his almost compulsive ear for detail plays into what's made a lot of his best stuff so dense and surprisingly powerful. When your mind never stops running at hyper speed, it's likely that you're perceiving, cataloging, processing and recapitulating sounds even before they happen sometimes. The perpetual shifting of Modern Jester is testament to that, but this tape I jammed in the car en route to work this morning is a different look into the same cluttered sense of perception. Recorded after a gig in Italy sometime last year, we hear a crowd talking while Aaron DJs the same song on repeat, so quiet it's barely perceptible beneath the din of chatter. On paper, the concept might seem a little flat; people talking after a gig. But no, this is immediately grating, disorienting, a little bit scary even. The subliminal song is more like smoke lingering in the air, scenting things imperceptibly but not really contributing too directly. The loud mess of voices speaking Italian are so assaultive and numbing without noticing it. Some strange circle of hell in an afterparty that never ends, as curated by Dilloway's unique sense of picking up on every piece of information that comes across his sense field. A totally engaging way to feel insane. You can buy the tape here.

Life Is Very Long

I've seen this thing happen over the years where an artist or a band puts out a record and some news/music journal will write a story about the record that centers around how the process the artist went through creating their work nearly killed them or how very, truly, really life-or-death serious this music is to them and their very ability to breathe air, live, etc. There are so so many bands and musicians now and so many various places to read about them, always clamoring for more stories, more songs and more stuff to think about, it would figure that there's probably only so many ways to make your story stick out and the whole "I NEARLY DIED, MANNN!!!" route would happen more and more. About 12 years ago my really good friend Carey interviewed me about a record I was finishing for Detroit's weekly paper the Metro Times. Based on an off-hand, in my mind completely humorous comment I made about planning to kill myself when the record was done, the paper spun the whole story in that tragic, dramatic, tortured, almost-dying (but not buy the record first!) kind of way. I think they called the article "Stayin' Alive". Carey got my joke and didn't write much from the perspective of a suicide watch, but more about how happy and renewing the music was, and how it was difficult to work on something major with no money, no hype, no real chance for exposure outside of a circle of wonderful friends. A lot of my wonderful friends read the article and got understandably upset. I don't know how I thought my joke was funny, or even coherent enough to be understood as sarcasm, even in my young and incredibly self-absorbed mind. It was kind of a point where I felt like the equivalent of staring at myself in the bathroom mirror saying "Don't Do That" because it was dumb, desperate and ultimately just obscured what I was really trying to express and accomplish.

Today I read an article with a headline about the dude from Man Man hoping he lived to see the release of his next record. I have a friend who right now has some legitimate uncertainty about how long their health (and life) will hold out, so reading the whole article just to find that the dude is going through some heavy emotional and personal times didn't really move me. It's hard to lose the feeling of excitement that happens when experiencing things and perspectives for the first time, especially when the loss of mystery and urgency is replaced by feeling like someone is trying to con you or make a grab for your fleeting attention. I like a few R. Stevie Moore songs, but after seeing a few gigs where he's playing the part of the "crazy mad scientist genius songwriter", gnarled beard and stained bathrobe in toe, I can't really get behind his shtick anymore. I can't remember the first time I read some article about how the artistic process took someone to some dizzying, supernatural place within an inch of their life, but reading it enough times eventually led me to play out the cliche when I was lucky enough to have people start writing about my own music. I'm sure I thought it sounded more interesting to say I was gonna make a statement so powerful that nothing could come afterwards than it would have to say I really liked the Beach Boys and thought it would be cool to be in a band, which was a lot closer to the truth. Cabin in the woods, death in the family, life-shattering breakup, living out of a suitcase/homeless, driven-to-substance abuse by the sheer torment of being someone who writes songs, moved to the east coast, moved to the west coast, spent some time living in Europe, fell in love, went crazy, nearly died, thought about nearly dying, religious experience while traveling, met a musical/cultural hero and got along, met a musical/cultural hero and they were deeply disappointing/dickhead, got sick, got clean, went to an abandoned factory/church/town/Walmart/parking lot/the woods, etc. forever. Life is so very long. Does part of it actually end when the document is made or the final stroke is put to canvas? And after that rush of unthinkable life-affirming/life-ending understanding, do you have to almost die again for your next record/book/poem/meal/masterwork?