Random Miscellaneous Tater Tots of Infinite Wisdom

First off, sorry again for the long hiatus from the blog. Weird times in my life right now. See the relevant posts about trees destroying me and having to move (limited Internet access!) 
Let me catch you up:

Gift Horse is almost done tracking our album and we will be mixing that sucker soon. Good God it sounds like sweet funhouse/old horror film bliss. Nate and Hank have really kicked some asses. See the relevant post a couple of clicks down the page.

The John Cougar TrainingCamp practices have been sounding thunderous. It is as if Death himself commissioned a cover band. The opening bands are now loosely confirmed and it looks like The Cubists from Augusta, GA will play first followed by The New Flesh from Baltimore, MD. We all really like these groups a whole lot and look forward to it with much pleasures in mind. (What?) So don't forget: 

whom? - John Cougar Training Camp, The New Flesh, The Cubists.
locale? - The Fabulous 40 Watt Club in Athens, GA.
whence? - Thursday, February 12, 2009.
what time? - Doors are probably at 9 p.m. I don't know...
how much $? - I don't know that either. Not much. Just come you cheap bastard.
well, what are you assholes playing? - 

1. The Most Unlucky Sound by Federation X
2. The Bloodening by Altamont
3. Indian Bones by Dead Meadow
4. Beezwax by Nirvana
5. Smoking in A Minor by Officer May
6. Greensky Greenlake by Dead Meadow
7. Holy Mountain by Sleep
8. A History of Bad Men by The Melvins
9. Rat Faced Granny by The Melvins
10. I'm Waiting For The Day by The Beach Boys

Sounds interesting to you's? See the relevant previous post and gorgeous flyer made by J.J.

Lastly speaking of JCTC, there will be an interview with Jason Scarboro (of Dead Confederate/John Cougar TrainingCamp fame) in Rough Draft sometime soon. They want to speak with him about the sickness in his mind that made him think up the TrainingCamp idea, so keep an eye out. Also pick up the current issue on news stands around Athens right now. I've got a little thingie in there that I wrote about the 5 Most Anticipated Upcoming Local Releases of 2009. I'll probably reprint it here later.

Bye!

The Trainingcamp has commenced.



Thursday, February 12 2009 at the 40 Watt. Other bands TBA

January 19-25

Wow. I dropped the ball a little bit this week.

Somewhere in between making an album from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. every night, the destruction of my house, and starting a new job I couldn't make time for the calendar. Oh well, there's only two shows that I'll mention at this point in the week:

Tonight (Thursday, Jan. 22) at Mercury Lounge:
Members of Kuroma are playing a set at about 10 p.m. followed by a DJ set. Go!

Tomorrow (Friday, Jan. 23) at Caledonia:
Gift Horse is playing with Baak Gwai, Kebert Xela, and Sound and Shape. $5. Doors at 10 p.m.

Meanwhile, the Gift Horse album is coming along nicely and we nearly completed the tracking portion of the process last night. I'll have a better update soon with some pictures and more info. For now, I appreciate everyone's patience while I try to sort things out. Then I'll get back to the Forces.

The World's Worst Alarm Clock

After another marathon studio session Tuesday night, Hunter and I hobbled back to the Park Avenue palace at about 5 a.m. We were still sleeping soundly at 11:45 a.m. when we both were awakened by the sound of cracking and splitting wood. I opened my eyes just in time to see a massive group of trees slam into the roof of our house.








The trees landed directly on top of Hunter's bedroom while he was fast asleep inside. Don't worry, he's okay, but the firefighters and inspector said that the cinder block CMU walls may have been the only thing that saved him. They estimated that a wood-framed house would have collapsed into the basement. Here's the view from his bedroom window. As you can see, the tree is resting comfortably about 8 feet above where his head was on the pillow.











Thank God that the only casualty was this poor guy, who was also asleep in his nest in our attic. Poor lil' fella. I had one just like him when I was a kid.

Divine providence at work or a random group of trees falling down? Who knows. Thanks to our neighbor Frannie Fabian for coming over and snapping a few pics. She's a really good photographer and hopefully she won't be too upset that I swiped these photos for our blog. Check out the rest of her photos of our house and her website. All of these photos belong to her, so don't you be stealing 'em, fools. Also, much thanks to the firefighters, the three dudes who got up in the crane and removed the tree, and all of our neighbors for their concern.

Well, another day. Goodbye Park Avenue Palace. You were......a house.

Come see us at the new Gift Horse band house on King Ave.

Gift Horse Enters The Studio

That's right, Gift Horse has gone into the studio to make our debut full-length album with Hank Sullivant (Kuroma) and Nate Nelson (Nate Nelson & Cortright) on production duties. We're making the record at Nate's space on the fifth floor of the Michael Brothers building in downtown Athens (it's the one with Doc Chey's and The Mellow Mushroom on the first floor). So far we've got most of the drums tracked and reworked a few songs, and everything sounds very, very promising up to this point. In fact, the drums sound outstanding.


We've only been working for three sessions now, but we have been keeping some pretty harsh hours due to the fact that we are not the building's sole occupants. A typical night starts at 7 p.m. and ends in the wee hours when we turn to absolute mush.

One non-musical highlight that I feel like I must
mention occurred on night two, when the fire alarm mysteriously went off on the empty fourth floor below us. Luckily there was no fire, but the alarm made the building's elevator do some weird stuff. Just before the elevator froze some of the guys "mistakenly" rode it down to the 1st floor. When the door opened they found themselves in the changing room of Toppers, the local gentlemen's club. A stripper and a bouncer ever-so-politely directed them to "get the hell out of here" and they shuffled back onto the Wonka-vator which took them back to the lobby. There it froze with the door open and made a mysterious buzzing sound for hours. Luckily the late-night crew at the Mushroom let us sneak down the fire escape. Thanks fellas.

Of course we will keep you posted with all things Gift Horse, but I just want to say thank you very, very much to the following people: Hank, Nate, J.J. Bower, Matt DeCamp, Jason Scarboro and Patrick Ferguson. From what we have heard so far and based upon the way we all feel we believe that we are not creating just yet another typical album, but something very special indeed. We recognize that we would not be on our way to completion without the help of these people. Stay tuned, we'll have more pics and info on a title and release date later.


So, if you're out at 2 a.m. in downtown Athens and you hear some mysterious sounds coming from the corner of Jackson and Clayton, chances are it's a girl drunkenly smashing a beer mug into another girl's face at Flanagan's. But it may be us across the street.







January 12-18

Monday, January 12:
Ghost To Falco, Sing iDog, Drivers Songs.
Caledonia. 10 p.m. $5. www.caledonialounge.com.
I don't know much about these bands but the description sounds psychedelic and creepy...
and Ghost To Falco is from Portland (where the smack flows like wine).

Tuesday, January 13:
Kevin Blechdom, Irene Moon, The World Provider.
Flicker. 8:30 p.m. $5. www.myspace.com/flickerbar.
Don't know much here either but this sounds really weird. And that's good. For example, Kevin Blechdom is not a man, Irene Moon is an entomologist/performance artist who talks about her slides while music plays, and The World Provider is from Montreal (where they eat their young). Drugs, anyone?

Wednesday, January 14:
Marriage, P.O.B., The Warm Fuzzies, Freakaboo.
Caledonia. 10 p.m. $5. www.caledonialounge.com

Thursday, January 15:
Drive-By Truckers, The Whigs, South San Gabriel.
40 Watt. 9 p.m. $20. www.40watt.com

Friday, January 16:
Drive-By Truckers, Centro-matic.
40 Watt. 9 p.m. $20. www.40watt.com.

Saturday, January 17:
Drive-By Truckers, Centro-matic.
40 Watt. 9 p.m. $20. www.40watt.com.

Los Campesinos!, Titus Andronicus.
The EARL (ATL)  9 p.m. $15. www.badearl.com.

This week, Mercer West and PartyPartyPartners.com are having a festival over at Tasty World. The club recently hired Mercer to handle the booking and his first act of business is to offer some free food and music starting at 10 p.m. every night. Apparently this is the Tasty World revival. Or maybe the entrance into the post-Tasty era. Either way, sounds like a townie townie town good time, and we won't mention the fact that Murphy hired my uh, lets say "roommate" for this booking job first and then hired Mercer without even so much as a phone call to the H-bomb to let him know that he wouldn't be getting the position after all. Eh, maybe we will mention that. Thanks Murphy!

Anyhow, here's the lineup. If you need any more info, get this weeks Flagpole where there are no less than 9 separate stories on the subject.

Monday, January 12:
Gay Africa, Hume, Muchos Gracias, Sweet Teeth, Tunabunny.

Tuesday, January 13:
Daffodil, The Matt Kurz One, Pegasuses-XL, Skeletonbreath.        

Wednesday, January 14:
Bambara, Horse Party, Memory Gospel Dancers, Yukon.

Thursday, January 15:
Bubbly Mommy Gun, Explorers Club, Puddin' Tang, Timmy Tumble. 

The Tower Burger gets some love from SuperSizedMeals.com and a forum for Corvette owners.

A couple of years ago, I posted a video I made called "The Tower Burger" on YouTube so a few friends could check it out and laugh. The clip is part of a 30 minute comedy short that my band made entitled "When We Were Champions." We made the movie around our house in Akron as well as the gymnasium at St. Vincent/St. Mary, where our keyboard player Josh went to school. (So did the King, LeBron James.) We all wrote our own characters and lines and acted in our own scenes, but tried to combine it all into one cohesive piece, striving to create the Hoosiers for this new millennium. Of course we succeeded.
This was one of my scenes, a commercial for McDonald's. It was an easy way to let the audience learn about my character, JJ "The Tower" Bower, star center for the Cleveland Cyclones. As a kid I always remembered the fast-food commercials that had star athletes just randomly show up at kids' pick-up games. Charles Barkley shows up in his uniform at the neighborhood park. He'd say, "Hey, Kids!" The kids would be all like, whoaaaaaaaaaa! Awwwweeeeeesomeeeeee!
This video is getting more and more hits, and I just noticed that I was getting hundreds of clicks from supersizedmeals.com, a website devoted to the various joys and stories and pics and video of gluttony, and Corvette Forum: "The Internet's Corvette Community."

Here is the mention in supersizedmeals.com.
Here is the mention in Corvette Forum.

I'm honored, to say the least. I love eating lots of terrible food and I like looking at Corvettes (although I'm too tall to drive a sweet 'Vette) and I like looking at owners of Corvettes writing about my silly video in their forum.
Here is the video. And if anybody wants to see the whole movie, I'll bring it over.

January 5-11

Monday, January 5:
The Ginger Envelope, Kristy Krueger, Dylan Sneed, Sweet Box.
Caledonia. 10 p.m. $5 (21+), $7 (18+). www.caledonialounge.com.

Language Arts, Romaneko, Sound On Film.
Tasty World. 10 p.m. $5. www.tastyworld.net.

Tuesday, January 6:
Madeline, The Deep and Holy Sea, Cassette.
Flicker. 8:30 p.m. $5. www.myspace.com/flickerbar.

Friday, January 9:
The Empties, Parachute Musical, Deleted Scenes.
Caledonia. 10 p.m. $6. www.caledonialounge.com.

Venice Is Sinking, Allison Weiss.
40 Watt. 9 p.m. $5. www.40watt.com.

Dancer Vs. Politician, Batata Doce, Club Awesome.
Drunken Unicorn (ATL) 9 p.m. $5. www.thedrunkenunicorn.net

Saturday, January 10:
Heavy Petty, Spring Tigers.
The Melting Point. 9 p.m. FREE! www.meltingpointathens.com.

Club 529 (ATL) (404)228-6769.

Subrig Destroyer, Whores, Sonn Av Krusher, Hell Comes To Town.
Drunken Unicorn (ATL) 9 p.m. $5. www.thedrunkenunicorn.net