Yes, it's a crude topic. It came to me on a drive to the local blockbuster.... Why not assign a sex act to each Major League Baseball team. This would assuredly be a topic that would create quite an umbrage storm, as much as it would delight certain fans (casual or otherwise,) of the old national pastime. I won't pretend that my prejudices and long time eccentric baseball likes and dislikes, long standing diss reflexes, won't play a part in this. I was a die-hard Yankee fan in the 80's and early 90's who's love of the team died for a variety of reasons, including their Gucci-pink hat corporate, super clean cut makeover...change... Money's complete dominance in the game changes things for me to. One has to remember, that the first multi million dollar contract did not happen that long ago (historically speaking.) I think it started with Kirby Puckett in late 80's...but my trivia or general knowledge of the game is not what it once.
My brother and I started riffing on this idea on our way to pick up the film 'Big Fan,' with Patton Oswalt. So, I will try to at least begin this list in the hopes of giving each team a certain sex act that will somehow represent them as an 'organization.' Yes, I know this is crude, lewd, idiotic, impossible to substantiate, and might offend the very thin skinned, and humorless... That's why I'm doing it...well not really....but that may be a bonus... So without further ado... Let us begin.
1. The New York Mets: The drunken blow job of the Majors
2. The Pittsburgh Pirates: The unprotected anal sex of MLB
3. The Seattle Mariners: The ill fitting dildo of the Majors
4. The New York Yankees: The 'Spitzer' of the Majors (contribution by Mike G
5. The San Diego Padres: The Testicle Jiggling kings of the NL West
6. The Baltimore Orioles: The boob cock slide that never get's to orgasm
7. The Oakland Athletics; The lumbering hand job
8. The Philadelphia Phillies: The unexplained money shot
9. The Texas Rangers; The missionary position of the Majors
10. The St. Louis Cardinals: The doggy style of the NL Central
(Ok... I will stop for now. I need some ginger ale. Please, help me complete this list my laudable readers. Go.......find that position that 'fits.'
I write for an on line music magazine (Perfect Sound Forever,) and they just posted a 2009 best album list.......perhaps we are now removed far enough away from such lists to make it more tolerable to look at.... This general concept is becoming more an more irrelevant for a variety of reasons...but with that said...fuck it...
After my Resolution 2010 post went up on MySpace, I was happily reminded via blog comments and direct messages that quite a few people discovered my music last year through Jeebus. I'm grateful for that! (On Facebook, you only get feedback if you post about babies, Mondays, or how badly you need a nap.)
What I hadn't considered was that my new friends don't know what Hanslick Rebellion is - or Skyscape - or what any of the projects I listed for 2010 have to do with Jeebus. For those of you who wrote to ask (and those of you who didn't), here's a quick New Year's primer.
Jeebus is Mike, Alex, Reeves, Matt and myself. Or as you know us: Orlando, Old Man Cropsey, Reeves, Joe and Jedidiah. Of this you are aware - and you know that we play nasty music loaded with offensive themes and dirty words, and titles like "Born Asking For It" and "Mock Cheer".
So from Jeebus, take Mike, Alex and me. Add Kearns on the drums. You get The Hanslick Rebellion. We play balls-out rock and roll, and we have been making music together since college. Our best-known song is "You Are Boring The Shit Out Of Me", which came out in 2007. Think of the Rebellion as the ego, and Jeebus as the id.
If you add vocalist Dom to The Hanslick Rebellion, you have Skyscape. I've been making music with Dom since high school. Dom has been making me laugh with his absurdist ravings since we were six. Skyscape is all about bringing Dom's game to the masses. When we're doing our job, you get awesome shit like "Break Your Fuckin Balls" and "Buffalo Head".
Then there's my solo shit. When I do a solo album, you never know who's gonna show up on there (besides me). Sometimes it'll have a little Rebellionness to it. Sometimes a little Jeebosity. That's to be expected. But mostly it's the stuff that I need to say for myself, in my way. I'm sure you know how that is.
So that's my world... welcome to it. If you found any of this of interest, then 2010 will be your year. OUR year!
After several years of relative silence, I plan - nay, resolve! - to release at least a dozen projects in 2010. It won't be a-thing-a-month, but it'll average out that way. You'll be able to get this stuff digitally through iTunes, Amazon and all the usual retailers (as well as eschatone.com, where you'll find most of it bundled with a physical counterpart of some kind, whether it's a vinyl record, a poster, or a t-shirt). Vinyl records will be available wherever you buy vinyl online or in person. Here's what's coming:
SOLO RECORDINGS
- This Sunday, some friends and I hit Studio G in Brooklyn, where we'll record "Yuppie Exodus From Dumbo", a new single that will be released in the spring - digitally and as a limited-edition wax cylinder. Yeah, you heard me.
- The Cutting Room Floor, my 11-song solo album, coming on vinyl in the summer.
- A live compilation featuring the best performances from my early-aughts CB's Gallery shows, released digitally with a poster (in other words, order the download from eschatone.com and you can opt to receive an original printed poster from one of those shows in the mail, while they last).
- A live compilation featuring the best performances from my CELEBRATION PARTY! tour this past summer, released digitally with a poster (in this case, one of the limited-edition silkscreens printed for the tour). Some tracks were recorded out in the crowd; others were multitracked off the soundboard and properly mixed. The whole thing's been mastered into what sounds like one long show, and it sounds fantastic.
- Thanks In Advance, a fully multitracked, mixed and mastered release of my Thanksgiving Eve show - which was excellent if I do say so - released digitally.
- A second studio solo album by the end of the year. I'm not sure if it'll be Shoot The Piano Player, which is finished, or something called Small Sacrifices Must Be Made!, which is almost finished. But it'll be a digital/vinyl release.
THE HANSLICK REBELLION
- A new studio album from The Hanslick Rebellion, released digitally and on vinyl in the fall. This may be the project I'm most excited about. It's our 15th anniversary and we've got a ton of fresh material to record, with one or two pieces of unfinished business sprinkled in. Technically, this will be the Rebellion's first full-length studio recording. the rebellion is here. is full-length but live, and The Deli Of Life is studio but an EP. We're thinking about calling this one Ashamed Of Rock And Roll.
- A second Hanslick Rebellion thing that you will like very much. Full-length digital release with an unbelievable physical counterpart. Details to come as September 22 approaches.
SKYSCAPE
- The full digital/vinyl release of Skyscape's Zetacarnosa in the summer. By the way, if you ordered a Zetacarnosa CD and it hasn't yet arrived, that's because something wonky happened in manufacturing and discs had to be re-pressed. Nobody's fault; we were just victims of the law of averages. Your disc is coming!
- Mineral Nine Nine Nine, a live Skyscape compilation featuring performances dating all the way back to our very first gig, all properly mastered. A digital release that will come with a t-shirt if you order from Eschatone.
- Skyscape's awesome 2009 Googie's Lounge show, in its entirety, beautifully mastered for a digital/t-shirt release which Dom has titled Flunky Gassoda's Honeymoon.
JEEBUS
- Jeebus's August '09 show in Albany, mastered up and sounding amazing. Just an incredible gig. Another digital/t-shirt release. Also, perhaps a full studio album from Jeebus in 2010 - it's all recorded, just waiting to mix (and we're hoping that will happen on somebody else's dime, if you know what I mean. We'll see).
- Finally... this doesn't necessarily count as a project of mine, but something I've been working on for 13 years is at last being mixed (two songs already down). I'm talking about the EP I started producing for Amy Willey in 1997. I'm embarrassed that it took this long, but the results are fuckin spectacular. I can only hope that Willey is happy with the record, which is all I care about - if she is, then maybe you'll get to hear it!
Fuck my ass, what else? More gigs this summer. And work continues on my solo album Failing Upwards (four songs complete and mixed) and a brand-new Skyscape record with a very interesting band lineup. I've started recording another solo album of all-new material called Like A Radio Loves A Song, while planning a revisitation of Physics with a few special pals. Oh! And Rise And Shine lurches ever closer to being performed by a bunch of good-looking people for school-tripping adolescents and old folks.
Also, watch out for the first album by my pal Crazee Joe Slevin: YARRRRRRRRR! And Other Words. May not be a 2010 thing, but it sure as hell better not take me 13 years to produce.
The past few years have been tough ones for me. Full of changes, many brought about by circumstances beyond my control. I worked steadily on this music all the while, taking time to get it just so - and watching helplessly as the music industry collapsed, as my fanbase moved on, as the economic disaster took hold. While dozens of new songs piled up in the queue, screaming to get out, unable to be realized until I cleared my overflowing plate. Very frustrating. But also rewarding in its way, as I now have all this music exactly as I want it, no compromises.
Will anyone care when this stuff comes out? I don't know. Honestly, I don't give much of a fuck. I'm doing what I want. In 2010, and beyond.
I hope you, too, are doing what you want. If you're not, you know where to find me. ;-)
Hey everyone on the eschatone fulcrum of nibbly hell-muffin bickelly-nordfank suasion..
Did anyone get the new Skyscape record...for those that do..> email me, and I will write a song for you're loved one, or prank phone call someone you fucking hate...with pleasure. Please support our record, cause it's really fun and fuck-all-off locker cream combo dreamed... like no?
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For the holidays, I feed those that have had to pay too much capital gains tax. For those that are lnot terribly literate among that grouping; I read stories about about the greed and control wielded by government. I find that it mitigates their repressed feelings of psuedo guilt about their own 'light dabblings' in greed and control.
the man so lonely: he regretted unsubscribing to junk mail companies
the man so incapable of sleep--: the frist time he took clozapam (anti-anxiety pill) was was when his brother gave him two before boarding a flight from New York to Argentina to visit a reformed hooker named Julietta. His brother told him: "Take two of these, you won't wake up you fucking insomniac." The man took two pills of cloazpam with a brand name water than intensley bothered him, as the label showed emaciated people in the background looking at a dam of water fall into a verdantly furred black hole. He took these pills shortly after drinking almost undrinkable wine, and listening to the woman seated next to him prey about her all her children (which comforted him in a mild and unembarrasing way until she got to a boy named Hermoso Hermoso who did something with duckling that did not make sense. Our flying man fell asleep for the entire nine or so hours of the plane trip down to the southern hemisphere. It was amaining for him. He knew not the guazy tongue of a deep When he awoke to the lights of Argentina, the spanish speaking woman did the sign of the cross over him and said in spanish (which I will try to translate:) I thought you were dead, you looked so happy Mister.
Answering a great question via e-mail from J. Eric Smith. I thought the exchange brought some cool facts about Skyscape's new album Zetacarnosa to light, and Eric was kind enough to let me post the question and answer here.
JES: I'm REALLY digging Zetacarnosa . . . one of the best things I've heard you produce over the years, I think. I don't have the hard copy yet, so haven't read liner notes and whatnot, but there are all sorts of key, guitar and bass things happening on this album that are absolutely fuckin' sublime, sounds I've not heard your other bands (or even early Skyscape) make. I dunno what you did different, but I like it! Are you using a bunch of different keyboards on this album, or just different patches (or whatever you call them in the post-MIDI era) . . . there are some mind-blowing sounds here!
JED: Cool... thanks! I'm thrilled to hear that. Zetacarnosa was a tough album to do but I think I'm happier with it than anything I've put out so far. It's what it's supposed to be.
I think the reason it sounds so unique is that it literally took 15 years to record. The finished tracks contain remnants from every phase of each song's development. For example, "Autumn Punkfest" starts with a riff that was recorded on a boombox by Skyscape's guitarist at the time, Joe Aversano, as he brainstormed the song in his bedroom in 1991. I took that cassette, bounced it into Pro Tools, left the intro as it was, then brought the riff into time with the band and looped it throughout the song. A lot of the guitars on the record were done the same way - the lead on "Statement Of Intent" is from a four-track demo; some of the guitars on "Young Socialist" are from a 1992 rehearsal; the acoustic guitar on "Statement Of Intent" is from an old videotape of Dom and me hanging out.
There are also vocals from weird sources... the vocal on "Buffalo Head" was from a 1993 videotape - Dom walked in on me while I was writing the music and started improvising over my unfinished sequence. I was adding organ to the sequence at that moment, which you can also hear a bit of in the track. The third verse of "Dom's Back Party" is a voicemail Dom left for me, which happened to fit nicely with the track. The demonic voice during the solo in "Clouds" is our one-time drummer Steve Theater - it's him talking from the end of "Back To The Wall" on the Band Of The Week record. The vocals in the disco parts of "Break Your Fuckin Balls" are from the first demo of that song. The vocal on "Mall" was done by having Dom, Mike Keaney and me each cut the entire vocal track, and then mixing and matching at random. There are also tons of overdubs, vocals doubled and blended with keyboards, vocals hacked up and looped, and vocals effected in all sorts of ways.
Bass-wise, it's all Mike Keaney, with the exception of the acoustic double bass on "House Of Wax", which is Mike Neglia. The primary band on the record is myself, Mike Keaney, Kearns, and Sean; Alex played all the guitars on "Dom's Back Party" and the contemporarily-recorded guitars on "Young Socialist". Kearns played all the drums. You could look at it to some extent as Hanslick Rebellion with Dom singing.
As far as keyboards go, there is a lot of real piano and some real electric piano, but almost everything else is a sample or synth. I used every keyboard I have on the record, including the Korg DW-6000 from Band Of The Week, and primarily the Korg Triton, which I used a lot for a year or two and then put away - it does really nice percolating arpeggiations, which you can hear in parts of "Autumn Punkfest", for example. I also used softsynths, which are not really my thing, but we recorded a lot of the keyboards at Sean's place and that was the easiest way to do it there. Most tracks included keyboard parts from every single source.
It also helped that the mix engineer, Dave McNair, was extremely competent and creative, and game to make the best of the lo-fi material he was given. When I asked him to do an automated EQ sweep on the ENTIRE TRACK in the middle of "Young Socialist", he didn't even flinch. That dude was awesome.
The point of Zetacarnosa was to celebrate Skyscape in all its forms, make sure all band members were represented, and make it feel like all moments of the band's history were happening at once. I hope to do this with future Skyscape albums as well; I have dozens of hours of similar archival material to mix in, even as we write brand new songs. I'm reworking Band Of The Week now with Alex, Dom and Mike; besides newly-recorded guitars and bass, I've added a ton of four-track demo and rehearsal stuff, plus all sorts of additional keyboard material while still keeping the DW-6000.
Well THAT was long... hope it was at least a little bit interesting!
What is the truth behind Skyscape's forthcoming album 'Zeta Carnosa?' How will this fleshy hunk of letter 'Z' digest within us? No one can be sure. The letter 'Z' is tricky. The Z falls through a trap door...it cuts, it strikes out, it streaks (zebre)...it is the letter of DEVIANCE. Do you fucking understand a bit better now garcon? ...It is the wound of lack
....S and Z exist in an inverted graphic relationship: they are the same letter, seen from the other side of the mirror. The Z is superfluous, but it grown around the bones of its superfluity, taking in blood and substance...whose!?
The Z is mysterious and dangerous. It's the letter of the zigzag, source of uncertainty. It's the evil double, violence itself inscribed within words, an exterminating, ESCHATOLOGICAL letter. And here I am
Vans are reserved; flights booked. I even got Cubs tickets for when we pass through Chicago. All I need to do now is make hotel reservations and attach a couple loyalty programs to my credit card so I get points on all this. Posters are being printed (silkscreens for the solo gigs; letterpress - at Hatch Show Print! - for Jeebus). Tour is go.
Now I can concentrate on the music. I've got three different bands to rehearse. The only musician besides me who is doing all the shows is Reeves. Luckily, the band coming for my solo tour is basically Jeebus minus Alex: Reeves, Mike, and Matt Johnson. We can work up a nice chemistry during our first week on the road which will serve us well when it's time to tackle the more challenging Music of Jeebus.
For a keyboard player, there is one extra step in the process of learning material: in addition to getting the notes under your fingers, you also need to sort out the sounds you're using. That means choosing and sometimes creating sounds for each song, then building a program that maps the sounds across the keyboard so everything you'll need to play that song is available to you. I don't believe in using multiple keyboards... that shit is just for show. You have two hands; with smart mapping you can lay all the sounds you need for a song over 88 keys. Maybe you'll need to change programs once or twice during a song, but you don't need two fuckin keyboards. I once wrung every single note of Faith No More's Angel Dust out of a keytar. That's 45 lousy keys.
Speaking of keytar, it's what I'll be bringing out for the Jeebus tour. The keytar, a Roland AX-1, adds another wrinkle. In addition to programming the external brain which contains the sounds, you also need to program the keytar. You have to assign functions to each of its inputs - the ribbon controller, the expression controller, the sustain button. Each keytar program has to be set up individually to correspond with a program in the external sound module. For example, if I want to put a wah on a synth sound, I not only have to program a wah in the sound module; I also have to tell the keytar that its expression controller pumps the wah.
All of that is time-intensive, but it makes a huge difference on stage and through the PA. The current set of Jeebus material is (mercifully) simple, keyboard-wise; plenty of notes but not many sounds to a song, and those sounds are relatively straightforward archetypes like "piano", "organ", "pad" or "growl". In the future, as the arrangements get more adventurous, I plan on running my keyboards in stereo and programming sounds so they bounce and fly all around the room.
My first rehearsal with another human being is on Sunday. Two hours for the Bitter End show with Anton Fig. I can't wait. Also, I hope I don't completely embarrass myself!
I'm hiking up a mountain. It's evening. Twilight. There are a few people with me - I can't make out who they are, but I know they are friends of mine, very good friends. We navigate a trail, pushing aside thick branches and vines as we climb.
The forest clears and we're at the end of the trail. We are standing on a cliff. In front of us is the reason we climbed the mountain. It's the most beautiful view in the whole world.
Directly below us, in a valley, city lights shine - like the Mulholland Drive lights you see in movies. By a trick of dream-perspective, the city thins out to plainly visble suburbs and then to what appears to be a coastal town, with fields, a few small houses and a little white church bathed in the orange-red glow of the setting sun.
Beyond that, a beach. Then the ocean, reflecting that huge yellow sun as it falls over the horizon. Two islands are silhouetted before the sun. One is covered in forest, and the trees are outlined in all sorts of fiery colors against the black, backlit bulk of the island. Someone on the shore of that island has built a small bonfire. The other island is farther away; it appears to be mostly rocky and is completely dark save two small lights in the hills, one green and one red.
The sun continues to set. The sky fades from red to blue to starry black overhead. We stare, desperate to take it all in. And then we get even more. The sky opens up.
High above us, the stars were already out in their thousands. Now triangular cracks appear in the heavens, full of crazy checkerboard patterns and oozing abstract shapes. Enormous wedges of light and color, almost too huge to take in, reveal glimpses of planets much, much larger than the earth. And they're coming through these jagged splits in the sky. It's terrifying, yet even more beautiful than everything else we'd seen from that mountaintop.
Suddenly, the sky explodes with pulsating light - yellow, white, red. Like when a bomb blows up in a cartoon. It goes on and on, and it's the only thing there is.
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When I woke from that dream, I scrambled over to my desk, grabbed my sketchbook and colored pencils and did my best to draw the scene before it faded from memory. The result was a landscape and a seascape, but it mostly was a skyscape.
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Domenic Maltempi and I got drafted onto the same soccer team when we were in second grade. Given my estrangement from family, that makes Dom the person in my life I know the longest. I still remember some of the shit Dom did that cracked me up at the age of six, though I can't really explain what about it was so fuckin funny. Dom is a supervillain with the power to make me laugh, mostly at inappropriate times.
Like in journalism class, twelfth grade. Dom would sneak up behind the teacher, Mrs. Swenson, and pretend to stick his finger up her ass. Nobody found this as hilarious as I did. Swenson kept asking me what was so funny - while my hysterics were distracting her from the show Dom was putting on scant inches from her backside.
It was in Swenson's class that Dom and I wrote our first song. It was supposed to be called "Yeah, That's Stupid", but once Dom's lyric was done and put to my music, the name changed to "Clouds". We liked the song and decided to form a band around it. Only problem was, we were dorks who couldn't play music worth a shit.
We ended up with a drummer named Kevin, who could only handle one beat per song, and a never-ending succession of guitarists. We had a keyboard player and no bassist, so we convinced one of the best guitarists in the school, Rob Haussmann, to join us 'cause we sounded "just like" his favorite band: The Doors. That ruse didn't last long, and Rob soon quit because, as he said, "I'm in six bands and this is the worst one."
We were the worst band, but we were a band... that had to count for something, right? We couldn't "shred". We had short hair. We used a keyboard. Nobody wanted us to play their house party, or Homecoming, or the Roxy. But we were a band anyway. Climbing a treacherous trail, over all obstacles, to reach that clearing and experience something transcendent. I named us Skyscape.
Dom, Kevin and I played our first show together at Erik Christiansen's house on March 7, 1992. There were about a dozen people in attendance. One of them taped the show using a small boombox. This is what we sounded like:
It was also at Erik's house that I got the worst advice I ever received. This came from Sean Gould.
We had just finished playing our second gig in Erik's folks' living room. Sean sat in on guitar. Then I asked him to join the band, and he told me he would - if we replaced Kevin with a better drummer.
"But Kevin is our friend," I said.
"This isn't music friends," 17-year-old Sean replied. "This is the music business."
The only thing dumber than that advice is ME, 'cause I took it. We fired Kevin the next day. And I can trace every bad decision I've made in music since then back to that conversation with Sean.
Many years later, Arturo Vega told me: Whomever you do your work with is the most important person in your life.
That's good advice.
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Skyscape has lasted, with the occasional argument-length hiatus, for almost twenty years. We've recorded countless demos and released one CD. We've sold out clubs. We've played empty rooms. We've had dozens of bandmates. There were times when I tried to keep the band going without Dom, but it was never really Skyscape. And Dom and I have tried to start other bands together, but they're always really Skyscape.
Dom moved to Texas in the late 1990s. We'd had a falling out so I didn't give a fuck where he was. But one afternoon I got a cryptic e-mail from somebody named "Bartleby Scantron", and knew instantly that could only be Dom.
I wrote back: "Dom, why don't you just say 'hello'?"
Soon I was getting a lyric a week via e-mail from Texas. I put a few to music. By the time Dom moved back to New York, we had the makings of a new Skyscape CD: Zetacarnosa.
I decided to involve as many of our ex-bandmates as I could. The core group included the entire Hanslick Rebellion, all of whom had served time in Skyscape at some point. There were a few Skyscapers I couldn't track down, but thanks to my exhaustive archive of old four-track recordings, most of them ended up on the album anyway.
Zetacarnosa was a tough record to make for a lot of reasons. Personnel juggling; technical difficulties (a third of the tracks got misplaced by an engineer and needed to be re-cut); labor-intensive editing of almost antique material to make it fit with the modern recordings... it took four years to finish. Worth every second.
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Dom was getting married and he wanted my help writing a song for the wedding. He sent me a lyric titled "Mare Spumans" - "the foaming sea".
The song was about the glory and wonderful pageantry of a wedding day. But it was really about the panic and confusion that shadow an irrevocable life-changing decision; it was about settling, and learning the frightening lesson that sometimes love is not the reason you're in a relationship. And Dom didn't even realize he'd put all this in there... his lyric betrayed the doubt below the surface, and also the fact that he was trying to hide it, or avoid it.
This left me with the dilemma: should I put this tragedy to music? There was something so self-fulfilling about the thing. It made the whole affair feel doomed. Should I even point any of this out to my friend, warn him?
In the end, I kept my mouth shut and wrote the best fuckin wedding music I could.
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On Monday night, Dom and I will head back to where we began: a tiny room, where we will play with a drummer (in this case, Joe Abba) for what is sure to be a small crowd. This time the room is not Erik Christiansen's parents' living room, but The Living Room in New York City. Upstairs at The Living Room, to be exact - at the piano bar they call Googie's Lounge. In all these years, we've only made it up one floor from the living room, har har.
But it's as good a place as any to start our next attempt at that old familiar climb... up the mountain, through the forest, dreaming of that clearing. Not knowing who will be with us when we get there, but certainly friends, very good friends.
CART
