Hope you're having a great one! I'm sure I'll read all about it on the various blogs. Talk to you tonight.
Love,
Andrew
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Saturday, May 19, 2007
The Productivity of Headless Chickens
This may surprise no one who regularly reads our blogloo (as far as such a thing is possible), but things have been super busy around here. A little too busy, to be honest. But most of the stuff that's been keeping us occupied is fun stuff, so I really shouldn't complain. It's just that little things like blogs, dishes, and sleep seem to keep getting pushed to the wayside.
This last week, I spent three nights recording with the inimitable Al Tuck at Charles Austin's Studio, The Echo Chamber. We went in each night immediately after work and stayed until all hours, getting down about 10 or 11 songs live off the floor. Charles got a fantastic representation of Al's voice, and in general I think we made some pretty solid recordings. I guess Al and Charles will now have to sift through the hours and gigas of bytes to pan gold out of the bitstream.
What with that and this long weekend we are now into, work has been mostly if not entirely exhausting. This may be a pretty controversial opinion, and I might get kicked out of the Society of Complaining Office Workers and Layabouts (SCOWL) for expressing it, but I kind of don't like long weekends. They always mean getting so much more work done in less time that the extra day is usually spent either catching up on lost sleep or drinking oneself into oblivion in a misguided attempt to chase away the stress demons before they start persuasively suggesting you throttle your boss or replace your co-worker's screensaver with a compromising picture of her from last year's Christmas party while she is in the washroom. My own as yet unthrottled boss has decided that we should only work a half day on the Friday before each long weekend this summer, which is awfully decent of him, but when noon had come and gone and everyone was still hunched over their computers trying to finish off all the projects that absolutely had to be finished before they could even think about leaving, the resentment was palpable. In the end, I left most of the job that I usually take all Monday and Tuesday to complete — and which I'd thought I might get a decent start on to avoid the otherwise unavoidable freakout on Tuesday when four o'clock hits and it's inexplicably only half done — undone in order to come home and nap for most of the afternoon.
I did manage to produce something I was somewhat proud of this week: an ad for a used car sale based on the concept of the sales people's boss ordering them to sell off all the cars. That was the client's direction, and I captured it in what I thought was a pretty amusing way, but unfortunately the negative boss stereotype did not go over well. Instead, I was forced to make the majority of the ad a memo from the fictional boss, using bosslike but non-negative language. Not nearly as visually interesting, but I guess it gets the point across. Anyway, here's my original design.
Let's see... what else? There were a couple of practice sessions with Charles, Cliff, and Mike on Monday and last night. That's really coming along well and the addition of Mike on vocal duties has been a stroke of genius. Now we just need a name. I can't remember whether I told you this, but we'd settled after a lot of debate on Sea Takes Castle. However, it was never an entirely popular choice, and now we've decided it sounds too much like The Sea and Cake. So it's back to the drawing board. Suggestions are welcome, but will probably be shot down. Just so you're warned.
Oh yeah, some updates to the last post: it turns out the name of the dish is actually General Tso's chicken, not General Gao's. I don't know anything about either of those presumably venerable military figures, but apparently this is a common mistake. Also, the Beauty Queens did not win the Amazing Race, as you may have seen. We were quite disappointed, especially as the team that ended up winning were a couple of misanthropic jerks. The Beauty Queens always had such a refreshingly positive attitude, we were convinced they were a shoe-in, and then on the final episode they actually got in an argument and said some hurtful things to each other. That's the problem with those reality shows — you can't expect the plot to follow any kind of coherent structure or even resolve satisfyingly. Reality needs some new writers.
There've been some other art projects going on that I can't really talk about yet, and the next bit of business is to learn the songs of The Got to Get Got, as it seems we have some shows booked over the next couple of months. Their four song EP, which was made before I joined the band, just came out and it sounds great. That'll help me figure out those ones at least. I was supposed to practice with those guys last night, but it conflicted with my other band practice so I had to bail. I also had to skip yoga class this week. Priorities, priorities. At least we have another one this afternoon.
And finally, in among all the crazy hecticity, Ali and I have been listening to an audio book called Practising the Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. He's one of these metaphysical, spiritual guys who tells you the best way to live. It's a very popular subject these days. But this guy is pretty down to earth and not completely kooky and new-agey. OK, he's a little bit kooky. He has a very interesting German/English accent, for instance. And he's kind of ugly. His writing is mostly about recognizing the ego in all its guises and trying to watch it detachedly, rather than getting suckered into identifying with it and its foolish desires. Very buddhist, but this guy's more into cultivating awareness at all times, rather than using meditation as a temporary/temporal practice of awareness cultivation. Plus, he seems to advocate my long-held view that the best way to think of the world is as a giant insane asylum wherein we are all both patients and doctors. If you already think of everyone, yourself included, as completely insane, then it's not so upsetting when you witness insane behaviour in yourself or others. I recommend you check it out. But don't blame me if you don't like it — I'm loony as a cuckoo bird.
- Andrew
This last week, I spent three nights recording with the inimitable Al Tuck at Charles Austin's Studio, The Echo Chamber. We went in each night immediately after work and stayed until all hours, getting down about 10 or 11 songs live off the floor. Charles got a fantastic representation of Al's voice, and in general I think we made some pretty solid recordings. I guess Al and Charles will now have to sift through the hours and gigas of bytes to pan gold out of the bitstream.
What with that and this long weekend we are now into, work has been mostly if not entirely exhausting. This may be a pretty controversial opinion, and I might get kicked out of the Society of Complaining Office Workers and Layabouts (SCOWL) for expressing it, but I kind of don't like long weekends. They always mean getting so much more work done in less time that the extra day is usually spent either catching up on lost sleep or drinking oneself into oblivion in a misguided attempt to chase away the stress demons before they start persuasively suggesting you throttle your boss or replace your co-worker's screensaver with a compromising picture of her from last year's Christmas party while she is in the washroom. My own as yet unthrottled boss has decided that we should only work a half day on the Friday before each long weekend this summer, which is awfully decent of him, but when noon had come and gone and everyone was still hunched over their computers trying to finish off all the projects that absolutely had to be finished before they could even think about leaving, the resentment was palpable. In the end, I left most of the job that I usually take all Monday and Tuesday to complete — and which I'd thought I might get a decent start on to avoid the otherwise unavoidable freakout on Tuesday when four o'clock hits and it's inexplicably only half done — undone in order to come home and nap for most of the afternoon.
I did manage to produce something I was somewhat proud of this week: an ad for a used car sale based on the concept of the sales people's boss ordering them to sell off all the cars. That was the client's direction, and I captured it in what I thought was a pretty amusing way, but unfortunately the negative boss stereotype did not go over well. Instead, I was forced to make the majority of the ad a memo from the fictional boss, using bosslike but non-negative language. Not nearly as visually interesting, but I guess it gets the point across. Anyway, here's my original design.
Let's see... what else? There were a couple of practice sessions with Charles, Cliff, and Mike on Monday and last night. That's really coming along well and the addition of Mike on vocal duties has been a stroke of genius. Now we just need a name. I can't remember whether I told you this, but we'd settled after a lot of debate on Sea Takes Castle. However, it was never an entirely popular choice, and now we've decided it sounds too much like The Sea and Cake. So it's back to the drawing board. Suggestions are welcome, but will probably be shot down. Just so you're warned.
Oh yeah, some updates to the last post: it turns out the name of the dish is actually General Tso's chicken, not General Gao's. I don't know anything about either of those presumably venerable military figures, but apparently this is a common mistake. Also, the Beauty Queens did not win the Amazing Race, as you may have seen. We were quite disappointed, especially as the team that ended up winning were a couple of misanthropic jerks. The Beauty Queens always had such a refreshingly positive attitude, we were convinced they were a shoe-in, and then on the final episode they actually got in an argument and said some hurtful things to each other. That's the problem with those reality shows — you can't expect the plot to follow any kind of coherent structure or even resolve satisfyingly. Reality needs some new writers.
There've been some other art projects going on that I can't really talk about yet, and the next bit of business is to learn the songs of The Got to Get Got, as it seems we have some shows booked over the next couple of months. Their four song EP, which was made before I joined the band, just came out and it sounds great. That'll help me figure out those ones at least. I was supposed to practice with those guys last night, but it conflicted with my other band practice so I had to bail. I also had to skip yoga class this week. Priorities, priorities. At least we have another one this afternoon.
And finally, in among all the crazy hecticity, Ali and I have been listening to an audio book called Practising the Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. He's one of these metaphysical, spiritual guys who tells you the best way to live. It's a very popular subject these days. But this guy is pretty down to earth and not completely kooky and new-agey. OK, he's a little bit kooky. He has a very interesting German/English accent, for instance. And he's kind of ugly. His writing is mostly about recognizing the ego in all its guises and trying to watch it detachedly, rather than getting suckered into identifying with it and its foolish desires. Very buddhist, but this guy's more into cultivating awareness at all times, rather than using meditation as a temporary/temporal practice of awareness cultivation. Plus, he seems to advocate my long-held view that the best way to think of the world is as a giant insane asylum wherein we are all both patients and doctors. If you already think of everyone, yourself included, as completely insane, then it's not so upsetting when you witness insane behaviour in yourself or others. I recommend you check it out. But don't blame me if you don't like it — I'm loony as a cuckoo bird.
- Andrew
Sunday, May 06, 2007
Been Gone Too Long
All right, let's just skip the obligatory apologies and get straight to what we've been up to that's been keeping us so occupied we can't even type a few sentences about it, for Pete's sake. Well, we've both had colds for one thing, not that that's any kind of excuse. Everyone I work with got it, then Alison got it, then I felt like I was getting it so I took tons of Cold FX and vitamin C and echinacea and successfully fought it off, then I got it. I missed a day of work and an Al Tuck practice, and contributed my fair share to Kimberley-Clark's Boreal deforestation agenda, but other than that it hasn't been too debilitating.
There've been a lot of musical projects going on, not the least time-consuming of which has been my cover of this song for the Inbreds tribute album being put together by Scott Grimbleby of Ingersoll, Ontario as the first release on his brand new Gooseberry Records label. I finally finished it a few days ago after a couple of weeks straight working on it, and I think it sounds pretty good even though I never want to hear it again. I'm sure everyone working on the project felt this, but it's quite daunting to record a new version of an already impeccable song. Especially the vocals.
Speaking of which, I don't want to jinx it or anything, but it looks like the songwriter/vocalist in question, Mike O'Neill, is going to be joining the band Charles and Cliff and I have been slowly but surely putting together, taking over the singin' duties. I'm really really REALLY excited about it. Really. It'll allow Charles and me to concentrate purely on playing our respective instruments, and it'll sound ten times better than if I had to do the singing and maybe one and a half times better than if Charles did it. We're getting together with him tomorrow night to see how it goes.
The other two bands I play in, Al Tuck & No Action and The Got to Get Got, are also progressing semi-regularly, so there's been plenty of music to keep me busy. I designed this handbill yesterday for the regular Saturday afternoon gig with Al.
Oh man, there's plenty more stuff going on to tell you about, but Alison just finished making a veggie version of General Gao's Chicken with tofu instead of chicken and it smells FANTASTIC! I'll have to catch you on the flipside. See Spiderman 3 while you're waiting for me to return, because it's awesome, and don't forget to watch the finale of The Amazing Race tonight. Go, beauty queens!
- Andrew
There've been a lot of musical projects going on, not the least time-consuming of which has been my cover of this song for the Inbreds tribute album being put together by Scott Grimbleby of Ingersoll, Ontario as the first release on his brand new Gooseberry Records label. I finally finished it a few days ago after a couple of weeks straight working on it, and I think it sounds pretty good even though I never want to hear it again. I'm sure everyone working on the project felt this, but it's quite daunting to record a new version of an already impeccable song. Especially the vocals.
Speaking of which, I don't want to jinx it or anything, but it looks like the songwriter/vocalist in question, Mike O'Neill, is going to be joining the band Charles and Cliff and I have been slowly but surely putting together, taking over the singin' duties. I'm really really REALLY excited about it. Really. It'll allow Charles and me to concentrate purely on playing our respective instruments, and it'll sound ten times better than if I had to do the singing and maybe one and a half times better than if Charles did it. We're getting together with him tomorrow night to see how it goes.
The other two bands I play in, Al Tuck & No Action and The Got to Get Got, are also progressing semi-regularly, so there's been plenty of music to keep me busy. I designed this handbill yesterday for the regular Saturday afternoon gig with Al.
Oh man, there's plenty more stuff going on to tell you about, but Alison just finished making a veggie version of General Gao's Chicken with tofu instead of chicken and it smells FANTASTIC! I'll have to catch you on the flipside. See Spiderman 3 while you're waiting for me to return, because it's awesome, and don't forget to watch the finale of The Amazing Race tonight. Go, beauty queens!
- Andrew
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