All right, congrats! We'll need video ...

Did you wear your hat?

Excellent!!

No hat required. We don't look cool. We PLAY cool. I will announce myself by my playing with authority, and the people will be astonished.

Everything about this is awesome.

I love the 'comfortable being who I am--just listen to me play' thing. Maybe the most of all things.



I've been told strange things about what I look like when I'm playing. Something like being disinterested or detached. I love things like drummers whose elbows never raise from their sides, or guitarists who sit on a stool. It's a musical performance --not theatrical, a dance troupe, or a fashion show. Maybe, at some point, at the semi-pro or pro level you feel like you have to keep up appearances, but there are examples which could indicate that this is only if you believe that you have to do that. You posted a Cheap Trick track here recently. They were ugly dorks, like Toto. Who cared?

Yeah yeah! Not only that but people *adored* Cheap Trick for looking like ugly dorks. I feel like if you are authoritative on stage, people will pick up on that and respect it, no matter what.

http://cellar.org/2012/akottw.jpg

Here are some of the guys. I have replaced the dude in the middle. OK I might have lowered the average age by a year. The singer, I can tell, is a freak, and I can't wait to play out with him. The guitarist is a different kind of freak who has followed every "alternative" act since the Velvet Underground. We were stunned to find out that not only were we both at a Julian Cope (who?) show at a small club in 1986, but we were both backstage, with about 8 other people, chatting with Cope for ten minutes afterwards. So it is destiny.

OK be prepared to hear a genre that you don't normally hear, including enormous amounts of fuzz and distortion, it may take some getting used to:

One of the more garage-y songs, "She":

http://soundcloud.com/jacksn45/she-rj

The song that will be ALL ME, "Camera":

http://soundcloud.com/jacksn45/camera

hmmm... that guy had a hat....

so, what? they use a drum machine on stage? I definitely hear drums in bofe dem tracks.

and I like the first one. the bending in the second one is kind of imprecise... I don't know if that's intentional, but it is a bit discordant.

I'm totally jelly, btw. I wish I was in a band. let me know if you ever need a big fat guy to come up and play some leads or sing back up.

I could get a hat.

Yes, not actually a machine but sound files. There is a lot of pre-recorded content. The guys say there's no drummer because they can't find one good enough who wants to do this sort of thing.

Totally intentional. This band does some weird-ass things and will completely throw in, say, a keyboard solo that is not in the key of the rest of the song. That's the nature of it, let's make it weird and unpredictable, trancey and/or psychedelic. Once you hear it a few times it settles into your brain a little. But if not, just freak out man!!!

Aw man, that was more likely in the cover band than in this one, where we will do one 45-minute set of about 10 songs. Although the cover band is not dead, just resting and will occasionally be brought out to do parties and stuff.

BUT you have total control of your destiny! You can do anything. Here is the Craigslist Philly Musicians section.

How about this dude in Coatesville!

@Flint
Yeh, like the Dead with all their theatrics. wait what? ;)

Yeah, Guy is playing a gig at the park in Downingtown today, sitting in because their drummer couldn't make it. It's taken him six weeks to get ready. :haha:

Congratulations on your newly-rebroken-leg UT!

I'm wearing a hat, so I'll :tip it: for you.

:congrats:

First rehearsal after we've gotten going is totally productive, and we shoot for an early October "test gig" which will go not really announced. I think.

The guys throw me into a totally new situation, where I'm learning songs not by listening to them over and over, but actually having them tell me what the riff is during rehearsal. The lead singer, who is a manic sort, sings me the riff. I play what I think he's singing. "No, no, it's like nah nah na-na-na nahhh. If you can hum it you know it." He's right.

These guys are all about jamming out different ideas until they coalesce into a song. We mess around with ideas for the first 30 minutes of rehearsal. A song idea approaches. It's all down on tape for us to remember the next time. Creativity flows and is permitted.

It's pretty glorious to be in a new situation. It's exactly like being with a new [appropriate sex goes here]friend. You know, there's being with someone for 15 years and there's being with someone two weeks, and both are exciting in different ways. This is the two weeks version, and we are infatuated with each other. The old bass player brought skills and ideas -- I bring different ones. It's not that one is better than the other, it's just different, and that's very interesting for everyone.