This weekend…
Friday: got drunk in a punk warehouse and flung pickles (well, just one) at Fall of the Bastards.
let’s get jiggy
I heard that “jig” was a racist term. Fuck it, who likes the Irish, anyway?
These myspace buttons suck. They’re too limited. I want to be able to enter my status as “permanently self-involved”…
The new Impaled site is up. http://www.impaled.info it has a funny splat noise that makes me giggle… tee hee!
The more answers I get…
… the more questions I have. But that’s rad… my life is an excellent, interesting, and entertaining diversion from my life.
Not the last Nile record though… that’s kinda boring, as I’m finding out.
The new Ludicra, though, which I have a finished copy of in my hands, is the opposite of that. You know, it’s fun being a member of an award-winning band that kills everything else on the planet. Yes… even better than the Beatles.
And let’s not even get started on the next Impaled… yeesh, I’m lucky to be working with some of the most amazing musicians and artists around. And they… are lucky to be working with me.
Just a couple more days in the life of TSE
Thursday… played with Ludicra. The night was fine, minus my truck not going up hills and the smelly hobo clowns dancing at the show. Yes, hobo clowns… no, there was no mirth involved. Just stink. Send out the clowns.
Friday, saw Dawn of the Dead. Not bad… heads blew up, zombies ate people… no complaints here.
Saturday… my truck makes its final gasp as I’m picking up Ludicra’s guitarist and singer in SF. Irony of ironies… some guy had just offered to buy the truck off of me maybe an hour before, as is. I should’ve taken the offer. My lovely woman Keri took us to the show (I’m that guy) and we played. The stage was rushed. At least five fistfights broke out. One guy we kind of knew ended up punching our closer friend and he got whupped but good and ended up crashing through a plate glass window. Blood was everywhere. I love saying that. Blood was everywhere. Drank at our guitarists house in Santa Cruz while telling the Germans we played with not to throw us in the ovens. I don’t think they thought it was funny.
Got picked up on by two homeless guys this week. Man, I still got the ol’ charm.
my life…
Rocks.
Ludicra is finished with basic tracking. Christy, Laurie, John, Aesop, and our guests, Sansa, Ron, Sigrid, Jackie, and Kris rock. Billy Anderson rocks.
Impaled is getting the next album together. And we’re having a rockin’ porn photographer take photos of us soon… sweet! Sorry, ladies and gents, there will be no Impaled weiner for y’all to marvel at, just our rockin’ faces. Our new guitarist Jason rocks. The new songs rock. We might be recording with someone supercool who totally rocks.
My room at my house has got new shelves which allowed me to unpack my drawing table… which rocks. Got to work on my rockin’ idea for the Engorged seven inch cover; a band, who by the way, rocks.
I got to go to some rockin’ parties with Brian, George, Tony, the Nixter, Nahthan, Aaron, Dino, Neela, Julie, Koa, Josh, and other rockers forgotten in the haze of the evening. But everyone rocked.
February 10th Ludicra show
Of course, this would’ve been more appropriate to post, oh, I don’t know, the day after the Ludicra show, minus me having to work and my intense exhaustion.
It was a banner evening for Lucifer’s Hammer. With four excellent (if I may say so myself) bands, it seemed that the old Lucifer’s crowd was out along with scores of people I’ve never seen before.
Blown to Bits just keeps getting better and better. They totally reorganized first as a three piece, and now as a four piece again, it’s obvious they have their rage in full effect.
Brainoil was heavy as a collapsed star, like they always are. You could tell the energy of the crowd was infectious as Nate and Greg made REALLY angry faces for two such affable fellows.
I only heard Kylesa, as my lady 1 Keri and Christine from Area 51 were busy piercing my arms in the upstairs office. Ooooh! It hurt so good! And they did an excellent job. Kylesa sounded awesome… at least, as much as I could hear inbetween my screams while having needles punched through my skin.
I was just inebriated enough as Ludicra went on. The crowd gave us enormous energy, and I think we played three songs more than we intended, seeing as how the bastards wouldn’t let us leave the stage. I mean, really, folks… that’s just plain ridiculous. But thanks, anyway.
Pix of Ludicra from the show by Nate from Brainoil…
The show over, I headed to my lady’s house, and got about three hours of sleep before taking her and our pal Aimee to the airport for their sojourn to Amsterdam. That’s so cool… and so totally sucky. Well… three weeks isn’t that long, is it? Twenty-one days… Five-hundred and four hours… Thirty-thousand, two-hundred and forty-minutes… One-million, eight-hundred and fourteen thousand and four-hundred seconds…
Ludicra recording Day 2-3
Well… I meant to keep up an intense journal over the next few days, but things are happening so fast, there aren’t “days” to keep up with! Saturday, the big day. It’s time to go record songs. I’m still sick, Christy’s sick, Keri’s not sick, but then, she’s not going to the studio with us. I have a GREAT morning…
Christy and I take off a bit early and we get to play a bit with Aesop our drummer’s awesome kid, Ezra. We head out, bagels and coffee for all (we’re such goddamn jews… recording black metal?). We get to the studio… and what happens over the next twelve hours was like, I don’t know, magic. I’ve never had such a productive day in my life. All four of us played together, with only the drums and bass having to be perfect all the way through.
Aesop blows me away… his style is without compare, and he blasts through all the songs. Billy is a great producer to work with, easing us along, no pressure, and we’re all laughs inbetween these super dour, super emotional songs. I laughed so hard on separate occasions, my stomach cramped up. I managed to get my drink on eventually, but not to the detriment of the material (no whiskey was involved). The day goes so well, Aesop and I are fucking done! I had two more days scheduled to record, and that’s it, the rhythm section is done. And I made it through with minor punch ins on only two songs. Pretty good for the shittiest bassist in the Bay Area.
So I called John, our other guitarist, to see how day three went. Christy aced the songs on her primary overdubs and did all her second tracks as well. What the fuck? If things keep going so well, we’re gonna have to stop being so depressed. What will become of Ludicra?
ludicra recording day one
So, I get up at six in the morning, leaving the arms of a beautiful woman, so I can get to work two and half hours early, so I can leave work early to have an even longer day recording. Keep in mind, I’m sick, and it only got worse today. Snot literally dripped out of my nose, completely out of control. My supervisor ended up giving me a prescription-strength Alegra. Now, I didn’t know Alegra had ephedrine in it, so right as I cut out of work, all of a sudden I tweaked. Ugh! I’m on speed! I haven’t done speed in two years! I don’t want to! AGGGHHH!!! Make my heart stop!
I got the studio, where only our drummer had shown up on time. Things always move slow like this, I’m used to it. I am, however, speeded up and tweaking hard. It was weird, because my last long-term relationship broke up partly due to drug use (and partly due to me just not being around, or so I’ve been told second-hand).
Ludicra is always emotional for me, having smashed basses at shows, smashed my head into walls, puked, been kicked out of where we were playing, etc. I was kind of afraid I’d get weird, but I guess I was just annoying. So that’s kinda like normal. Coming home later, I do feel the down-side of it, and I feel like I might cry if I watch the right long-distance commercial. Note to self: don’t watch long-distance commercials.
Well, after spending I don’t know how many hours sitting around getting “tones,” we recorded one song before our guitarist had to go deejay at a bar. It sounded awesome. Every song we practiced while getting tones was what we would’ve considered a take. So things are looking good. I’ve concern about sound-bleeding on the mics, that no one seems to mind. This can cause problems later down the road, but I don’t want to stress (for once). I remind myself, this is Billy Anderson, he’s done the Swans, he’s done Bungle… despite the fact that he wanted to beat me up at one time, his judgement is good.
Now, Christy sits here being bored while I try to write this journal. It’s a good thing she’s here to correct me tweaker typing. If I’m sick tomorrow, I’ll have to take another Alegra, and I have to admit, part of me hopes I am. Hey, I didn’t kick speed because it wasn’t fun, you know? Shit… time to drink.
Beautiful lady is on her way… YAY!
And, finally, the complete list of names we came up with for all styles of music… say them outloud, or it’s not funny… Ross Sewage – death metal Ross Doubt – punk Ross Putin – goth Ross Tafarian – reggae Ross Sugar – glam rock Ross Some – skate thrash Danger Ross – heavy metal K R Ross 1 – hip hop