Wednesday, July 19, 2006

If you let the ferret out... you're gonna have a bad time.

Last night turned out to be our last full band practice before the show this Friday. In the previous entry, I mentioned that we have hit the semi-awesomness level, but I'm happy to report that the alert status has been kicked up to pretty-awesome. So hide the kids in the cellar and prepare to get your eyes, ears, and noses blown into next week.
Holy crap, I kind of just threatened everyone didn't I?

Regardless, I'm no longer terrified of taking the stage. Everyone has worked their butts off to make this a good show and I'm quite happy with how things are shaping up.

Anyone who really knows me is aware of the fact that the only form of sound that my 1994 Geo Prizm pumps out is from an ancient cassette deck through several cracked speakers. I'm old school.
Because I'm cheap and busy, I never bothered to get a CD player installed in my vehicle. Instead I would spend countless hours dubbing cassette tapes every time I bought a new CD so that those albums could be mobile. Over the last few months, this cassette deck of doom decided to slowly start eating the tapes one by one. I lost the oldest ones right off the bat, but that didn't quench it's thirst for analog blood, so over the last few months, it ate the newer tapes as well. Weezer, gone. Old 97's gone. The Progress, gone. Many others too indie and pretentious to list... gone. Luckily there were a couple of tapes that stuck with me including my cassette copy of Motion City Soundtracks "I Am The Movie" which I had to listen to for about 6 months straight because my only other tape, Limbeck's "Hi, Everything's Great" got too warm and the audio was pitched shifted down a couple notches making it unlistenable. Since I had about two albums in car rotation, I'll take on anyone in a trivia contest over those two records. I can sing them forwards and backwards in my sleep. Sometimes I still do. Why didn't I just dub more tapes? Because my home stereo broke as well! What are the odds, right? For future reference, do not buy RCA products.
Anyway, I swear I'm getting to the point here...
A week or so ago I burnt a CD for Amanda with some of my favorite songs on it. We never really see eye to eye on music. She's into a lot of 80's rock (which I enjoy as well, but do not appreciate on quite as deep a level as she) and she also enjoys some good booty-shakin' tunes as well. I made this CD for her in an attempt to force my likes upon her. So last night when I show up to her place she was eager to show me that she had purchased a boat-load of blank tapes and had already dubbed me one for the road.
On this tape was the same CD of my favorite songs that I'd made for her plus Weezer's Blue Album.
Yeah. That's the bee's knee's right there.
In fact, if that's not love then I don't know what love is.

If anyone wants to bring me cassettes at future shows, feel free, but if they suck or have hardcore songs on them, they're getting tossed out the window. In fact, if anyone makes me an old-school mixtape that I actually like, maybe they can win some new merch or something.

For those of you who read the Moog Music website on a regular basis (Yes, I'm well aware that I'm the only one who does) they've been working on getting a new synth out to the masses called the "Little Phatty." It's gonna be the coolest thing the world has seen ever. I preordered this monster several days after it was announced. They're only making 1,200 of them total, so right now I'm on a waiting list waiting to hear my fate on the matter. Will I get it? I'd better.
I've been interested in upgrading my synth for a variety of reasons. First off, my current synth, the MG-1, is from 1979 and has some problems staying in tune and isn't quite ballsy enough for what I need it to do. I bought a Prodigy last year in hopes of getting a better sound, but that synth needs some TLC and rarely leaves my closet. Now us Moogheads are on the verge of getting a piece of gear that's new, stable, reliable, and sounds unlike anything I've ever heard.
The other reason I wanted to upgrade so badly is because as soon as people see me lug the synth on stage, they immediately start the comparisons between ENY and Motion City Soundtrack. I think these comparisons are pretty ridiculous since I know we don't sound like them.
I can't count the amount of times at shows that people have asked me if I bought the synth because of them. The answer is no, I did not. I was in the market for a Moog long before they came onto the scene. Consider this... ENY has been a band for 3 years. How long has MCS been in the spotlight? Maybe two years max. That's why I see them as more of a contemporary. I don't try to copy them, I see them as band doing something very similar to what we are doing, and right now, they're just doing it better. So if the synth player in that band has any common sense, he'll purchase a Little Phatty as well, so one day when we're back to using the same synth, it's not because I'm copying him.
I have original thoughts, you know.

Glad to get that off my chest. It'd been bugging me for ages.

Yeah, so the music video discussion is heating up over on the ENY MySpace group. Cast your votes now while you still can.

Oh, and hardcore music still sucks.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I think I just might make you a tape. And I may even toss a hardcore song on there to see what happens.