"Awesome" Blog

New album out

2011-06-15T12:18:00.001-07:00

called "Bon Iver."

Oh, wrong blog, sorry.

New album in T-minus 4 days

2011-05-10T11:42:00.000-07:00

...and T-minus 1 month for next album

OMG WE HAZ WEBSITEZ

2011-05-01T20:43:00.000-07:00

CHECK IT OUT, PEOPLE

Why hello Mr. Blog!

2011-02-03T10:35:00.001-08:00

I don't know how you found us here. It seems that someone stole our awesometheband.com URL right out from under our noses! On the up side, you can now go there to learn about the weather in the Maldives.

I'm sure this whole internet thing is a passing fad anyway. Soon we'll be back to updating you with letterpress broadsides, and maybe cave paintings.

Hey, where'd everybody go?

2010-12-22T09:55:00.001-08:00

Center-Cut Ham Dinner Night Slideshow

2010-11-05T10:24:00.000-07:00

Everyone should go see David's new solo show at Annex Theatre, "Center-Cut Ham Dinner Night Slideshow". It's like watching Emo Phillips meet Carl Sagan in Terry Gilliam's basement.

http://www.annextheatre.org/2010-season_/center-cut-ham-dinner-night-slide-show/

And the nominees are...

2010-10-24T17:49:00.000-07:00

Say, what do you know? Our own Robertson "Davies" Witmer and John "Hey John" Osebold are nominees for Theatre Puget Sound's 2010 Gregory Awards! They're both up for the Outstanding Music & Sound Design award alongside our pal from Miss Mamie, Brendan Hogan, and "A" sympathizer Matt Starritt.

In the Best Actor category, you'll find our friend and sometimes-narrator/harmonica player Charles "Chuck" Leggitt. West's lighting/video hero L.B. Morse is gunning for the Lighting Design high score, and our former rehearsal space landlord and internet radio booster Scotto Moore is on the list for Outstanding Playwright!

So you see, it really is who you know. Or rather, who we know. But you know us and we know them so okay, it is who you know.

Puzzlingly, West was left off the roster of Outstanding Production nominees this year. I knew we should have called it The Laramie Project...

Good luck Rob & John and also everybody!

Nilsson, Nelson, Wilson

2010-10-21T09:09:00.000-07:00

Thanks to brother Sean Nelson (religious title), we'll be playing our 8-minute Harry Nilsson medley with him at Rainn Wilson & Friends at the Paramount Theater this Saturday.

I've seen so many shows at the Paramount that I'm giddy as a schoolgirl selling pixie stix to a talking mailbox to be playing there.

Savory Onyx Machine

2010-10-20T14:04:00.000-07:00

Photos and reaction to the performance installation we did at a vacant storefront in Pioneer Square yesterday

So what

2010-10-11T15:24:00.001-07:00

now

The Dick-Around Gang Gains Bonus Points on Level 5

2010-10-03T21:27:00.000-07:00

gained:
BALL PLACEMENT
RECOGNITION
ATHLETICISM

mvp:
LUKE'S iMIXER

bonus items:
PINEAPPLE
BEEF
CHICKEN
RICE
BEET SALAD

Star Train or 12 Angry Men?

2010-09-26T09:54:00.000-07:00

Discuss.

Is this thing on...?

2010-09-09T22:33:00.000-07:00

Oh hi!

Bet you thought we had forgotten about this here bloggythinger. Well, the truth is, we almost did. Almost.

Then tonight we* decided to have a rehearsal for the show we have coming up on Monday night that you should really check out if you even care about art and stuff.

And the rehearsal was fun and silly and good and we** remembered that we like playing music and hanging out and dicking around***.

So don't fret, you'll hear more from us soon.

Just hold tight, Sally. Rain's a-comin'...

*Only 5 of us could make it to rehearsal. Come to the show and see if you can spot which ones! (HINT: it won't necessarily be the ones who play better)

**Some of us remembered. I don't know what those other jerks remembered. IF ANYTHING. Amirite??!

***Welcome back from Canada, Evan!

How we spent our summer vacations

2010-08-12T01:59:00.000-07:00

Havin' a blast, happened so fast…

Basil did the acting thing in the feature films Grassroots and Knights of Badassdom and on the TNT series "Leverage".

Rob is directing a puppet show called "Frankenocchio".

Evan is touring a fringe show called "The History of Lost and Found"

David is writing a solo show called "Center-Cut Ham Dinner Night Slide Show". (At Annex Theater Nov. 2-17)

John O. is planning a wedding called "Johntana".

John A. is planning a baby called "Monjohn".

Kirk is.

Man Fest Dest

2010-06-14T21:11:00.001-07:00

We shot this in Calgary between shows for a production company called (fortuitously enough) "Welcome To The West". Enjoy!

Pete's eye view of Calgary

2010-05-24T16:10:00.000-07:00

Our friend Pete joined us as sound engineer for our trip to Calgary. It turned out to be a challenging and rewarding experience, and he even managed to snap a couple of photos along the way!

http://www.dubtrain.com/pete/travel/calgary/

Sunday Night Live!

2010-05-21T16:33:00.000-07:00

Don't forget to come on out and join us for Chamber vs. Chamber this Sunday night the 23rd in the super-swanky Fireside room at Seattle's super-swanky Sorrento Hotel. Be warned, however, that only sexy, smart, witty arts-types will be in attendance, so you might want to wear that little number. I think you know which one I mean... **WINNNNK**

And yes, actually, we do put the "dance" in "attendance".

(Facebook event page here, if you're into that kind of thing)

Evan's new horn

2010-05-19T13:14:00.000-07:00

kirk's new drumkit

2010-05-18T23:36:00.001-07:00

Rob's new accordion

2010-05-18T13:46:00.000-07:00

John's new guitar

2010-05-13T09:14:00.000-07:00

The New York Times has come today

2010-05-12T17:32:00.000-07:00

A shout-out from the NYT on our score of The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle.
And I quote:

"In the background, a group of musicians collectively known as Awesome lives up to its name."

So you know, we're huge in New York now, obvys.

Post-Mother's Day Discussion

2010-05-11T13:39:00.000-07:00

I just thought this picture was awesome. This is Dare. She and her sister Emerald and her mom Counsel are artists. Respect.

Post-show discussion

2010-05-11T10:00:00.000-07:00

Like music, talking, listening and drinking? The good folks over at OnePot have invited us over for their upcoming Chamber vs. Chamber music/art/history/ice cream* social event at the Sorrento Hotel's Fireside room on Sunday, May 23rd.

Whether you missed West and want to get a little live taste of the music, or you saw it and want to know more, or you hated it and want an explanation, this behind-the-music event is for you. It'll be a cool discussion about art, opera, indie music and other heady stuff, led by City Arts editor Mark Baumgarten and West director Matthew Richter. We're joined by our hyper-talented pals Nick Garrison and Sarah Rudinoff, so come join us and bring your party brains!

Go here for more info and ticket link.

*ice cream may not be served.

exit, stage left

2010-05-10T01:29:00.000-07:00

Calgary is snow

2010-04-28T23:18:00.000-07:00

Calgary: Day 2

2010-04-28T15:45:00.000-07:00

Some quick things:

Headset mics for (almost) all!

Hot tub curfew is 11pm... uh-huh...

It is not sunny and 75 here. Sorry JZ!

Keep drinking water, we're over 5000 feet above sea level! I don't know what that is in metres, but I'm guessing it's still pretty high. Speaking of pretty high...

... um, nothing. What?

The Marx Bothers performed on this stage, like, 6 or 7 years ago. My timeline might be off there, but probably not.

Me and Evan just Skyped each other in the same room. Yeah, that means what you think.

pics from WEST

2010-04-27T19:31:00.000-07:00

photo credit: me! (David Nixon)
Click on the picture to get a larger version.

WEST Goes East: 1st Dispatch

2010-04-26T23:42:00.000-07:00

From our esteemed driver, one-man road-crew, and yard-chicken entrepreneur, John Sutton:

"6 speeding tickets, 1 drunk driving citation, 2 dead deer, a border merry-go-round (canada, america, and canada again), 65 gallons of diesel, and a broken gas pedal later I have arrived in Cranbrook BC. All is on track to meet you in Edmonton by the time you arrive. Fly safe suckers!

Forgot to charge the camera battery so you will have to imagine the wonderful sights...

With love,
John

p.s. I traded someone's guitar for a sandwich in Idaho and loaded a crate with potatoes I dug up from a field. It snowed here last night. Bring your long underwear!"

More to come, assuming wifi reaches the hot-tub at the rental house.

TONIGHT: WEST BEGINS

2010-04-22T09:33:00.000-07:00

Wow. It was February of 2008 that we first started thinking about this show. It's hard to believe that it's finally happening. I've been told that tonight's show is already sold out.

UPDATE!!! Maybe tonight's show isn't quite sold out.

GET TICKETS HERE

2 more days until West opens.

2010-04-20T14:50:00.000-07:00

Until then, here's some snippets from the actual script:

"...Basil enters out..."

"...Evan enters, puts on his..."

"...John O, still unable to..."

"...John A grabs it, trying to keep..."

"Something catches..."

"They are far too large..."

"...Rob comes up..."

"...David is drawn..."

"...Kirk takes the lead..."

and that's all just the first act!!!

tickets available here

5 More Days Until West

2010-04-18T10:03:00.000-07:00

It's hard to believe that we've been working on this since February 2008.

Get your red hot TICKETS here, before they sell out.

oh, and another teentix interview piece is up. (Has anyone heard of a band called Anchors? Apparently they're one of my favorite bands!)

do you like netflix? male birth?

2010-04-15T16:33:00.000-07:00

Dizzle is now available on Netflix.

Pre-previews

2010-04-13T14:53:00.000-07:00

Hey, everyone! We're on the teevee on the innernette!

Seattle Channel Video can be played in Flash Player 9 and up

Thanks to Nancy Guppy for the enthusiasm and to Director/Dovetail Jointmaster Matt Richter for sharing his bio-profile-worthiness with us!

Also, if you like using your eyes to look at photos and read words, here are a few of both at the P-I dot com concerning us and our upcoming WTF-ery at On the Boards.

9 DAYS TIL WEST OMG YALLZ

Bonus: Teen Tix Crush of the Month teaser!

Cremaster: The Finnegan's Wake of cinema

2010-04-12T11:17:00.000-07:00

I spent all afternoon yesterday at SIFF cinema watching the entire Cremaster Cycle with some of my fellow bandmates. I was a virgin, never having seen any of the five episodes of Matthew Barney's sprawling epic. I'm really glad I saw them all in sequence. Cremaster 3, the sprawling central film of the series was made more enjoyable by joining Jen Graves in the back row for something we invented called "wineSlogging". (The Stranger was there to live-Slog during the film, but they were asked to stop because their keyboards were too noisy. So we went to QFC during intermission and procured a nice bottle of French wine, screw-top style). I think that the music by Jonathan Bepler was one of my favorite things, especially in 2 & 4. These movies have it all: cars, bees, bagpipes, buffalo, naked ladies. What more could you want?

Go West; Do not park North

2010-04-07T01:57:00.000-07:00

The big day was finally here... we loaded all of our equipment into On the Boards in preparation for the final few weeks of rehearsal before "West" premieres on April 22. I pulled the van up on 1st Ave W (the little cobblestone street in front of the main entrance), and we loaded everything in to the studio. After a quick round of speed dating the lobby, I returned to the van, only to find a parking ticket indicating that the vehicle was 4 feet north of a No Parking sign. Here's a photo of the situation. What do you think?

Tuesday field trip!

2010-04-06T21:37:00.000-07:00

Kirk says:
"Hey everybody! Come on along and take a ride with me...

"... Into my DRUMKIT MIND VORTEX!"

What I remember from today's teentix speed dating session

2010-04-06T21:35:00.000-07:00

Anne's been playing violin since she was 5.

Holy Names, Newport, Highline CC, Forest Ridge and a "kinda ghetto" school in Lynnwood.

Where does that 4th wall come from? No really.

I hate They Might Be Giants, but you all seem to like them. So why? Defend them!

Bad High School Prom Photo

How DOES one survive high school?

Evan looks like Nora Ephron.

Jeopardy Tuesday

2010-03-30T22:55:00.000-07:00

Answer: What everyone should say to you today and every day.

Question: What is, "_____________"?

It's Monday

2010-03-29T22:55:00.001-07:00

Dizzle Gets Distro

2010-03-23T12:12:00.000-07:00

David Russo's feature The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle, with a score by us, has officially been picked up for distribution by Tribeca Film, beginning with a video-on-demand platform. This means that, beginning April 21, Dizzle will be available in up to 40 million homes via cable and satellite systems. Big news for a film that premiered in 2009, ran the festival circuit, and got picked up for overseas distribution in the Middle East and Down Under. Congratulations to the tireless Dizzle team.

Here's a link to their Facebook fanpage if you'd like to show your support.

Side Project Alert: Come See Me Dance Tonight (Thursday)

2010-03-17T22:47:00.000-07:00

I'll be premiering a new dance piece at the Get Crushed benefit/dance party for Locust. There'll be a whole bunch of other great stuff, so if you're looking for something to do, come on out!

The Details...
WHAT: GET CRUSHED
WHEN: Thursday, March 18th. 8pm-Midnight
WHERE: Sole Repair on Pike St.
HOW MUCH: Only $10. 21+
OTHER STUFF: "music by Ivory in Ice World (dreamy/Mazzy-Star pop), The Witness (Creedence-y/white soul), and DJ Zeke Keeble (locust's resident musician). Art by Ben Beres (of SuttonBeresCuller), Jed Dunkerly and Jason Puccinelli (of PDL), and others. Plus performances by locust, the Can Can Castaways (who are tricking Seattle into watching modern dance every weekend—they're a gateway drug)" (says The Stranger)

Aw man, you shoulda been there

2010-03-11T23:03:00.000-08:00

Tonight at rehearsal we nailed down some pretty gnarly three- and four-part harmonies. Seriously, John Ackermann totally schooled us all. Wish I could show you the video but the sound on my camera phone sucks so it wouldn't be worth it.

That concludes this week's episode of BORING AMAZING STORIES!

The West is Haunted

2010-03-03T09:18:00.000-08:00

Backstage at iDiOM in Bellingham
(photo by SoL)

Additional production credits:

2010-02-28T01:42:00.000-08:00

Lights: Jaz

Sound: the Creature

Popcorn: Pickford Cinema

Digital Artist: Hal

Catering: Farkler's

Transportation: Vandor

The Posters of Bellingham

2010-02-26T00:14:00.000-08:00

Today Was Banjo Day

2010-02-24T18:02:00.000-08:00

Also, if you wanna see a preview of WEST -- that [gargle gargle] we've been talking about for the last 2 years -- here's your last chance until the final version in April at OtB. This Thursday, Friday and Saturday only. 8pm, at the Idiom Theater in Bellingham. Only $10! All ages!
At this event you'll hear all new songs you've never heard of, including:
Queets'adi Ch'as
The Shanghai Grocery
Caterwaul of Stars
The Minutes
Soon Soon
Ocean of Trees
and many times more!

act now and get these ginsu knives, free of charge!

I sure do love corn chowder.

Oh, also, the Public Market has really good buffalo sandwiches.

Also, everyone should really read this awesome piece by Rebecca Brown on FAILURE.

before/after

2010-02-21T10:04:00.000-08:00

shopping list

2010-02-19T23:06:00.000-08:00

1. eggs
2. IPA
3. orange juice
4. Archie comics
5. Mint Milano
6. Pico De Gallo
7. carrots & pineapple
8. ice skating lessons
9. saloon sketch
10. 24 karat gold bikini

Chop Suey - 2/6/2010

2010-02-15T09:53:00.000-08:00

photos courtesy of Matthew Runkel

Birthday

2010-02-13T20:40:00.000-08:00

Someone is having a birthday today! And that person is in our band. And that person is in my house. Cheers!

The West at a glance

2010-02-12T14:03:00.000-08:00

I just made this my desktop picture. I thought you might enjoy it too. The drawing was made by Jed Dunkerley. The stars were made by God. Or aliens.

Click to see it larger.

...aaaaand goodnight

2010-02-07T03:06:00.000-08:00

Phew!

Great to play some songs for the good people at Chop Suey tonight. In case you didn't notice, we had a blast. We haven't played a club show in a while and it was pretty nice to just blaze through some of our oldies and newies. I only screwed up a couple times, but I thought we sounded pretty solid otherwise for a band that never plays shows anymore.
Thanks to Ivory in Ice World (did you give Rob his socks back?).
Thanks to Library Science (Nice computer. You get teh innernetz on that thing? Come on, I kid because I love.).
And thanks to you, the people of the United States for voting for us for most Congressional band of 2009: we are filibuster-proof!

And don't forget to pick up our new gyro of songs when it comes out in septapriltoberween.
And come to our show at On the Boards in April. It's called West. We played some songs from it tonight. You better reconnize.

My wife says I'm filibustering myself so I will now go to bed.
Goodnight Keith Moon!

This Saturday

2010-02-05T13:17:00.000-08:00

Just a reminder that this very Saturday, February 6th will be the "Golden Birthday" of "Awesome".

Now a golden birthday is slightly different than other golden things (wedding anniversaries, girls, showers, etc.). Your golden birthday is when the numeral representing your age in Earth years on this particular birthday is the same numeral that represents the day of the month on which your birthday falls. So for example, Evan, whose birthday is on February 5th, had his golden birthday when he turned 5.

HEY!!!

IT'S EVAN'S BIRTHDAY TODAY!!!!!

Here's Evan at Chop Suey in 2007, wearing his "I Got Lucky" t-shirt, and coincidentally catching a pair of lady's undergarments thrown from the audience. Here's my best guess at what he was thinking: "You know, the idea of pretty girls throwing their panties at me sounded good in theory, but now that it's happened, I'm wondering just how hygienic this is. Basil, can you throw me the Band-Hand-Sanitizer?" Photo by Victoria Lahti *.

Knowing Evan, I bet that his golden birthday was quite a party. That's basically what we're trying to live up to this Saturday at Chop Suey. We'll be playing with Ivory In Ice World and Library Science. Fun! Fun! Fun! We'll also be debuting three new songs from WEST, the theater thing we've been working on since forever.

(* P.S. if you're looking for a really full evening, here's what you should do: Go to the Canoe Club (409 7th Ave S (7th & Jackson in the Int'l District)) at 8pm to see Jose Bold (John O & Kirk!) at the Jacked Camera Benefit show, then come to Chop Suey to see "A" later. You see, our photographer friend Victoria (see above photo of Evan) had all her camera stuff stolen, and now there's an ALL AGES benefit to help her recoup some of the costs. It'll be great! There's booze! They're even going to try to auction off some of my paintings. (Good luck with that!) Anyway, this is a great cause to help a friend of the band.)

Awake for 43 hours

2010-01-29T01:58:00.000-08:00

I've been awake for 43 hours. Everything is a melty marshmellow mushmouth sunday. The cats are speaking Special English. It would all be pretty great if it weren't so terrible. I guess that's true of a lot of things. But here, since you're up with me, here's an animation test I've just rendered:

My Week of Rockumentaries

2010-01-25T20:10:00.000-08:00

It started off a week ago last Saturday. Sarah and I watched Anvil: The Story of Anvil. Sort of a heavy metal rags-to-slightly nicer rags story. It was life-affirming, in a lunkheaded kind of way. Then this Saturday we watched 30 Century Man, the story of the amazing Scott Walker, reclusive 60's crooner turned experimental enfant terrible. This one amazed me, as I had only heard of Scott Walker through Kirk. But he was hugely influential, as it turns out.

Then last night, I couldn't sleep, so I watched (thanks to the magic of Netflix streaming) You're Gonna Miss Me, detailing the life and harrowing times of Roky Erickson, the brainchild behind the 13th Floor Elevators (pioneers of garage psychedelia, complete with a jug player!). This one gave me nightmares. It was more a portrait of a family shattered by mental illness than anything else. But now I totally want to start playing the electric jug.

The Annual 4'33"

2010-01-25T16:12:00.000-08:00

Kind of the opposite of math rock, despite the numbers in the title...

Every year I teach this Music & Philosophy class, and I perform John Cage's 4'33". (This year I played it on a cheap kid's keyboard.) Then we talk about it. Today's discussion was particularly lively.
Here's an mp3 of the performance.

We also listened to some Christopher DeLaurenti stuff, including one of his intermission pieces, which is great.

Sometimes teaching is fun.

Music math is hard!

2010-01-22T11:16:00.000-08:00

Check it out, math-pop fans! Jose Bold explains some of his compositional figures on LineOut (the Stranger's music blog).

Ooh! Look what just came in the mail!

2010-01-21T16:56:00.000-08:00

Shaping new space

2010-01-20T15:03:00.000-08:00

So here's what we were doing when David did what he did that day. Up until last weekend, we've been making our songstuffs and doing our mindjams in a practice space neighboring another space where a band of friendly but possibly deaf older dudes has been trying to learn a thundering version of Purple Haze, probably since the song was new. So it was time to move into a space more conducive to working, thinking, hearing ourselves work and think, and especially not hearing labored classic rock (and the occasional comically lonesome trombone lesson).

Sometimes the universe gets it right, or we create the abundance in our lives, or shit just lines up in a lucky way: a friend of ours with a huge shop (and a band of his own) offered us a rent-share deal we couldn't refuse.

And so we found ourselves in a luxuriously large scene shop with three problems to solve: concrete is bad for feet, sawdust is bad for gear, and cold air is a drag. Witness the solutions as documented by my telephone:

First, we assemble a drop-ceiling/grid...

...which we suspend from the shop ceiling and cover in "clear" plastic.
(This was when David got on the wrong end of a staple gun.)

We hoist the structure up about 9 feet and begin laying floor.
(Hello, walls.)

Basil pauses to invite the viewer to feast his or her eyes on the majesty of a room within a room.

Hey look! Rob's back with some foam and a measuring tape.

A finished floor holding eight relieved knees under four fatigued faces

Suddenly: artmusikspace!

And with that, we have run out of excuses for not finishing West. We even have extra room to move around and stage our unstageable ideas! Access to dangerous power tools for building impossible shapes! And two whole electrical outlets to power it all! Let's remember to turn off that space heater after practice, dudes.

Thanks to Jason and Jed and Bandylegs Johnson for sharing, and to Dubtrain Pete for the floor concept. Let's all get together for beers and hugs soon.

This is what I did today

2010-01-17T23:12:00.001-08:00

Song a Day 2009

2010-01-12T16:53:00.000-08:00

So, it's a new year. I know, right?

Last year I made 365 pieces of music, one for each day of the year. I've posted a few of them on this blog. Some of them even wandered their way into the "A" oeuvre. Now you can listen to the song I made one year ago today (and for the rest of the year) on my Song a Day blog. You'll laugh, you'll cry, and if you're not careful, you might just learn something.

Dirty Dancing: A Review

2010-01-09T23:28:00.000-08:00

[What? Shut up! If it has music -- and especially if it has dancing -- then it’s pertinent to this website.]

Now I always knew that this movie was a dance movie, on account of the title. But what I didn’t know until tonight was that it’s also an abortion movie. Its basically Mad Hot Ballroom meets The Cider House Rules. The movie features a pre-nose-job Jennifer Grey as Baby, a rich teen whose family is vacationing at a resort where Johnny (played by the recently deceased Patrick Swayze) is a dance instructor. Johnny teaches Baby how to dance so she can cover for another dancer who needs to get a botched abortion. In the process Baby falls for Johnny and they copulate. He gets fired for it but comes back in the end for a feel good dance party and Baby does a lift.

There were a lot of good dancers (Swayze included), but none of the dancing was good. However, some of the people in the movie could fold themselves in half backwards, with the fold point being in the middle of the back. That’s creepy, but probably helpful in certain situations.

I was surprised when Patrick Swayze suddenly said, “Nobody puts Baby in a corner.” I knew it was a pop-culture reference, but I guess I’d forgotten it was from this movie. Then I was bugging my wife, “Waitaminute – what does that mean? Was she put in a corner earlier in the movie and I missed it? Is that code for something?”

I found myself thinking: Do these kinds of resorts still exist? I also found myself thinking: I wish I’d gotten to go to Camp Waskowitz. All the 6th graders at Valley View went to Camp Waskowitz, but we moved away in 5th grade, so I never got to go.

In doing my research for this review, I found out that not only was there a sequel (Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights), but a remake of the original is in the works for 2011. The question is, who should play Johnny & Baby?

Here’s some suggestions to get you started:

Harrison Ford & Mena Suvari
Harrison Ford & The Octomom
Eddie Murphy & Eddie Murphy
Patrick Swayze (CG)& Audrey Hepburn (CG)
Alec Guinness (CG) & the blue alien cat-lady from Avatar (real)

Also, the sweet corn chowder from Nana’s Soup House in Fremont is fucking fantastic. I bought a whole tanker of it.

cluster custer

2010-01-08T11:27:00.000-08:00

Winterfest 2009

2010-01-03T13:09:00.000-08:00

Thanks to all those who came out to see our shows!

Happy New Year! (and decade!)

2010-01-01T02:20:00.000-08:00

and energy (happy new year)

2009-12-31T17:56:00.000-08:00

Flight to Mars

2009-12-30T08:34:00.001-08:00

The Logjam Documentary

2009-12-29T21:37:00.000-08:00

In case you missed it tonight:

One more show tomorrow: Flight to Mars! or Mission to Mars! Or Flight to the Mission District 9 of Mars! At the Seattle Center Center House House at 7pm, free all ages! Now with video!

Logjam!

2009-12-29T08:19:00.000-08:00

Winter Waterland

2009-12-28T12:05:00.001-08:00

Yours are the sweetest eyes I've ever seen

2009-12-21T00:20:00.000-08:00

Happy Holidays!

Avatar and The West: A Review

2009-12-19T17:37:00.000-08:00

Avatar: An extremely entertaining white guilt redemption fantasy.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could go back in time and stop the slaughter and genocide of the Native Americans? While you’re at it, you could prevent the clear-cutting of old-growth forests, the poisoning of lakes and streams, and say FUCK NO! to the ugly and environmentally unsustainable suburbs and strip malls? Yeah, sure that’d be nice. But we don’t have a time machine. What’s past is past. Shucks, sorry about that Indians! But there’s nothing that can be done about it now. I mean, even if we gave back your land (which we aint), what would you do with it? Most of your ancient ways of life are long forgotten.

But we whites sure envy your ancient ways. We like to start magazines like Shaman’s Drum. We wish we were one of you. (Except without the bad stuff like living on a reservation. Or puffy-nosed alcoholic homelessness. Or being forced to earn your daily bread with white people stuff like casinos and fireworks.) We like to drive our cars to the National Parks and say to our children, “Hey now, don’t just throw that Capri Sun package on the ground. Be like the Indians who used to live here: respect nature!”

Avatar is perfect for us. Because we love seeing war and destruction and kick-ass special effects. And we love imagining that we could become a kick-ass native warrior who could protect the trees and ride a mother-fucking dragon and mate with some hot “exotic” native lady. We’re so dedicated to these causes that we’ll buy the DVD!

So I guess I had mixed feelings about this movie. I mean, I actually really DID like it. I mean, at least insofar as it was fun and exciting to watch and visually beautiful. I didn't even care that they never explained how the floating rocks always had waterfalls coming from them. Now I wanna go back and watch it in 3D. But it made me think: What's left to say about The West?

Today's playlist

2009-12-17T18:24:00.000-08:00

Oh! You Pretty Things (David Bowie)
Maybe I'm Amazed (Paul & Linda McCartney)
Army (Ben Folds Five)
Outrageous (Paul Simon)
14th Street (Rufus Wainwright)
Kissing The Lipless (The Shins)
Free Man In Paris (Joni Michell)
In Ear Park (Department of Eagles)
Kicheneface (Jose Bold)
The Green Ray (Gavin Bryars)

A is for Awesome

2009-12-09T17:15:00.000-08:00

You know, for kids.

For Your Consideration

2009-12-08T12:40:00.001-08:00

The Mountain

2009-12-06T14:23:00.000-08:00

Damn what a fantastic show Mr. Jose Bold put on last night. I'm still thinking about it. So beautiful and so funny. Here's hoping he'll at least post a clip or two.

And the new album is amazing too. go upload it all over your facebook right now:

josebold.com

Tuesday's gone...

2009-12-01T23:58:00.000-08:00

...and boy am I glad. Here's the Lynyrd Skynyrd band, people:
[a string section? wow...]

Notes

2009-11-27T23:55:00.000-08:00

"When the aliens came down, with their limitless energy machines and their limitless food machines, and told us they would give us all their technology if we would only promise to listen and heed the sad tale of the home world they so nearly destroyed with a juvenile civilization's ignorance at what terrible damage to nature can be wrought from a thoughtless use of technology, well, the environmentalists down here on Earth became a bunch of insufferable know-it-alls."

STATE OF BANDOR

2009-11-26T12:54:00.000-08:00

NUMBER ONE:
we take pause in West to think about europeans coming to new land and supping with natives. we eat food. we will not be able move for a day.

NUMBER DEUX:
we get ready to plan 3 free nights of food court merriment for winterfest. each night = different show. we promise not smash your food with hammers that have fake blood in them.

NUMBER TRES:
we enter new year aggressively preparing West for one last pre-OtB presentation in bellingham.

in meantime, johnO and kirk play at northwest film forum on december 5th, same day as new jose bold album is released.

cowboy haiku

2009-11-24T00:44:00.000-08:00

hell is others, sure

but riding solo ain't some

grand picnic either.

The True Story of Thanksgiving

2009-11-22T15:24:00.000-08:00

In case you missed it:

Kids are so cute!

Hello Trees

2009-11-20T13:09:00.000-08:00

As I’ve been thinking about West, I’ve been interested in the landscape, the ecosystem, the non-human part of nature as a character. And of course, many Native American cultures took this idea to be more than metaphor: the trees, the water, the hills are actually alive. So, in that spirit, I’d like to introduce you to three trees:

The Tree That Owns Itself.

In around 1830, Colonel William Jackson, who loved this white oak tree very much, deeded the tree to itself:

I, W. H. Jackson, of the county of Clarke, of the one part, and the oak tree . . . of the county of Clarke, of the other part: Witnesseth, That the said W. H. Jackson for and in consideration of the great affection which he bears said tree, and his great desire to see it protected has conveyed, and by these presents do convey unto the said oak tree entire possession of itself and of all land within eight feet of it on all sides.

So, supposedly, the tree owns itself and the land around it.

(I’m reminded of what Young Chief of the Cayuses tribe said in 1855, upon signing over their lands to the U.S. Government: “I wonder if the Ground has anything to say? I wonder if the ground is listening to what is said?”)

Now legal experts say that this has practically no legal force at all for several reasons: One, in order to become the legal owner of something given to you, you must have the legal capacity to receive it, and it must be accepted by you. And some would say that the tree does not have the legal capacity to receive property. A related legal notion is that nothing which can be owned can own anything else. For example slaves: Can slaves legally own something? Some would argue that their being owned by something means that the slave’s so-called property is defacto the property of the slave’s owner. But more interestingly: can anything own itself? What would it mean to own yourself? We have a good idea of what it means to own ordinary objects like cars and houses: you have the right to use the objects as you like (so long as you don’t infringe on anyone else’s rights), you can sell the objects, you can destroy the object if you want, you can move it, or change it. But it’s a little stranger to apply these ideas to yourself. You can’t sell yourself or destroy yourself (though suicide has been officially decriminalized in all US states, it is still considered an unwritten “common law” crime).

Anyway, the tree fell down in the 40’s, and a cutting of the tree was planted in its place. They call it Son Of The Tree That Owns Itself. The state of Georgia basically acts like it owns the land, and takes care of it like it’s a park.

The Lost Monarch.

It's 26 feet in diameter (82 feet circumference). It would take about 14 people to hug it. Its about 320 feet high. It’s the largest known Coast Redwood. The tree is estimated to contain 42,500 cubic feet (1,200 m³) of wood. It’s probably pretty old. There’s no pictures of it because it’s hidden. They don’t want us to know where it is. That’s okay. It’s probably better that way. I like knowing that it’s out there though.

Pando.

Okay, now Pando isn’t really a tree. It’s a clonal colony of a single male Quaking Aspen (Populus tremuloides) located in Utah. Basically, it’s a giant root system that sends up stems that are taken to be trees (Aspens). But it’s actually a single organism. Pando weighs 6,615 tons, and is approximately 80,000 years old. It is the oldest, and heaviest living organism on the planet.

Travel log

2009-11-17T13:29:00.000-08:00

The East is still very much the East now. Perhaps even more so now that the leaves are off the trees but no snow has yet fallen. The bare trees, still brown and gray, lend a transparency through yards and into homes otherwise masked at other times of the year. People are still lured outside by the crisp, dry weather when they ought to be in, closing their shutters and thankful the witches that most certainly walk the old rail beds and deserted cattle paths and long-abandoned mills don't take a sudden interest in them. This quiet time, this cold stillness before the white shroud descends, this is the time to exercise the most caution. That fallen-down house is not empty. That mirror-lake is only fixing on its prey. As you look past those empty trees, their inhabitants are tracking you. Best now to fix the cracks in the floors and window frames, take down the scarecrow (make sure the crows see you doing this) and dismantle it, just to be thorough. Smile at the Pastor today. For this is not the calm of Springtime. This is not even the joyful resignation of Autumn. This is the between-season that one in the East should not stop too long to observe. The sun will drop from the tiny sky in a moment and there will be no moon. You will not enjoy the darkness tonight.

Better to pick up the pace, pull up your collar and hurry home.

Better still to pack up your own ghosts and head West.

Chinese Immigrants, 1870

2009-11-15T15:00:00.000-08:00

Friday the Thirteenth in Phoenix

2009-11-13T12:20:00.001-08:00

I'm sitting in a dark theater, building a sound design for a new play called "Junie B. Jones: Jingle Bells, Batman Smells". This is the second time I've designed in a fly house, which means the theater has lines that raise the scenery up and down. Matt is our man on the rail, which means he hauls in the scenic pieces using a counterweight system. Most of our time is spent bringing these pieces in and watching the actors move their desks on and off stage. My job is to try to time out the music with the scene changes, so that everything flows smoothly. I wrote some of the music myself, but the main piece of music I'm using is by my friend Barbara Lamb, a great fiddle player from Nashville. There are lots of bells and whistles, since the show has lots of flashbacks and dream sequences. We just started tech for Act 2 today, which has lots of burping sound effects from an imaginary toy called a "Squeeze-a-burp". That toy is a genius!

Elder Statesmen of nerd-rock

2009-11-12T16:33:00.000-08:00

A few highlights from Tuesday's amazing They Might Be Giants show celebrating the 19-years-later platinum status of their major-label debut, Flood:

-Every song on the album. Even the ones they couldn't remember all the lyrics to.
-Cameo by Avatars of They (shabby sock puppets of the Johns mugging for a live-feed camera).
-Lounge-funk update of "The Sun is a Mass of Incandescent Gas" to "The Sun is a Miasma of Incandescent Plasma" (for science).
-Linnell's effective use of Kaoss Pad and my corresponding feelings of validation.
-A clear demonstration that after 25 years they still entertain each other as much as they entertain us gathered geeks.
-Encore: Fingertips. Fingertips. Fingertips.

It's not often I get to bring my 14 year-old self out for a night of pure delight. Thanks for aging gracefully, TMBG! You still rock, hilariously.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled bloggings of inscrutable imagery.

Bodie

2009-11-12T00:17:00.000-08:00

After the nothingness and the spark, it explodes in fractal growth (it grows itself into art / language) until we finally get that moment of cultural apoptosis that brings us inexorably to the crash.

Rubble Vision

2009-11-09T11:27:00.000-08:00

Hubble Vision

2009-11-09T08:51:00.001-08:00

double vision

2009-11-08T13:50:00.000-08:00

tunnel vision

2009-11-07T12:27:00.001-08:00

2009-11-06T16:00:00.000-08:00

Hello from sunny Arizona! I made it here safely with my accordion. Everyone is very nice and polite. Wish you were here

Ah, The West

2009-11-05T16:09:00.000-08:00

According to teh internets,

This huge tree was cut down by an entrepreneur in 1853 who concocted a plan to take the thick bark (just the bark!) on a worldwide exhibition and charge admission. He ran into a problem, though: it was all thought to be a hoax and people didn't believe a tree could be that large. The stump itself soon afterwards did become a tourist attraction here though: dances were held on the stump and the felled tree (still visible in the background) was shaped to form an elevated in-place bowling alley. Later the stump was used as the floor of an enclosed office building, and now it's open to the light again.

What an asshole.

Notes on a future dream

2009-11-04T11:11:00.000-08:00

Stars at the beginning, stars at the end. Sun swallows earth. We have always remembered this. Seven sisters escape the bear atop a flat rock tower. Bear sees seven new stars and feels time unspool. Prophecy is blood's memory of past and future cycles. We are all freed by the coiled death our life creates. He comes from the left, always from the left. Sleep is a compass. Death is West. Out is the only way.

Three Things I Learned this Holloween

2009-11-02T14:20:00.000-08:00

Crochet = pretty
Music in cavernous lobby = delayed reflection of sound
Musical chairs = violence

"Awesome" plays Holloween Show at The Moore

2009-10-27T15:26:00.001-07:00

$20 at the door, 10pm, 21+, rumors of free Heineken and halloween hijinks.

Pictures from the Centrum Retreat

2009-10-16T17:43:00.001-07:00

(Sadly, lacking John Ackermann, who couldn't get away from Abraham Lincoln.)

Sign of the Eagle, Man

2009-10-16T09:37:00.000-07:00

yesterday, i was walking to work when a guy with purple hair exited a cafe in front of me, took a look at me, and broke into a grin. "eagle," he said, "sign of the eagle, man. right on!"

The Origins of The West

2009-10-15T18:00:00.000-07:00

The West ends here, the pacific ocean, the West Coast (the “Left Coast” as they would tell me in South Carolina). We’re at the forward edge, the leading edge of Western-ness. The West moves West, bringing West with it, wiping out the non-West -- the stray bits of East that were here in the West before The West got here. The West sees these stray bits as like wild weeds, needing to be pulled up or tamed, paved over and smoothed out. The wabi-sabi tangles of vine and nest replaced by the ruled-line gleam of steel and plastic.

The West is new and the East is old. The East is tradition and balance. The West is progress and revolution.

So we know where the West goes. The harder question is “Where did it come from?” If West is new and East is old, just how new is the West? Where and when did it originate?

Recently I’ve been reading a book called The Spell of The Sensuous by David Abram, as well as listening to a podcast philosophy course by Hubert Dreyfus. A strange sort of story about the origin of The West begins to emerge.

Socrates, Plato and Aristotle lived in Classical Greece – a good place to start when looking for the origin of The West. Before that was Homeric Greece. And the transition from Homeric Greece to Classical Greece coincides with Greek culture’s being infused with a relatively new thing: the alphabet. It was perhaps 4 or 5 hundred years old, but only in Plato’s time did it start to become common for children (of a certain class and education) to be taught the alphabet, taught to read and write. Socrates was mostly illiterate. For who knows how long before that, knowledge was primarily transmitted orally, as songs and recited poems. People would memorize these things. Even in Plato’s time, much of the population still knew the entire Odyssey (all 12,110 lines of dactylic hexameter) by heart. Though it had been written down by Homer a couple of hundred years prior to Plato’s time, the written word until then had been an oddity, a gimmick, something only a certain elite knew about or cared about. It took a while to really take hold. So the Homeric Age of Greece was an oral culture, and people learned to memorize extremely lengthy poems and songs. These songs were manifestations of the embodied values of the Greeks at that time. The songs would slowly change as the culture changed. And for a long time, words were only sounds, sounds that came out of an individual person at a particular time. The introduction of the alphabet (which came from the Semitic aleph-beth) changed things quite a bit. For one, some words could become permanent. The Odyssey would no longer change or grow, it was stuck in the words of Homer. It became like The Bible –a holy work that was blasphemous to suggest editing or updating. Secondly, for the first time, words could be separated from the speaker of the words. (Note: the distinction between words and the ideas they expressed was not something comprehensible to the Greeks at this time, and would not become comprehensible for hundreds of years. That’s why you find so many use-mention mistakes in Aristotle, for example.) Thanks to the alphabet, you could write down something that someone said and instead of talking about what this particular person said, you could forget about the person and just talk about the ideas/words themselves. And at the same time, while certain words (like The Odyssey) became “stuck” by being written down, the alphabet invited one to look at, and possibly change words. Written words enabled a certain kind of abstraction that was impossible before. In the oral tradition, you could talk about Justice only in the context of memorized stories and songs that would give one concrete examples of justice. Justice lived only in specific just actions and just people. But now you can write down the word ‘Justice’ and ask: What is Justice itself? And this was precisely the kind of question that Socrates asked, and the kind of forced introspection and self-examination that got him killed. But Plato took up the cause and wrote down everything that Socrates said. And so the idea of putting abstract ideas squarely in view – only possible thanks to written language and the change in thinking they enabled – brought about a radical change in culture and value. Whereas before, the values of the culture, the way that it sees itself, what the culture thinks a human being really is – before, these things did not exist in the form of explicit beliefs of the culture, they were simply embodied in the actions and stories (and the actions of Odysseus and others in the stories). Now they can be made explicit as written words and then debated. We can examine our concepts, analyze them, decide that they contain implicit assumptions that we no longer agree with, and rebel from them. This is the beginning of philosophy, and the beginning of The West: Progress over Tradition.

Furthermore: Words used to be natural sounds. Words were the bark, the purr, the chirp of man. The pre-alphabetic man is an animal continuous with the other animals. He is part of the living buzzing, chirping, barking world. But when his words begin to have lives of their own apart from their being the sounds of flapping flesh and air, man follows them away from the corporal, away from the physical animal body and into the realm of abstract ideas. His sense of self, his very identity is changed: he is now a thinker, one who trades in concepts and ideas. His body is now seen as a mere container for his true essence. He leaves the animals and the rest of non-human nature behind. Later this way of thinking about what it is to be human is picked up by Descartes ("I think therefore I am") and then brought to the center of Enlightenment thinking by Kant: To be human is to be a thinker who can transcend his animal nature. You may have animal wants, animal desires, but because you are human, you don’t have to act on them. This is why you, but none of the non-human animals, have free will. And this is why the humans are the natural masters of the earth. The essence of Humanity in The West is freedom from and supremacy over one’s animal ingredients. Humanity in The West is the freedom of self-determination. Man is only accidentally corporeal, only accidentally embodied, only accidentally flesh. His true nature is Mind (over matter). He rises above and tames his own physical nature and so entitles himself to tame all of nature and bend it to his will. He is the master of the corporeal world.

Another thread in all of this has to do with the thinning of Gods that started to happen in Classical Greece. Way back in Thales’ time (well before Socrates), it was said that “All is full of gods”. There were many many gods. Indeed, gods were in everything and were everywhere. This brought with it a certain kind of respect for everything in the world around you. The spiritual world was not somewhere far away, it was all around you all the time. Abram marks this as a (perhaps the) crucial difference between indigenous cultures with an oral tradition and our modernity, our West: It is only in The West that there is a distinction between the natural and the super-natural, between the world of the flesh and the world of the spirit. In the non-western non-alphabetic cultures Abram studies, all is (still) full of gods. And this does not mean that, say, a tree has a god living inside of it, as an interloper from another world. Rather, the tree itself (with nothing weird added), is already a spiritual, living, being. This is contrasts starkly with the Judeo-Christian God who lives in another world entirely. In the Judeo-Christian way of seeing things, the world that humans live in (while alive) is essentially a world of deterministic biological machines and non-living swarms of particles whose motions are completely determined by the inviolable laws of nature. It is the world of science and rationality, completely separate from the world of spirituality. (“We are spirits in the material world,” says Sting.) The Westerner must grapple with this bifurcation of worlds constantly: In what ways do religion and science conflict with each other? Are miracles scientifically impossible? How does the non-physical soul/mind interact with and control the physical body? These are questions that do not make sense in the pre-Western world, nor in the world of the indigenous people whose oral traditions Abram studies. (The post-theist Westerner solves this neatly by vanishing the spiritual altogether: It is not in this world, and it is not in any other world either.)