Attention fans of blog:

Show tonight (July 25) at the National Underground on the corner of Houston and Allen, across the street from a playground and near the landmark eateries Russ & Daughters and Katz Deli. We go on late tonight, near or at midnight, but the band before us, the Hey, are fantastic and you should come out to see them too. $10 at the door, a bit pricey, but worth it. maybe. no, definitely. well, maybe.

the set will be eclectic and electric.

this is pretty awesome

http://www.beck.com/irrelevant_topics

Beck interviews Tom Waits on a variety of different things. Tom Waits is the coolest person ever.

shows, shows, shows

Three shows coming up. It's incredibly rare that we book this much this far in advance. The first show is next Saturday (not this Saturday; this Saturday, a pretty lady celebrates her birthday in Fort Greene Park), July 25th at the National Underground in the Lower East Side. It's a midnight show for us, and we get to play with the Hey! It's $10, but we've got a couple new tricks up our collective sleeve, and I think it'll be well worth the money. We love the Hey!

If you can't make it out to that show but still want to see the Hey! and Oh No! and the Tiger Pit, you can catch us at my favorite venue, the Charleston on August 15th (6 days before a certain, brown-eyed handsome man's birthday). As always with the Charleston shows, the start times are in flux, but it should be $7 at the door.

Lastly, we're returning to the Trash Bar in Williamsburg on September 25th with the Mess Around. It's the Mess Around's birthday blowout rockstravabanza. These guys are pretty good. We've played with them before, and I'll say it again, pretty good.

Hope to see you at the shows, at least one of them.

much needed new gear - FIXED

I got an awesome new guitar a couple days ago for a price so low, I don't even really want to say. As you can probably tell, I'm thrilled. Below is a picture from Gretsch's website. But that's pretty much exactly the guitar I got. A Gretsch Electromatic hollowbody G5120 guitar in orange with a clear pickguard. Exactly what I wanted. It's the low end guitar offered by Gretsch, but it's also doesn't cost a friggin' grand like their other models. It's made in Korea and has cheaper electronics/pickups than the Arkansas-made ones, but it still sounds like a dream.

So that's one down. The other guitar I've been wanting is an acoustic resonator to play around with at home. I imagine I won't be splurging on that anytime soon, but you never know when deals creep up.

This orange Gretsch beauty will be making its grand debut July 25th at the National Underground in the Lower East Side. Should be a dandy of a show with us and our good friends the Hey!

Geeking out at the end of the universe

the other thing i've been into lately is astronomy. yup, astronomy. minus the complex mathematics that's needed to fully understand it. i'm content at the moment to just soak in the pictures and come to the humble realization that i am not at all important in any sort of cosmic sense. enough blather, look at these pics.

There's so much out there. If you can imagine, say there are a million galaxies (there are more, but for example's sake here). And in each galaxy, there are a million stars (again, there are more in reality). And even if just half of those stars have planets orbiting around them. think of how many fucking planets that is. jesus.

ok, enough thinking. here's another pic to make you cry out sweet moses and feel like a blip on the grand radar of the universe.

two things

a Gretsch 5120 hollowbody with a Bigsby tailpiece

an acoustic resonator

but first, tea, juice, water, chicken soup, drugs, drugs, drugs and i've gotta shake this damn cold i picked up in detroit.

the scourge of no dancing

i hate to say it, but some people are too cool for school. look, rock n roll is about dancing and having a good time. those are the roots of rock n roll. in the 50s and 60s, people used to dance to rock music and have fun doing it. then, for some terrible reason, things changed. people regressed from dancing to toe tapping to head bobbing to where we're at now: standing with your arms folded and politely applauding after songs. that sucks. i hate it. i hate it as a fan and as a performer. fuck that hipster shit. too cool to fucking dance? ridiculous. we played what i thought was pretty dancey set a week ago and most people were too cool to dance or show any kind of emotion and thought it more fun to enjoy a show with their arms folded while standing statue-like in corners. how is that more fun than being an active part of something? this is the other bad part of shows nowadays. people are legitimately afraid of coming close to the stage. what's going to happen? honestly! This is going to sound like sour grapes, but it needs to be said. Rock n roll shows are for dancing and some form of movement is always appreciated. I hate playing shows where there is a five foot buffer between the band and the audience. I hate seeing a huge empty space between us and you. It's stupid and artificial.