On the local music / self promotion tip, here is a list of shows that bands I am in are playing. Come one, come all.

Saturday, November 3rd
Halfway Inn in Ann Arbor
– The Sights
– The Pop Project
[I’ll be playing drums for the Pop Project. Expect a bunch of new songs and a few from their full length CD.]

Friday November 9th
Magic Stick in Detroit
– Red Shirt Brigade (CD Release show)
– Judah Johnson
– The Recital
– Windy & Carl
[Rob, the drummer in the Recital is currently working 3 jobs, therefore making it difficult for us to perform as frequently as we’d like. Because of this situation, we spent one Friday night a few weeks back setting microphones and cameras up around Rob’s drum set. We then had him play through our set, recording the audio on a digital 8 track and switching between the four cameras. This was all put on a video tape, which is going to be used as the “drummer” for this and our November 16th show. We’ve done one “test-run,” at the Lager house in Detroit which elicited some kind words from the Metro Times. If this crazy experiment sounds at all interesting to you, you should come out to one of these shows and watch us squirm. Chances are this will be the more challenging of the two “video” shows, as we’ll have to run the faux drums through the Magic Stick’s PA, whereas we will have more control over them at the November 16th show. Also, this is the release show for RSB’s full length, “Home of the Cannon Saints,” and Judah Johnson and Windy & Carl are playing. Also: It’s all ages! How can you not go?]

Friday November 17th
Halfway Inn in Ann Arbor
– Hot Paws
– The Pop Project
– The Recital
[Same story as above, except I’ll have my drums there for the Pop Project Set, so The Recital will likely play the two songs I don’t play bass on, with me on drums.]

     Dear religious people who go to the church directly behind B&N every Sunday morning and insist on coming in afterwards to drink coffee and leave gi-nourmous piles of Christian Inspiration books throughout the store: I have a message for you. Christ contacted me earlier in the week and asked that I pass it along. Here is the message:

Hey fuckwads,
     Please shelve your fucking books or I will make sure you rot in hell.
Just because I was a hippie doesn’t mean I was a slob.
yer pal,
JC

Thank you. Peace be with you.

     Some photos I took of Spiritualized @ the Majestic in Detroit, 10/30/01:




     How was it? Very good. For much of the show, there were 12 people playing on stage. Jason will probably fire them all after this tour, though, so don’t get too attached. Also: It’s a safe bet that ‘Attending Spiritualized shows’ is not a popular activity among epileptics.

     I saw Man… or Astroman again this weekend. Rather than write another boring show review that everyone will skip over, I summed up my opinions in the form of a graph. The really sad part is that I am not joking. Click here to see it. Oh wait, one thing I will talk about is how at one point, they refused to go on with their set until everyone in the Magic Stick was kneeling. That was pretty impressive.

     In case you’re keeping tabs on my T.V. watching habits, you’ll be happy to learn that I still watch way too much TV. Shows I am currently watching include
Undeclared (Which is easily my favorite show),
The Real World (Which isn’t so great lately), The Amazing Race (Which is Better than Survivor), Survivor 3 (Which is completely lame so far), The Practice (The reruns on FX have me addicted), and Dismissed (Speaking of Dismissed, has anyone else noticed that the underage contestants often end up drinking alcohol? Apparently laws don’t apply to MTV.)

Movies I really want to see:

  • Waking Life – Melding of live action and animation by Richard Linklater. You can download six movie clips form the official site:
    1,
    2,
    3,
    4,
    5,
    6.

  • Amelie – From the folks who brought you delicatessan and City of Lost Children.

     An extremely interesting tour of the remains of various Motown related buildings in Detroit is here. This comes from the Fabulous ruins of Detroit site which has been linked here numerous times.

     Brian at Bipolar conducted an interview of sorts with me via email. Click here to find out what I had to say about various things.