ON-LINE JOURNAL OF CHARLIE DANGO: YEAR 2006

One other thing...
Tuesday, December 26, 2006, 09:00 AM
I've been saying ever since Thanksgiving that this year didn't seem very festive with the holiday cheer and all and what better way to encapsulate a crappy Christmas than the death of a legend. Rest In Peace, Godfather.

Now that we're done with that....
Tuesday, December 26, 2006, 08:48 AM
Christmas is over with and it's time to move on to the new year. I'm back to work after a 4 day weekend which was nice, but a little stressful. I wanted to get Sariah something for Christmas, but we ended up going to Springfield Friday night and then coming right back home with nothing. The next day I decided I was going to do something for Christmas and I told Sariah that if she wanted to get me something for Christmas to just let me pick out what it was going to be and buy it. She did, so I bought drywall for HQ.

Aaron and I spent the day getting HQ ready for the drywall by moving all of the equipment into one room and then putting up foam sealant and the rest of the insulation we needed. When we finally finished with that we moved on to putting up drywall and got one full wall completed. I got really drunk that day. I was so drunk that I stayed at HQ to work on more drywall, but got too tired and passed out. Chris woke me up and dragged me to Sean and Jessi's Christmas party. I really didn't want to go as I'm not much for huge parties anymore, but I had no way to get out of it.

All in all the night was alright, at least until Sean and Seth got into it and I tried to get between them. I lost my balance at the same moment Sean shoved me and I ended up twisting my ankle. From there the night went downhill pretty fast as I just started arguing with Sariah and releasing a bunch of pent up anger onto her. I ended up driving us home and I really don't know how we made it home alive as I really don't remember much if any of the trip. The next day I woke up on the floor of my computer room with Sariah laying next to me wondering how the hell I got home and what the hell I was doing on the floor.

I spent Christmas eve on my couch with my ankle wrapped and elevated to help bring down the swelling...that was pretty much that whole day. I spent the night tossing and turning on the couch because I couldn't walk up the stairs to go to bed. I think all-in-all I only got 2 hours of sleep. The next day Sariah and I went to her sister Ashlee's house for Christmas. I had a pretty good time there as well only this time it wasn't marred by drunken rage or stupidity.

So now it's back to normal..well almost. I can't find my keys for some reason and I'm assuming they're at HQ, but I have to go out there tonight to check. I really hate drinking a lot and I especially hate huge parties. I just can't see myself going to another one, not if this is the way it's always going to end up.

Abacab is a very cool song!
Wednesday, December 20, 2006, 09:01 PM
I finally bought a router since I got hit with another computer-ending virus not too long ago. It's up and running and I'm back on the net at home. I feel like I've been super busy this past month. I think it has a lot to do with FCF writing new songs and the videos I've been producing of that process. It's been super fun for me and I want to keep doing it as long as we can. There are already 4 installments on the web that can be found on our myspace page and our website. Thank god for YouTube as well. Were it not for that website none of this would be possible as the files are way too huge for our website.

Anyway, I got a call today from The Funny Bone in Fairview Heights. Apparently they had a drawing for free tickets and they pulled my name so now I have 20 free tickets to a show next week. I'm trying to find people who want to go with me, but it's far enough away that it makes it hard for a lot of people to swing it. If we went early enough I could see crashing at Payne's place in St. Louis afterwards. I'll have to get him on the phone and find out what he's doing next Saturday too. Maybe if I can secure that I might be able to get some friends from up here to make the journey with me.

Getting ready for Christmas. It's going to be a sad one since we have no money, but we'll make it through...

A Weekend Alone...
Friday, December 15, 2006, 05:08 PM
I'll be spending this weekend alone. Sariah is staying with her family over the weekend and I'm not going with her. Tonight I have some band stuff to take care of and then tomorrow I'll do a little bit of christmas shopping if I feel up to it. Other than that, I don't know what I'll be doing this weekend. Probably not much of anything...

FCF is still writing the new cd. We've got 6 ideas on the HD24 so far and are still working on more. Tonight we're going to mix things up a bit and write some lyrics and vocals first and lay those down with nothing but an acoustic just so we can get a feel for a different writing technique. It might fail miserably, but we'll never know until we try.

Sean and I worked with Chris a couple nights ago on some vocal parts and it really worked out pretty well. I think we were all just having fun and doing whatever came to mind. I enjoy times like that.

Two Wrongs Don't Make A Write
Monday, December 11, 2006, 09:34 AM
I'm sick today but I'm still at work. This weekend was pretty rough, but I had a pretty good time. I just wish I didn't drink so much all the time. The band has been doing pretty good at writing some new songs. I say "the band" when I really mean Sean and I because Aaron and Bub haven't really contributed much of anything in the way of new ideas. Although I want them both to bring ideas forward and work on stuff, my hopes alone aren't enough to make that a reality. They want someone to hold their hand through the entire process and I really don't want to do that. I want to come in and hear a song that those guys wrote for a change.

I'm really not interested in coaching grown men into doing something they should already want to do so I am just moving forward. I have to because I have ideas for songs and I'm getting them out there while they're fresh in my head. We have the makings of 5 songs as it stands, even though one of those songs probably won't be on the cd, but that's a good thing. I'm not ruling out ideas I'm just going for it. Any one of those guys can go out to HQ and record some stuff should the inspiration hit them, they simply choose not to. I know that when all is said and done, no one is going to be happy with the new cd because they'll all feel like it's not something we produced as a group.

Maybe I'll take a break from writing for a while and see what comes out of Aaron, Bub and Sean. Hell, it's not like they couldn't use the time together to strengthen their musical bonds a bit.

Things Happen For a Reason...
Tuesday, December 5, 2006, 07:20 PM
...This is what I said when Sariah left her job at Green Mazda a few weeks ago. I never would have anticipated that the reason was to provide me with transportation after hitting a deer. Thanks to my decision to go thrifty, our insurance won't cover the damages to the car (which are estimated at over $3000). Somehow I don't believe it's that high and tomorrow I'm going to begin my search for a new hood, side mirror and radiator for the Tracer.

We drove the car home from the autobody place tonight and outside of the hood it really seems fine. I don't want to get rid of a car that still runs fine if I don't have to so I'm going to use my mothers old car for a while and search for some decent prices on replacement parts for the Tracer. I don't need everything in perfect working order, I just need the car to run and not be so visibly messed up to where cops pull me over all the time.

I'm assuming a radiator is going to run me in the $400 area and Sariah mentioned that the guy at the autobody place said there was something wrong with the air conditioner. I'll find out for sure when I take it to my uncles, but the hardest part will be the hood. I don't know how much junk yards parts run so I'm hoping a hood doesn't run me over $800. Who knows really. Before I even get to that stage I'm going to take a rubber mallet to the current hood and try to beat it into something that resembles it's former appearance. If I can get it to where it's not buckled up anymore and I can tie it down reasonably so it doesnt' fly up when I'm driving on the highway I think that alone will be good.

In better news, the band has been writing new material and we've got a few songs in the works right now. They sound a bit different, but I think it's just us working out a lot of the influences that we've had for a year now and the later songs will most likely be more true to form FCF material. Don't get me wrong, I think the new stuff we're writing is excellent, but it really doesn't come together for me until vocals are introduced. We're really going to need to focus on that and make sure the vocal parts are as kick-ass as the music underneath them. I think we can have the writing finished by late January at this pace.

The addition to HQ is helping out a lot, but we're still not finished with it so it's leaking any hot air we pipe into the place. I think if we pool our funds and get enough insulation to finish the room that should help a bit. We'll probably tackle that in the upcoming weeks. Unfortunately Ed's mixer is screwed up now because of condensation. He will probably have to get a new one, but in the meantime we're making due with what we have available (which isn't much). I really don't think we'll be recording the new cd ourselves so we're going to have to begin putting together ideas on how we can finance that as well as a new trailer. In my mind the trailer is more important and we should tackle that first. We could always play shows and shit to raise money for recording, but the trailer is what's going to get us to the shows we need to play to further spread the gospel according to FCF.

All things happen for a reason so lets just hope that the negatives we've experienced will be balanced out with positives later down the road.

MY BABY!!! (again)
Friday, December 1, 2006, 09:37 AM
Damn this weather!
Today is the first day of December and only 30 days away from the new year, a pay raise, insurance and a few other niceties. Unfortunately before I could get to December, November decided it was going to have it's way with me in the way of taking my beloved car away from me.

Last night on my way home from work I left a little early to beat the weather as it was reported we were going to get 6 inches of snowfall through the course of the evening. By the time I got to my car it was raining ice and I feared the worst. After stopping at a local gas station to fill my tank I made my way home. No more than 5 minutes outside of Virginia I come to a hill and prepare my decent, only then to I see the 6 deer standing in the middle of the road 100 yards in front of my car. I start easing on the break, but I was going down hill on an ice covered road. At that point in time I knew I was going to hit them so I started veering toward the side of the road in hopes that I could possibly miss them or at least minimize the damage. All I could do was slide, wait and hope for the best.

I collided with one that flew into the air and came down on my hood with enough force to send my car into a 360 degree spin. It seemed like everything was happening in slow motion as even while I was spinning I was able to look behind the car and see the deer flopping on the ground. After the car completed it's spin and came to a halt I noticed the entire hood was buckled and my passenger side mirror was destroyed. The car was still running and I started to go forward a little bit, but then stopped because I didn't know what the procedure was for this kind of thing. Last time Sariah and I hit a deer we just drove the car home. Since it was freezing and still raining balls of ice, I decided to just go. I kept thinking there was probably nothing left of the front end of my car the whole way home.

When I finally got home I astonishingly noticed that the front end was fine and that my hood and side mirror appeared to be the only thing damaged. However as I was walking up to the house, I looked back at the car and noticed a pool had formed underneath the engine. I thought that maybe the heat from the car had melted the ice below, but then I remembered that it would have had to have been sitting their for a while running for something like that to happen. Upon closer inspection, sure enough the radiator was draining coolant all over the street. This was a bit more of a problem than just some body damage. I reported it to the Cass Co. sheriff's department as it happened in Cass and then we reported it to our insurance agent. Today I have to arrange to have it towed to an autobody place so I can get an estimate on the damage. The car is probably only worth $3000, so if the repair is more than that I'm fucked.

Here’s a picture of the damage.

Watch for Falling ROCK
Wednesday, November 29, 2006, 09:55 AM
I’m absolutely sick of pop being referred to as rock and rock being referred to as metal. It’s like the whole world has gone sissy. Pop is pop. If pop artists don’t like the fact that they are labeled as pop, then perhaps they shouldn’t write pop songs. Instead the media distorts the whole pop/rock/metal label system so you perceive generic pop artists as rock and generic rock bands as metal, so on and so forth. I think this all started back in the mid nineties when pop was being mislabeled as punk. Well, maybe it started before then, but it’s still annoying as hell.

Calling a rock band from the 80’s like Cinderella or Poison metal is blasphemy. They were never were, nor are they now metal. The whole of pop media has a hard on for throwing up the horns and screaming metal while jamming a Bon Jovi song and the rest of the real world looks on in utter dismay and disbelief. Do we accept everything the media shoves down our throat? Pantera was a metal band and they, if nothing else, were the clear dividing line between what is rock and what is metal.

Today bands like My Chemical Romance and AFI are being labeled as metal, only with the word “core” added to it as to distinguish themselves from real metal bands. Of course these bands are not metal, nor are they “core”. They are pop groups just like Linkin Park. If you can’t see that, then you probably watch far too much of supposed music channels and read too many supposed music magazines. If you’re bullshit barometer isn’t going crazy with every new issue of Rolling Stone or Spin, then you most likely aren’t really listening to the music anyway.

I think that’s the main problem overall. There are far too many people running the industry who really don’t listen to music. Most music falls under the category of something that will attract people to one place to have fun and let go of their inhibitions. What’s the best music for that? Well who knows anymore as it’s all become image and presentation over actual substance. Of course if it’s got a good beat and a vocal hook that everyone can sing along with, then you know everyone is going to love it. To people who don’t listen to music, that’s all it really is.

The groups I listen to vary quite extensively, but I tend to be more fixated on music-oriented groups. I really love Isis and they are more of an ensemble of musical texture rather than a songwriting group. They will never make it big simply due to the fact that they don’t write memorable hooks, but that’s not to say they don’t write moving music. Unfortunately, mainstream audiences don’t hear music in songs they hear beats and words. It’s no surprise that rap has been as successful as it has been considering they’ve basically stripped music down to the essential core of what mainstream audiences clamor for. People from every walk of life can enjoy a good rap song be it children or the elderly. Rap is the enemy of music as it’s purely a commercial art form. The only way to make rap less commercial is to add music to it, then it because “artsy”.

With as many people seemingly picking up instruments and starting their own little garage bands as there are today, you would think that there would be more of a nationwide appreciation of music than there is. Alas, this is not the case. Most of the people starting bands are musically deaf and really only in it for the possibility of success. Many bands balk at the notion of being in it for fame, but how can they deny it when only months (sometimes weeks) after forming they are already out playing shows? No real band is going to find a chemistry and write good songs after only being together for a month. No, these bands want to take the stage and play to audiences. It doesn’t matter if the music is crap, they just want the experience.

The unfortunate side of bands who don’t focus on the writing dynamic early on is when they start taking their band too seriously and attempt to actually write songs. This rarely works because the chemistry was never there from the start, but the band has been together for so long that they are unwilling to trim the fat and find people who fit in a collective songwriting environment. You end up with a crappy band with crappy songs, a few egomaniacal members who think they are the lifeblood of the group and a seemingly never ending string of songs that just don’t stick. Somehow the band becomes some sort of crusade and the members of said group begrudgingly carry the torch for their band as though the task were handed down from on high. And when the group finally ends their futile journey nobody cares.

Songs are the most important element of any band. I’ve said it so many times in the past that I simply lack the energy to muster those words anymore as they always seem to fall on deaf ears. The once prosperous Springfield music scene died due to the abundance of bands that cared only about success. Each and every rock club in Springfield closed it’s doors over the past 6 years. Why is that? Could it have to do with the fact that Springfield is full of bands that couldn’t write a decent song if they tried? People eventually get tired of hearing crap all the time and start to avoid places because of it. If every single weekend a club features bands that are more interested in you buying their cd or merchandise than playing a song worth remembering, then it’s easy to see why people would lose interest in the place.

All in all, music is systematically being destroyed by the media and hungry youth too blind to the obvious that they consume without tasting. The industry would prefer to lead you like a horse to water so they can better predict marketing demands and make even more money. It’s not unbelievable that a company would want to make money, but what is unbelievable is that people are actually buying into this nonsense. Unless there’s some sort of new renaissance, the future for art will be dismal if not non-existent.

Long Weekend
Saturday, November 25, 2006, 01:31 PM
I feel like an idiot as this weekend was a 4 day weekend for me and I spent the first two days of it sitting at home doing nothing. Here I sit in my computer room on Saturday and I'm burning a cd before I make a trip to Springfield to meet up with Damon. Sariah is meeting one of her friends from New Jersey and then going to Missi's all-girl party tonight. The guys would probably try to do something, but they're most likely all stuck babysitting. I don't think I want to drink tonight. I've got belated Thanksgiving with my mother and my sister tomorrow and I have to clean the house tonight before that happens. Not to mention I really don't want to be in a sour mood tomorrow or end up being sick all day.

So what's been going on....hmmmmm....

Well, I've started looking for a second job. Since Sariah quit Green Mazda I'm now in a position where I have to take up the slack and at least provide us enough money to get by. My job is enough to pay the bills, but we still need money for gas and food and stuff. I really don't want to get a second job, but if Sariah isn't going to go look for a job, then I really don't have a choice in the matter. She's done the two job thing before when I was out of work, so it's only fair that I return the favor now. This is going to put a damper on band stuff since I probably won't have a lot of time to do anything. I need to get the HD24 over there and show those guys how to use it before I start a job so at least we're staying productive.

I have an abscess in my mouth for some reason. I guess it's that tooth again. I passed on dental insurance because I figured since the pain was gone and I could finally close my mouth again that the problem was averted. I thought wrong. Nothing I can do about that now. I've got too many other things going on. I'm off to Springfield to see about car stereos that you can hook up an iPod to. No, I don't have an iPod, but I was thinking about getting one if I could hook it up in my car and listen to music that way. I just thought it would be nice to be able to take all the songs on my computer anywhere I go (especially in the car) without having to burn them to cd first. It's a real pain in the ass and I always want to listen to more songs than what can fit on a cd. Sariah has an MP3 cd player in her car and I would like that, but screw it. If I'm going to get something new I want something that is going to be really comfortable for me. Not to mention I could get those little iPod station things that let you put in your iPod and play your music through speakers. I would get a couple of those for the house and just take my iPod anywhere I go in the house and listen to music like if I'm taking a shower or cooking something to eat.

I've got to hit the road.

THE LAST SHOW!
Monday, November 20, 2006, 09:56 AM
This weekend was a blast. It was the first long-distance FCF show that was really fun. We were all in high spirits throughout the entire thing and it we definitely made the most of our time there. As promised, we didn't drink a thing until we got there and then we only had a few before going on. The venue was great and we put on a really great show. The only thing that would have made it better would have been for me to be able to see my fretboard while playing. I messed up a lot, but I guess it wasn't as apparent as I thought it was.

My rig is now both appealing and appalling - appealing to the ear (finally) and appalling to set up, transport and tear down. I'm thinking that once I get a live-in amp case it will take care of a lot of the headaches I would have trying to use this rig for every show. I'm in a dilemma regarding what to do with the Deuce. I could either get a dual-head road case and use 3 412 cabinets or I could build a 212 combo case for it and buy a single-head road case. The difference in money between dual head and single head road cases is slight, so it's basically down to what would sound the best. I had an idea to use a dual-head case and tap one of the Krank cabs to be stereo. That way I could run the Deuce and the Rivera to the same cab. I'm afraid that by doing that I'll be compromising too much low end out of the Rivera.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my life it’s that motivation makes accomplishing goals much easier. The easiest way to create motivation is to create a problem with a definite solution. The goal to solve the problem is in place and the motivation follows from having to deal with the problem over and over until everyone is on the same page and puts their efforts toward accomplishing the task of solving the problem. In this case, I’ve created a problem by growing my rig to three half-stacks. The solution is for us to buy a trailer. The motivation to solve the problem comes from the number of times we have to rent a trailer, which sucks because the closest place with a trailer the size we need is in J-ville. So inevitably we get a trailer just to make things easier on us and life goes on.

Anyway, back to Indianapolis. We had a lot of fun playing the show and afterwards the fun continued on into the night as Ewop and myself began doing karaoke at a sports bar across the street from the theater. I had a little too much to drink, but still had a blast. We took 30 cds with us to hand out to the people who attended the show and I believe we got rid of all but 2 of them. That was cool. Hopefully when we go back there will be an even bigger crowd than before. I can’t wait until we go back because it was definitely a kick-ass time.

Cry me a river..
Friday, November 17, 2006, 02:53 PM
Today is PS3 release day and after reading all the reports coming in from the field it seems to be the most violent of console releases to date. I've hit the forums now and have read numerous posts from disappointed fanboys turned away at the doors because the store they went to didn't have enough systems in stock. Ooh, there's a shocker. What better way for a company to sell an overpriced product than to hype it up to immense proportions then purposely understock the retailers so demand reaches a fevered pitch. Had there been more than enough to go around, nobody would have fussed as much about the big PS3 release.

I could care less as I'm not getting one. At that price they can suck it. The only reason they are charging that much is because of the Blu-Ray drive and that's not even that big of a deal either. DVDs will remain the predominant movie format because HD-DVD and Blu-Ray will always retain a price point that eludes most people. It will most likely suffer the fate of laser disc as a medium that was too much, too soon. Besides, by the time prices for high definition DVD players and media drop to reasonable levels there will most likely be a new technological advancement rendering the entire DVD format obsolete. Ah, but that's a different tale.

The PS3 is probably going to be a great system, but I'll never buy one for $600. I can wait a year for the price to come down and still be happy, after all that's what I did with the PS2 and received many years of play out of it.The people who bought the system just to resell it are scumbags. They are paving the way for legislature creating tougher laws against open-market trading which will greatly stifle online stores and auction sites. Companies like Sony aren't going to be too happy getting $600 per unit when the people buying them are getting upwards of $2000 per unit from release day resale. If I were Sony, I'd send my own people out to buy the systems then resell them on the internet for jacked-up rates. Then again, that's probably against the law and they would have a paper trail connecting them to the activity a mile long.

Enough of that talk.
Tonight FCF practices and tomorrow we play.
Oh yeah, Sariah quit her job.

I've made a decision...
Saturday, November 11, 2006, 11:10 PM
I'm going to stop reading emails and blog posts from Sean. I just get to upset when I read them because it's unbuffered emotion and I just don't relate to that. When I post stuff on my journal, I usually edit it quite a bit from what I start out posting because my first draft is almost always raw emotion. After typing for a few minutes I stop and re-read what I typed and realize that I was really just venting. Most of the time I delete everything I typed (even if it's pages of stuff) because by the time I'm done I understand that just typing it out was my release and there really isn't any need to post it online for others to see and possibly misinterpret. Unfortunately this doesn't happen all the time and the entries that reek of emotion are the ones that cause the most damage to my relationships with others.

I know Sean well enough to know that his online stuff is pretty much just that. I usually don't get bent out of shape about it, but there are the occassions when there is enough stuff going on in the real to reinforce the negative aspect of what I read. It's just better for me to not read it because I know that's not the way we are when we are around each other and it's senseless to get caught up in a back and forth that stemmed from one of us pouring our emotions out in a blog or email. I think that will be a good start for me to get my head back in a space where I need it to be to continue on in FCF. Sean always says it's lack of communication that is damaging the fabric of the band, but I disagree. I think it's miscommunication; one person saying or doing something and everyone else taking it the complete wrong way as to which it was intended. That may never stop, but I'd like to try to make some changes.

I got just got back from Damon's wedding. It was pretty nice. After the ceremony started I was pretty comfortable, but leading up to that I felt kind of anxious to get out of there. I ended up staying way later than I planned, but that's okay because I was having a good time. I'm sure Damon and I will get back together in the near future to discuss some stuff we were talking about at the wedding. It seems he has a lot of things he wants to talk about and while I've bored him to death with stories about Sariah and I, I think this time he's interested and wants some insight. I had a good time and I think Damon did to.

Why me?
Sunday, November 5, 2006, 08:14 AM
It's 8:05 on a Sunday morning and I'm sitting in the office. Why am I sitting here in the office? Well I have to shoot a church service this morning for work. Why do I have to shoot it? Because Tim did the last one and swore off doing Sunday shoots. I'm right there with him as I haven't been to bed yet and I'm about to pass out on my feet.

I hate weekend shoots, but nothing even comes close to my hatred of Sunday morning shoots. If I'm there an hour I'll be surprised. No one seems to understand that there's only so much you can put in a 30 second commercial. They often want you to shoot all day long, which basically is a waste of my time since only a tiny portion of what I shoot actually ends up in the commercials.

It seems like more and more Laymon is scheduling after-hours shoots. He keeps telling us that it's the only time they have available, but that's not true. He's just willing to bend over backwards for any client and gets away with it because there are no limits governing him. Too many more of these after-hour shoots and Tim and I are just going to refuse to do them. If he wants to start up with his typical threats then we'll take it straight to Donny and see who comes out on top on this issue.

The worst part about this is that the church I'm going to shoot has their own video equipment. Yeah. They shoot videos for their church all the time. So why am I going today to shoot a commercial? Because Laymon decided he didn't like the quality of the video they shoot. That's pretty funny considering the fact that Tim or I wasn't given an opportunity to view the footage they've done and inform him as to whether or not we could use it. He knew that if he showed us their footage we would be more apt to go with theres rather than shooting them on a Sunday and Laymon wanted our "professional production" applied to the project.

There isn't going to be a whole lot of professionalism mustered out of a person who doesn't want to be there, is tired as hell and trying to capture visuals through bloodshot eyes. . . .

GRRRRRRRR...

I guess I was wrong after all...
Friday, November 3, 2006, 10:06 AM
..and boy was I wrong.

I kept thinking that Eclipse studios was where None Taken recorded, but they recorded at Oxide Lounge, not Eclipse. Oddly enough Vivesect, a local metal band, recorded at Eclipse and their demo sounded pretty good. None Taken's demo doesn't really sound the way it should have considering the quality studio they were in. Eclipse is nothing more than a dude with a Mackie Digital 8-Buss, a computer and about the same amount of mics I used to have. Oxide Lounge has a lot of great mics, preamps, recorders and the board is by far one of my favorite analog boards. How can this be?

I guess it's the reason I decided to stop recording after all these years. You can have all the equipment in the world and still end up with a sub par recording while others can make great sounding demos with next to nothing. It's a mystery and I even went to school for the stuff. I was talking with Sean this past week about recording in an actual studio this time around, but I just don't understand why we would pay someone else with virtually the same amount of equipment as me to do the CD.

That really chaps my ass...

Final Fantasy XII
Thursday, November 2, 2006, 08:34 AM
Yesterday I bought the final Final Fantasy game for the PS2. To my slight disappointment, it's gameplay feels much like FFXI and I wasn't too crazy about that. Perhaps the reason I wasn't crazy about FFXI wasn't really the gameplay as much as it was the fact that tiny baby steps forward in the game take months of time in the real world to achieve. Shouldn't it be the other way around here? I mean, it's a game, not real life.

Anyway, FFXII reminds me a lot of FFXI just without the online gameplay. The story doesn't seem to compelling yet and I'm already getting a sense that the lead character isn't going to evolve into something else. That sucks because the lead character at this point is a thief and I hate playing as thieves. Another looming suspicion I have is that there isn't going to be some cataclysmic world-changing calamity that effects the storyline later on like in past FF games. If my fears come true....

The only reason I keep coming back to the FF series is the continuity of storyline, ideas and gameplay. Over time the graphics get updated, new character ideas are evolved and the plots get much, much deeper, but one constant has always been the battle system. If you really think about it, FF has had the same battle system for upwards of 15 years. The lineage broken by only the most recent FF games (XI, X-2, XII). Now, that's not to say that the battle system isn't cool. Ever since I played FFXI for the first time I liked the idea of engaging the enemy in the field in real-time, but I couldn't shake the notion that I wasn't really playing a true FF game.

With Square-Enix's decision to basically port gameplay from FFXI over to FFXII, it's clear that a lot of long-time fans are going to be upset. I've noticed a real change in things since Square absorbed Enix. Things have really started to become more corporate and less about the games. It's almost like a board of directors has to approve each game, but none of the directors really know anything about the games so they just have checklists of everything that was popular in earlier FF games and they just make sure that the developers are putting those things into the new games. No heart/all money.

Sure the game has magic, summons, chocobos, airships and a lot of the other FF mainstays, but coming from a person who's already faced the disappointment of playing Xenosaga I can truly say that popular symbols make not a good game. Xenosaga was built on the idea that the entire Perfect Works novel would be created in game form, unfortunately they only assembled a skeleton crew of the Squaresoft Xenogears development crew to create the game. Obviously there was frustration between Namco and the developers because the remaining Xenogears development team left and the project was turned over to a new team that was totally unrelated to the Xenogears/Perfect Works world. Thus, Episode II and III strayed so far from the original story that there really was no reason to keep it going and they shit-canned the project at the end of III.

In Square-Enix's case, they took a long-running game series and turned it over to the one development team I hoped they would never tap for a game. That team being the developers of Final Fantasy Tactics and Vagrant Story. I can pretty much rest assured that this game is not going to have any sort of pivotal plot twists that matter or any sort of love story or any real gripping story line. Although I think this team has done a superb job of building up the story just fine in the few short hours I've been playing, I can see it either going somewhere good or taking forever to get nowhere. Hopefully I won't be disappointed…..I know Chris will be.

Nothing to talk about today, sorry...
Wednesday, November 1, 2006, 04:10 PM
Today was my first day back from being sick for the past two days. My next check is going to rock! I thought I had to shoot a commercial tomorrow in Staunton, but apparently people like to play funny jokes on me and not tell me when a commercial has been rescheduled. It's a good thing someone finally told me or I would have been taking a long trip in the morning for no good reason.

Today is the first day of November and I can't wait for this year to be over. Sariah is bugging me about her job and how much she hates it. I've got my mom and Sariah's mom living with me at the same time. I've got the band wanting to get together and do a bunch of stuff. I've got a wedding I have to be a part of, another show to do, a demo to finish, a demo to start and a whole lot of bills to pay.

I need a vacation. A real one this time!

Breakdown Pt. 5
Sunday, October 29, 2006, 11:50 AM
What could make my life more enjoyable?
Having Sariah's mother and step father move in with us.

Since they've moved back to Jacksonville to take care of Sariah's grandmother, they've done nothing but argue with her constantly. Now, she's kicked them out of her house and they're going to be living with us for no specific amount of time. Neither of them work, nor do they have any sort of disability money or anything coming in. Basically, they're two sponges living in my house. I'm going to have to deal with coming home from work and seeing those two sitting in my living room, drinking coffee and watching television and there's really nothing I can do about that because Sariah told them they could stay. The best part is that they're going to be sleeping in my moms room. I don't like that because it's my mom's room, but right now we don't have anywhere else for them to sleep.

Sariah just gave a bunch of our stuff and $480 dollars to one of her friends and now is letting two deadbeats live with us. Yeah, I know my mom lives with us, but she works two full-time jobs and is hardly ever home, not to mention when she is home she always cleans or cooks for us and then leaves for a month. Not saying I enjoy my mother slaving her life away, but it's the difference between someone who is at least motivated enough to not be a burden and two people who are burden to everyone everywhere they go. Today is my laundry day and all I've heard all day is bullshit drama about Cheri and Dave not having anywhere else to go and bullshit about Sariah's grandma being a bitch and blah blah blah.

My mother lives with us and has lived with us for some time, but she's not my father. Divide my father into 2 people and that's Cheri and Dave. What am I supposed to do? I'm basically trapped in a situation I don't like, but I can't get out of because the situation exists at my own home. I've always known something like this was going to happen, I just didn't think it would be this soon. Cheri's a deadbeat and always has been. Everything she ever had was given to her by others and she never worked, never cleaned, never really did much of anything other than be the center of a lot of drama. Add dave to the mix and you've basically got two bums spending their entire lives trying to find people to mooch off of.

I give it a week before I snap.

Breakdown Pt. 4
Thursday, October 26, 2006, 07:24 PM
I’ve been in a really bad mood all day and it has nothing to do with my birthday. I just feel like I’m trying to run away from myself and there is a great fear in my life about the future. Today is the peak of the so-called “dark place” that I’m in. I guess it’s because I’ve had all day to think about shit and just sitting around thinking about stuff doesn’t really do anything other than make me feel like there’s really no way out. I fear becoming my father in so many ways, but at the same time I fear becoming anything else. I’m in a strange situation as I’m in a band where people shower me with adoration and praise, but I hate it. I don’t hate the band, but I hate being praised and having to be gracious and whatnot. I suck at gratitude.

A large part of me wants nothing more than to have the world to myself, but at the same time I need others in my life to please. I need goals relating to making other people happy, but all I want to take away from it is my own feeling of accomplishment. I would be happiest to have a job where I bring happiness to people who have absolutely no connection with me, but is still something I can take something away for myself to feel proud of. I hate being depended on because it makes me feel as though I have to perform up to other people’s expectations which by definition is a connection. It’s a bad analogy, but I’d like to be Santa Claus. I’d like to be a guy who brings joy to everyone around the world, but at the same time is a figment of everyone’s imagination. After all if Santa was real he’d cease to be as great as we make him out to be.

Character flaws are the downfall of everyone and my flaws are too immense for me to take. I want so much, but fail to deliver on so many things as I fear gratitude so much. My mother always told me how my father would start projects and then never finish them. I never understood why until I started doing the same thing. In the beginning intentions are good, hopes are high and there’s more personal gratification from tackling a job and putting yourself completely into it. The closer it gets to completion, the more and more that personal satisfaction is replaced by anticipation of others and finally an all encompassing and unsettling acceptance of praise for the job you completed. I think I sabotage myself so I can avoid the uncomfortable situation that is accepting others gratitude. I would rather fail and bring the whole project down than face praise.

I can’t explain why, nor have I been able to do anything about it. The only thing I’ve thought for the past 10 years is that by escaping my current situation I will find the happiness I’ve never known. I always think happiness is waiting for me in some other city or some other job or something other than what I’m engaged in at the present moment. This is not true. There is no magical happiness for me waiting just over the horizon. I either have to learn to be happy with myself now or end everything because I don’t know of anyone who can look forward to a long life filled with unhappiness. I don’t know why I have to feel this way all the time, but it’s clear to me that I can’t run from it because that’s all I’ve been doing my entire life.

I know just sitting in it and trying to put on a fake smile and convince everyone I’m happy is just not going to happen. This is something else I’ve been doing for a long time. I pretend to be someone I’m not. I either get so wasted that I become nothing more than a busted damn of emotion or I pretend that I’m confident with myself and above everything and everyone. I don’t want sympathy or pity from anyone. In fact, I hate it when someone tries to be sympathetic to me because it makes me feel like a freak. I don’t want everyone feeling sorry for me and treat me different than they would anyone else. I do want people to accept me as I am and at the very least give me the space I need sometimes, but other than that I just want to be normal. The problem there is that my life is intertwined with others so the decisions I make impact others. No one experiences this more than Sariah.

The issue with Sariah is the worst part of my life. I love her, care for her deeply and want to make her happy by being the best person I can be. She’s my rock. Without her I would be left alone to my own devices and would surely slip deeper and deeper into myself and shut out the outside world entirely. I don’t have any personal ambition in my life that isn’t directly tied to Sariah. She’s really the only reason I’ve come as far as I have and for that I am eternally grateful to her. Unfortunately, she’s not some lofty concept or idea I conjured to give myself purpose. She’s a flesh and blood person who has desires of her own and those desires involve me taking on a task in which I know failure is a strong possibility.

My mother told me tonight during dinner that when I was 4 my counselor had me draw a picture of my family. I drew my mother, my sister, our trailer and myself as a baby. I think the reason I drew myself as a baby is because I yearned for attention and even at that age was a very self-centered person. So where was my father? That’s the best part. See, in the picture the trailer was on fire and the fire was my father. I don’t know what to make of that. I could rack my brain trying to figure that out but would never come up with an answer that made sense. One could say that I feared my father and thought he was destroying our family, but all my earliest memories of my father were of love. I loved my father more than anything in the world at that age. Why would I draw him as fire?

As disturbing as that revelation was to me, I can’t obsess on it because those problems are not mine anymore. I guess the best way to put it is that if I were to draw the same picture today I would be the fire. Sariah wants a child and has wanted one for many years now. I haven’t given her one for many reasons and the most important of them being my fear of completing my journey in life. As much as I’ve tried to fight it, I can’t avoid the truth that I am becoming my father. The last step is to have a child and then turn my back on it just as my father did to me. Why would I turn my back on it? Much like starting a project and not finishing it, I’m afraid of the outside world’s intrusion into my life the day a child is brought into our life. I’m afraid of the responsibility of being a parent. Not in the raising or caring for a child, but more or less the responsibility of being thrown into a world where I am not the center of things.

Everyone says that if I have a child that my child will become the reason I exist and that I will be a great father. Nobody knows me though. That’s a blanket statement everyone makes when they here about a married couple where the man is reluctant to have a child. My situation isn’t a run of the mill sort of thing. I’m extremely self-centered. To a lesser extent, it is somewhat of an illogical decision for me to create another me when I don’t even like myself. Knowing that I would have a child that would have to suffer with the same bullshit I did is unbearable. My child would be a shell of a person, excitable and full of life one minute and totally unreachable the next. How could I handle knowing that my child was going to be just like me and there is nothing I can do to change it? I already want more for my child and it hasn’t even been born yet. I want it to have more opportunity, better schooling, a better home environment. I want it to have everything I didn’t have, but what can I do when it will have the one thing I don’t want it to have?

I feel like a defective part that no one has discarded yet because it’s still performing it’s function. What if after I have a child I cease to function and I become wrapped up in my own internal bullshit to the point where nothing in the world matters but how I feel? Sariah will leave me, take our child with her and I’ll fall apart completely. I will no longer have something to work toward as I don’t consider working to better myself something worth my time. What happens when I transfer my compassion and caring to the child? I fear I would being to hate Sariah. My tolerance of her is based on my compassion for her. A marriage cannot work if the parties involved only care about their child and could really do without each other.

In the end, I’m worried about me. It’s pathetic, but that’s who I am.

October 26, 2006
Thursday, October 26, 2006, 10:19 AM
Happy Birthday to Me.

My boring weekend..
Monday, October 23, 2006, 09:28 AM
My weekend wasn’t interesting at all. I spent Saturday asleep and Sunday I did housework. Sometimes I feel like I have lots of energy and can’t wait to get something started, but most of the time I just feel drained. I hate repetitive bullshit, so I tend not to get into routines. I just wish there were a way I could feel better. It seems like every day I slump a little more. Maybe I’m just getting old or maybe it’s my weight. Maybe I’m so out of shape that even the simplest things take a lot out of me and after a while I just stop doing even the simplest of things. I don’t know.

I do know that I actually enjoy doing the laundry on Sunday. I wouldn’t say I look forward to it, but I’ve done it for a month now and I just feel like I should have been doing it all along. Hell, I’m at home anyway so I might as well be somewhat productive. Yesterday I did the dishes, and cooked dinner for Sariah and I. I felt pretty good about the whole day, but it’s still nothing exciting.

I guess Bub had a party Friday. I didn’t find out about it until that day when Tim told me about it. Sariah was working and quite frankly I just don’t feel like being around anyone. I don’t feel like doing much of anything right now except taking a break and finding my center, whatever that may be. I don’t want to drink and I really don’t want to party and that’s really all my friends and I do anymore when we’re together. It’s not like we plan it, we just do it. It’s like a natural reflex to crave beer when we’re together. I wonder why that is?

Giving 4PS a shot in the arm..
Friday, October 20, 2006, 03:16 PM
Tim recently created a site with nearly every Four Pointed Sisters song on it. It's pretty rad. We're going to give it it's own .com here pretty soon, but for right now you can check it out HERE!

I think I'm going to spend the weekend working on songs. I'm thinking about it.....

Breakdown Pt. 3
Wednesday, October 18, 2006, 01:07 PM
I’m so unbelievably tired. I don’t know what’s going on with me but I’ve been sleeping on the couch for the last 2 nights and feeling even more tired than I usually do when I get up in the morning. I think it’s because I actually sleep all night without waking up every hour to reposition myself or to scoot Sariah over because she hogs the bed. I don’t know. What I do know is that I have to shoot a commercial today and go to Funk’s house tonight. I’ve got to re-shoot a commercial in Rushville because the owner wasn’t happy with the last one. This time I’m not doing anything fancy. I’m just going to shoot a few things, add a few graphics and be done with it. I spent 2 weeks on the commercial that was rejected and put a lot of work into the graphics compositing only for it to be turned down. Why do I even bother trying to make good commercials for these people when all they want is nothing?

I’ve been giving some thought to the new cd. I think I’m going to spend a while writing out ideas that come to me and putting them together just to see how they’ll work out. Granted it will all be with a metronome background beat, but still it will be good enough just as a scratch pad. I also need to find out whether or not we are going to set up the practice space for recording so I can take the HD24 over there and get Ed to set up a makeshift recording setup. From there I’ll need to show everyone how everything works and as long as nobody messes with anything they should be able to go in at any time and just turn everything on and go. Hopefully it will be that smooth, but somehow I doubt it.

Oh great! They just instituted a dress code here at Cass and one of the things on the list is “extreme” hair. I don’t know if my hair falls into the extreme category, but I’m under the impression that it does. It’s funny because I was going to cut my hair this week anyway. Now I’m thinking I should keep it the way it is and just put it back in a pony tail. Shit, I don’t even really venture upstairs for much of anything anyway. I don’t know why my hair would bother anyone. Hmmmm… Whenever things like this happen I always do a job search just to see what my options are. I think I’m really going to need a change of pace here coming up anyway because I need to make more money. I should just be happy with what I have, but I really want to make more and do more. I can’t really leave Cass because they pay me more than anyone else can really. I just don’t really know what to do about that.

This Saturday I’m going to get back to recording Murder Theory so I can finally finish up their demo. I already feel stupid as is for letting it go for this long. I don’t know what else I’ll end up doing this week. I’ll just have to play it by ear…

Breakdown Pt. 2
Monday, October 16, 2006, 11:17 AM
It’s Monday again. This weekend was alright. FCF played it’s last show of they year, but already Aaron and Chris are talking about how it’s not going to be our last show. Thanks for taking an interest in working on writing new material guys. I’m starting to believe that no one wanted to take a break from shows and that I pushed it on everyone. If no one wants to write new songs, that’s perfectly fine with me. Like I’ve said before I’m not going to argue with these guys anymore. It’s a band decision whether or not we use the money from this last show to promote ourselves or use it on HQ. It’s a band decision whether or not we play additional shows or not.

Being in this band is like being in a car with no one at the wheel. Whenever you start to get nervous and reach for the wheel, everyone else slaps your hand and tells you to leave it alone. You’re on a ride with 4 other people and fate is the only thing behind the wheel and for some reason no one has a problem with that. You have three choices at this point. Choice number one involves forcefully taking control of the vehicle and guiding it to wherever you think it should go despite what everyone else thinks. Choice number two, you pretend you're not scared or nervous and just play along with everyone else who doesn’t seem to mind the fact that you’re barreling down the highway in a car with now driver. Choice number three, you could bail out of the car, save yourself and leave everyone else to suffer the fate that awaits them.

Does that sound bleak? I don’t think so. I think it’s fair assessment of where the band is and has been for a long time. Everyone wants to believe in something but no one wants to believe in each other so we remain in a car with no driver. The worst fate in store isn’t crashing and burning, it’s going nowhere. That’s what scares me the most actually. A bunch of guys in a car going in circles and no one seems to notice because the scenery changes thus no one feels the need to take hold of the wheel and actually drive the car to a destination. This is the situation I’m in. I have goals and many of my friends and band mates do not. People without goals don’t accomplish anything. I don’t like the fact that my friends have no goals, but what can I do about that? Nothing. They live their life the way they want and are as happy as they think they can be I guess. I don’t know.

Everyone’s taking everything too far. One little thing turns into a raging argument that never needed to be because our tolerances for each other’s bullshit is running so low. My perspective on things is clearing up a bit. Actually, the day after I posted my last post I felt a little lighter in the conscience. Sometimes I feel as though I have to defend my thoughts before anyone even attacks them. I think everything I say, think and do is going to be scrutinized and I’m going to have to defend it sooner or later. I hate having that burden looming over me at all times. I don’t really feel it as much now, but I’m still feeling some resentment.

I care about the future of the band and I don’t want to see it end. Of course, that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop being who I am to make it so. If during or after this break the band decide they have too much going on in their own personal lives to focus on being a band right now, then I will respect that. Not saying that we’re close to that or anything, but I just get these strange feelings from everyone else like there’s something everyone wants to say and they’re just not saying it. I don’t know. That’s part of the thing that’s been bugging me, but it most likely has no base in reality. After all, that’s a definite direction now isn’t it. Even after all these years I can’t just accept the fact that FCF is a car going in circles waiting for someone to step up and take the wheel.

Breakdown Pt. 1
Thursday, October 12, 2006, 10:31 AM
I’m kind of at a point now where I really don’t know what I’m going to do. I’ve been blindsiding myself in order to follow through on something that I don’t even know if I care about anymore. At one time I was excited about the prospect, but now I can’t even think about it without becoming angry and stressing myself out. That’s kind of the state I’m always in now: angry and stressed out. I need time to clear my head I think and get a fresh perspective on things. I need to relax.

Two days until FCF’s last show of the year and I think after that I’m going to retreat for a while and just work on some stuff alone. I need to find my comfort zone again and right now I just can’t seem to focus on it. I feel like I’m getting pulled in so many different directions that I just can’t come to grips with anything. I’m tired of feeling the way I do about everyone and this only comes at a time when I’ve been pushed past the threshold. The next few days are going to be difficult. I just hope no one starts any shit with me over this, but everyone's track record up to this point hinders whatver hope I may be able to muster.

Audio Clippage..
Tuesday, October 10, 2006, 10:23 PM
Here is a short little thing I recorded because I wanted to get this sound on a recording because I really like it.

RIFF ONE (dead link)

I kind of have a thread going at HCAF regarding what am I used to record this clip with. I'll post tomorrow what amp it is although it's not just an amp alone (wink).

WEEK 2, OCTOBER 2006
Monday, October 9, 2006, 09:28 AM
This weekend was awesome. I did absolutely nothing all weekend! Okay, maybe it wasn’t awesome, but Sariah did get to spend her time off productively as I was stuck at home doing laundry all day. She deserves it because she’s been working really long hours and rarely gets time to do the things she wants to do. I enjoyed doing the laundry as it gave me a chance to practice a bit. I spent a few hours off and on playing guitar in my living room through my Valve Jr and the EH POG. Until I get we start writing I’m basically using it as a distortion pedal now. It’s incredible for that actually. Who would have ever thought that an polyphonic octave generator would also make a kick-ass distortion pedal? It’s really chunky and kind of dark, but with a strange compression that mimics brown sound in a way, it’s just not EVH bright or anything. I love it.

Anyway, right now I’m waiting for US Bank to post Sariah’s check that I deposited Saturday morning and once that goes through I have to pay our car payment. Speaking of money, Sariah should be doing pretty well on her next check. She’s already sold 3 cars this pay period and made a pretty good commission off of one of the sales so if she sells any more cars this week she should make about a grand. That will be nice. My job is still the same. Nothing ever changes here. You would think that after we got our house and car refinanced that it would be smooth sailing for Sariah and I, but that hasn’t been the case. This just illustrates how bad things were for us before. We can afford our payments now whereas before we weren’t really getting by at all. Bills were behind by months and I had to borrow a lot of money from my mother. At least now we’re self-sufficient and I’m not even charging my mom rent anymore. She needs all the money she can get to afford that car payment after all.

Thursday the band is practicing for our last show of the year. From there, we go into writing mode. I can see a compromise in our near future. I’m going to compromise by doing the “lets just get together and jam and see what happens” shit and they’re going to compromise by actually developing their skills a bit and working on riffs at home. One thing I am going to do is move my recorder out to HQ and set it up so we can all use it when we need to. I’m going to find a cheap metronome and just record riffs along with that. Here is where everything is going to go to shit because everyone else is going to play stupid when it comes to recording. I don’t have a problem showing everybody in the band how to run the recorder, but I will have a problem with them saying they aren’t going to record anything unless I’m there because they just don’t want to mess around with it. It’s everyone’s responsibility to take care of themselves, they can’t expect someone else to assist them in everything. Everyone needs to learn how to set up the board and the recorder. If all goes well, the board and everything running to it should already be set up, the only thing they’ll need to learn how to do is set up songs, arm the tracks and go.

I’m not going to argue with anyone. I’m going to present the idea and defend it, but I’m not going to get into an argument with anyone about why they should do it. As far as I’m concerned anyone who wants to do it should take advantage and anyone who doesn’t want to should not be forced to. It’s just a scratch pad… Anyway, I think Sean will like that because he can come out whenever he can and just lay down drum beats and then listen back and see if he likes them or not. He used to do that shit all the time a long, long time ago and I think it helps him develop. Perhaps not, but it will still be an option available to him. I don’t know where we’re going to put the recorder and the board, but we’ll figure something out I imagine.

I HATE DRINKING!!
Friday, October 6, 2006, 08:45 AM
Last night Aaron and I finished putting up the OSB on the walls of HQ and we opened up the doorway between the two rooms a bit. I was going to go out tonight so we could put up the house wrap and probably some siding, but I feel like dogshit! I got a 30-pack of Keystone Light and almost drank the whole damn thing by myself because Aaron brought his own beer and by the time Chris got out there it was almost gone. I think Chris said he only had 3 or something like that.

My head hurts so bad I can barely stand it. I don't even know why I'm at work today. Oh yeah, Sariah sold 2 cars yesterday. I'm happy about that and I know she is too. One bit of weirdness is that this morning Sariah woke me up and asked me what the deal with the TV was. I thought maybe our cable got shut off or something but then she told me the TV in our bedroom was sitting on the floor. ??? I was too drunk last night to even remember if the TV was there or not before I crashed, but it surely was on the floor this morning. Could I have moved it in my sleep?

Assuming I make it through the day here at work I'm probably going to go home afterwards and sleep or something. I just feel horrible..

THE POG!!
Tuesday, October 3, 2006, 04:41 PM
Oh god!

I got my Electro Harmonix Pog today. It's bad ass!! This is the kind of pedal you can overuse. The people at Electro Harmonix are great for making this pedal. The feature I bought it for is definitely the feature I am most in love with at this point: the ability to make your guitar sound like an organ.

Nobody believes me.....
Tuesday, October 3, 2006, 10:57 AM
..when I tell them I'm an asshole.

I guess they just expect me to not be one because we’re friends, but I am. I can't deny that. If you don't like it, then don't talk to me or try to be my friend. Do yourself a favor and just always assume I'm going to let you down, because chances are I will. I really have to believe in something with all of my heart to stick with it and if your plans for me don't fall into that category then you might as well get used to me not following through.

Some people think I’m intentionally being this way to them, but it really has nothing to do with them at all. This is the way I am. I’m self-centered and usually don’t concern myself with other people’s lives. I haven’t always been like this, but years of caring about people who either don’t care about themselves or treat you like you’re some kind of asshole for sticking your nose in their business, I’ve basically stopped giving a shit.

Being friends with me is pretty easy. All you have to do is not plan anything with me involved or expect anything of me and we’ll have a blast. I think that’s why I get along better with complete strangers then I do with my best friends. I know that I can talk to strangers for as long as I want and end the conversation when I’m ready and not have to worry about whether or not I’ve offended someone or hurt someone’s feelings.

I think the closest friends I have at this point are Chad Knous and Damon McCombs. Why? Because they are completely okay with the fact that I am who I am and never expect anything from me. They’re just happy to see me when I come around. That to me is all I really want; friends who are just happy to see me and don’t expect shit from me. I already have a group of people who care about me, but give me loads of emotional grief and expect me to be someone I’m not and that’s my family. Anyone who knows me knows that my family and I are not very close. The reason is because they always expected shit from me and always made me feel guilty about everything. I don’t need guilt trips in my life. I don’t need people giving me shit about why I haven’t come by or why I didn’t return their call.

The more my friends remind me of my family the more I want to distance myself from my friends just like I’ve done with my family. I used to be able to spend time with Sariah’s family and be perfectly comfortable with myself, but it hasn’t been that way in years. They get about the same treatment from me as my own family does. I take shit to heart and that’s pretty much something I will forever take to the grave. It’s not like they did anything particularly bad to me, I just don’t like to be judged or have expectations thrown on me. Comfort is knowing you’re with people who could care less about who you are, what you do or what kind of lifestyle you have.

There’s only one thing I expect of my friends: to give a shit about the band. I expect each person to take charge of their position in the group and set out to be an actual member of the group, not just a guy with an instrument on stage following everyone else’s lead. I expect them to want to rise above where we are and push for something bigger and better. I’m not in this band to see it squander it’s talent away on nothing because no one in the band is motivated enough to push on to the bigger arena. It saddens me when my band mates say stuff like they don’t care if we’re still jamming in Ewop’s shed 10 years from now as long as they’re still playing music. It just means that they don’t recognize the potential of the songs FCF has written and really don’t see a future in the band. How can someone stay energized about being in a band if the other members really don’t see a future?

I’ve said it before and I’m saying it again: I consider FCF a business. If I were content with it being just good friends hanging out and playing music together then I would never have offered to join in the first place. I am not one to sit around and wait for something to happen and that is why after the 14th we’re investing in the creation and duplication of press kits to send out everywhere. Is that the thing that’s going to break FCF to the mainstream? No, but at least it’s a start.

Damn FedEx!
Monday, October 2, 2006, 08:42 AM
I guess they're not delivering my pedal today. I was really psyched about that too, now I'm going to have to wait till tomorrow to get it. Oh well, I probably won't get my guitar back today anyway so I guess it's for the best. I'm going to have to pick my guitar up today assuming they get it done, but I'll have to balance that out with other things. Lot's of variables in play...

This weekend was alright. We got one wall up out at HQ. Aaron likes to drag ass when he's working which is funny considering he gets all pumped up about getting something done. The best part was when I suggested that we put the OSB on before we put the wall up and he thought that was a bad idea. ??? How can that be a bad idea? It's on the ground, we can make sure all our boards fall flush and our cuts are precise. I still think his whole thing was that he just wanted to get the framework of that one wall up before Sean got out there.

Anyway, they said they were going back out Sunday to do the other wall, but I doubt they actually did anything. I was supposed to take my car to my uncles, but I felt like shit the next day because of the party Saturday night. I left the party early (at least I think it was early) because I just got tired of doing nothing. I kept trying to get a poker game started, then someone else would start up a conversation with me and everytime I went to get some more to drink, some kid hanging out in the kitchen kept striking up a conversation with me. I couldn't just relax and hang out, but that's usually the way it is at parties and that's why I hate them.

I would have much rather stayed at Ottwell's and got the second wall finished, but having to contend with Aaron constantly naysaying every idea was getting pretty frustrating. No one believes I know how to measure anything yet I give them ample opportunity to measure everything themselves so they can get figures they're comfortable with, but they never do. So if no one believes me and no one measures for themselves, then exactly how will anything get done? I'm half tempted to go to HQ after work and try to do as much as I can on my own. I really hope they actually did something Sunday.

I've got to finish a commercial now...

I am a complete asshole!!!!!!!
Sunday, October 1, 2006, 01:34 AM
There is an absolute fact in my life. Do not corner me or force me to do things I do not want to do. If you put me in an uncomfortable situation, do not expect me to simply stand there and satisfy your desire. I will retreat. I will find a way out and find a way to make myself feel absolute. Unfortunately, tonight was the collaboration of birthdays between Sariah and myself. I do not require a party to affirm my state, perhaps Sariah does, I don’t know. All I know is that tonight was probably one of the most uncomfortable nights of my life. I would think that if my friends truly understood me they would know by now that I hate large gatherings.

I know I’ve upset Sariah by leaving, but in my mind I didn’t have any other option. I would have stayed there and endured a night of restlessness, followed by a full day’s worth of gnawing away at a project that rightfully should have been accomplished before sundown today. Words cannot express my anger at the fact that we did not complete what we set out to do today. I still understand that I must face the wrath of Sariah tomorrow, but at this point, it’s better than the alternative……and that’s pretty much why I decided to leave at that point. I don’t what to stand in the way of Sariah being happy, but at the same time I don’t want Sariah standing in my way of being happy.

I love Sariah and I hope she understands this…

For future reference...
Friday, September 29, 2006, 02:34 PM
I know we only have one show left this year, but I think I need to point this out:

If you see me like this:

Don't come up and do this:

No offense, but I need to get off-stage. I would be more than happy to talk to you at your leisure once off stage, but while I'm packing please try to give me some space because other bands do need to get their stuff on and I'm just in the way if I'm still on stage with my gear.

I should have done this 6 months ago....

2006 WSOP Main Event on ESPN last night
Wednesday, September 27, 2006, 02:10 PM
Stupid-ass Jamie Gold won the 2006 WSOP Main Event. I knew this for a while now, but after watching his performance at the WSOP and his shitty behavior at said tournament I couldn’t believe how much of an ass he is. He’s convinced he’s good, but he’s not. He got extremely lucky. Wanna see how good Jamie Gold really is? Put him deep in a tournament with a semi-short stack and cold cards, then you’ll see how great of a player he is. What a douche bag!

Alan Cunningham was fucking up so bad at the final table I was embarrassed to even watch. He let so many people take advantage of him it wasn’t even funny then went out on probably one of the worst calls of his life. He had a chance to cripple Jamie Gold early on in the match when they both landed flushes on the river, but Alan had the nut flush with the ace high. Instead of moving all in, he bet 2 million. Jamie, being the dumb-ass that he is couldn’t lay a flush down and called. I knew before Alan even made his bet that Jamie was going to call because he’s an idiot. Had Alan went all in and Jamie called, I doubt he would have won as Alan would have taken half his chip stack and become the chip leader.

It must have looked like great play to Jamie when he keeps hitting his cards and walking away with everyone’s money. Sure, it’s easy when you’re chip stack is nearly 5 times bigger than your opponents. It’s easy to call with any two cards in your hand because even if you opponent goes all in, you’ve got enough to cover them and not even have to worry about losing. Where’s the greatness in that? Bah!

I want to enter that tournament so bad. I know I wouldn’t get that far in it because I’ve never played in a real tournament before. This year there were over 8700 entries at the main event. That’s the number of people you would have to outlast to win the damn thing. I don’t even think I could play for more than 8 hours at a time. I don’t know because I’ve never really tried. I can’t even keep a good poker game going anymore because either no one wants to play or when they do they have no patience and end up sabotaging themselves 1 to 2 hours in.

I think if Sariah starts turning things around at work and we get our debt situation back under control, I’m going to start going down to the casino and playing there. I want to get a feel for playing poker in a casino. I would especially like to enter a tournament just to see how I fare. I’d probably do horribly, but it’s worth it to me just to try for the experience.

Hello all you nice people.....
Monday, September 25, 2006, 11:30 AM
I know a lot of people read this journal now and due to that I can’t really post a stream-of-consciousness release like I used to for fear of having to explain myself to the people I care about. I can’t explain myself better in-person than I do in my journal. So really what I fear is the committee rebuttal. By posting my thoughts I must face a tribunal of my friends so they can tell me what they think of what I said. It’s like having your inner-thoughts exposed to everyone around you. My journal has been helpful to me over the years and it’s always funny for me to look back and read about things that took place in my past that are trivial today, but meant so much to me at that time. It is a tool that I use to evaluate myself and to learn from the past because quite frankly my memory isn’t all that great. Without a window into my past I would keep repeating the same mistakes I’ve made over and over and learn nothing from them. I would never be able to progress beyond where I’m at.

I’m not going to stop posting in my journal because of my audience, however I’m also not going to allow my friends an opportunity to gang up on me with their rebuttals which is pretty much the only way I think my friends know how to deal with issues as they’ve never really addressed them with me face-to-face (outside of Sean). If anyone has a problem with what I’m putting in this journal, don’t keep it to yourself. Tell me about it in whatever form you want and I’ll listen. Don’t form a mob to come after me and confront me. Do I like having to dedicate an entire night to my friends surrounding me and telling me collectively how they feel about what I post in my journal? Hell no, but I’ve listened in the past and I know I will in the future because they love to do that sort of shit to me. It falls on me because I openly express how I feel whereas everyone else keeps their negative opinions about everyone else hidden.

Everyone exists in a grey area and no one is better than anyone else, yet we all feel from time to time that what concerns us is more important than what concerns others. No one has the right to put themselves before others, but that doesn’t stop anyone from doing it either. You can’t necessarily call someone a bad person when you are a bad person as well. The only thing we have in this world that define who we are and what sort of stuff we’re made of is our own actions and how we handle the actions of others. Those really are the only things one can be judged on because inside we all think the same. For those of you who read my journals, you’re reading my internal thoughts and really are stepping inside of my mind for just a brief period of time. I invite anyone who wants to know to come here and read my thoughts, however I expect everyone to realize that these thoughts are nothing more than that. I expect everyone to judge my actions, not my thoughts.

My world would be much simpler had I not started an on-line journal because too many people cannot differentiate thought from action. Contradictions in thought and action lead others to believe that actions are not sincere, that’s why it’s best to not make your thoughts aware to those you have contact with as certainly your actions will not always coincide with your thoughts. Unfortunately I also endure those who judge me on my thoughts because they are out there for the world to read. I think it’s pretty ridiculous for someone to judge me on my thoughts since no one has pure thoughts. I take it as a reflection of one’s own character as well as their mental age. I think the internet has really opened my eyes to the fact that we all exist on two planes: physical and mental. Whereas our physical body may have reached a certain age, our minds do not always follow. I believe wholeheartedly that a person’s mental age is based on how well they can understand and accept the world as it is. Alas, there are far too many people on this planet who have remained and will always remain children at heart. Once we achieve mental adulthood worldwide, the end of humanities woes will shortly follow.

Tone and things to come..
Thursday, September 14, 2006, 08:24 PM
I paid a visit to HQ tonight to fuck around with my amp. I don't know if it's just me or the fact that we weren't all playing together, but it sounded like shit. Also, I keep having a problem with one of my tubes not staying connected to the socket. This is bad on the amp so I either need to pull the two outer tubes and run it at 50W, or I need to figure out how to keep that tube secure inside the amp. I hope I don't have to replace the tube socket because that will just suck.

I've been giving more thought to Toad's Mesa. Even though when I tried it in a practice setting the amp was noisy as fuck, the tubes are like 6 years old. I imagine once it gets retubed it will be fine, but I want to find out before that if my assumption is correct. I'm going to take Toad's Mesa to Fred's tomorrow and have him put in a spare quad of JJ EL34s I have at my house to see if that gets rid of that noise. If it does I was thinking about trying something a little goofy before our show at The Central.

Here's the plan, I run my guitar into the Mesa and from the Mesa out to a 412 cab, then slave the power section of my Rivera off the slave out of the Mesa and from the Rivera to another 412. I need to try it at practice first to see if it will sound like poop or not. I really like the sound of the Mesa, but it's just not powerful enough. With the Rivera slaved to it I think that will help with the volume issue. Then again, I may come full circle back to just using the Rivera by itself. I mean, it sounded really good the other night when we practiced so I just don't know why it sounds like shit when we don't.

I guess I'm a little worried about the future because when we start writing our new songs I'm afraid the amp isn't going to deliver tone-wise. It works great now, but the songs we have are heavy. I can't get around one thing with the Rivera; it's bright. I having the same problem I had a month ago where I'm trying to dial out the bright-ass attack of the guitar and end up with nothing but mud. It got to a point where I had the treble and presence all the way down and the mids at like 3 and it was still to bright. The eq on that Rivera is goofy as hell.

Do I want to go back to the pedal thing? Hell, if I did that then I would definitely need to spring for a better distortion unit than the Metal Zone/TS-9 combo. Speaking of the TS-9, I ran that through the Rivera tonight and while it altered the mids a bit, the bright attack was still there. I say I don't like it, but when we're practicing I dial the amp in so it's tight and loaded with attack. Perhaps I don't like it when it's by itself, but when playing it helps me cut through better. I really don't know, but that's why I have a small practice amp now. I just hope the sounds I produce through the Valve Junior can be replicated well through the Rivera.

Everyone else in the band thinks I'm crazy because I'm never satisfied with what I have, but it's not really that. I like what I have and in certain situations the amps I have deliver exactly what I'm looking for. How can I write something on an amp that sounds one way and then transpose it to an amp that is voiced completely different and expect it to come off with the same feel as when I wrote it? It's like a drummer writing a song on a 9-piece kit and then trying to play it on a 3-piece kit. It's just not going to work.

As for writing, I'm really wanting to get adventurous with sound, but I'm afraid that it will detract from the vibe of the group. We'll really, really, really need to work on dynamics in order for this to come together. Kind of like the end of the bridge on Mr. Positive where there is a short two-bar break that I've always felt doesn't vary dynamically like it should. I really wanted that part to dip low an then swing back up to the full-on outro. I didn't really let it be known at the time because I think I was just happy we completed the song, but looking at it now and especially when we play it live I think we should have varied the dynamics right there to offset the coming part instead of playing it at the same level so the bridge and outro blend together.

One of my main goals with the new stuff is to keep it from being a all-out bash fest on Sean's part. I want to up the tempo of some of the newer stuff we write, but still have it feel laid back. A lot of that is on Sean, but we have to do our part by not covering up Sean with massive amounts of noise. Air. Room to breathe. That's the motto of the next writing effort. Intensity is made so much more intense when there's space in-between. I listen to bands who's songs are a constant barrage of noise and although I like it on cd, I doubt I would care for it live. Right now, I think all FCF songs share the same tempo. If they vary at all, it's probably only slightly. Our start/stop stuff feels like a lumbering locomotive grinding to a halt and starting back up again and I hate it.

The tightest stop start part we have is in Betty's pen and it's the part that we always fuck up. I don't know if we're all too sedated to perform rapid stop/start changeovers or what, but it's really irritating to think that we are incapable of doing something that other bands have absolutely no problem in pulling off. I believe a large part of this comes from everyone listening to each other's part too much. We're going to need to work together on a lot of stuff and hopefully in the near future when we're done with the concrete and our show line-up is through we can start going to HQ and working out parts and just practicing our stuff. Sean should get a metronome, not because he has horrible timing or anything, but just to familiarize himself with playing against his own beat. Bub should use that metronome as well to learn the meter of the song and when his pick strikes should fall. Once he gets comfortable with that I think things will tighten up a lot.

Aaron and I have to start getting together throughout the week and working on stuff. I'd like Ottwell to be there too so we can work on vocal/guitar arrangements. I really don't like coming up with a whole guitar-driven song before the vocals come into play because as stupid as it sounds, it's just too difficult to write sections of a song that consist of nothing but whole chords when it's just you and a guitar. The temptation to make it more interesting is too great. We all need to learn to become utility players when needed. Sometimes the best parts are the parts where you could have gone crazy but didn't. Finesse counts for a lot of what makes a good song a good song.

I've got to get off of this computer....

Wiiiiiiiiiiii
Tuesday, September 12, 2006, 10:58 AM
I just read a post where someone compared old video games to vinyl records. He made a comment about how everyone said CDs would kill the vinyl market (which they did) and then said that since you still see vinyl today the naysayers were disproven. It's odd knowing your old enough to remember a time before something that everyone takes for granted. Yes, CDs destroyed the vinyl market. There used to be nothing but vinyl and cassettes in stores then poof, it was all gone. The person who made that comment never had the opportunity to go to a popular records chain and see rows and rows of vinyl records so he doesn't understand the true effect of CDs. He grew up when CDs were already the norm, but you still saw vinyl floating around from shop to shop. To him, that's just the way it's always been. Not true.

Anyway, we were discussing the new Nintendo Wii at the time and I made the comment that the Wii was going to kill resale on older systems. That's when the comparison to vinyl was made. First of all, videogames can't be compared to vinyl. The reason vinyl still sells to this day is because there are people who cherish it and those who believe it is superior to CDs as far as quality is concerned. A videogame is a videogame throughout the ages. Unlike vinyl, new NES, SMS, NEO GEO, TurboGraphix 16, Genesis, SNES, N64, and Sega Saturn games are not being produced. They're time came and went. If you want to enjoy those old games you have to either find an emulator and roms for each game on the internet and then play them on your computer (lame), or you can buy the old system, controllers and games at a resale shop for probably $60-$100 bucks (depending on the system).

Nintendo is releasing a system that will allow you to play those old games without having to keep those older systems hanging around. You simply download the games from the internet directly into your Wii console and play them to your hearts content they way they were meant to be played; on a television set. I think it's going to cause a lot of these resale places to lose a lot of revenue. That's not to say that eventually the status symbol of these older systems will not increase as more and more of them are removed from circulation and the original games become harder and harder to get your hands on. They will take on a new ideology and cater to a new audience, but for the avid gamer the Wii is like the answer to a lot of peoples secret prayers....definitely mine.

I'm never satisfied...
Tuesday, September 5, 2006, 10:34 AM
This weekend was pretty boring. Outside of recording guitar tracks with Danny from Murder Theory, I didn’t really do a whole lot. For recording we used a Mesa 3-ch Dual Rectifier. I thought it sounded pretty good and worked a lot better for Danny tone-wise than my old Peavey XXX or his Crate. I know utilizing the tube rectifiers adds a completely different dimension to the sound. It’s like lots of gain plus tube saturation and sag all rolled up into one. It’s got me thinking…..what if I were to buy that amp?

I know, I know. I’ve already got 3 tube amps, what the hell do I need another for? Tone. I need a variety of tone options, especially if I’m recording bands. I put it out of my mind before because I was tired of dealing with the frustration of not having a decent place to work out of, but with HQ coming along, who knows what the future holds. If we actually build the back of Chris’ garage into a control room (a comfortable one, not just a makeshift one) then I could see amping up recording services in the future. The one thing I’ll need above all else is a good selection of equipment.

The Rivera is a versatile amp, but it can never approach the sound of an amp with a tube rectifier. Aaron has the TSL60, which is a good modern Marshall sound and the Rivera is a clone of older Marshall Super Leads and Fender Black Faces, so just those two amps alone offer a wide plethora of tone options, but neither one can reproduce that really spongy sound that a tube rectifier gives. I attribute most of that sound to a tube rectifier, although I’ve heard other amps (Framus Cobra, for example) that sound much like the Mesa utilizing its tube rectifier, but I don’t think the Cobra has a tube rectifier. Hmmmm….

Regardless, the Mesa has a unique sound and I would like to have it. I would probably rather have the Framus Cobra, but I’m not paying $2300 for a recording amp. A friend of mine owns it, but he never plays it anymore as he’s not really in any sort of band setting anymore. He’s talked about selling it before, but I don’t know how serious he was. He will probably want to sell the whole thing, not just the head. So that means I’ll have to pay him for the cab too, which I REALLY don’t need, but I guess if it’s a package deal it’s a package deal. The thing is, I can’t really present this idea to him because Sariah and I are still kind of in a transitional period. We don’t know how much she’s going to be making or even if she’s going to stay at Mazda. It sucks because I think she likes the job, but she’s getting stressed over a sales manager who’s giving her unnecessary shit apparently and she’s really having a tough time with the hours.

She has the potential to be a good salesperson, but she just has to commit herself to the premise. Right now she’s fighting against it because it takes up a lot of her time and she’s still on her old clock where she could stay up till 1 in the morning every night. Now she has to get to bed at 11 o’clock or she’ll be a wreck the next morning. It sucks for me too because I have to wake up an hour and a half before I usually do so I can wake her up, but she doesn’t get right up and I end up having to stay awake to make sure she gets up. I hope she continues with sales, but I’ll understand if she walks away from it. I’ve given her as much support as I can and will continue to as much as she needs. She’s sold 3 cars in 2 weeks on the floor and that’s good. Everyone she works with believes she’s going to do great, but the bottom line is that if she doesn’t want to do it, she’s not going to do it.

Back to the subject of amps, if I were confident that Sariah would be staying at Mazda, then I would probably go ahead and present my offer to Toad (the owner of the Mesa). He could either take it or leave it, but I would be willing to bet that he’d rather have the money than a huge amp he doesn’t even get to play anymore. I would offer him $100 a month for a year with $300 down up front. That’s $1500 for the whole half-stack. That might seem like a kick in the nuts considering how much he paid for it, but I’m really giving him top market value for both the head and the cab. That’s what sucks about guitar equipment. Unless you’re a bargain hunter like me, the moment you walk out of the store with it you’ll be lucky to get even half of what you paid for it on resale. That’s especially true for cabinets.

Mesa Dual Rectifier 412 cabinets are $1000 new. Used they’re $500 at best. Altogether I paid $425 for mine. The head, which I’m sure Toad paid over $2000 for is only worth $800 at best. It’s the 3-ch version of the Dual Rec and it’s not a very popular amp in the Mesa line. I’m not just saying that because I want to buy it. In fact, I don’t want to buy it because of that very reason. I keep thinking to myself, if I buy Toad’s gear for $1500, I’m taking a loss because I know I can’t resell the head for more than $800 and the cab for $500 and that’s not going to change with time. Essentially I’m giving him $200 extra dollars just to call it fair. Now, let’s say I take that same $1500 and with that sell my Krank cab, which I’m very confident I could get $700 out of. That would put me very close to the price of a Framus Cobra or a Bogner Uberschall – Much finer amps for that type of sound and both retain a high resale value as well.

I think about stuff like this and I think here I am buying all these amps and I’m not even that good at guitar to begin with. Also, I’m buying amps left and right like they’re going out of style, all the while Aaron has stayed with his TSL60. He’s talked about getting a new amp, but he has no idea what he would even get. He hasn’t experimented with other amps that I know of and as far as I can tell he’s not on any sort of tone quest like I am. I’ve never wanted a Mesa before and now I’m thinking about buying one for recording purposes. Perhaps I should just finish Murder Theory’s demo, return Toad’s amp to him and not think about it anymore. I know my bank account will thank me for that.

Here I Go Again!
Friday, September 1, 2006, 09:18 AM
Last night I had the privilege of playing one of the finest amps I've had the opportunity to play. Fred Cawley of Quadrapet/Bonards fame bought a Frenzel Hot Box 30 that he had built to be 50 watts and a few other minor differences that I forget now. Long story short, for $800 this amp sounds tits! It's not an all-around amp for everything, but what it does it does very, very well. It's very spongy and kind of compressed sounding and in a way very forgiving, but it still retains a lot of play in the dynamics. You can go from a really great, warm clean tone to a blistering saturation just by playing the guitar harder. The other really cool feature the amp has is that it's self-biasing so you can just plug in power tubes and go. Fred switched out KT88s, EL34s and 6L6s last night and we tried all three just to see how they sounded. Each tube had it's own distinctive sound and while some sounded better than others, they all sounded fantastic through that amp.

Fred's a great guy. He modded my TS-9 so it doesn't drastically cut the low frequency of my guitar signal anymore, which is very good. He's going to mod my Epiphone Valve Junior as well. If it can sound half as good as his Frenzel then I'll be happy when all is said and done.

Tonight we're putting sand down in the second half of HQ. That ought to be an experience since none of us have ever done anything like this before. I didn't expect us to go straight to the sand portion yet considering we don't yet have the money for concrete. I figured we would wait until we had ordered the concrete before we got the sand that way the elements wouldn't fuck up our progress. Regardless, we'll make it work.

Tomorrow I record guitar tracks with Murder Theory (again). This time I'm going to really focus on getting a good guitar sound out of the box instead of using whatever comes out of the amp and trying to manipulate it in post. I'm going to try to borrow Toad's (Chris' brother) Dual Rectifier and I'm going to use my Epiphone Valve Junior with my pedals and see if we can bring it in somewhere close to sounding like what it should. Hopefully we can bust through all the guitar tracks tomorrow because I really don't want to work on stuff Sunday, but I will if I have to...

Oh, What a Night!
Wednesday, August 30, 2006, 01:14 AM
Today was a shitty day in a way.

First off, I quit a band that I never even had the opportunity of practicing with. Like a lot of things in my life I agreed to do something I couldn't feasably accomplish and ended up letting a lot of good people down in the process. I apologize to Cary Funk for basically lying to him. I can't be in any other band but FCF. I just don't have the time to dedicate to anything else. I feel like shit because I've been working on Murder Theory's demo for a year and we still are nowhere near completion. They tell me they're cool with it, but I'm no fool. No one wants to be led on for as long as I've been leading them on with this demo. I just flat out suck and there's no other way of saying it.

From that I go straight into a band meeting about the last blog entry in this ongoing journal. I said some things that I felt needed to be said and in the process hurt a lot of my friends feelings. I didn't mean to say some of the things I said in that entry because at the time of writing it I was very angry about some things that happened before the show we had played the previous Saturday. Although some of the things I said were due to anger, most of what I said was the heartfelt truth. I know my friends and I know that they know me. I assumed that once I made mention of my concerns we would need to discuss our relationship as a unit. I anticipated it as we hadn't really discussed direction of the group in many months. I'll be the first to admit that I'm a doomsday prophet and I tend to jump to conclusions that aren't often true, but some of the things I brought up are personal feelings that despite being discussed this evening I cannot deny as being the truth as I see it.

I think we all know we need to work on our problems individually and collectively and I had no doubt in my mind that at the end of the day every one of us would realize this fact. However I couldn't for the life of me predict what was to transpire toward the end of our meeting. I honestly dont't know what happened, but Chris freaked the fuck out. I was shocked and confused. I couldn't understand why after all we had talked about collectively, Chris was in such a fowl mood. He kept insisting that Sean, Aaron and I were talking heinous shit about Bub while he wasn't there. When we told him that everything we discussed about Bub while he wasn't there we eventually talked about with him during our collective meeting, he insisted that we didn't tell Bub everything we had talked about. He kept saying we were sugarcoating it for him when he was there, but what we were saying while he wasn't there was much more vicious.

I became enraged. I couldn't believe that Chris would try to convince Bub that we were talking shit about him while he wasn't around. To me it was like he was trying to make Bub angry at us. We've all been friends for many years and it doesn't need to be said that this debacle we were in wasn't our first rodeo. Somehow, Chris remained steadfast in his belief that we were harboring some ill regard toward Bub and trying to disguise it with double-talk. We told Chris to tell Bub exactly what we were saying about him behind his back that he felt we sugarcoated. He merely sat there silently and shook his head in disapproval as if we knew what the hell he was talking about. I was totally convinced that he had slipped completely off the deep end. Sean was convinced that he was drunk and Bub just didn't know what the hell was going on.

At the end of the night, Chris was screaming at us about how he hoped we didn't talk him the same way we talked about Bub behind his back. Literally screaming like a loony at midnight. Bub, Sean and myself retired to our vehicles and agreed to meet back up Friday. Lord knows what will happen then because I'm fairly positive that no one besides Bub will have the opportunity to talk to Chris before then. Was he just drunk or is there something else on his mind that caused him to erupt in the manner he did. I can't help but think that my blog has had something to do with it. I think after reading my last blog entry he chose to read some previous entries and wasn't too happy with what he read. I tried to explain him that my journal entries are basically a recording of how I felt at a specific point in time and don't really reflect my overall viewpoints on anything. He didn't seem to understand.

All in all, I just think that Ottwell was shocked by the fact that not only do I think the way I think, but I post it for the entire world to see. He made some comment tonight about it and suggested that I wouldn't keep journals were it not for the internet, which is totally untrue. Anyone who knows me knows that I've kept journals througout my entire life. Writings, lists, drawings and many other things I've scribbled into notepad after notepad through the better portion of my life as a way to express my thoughts outwardly. It's surprising to me that Chris has just realized for the first time that I do this. For fucks sake, my online journal spans 5 years of my life. It's not like I just started this as a way to piss my friends off or something.

Sariah's yelling at me to stop. She has to work tomorrow and I should really get to bed. . .

Was I angry? NAH!!!!!
Monday, August 28, 2006, 12:04 PM
Until Saturday thing had been going pretty well I’d say. The band made it back from the brink after Randy’s death, we went on to record a good cd and have played a lot of kick-ass shows. So why now am I starting to feel like I should have never offered to take this job? I guess I always assumed that I understood what the rest of the guys wanted to do with their lives and I was pretty sure they knew how I felt about the band situation. This past weekend I realized that what we know about each other is completely wrong. I’ve never hid the fact that I never wanted to be in FCF and that my joining the band was not because I wanted to, but because I felt I had to. I had to join FCF because had I not, the band would have died right then and there. I didn’t want that to happen and neither did they. I never felt like I made a mistake because I didn’t. I did what I knew had to be done because I care about my friends and I care about the band. Had another viable option been open at the time I would have pushed them to choose it. There was no one else. I dove in head first because had I given myself enough outs I would have opted for one a long time ago. That’s just my nature.

I’ve had a lot of fun in FCF and I’m still happy the band is continuing on and staying positive in regards to the future. Unfortunately I have to deal with the baggage now too and everybody in this band has baggage they bring to the table. I can say without a doubt in my mind that Aaron is secretly waiting for the band to dissolve. He’s always been insecure and flighty when it comes to being in a band, but after Randy died I think his love for playing music died with him. The only thing he’s really into right now is HQ because it’s bringing his true passion to the forefront. If you asked him on any given day without fear of everyone in the band finding out how he truly feels if he would rather practice or work on HQ, he would choose the latter of the two. Aaron hasn’t brought much of anything to the table as far as ideas for new songs. Sometimes he seems like he’s interested in learning new stuff on guitar, but after a day that interest fizzles out and he’s left just plodding along, doing the same old stuff. I can’t speak from experience on whether or not Aaron and Randy actually had a musical connection, but I think Randy’s pacing was a little more in-tune with Aaron’s ability and that allowed them to be more cohesive. If we were to all sit down and answer honestly whether or not we thought FCF was going to go anywhere, Aaron would say no. Of course, he wouldn’t be the only one because I’ve asked Chris that same question before and his answer was no.

Why would Mr. Positive himself say he didn’t think we would ever make it? I don’t know. I do know that he has told me that even if the band doesn’t make it he’s still going to keep doing what he’s doing, which is singing for a band. I guess to him that sounds great, but to me that sounds like he’s saying that no matter what happens he’s never going to try to do anything other than what he is doing right now. It’s also a cop-out. With a statement like that, he’s also saying that he wants absolutely nothing to do with the business of making FCF something. He just wants to sit in the back and get high while someone else drives the FCF mobile to success. Again, he’s not the only one who feels that way and that’s why I’m kind of pissed at Bub right now. This weekend he made a comment that really upset me. Not because the comment was rude or way out of left field or something, but because it was a canned response to a serious issue coming from someone who I would classify as 3 steps away from being a human sloth. He said that he “just wanted to play” during an argument we were having outside of a venue as to whether or not we should actually play. The reason it angered me is because it’s true; all Bub wants to do is play. He doesn’t want to learn how to play, he doesn’t want to take command of his role in the band, he doesn’t want to help write really great songs and he certainly doesn’t want to take pride in his ability. No, all Bub wants to do is play. No matter when, where or to how many people, all Bub wants to do is play.

There is no getting around that. I’m in a band with someone who doesn’t give a shit about anything other than getting on stage and playing. This person is a foundation of the band. He’s the fucking rhythm section. When he sounds like shit, we all sound like shit. How in the hell do you get around that? The answer is, you don’t. You just ignore it, hope it changes on it’s own and move on. This must be how Sean operates because he’s been doing this consistently for far longer than I have been and although it bothers him, he’s either unwilling or unable to change this. Sean wants everyone to do their part and wants everyone to be serious about the band and enjoy themselves as much as he is. As far as I’m concerned, that’s really all Sean wants.

I would say that Sean wants to write great songs, but I know he won’t get beyond where he already is. His answer for everything; That’s just the way I play. It’s pretty much a canned response for any sort of inquisition he receives about his drumming whether it be about how many sticks and cymbals he goes through to patterns and rhythms he can’t seem to play and has no intention of learning. Now, when he’s on the podium he’ll be the first to tell you that he advocates change and not sticking to one thing, but in practice he doesn’t do much to reach beyond what he’s already achieved. It’s just an excuse really. He can’t get away from his obligations to his family enough to practice. I’m never bothered by the fact that Sean can’t practice as much as he wants to. What I’m bothered by is that when he gets an opportunity to get free, he doesn’t practice. I know this because since we’ve been working on HQ, he’s made special trips to go out and put up siding, drywall and cut lumber, but rarely if at all uses that time to practice his drums. If someone were to point that out to him, he would come up with another excuse most likely involving everyone else like why should he practice if no one else is going to. Should any of us not practice just because someone else isn’t practicing? Does he feel that he is good enough at drums and doesn’t need to learn anything else? The thought that Sean would not push himself to learn something new angers me and I don’t believe that’s the case. He needs time, but why when he has the time does he choose to do anything other than practice?

Sean always expects everyone to be emotionally invested in what they do. If they’re not, then he says he can’t enjoy himself and therefore has to make everyone feel worse. That’s bullshit. I can’t be happy unless everyone else is. It’s a load, plain and simple. Sean really needs to learn how to get over himself. It doesn’t matter if no one else is “feeling” the show to me. I play the show the same way if I’m into it or if I’m not. To me, it’s a function of being in a band. It’s a job. I take pride in my work, but I don’t have to be emotionally invested in it every time either. I’m sorry that Sean is upset to learn that not everyone shares his sentiment about playing shows, but it’s something he’s going to have to come to terms with on his own. We’re all supposed to be adults and we should really start acting like it. The only people we have to answer to are ourselves. I judge each show on my performance not by how I think everyone else did or how they presented themselves. I started to fall into that trap a while back, but there’s nothing I can do about it. If Aaron wants to stand there all night long and do nothing, that’s his prerogative. Why should I care if he’s moving or not? The songs transcend the performance and always have.

We have our arguments, but this past weekend really has me questioning myself. I’m pushing for the band to try something new because the band has been stagnating for 3 years when they should have been signed to something by now. Saturating the area with copies of our demo and making sure people who are industry mouthpieces in their own right have a chance to hear us is the only way we’re going to break out of central Illinois. I’m starting to believe that I’m the only one who sees this? If it were up to Chris and Bub, we’d just be playing local shows every weekend and booking a little tour every year because that’s the easiest option for people who don’t really want to do anything other than play in a band. Every time we talk about what we’re going to do in the following year the topic of tour comes up. Even though touring is the absolute worst possible thing we could do. Oh, FCF played a show in some city on a Monday night and the place was packed. Yeah, but was it because the people were there to see them or because that bar draws a pretty good crowd on a Monday? This is what I’m talking about. It’s the questions that everyone wants to pretend are unimportant or at the most push off on someone else who they believe understands it better. No one is willing to admit that no one understands this shit better than anyone else unless they’ve been doing it for years. The only way we’re going to get people with that kind of know-how and connections to handle our group is if we do what we need to do to expose ourselves to those people. That means taking on the added responsibility of promoting ourselves, something the band has never really done and probably never will because everyone is perpetually broke and nobody leaves Beardstown.

So what’s in store for FCF? We’re going to finish playing the shows we have and put whatever money we make into finishing (the concrete and outer wall, at least) HQ before winter and then focus on writing and recording a new cd. During that time we’re going to make a press kit (even if we have to book a couple additional shows to get the money together) and start promoting the hell out of ourselves. I’m personally going to see to it that Aaron, Bub and Chris take an active role in this because the only way their going to learn to appreciate the band and what it takes to get to where we all should be headed is to get involved. No one in this band can tell me they’re happy with their financial situation. No one can tell me that they don’t yearn to do something with FCF. Then why if we all want the same thing do only some of us put in the work to get it to where we all want it to go? Despite what I’ve been told, no one wants to spend the rest of their life doing what they’re doing now. If I’m in a band with people who want to make intelligent decisions that greater impact the course of our future together, then I’m all for that. If the only thing these guys want to do is play, then I believe I’ve had about all I can take of this.

My friends are my friends and I love them as well I love the band and the music that’s been written and that we’ve written together, but I’m not a young man anymore and the most important things in my life are not the same as they used to be. I admit this because anything else would be an outright lie. One day, I’m going to leave and I’ll most likely never see my friends again. Not out of bitterness or anger, but simply because our lives have become so separate. Sometimes I feel as though we’re all living a lie in a way. Each year that passes brings more differences between each of us. We celebrate our unions of old all the while we deceive each other with the pleasantries we would normally reserve for a stranger. It starts out as nothing more than an unspoken truth, a difference and snowballs into a complete separation. The less we speak openly and honestly to one another, the less we are allowed to. Over time, there are large volumes of our life that are off limits to each other with a caveat of total understanding on all parties lest a more rapid communication breakdown occur. We’re silently and politely allowing ourselves to place barriers on our friendship that will eventually lead to separation which is ironically accelerated by desperation to keep our friendships intact. In other words, we avoid troublesome issues for fear of losing friends, but our silence creates barriers that will eventually lead to the demise of friendship.

Friendship, much like love, is an exercise of personal sacrifice, the kind of sacrifice that’s easy to make. However, if feelings for one another grow short the sacrifice becomes unbearable. How honest are we with one another? How honest are we with ourselves?

Saturday Night is the Loneliest Night of the Week
Saturday, August 26, 2006, 01:08 AM
It's one in the morning on Saturday. Today is going to be a somewhat busy day for me because I have to practice with Unmake at 1PM and then play a show at the Black Sheep Cafe in Springfield at 7PM (I think). Had None Taken not been on the bill with us, I probably would have cancelled this show. Nothing against the Black Sheep, but the crowds they atract are not the kind of crowds that dig our music. To them we're just a bunch of old farts playing dinosaur rock. It sucks that the community has to be so jaded, but it's to be expected.

Today (technically yesterday) Sariah sold her first car at Green Mazda. To celebrate we had dinner at Olive Garden. I knew she could do it and she did. The future is looking bright for her and I hope she keeps up the good work. My job is the same old/same old, but it's pay and I like it so I can't complain. Thinking that Unmake were recording today, I took a trip to Springfield after work to go hang with them for a bit. It wasn't until I got to spfld that I found out they weren't recording. Since I was there, I decided to stop by Daddy-O's music and check out some of the bass stuff they had. There was an amp there that sounded pretty cool, but it was $500. I called Bub and proposed that if he split the cost with me I would buy it. He said he couldn't afford it because he was buying a house. Oh well...

I think I'm going to find a cheap (but good) power amp on ebay and a Sans Amp RBI preamp to use for Unmake. I could probably get away with just running that through my Krank cab for a while. That's assuming it doesn't cost too much. I need to check out prices on that shiznit... Tomorrow is show, then god knows what. Sariah's not coming so it looks like I'll be flying solo. Hopefully it will be a decent show. I'm not holding my breath though...

Down with the sickness
Tuesday, August 22, 2006, 07:47 AM
I don't know exactly when it happened, but I got sick over the weekend and am still feeling it today. I was supposed to practice with Unmake yesterday, but didn't get out of bed. I need to call Cary and let him know that I might not be there tonight. It all depends on whether or not I make it into work.

Sariah started selling yesterday. She didn't feel comfortable and didn't make any sales, but this was just her first day. It wasn't even a full day. She ended up getting a sun burn on her face and chest from walking the lot all day. I told her she needs to pace herself and learn how to moderate what she does. She's going about the job all wrong and needs to relax. I'm sure over time she'll get the hang of it, but right now she's still too green to sell anything.

This past weekend....
The show was good. I wouldn't know how the rest of it went since I didn't stick around for it. Kevin's party was good, but kind of boring. I ended up chopping down a branch for firewood. Sunday I was sick. I feel like crap.

Tonight-Z-Night
Friday, August 18, 2006, 11:51 AM
Yes, tonight is the final show at Viele's Planet. We're playing first and will probably be forced to go on at 9PM or something like that. It's okay though. I'm not staying for the whole show because Sariah has to work the next day and I have to wake her up. If I'm in a condition that will prevent me from waking up to the alarm then she'll be late for work. Likewise if I'm not there I won't be able to wake her up. So, it's going to be a short night for me. I'm sure the guys will have fun though. I just care more about Sariah not being late for work than about some bar.

Tomorrow night is Kevin's party and I fully intend to go. Sariah will have her first day off in 6 days Sunday so I imagine she'll want to drink a little Saturday night too. I'm not going to get drunk tonight or Saturday night, I just want to hang out with the boys. Anyway I don't know what else to type so I'm hanging it up for now......

Glory Hole
Wednesday, August 16, 2006, 08:52 PM
It's my mission to finish digging out the second half of HQ. I think I'm possessed to get it finished. After a marathon run to, from, back and again to the Rock Shop today, I finally got an A/B pedal and had them make some patch cables for me. Todd didn't charge me for labor and reduced the price of the A/B switch by $10, but the total still came to one hundred dollars. After getting to HQ I wired everything up the only way I could without a Y cable (damn it) and it worked okay. I started having problems with my TS-9 pedal so I inspected it and found that the AC jack was pushed way far into the pedal. ??? I opened up the whole thing to find out what was wrong and it turns out when I chucked it at the last show it actually fucked it up. For some stupid-ass reason Ibanez bolted the circuit board to the frame with ONE SCREW. That screw grounds the circuit board to the chasis. So basically the circuit board broke at that screw and slid farther back into the pedal.

I worked some frontier medicine on the thing and got it back to working order. After that I decided it was time to dig. I spent about an hour and a half digging, raking and shovelling dirt. I'm getting closer to my goal, but I'm starting to wonder what I'm going to do when it's finished. I think there will be a giant empty hole inside of me the same volume as the dirt I removed from HQ pt.2. Aaron told me to call him if I went out to HQ anytime this week, but I figured I was just going out there to hook up the pedal and get my amp set for the show this Friday. Oh well. There will be plenty of time to do the siding in the future.

So now what?
Monday, August 14, 2006, 02:22 PM
I talked to Sariah about me not really missing her over dinner yesterday. As I expected, she didn't say anything and just looked at me with a sad, puzzled expression. What can I say? I'm being honest with her. I'm offering her a springboard into additional dialog if any were needed. Basically what it comes down to is that I feel like an idiot now because I told her how I felt.

We don't really have an open relationship in the sense that we talk to each other about how we feel and this and that. I used to talk a whole lot and try to get her to talk about her feelings, but you can only do that for so long before you just stop. That's what I did. Now we simply coexist and things get done. I don't know how to feel about that.

Sariah started her new job at the Mazda dealership in Springfield today. She called me and told me that they're having her test drive all the vehicles to get used to them. I guess tomorrow she'll start doing some of the sales stuff. I don't really know. I was going to talk to her about it tonight, but I have to practice. That's okay though. She'll most likely make plans with Jill or something after she gets off work.

I've got to go check out HQ and see what the guys did. They put up siding yesterday, but could only go up to the bottom (or top, I forget) of the window we put in above the door. I knew they wouldn't get that much done because what was supposed to be everyone going out there at 10 in the morning (according to Aaron) became 5 or 6 in the evening. To me, that's funny. Not that no one can get out there until late afternoon, that everyone continues to ignore the fact that no one can make it out there until late afternoon.

I would have went out there yesterday, but Sariah wanted to stay home and I wanted to spend time with her. She called me right as I was getting ready to go to HQ and told me she was on her way home. I really wasn't anticipating her arrival till much later that night so I had to hurry up and get the house straightened up as much as I could before she got there. Monti did a pretty effective job of tearing stuff up over the course of last week and I wasn't home enough to really clean up anything.

Guh. Friday is the big show..........

2 for 1 Special!
Friday, August 11, 2006, 03:43 PM
Okay, HCAF is shut down for the day so I've got nothing better to do. Yeah, it would seem like with my own site and all I would spend more time there, but nobody really posts anything. They do, but not in the frequency of what I'm used to on other forums. HCAF is nice because there is always some talk going on cause it's mostly inhabited by people with jobs like mine who have plenty of time to fuck around on the net.

Tonight I'm going to HQ to fuck my back up again. Why? Because I've got nothing better to do and theres work to be done. Sariah isn't home yet and I'm pretty sick of being at home so off to HQ I'll go to dig up lots and lots of shit. I know this much. If I go to HQ tonight, I'm not going over tomorrow. I mean work has to be done, but we've come to a point now where I'm the only one with money in the band and to be honest, the money I have is actually an illusion since Sariah doesn't have a job anymore.

Since I'm the only one with money, I'm the one who's going to have to buy the beer. I could buy a 12 pack for myself, but then everyone would treat me like an asshole, even though rarely does anyone buy a 30 pack unless it's a cooperative effort besides Ed and I. Ed won't be there and if I know the rest of my band Chris and Bub won't be there either. Not like it matters. Everyone is broke beyond all belief when they get together for some reason.

They're my friends and my brothers so I don't mind sharing. It's not like I'm going broke to support my friends or anything. I just hate it when everyone shows up and says they don't have any money, kind of like it's a probe to find out who's buying the beer for everyone. Then, once they have figured out that everyone is either broke or sticking to their broke story like glue, someone will magically have some spare cash they can throw in.

That shit is stupid. I don't think anyone has asked anyone to buy all the beer. People have pitched in and people have graciously donated beer without being prompted to, but no one has been asked to buy all the beer. So why would someone with money be afraid to say at the outset "hey, I've got a few buck I can throw in" instead of "dude, I'm broke"? It's not like whoever says that they have money is going to be forced to buy all the beer.

I can't believe I'm posting this. Okay, it does bother me when I'm pitching in more than everyone else all the time. I know I have more availble cash most the time, but still it's a group effort. If we're all drinking equally then we should all pay equally. The last 30 pack I bought I only had 3 beers and switched to NA. I of course was under the assumption that I was going to be getting some money from everyone else when I arrived at HQ with the beer. Never happened. Leaving our last show on Saturday I felt it was important to purchase beer before everybody closed up shop, thinking we were going to be partying well after the show had ended. I was wrong and half a 30 pack pretty much stayed at Sean's house to be consumed by the Taylors throughout the following week.

Everyone leaves beer at everyone's house. It's no big deal. I just think I've been spending a little too much on beer as of late and I would really like to have someone else help out. If Aaron was coming out tonight and I assume he is since Sean is, then he should help out with beer. Why not? He's drinking it. He has money. GRRRRRR.... Forget it.

Jesus Is Magic
Friday, August 11, 2006, 09:49 AM
I watched the Sarah Silverman DVD last night. It was pretty funny, outside of the fact that she pulls some of her comedy routine from David Cross. I also bought 3 DVDs from the video store. I think that puts the total of DVD's I've purchased in the last week to 11. I don't know why I'm buying so many DVDs lately. It's like there's a whole in me and I'm trying to fill it with DVDs. Maybe it's because I miss Sariah.

Well, it's hard to miss a person who you rarely see when they are around. I don't know about her, but I'm kinda used to not seeing her that much. A week without her doesn't really seem like that long of a time period because we spend every week of our lives doing other things. Is that bad? Should we spend more time together? I don't know. I know that we've been together for a long time and we're happy with each other. We never really fight anymore. At the same time we sort of avoid each other, but not intentionally. We just do our own things and our own things pull us in different directions.

I enjoy being with Sariah and doing things with her, but too much time together tends to be less enjoyable. I do miss her, but in a weird sort of way. I don't really think that much about her not being around until it's time to go to bed because usually that's when we see each other. I guess something can be said about a couple who spend most of their time together asleep. I don't acknowledge a problem in the relationship because I'm comfortable and I belive Sariah feels the same way. We're two people in a comfortable relationship who love each other, but just can't seem to do much together.

We talk about having kids sometimes and I always wonder if it will destroy our relationship. When couples have kids, they must spend an extraordinary amount of time with one another. Well, I guess they don't have to, but the alternative is what? Divorce? I don't want to leave Sariah and I want her to be happy, but what if our true happiness is to be apart? What if what she wants more than anything else is something I'm not willing to share with her? I think about these things a lot because I've had to endure the whole being a bastard thing because I won't let Sariah have a baby bullshit. I'm a monster because I'm making her choose between being with me and having a child.

I guess I am, in a way. Children don't cause me to get all silly and despite what my friends think, having my own is not going to change that. I'm not just saying I don't like children to make myself out to be something I'm not. If Sariah and I have a child, our relationship as we know it will be over. The comfort will be gone and every day will be a constant, ongoing struggle to maintain happiness in a sea of complexity, frustration and total burn-out. People always want to dismiss logic and push forward into the realm of ignorance with an open heart. I'm not that passionate about anything to do that.

Sariah and I will have a child one of these days (assuming I'm able to) and when we do, it will be the end of our marriage. Maybe not right then, but we will not last even half as long as we have now. Right now Sariah is pushing forward to advance her station in life. If she succeeds she'll have advanced well beyond my payscale and once again be head of the household. I don't have a problem with that at all. I'm encouraging her to apply herself and push herself because the better she does the easier the future and all future decisions will be.

Sariah helped me change. She helped me become less of a self-absorbed asshole by showing me that unless I start paying attention to her needs, I was going to be spending the rest of my life alone. Well, that was the intention. Whether or not I would be alone for the rest of my life is questionable. The lesson was bittersweet and I won't forget it. I think that is why I'm sitting here typing all of this out. I'm troubled with the concept of having children and for years I've watched Sariah and I live nearly seperate lives in complete harmony. Some would say we're trying to tell each other something without actually saying it or necessarily believing it ourselves. Perhaps we don't want to be with each other anymore. I don't want to say that because I love her and I feel as though I do want to spend my life with her. Maybe it's not that. Maybe it's that I want her to spend the rest of her life with me.

It's that simple twist that turns an entire relationship upsidedown. Do I want to be with her or do I want her to be with me? I could say both since I care for her, love her and do things for her to make her happy, but at the same time I don't want to be in a relationship I'm not comfortable with even if that's what she wants. I guess it all comes down to whether or not she feels as though this relationship is one-sided. She's fulfilling her end of the happy and comfortable relationship while I'm off doing my own thing and ignoring her needs. I can't expect her to not have what she wants and be happy with it just like she can't expect me to give in and be happy. It's times like this that I dread being married.

MY BABY!!!
Thursday, August 10, 2006, 09:30 AM
We practiced last night. It sounded really good for a change, really tight. Last night was the first time I got to hook up my amp since last Saturday's show. The amp worked fine, but there was one noticable problem...The master volume knob on my first channel had been broken off. That will be a minor fix, nothing to big. Also, the jack plate on my Mesa cab is bent in from when it fell back on the connector to my speaker cable. Oops! I could bend it back into place, but it works alright now so I don't really see the need.

I thought nothing happened to my guitar, but I was wrong. There is a decent sized gouge out of the back of it now along the upper back corner. I don't really care though. A guitar without scars is not a road guitar. I do have to be somewhat careful though because I'm not in a situation where I can afford a new one if this one is destroyed. I could probably go back to playing my Squier if that happens, but I'd rather not. I've developed a real fondness for my Ibanez.

In other news, my back is hurting once again because yesterday I decided to put in some digging time in the other room at HQ. We need to dig about a foot down to level out the ground for when we pour concrete. It was so hot out there that I had to take my pants off and dig in my underwear. I wear boxer breifs so it wasn't that bad. I knew I would end up in pain after all that digging, but we really need to get that stuff taken care of or we'll never finish the place.

This weekend we're going to meet up and try to get the siding done. I say get it done, when I should say start on it, since we haven't yet. Regardless I'll probably go out there Saturday with a good rake and try to dig up the rest of that shit. Sariah returns on Sunday. I guess she's having a good time in New Jersey. I just hope things work out for her when she returns. . .

I Fell Back In Love......
Monday, August 7, 2006, 09:01 AM
...with my Rivera this weekend.

For the past couple of months I have been using a Peavey power amp to play through because my amp was out of commission. When I finally fixed it I discovered it was merely 2 microphonic preamp tubes that were the culprit. Last Saturday's show was the first show back with the beast and it was a beautiful thing. The truly funny part is that I could have been using it all along.

A guy told me that if I ever had a power tube failure, I could pull all the power tubes and just use the preamp through a different amp or a power amp by taking the signal out of the effects loop send. I didn't really think about it, but the effects loop does have level controls for the send and return, so basically if I had a different preamp, I could bypass the preamp section of my Rivera completely and use whatever I wanted. This came in real handy this weekend.

I took the Rivera out to HQ after work to try it out. It had been so long since I used it I had to get myself reaquainted with the thing. I remember being blown away by the Peavey power amp I began using after the Rivera crapped out on me. I knew that having played through the Peave for a month I was going to be used to it's sound. After I hooked everything up and made sure that there was nothing wrong, I spent about 2 hours trying to dial in a usable sound. Trying for hours and ending up with fatigued ears I could do no more and had to get back to J-ville to take Sariah to St. Louis. I put it out of mind for the time being, but I knew I was going to have to make a choice between using the Rivera that I couldn't get a good sound out of or the Peavey that had been providing me with a good sound for months now.

It wasn't until I had gotten back from St. Louis the following day that I remembered what the guy told me about the effects loop. I thought, why not try to run my pedals straight to the power section of my amp. I mean, I can't get a good sound from the Rivera preamp and I'm already using my pedals as a preamp of sorts for a solid-state power amp now - it just seemed to fit. I made my way to HQ to pack up my stuff, but before I did I had to try out my idea. Sure enough it sounded good, good enough to use for that nights show at least.

When we set up, I knew it was going to be a good show for me because my guitar sounded ferocious. It was like my previous sound with the Peavey, only way louder and way more ballsy. It truly was the sound I've been waiting for. Many times in the past I thought I had acheived it, but that was me being naive. I discovered over time that while many amps have a usable overdrive channel, they all tend to be a bit noisy. Also, they are limited in how the distortion can be manipulated. I now have a sound that is crunchy, tight, quiet when it needs to be and weighs a ton. Once I get an A/B switch, I'll have the best of all worlds by allowing me to switch from pedals to preamp section of the Rivera. I can finally have a good clean sound as well.

The setup is going to be elaborate, but it should sound killer when it's all put together. I'm looking forward to practice this week.

Cargill Meat Solutions
Thursday, August 3, 2006, 03:55 PM
Today Tim and I shot a commercial for Cargill Meat Solutions in Beardstown. It's the first time I've been back in the plant in 12 years since I worked there. Nothing has changed. After only 30 minutes on the floor I was ready to leave. I hated that job and swore I would never go back there. It's funny that I would have to return through a different job. It was Tim's first visit to the inside of the plant. He seemed surprised by it, as many do for the first time. You don't really think a meat processing facility would look that way until you're there. Unfortunately we didn't get to go to the kill floor. I think Tim would have enjoyed it.

Saturday is our show at Gearheads.
It should be fine. I'm getting my amp back tomorrow. I'm hoping it will be fixed, but who knows. I feel guilty for not taking it to Fred, but I just figured there was something else wrong with it than the tubes and I wanted to run it by a Rivera dealer to see for sure. I'll be taking it to HQ after work tomorrow to try out. If it's still acting up, then I'll have no other choice than to send it to the Rivera company. That will suck.

Sariah leaves tomorrow for New Jersey. She will be training to be a car salesman with her brother-in-law for a week. I'm excited and nervous about this. I mean in two days Sariah will not have a job for the first time in 5 years. It's scary, but taking chances usually is. It will work out. I wouldn't have even suggested she try it if I didn't think she could do it. Hopefully her training will be very helpful to her.

Tighten Up The Graphics
Monday, July 31, 2006, 01:42 PM
I'm at work on the last day of July, staring at this computer, wondering what to type. I don't know. Has anything been going on? The drywall is 99.8% finished in the one room of HQ. There is still a piece or two here and there that needs to go up and the mudding finished. From there we can paint and finish the ceiling under the loft. We're intending to dig up all the crap from the next room and lay concrete over there. We have to put in new studs, then start from scratch again with the wiring, insulation, drywall, mudding, etc. Then we get to the siding.

It's an ongoing thing and has taken a long time to get to where we are now. It sucks because we have spent a lot of money on this and sometimes I just can't understand where it all goes. Nevertheless, we have a practice space that is good for our needs and is going to get even better over the following months. Building materials aside, I think we need to focus on how we are going to set up and what sort of PA system we will need to complete the space. Ed, our soundguy, is talking about headphone mixes for everyone. I don't like that concept because wearing headphones for any extended period of time is fatiguing. Also, I think we'll end up hurting our hearing even more when we try to come over the top of our already loud instruments with even more stuff.

A way I was thinking we could make it work is by utilizing both halves of HQ and spliting ourselves up between the two rooms. Perhaps Bub and Sean in one room and Aaron, myself and Ottwell in the other. Then again, Ottwell always complains that the guitars are too loud, so perhaps he would stay in the main room with Sean and Bub. I don't know, any configuration of that is fine. We could put in a large window in the way seperating the two rooms so we could have clear visability and have a speaker array that provides monitors for all of our needs. For some, a setup like this detracts from intimacy, but I've never been one to derive intimacy from closeness. I just consider it an obstacle really. We don't have the room to practice our on-stage performance in a realistic sense, so we're really just battling one another with our sound and bitching about how we're not happy with the way everything sounds afterwards.

I know when it comes to me, being away from the drums will help me hear myself and everything else much better. I think the next time we practice I'm going to switch places with Aaron so I can be just a little farther away from the drums. It should work better because Aaron needlessly turns his amp to a level that is beyond everyone else forcing me to try to compete with my amp, even though were I playing alone, my volume level would be comfortable for me (and that's standing right next to the drums!). We'll switch it around and see if anything improves. I still like the idea of being in a seperate room. As long as I have line-of-sight with Sean, I can do whatever.

When it comes down to it, both Aaron and Bub need to HEAR themselves because right now I just think they're letting the loudness and the mish-mash of sound cover up their shitty tones and lackluster performances. If they were forced to hear what they actually sound like when they're playing their parts, I believe they would try to adjust their sound and playing to become more present and more defined. The more defined they are, the better everything else is going to sound. It sucks now, because I can write something with a very precise vision of the sound I want to acheive, but then Aaron and Bub come in and it's like 500 tons of mud was slopped on top of the riff killing the definition of it. Sean can't tighten up his performances if everyone else is just noisy and burying him with slop and I truly believe that Sean needs to tighten up his performances as well.

I don't mean to cause strife, but I think a really tight riff needs space. Notes, as well as beats should be very staccato leaving breathing room between all strikes. The more breathing room, the more clear and definted the sound becomes. I think a majority of FCF's material no matter what speed it is played at sounds sluggish. It's the result of people playing behind the beat, or their strikes taking on the form of whole notes/beats instead of quarters, even if they are supposed to be playing quarter notes/beats at the time. To me, that's what we need to focus on with the new cd - tightness. We can practice together for the next 6 years and never play tight until we actually begin working on how to play tighter.

Before Randy and Sean joined the group, tightness wasn't even an option, nor was it considered by the band as an essential. Over time with the Randy/Sean element added, some tightness was gained through stop/start riffs, however the playing between those stop/start riffs was still sluggish and lacked definition. My hope is that we start working on the meat of the riff and tightening that up instead of finding clever ways to make a sloppy riff sound tight by trimming the head and tail of it. Each note played should be played with reason and purpose. If there are too many notes cluttering up the sound of a riff, those notes should not be played. Aaron always wants to add "his part" which is basically adding his performance. He doesn't add to anything, he just plays what he wants and we say "sounds good". The problem is that it is going to take work on all of our parts and I know how impatient we all get (especially when we have alcohol coursing through our veins). I think we need to work on a song that is so simple a child could play it and even though it would just be a scratch song, we would really have to work on it and make it sound the tightest we could ever make it.

By now, you probably think I'm just a perfectionist and that I'm not going to be happy until the band is playing what I want them to play. Not true. While I am a perfectionist, I believe that learning how to really listen and tighten up ones own performance is essential to any band. I don't want to tell anyone how to write or what to play, but I do want them to understand some fundamentals of playing before they attempt to tackle a song. I see it in every practice when Bub tries something new. After he tries it he just smiles and looks around at everyone to kind of get a pre-conception about the part he tried before we discuss everything after we stop playing. He's not doing a part because he thinks it will fit, he's changing something and seeing if everyone thinks it's cool or not. We've all done that from time to time, but that's all Bub does. I've even seen Aaron struggle with a part to get it the way he knew he wanted it to sound. I've never seen that from Bub. It's like he has no real concept of what he himself wants and has to rely on everyone else to let him know if what he's doing is good or bad. That's no way to be in my book. How can someone who doesn't know if he's playing something good or bad take pride in what he does?

Geesh. What started out with me no knowing what to say quickly turned into me having a very definite idea of what to talk about. There's really nothing else to be said. It's just one of those things we'll need to work on the next time we get together.

Since I can't say no to an amp....
Monday, July 24, 2006, 07:20 PM
I bought an Epiphone Jr. Combo amp.
It's 5-watt, all-tube combo which sounds okay by itself, but when run through my Krank 412 it sounds badass.

Here's a picture of both together.

It only has a power switch and a volume knob. How sweet is that?
I've been fucking around with it for an hour or two and I love it. Unfortunately it's only 5 watts, so I can't use it at regular band practice.

I had my neck on my guitar adjusted at the Rock Shop while I was there, but it seems like it didn't realy do anything. I think the guy adjusted my bridge and set the action way too low. I'm going to have to fix that now.

Really liking the amp, though.

Back up, finally...
Tuesday, July 18, 2006, 10:52 AM
I've got my blog transferred over finally. Some stuff has happened since then. On the FCF front we installed an air conditioner at HQ, started writing a new song and have had to deal with Rob Hansen again. It's hard to gauge how the rest of the band feels about the situation because deep down I think I'm the one causing all of the problems. Well, to a certain extent I am. I'm causing problems because I talk about stuff that nobody wants to talk about. Had I just not said anything from the beginning we wouldn't be in half the messes we are in. That's not me though.

I guess I should explain. We were offered to play this years Band-Camp which is an outdoor festival-type show run by Rob. Even though I told him we would not be a part of Band-Camp back in February, I guess he expected feelings to change. Of course with Chris, they did. Chris lives in this relm of existence I'll never understand. Despite Rob preventing us from playing IHYBFEST 2, Chris seems to think Rob is a great guy who's really looking out for our best interests. ??? What? The guy kicked me out of my own show and told me I would be arrested if I tried to come. Well, I guess that's just Ottwell. Like I've said before, someone could be raping his mom right in front of him and he'd just stand there and stew about it, then probably forgive the guy afterwards.

I know it seems like I'm picking on Chris a lot, but he's the one who told Rob that we would do the show. Imagine that. Chris, who should have remembered the bullshit that Rob and I had gone through a mere 5 months earlier, told Rob we would do the show without even consulting me or Sean or anyone else. It's that and something else. I keep having this nagging feeling like Chris believe what Rob tells him and truly thinks I'm hurting the band. That gets under my skin, especially since Chris and I have been friends for well over a decade. While I've gotten flak from Aaron about it, nobody else has really been vocal. I guess that's what bothers me the most. I'd hate to think that people are harboring feelings and not sharing them with the rest of the band. I'd hate to find out that there had been a deep resentment towards me held by other members of the band that I'm just finding out about now. I would rather know than not, but I just don't understand how people think keeping shit built up inside of them makes a situation better?

If anyone has a problem with me, I would hope they would just tell me about it so we could talk about it together. A problem is only a problem when there can be no compromise. If I don't know that there is a problem, how will I ever change?

Well, we'll have to deal with that at a later time I guess....

Sariah and I are nearing the closing date on our refinance. Yay!
A bit of scary news is that Dave Armold (Sariah's mothers husband) had a heart attack the other day. The doctor barely brought him back. He said the next time there won't be a coming back. He was supposed to be taking heart medication and stop smoking, but he has done neither. Some people just feel as though they are invincible. Scary.

HA HA!! Screw you, bad credit!!
Thursday, June 29, 2006, 09:18 AM
Today I just heard back from US Bank and the thing I thought would never happened has happened. We are refinancing our Scion (yay!). This will drop the payments to $360 a month which is a hell of a lot better than the $460 we have been paying. That comes at a time when we really, really needed it too because we've been struggling to keep up with the bills as of late and this will really help. On top of that, we're refinancing our house as well. That should drop our payment on the house to around $380, which is a lot better than the $600 we're up to now. Screw ARM's! They are horrible loans.

How is this possible? Well apparently paying the high balances down on our revolving credit lines DID increase our credit score after all. I was telling Sariah for almost a year that we needed to do that so our credit scores would improve. She fought with me and just wouldn't accept it, until Tuesday when we went to the bank and was told our credit score. I knew mine would be better (it's on the upswing) but it's at 677 through Experian and even higher through Trans Union. Sariah's shot up to 678 which is a far cry from the upper 400 she was at a year or two ago.

It's feels good to finally be at a point where things start looking better for the future.

Contemplating FCF
Monday, June 26, 2006, 03:34 AM
I'm growing increasingly disatisfied with FCF. It's nothing more than everyone's propensity to start needless arguments. If being in a band together is such a chore for everyone and no on is enjoying themselves, why even do it? I do it because I enjoy playing shows, writing songs and drinking (apparently). I try not to bring my personal problems into the band setting. My time with the guys is a chance for me to set aside what I've got going on at home and focus on something else. It works for me, I just don't see why every time we get together an argument breaks out. It's probably alcohol related.

I know that my drinking has become cause for concern with the rest of the guys and I still don't see why. Outside of our show at The Mutiny, I can pretty well handle myself on stage no matter what condition I'm in. However if you ask anyone else in the band their opinion on any given nights performance you'll get 5 radically different responses. Even nights that I think we do an excellent job, someone ends up bitching about something. Aaron has become bad at that. He'll bitch about the sound system, the room, not enough whatever in the monitors, too much whatever in the monitors, can't hear me, I'm too loud, can't hear himself. Waa waa waa. Constantly. If I didn't know any better, I'd say he's doing it just to fuck with us.

I usually dismiss whatever Aaron has to say because I know that if I get even slightly caught up in it I'll be the one paying in the end. It's up to him to find a way to make live situations work for him not constantly tell me I need to do this or that. He insists that I go back to using my Rivera because it sounded "perfect". Well, I have a different idea of what perfect is and the Rivera wasn't it. It was just the closest thing I could get to it at the time. Right now I'm using a power amp as my main amplification and just running pedals into it. I'm also using a floor wedge which is kick-ass. I love having the ability to have the sound right there in front of me without having a full 412 cab in front of me. It's made me a lot happier since I started using it. Aaron is just going to have to get over his whole thing with the Rivera because it's going to be on the disabled list for a while until I can get up the money to have it looked at. I'm severely broke at the moment.

I wish everyone else in the band would just relax and have fun with it. I think it bugs Sean a lot when members aren't pulling their weight. I don't really care because I'm going to do what I do regardless of what anyone else does. I'm not trying to inspire motivation, I just do it because it comes naturally. If Chris or Bub don't do much it's because they can't really. No reason to jump their ass about it. It just really bothers me that everyone takes everything so seriously. I'm hoping that will change, but somehow I doubt it will....

Let's Fail at Life!!
Thursday, June 15, 2006, 09:07 AM
Well I failed, at least at the "while drinking" part of yesterdays big announcement. Yes, I smoked yesterday, but I was pretty stressed out and drinking to boot. First, Sean tells me that we're not practicing, then says he's waiting on Seth to watch his baby, then my amp goes shithouse, then the movie I was trying to shoot gets a monkey wrench thrown in it because one of the key actors leaves early.

I was stressed out and tired.

Well anyway, I guess I'm going to go back to smoking only when I drink and only then when the urge strikes me. I'll remain smoke-free when I'm not drinking. At least we'll be saving money that way. I don't know what I'm going to do about my amp. I'm meeting with the guy I bought it off of today to see if I can get it fixed before tomorrows show. I don't know what happened to it but it's blowing fuses now. Something probably got jarred loose on the move back from our show in Decatur, or when they were unloading the van. Despite what they claim, I know the other band members throw shit around when they're unloading the van. If they didn't, then this wouldn't be head number 3 that developed a problem between my performance at a show and the next practice, post unloading.

Now I could unload my own stuff, but it's not feasible. It's also not feasible for those guys to wait on me to come to town to unload my stuff. I just wish they wouldn't treat expensive electrical equipment like it was a giant log of wood or something. I'd also like to know why and when my impedence selector got set on 4 Ohms, but that's another thing entirely.

Let's do this!
Wednesday, June 14, 2006, 09:40 AM
Today is a big day for a couple of reasons. One, it’s FCF practice day. Two, I start shooting my new movie today. Three, today is the first smoke-free day of the rest of my life. That’s right, I’m quitting. I know I did it before and then started again, but this time I’m going to go the whole nine. I’m totally quitting. No smoking when I drink, no smoking period.

Why the change of heart? Well last night I got home from the bar and realized that after smoking a full pack of cigarettes in 5 hours, then bumming probably 6 more cigarettes off of strangers for the last hour, I came to the conclusion that I smoke far too much. Moderation is not my strong suit by any means. I was talking with Sariah, who is bummed out by our financial situation and I suggested that we both quit smoking together. We’ll be saving upwards of $200 per month and we’ll feel a hell of a lot better. She said she would do it, so I’m in.

Now, Sariah doesn’t have the strongest will in the world so I imagine she’ll slip. Hopefully she doesn’t because that means I’ll start smoking again just out of frustration. It seems weird to me that we could spend $200 a month on cigarettes and constantly wonder why we have no money. If you’re reading this and thinking I’m full of shit, add up the cost of a pack of cigarettes (Which is like $3.30 for what we smoke, sometimes more) and multiply it by 2 (One pack for me/one pack for Sariah) and then multiply that by every day of the month and you’ll have $198 and that’s not even counting the weekends when we have shows. I usually go through 3 packs on the weekend we are playing a show (4 if we’re playing Friday and Saturday).

I could do without constantly dealing with raging nicotine highs and next morning crashes. I think it would be nice to finally give it up for good. It’s going to be hard, especially with long van rides to shows and whatnot. As far as I’m concerned it’s for the best. I’ve tried to stop drinking to no avail, but I don’t drink nearly as much as I smoke. Hopefully I can put it behind me forever.

Moving....
Wednesday, June 7, 2006, 01:35 PM
Tonight is our second Wednesday night practice. If it stays like this I’ll be surprised. There’s always something that screws up our scheduling. I’m racking my brain trying to figure out how to book July. We’ve got a Jacksonville show, a Beardstown show a Viele’s show and a Meredosia show that month. I was hoping to get us into a Peoria, Bloomington or Chicago show, but unfortunately things haven’t worked out that way.

Perhaps I can get something cooking this week. I don’t really know.

My life is taking a strange turn. I’m in FCF, which I have been for a year now. I’m also practicing with a band called Unmake. I haven’t done any shows with them because I’m still trying to learn the material. I’m still working on Murder Theory’s tracks. That project has had the brakes put on it with everything else that has been going on. I think I’m going to have to set aside some real time and just get that damn thing finished already. It sucks being in a position where I want to do all sort of different stuff, but only end up doing a few select things.

I want to make another movie. I’ve really been giving it a lot of thought since Tim uploaded the older stuff to his website. I think I’m going to write up a script and just go with it. I don’t really want to do anything elaborate, I just want to have some fun. I’m not doing it until I finish Murder Theory though. That is my number one priority now. I’m probably going to stop practicing with Unmake until I can get that finished. It sucks that they have to wait this long for me, but then again, I’m not really getting paid that much so it’s kind of a trade-off.

I just got an email from Sean about tonight. Bub and Chris won’t be able to practice until 9:00 PM, which as far as I’m concerned gives us ample time to either work on the new song we’re writing or do manual labor. Either way, we’ll be doing something tonight. I just hate waiting till after 9 to practice. Lord knows it won’t be till around 10 or so till we actually play a song. That sucks! You would think that if there was one day of the week you knew you needed the evening open, you could just go to your place of business and tell them “Hey, I can’t close Wednesday nights!” and expect them to work around that. According to Chris and Bub, they can’t do that. You know, if I had to work at a job like that I would have quit already. I can tolerate the 8 to 5 routine partially because it gives me weekends off and because it’s consistent. I don’t have to worry about my boss coming up to me at the last minute and telling me that I have to work late. Not that I’ve never had to work late, but I’ve known about those times well enough in advance to where they don’t mess with my schedule.

Some people are just so docile when it comes to their job. It’s like they believe in all of their hearts they’ll never work again if they get fired or quit. No, there’s always a job out there for you. You just have to be willing to do it. Speaking of jobs, Sariah might be quitting her job and moving to New Jersey to become a car salesperson. Isn’t that great? The only thing is that I have a band and a good job here in Illinois, so I’m staying. Huh? Yeah, if Sariah decides to pursue that idea, she’ll be moving to New Jersey and I’ll be staying in Illinois. No, we’re not getting divorced. She just realizes that there isn’t much left for her to do in the manual labor field and if she’s going to have any sort of hope of doing something with her life she needs to broaden her horizons. She became interested in being a car salesperson a while ago when Ken mentioned it to her. Of course she didn’t pursue it because she was comfortable at her current job. Not happy, just comfortable.

If she decides to do this, then she’ll be moving out to New Jersey to work at Ken’s dealership and have him kind of train her and guide her through the steps of how to make it as a car salesperson. The idea was that if she was going to seriously try to become a car salesperson, she would be better off learning from Ken in his environment, because she has a tendency to give up far too easily on things that she really can do. If she goes out there and with the help of Ken she doesn’t take to car sales, then back to Illinois she’ll come and the manual labor job search will pick right back up. I hope that she doesn’t get discouraged and not go or just not care about the job and give up. She really needs to get a better job, especially one that doesn’t screw her back up anymore. If all goes well, she should be able to come back to Illinois and get a job a local dealership with no problems.

Why doesn’t she just have Ken train her and then get a job at a dealership in Illinois first? Well, I’m really afraid that without a guiding hand she’ll lose faith in herself and give up. If she’s working at Ken’s dealership then she’ll at least have the benefit of having a manager who can sympathize with her a bit and really help her achieve success. Starting out in Illinois means she has to muster the confidence herself and she hasn’t had a great success rate at that so far. I’m not saying she’s not capable of keeping herself motivated, it’s just when she doesn’t know what to do she freaks out. If she is on her own without the confidence she needs to do the job she’ll definitely quit. With Ken there won’t be as much pressure for her and she’ll have the extra assistance she needs if she gets stuck in a tough situation that she wouldn’t have here.

It’s a strange idea, but if it works then she’ll be a lot happier. If she tries it out and it doesn’t take, I’ll still be proud of her for trying. Moving 1000 miles away from your spouse to take on a new career path is no little thing and she wouldn’t be doing it were it not for me pushing her to make something of herself. I’m not trying to get rid of her, in fact I can foresee the months ahead as a very trying time for me. Having to take care of everything alone is quite a handful for someone who’s never done it before. I think we’ll both have a greater appreciation for one another after something like this. With more money and better opportunities for the future, I can truly see having a kid in the next year or two. I just don’t want to have a kid when we can barely afford to live as is. If she were to lose her job right now we would be fucked. I couldn’t imagine trying to make everything work out with our finances and take care of a kid all at the same time.

I’ve got to pay our Cingular bill………

I am not paledarknothing
Monday, May 29, 2006, 11:35 PM
You know, it just goes to show how little people know and how little they actually care about shit that goes on in the music scene when even though I've said countless times in the past that I'm not paledarknothing, people still think I'm lying.

I am not paledarknothing.

Go to pale's website and talk to him directly if you don't believe me.

Oh, but that's not good enough. That's just me pretending to be someone else just to fool everyone, even though I've never pretended to be anyone else. I use the names Charlie Dango and DSM online, but never have I claimed that they are two different people, nor have I pretended that I'm not one or the other. I'm both. What I'm not is paledarknothing.

Listen to his cds and then listen to FCF's California and pay attention to the parts where I sing. Sounds nothing alike. If that's not good enough for you, listen to Four Pointed Sisters and compare it to paledarknothing. If you still think I'm paledarknothing after that, well then you're just an idiot.

That is all..

Kracker ass!!
Saturday, May 27, 2006, 02:05 PM
Tonight we play at Krackers. This show marks the first show in our long series of shows we have coming up. It's going to be hectic this summer for FCF.

I got bored last night and decided to screw around with Photoshop and the "I'm the Juggernaut, Bitch!" video. Enjoy!

Time has come today.
Wednesday, May 24, 2006, 02:58 PM
I think I’ve come to a point in my life when I can truly say I’m happy. I’ve been unhappy for years….make that decades. I’ve tried to do a lot of different things and none of them really made me happy. Since I’ve joined FCF, my life has changed for the better. I feel like I have forward momentum again. I have goals and I have responsibilities that I can apply my time to. I’ve only been playing with these guys for a year now and I really don’t feel like things have gotten strenuous or frustrating at all. I enjoy what I do and intend to keep doing it for as long as I can.

It seems as though everyone else in the band is feeling like something is wrong. In many ways I still feel like an outsider, even though I’ve grown up with these guys my whole life and have been in many bands with them in the past. I knew that I would always be in the shadow of Randy coming into this thing and not once did I ever expect everyone to let go of the past. I still don’t see that happening any time in the future, nor do I care if it does. Until the day comes when the rest of the band doesn’t want to do it anymore, I will stick with them.

It seemed like when I first started out, everyone was purposely avoiding the fact that Randy’s death greatly bothered them. We wrote new songs and over time FCF was back in the saddle playing shows and trying to promote the “new” thing. Through it all there was a certain tinge of pain and discomfort in everything we did as a band. It didn’t help that the people closest to the band expressed such a swelling of emotion to hear the band again without Randy. Sometimes the emotion was positive and other times it was negative, but in both circumstances it was delivered with the same lack of ease.

Funky Circus Fleas is not a complete band anymore. Each member of FCF was religious in their dedication to the core of the group, meaning that not one member could be replaced and the whole still function properly. They always said that were any member to quit, the band would be over. For the past year they’ve had to face that and move on. I don’t think there is one person in the band who wouldn’t rather be playing with Randy right now.

Lately, we’ve run into a bit of despair while trying to write some new material. While everyone talks about how we should write new songs, I feel like I’m the only one who is actually trying to do it. I come up with some stuff, we work on it and collectively I feel everyone else in the room give up. Add to this the fact that no one but me is coming to the table with new riffs. It’s almost like the rest of the band is ready to put the band to bed while I’m just hitting a decent stride. That frustrates me, but there is nothing I can do but let it go. FCF is their band and I’m just doing what I can to keep the band going and the music alive.

It’s quite possible that we are rushing things and don’t even need to write new stuff for a while. I can’t foresee us having the time to really dedicate to song writing until October or November. I want to book and play as many shows as humanly possible between now and then, but again I feel like I’m the only one who wants that. Again, if someone told me to cancel all of our shows, that they were taking some time away from the band to think about stuff or whatever, I would do it. I wouldn’t like it, nor would I ever book shows again, but I would do it. It’s hard to try to wedge your foot in the door of some place, but to slam the door shut on your own foot once you’ve finally managed to get it in there is bogus. I’m not saying that is going to happen, I’m just saying that I wouldn’t be surprised if a member of FCF made a decision to take time away from the band.

What would I do without FCF? Well, I don’t really know the answer to that. I’m sure I would move on, I always have before. I do what I do because I want to do it and it makes me happy. However, I’m an all or nothing kind of guy. If I do something, I want to give it my all, not half-ass everything just so it will be easier to deal with. Maybe FCF was meant to pass on when Randy did? It’s not like everyone in the group was having the time of their lives before he died. If anything, it looked like the end was on it’s way regardless. Constant bitterness, anger and frustration with one another was all I saw toward the end. Even at some of the worst practices we’ve had I don’t think we’ve gotten to the point where we were carrying our anger away from practice. At least I don’t think it’s like that.

A week ago we had a fight over a new riff we were messing around with and the fight became so pointless that I just couldn’t stand to even hear it being debated anymore. I left the practice not because I was angry, but because I knew that nothing else was going to be accomplished that night. It was late, I was tired (and drunk) and didn’t want to sit around arguing about something none of us were in any way able to fix that night. Sometimes it’s just best to put things down and leave it for another time. If it’s worth coming back to, then it’s worth coming back to. If we never play that riff again, then so be it. I just don’t want to argue over things that are pretty much a direct result of everyone skipping 10 pages ahead in the story and getting angry when no one knows what the fuck is going on.

I imagine there will come a time when I’ll become tired of trying to write songs just to have them end in arguments. The story will play out as such: I’ll get frustrated and tell everyone I’m not writing any new material until we stop fighting about dumb shit. The next time we try to write, everyone will be looking at me to throw a riff out, partially because I come up with a lot of riffs and partially due to what I said the practice beforehand. I won’t throw out any ideas due to not having any prepared as a result of my frustration over previous writing sessions. I will be accosted by the other members for purposely not wanting to participate. I will tell them that I’m just waiting for someone else to come up with and idea and that I will help work that out, but that I’m not throwing out anymore ideas. Everyone will freak out, partially because they know they don’t have any ideas and partially because they’ll think I’m acting childish. They’ll tell me I’m being a baby in an attempt to goat me into changing my position. I’ll tell them that I’m being no more of a baby than they are by sitting back and expecting me to come up with everything and then turn right around and deal with their bullshit when they’re not happy with it. Someone will get pissed and leave. Everything grinds to a halt/everyone leaves in frustration
How do I know this chain of events would happen? I know it because I’ve lived it, time and time again. It’s almost like I’m playing in a group full of people with no long-term memory. No, that’s not it. I’m playing in a group full of people who assume that we won’t make those same mistakes. I could call out certain members of the group for not coming up with anything, or practicing on their own time, or really doing anything to challenge themselves musically, but again I know from past experience that all this does is push said member into a corner and they feel more isolated and disenchanted than before you ever opened up your mouth. Everyone wants everything to just come to them without actually trying to make it happen. Some members of the group are so self-defeating that the better another member gets, the worse they feel about themselves which ultimately keeps the entire band from ever getting better.

When I think about this stuff I feel sad. I try not to think about it and just continue forward, however I think that just adds to the problem. I don’t think anyone in FCF actually faces the problems at hand and works through them. We just continue on and hope that the forward momentum will render our problems asunder. Instead we defer our problems, compounding them until we have a tidal wave of emotional outpouring like what has recently been troubling the group.

The dumbest thing I had the misfortune of bearing witness to was Aaron telling me I needed to come back in and argue with the group. By saying this, not only did he indicate to me that he wished to continue arguing, he made me feel as though if I wanted to belong, I would come back in and continue a pointless argument. I can’t say whether or not he takes some sort of pleasure from the bands pointless conflict. Perhaps he’s so fucked up that he only feels close to those he fights with. I don’t know the reason why, but if it takes me engaging in meaningless arguments to be accepted in FCF, then I choose to remain on the outside.

With that said, I carry no resentment toward any other member of FCF for that night or anything else. Like I said, I’m happy. I’ve been round the block enough times to know where all this stuff ends up. It’s pointless and goes nowhere, but if that’s what the other members need, then so be it. I merely choose to disassociate myself from it. Lord knows we’ve argued before over the writing of songs and other things; arguments where I’ve stood my ground and actively participated through the entire duration. Last weeks argument was not even close to resembling the previous arguments we’ve had. Those are the arguments I choose not to be a part of.

Yeah, yeah! It must be bothering me if I’m talking about it so much. Honestly I haven’t thought too much about it. It’s just that recently I’ve noticed that certain members of the group are acting differently and I think that what happened that night might have an effect on that. Even though nothing of consequence really happened, sometimes it’s the things that aren’t done or aren’t said that make the biggest impact. I can’t predict the future of things to come (even though I try). We’ll just have to wait and see what happens next.

Close call...
Sunday, May 14, 2006, 03:43 PM
Yesterday was different. First I went to HQ and cleaned up a bit, then I set my guitar stuff up and dicked around with that. Then Aaron came by and we put a window in above the door to HQ. We were supposed to practice at 6, but Sean didn't make it out till close to 9 PM. I don't know why we all agree to practice on days like that because all it does is put everyone in a sour mood. That sour mood transferred over to our late night practice. We ended up getting into a retarded fight over some mundane detail of a new song we were working on and the whole night kind of unraveled from there. I left abruptly because I was sick of everything at that point.

On my way home I got stopped by a Cass County Sheriff's Dept officer for going too fast through the square. I thought I was going to get a DUI for sure, but I didn't. The officer just asked me if I had anything to drink and if I was intoxicated. I told him I had a beer with my friends and told him I just left practice. He let me go. I was happy.

I feel like poop today. It's almost 4PM and I still feel like crap. I'm just going to relax and try to get this poop feeling to go away.

Interesting
Monday, May 8, 2006, 04:11 PM
Saturday I played around with my amp. First I took out those damn Carvin BR12s from the Krank cab and hooked the Eminence speakers back up. I tried a lot of different combinations and found that what worked best is running both half-stacks together in a master/slave sort of way. I really liked running them in stereo, but the buzz was too much to handle. I've recently read that I can fix that by lifting the ground of one of the amps. I'm going to try that out tonight I believe.

My guitar sounded totally brutal when pushing both half-stacks. It's as if I was unleashing the powers of hell through my speakers! Mwa-ha-ha-ha!! Seriously though, it sounded really good. My thoughts now turn to switching...should I build the hybrid pedal from hell, or should I just use the Rivera footswitch? I just keep thinking about having the chore it will be to switch channels on the Rivera, switch off the TS-9 and switch on the DD-6 whenever I go to clean on Finding Emo. That's three buttons I have to hit each time I go from distortion to clean and back again.

I'll figure something out, but until then I'm killing myself with the number of footswitch hits I have to make. If I didn't mind augmenting my pedals, I'd solve the problem in a heartbeat, but I do mind.......

The Past and the Future
Thursday, May 4, 2006, 04:09 PM
Tim and I were just talking about our past and the journals we've kept. I decided to read back over some of my old journals in the archive, but got bored really quick. I don't describe situations very well and I kind of always refer to things in passing or future events I'm waiting to take part in. It's very rare that I actually take the time to describe what happened in a sense that I'm sort-of reliving the experience through blogging.

I think I'm going to try it now just to see if it will work:

Last Friday started out as my days usually do now, at work. I felt very excited because I was doing one of 3 things that day; Buying a Rivera Knucklehead guitar amp from Fred, Buying a Peavey Deuce head from Tim and playing a show at Viele's Planet in Springfield. Nothing of consequence happened during the day, but once I got off of work I quickly made my way to Ewop's house to prepare for practice. We were supposed to practice earlier in the week, but between Sean going to his kid's ball game, my job and Aaron's boat rides (or whatever he does) we couldn't find the time to get a practice in except hours before our show.

I had contaced Aaron earlier in the day and told him that everyone needs to be at Ewop's at 5PM so we can get a good practice in and still have time to load up and get to Viele's early enough to set up first. When I booked the show, I made sure Jeff Viele knew that FCF was playing first, because we had a show the next night and I didn't want to end up blowing our load that night and not being ready for the next night. It was very important to get to Viele's ASAP so we could get our shit on stage before the other bands got there because they would surely start loading in if no one else was there and that would mean they would be playing first.

I arrived at Ewop's at 5PM to give myself some time to change into shorts. Where was everyone else? Hell, I knew no one would be out there right at 5, but by telling eveyrone they needed to make absolutely sure they were out there at five would pretty much guarantee they would all abe there by at least 6. I found out shortly after Bub arrived that Chris was out of town and wouldn't get back to his house until around 8PM. This meant we had to practice without him. We actually managed to pull a decent practice out of our ass before it was time to load the van and get the show on the road.

I had started drinking as soon as I got to Ewop's house at 5PM. I don't think anyone else was really drinking at all, but if they were, they weren't drinking enough for me to notice. By the time we got to Viele's I was pretty drunk....but that didn't stop me from immediately drinking 2 glasses of Guiness upon arrival. The drinking continued on and on and next thing I knew, we were playing. I don't really remember that much about the show, other than the fact that we had a pretty good turn out for a Viele's show on a Friday night. I guess I figured everyone would be saving up for the ICE T/NIL8 show the next night at Club 217 instead. We had a good time and drank.....a lot!!

The next day I felt like warm and sticky ass. Like an ass, I laid on the couch all day feeling miserable, instead of getting up, taking a shower and getting out of the house. On the couch I laid until 8PM when Jill and Sariah came back to the house and we prepared to leave for the show. Still wearing the dirty clothes from the night before and reeking something fierce, I made my way out the door and to the club. I was waiting on Ewop to call me and let me know when the guys had met up and were heading to the club. Halfway to the club I get a call from Ewop. "We're here!" GRRRRRRR!!!!

Once at Southside, I hooked up with Sean and we made our way out to Bob and Debbie's RV where we sat and had a few drinks. a few people were out there, including Toad, Debbie, Bob, Aaron, Chris and Seth. Shane from Honest Pod showed up a little later when what's his name left (I can't remember the dudes name, but he knows who he is). We shot the shit while Chris tried in vain to tune a tv station in through the antenna. Next thing I know Honest Pod is ready to start and we're back in the Southside. I make my way to the packed bar to get a beer when I see Chris with a HUGE bottle of Heineken. He got it the day before and wanted us all to drink it. I thought he just got a case of regular bottles, but these things were HUGE!! I had him get me one and I commenced to drink it.....the entire thing well before HP finished their set. 3 Bud drafts and some speedy moving later, FCF was ready to play.

The set was horrible in the sense that we fucked up a lot, but the energy was high and everyone had a good time....except Sean, but that's becoming par for the course at this point. It seems like he never enjoys the shows and is in a bad mood after we get done playing. Oh well, I enjoyed myself... and I enjoyed myself even more when we got to Toad's apartment and continued to drink and go apeshit. I drank so much my own wife left me...................in Virignia because I didn't want to leave the party. I ended up going home with Chris, puking and passing out on his couch while he played Resident Evil 4, which I couldn't have given a rats ass about. The next day I awake to Cerberus licking my face. It was late in the afternoon and I had just gotten up. My calves were in serious pain and I noticed a cut on the palm of my right hand. ??? I don't know how that happened, but it looked fresh. Chris commenced to play Resident Evil 4 again, so I stayed a while and watched him play. He said it was the greatest game he's played in a long time. I didn't really see what was so special about it. Perhaps I'm just getting to the point where I don't appreciate games as much as I used to......or perhaps it just wasn't that impressive. I don't know for sure.

Well, that was my weekend. Spent most of it drunk or hung over. I think I'm going to go home. . .

I'm bored out of my mind. I have a shoot later today in Jacksonville at Abuelos Mexican restaraurant in J-Ville. That shouldn't take too long, but then again Denny is going to be there and he always has this habit of drawing everything out (kind of like Laymon). I just get in/get out. Job done, client happy, what else could you ask for? Regardless, I'm going to go to J-ville for lunch and then just hang around there getting shots until it's time to shoot. I really don't want to have to make a bunch of trips back and forth to J-ville from the office. Of course, this all depends on when Laymon gets back with the Vibe as well.

Speaking of work, the last 11 commercials we've done, I've shot 8 of them. Laymon's been to 3 of them. That's almost half of the commercials I've shot and a quarter of the total shoots to date. He said to me last year that he was going to give Tim and I more breathing room when it comes to shoots and let us go out on our own and shoot a lot of the spots. So far, he's been keeping his word. I'd like to see it stay that way because I'm enjoying things a lot more now.

I think I've got it!!
Sunday, April 23, 2006, 12:02 PM
Yesterday was a long day. First I went to Bloomington to meet with the dude who bought my Krank Revolution. He gave me cash, I gave him amp. Deal!

On the way back home I stopped in to The Rock Shop to see what amps they had in. Of course the only new amps they had were 2 Krank half-stacks. I decided I was going to try out an Ibanez TS-9 pedal just to see if it was close to what I was looking for in a boost/overdrive pedal. They let me try it out through an overpriced Soldano Hot Rod 50, which itself sounded pretty good. They also let me try a sweet Ibanez RG neck through that was heavy has hell, but felt and played good. Real solid guitar!

After fucking around for a while I thought the Soldano sounded pretty good. I asked one of the guys there if they would come down to a grand. He came back a little later and said they couldn't because the $1300 they were selling it for was what they had into it. I decided to check out what the amp goes for on ebay later that night. $1000 buy out on Ebay. Oh well. Anyway, I decided to get the Ibanez pedal and they were nice enough to throw in a Boss pedal board that holds three pedals, which is sweet because I now have 3 pedals. HA HA!!

After that experience I went to the office and loaded up the Vibe so I could go to Beardstown and shoot the Riverview Restaurant commercial. That took about 4 hours, but turned out pretty good. Later, I tried out the TS-9 through Fred's Knucklehead and was amazed at how much things changed. The mid crunch I was looking for was finally there. What's best is that it didn't add much noise to the chain and is adjustable to have lots of crunch or just a little. Also, I can basically have 2 different types of distortion (thick and crunchy or tight and barely overdriven) just by switching the pedal in and out of the circuit. We practice today for the first time as a group in two weeks. It should be interesting to hear the difference with the new amp since this will be the first time I'll have used it in a full-band practice situation.

Later on that night Sariah and I played poker with her friend's Amber and Aaron. We didn't play for that long, but I had fun. Saturday was a pretty good day (except for that parking ticket! GRRRR!!) I'd like all my Saturdays to be that action packed!!

I BURN!!!
Tuesday, April 18, 2006, 06:25 PM
God damn! I spent 6 hours in the sun today shooting commercials and ended up getting burnt on my face and arms. I feel like shit and everybody wants me to make an appearance tonight at South Side in Virginia. Now Sariah says she isn't going. Crap.

The auction on my Revolution head is nearly over. Hopefully the person who wins it won't punk out on me and not pay for it. I also found my Rode NT4 today and will be listing that soon. Once I get Citi financial paid off I'll be happy. I'm already happy with the Rivera head so I think I can move on to more important stuff (to worry about).

I feel like crap!

Relisting
Tuesday, April 11, 2006, 11:17 PM
It's going back up. I'm still going to get with Fred and see if some different tubes will make it sound better, but the tone still doesn't come close to comparing to his Knucklehead.

I reloaded my Krank cab with Carvin BR-12s, rewired it and have it set up as a full stack now. I can't wait to give it a go during practice.

Anyway, here's a picture of it and all it's glory!

The crazy life of an idiot!
Monday, April 10, 2006, 10:55 AM
Well, I listed my Krank Revolution and it sold after one day. Flash forward one week and I get an email from the buyer telling me he isn't going to buy it and is backing out. I was pissed so I left him negative feedback. He left me negative feedback as well, but what he said was stupid; "lazy with emails/rude". Yeah, I'm the rude one for leaving him negative feedback with a justifiable reason. He's a douche and I hope he gets barred from Ebay.

Anyway with that, some new info I've dug up on tubes and this past weekends show where I used the Krank with my Mesa cab for the first time, I've been reflecting on the Krank. I could never really say to a certainty that I hated the Krank, just that it wasn't giving me the tone I desired. On Saturday we played Knox college in Galesburg, IL and I decided to use the Mesa cab instead of the Krank cab because this was the last show in which I would have it. Surpirsingly enough, I thought it sounded marvelous through the Mesa cab. I didn't even turn the amp all the way up and it was super loud and mega bassy. It still doesn't have the mid crunch like a Marshall, but perhaps with some work I could get that sound out of it and retain the balls it has.

I don't know if I'm going to keep it, but I'm definitely going to give it a little more time and I'm going to do what I didn't do with the Peavey XXX. I'm going to experiment with different tubes, but I need to find out if I can get this thing to take EL34s or not. I really don't want to swap out the transformer in it because that would be an expensive thing to do just to use different tubes. Anyway, I've got a lot of different ideas that are all going to come out over the course of this next month.

I need to start booking more shows for FCF. I didn't really want to get us jammed up with a bunch of show dates around here, so I haven't replied to The Sandbar in Virginia, Viele's or Easy St. in J-Ville. I'm really hoping we all take the press kit thing more seriously and devote some time to it in the future after HQ is finished. BTW, we had our first practice in HQ last Thursday and it was great. I felt a lot better in there than where we have been practicing and I know everyone else felt the same way. It was nice to be able to move around (and hear myself!) and the drums sounded awesome in there.

I need to work on IHYB this week and get some new content up. I've really been slacking off with this whole amp search thing. I'll get it together.

I spend a lot of money...
Monday, April 3, 2006, 08:10 PM
Well, I listed the Krank head on Ebay. I'm going to end up paying $15 to list it, but I just want to see if it will sell. I doubt it will, there are a bunch of other Revolution heads up now that aren't even getting bids.

Listing the head made me think back about all the amps I've bought throughout the years. I decided to compile a little gallery of the tube heads I've bought in the past 14 years. Enjoy!

Bought this amp from my high school for super cheap. It wasn't in the greatest of conditions, but it was still usable. At the time, the 7027 power tubes it ran on were out of production and since no one was clamoring for them and the internet wasn't what it is today at that time, nobody knew that you could use 6L6 tubes in place of the old 7027s. Alas, I lost this head in a fire just before I moved to Florida.

This amp I bought used from Tim DeWitt after he gave up playing guitar 12 years ago. I didn't have a good cabinet to use with it, so it always sounded like poop when I played through it. I got this amp shortly before moving to Florida and used it while I was in Bacteriostatic during the years 1994-1995. I sold this amp to Randy Hoar in 1997 for an unbelievably low price.

God bless Ebay! The first and so-far, only amp I've bought off of Ebay. I got it for something like $400 and the only thing wrong with it was that it needed new tubes. I replaced the JJ E34Ls with JJ EL34s and used it only 2 times before selling it to pay some bills off. I ended up selling it for $650. The first and only time I made a profit on Ebay as well. I miss that amp!

I bought the Triple X last year after Randy died and it was looking as though I was going to be the new guitarist of FCF. I bought it from Samuel Music in Springfield. It was the first amp I ever bought brand new. I liked it at first because for the first few months all we were doing was practicing and recording. It wasn't until I started playing out with the band that I really began hating that amp. I sold it a few weeks ago to a local black metal band.

Before selling my Triple X, I purchased a full Krank Revolution half-stack from the Rock Shop in Springfield. I was interested in the amp once I heard about it and wanted to give it a shot. After playing a miserable show the night before, I talked the owner of the Rock Shop to let me try out the Krank at a show we were doing that day. He let me and after that I bought the amp. I thought it was great, but I soon realized that it was only having come off of playing through one of the worst amps I've ever used that made me feel the Krank was a leap forward. I don't regret buying the amp because I got a killer deal on it, but I still wish I would have just admitted to myself a long time ago that I wanted Marshall.

I think I'm a confused soul. I don't like throwing massive amounts of money at things just to see if they fit, but that seems to be all I've done lately. If the Revolution head sells and I get a JCM 900, I doubt I'll be complaining anymore.....but then again, you really never know.

Krank
Monday, April 3, 2006, 01:12 AM
I'm still wondering about the amp.
It's been eating away at me for the past few days and our show at Black Sheep didn't help matters anymore. I really think Aaron is fucking with me. He never used to turn his amp up that loud until I got the Krank Revolution half-stack. Now he's got his master volume nearly maxed out at practice and even at shows. I could barely hear myself at Black Sheep. As crazy as that may sound, I was just being constantly overpowered by Aaron's guitar the whole night.

My thoughts turn to selling the amp now. I keep thinking that if I can pick up an old 100 W Marshall SL-X for around $500 I could sell my Revolution head for a grand, keep the cabinet and put $500 toward what I owe the Rock Shop, which would be pretty much the same as me selling my Mesa cabinet and keeping the full revolution half-stack, only this way I end up with both the Mesa and Krank cabinets. I'm still up in the air about this though. I just don't think the Krank thing is working out for me.

Sariah will never let me hear the end of it if I do this, but I don't see the difference between selling the Revolution head for $1000, buying an SL-X for $500 and applying $500 to my account. Doing things that way gets me a head that I know I like and allows me to keep the Krank cabinet. If I reload the Mesa cab with 16 ohm speakers, I could use both cabinets together bridged at 8 ohms. A full stack! I think it's a viable option especially if I'm not happy with the sound I'm getting now.

In doing this, I'll probably sell the dbx 363 noise gate I recently bought too as I would no longer need it, but I wouldn't do that until after I got the new head and tried it out. However I already know the Marshall wouldn't be nearly as noisy as this Krank head is. Again I have an amp that isn't loud in the right places.

I have to wonder sometimes...
Thursday, March 30, 2006, 10:47 PM
FCF practiced tonight preparing for our show this weekend.
I'm starting to wonder if I made the right choice in getting this amp. I know Sean is probably saying "I knew it" right about now, but I think I've been intentionally overlooking purchasing a certain amp simply because I used to own it. The more I think back to it, the more I miss my old Marshall JCM 900. One of the things that really bothers me is that my Krank is noisy as fuck. I had to buy a noise gate to run through the effects loop in the amp, but haven't been able to effectively use yet because it drops the signal level so drastically that the amp ceases to be loud when I use it. This means I have to spend even more money buying an outboard preamp to bring the signal back up out of the noise gate. Why? Because the distorted channel of my amp is far too noisy to not gate it.

Am I chasing a goal I'll never reach with this amp?

I'm a little put off by the fact that Aaron's amp is louder than my amp. Not that I'm trying to compete with him or anything, I'm just trying to find my sound. At first I believed the Krank gave me that, but now I'm starting to wonder. I have to use it at a few more shows before I know for sure. Granted we've been playing our shit way too loud at practice lately. Aaron is sandwiched in with Bub now and feels he has to turn his shit up all the way for some reason. Add to that the fact that he's running through my Mesa cab now and you have a super loud guitar sound that just carries through the room, drowning out everything I'm doing and I even have my amp up all the way.

If I were to sell my Krank half-stack, I could probably get the same amount I paid for it back out of it. The ONLY reason I would sell the half-stack is if I intended to go back to the JCM 900. Like I said, I'm going to continue using the Krank at shows and determine from there what to do next. I think it truly shines when we play live and I have a whole section of the stage to myself. I will say that the Krank is far better than the Peavey XXX I used to own. With that I couldn't hear myself at all (practice or live). With the Krank, I can hear myself and during shows I have all the definition I'm looking for in an amp, but practice has been crappy the past 2 times and it's because of Aaron turning his fucking amp up all the way.

I know what your thinking; just tell Aaron to turn his amp down. I did, but that's not really the primary reason I was thinking about getting rid of the Krank half-stack. I just think there is this sound in my head that was implanted there after using that old JCM 900 and I've been trying to convince myself that other amps could do it better. I don't know. I'd like to keep my Krank and perhaps later on down the road buy a JCM 900 outright and play around with both. I guess that's for a future date. Right now I'm jsut glad I have an amp that sounds good live.

Our next show is at Blacksheep Cafe in Springfield and it's an all-ages show. It will be the first time I've been back to the Black Sheep since the first show I saw there a while back. With as many people that I've contacted online, the turn-out should be good. At least I hope it is

Believe it or not..
Sunday, March 26, 2006, 02:12 PM
..I still haven't learned that you can't type for 30 minutes on one of these things without it logging you out and losing everything you just typed.

So, I'll make this brief.

- IHYBFEST 3 was a financial failure. Even counting t-shirt sales I still went under $60 for the night.
+ FCF had a decent show and we networked with the Venom Lords and might be able to start doing shows in Chicago now. ROCK!
+ I really enjoyed seeing The Its! again, as did those who stuck around.
- All-ages attendance: 24 / 21+ show attendance: 29
+ The crowd was more lively this time, but scarce.
- Not all of the bands got paid.

In short: There will not be another IHYBFEST.

There, let's see if I get logged out now!

Loggins...
Monday, March 13, 2006, 12:27 AM
I added some new pictures of Monti to the site. He truly is the worlds cutest dog!

Other than that, I had a rough night last night thanks to...well, I assume alcohol poisoning because I wasn't really drunk (I had 12 Guinness and one Smirnoff black cherry drink), but I felt as though my veins were pumping fire, I stomach was tied in knots and I had cold sweats going strong. I still feel fucked up, but not nearly as bad as last night. That really sucks because this upcoming Saturday is Smitty's big St. Patrick's Day party with a keg of Guinness. I've been looking forward to it for months now, but after last night I don't know if I should put myself in a situation such as that again.

I know that when I start feeling like that I just want to be alone and have zero tolerance for others. Those are usually the times in which I leave the party and begin an adventure on foot. Don't ask why I just do... So I missed Honest Pod in Virginia thanks to my wife scheduling our monthly poker game on that night at the last minute. It sucks because we've missed the past 2 months due to my schedule not allowing me any free weekends. I had fun, but I really wanted to see HP. I hope they had a good show...

I'm thinking about calling in tomorrow...assuming I continue to feel this shitty. I don't know yet what I'm going to do. I'll sleep on it....

This weekend in review
Monday, March 6, 2006, 09:48 AM
Well, this was an interesting weekend.

FCF's show at Crackers in B-Town was probably one of the worst shows we've done in a while. We were completely wasted when we started and it didn't get any better for us the more the night raged on. I was struggling with my amp (which I've been doing for like 3 weeks now) to get a good sound out of it (I think the tubes are shot). After playing the entire show with a barely audible, horrible sounding guitar setup, I knew something had to be done. Also, my month-old delay pedal took a shit on me during the show, which I didn't appreciate at all.

The next day I made a trip to The Rock Shop in Springfield to get another delay pedal. On the way over, I mentioned to Sariah that I was thinking about getting a new amp. She wasn't too happy to hear that, but I just couldn't take it anymore. I've been working on my sound for nearly a year now and it's really been a mixed experience. Since I started with FCF, I've already got a new guitar and have incorporated 2 footpedals into the mix. Now that my Triple X is sounding like poop, I had to wonder how much more bullshit I could take. One day it would sound great. The next day, complete crap that I couldn't wrangle in for nothing.

When I got to the Rock Shop, I explained the situation with my pedal and that I had a show that night so I needed another one, which they gave me (great guys!). The next thing I did shocked many people this weekend, including myself. A month or so before this (when I got the Ibanez RGA121 and the delay pedal) I asked the owner if he was still a Krank Amplification dealer, in which he replied that he was. He didn't have any in the store at that time, but I was really wanting to try one out. I asked him to email me when one came in, which he did a few weeks later. When I went back to buy a noise suppressor pedal, they had the half-stack in so I decided to play around with it. My enthusiasm died when I plugged in and was really put off by the lack of gain and amount of noise the amp put out. Of course, I knew that in-store conditions are always the worst.

Flash back to this past weekend. I asked the guys at the shop if they had the Krank half-stack still, in which they replied yes. They asked me if I wanted to try it out, but I had already tried it out and wasn't digging it in the store. They told me that I could have it for $1900. I told them for $1700 I would walk out of the store that day with it. They asked me if I was serious..... After thinking about it, I didn't want to spend a lot of money on a new amp if I really wasn't impressed with the amp to begin with. I had to try it out in my environment (live) to know for sure. That was when we put together the plan. I would sign off on the amp, but they would hold it till Monday, which would give me the weekend to try out the amp. Since I had a show that night, I knew I would know by the end of the evening. So I agreed to the deal, signed for it and loaded it up. They even gave me the footswitch and a HUGE speaker cable for free.

That night, I arrived at the show and wheeled in the new Krank Revolution half-stack to the amazement of everyone around me. I didn't care though. My main concern was how it was going to sound. As I was hooking it up, the sound guy approached me and complimented me on the amp, mentioning that he too had one. I told him that I just bought it today and was actually trying it out that night. He told me that once I played through it tonight I would be sold. I didn't really believe him. I've been told that before and have never been blown away by any amp I've ever used, and I've used a lot. Once I hooked it up, I got the low-end and the gain I was craving, but the volume just wasn't there. I couldn't figure it out and through the first song I could barely hear myself. I thought I had the amp all the way up, but I was wrong. I still wasn't used to the placement of the controls on the front and was unknowingly turning the pressence knob all the way up instead of the master volume. Once I found the master volume knob, I noticed it was only a quarter of the way up. So I turned it up..............BRRRAAAAAAAAAARRRR!!!!!

LOUD, BALSY, HI-GAIN but CRISP and DETAILED. I immediately fell in love. Never before have I heard an amp that gave me the sound the Krank Revolution amp gave me......MY SOUND!! It was the sound that I've been searching for and trying to explain to everyone in hopes that they would know what amp I needed. By god this amp is it. I was overwhelmed with the sound of the amp, so much so that I was having trouble playing because I was scared. Why? Because the amp reproduced my guitar so well that if I fucked up it would be plain as day and SUPER LOUD to boot. It will take a few practices and shows to adjust to the new sound, but it will be great to finally know I don't have to struggle for my sound ever again.

I hate technology!
Thursday, March 2, 2006, 09:30 AM
Two days ago my Sony 5-disc DVD player crapped out on me. The discs won't spin once they are loaded into the laser head assembly. I'm assuming the motor is fucked. I was thinking about buying a new laser head assembly, but I don't know which one my player has. I guess I'm going to have to take some time Saturday or something and crack that fucker open, pull out the laser head and see what model number it is. If I can find that out, then I can order a new one for pretty cheap. Beats having someone else repair it and charge me for labor.

If I can't find that info, then I'll probably just have to buy a new DVD player. I really can't see myself buying another Sony DVD player when this one failed after a little over a year. That really pisses me off!

You have to care..
Monday, February 27, 2006, 03:57 PM
Everything worked out after all. IHYBFEST 3 is on at Viele's Planet. Jeff and I were finally able to work out a compromise (which oddly enough was $10 off from what I proposed. We're back on track and things are looking good for that. Of course I'm also working the sidelines of trying to hook up a few shows for FCF and end up in situations like the one I'm currently in with The Last Vegas.

I've been trying to book a show with a group from Chicago called The Last Vegas for a few weeks now, but have ended up running into a wall when it comes to this and that. Well I finally got word from Jeff about this show I'm preparing and he said it's cool, as long as he doesn't have to come up with any money to guarantee the band. Kind of a shit deal for the rest of the bands on the bill, but I'm willing to do it if it helps open up channels for future use. The problem is that I wasn't originally trying to book this show at Viele's, but instead at a place called SOP's in Peoria, with whom I'm still trying to get back in contact with to confirm this date. In the meantime, I've already shot The Last Vegas a guarantee of $900 for the two nights. If they accept and I can't land SOP's, then I'm gonna have to get cracking on an alternate location.

In fact, I'm going to call that guy right now...

Crap
Wednesday, February 22, 2006, 08:15 AM
NIL8 can't do IHYBFEST 3 and now Jeff Viele thinks the show isn't going to be a success or at least not as much of a success as he once believed it would be. He's making me pay $100 per show for sound up front and give him a 25% cut of the all-ages shows. That's not a problem for me, however he didn't say anything about covering half of the 21+ bands guarantee. If he can't do that, I can't do the show. I can't take the chance of no one showing up and going out of pocket on this deal. Viele will have made money from the first show, no doubt, but for me to be able to sell enough tickets to cover the full guarantee plus cover sound.....I just don't see that happening. 80 people would have to come to that show alone just to break even. The first show I put on only sold a little over 50 tickets and that was strictly all-ages. How can I expect to bring in a large all-ages crowd, then a huge 21+ crowd in the same night?

11:37 PM
Sunday, February 19, 2006, 11:46 PM
It's late Sunday night. Sariah should have already been home by now, but her flight was delayed 3 hours so now her plane doesn't arrive in St. Louis until right around now. I don't know if she is driving home yet or not, but she's supposed to call me as soon as she lands to let me know whether or not she's going to stay the night at her sisters tonight and come home tomorrow, or try to drive home tonight. I know she's bad with directions and falls asleep when driving late at night, so I would prefer not seeing her till tomorrow if it meant her getting here safely, but I really do miss her and want to see her.

I was supposed to go to St. Louis this weekend and visit Payne, who was back from Texas. Instead I slept all weekend. I shit you not, I was nearly asleep 32 out of the 48 hours this weekend. We played a show in Bloomington Friday night and didn't get back to Ewop's till a little after 4 in the morning. I didn't get to sleep till some time around 7 in the morning and pretty much slept all day long. When I woke up, Payne had already called about a million times. I was going to call him back, but it was late and he said he was going out with his old lady. I just figured I'd call him the next day. I ended up staying up way late Saturday night and then sleeping a majority of today away too. I hate it when I don't do anything all weekend. I was really going to try to get out and do something this weekend, but damn it if I just screwed myself.

I felt really shitty after the show Friday night. I've never felt that way before after a show. I think I really need to get into an excersie routine to stay in shape. I would probably enjoy my life a lot more if I had the energy to go out and do stuff. Lately it seems like I've just been saving it all up for shows and then afterwards spending the rest of my waking life doing nothing. I need to break that habit and break it for good. It's just hard for me to do things by myself and I don't think Sariah would stay committed to the idea. I don't know. It's worth a try though.

The games continue
Wednesday, February 15, 2006, 10:33 PM
Just as I thought. Rob told Steve Poe that if I don't remove the post that contains his email where he tells me in so many words to fuck off, FCF can't play IHYBFEST 2. Oh wait, let me correct that statement. He told Poe that I can't play IHYBFEST 2, not FCF. What kind of maniac thinks that a band is going to do the show without one of their members? Likewise, what kind of maniac thinks the band in question isn't going to take offense to the notion that in order to play a club they have to tell one of their members their not invited.

I always thought Rob was an asshole, now I know he's totally fucking crazy.

Day 6 without Sariah
Wednesday, February 15, 2006, 09:53 AM
It's hard for me to get along without Sariah around. It's weird because we don't really do anything when we're together, but there is a strange feeling of emptiness when she's not around. I told her on the phone that I couldn't get to sleep without her being there. She brought up the fact that I usually go to sleep before she does so really this shouldn't be any different. That is true, I usually fall asleep long before she even comes upstairs to go to bed. I can't explain it. It's because I know she's not home.

I thought I would go out and do a lot more with my time since she's gone, but I haven't. I've been staying at home and taking care of the dog everyday. I guess there's not really a whole hell of a lot to do in jacksonville on a week night. I've got to keep this up for another 4 days. I think I'll manage. She's enjoying New Jersey, which is good. She's made like $140 from selling jewelry. I told her she could make a lot of money if she started doing this all the time, but she doesn't think she can. Granted $140 in 6 days isn't really all that great, but it's not like she went out there intending to sell anything.

In 15 minutes Tim and I have to go meet with our boss to discuss an upcoming presentation to the Virginia high school. My mind is scattered in about a million directions at the moment. Steve Poe from Non-Thought is going to call me tonight regarding some trouble he's having with the show coming up February 24th at Club 217. I'm sure it's because of something Rob Hansen is doing to him. I'll find out later tonight. For some reason he hasn't said anything over email about what the problem is. I'm assuming it's something I'm not going to like. After this last manuever by Rob it won't surprise me if he's threatened Steve with pulling the show or something if I don't call him.

Rob wants to talk to me about all this over the phone as if things are going to be different over the phone between he and I. Nothing is going to change. I'm finished with the guy. He's done nothing but stab me in the back and fuck me over since I started associating with him. If my refusal to play his stupid games results in the cancellation of the show, then that's just bullshit, but it's not my fault. I'm not the one threatening everyone if I don't get my way. Oh who cares! Small potatoes.

10 minutes till our pointless meeting. A bit of good news, I don't have to go to the business expo next week. It was a stupid idea for Tim and I to go in the first place because we don't do anything. I was glad he made that decision because had he not, then we would have been at each others throats again over the whole lunch thing. See, I have a problem when people force me to do things on my time that I would rather not do. When my boss tells me that I have to spend my personal lunch hour eating at some bar that I don't want to eat at I take serious offense to that. The same goes for Rob Hansen telling me that I have to remove his email to me regarding the situation at disasterradio.net. I don't have to do anything, it's my site. You're only as free as the level of annoyance you can tolerate.

AH Fuck!
Thursday, February 9, 2006, 10:32 PM
Now that I'm back in FCF (see www.ihateyourband.com for info) and we have a show coming up I get hit with a brutal sickness. Damn it!

I really hope this doesn't carry over to Saturday. I don't want to end up not doing the show because of this.

Another day, another threat!
Wednesday, February 8, 2006, 02:43 PM
It's been 3 years since our last debate, but Rob Hansen, Ray Lytle and myself are back in the thick of things it seems. Thanks to some confusing aftermath of a chat room excursion, I received a myspace message from Rob telling me he was pulling the plug on IHYB related stuff and FCF stuff from Midwest Music Network (the show he hosts on WQNA) and that his plans to turn over the Springfield Concert Web name to me to keep alive was terminated as well.

I've put my foot down about it and went into extreme attack mode to bring this situation to a halt. I'm tired of playing kids games with Rob Hansen. He can forget the SCW and further Band-Camp shit because I can't stand this shit anymore. It's just something that I don't want to personally deal with. It's hard enough trying to do what I do and have people like Rob Hansen threaten me and FCF with all these bullshit retaliatory measures. If it's never worked before, why the hell would he think it would work again?

Anyway, that's all that's been going on here on my end. Sariah leaves for New Jersey in 2 day and she'll be gone for a week. I don't know what I'm going to do during that period of time, but I'll think of something.

Archives are funny!
Tuesday, February 7, 2006, 03:36 PM
If you haven't read the archives, I suggest you do. They're funny!

Anyway, FCF had a really good show with None Taken and NIL8 over the weekend at Easy Street Lounge in Jacksonville. I'm going to put up some pictures once I get them.

I'm listening to Ray Lytle's internet radio show at the moment. Yes, I'm that bored. What am I forgetting to do?

What?
Saturday, February 4, 2006, 09:01 AM
It's February 4th and it's freezing fucking cold. FCF has a show tonight at Easy Street Lounge. I hope it gets warmer out today or things are really going to suck. I've been super tired the past few days. I going to start using my breating machine again. It sucks having sleep apnea. I'm still waiting to hear back from the bands I've contaced about March 25th's IHYBFEST 3 showcase. Hopefully they will be on-board for this one. I think once the word gets out that my shows bring great music to Springfield, the attendance will really start to pick up.

It's hard for me to type right now because I'm so tired and cold. I think I'm going to give up now.

February.....what now?
Wednesday, February 1, 2006, 11:59 AM
No sooner do I finish a show, I thrust myself into another. IHYBFEST 2 is on the horizon and I've begun planning for IHYBFEST 3 and the initial stages of a show with The Last Vegas that I may or may not bill as IHYBFEST. Anyhoo, I'm finding myself pretty busy lately. I play in and book shows for FCF, I book IHYBFEST and run the website, I have a full-time job and I'm married. All I need now is a child to completely and utterly weigh myself down.

I like my freedom and my options. I like being able to make my own rules. I enjoy living a life unfettered. I might be going to Peoria Friday to check out a show at SOP's to see what kind of a turn-out they get and to experience the bar first hand. I'd like to open up that avenue of show options for the band and IHYB. It's all part of the great plan that I don't really have fully detailed out.

Sariah is pissed because I'm spending money on putting together these shows that I'm not getting back and I'm giving away t-shirts instead of selling them. Well, I still have a lot of t-shirts to sell and I'm not giving many more away. I explained to her the first night why I gave so many away and she still doesn't get it. My goal with the shirts has been the same since day one. Get a tax ID number, get business cards, solicit them to stores, have the stores carry them. It's quite simple, actually. I just need to do the work to get it there. No problem!

The shows I never intended to make money off of. It would be nice if I could, but I doubt that I will. If anything I'm doing this to establish the site and my place in the promoting world. Who knows, with enough publicity I could go from promoting shows to becoming a booking agent to possibly managing a group. I don't intend to pass up any chances to advance my career, but at the same time I'm also not doing this as a career option.

I want to see good music in Springfield. If I lived in Chicago, I wouldn't care as much because I could go to the clubs any given night and check out cool bands. Here in the midwest we don't get bands like I'm bringing in. As far as I'm concerned I could do these shows for free. I'm enjoying the hell out of the bands that I've been in contact with thus far. With the next show, I'm hoping to expand that base even further. I am trying to bring back The Its!, but they were so good I think they deserve another show. I definitely want to get Crank Sanatra up here once they take care of their van situtaion. As well there is another group called Treaty of Paris that wants to do the show but wasn't able to last time. If NIL8 or The Its! can't do the show in March, I think I'm going to get them.

It's a waiting game now. I just hope I can make this one happen just as well as the first.

I hate this!
Thursday, January 26, 2006, 03:21 PM
Two entries in one day! Shows you how much I have to do nowadays. Anyway, I'm stressing out because I'm trying to get information from some guy in some Peoria band who is organizing OUR show in Peoria. I mean, when I first contacted this club I was told that we would be booking the bands who play with us and that it was our show. 4 days before the show I find out that it's no longer our show, but some guy who's a dj at 99x or something like that and who is also in one of the bands that is going to be on the bill. Great! Add to that the fact that the band we had originally set up to open for us, Crank Sanatra, was forced to cancel at the last minute and you've got complete hell. Scratch that! Complete hell is me trying to get information out of some bar owner who has no idea what he's doing, trying to book band after band on short notice only to be told that they can't do it, finally finding a band that wants to do it, but is holding out for some reason and through all of it, not knowing any of the details about the show.

It's frustrating. Almost to the point where I'm half tempted to call these assholes back and cancel the whole god damn thing. Why not? They don't have their shit together, we're not getting what we were promised, our opening act is no one at the moment and I don't even know if we are getting paid yet. I don't know. I'm still pissed that no one bothered to inform me that the show I booked was now being booked by some other guy in some other band and it was their show.

Fuck this!

New stuff and stuff
Thursday, January 26, 2006, 10:10 AM
Crank Sanatra officially cancelled last night. That sucks. I'm going to get them up here though, just not this weekend. The show will continue on as a four-band set. That's just the way it's going to have to be. I'm not going through the same bullshit with IHYBFEST that I'm going through now with trying to book an FCF show at the last minute. Speaking of that, booking a show at the last minute sucks. Everyone is either busy or playing a show.

It looks like I'm going to have to resort to drastic measures.

Anyway, yesterday I bought an Ibanez RGA121 from the Rock Shop in Springfield, IL. It's a nice guitar by all means and after playing it last night during practice I like it even more. It think it's going to work out splendedly. It's the most expensive guitar I've ever bought. The Epiphone Les Paul was close to the same price, but this guitar shows it's price, unlike the Les Paul that just looked cheap.

I got it through their credit thing they have set up in store. Not a bad deal as long as I pay the thing off in 90 days. After that the interest goes sky high. I think I can manage paying it off in 90 days. The funniest part was that I got approved for 3 grand and the salesmen kept trying to get me to buy really expensive shit like a Vox AC30 or a full Marshall stack. Once I found out that I had a higher amount than what I was trying to get, I seized the moment and decided to get another thing that I've wanted for a long time, but haven't had the money to get; a Boss delay pedal. I debuted that last night too and everyone was freaking out. It's just delay, but it makes the songs sound so much better when used right.

I'm going to do a little write-up on the Rock Shop on IHYB because I think they deserve it. The guy who owns the place cut me a sweet deal on the guitar and threw in a lot of extras to go along with it. I gave him a free IHYB t-shirt in return. Sariah wants me to stop giving away shirts, but I can't help it. IHYBFEST is 2 days away now. I'm not even thinking about it really. I'm more focused on finding a band to do this Peoria show with us tomorrow. I hope everything works out.

Ah, the future...
Wednesday, January 25, 2006, 09:15 AM
I'm in a strange holding pattern right now. I'm waiting to find out of Crank Sanatra is going to be able to make it to Illinois to do the shows I've booked for them. They recently had van trouble and had to have their van towed from Nashville to Chattanooga, so not only are they without transportation, they are low on funds as well. They are currently looking for another way to get up here, but if they don't get in touch with me soon I'm going to have to replace them.

FCF is playing a club they've never played before this Friday. That should be an interesting experience. I think I'm going to get the band Devil's Pie from Peoria to do the show with us, but I also want to see about getting None Taken to do the show too. With such short notice it's hard to imagine anyone being willing to do this show. I think everyone either already has shows or has made plans. When you add that it's a Friday night show to the top of that, then you end up in a situation where choices are diminished. There are other bands I can contact for this.......but I don't want to.

I'm kind of giddy because I'm going to try to get a new guitar today. I don't know if I'll be able to actually get it, but it's worth a shot to see. Hell, I got a Sams Club credit card, why couldn't I get this credit line through the Rock Shop? The guitar I'm eyeballing is an Ibanez RGA121. I'm going to play around with it today and see if I even like it. The guy said that the bank bases a lot on debt to income ratio. I think for me that's not good, but I'll have to see. I probably won't get it though.

More on all this later when CS gets back to me.

Legalize Murder!
Friday, January 20, 2006, 01:49 PM
Well, today is Friday. In one week we play Badabangs with Crank Sanatra. I can't wait for that show!

Of course, a week from tomorrow is IHYBFEST. I'm nervous about that because I'm afraid that no one is going to show up and that it will be a complete and disasterous failure. Though I worry about this internally (and bring it up from time to time), I'm not obsessing over it. It's going to go how it was meant to go. There's not a whole lot I can do about that really other than make sure everyone knows a show is going on, when that show is and where it's at. It's up to the people to decide to come.

I'm happy because my amp finally sounds good. I've been screwing with it for months now trying to get a decent sound out of it and by trying the dumbest suggestion I could imagine it actually turned out to work. Now I have no real problems with the amp at all. Granted there are still some things I would like to see improved, but a majority of the issues I had with the amp were taken care of in one (actually two) swoops. Damn Peavey! Who else makes an effects loop that can drastically change the performance of your amp?

Sean and Aaron seem to be constantly going at it. I've tried to tell Sean to just let it go, but Aaron has the tendency to get under peoples skin. I avoid it altogether because I know that debating with Aaron serves no purpose. He doesn't keep a cool head about things and tends to get really defensive for no apparent reason. Like I've told Sean, I don't notice it as much because Sariah is the same way. After 13 years of being around that attitude non-stop, it's just something I don't pay much attention to. Not trying to make Sean sound like the villian here, but I just wish he would relax his posture a bit toward Aaron and just let him wallow in his own self-loathing. The rest of the band wants to make things happen (even if they don't do a lot to help right now) I still think there is a lot of potential there.

Man, we have a show coming up at Paulie's again. This time I won't be able to use Aaron's guitar to get the hum out of my sound because it's broken and he isn't coming off that invader pickup. He did tell me that he was going to take my guitar home and put that invader pickup in it, but at practice last night he said he didn't remember saying that. Typical. So it looks like I'm either buying one myself or I'm just going to have to deal with a night of extremely loud hum....or Aaron will stop being a douche and trade me pickups. Hell the Seymour Duncan '59 isn't some cheap-ass pickup! He acst like the invader is god almighty. I know what it is though. He's got an advantage over me at the moment because he knows I want something of his and he's going to milk that moment for all it's worth. It doesn't matter though. I'm not holding out any hope of that happening.

Uhh...Sariah made a ring last night that was really impressive. She was glowing because of it and I don't blame her. I was really surprised that she made it because it looked really nice. I've liked some of the stuff shes done in the past, but let's face it it's just arranging different beads on a string. This took actual creative work to accomplish and she did it really well. I'm very proud of her and I certainly hope that this helps changer her mind about the bead shop.

.....

I can't think of anything else.
At least not right now.

It's been a week?
Tuesday, January 17, 2006, 11:06 AM
Wow! I thought I had posted more than that this month. Oh well. Anyway, the only thing that has happened is that I received my IHYB t-shirts and stickers. I've already begun selling them off as fast as I can. Hopefully I can sell them all and make a lot of money, but I'm not holding my breath. I think I've already got rid of 17 shirts, but I've only made $90. How can this be? Well I've been exchanging some of them for services and what not.

Right now I'm deleting all of the spam out of Sean, Bub and Ewop's email boxes that they still don't use yet. I need to straighten out Sean with that and get him set up proper. I set Aaron up, but he doesn't use it either. Perhaps I should just delete them all and wait for them to come to me for an email address. ..... If I have to do another marathon deleting session like this one I will.

This weekend was special because FCF had a show at Tops and Tails with Grim in Creve Cour, IL.......at least we thought we did. Apparently someone got their wires crossed when they put down this show because it was never set up. Something had to have been said to someone about it because Grim actually played Tops and Tails that night, but we were never on the bill. I still don't understand it. Anyway now we're all trying to figure out a way to keep it from happening again. I told Sean that we need to have only one person handle booking that way this stuff doesn't get like this. We got together as a group and discussed some of these things, but it soon turned into an argument.

Wow! People keep sending emails to me at addresses I haven't even setup yet! I really need to get in control of this stuff. Anyway I've realized that my amp is poop and I have to get a different one. Also, Aaron said he was going to take out my Seymour Duncan '59 and put in an Invader. Hopefully that should help things out. For our next practice I'm going to use a Boss EQ and Metal Zone pedal to mess around with sound a bit. If the these do the trick, I might not need to get rid of the amp, but I doubt it will change things that much. I've been thinking about just going back to a single-channel amp and using pedals to ad overdrive, but availability will determine my course of action. I'd love to get an Orange head, but I don't have that kind of money.

I'm going to keep checking Ebay for some deals. I don't know if I'm ready to sell the Triple X or not, but I have to decide pretty soon so I don't miss out on any really great deals that come down the pike. hmmmm.....what else has been going on? I've missed a total of 5 days of work since the 1st. Talk about crap! I've had a really shitty sickness come over me for the past few weeks and I'm just now shaking it (thankfully). I don't intend to miss anymore days, but you never know what may happen. I really don't want to burn up all my PTO time in the first quarter of 2006. Guh!!!!

Wowsers!
Tuesday, January 10, 2006, 05:21 PM
Today was my first day back to work since last Thursday. Fortunately for me we had a shoot today with Jennings Beardstown. Also, fortunately for me Tim skipped out on me by going home sick. I would have followed right behind him (lord knows I felt shitty enough to), but I knew that if I did we would all end up in a departmental meeting and our boss would try to make it seem like we have an obligation to do this crap, yadda yadda yadda. I know what my obligations are and that's why I stayed.

It's funny though because right before Tim said he was leaving I was about to tell him the same thing. He just got to it before I did. I really don't want to use any more PTO time this early in the year though. I'm going to continue to tough it out and come in for the rest of the week, even though I feel like utter shit. I have some pictures I need to upload, but I don't know where the USB cable is. I'll have to wait till Tim comes back....whenever that may be.

We had a good show over the weekend at Southside Tavern in Virginia. I've decided to get a shirt that says "I need a hug" on the front because that seems to be all I do at shows anymore. Not that I have anything against hugging people, it's just that emotional displays like that generally only come about from the massive intake of booze. Were it not for alcohol, I doubt anyone would be nearly as affectionate with me. Life in a small town I suppose!

We made $360 plus dollars and that is going to the shed (I presume). Even though it would be nice to get some t-shirts....and put together a really nice press kit. I guess priorities are set that the shed must come first. There will be more chances in the future for us to make some decent money. We'll just have to do the press kit then. Hopefully before March though. I want to start booking shows in Chicago, Wisconsin, Iowa, Indiana, Misouri and wherever else I can get us into.

Anyway......I still feel like crap, so I'm going home.

Booking and stuff like that
Wednesday, January 4, 2006, 11:21 PM
I just sent a couple emails to fatabooking and flowerbooking, two booking agents that handle a log of the bands that I like. I doubt I'll get any response from them, but it was worth a try. I'd love to get a band like Cave In, Isis or Pretty Girls Make Graves to play here. LOVE IT! If I can make that work, then I'll definitely start taking a more active role in promotion and cross promotion of my site and FCF. I just have to ease my way into things a bit though.

Why isn't this damn thing playing?
UGH!

Well Tim is definitely on his way to acheiving his long-time goal of archiving music videos from VH1 Classics. He's already got like 28 videos I think. We have enough room for 3000 of them! He's already got some real cool ones. I think I'm going to transfer my sites over to a different server. I got something in the mail regarding a really sweet deal that I just don't think I can pass up. I'll have to look into it more, but it would definitely be great for hosting these videos off of. Perhaps Tim will do it. I don't know though, he's pretty strapped for cash. So am I, but the sites are more important to me than money.

Payne left for Texas a few days ago. I wonder how he's doing.....