Sadly Underwhelmed

So recently Adam gave me a ton of music and I'm slowly methodically loading into my computer's music player (yeah I'm not saying a brand name! why? because I'm punk-as-hell that's why). I say slowly because I'm listening to every song on every album at least halfway through to see if it is destined to become a favorite or not. I've been listening to everything from Katy Perry (yeah yeah shut up) to Converge (not laughing now are you?). Lotta Converge actually, I'd forgotten how happy they made me. I also finally got my hands on Every Time I Die's song Ebolarama which has long been a favorite of mine. But just a few precious minutes ago Greg and I were sitting around listening to Fake Problems' EP 'Oh No!' Now Fake Problems come fairly highly recommended. Their most recent album had critics and bloggers falling over themselves to compare them to folk punk icons (ugh ugly word) like Against Me! and This Bike Is A Pipe Bomb. This EP, I should note, is not that most recent album. In fact, it predates their first album by about a year. That said, I was completely underwhelmed. None of the songs really seem to go anywhere and maybe two of the six tracks even hint at the folk punk enthusiasm the band has since shown they were capable of. Most of the songs however are simply limp, meandering acoustic songs that would be better suited to some lead singer's discarded solo project. I'm so glad these guys turned the corner they did.

On a brighter note, this song by New England's own Smoke or Fire is fantastic. I burned my fingers out playing the riff over and over again and I still don't get tired of it. So without further ado, The Patty Hearst Syndrome.

Sittin' in the studio, talkin' 'bout a side project.

So on Friday, Greg and I met up Adam at the studio to do some vocal recording. Unfortunately, the studio was locked and we couldn't get the key anywhere so ended up heading back to our room and listening to music. A bit of back-story for this, Greg and I are constantly thinking of side projects we want to do and while we were in New York for a Mountain Goats' show I came up with the idea of doing an indie band called Funion. Back to present day, we're hanging out and as often happens when music people are hanging, a guitar is being passed around. Next thing you know we're throwing down tracks on a computer, creating a myspace page and Funion is born. So for anyone who wants to see said myspace page, that would be here. For those of you who are too lazy to click the link, here's a little taste courtesy of our friends over at last.fm.

Addendum

I would just like to throw my two cents in regarding Greg's now long departed Halloween Costume. While both the 50-cent and the Goldfinger costumes were pretty weak (albeit pun-tacular) the Lincoln hat showed a certain admirable craftiness and ingenuity.

P.S. For this to make any sense at all you have to go read my band's blog here.

P.P.S. Criteria is a fantastic band.

YAY

There is a new name!!! and now it's almost like a new blog. I swear to god I'm going to start updating more. My computer and I are still recovering from a particularly nasty little virus we picked up while attempting to watch the third season of a show called Psych. Fantastic show, terrible virus. Not really a good trade off, I'll watch it on dvd. In other (computer related) news, I have found (Dana found it first, but I was the one who tried it first so ha!) a really cool website where you can enter books/movies/whatever that you have read/watched/whatevered and rate them and it will suggest more things for you to read/watch/whatever.

books.livingsocial.com

add me as a friend, we can compare things we've gotten around to rating.

P.S. Dana-add a damn picture to your living social account.

New Post New Name?

So I've been thinking that maybe I should change the name of this blog since I no longer record a song a day, in fact I'm extremely lucky these days if I record a song a month. That said, I'd like to start blogging more with my opinions on books, music, movies and still the occasional song or a news about the band, so the new name could be more generally reflective of that. If you have any ideas (you 3 who read this) feel free to send them along.

So after all that talk about how I don't record songs anymore, I did actually get one done tonight after about an hour and a half of work. I wrote 3 or 4 songs over the summer for the band and I'm hoping to get demos of all of them recorded at some point here. This one was the first of them and if it sounds a little different from all previous ones, that's because it was recorded onto two tracks! I'm getting very high tech now. It actually sounds different though because instead of my acoustic this song is being played on my new, beautiful Epiphone Dot. The song is called Daedalus Wept Bitterly and I hope you like it.

Daedalus Wept Bitterly

NOTE: A little housekeeping, it seems my web-hosting services won't let you simply play the song online and is making people download stuff. Just think of it as a free gift!

New Demo

Accordion Walled Classroom Setting

And We're Back

So I finally got off my ass and deleted a bunch of the old recordings that were on my web space and so I could finally make the link to the song in the last post work. Here's hoping the legions of people who previously read my blog will come flooding back and bring their friends. And while they're here they should check out the hottest new punk band in Worcester, MA, Kid Omega at their myspace page, the address of which is:

www.myspace.com/kidomegaband