i know where my taxes go while my taxes know nothing about me

last night was the beagle club show. i swear to god those guys get better every single time i see them. they opened with "mr. miller's opus" (listen to it over at my mog page), which i think is the best song to come out last year (period), and a great opening track. and they never looked back. i'll write more about how wonderful they were soon in a more visible place than this remote portopotty on the fringe of the internet fairgrounds. i might even post a picture or two.

drew and the medicinal pen (or you can just call him drew) opened. he opened their last show at goodbye blue monday (which i wish i lived closer to) as well, and he's a really nice guy that's really coming into his own on stage; last time i liked him, this time i really liked him. i picked up his cd and i'll spend some time listening to it tonight. the beagle club guys tell me it's really good. he's having a cd release party this weekend that i wish i could go to.

and now, if you'll allow it, i'll plug myself a tad. green dragon podcasted another one of my songs today...new york city this time. i really can't thank him enough for that. you can check out the podcast here (.mp3 link). if you feel like it, leave him a comment mentioning that you liked hearing it. that'd be rad.

my fingers smell like metal

for the first time in i-don't-know-how-long, i just spent two straight hours playing the guitar. it had been so long, in fact, that i spent the two hours in question trying to relearn how to play all the songs on they're more afriad of you than you are of them. so now i can play them again, slightly less well than i could a year ago. i'm a schmuck.

i'm removed enough from it now to admit to you that i've never been happy with the way a lot of things on that record came out. bits and pieces of songs, mostly. but basically all of a viking's funeral drives me crazy. i got overzealous and i got carried away trying to make a song rock hard with a programmed rhythm section and a lot of compression and reverb. but truthfully (and you're just going to have to take my word for it for now) it sounds much much nicer on an acoustic guitar. maybe with a real piano, too.

which brings me to some exciting, albeit slightly speculative, news. rob, the ivory tickling of whom you can hear in i spin forever and scutigera coleoptrata is moving to new york city from san francisco in june. i can't promise much since we've only talked a little bit about it, but i'd be lying if i said i wasn't excited at the chance to play again alongside one of the most talented, intuitive musicians i've ever had the pleasure of knowing. allow me to elaborate: both the keyboard parts mentioned above were recorded in about three takes. i brought a portable recorder out to the piano rehearsal rooms back at brown university, told him what chords to play and slapped some headphones on him, and the rest is history.

so, if he can find any time for me when he's not engrossed in his theoretical physics phd program (show off), well, it'll be pretty cool. i'd love to record some songs with him in which the piano is more than a pretty afterthought. stay tuned.

also. it's the time of year now on new york where the sun is right in my eyes as i make my way home from work on long island back to brooklyn. it's probably for the best that everybody slows way down since nobody can see, but it also means it takes me forever to get home and i have a lot of time to think about things. this evening a lyric from a song sean was working on a while back kept popping into my head: "the sun's in my eyes, interstate 95..." i should make him play that for me again. we can make something of that.

if you can't tell, i'm really thinking seriously again about playing music. it's about time.

oh shit! i almost forgot the whole reason i started writing this post, which was to tell you that if you're around new york, endless mike and the beagle club are playing on thursday (that's the 29th) at a really cool bar in bushwick called goodbye blue monday. sean and i will be there.

endless mike and the beagle club at goodbye blue monday

"do you know what this is?"

mike was holding a plastic dinosaur that he had found lying around somewhere inside goodbye blue monday. the whole place is littered with old stuff. all of it is for sale, reportedly. none of it has price tags though. i smiled and shook his hand.

"it's a dinosaur," i said.

"yeah, but what kind?"

avoiding the question because i couldn't remember, i launched into a story about my childhood. "you know, when i was a kid i was convinced i wanted to be a paleontologist and when i told my first grade teacher that she had to ask me what it was."

"the exact same thing happened to me," he said. "at first i felt smart but then we did a dinosaur unit and the teacher kept singling me out, asking 'is that right, mike?' after everything she said. it made me feel like a freak so finally i just said 'i don't like dinosaurs anymore.' but do you want me to tell you what it is? or will it drive you crazy that you couldn't remember?"

"it's on the tip of my tongue. but yeah, go ahead."

"pachycephalosaurus." that's not what was on the tip of my tongue. "when me and matt were kids we were in the drug store with our grandma and we wanted to buy a book because we thought it was godzilla but really it was about dinosaurs and that ended up being the book we used to learn to read. and i guess we just kinda kept going and going and soon enough it was paleontology text books from the library."

mike is this easy to talk to. like an old friend the minute he's a friend at all. and it's partly this willingness to reveal what's underneath in such detail (even when it's just dinosaur enthusiasm) that makes him the gifted songwriter that he is. i'm talking, of course, about mike miller, from endless mike and the beagle club (matt, his brother, is also in the band).

we spent most of the time before the show started reading books we found on the shelf near our table (male sexuality, 101 questions and answers about welding, etc.) and stacking cans of $2 pbr.

a guy named drew opened the show with an acoustic guitar. he was pretty good, but he didn't have any cds with him or anything.

and then, spilling off the stage like they often do, the beagle club took over. i've tried before to put the energy this band has into words and i've always failed. maybe energy isn't even the right word. it's more of a feeling. some members never stop dancing. and some hardly ever leave their position, sitting on the corner of the stage and playing whatever handheld percussion the song calls for. but there's a unity in the group, such that every role, from biggest to smallest, is equally dedicated to creating this experience. endless mike and the beagle club delight in blurring the line between rock concert and performance art. anyone who has ever sat around and dreamed of being in a band has dreamed of being in a band like this one. i can't think of any band i've ever seen that's more authentic.

and the songs are just so good. god damn are they good.

the husky tenor, a record i've been waiting for with baited breath, is finally done and i got my hands on it friday night. in lieu of liner notes, the package contains a six page hand-written letter from mike. a sort of stream of consciousness about what the band means to him and about free will and decision making and it closes with an invitation to discuss it all further with mike's email address and, if you're a fan of pen and paper, his mailing address.

i, for one, intend on writing him. and you, well you should find a way to see this band in concert. and you should order this record, which i believe will eventually be available here. and you should never ever tell me that rock and roll is dead because i will tell you exactly where it is alive and well.

here's a picture of sean holding a cat. a cat that apparently lives at goodbye blue monday. there are lots more pictures of the show up at flickr.