I want.

- a mandolin

- a ukulele 

- a banjo

- my own drums

- my ultimate goal of a stand-up bass, some day

The Official Soundtrack to the Motion Picture "2008"

A habit has to be made out of this. I made a list last year of my top releases of the year. The year before that, I made a posted a big breakdown of what happened to The Hormones in 2006. Too much happened to remember in 2007 and 2008 was pretty steady as far as spaced out, bigger, more successful shows, so I really feel no need to write anything band-wise. However, a top album list is something I planned on doing from the start.

My 2007 list can be found on my Facebook.

I also got a Last.Fm account this year around September I believe? I think it's a pretty cool way to keep up with what I've been listened to, so there will be some year-end stats on what I have been up to.

Look for this in the next couple days.

Sheetz.  Music.  Beer.  Records.  Repeat.

Sheetz.  Music.  Beer.  Records.  Repeat.

Sheetz.  Music.  Beer.  Records.  Repeat.

Sheetz.  Music.  Beer.  Records.  Repeat.

Sheetz.  Music.  Beer.  Records.  Repeat.

Sheetz.  Music.  Beer.  Records.  Repeat.

Sheetz.  Music.  Beer.  Records.  Repeat.

Bruce Springsteen is a god.

That is all.

Christmas 08.

After working 8pm-4am on Christmas Eve, well nevermind... back up.  After eating an early 1pm dinner on Christmas Eve at my grandparents' house, I had to leave to go to work later that evening.  I knew I would be back the next day so I was pumped to see everyone again.  I was hoping it would be fun, and due to the fact that I did not work on Christmas Day, I figured I would let loose with the family.

I got off of work around 4am on Christmas Day (Christmas Eve night, etc.) and stopped at my house in Greensburg to check things out.  One of my roommates had friends over the night before, so I figured the house would be a wreck.  Surprisingly, he cleaned up at some point, but still, half of a case of my beer was missing.  Hopefully when I show up there in a day or two, there is 15 bucks sitting on the dining room table as he promised.  After all, he exasperated half of my supply.  So I changed and left for 819sburg.

I got back to my parents' house around 5 or so, waking my mom up, talking to her about my night, etc.  Never really fell asleep until after 6am.  I was woken up at 8:30 by my brother.  We opened our gifts and I was surprised to get a GPS system, which I thought about asking for but never did.  I had it in my mind that I was getting my new acoustic I picked out and brought home myself.  So I was happy.

The highlight of the holiday, though, was dinner at 5 at Bubba and Tut's.  We were back for a second night in a row-which I thought could be hit or miss.  More family showed up and more "Extra Gold" was pounded down, and the guitars came out.  Tons of good energy, everyone was having fun, and things couldn't have gone better.

My only regret is that I regained my composure around midnight after finding myself on a stiff bed in a dark room.  I looked at my phone and my last text was sent out at around 10:16.  I missed 2 solid hours, as I got up and checked on everyone, and not many people were left at the house.

It was a great night though.  Of course.  Many great stories will be told of the past 48 hours.  And many great conversations were had any various ways.

Faintly Falling fucking Ashes.

It's officially Christmas Eve, well at least two and a half hours in.  How am I spending it?  I'm trying to drink myself to sleep on my parents' couch, while watching The Dark Knight for the ...th time.  Sixth?  Seventh?  I've seen this movie way too many times already.  This is coming from someone who thinks one viewing of a motion picture is enough.

I don't blog enough.  I wanted to do this more often.  There is no time.  I live a busy life of nothing.  I work, I play music, and I seem to do a lot of driving.  I shopped a lot this week.  More than I ever do.  Christmas is the reason for the season.  I spent too much money today.

I don't feel creative enough.  I have song ideas that come to me and develop but will they ever get anywhere?  That's the real question.  I have no idea.  Time will tell.  Hell, the newest Hormones song was actually written by me a good two years ago.  Wow.  Hard to think about that.

It pisses me off though.  I want to be more productive.  I WANT TO RECORD.  I want a diligent band.  What the fuck, right?  I dunno.

So yeah.  I'm three beers in.  There is no one up to correspond with.  Batman is going nuts with his cell phone sonar shenanigans and I have to be at my grandma's in 10 and a half hours if my math serves me right.  I am pumped to have a good homemade free meal.  I think I'll get ready for bed and let the alcohol content set in.  I gotta work tomorrow at 8.  Fuck that.  8p-3a.  I hope freezing rain pollutes the area and fucks everything up.  That would be beautiful.  I want to drink with my family.  Fuck Sheetz.

And god damn,  my spelling and grammar is pretty good for having a nice buzz.

Merry Christmas Eve everyone.  Enjoy the season.

Off for the semester.  I love it

I'm running on very little sleep, and I'm not tired.

At the same time, I have so much work to do to finish off the semester, but I'm too tired to concentrate.

Paradox or just a situation that is unnecessary to explain?

Who are you?

Who are we trying to be?

Who am I?

Mindfucked.

Writing papers just kills any sort of chance of creativity in other mediums.  Right now, I could be working on my research paper.

I have the work ethnic and motivation and am feeling creative enough to write.  I am feeling creative enough to make some stuff in Illustrator.  I told my brother I would make him an album layout for shits and giggles.

No time.

Especially writing papers with a length requirement and no direction.

Stress.  Lack of time.

Heres to studying.

Tonight We Dine On Turtle Soup

Oroku Saki?

Noice.

Love this weather.

I Did My Job

Passive aggressive, confessing, repressive, structurally uncertain, transparent, transgressive.

You have to come to terms with the fact that some people are fake.  That covers one end of the spectrum.  On the other hand, there are some people that are just plain not as genuinely trustworthy and good-hearted as others.  I've had countless people tell me in certain situations that I'm "too nice" for something/someone, "too good of a person" for something/someone, etc.  I can say that I feel I was raised well and my parents did a good job keeping my mindset in good morals, no matter how "fuck the world" I may be.  When I have a problem with something, it usually is set with some good backbone of a theory.

Anyways, I have to learn that not all people are like that.  Some people will act like that to get what they want.  Some people will act like that on purpose, some may not realize that.  Are they taking advantage of my personality/good character?  I have no idea.  Is it intentional?  Who knows.  There are some shitty people in this world, and when you learn more about them, it all makes sense.  It's just a shame to realize that some people could be so much better than they are.  I could go on for hours about this, but its just something I've been thinking about.  And after all of that, there are still those people that you will never understand, and who really knows what is going on in their head.

Life lessons 101.

Please Take Me Home

Something about this empty room gives me comfort. Or even driving back to an empty house. It always feels so much warmer here.

November Rain

Halloween is over but its spirit is alive and well. Good times last night. This little guy made his way onto my arm...

Any colour you like...

So I made this colour chart a while ago. I wanted a quick refernce of what I owned color-wise when I had the choice of picking out something new in more than one press of a color. I already have to add to it, but I still think this is a cool picture. Or it could just be the fact that I am currently bored and temporarily immobile.

More Halloween fun.

I made this 3 yeras ago already. time flies

Not having a car on campus kinda sucks but at the same time its not that bad. Kinda lookin forward to walking back to the house in the snow. Might miss the Sheetz meeting though. boohooo.

My jeans have still only been washed once since August, but that's ok.

I went home tonight to see my mom and dad for the first time since break?  A good two solid weeks or so.  My visits are becoming more and more sparse.  It felt good to just walk in and lay down on the couch to a warm empty house, before everyone got home from school and work.  I took a nap on that couch.  I used to hate sleeping on that couch.  My mom made tacos because she knew I was coming home and that is awesome.  I also left with a couple bags of food and clean clothes.

I feel more and more lately like I am just visiting than anything else.  My former bedroom is now formally broken in by Blayze.  Blayze's room became my room, but it just seems more like a spare bedroom than anything else.  The only thing that keeps it from leaving me is the custom green wall color scheme and the dresser full of old band tshirts.  Winter break will be an interesting checkpoint to note the state of things.  If I work a lot, I will stay in Greensburg more than anything.

You gotta remember though, Greensburg gets pretty damn lonely when everyone goes home for break.  Then again, it's pretty damn lonely anyway.  Time changes everything.

Lose/lose situation.

I hope I still 2-3 days off at a time here and there.  That would be nice.  I want to be able to travel around and play as much music as possible with friends.  That's what I live for.

misfits nerd.

Lose this skin.

Every now and then I get the urge to write in here.  This little, innocent, white box that eventually turns into something that everyone can see.  I get the urge to write music, I want to write new songs.  More often than anything else, I'll sit on my bed, strum a few chords, work with a couple vocal melodies, and decide, "Today isn't the day."  Other end results include re-workings of songs I already have written and recorded and played for a few years.  Tonight was one of those nights.  The creative process is a bitch.  Yet, at the same time.

Recently I feel like my time is extremely limited and pinpointed.  Living in a house with three people who really have nothing to do with music.  It just isn't my thing.  Especially on nights when everyone is sleeping three hours before I am.  I want to use this time for creativity and I feel restricted.  It stresses me out.  I am here for school, sure.  I want to graduate, I want to live and make enough money to be comfortable.  But at the same time, fucking live a little.  

I hate inactivity.  I strive for productivity on a day to day basis.  I hate the fact that I try to keep in motion for the most of my day, and I try to keep busy.  Yet, some people can be content with watching tv during their downtime.  And not just a half an hour here and there, but for hours at a time.  Really, what do you get out of that?

I try to live. I want to branch out my hobbies.  I want to constantly learn how to play new instruments.  I want to constantly improve my graphic design skills.  And you have the ideal couch-potato figure mentioned above.  How do they sleep at night?

I need a solution.  I will write all that I can through this blog.  At first, this was to document interesting show experiences.  Those will continue to pop up, but more often than not, this may be a day to day blog.

So regardless of the situation, I will try to make a new hobby out of this.  I will write no matter the occasion.  I just have to keep telling myself that it will assist in creativity.  It will spawn inspiration.  Am I right?

It's been a while since I....

A new placeholder. I haven't touched this thing for a while, and it really is no big deal because I don't really promote it, but still. I wanna keep this up to date for my own personal reference. It feels really good to just write or type and not have any pressure put on you. This is not a research paper. There is no due date. The only due date is the day that I forget what I wanna write about.

So, without further ado, sometime soon I hope to post about:

- the show with World/Inferno

World/Inferno was a good time.  We sold the majority of our tickets and 130 paid in total.  A great turnout for a Tuesday night.  On top of that, World/Inferno played a killer set and I met a lot of people that we sold tickets to.  That makes no sense?  These were people I got in touch with online.  They were all great.  Thanks again for everyone who came and made this such a good party.

- the show with Static Radio and Let Me Run at the end of the summer

Not much to say other than the fact that this was the one show at the Corner Pocket that I actually enjoyed and didn't regret at all.  The bands were awesome NJ bands and really cool guys.  We played a decent set and didn't run into any problems.

- the show with the Lower Class Brats

Bradstock Six

Bradstock, Bradstock, Bradstock. Ethanstock? This year things were different but at the same time oh so familiar.

The Hormones set was a little painful. Kayla had to play though the PA due to traveling constraints.  There was a lot if miscommunication and Jesse told us he just plain couldn't hear us most of the time.  I couldn't hear Kayla through the PA, and thought my amp sounded like shit.  It was rough, and it was met with the usual "you guys sounded good,"  "good job, man," etc.  No.  It was terrible.  A bad depiction of our band.

I gave it a second go later with my acoustic.  I played some songs with various friends.

Acoustic set of "dick and balls"? was strong.  Consisted of Dan DeFalco, Ian Kovalcik, and I, on and off.  A lot of fun and a lot of people surprisingly watched us.  We were asked to play Sweetest Girl a few times, we did the annual ending of Bradstock with Brad - Blister in the Sun. A few other songs here and there.  If I Were President, Waiting For The Bus, Ring of Fire, Skulls.  That's what I can think of at the moment.

The night was met with some swimming and late night escapades.

A placeholder...

I have to mention:

- Bradstock, The Hormones

- Bradstock, acoustic act

- Games N'at

When I have time, when I have time.

The Space Madness of Friday the 13th

It all started with some fallen-out plans on a spur-of-the-moment Hormones set tonight.  Well first, backtrack a day.  Nice weather.  Canoeing and swimming in the river after everyone gets off of work today.  It rains, so I decide to take up a call to go into work.  

I got a call as I was getting ready to leave for my five hour shift, asking if The Hormones wanted to play an open-stage night at Vi's in Vandergrift.   Sure, as long as everyone can get there.  Long story short, pretty soon it's after 9, I'm out of work, and Kayla can't make it.

 Longer story short, I call up Eric and pretty soon Eric and the Generics are standing in front a very, very small crowd.  A group of close friends and some bar-goers.

We played for the first time in two years.  The three originals, and some covers.  Which, we actually did better on the originals than the covers.  We fuckin nailed those three old originals.  It felt like it's been more than two years, but we all had a lot of fun and if you missed it, oh well.  No photos, no videos for youtube, nothing.  Friday the 13th, 2008 - Approximately  11:30PM - Eric and the Generics performed once again for the first time in two years, and who knows how long until the next reunion.

The "set-list" as follows:

Brothers War

Devil's Got Ahold of Me

Sing With Me

Waiting Room (slow as shit)

Song #2 (sorta)

I Painted My Room Roboto-Green, and Now it's Blue

We've been busy, so our shows have been here-and-there lately.  We played at Roboto once again on May 29th with our dear friends Kiwi Punch.  The turn out was typical, close friends and such.  Nothing special, but we still had a lot of fun.  First band's first show, you know that goes.  Did an alright job.  Nothing really interesting happened throughout the night, either.

Deep conversation outside on the sidewalk about color blind-ness.  Reds and greens get mixed up easily.  Or when intensified, the borders are blurred.  Little did we know, a friend of ours who came by to see what we were talking about was also color blind.  He helped explain things for us.

Kiwi Punch was mid-set when it was announced that the bands could play til 10, maybe 10:15, something I sort-of speculated all night.  Especially when the bands got off to a late start.  So we set up as much as we could, and as soon as they ended, it was damn-near 10pm.  We rushed through a no-covers, no-bullshit set.  We X-ed one song when the guy running the place let us know we had time for one more, and we played Tza and Flies with a 1-2 punch.

We perform pretty damn good under pressure.  No, I'm not bragging.  I just feel like it's the truth.  And a lot of people enjoyed it.  So if that's what it all comes down to - 15-20 quick minutes of intensity, so be it.  That's the shit I live for.

The Room That Doesn't Quite Rock

A few Thursdays ago we played our first dirty-ass-bar show.  Nothing special.  I think I go into these situations with expectations set way too high, at least most of the time.  This time I kinda figured it was going to be a flop.  We got asked to play last minute and the results definitely showed.  I had been in the bar before, it was a dive, but it seemed promising for our type of music.  Previously saw some acoustic and folk-type stuff going on.  Small crowd then, smaller crowd now.  

This place is basically two long, rectangular rooms.  One room is a long narrow bar on the left with a few tables and seats to the right of the bar.  Walk in the entrance, walk all the way back, go up some steps, and you have "the room."  The room consists of a few booths in the back across from a boxed-in women's room.  A pool table is pushed off to the side and a few more booths are along the same wall.  There's darts.  There's a few more seats and booths.  All on the opposite wall.  Cleared out center for bands.  So we load in, and the girl who promoted the show approaches me.  The other local band wants to play first, and she wants to throw the touring band on in the middle, so people watch them.  Eh... sure.  We'll play last.   Three bands, its late, but we should be out by midnight.  The other local band shows up and their singer tells me he has to set up the PA, in a "what's with this bullshit" voice.  Agreed.  So you can say it sucks being nice, but at the same time, we didn't have to set up the PA.

So this girl sets up shows at this bar pretty regularly, but for some reason she comes up and asks me how much she should charge for cover.  It's your show, I told people three bucks because I thought it was three bucks.  Whatever.  So she disappears and a girl who was sitting in the back approaches me and complains that she shouldn't pay.  She had been sitting there since eight, which was true, but this is along with the fact that she was one of maybe six people in the room who weren't bands.  "Ask someone else."  We're not getting anything out of her, anyway.

The people.  There's that drunk girl who had a lady who could have very well been her mom taking pseudo-myspace photos of her ass all night.  When she wasn't doing that, she was asking for photographs to be taken as she sat there and made out with her boyfriend.  A character that we met a few weeks before was there, but he was gone before we started playing.  And then, not to name names, but an older burnout was there.  Dancing to all the bands, telling everyone how awesome they are.  Out of this world, but enjoying the world he was occupying at the time.

Our group split before the bands even began to play.  Around 10, while the local band  was setting up, a few people who tagged along went their separate way.  I was hungry, and we were sick of sitting around, so the rest of us went over to 43rd to hang out at Josh's.  We watched Mitch Hedberg and had more fun than we would have at the venue.

We returned an hour later or so, and the touring band was just setting up.  The touring band - The Boss Martians - was interesting.  They played what I wanted - a quick set, no bullshit, very straightfoward.  Cool guys from what I could tell.  Original sound.  Hope they can make it back to a better place in Pittsburgh sometime.

We played to the burnout and a few other band members who claimed they enjoyed our set, but it was one of those nights.  The sound seemed off, broke some strings, nothing went right.  One of those nights where "nice set guys" seems oh so fake.

A Brief Yet Traumatic Introduction

I have come across the conclusion that I should start a chronicle of previous/present/future shows and other events in my musical life.  I want to be able to look back and have a firm grasp of the memories.  We'll see what happens.  As usual, I'm tired, and I'm done for the night.