Friday, October 23, 2009

If You Were Here, I'd Admit That I'm An Asshole. But Now It's Over and I Can' Stay Sober.

That 70's show is a show that I really enjoyed watching years ago but I try to steer clear of it. Do I really remind you of Eric Foreman from That 70's show? I don't know how many times people have told me that. It was all sort of ironic that my friend Oneida texted me saying that just that because I had JUST gotten the new David Bazan album AND That 70's Show was on mute at the time of the text. Who's David Bazan? Well, maybe if you read this blog more you'd remember I wrote a mini paragraph about him to set up the video I posted on this entry. But anyway, he's the singer of Pedro The Lion. What does that matter? Well, in the fall of 2006, I would HEAVILY listen to Pedro The Lion and would HEAVILY go over to a house and watch That 70's show. And here I am, near exactly 3 years later, in a COMPLETELY different world, still listening to David Bazan's music. Kinda nifty, huh? No? Yeah, I could see why that might not seem like a big deal cause artist come out with new music and life does go on, but I can't express to you how thick of nostalgia it carries and how just...right? October and Pedro The Lion/David Bazan are. His new album is fantastic. It's pretty much the same exact thing as Pedro The Lion but he dropped the name and just made it David Bazan. Only been listening to it for a few days so I don't have any clear favorites just yet but I do enjoy the less happy. I dislike the songs that kind of sound like Keep Swinging and prefer the songs that sound more like Arizona and Transcontinental.

One thing that's been on my mind lately is, "Wow. My program is outstanding. But am I learning these things to soon?" I'm playing some incredibly pieces right now but I'm worried I won't be playing them next year or the year after that. I mentioned a month or so ago that I would be playing Agustin Barrios Mangore's Un Sueno En La Floresta. No longer! I decided to finally, after, 4 years of having the music and loving the piece, to do Agustin Barrios Mangore's Variation on a Theme of Tarrega: Lagrima Variations. It involves the theme(obviously), slurs, a little thirdsy(not a word) part, artificial harmonics, tremelo, arpeggios, and classic Barrios shredding. I have never heard anyone play it and I've never met anyone else that knows the piece besides me and the guy I discovered it with. So I'm quite excited to be playing it. I start the Brouwer Sonata when I return from winter break. Me and Larry started working on the Grand Overture. A bittersweet bummer. Why? Well now I have to actually play it right. It really does piss me off on how bad of a teacher Mr. Hii was. How did he miss so many bad parts about my playing this piece? And that's because he was "giving me his all"? We're actually analyzing the piece and discussing how I should play this part this way because I play that part another way and just TONS and TONS of different things. Larry is just filled with endless great ideas and it really just blows my mind. I have so much music to be playing these days and I absolutely love it.

Last week someone on punknews posted an add for joining his band. Ever since he posted that I've been super super super ancy to join a band and play music. I posted an add on Craigs List saying I was available to join/start a band. Preferably join. I got a few responses. 2 from really really really bad bands. 1 from some old dude playing punk music. Then one from a 26 year old guy who apparantley likes the bands I've listed as inspirations, is a fan of punknews and plays guitar. That sounds awesome but at the same time, it's craigs list and I have that constant paranoya of it being a scam. Haven't responded to him yet. But man, I just want to branch out. I live in San Francisco, California, one of the biggest punk scenes in the country. It'd be criminal if I wasn't more involved. I don't care what kind of punk. I'll play pop punk, skate punk, beard punk, Bad Astronaut esque rock, ANYTHING. Only bad thing about me being in or starting a band is that I'm not in it for trying to make it big. I just want to casually play a few shows a month and just have a good time. I also don't even have the equipment to play a show so I'm not really that attractive of a band member.

Music rotation is great right now. I've got Thrice-Beggars, Swellers-Ups and Downsizing, Strike Anywhere-Iron Front, Hot Water Music-Never Ender, and David Bazan-Curse Your Branches. This is the first time I ever have a Strike Anywhere song in rotation. I'd always just hear a few songs off one of their albums and never got too into it so this change is nice. This is the second Hot Water Music album I put into a full rotation and since they have so many, I'm going to have at least one of their albums in rotation pretty much until the summer. And I've already expressed my feelings for Thrice, Swellers and David Bazan. All that talk of David Bazan would only make it fitting to post a video of him. Again, I really really really highly recommend you listen to Pedro The Lion and or this new David Bazan release. Really really mellow, great story telling songs. This video doesn't really do the album justice because he doesn't really use an acoustic guitar, and everything is very electronic.


Pedro The Lion-Curse Your Branches

Oh, falling leaves should curse their branches
For not letting them decide where they should fall
And not letting them refuse to fall at all

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