012: Exploring the Psychic Plumbing...

Anyone who has ever crawled under a house will know that feeling of not really wanting to see what you are going to find, because you only go under there when things go WRONG... And you keep thinking that there are spiders or rats trying to get into the legs of your pants... (Which is particularly nasty around this neck of the woods because we have the dreaded BROWN RECLUSE spider that does nasty things to you when it bites you...)

Oh jeeze! I just remembered... I was sitting on my favorite old chair, a burnt orange number with a huge ink stain on it, no legs, and the stuffing falling out of the cushion (my wife made me leave the chair in our old house when we moved... I shed a tear...) where was I??? Oh, yeah... I was sitting in my old chair with my keyboard in my lap typing away on some writing assignment when I saw what I thought was a mouse run by my feet. I squealed and jumped up onto the seat and looked around the base of the chair and realized what I thought was a mouse was a spider the size of a fucking BASEBALL running across the floor.

Now my wife's cat, a fat, grey, moldy sausage of a cat with no tail, and I have never really gotten along that well. I try to leave it alone and, unless I'm messing with it's food, and it stays away from me... But, back when this gigantic spider came strolling out of the woodwork to rape and pillage, the cat and I had a rare moment of understanding: I was freaked out by this huge spider, and the cat (who also must have thought it was a mouse) came running into the room and beat the CRAP out of this eight legged interloper... By the time the cat got bored and walked away, the poor spider was terminally crippled (and still the size of a silver dollar, even with all of its legs scrunched up to its hairy little body) but still twitching... I delivered the deathblow with my shoe, clubbing the creature into oblivion, although I really wish I hadn't... After annihilating the corpse I had no evidence of just how massively huge the thing was and, as it turns out, the next morning my wife thought I was exaggerating the size of the thing and called me a sissy...

Well, that's about it for that story...

Here's a report on the music that I've been listening to while typing (because I'm SURE you care):

NOW PLAYING - "I'm Not in Love" by 10cc
BEFORE THAT - "I Believe" by Buzzcocks
Before that - "Walking in Memphis (Club Mix) by M R M
"Don't Worry" by The B-52s
"Smart Enough" by Dorkweed
"So Says I" by The Shins
"Yellow Fever" by Rasputina
"Strawberries" by Chester Copperpot
"Here Today, Gone Tomorrow" by Dada
"Video" by Buzzkill
"I Feel Love" by Messiah
"Cheese" by Less Than Jake
"Lenny and Terence" by Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine
and since I started typing this list 10cc has ended and now "Heartbreaker" by Sugar Boom is on...

See, isn't it fun to read lists of songs??? Of course it is... And I get to feel hip because I know all these nifty bands like Buzzkill and Rasputina and The Shins... Don't feel bad if you aren't as hip as me; I've been practicing for MANY YEARS... (That's supposed to be funny by the way... And now "Thank God" by Storm Inc. is playing... Maybe this would be a good time to talk about Storm and the Balls...)

My new favorite local (Portland, OR) based band is, BY FAR, Storm and the Balls. Do check out Storm's super-cool web site here:

http://www.stormlarge.com/

Storm has one of the best voices I've ever heard live and her backing band includes two ex-Everclear performers and one ex-Motherload dude. She sings in a sultry lounge / barroom style, the band (bass, keyboards, and drums) chops out slick jazz / rock, and the group as a whole pump out quirky cover tunes and hilarious originals that amuse the hell out of me. At a recent show at Dante's in Portland, opening for Nina Hagen, The Balls belted out fractured versions of "Tainted Love," "The Star Spangled Banner" (which lapsed, at times, into "Paranoia" by The Kinks and "The Pusher" by Steppenwolf), a medley of songs by Bauhaus, Nine Inch Nails, and The Cure, and a wicked rendition of "Dancing Queen" and "Take a Chance on Me" by ABBA over the top of the music to "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida." The original songs were also a treat. My favorite was the psychotic "I Want You to Die" which took the love ballad into areas that only David Lynch has really explored before. Anyway, I HIGHLY recommend checking this group out as soon as possible. For the over 21 crowd that's easy enough; just drop by Dante's on any Wednesday about 10:pm... If you do stop in, tell her I sent you, and maybe she'll send me a free, signed, poster!!! (And don't tell my wife I wrote that, please...)

That's funny... My REVIEWER mode just popped into gear... I used to get paid 25 bucks per ad to write positive reviews of CDs I really didn't like at my old job. It's really difficult to find something good to say about most bands that have record labels with enough money to pay my ex-boss $200 to $600 per ad for a review... I should note, also, that regardless of how much money my boss got for the ad, I made $25 bucks a shot, and I did all the work. He just cashed the checks... Thank the Gods I'm no longer a wage slave... (Now I'm just indebted to the government for about $20,000... I love student loans. But, damn it, college students, and their families, have to eat too...)

That's probably enough...