countblastula

2011 PROJECTS UPDATE!

1. As you can see by the inset promo photo, I have suddenly joined Allen Clapp And His Orchestra as, get this, lead guitarist. I attempted to play lead guitar for a while in the 80s and 90s, but now I only play ironically. And the reason for that is that I'm just not very good. My entire repertoire consists of 3 tricks: the Robyn Hitchcock bounce-off-the-open-E-string-while-playing-melody-on-B-String-underneath, which works OK in certain keys, the John Wesley Harding play-the-bassline-on-the-low-strings-while-strumming-chords-simultaneously, which doesn't work at all in this band, and um, I forget the 3rd one. Oops. What I am good at is showing up for practice and playing what I'm told, which most of the better guitarists have a problem with. I'm pretty sure that's how I got the job.

We're playing in LA on December 1st and in San Francisco on December 2nd.

2. We now have a wood and wire aviary in the backyard, thanks to the architectural and constructorial skills of KC Bowman. Scroll through the set for more angles.

3. Remember way back in 2006 when I did NASOALMO and live-blogged the results right here? I'm re-releasing "November" as a free download with 8 bonus tracks to celebrate its 5th anniversary. (All of the lead guitar on that album is played ironically, by the way, as is the singing, unfortunately.)

4. While I was in Michigan I put together an album of newspaper clippings documenting my early childhood as a minor local celebrity. You've probably seen this already.

5. 2011 Almanac - Still going. I added a bonus selection of November Leaves, just because.

6. Single-Of-The-Month Club - Believe it or not, we made it all the way to November without any loss in quality. This month's artist is Andy Siff, and he's brilliant.

Harken back to January 12th.

Carried over from 2010:( Read more...Collapse )

The 2011 Almanac has been updated for May, but I don't know why you'd want to look at it since Flickr changed their layout and it looks all stupid now. Instead, enjoy some pictures from May Day when my parents were in town.

British playlists continued, with one week to go:

7. Green & Pleasant Land: This is my very favorite (and the longest) of the 10 playlists. It's songs about British natural history; hedgehogs, foxes, Green Woodpeckers, David Attenborough, insects, luscious fields, gardens, and rain. Kind of makes me wish I was in England right now. If there was such a thing as a digital desert island, this is the playlist I would take with me.

8. The Best Of Toytown: I narrowed this down from over 100 songs that I got from this site. They describe the "Toytown" genre thusly:

"Toytown Pop is English and is derived from aspects of British lifestyle and culture. Influences include: Edward Lear, Alice in Wonderland, Listen With Mother (and later, of course, Watch With Mother), George Formby, Flanders & Swann, The Goons, The Wind in the Willows, Enid Blyton, Beatrix Potter, English fairytales, Lord Kitchener and his pals, Oscar Wilde and Victoriana in general.

One thing that we’d like to add is that Toytown Pop is NOT the English equivalent of American “Bubblegum” music. Whereas the “Yummy Yummy” and “Sugar Sugar” brigade aim for the lowest common denominator and then go downwards from there, the Toytown creators crafted some of the most beautiful, ambitious and, more often than not, melancholy music of the 60s and early 70s (OK, OK… with some of the lowest common denominator stuff mixed in when necessary). But it’s true that some American bubblegum acts like the Lemon Pipers and others created some fantastic Toytown Pop. We’ve just decided to exclude it as an imitation of an English style of music.

So, while Toytown is quintessentially English there are no rules that disqualify American musicians or indeed, any musicians at all from creating good Toytown Pop. Think of what Brian Wilson might have achieved in 66/67 if he’d have kicked out pretentious old Van Dyke Parks and used a “Laughing Gnome” era David Bowie, or Keith West or Jeff Lynne as his lyricist instead. With all of that hokey Americana out of the way he might well have achieved his “Teenage Symphony For God”, and what’s more Mike Love would have understood the words. Maybe."

Sounds good to me! And indeed, this has always been one of my favorite styles of music, from long before I knew there was a word for it.

The 2011 Almanac has been updated for April, although it seems Flickr has changed their layout and now displays 9 across rather than 6, so it doesn't really make sense anymore and I don't know how to reconfigure it. The poppies are blooming again, the farmers market is back, and I've resumed riding my bike home from work now that it has stopped raining every day and stays light until after 7:30.

UK tour dates are coming together nicely. If you're in the UK or know someone who is, please take note or pass these on:

May 12th: Brighton Great Escape Festival, Latest Music Bar, roughly 7:30pm or later.

May 13th: London Recharged Radio Friday Forum. We'll be on live from 7-9pm GMT. I think that's around 11am-1pm California time. You can listen anywhere in the world at http://rechargedradio.com/.

May 15th: London 12 Bar Club, with Sophie Madeleine & Anton Barbeau (featuring backing band of Andy & Morris from the Soft Boys).

May 19th: Liverpool Cavern Club, Agony Aunts @ IPO Liverpool - 10 pm, front stage (reminiscent of the one you see in all of the old Beatles footage, although it is a reconstruction).

May 20th: Liverpool Cavern Pub, Corner Laughers @ IPO - 6:15 pm.

We've been getting in shape with weight training and 80s work-out montages.

March has been added to the 2011 Almanac. Not much going on yet. Judging by the previous 4 almanacs, April is when the biggest changes occur.

So what's been happening lately? Well, we've been playing the new Back To The Future game at Charlie's, which is fun because it kind of picks up a few months after the end of the trilogy. All of the characters are back and some even have their real voices. The first time travel sequence takes you to 1931 where you meet a teen-aged Emmett Brown, Marty's grandfather Artie McFly and "Kid" Tannen, a bootlegging gangster. And....that's as far as we've gotten. It's similar to the great 1993 Lucas Arts game "Day Of The Tentacle" in that you go around looking for clues and solving puzzles in the past that will affect things in the future. Inspired by the BTTF game, I found a bootleg download of DotT for Mac a couple days ago and I've been re-playing it to see if it was as awesome as I thought it was in 1993. Obviously the graphics and sound are dated, but the fun quotient is still there and from what I've seen so far I'd have to say it's much better than the Back To The Future game, as far as time travel games go. If you do decide to download a free copy of DotT (which I strongly suggest you do right away), just remember - when in doubt: F5 (or FnF5). Is there anything that F5 *can't* do? It's truly the wonder key.

Excitement about the UK trip has gone up a few notches as I've just been informed (by goldenmoonbear) that we're invited to play at The Great Escape in Brighton, which bills itself as "Europe's Leading Festival For New Music". I don't know how true that is, but I do know that it is full of bands I've never heard of which could just mean that I'm too old for my own britches. Brighton has a Santa Cruz vibe to it that fits right into my comfort zone & last year's Brighton gig didn't go so well (it didn't go at all) so here's hoping we can make up for that this year.

2010 was the hottest and wettest year in recorded history (and yes, I'm talking about the weather, you filthy perverts). This year will probably be even more so, but it's hard to complain when the Bay Area gets days like the one seen in the accompanying photo. On February 6th it was around 80 and sunny so we took our first extended outdoor shorts-clad trek of the year - to Coyote Hills with the Bowmans, where I somehow had never been despite it being only 13 miles from my house. It's a fantastic place to find waterbirds and it's also full of English-countryside-esque rolling hills and rock formations. Poppies are already blooming, a few weeks ahead of schedule.

The 2011 almanac has been updated for February. Not much to see here.

Agony Aunts & Friends Single Of The Month Club has also been updated with the new Bigwheel single "Tiny Pictures", which we wrote in 2000 and never got around to recording until a few weeks ago. I think you'll like it. It's a free download, so what do you have to lose?

In egg news so far this year - Goldie: 12, Guad: 0.

Carried over from 2010:

1. The third album by The Corner Laughers tentatively entitled "Poppy Seeds: Still working on it. The rough mixes I've heard so far are very exciting. Summer release?

2. Some sort of album by the William Cleere band: Done, and should be out very soon. The first single "Labor Day" was featured in Magnet Magazine

New for 2011:

3. Agony Aunts / Top Secret Corner Trout Project Alphabetical Single Of The Month Club: KC and I were discussing publishing a new single on Bandcamp every month using a different lead singer and band name every time and going through the entire alphabet. Ex: January - Agony Aunts, February - Bigwheel, March - Corner Laughers, April - Dark Green Pants. Who knows how far we'll get? Probably not even two months.

4. 2011 Alamanac: If you've been reading me for a while, you might remember that I do a monthly photo almanac in odd numbered years. (Here's 2005, 2007, and 2009.) For this year's version, 3 views are from Karla's office and 3 are from our front yard.

5. The 4th Agony Aunts album tentatively titled "Undecimber". That's right, even though we've only done one previous album, we're skipping right to album #4 which we expect to be our masterpiece. Albums 2 and 3 will have to wait until we've become washed-up bloated drug addicts. (This just in - "Greater Miranda" finished #2 in David Bash's top 100 of 2010 which I consider a major honor and a huge surprise.)

As in previous years I'll be keeping track of movies watched, albums listened to and books read. I also joined a site called Daytum which is supposed to be this new miraculous way of organizing your life. I don't really understand how to use it and can't be bothered to read the instructions so right now all it does is keep track of how much coffee I drink.

And just like that we have reached the end of another yard almanac. The change from November to December is the most dramatic of the year on our street, as you'll no doubt glean from seeing all the months lined up.

You might not notice this unless you click "all sizes" and look at the largest versions of the photos but the 6 poppies that we planted in the spring have multiplied and taken over most of the front yard, as we had hoped they would. You might also notice that It's almost impossible for us to keep small plants alive in the backyard. I attribute this to a combination of lack of sunlight and invasion by squirrels and raccoons. We'll probably keep trying though, against the odds.

For posterity's sake and scientific study here are my 2007 and 2005 Mountain View almanacs again. (2005 is only 4 photos across and I'm not sure how to get it to display correctly in Flickr.)

For several years goldenmoonbear and I have had a tradition of watching the entire Back To The Future trilogy on Thanksgiving weekend. This year was the first year that we felt we had a suitable environment in which to invite other people to take part. Photographic evidence is here. It was so much fun that I'm already planning bigger festivities for next year with costumes, live music and maybe even a special appearance by Claudia Wells. But probably not.

The 2009 almanac has been updated through November. You might not think we have seasons in Northern California but we do, if you look really closely.

The big news is that The Corner Laughers are playing a gig with KC Bowman tomorrow night. KC has long been one of my favorite musicians and songwriters and he rarely ever plays in public so this is a special event indeed. I certainly wouldn't want to miss it if I were you. It's at Red Rock Coffee House in downtown Mountain View. We'll be starting around 8. You can download some of KC's songs here.

halphasian, globalesque and clyde_park have a little meme going about which writers they've read the most works by. I'll play (fiction only):

1. Douglas Adams - Read just about everything, loved it all.

2. Tom Robbins - Read all of his books. Older ones are fantastic, newer ones kind of lame.

3. Jasper Fforde - I believe I've read everything he's ever published and I'm eagerly anticipating his new novel that's coming out at the end of the year. How I discovered: I'm an equally huge fan of George Formby; I own all of his movies and recordings. While researching GF's bio on Wikipedia I discovered that he was listed as a character in the Thursday Next series: in fact, in that universe he was still alive and had become Prime Minister. How could I resist?

4. Haruki Murakami - I've read all of his books except the non-fiction ones. I love about 1/2, the rest are kind of the same story over and over.

5. Scarlet Thomas - I haven't read all of her books but the ones I have read are among my favorite books of all time.

6. Jacqueline Winspear - Read the entire Maisie Dobbs series. It's set in 1930s England and references WWI constantly so it's right up my alley.

7. Nick Hornby - Haven't read the new one yet, but one of the main characters is on the same record label that The Corner Laughers are on, so what am I waiting for?

8. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - Read most of the Sherlock Holmes series, as you might have guessed by my Halloween costume.

9. J*** G***** - I will not discuss this one but I have read WAY too many of her books.

10. Honorable mention - C.D. Payne, Carl Hiassen, Kurt Vonnegut, Louise Wener, Christopher Moore.

First the newsly items:

1. The 2009 almanac has been updated for October.

2. Ultraviolet Garden is now available as a legal download:



3. There's an interview with the Corner Laughers at Voice Of Energy. There are a few slight errors and misquotes but overall it's very flattering.

4. I have several upcoming events in October: on the 15th I'm playing piano with John Wesley Harding at the Rickshaw in SF. On October 24th, I make my big screen debut in Why Isn't Chris von Sneidern Famous?, which is showing for one night only at the Landmark Clay Theater as part of the Cinema By The Bay film festival. The Corner Laughers will be playing a special Halloween / record release show on October 31st at The Make Out Room. There will be costumes and candy and contests. We hope to see you there.

Now the complaints: Hardly Strictly Bluegrass is the worst thing in the world. Every year I proclaim that I will never go back again and every year they tempt me with free shows by my favorite artists. This year it was Robyn Hitchcock, Billy Bragg & Aimee Mann. As is usually the case there were about 8 million people there and there was really no way to see or hear any of the shows. It was cold and dusty, parking took about an hour and we missed the entire Robyn Hitchcock set. At the Aimee Mann portion, the people in front of us stood the whole time, blocking everyone's view even though there was no need to. It reminded me of the old "parable of the commons" or whatever - 1000 people go to a concert, at first they're all sitting down and everyone can see just fine. Then one person decides that if he stands up he'll be able to see better than everyone else. This in turn causes the people behind him to have to stand up, then pretty soon everyone is standing and no one can see any better than they could in the first place but they're all a lot more uncomfortable. The only positive note was that Karla bravely went up to Robyn Hitchcock (who was riding in a golf cart) and gave him a copy of our album. He's kind of connected to us through the Popover label, but I don't know if he understands or remembers that. Anyway, I swear to you that I am not going back ever again.