Someone just asked us if we knew any vampires.

Today I woke up, took a nice little walk around the house, and discovered that nobody was home. Yes, I was all by myself, and like any self respecting male in my position, do you know what I did? No! I did not, in fact, masturbate furiously. Unless you were referring to my ego, because I sure as hell went to town on that. And by all that I mean I recorded a demo of the new song I wrote for my band Easy Chowder (http://myspace.com/easychowder). Now recording music right after you wake up leads to some pretty bad recordings, but it's much better without anyone in the house judging me. Am I right? No? I'm just way too self conscious? Well, maybe that's true. But either way, it was just a demo to give the other two people in my band an idea as to what this song sounds like. So it didn't need to sound perfect, which was great because my voice sounded really deep and raspy, and like I was about to cry. But I never cry! Don't forget it! The closest I've ever come to crying was when I read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safron Foer. There were a lot of parts in that book that had me very close to tears. This ended up almost making me look like a big cry baby in the math class I was taking at the time. And now to bring it back to my original story, I laid down some tracks for guitar, piano, and that lovely voice of mine, and knocked that demo out of the park before anyone knew I was even awake. It came out pretty bad, especially since I'm god awful at piano, but I think for its purpose, it'll get the job done.

Yesterday, before I left for the show, I was having a rousing conversation concerning fashion and gimmicks in today's music. Now there are plenty of bands out there with gimmicks that I love (The Aquabats) and there are plenty of bands that follow some form of fashion associated with their scene that I also love (I just took a look through my music library and couldn't really find anything that fit the bill. Maybe I don't like bands that follow some sort of fashion). But we were both in agreement that bands that need to rely on this sort of thing really suck. You should all probably know the types of bands that started this conversation. Yes, all these popular new "crunkcore" and "christcore" bands. You know, like Brokencyde and Attack Attack. These guys go out of their way to look as ridiculous as humanly possible, and they don't even have the decency to write a good song. But I know, it's easy to shit on those bands. They're popular with the younger crowd, they're bright and flashy, and just begging for flack from anyone old enough to drive. So, I'm going to cut this rant off before it gets to be too much. I will end it with a quote from a band I've been enjoying quite a bit lately, Polar Bear Club. "Learn something, feel something, think something new. Those magic clothes don't make music. We do."

Hmm... I don't know how I feel about ending a rant with a line from a song. Well, what's done is done. But speaking of Polar Bear Club, I'm going to see them in less than a week. They're on tour with Strike Anywhere, Crime in Stereo, and Ruiner. So I'll be driving down to Jersey to see them with my best friend Kate. She goes to grad school down there, so it makes sense for her to go to the Jersey date. I could easily go to a New York City date, but I'd rather go a little further so as not to go to a show by myself. Recently, I was trying to plan this whole trip down to Jersey out, and I was nearly giving myself a heart attack. I don't know what was up with me, but I couldn't plan this out. All I had to do was pop that shit into Google Maps, change the route so it doesn't take me over the George Washington Bridge, and I'd be all set. But no, I was really overthinking all of it. But eventually I slapped myself into shape, got directions a week early, made sure I wasn't going over the worst bridge to ever go over (shame on you Google Maps, you should know better), and then I was all set. But I'm really looking forward to this show. Strike Anywhere was always a band I was never too big on. They were alright, and I'd listen to them from time to time, but I was never in love. Then they put out this new album, Iron Front, and it turns out to be this really killer album. It's really good, and it got me listening to their older stuff, and it's all really good. I guess Iron Front was just the spark that I needed to turn me into a Strike Anywhere fan. I think Polar Bear Club is one of the best bands out right now, though. They're who I'm really psyched for on this show. I could listen to Sometimes Things Just Disappear forever, but the band also hasn't put out any bad material yet. Their new album is amazing. As for Crime in Stereo, I really hope they end up blowing me away. I've seen them once before and they were half great, but also half bad. So I guess we'll see how they end up. And as for Ruiner, I'm not a huge fan of them yet, but I really feel like they're going to grow on me. And I have a feeling that their live show is really going to help me get into them. So yeah! That's the show I'm going to next Tuesday. It promises to be a great time.

Today, in the shower (we're about to get steamy in here) I had a great idea for a song. And I realized that I get a whole lot of my song ideas while I'm in the shower. I guess it's because I'm not surrounded by potential distractions in the shower, like I am most other places. But I had this line stuck in my head, and I just started singing it over and over in the shower. It was kind of ridiculous singing a song that doesn't even exist yet in the shower, but that's what I was doing. And I'll hopefully be able to write a pretty killer song around this line. I received some more sagely advice from AJ last night while I was writing last night's entry here. He didn't even really offer it as advice at first. He was just telling me what he does, but it was something to the effect of making sure that you write all the time, and just pick out the good shit as you go along. It just seemed so obvious that I didn't know why I haven't been writing songs this way since I started playing music. But now, after today's shower, I have some good material to go on. I'll be knocking out musical gold left and right soon enough.

But before I take the folk world by storm, I need to hit the hay. Because, as it turns out, I need to wake up at 6:30 in order to bring my brother to school. It's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it. I'm just glad he has his test to get his driver's license soon. I mean the kid is about to turn 18. He should have his license by now. But who am I to complain? It's not like I won't be going right back to bed after I drop his ass off at school. Well that's all for tonight, blogspot viewer. Get psyched for tomorrow's entry. It promises to be the fifth one yet!