PLACES AND NUMBERS

I got the final mixes of the new Places and Numbers ep from Casey Bates tonight.  I am stoked.  I absolutely love this process.  I get such a kick out of writing and recording music and having Casey make it sound awesome.  There’s nothing like it and nothing I enjoy more.  We are launching a a new myspace layout to coincide with the new ep.  Cyndi always emails me and asks me to approve things and my only thoughts on it were that the background color is kind of poop brown and makes me queasy.  I probably could have kept that to myself but I know she gets bummed when I don’t reply to her emails.  So anyway I’m very excited for you guys to hear the Notes From The Dead Zone ep!

I caught a matinee of Ben Affleck’s The Town this weekend.  The critical buzz about the film was pretty significant so my expectations were high, but I’m pleased to say they were met and then some.  The Town is pretty much what it looks like – a gritty bank-robber flick set in Boston.  But there’s something really cool about the film that you can’t quite put your finger on.  It feels like I’ve seen a dozen movies like this, but none so lean.  The fat has been trimmed, the characters feel real and don’t do exactly what you expect them to do.  Instead of being the bank robber with a heart of gold, Affleck’s Doug MacRay feels authentic.  He’s damaged and he knows it, though he can’t exactly put it into words.  We care about Doug, which makes the amazingly orchestrated action sequences carry so much more weight.  I was exhausted from gripping my armrest for much of the film’s length.  It’s refreshing how cliche-free The Town is, especially considering that it covers well-trodden cops and robbers territory and was sure to be compared to classics like Heat and The Departed.  It stands up to the comparison and carves out its own unique niche in the genre.  Highly recommended.

You know old people are bummed.  They figured we would be in flying cars and living on the moon and that they would have a personal robot going in to the office for them at this point in their lives.  It’s true, look back at pop culture when they were our age and you can’t tell me they’re not disappointed as hell that life isn’t like it is on the Jetsons.  Their retirements have been eaten up by the recession, they are upside-down on the second mortgages they took out to put their kids through school, and they never got to do what they wanted with their lives because they were planning for that future when everything was going to be amazing.  I’m not dogging them, I have nothing but respect for my elders.  I’m sure we will all be bummed out when we are their age.  But it seems like a mass conspiracy that they aren’t all freaking out at this point.  What if they’re all playing it cool because they don’t want our generation to panic and stop paying into social security?  It makes sense, social security isn’t supposed to become insolvent until it’s time for our generation to retire, and by then old people won’t have to worry about it because they’ll be in heaven.

It’s a terrible fear of mine that some of my favorite records are going to be forgotten. So I thought I’d take a moment every now and then to point out a long lost treasure. Frank Black, which is Frank Black’s debut solo record, is such a treasure. Recorded during and released just after the demise of the Pixies in 1993, Frank Black has always been and will always be the musical benchmark of my beloved 90′s alt-rock. I have purchased this record at least 3 times over the years (after losing my physical copies and my old iBook completely dying) and every time it is like reuniting with an old friend. The record still sounds incredible and the songs are as relevant as ever. When people complain about music today but can’t put their finger on what the problem is exactly, I recommend they listen to Frank Black so they can hear what used to be right in music. I recently went to the theater to catch Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and I was pleasantly surprised to hear “I Heard Ramona Sing” (one of my favorite tracks from the record) featured prominently when Scott sees Ramona Flowers at a party.  If you find yourself apathetic towards music and generally uninspired as an artist, give Frank Black a spin and be prepared to feel refreshed. (note:  Frank Black is currently unavailable on the US version of iTunes, you have to change over to the Australian version of the site to buy it.)

I’m playing a show at El Corazon in Seattle on September 10 and my backing band is Gatsbys American Dream.

I guess it’s been almost a month since my last post  so I figured (actually Cyndi figured, go figure) that it was time to post something.  I get a little un-bloggy when I’m not actively doing music stuff on a day-to-day basis because I can’t see how my personal life would be interesting to anybody, so I apologize if that’s not the case.  What have I done in the past month?  Well I finished out the remaining dates of the Dangerous Summer/The Morning Of Tour.  Good times were had and I think I will be friends with these kids for a long time.  On our day off between Spokane and Salt Lake City, I flew to Vegas and partied hard and actually made some good money.  It’s a nice perk of my job with the airline that I can just fly from concert to concert when I’m on tour and there’s no way I’m gonna hang out in Salt Lake City on a day off if I don’t have to.  After the tour I went back to work as a flight attendant in NYC, not as fun as tour but I actually make money and I get to give people soda pop and peanuts even if they yell at me.  It’s a glamorous life let me tell you.  On a day-off in New York I flew up to Albany to hang with my favorite record label Equal Vision Records.  It was nice getting to spend some quality time with the people who make it possible for me to play music, and once again I was pinching myself wondering how I got so lucky to have such a great team.  A couple days later I played an acoustic performance at Angels and Kings in Manhattan.  That was a blast.  It is not the pretentious wannabe-hipster-filled place you might expect it to be.  Actually a lot of the bars in Seattle are more like that than Angels and Kings.  It was super fun, the guys running the show were awesome and I had a bunch of friends out and I got really silly by night’s end because said friends kept buying me tequila shots.  I know I speak for many New Yorkers when I say it wouldn’t be a bad idea for there to be sick-bags on the Long Island Railroad when you’re heading back to Queens after a night in the city.  Now I’m back in Seattle and I’ve been pretty booked up with my good friend Casey’s wedding shenanigans.  Which is great because I get to hang out with some of my best friends for a couple weeks, what more could a guy ask for? Plus I’m the best man (no big deal) and I was in charge of organizing the bachelor trip.  All the groomsmen plus a couple tag-alongs stayed at this amazing cabin on the Wenatchee River this weekend.  We partied and fished and tubed the river, it was pretty much the coolest bachelor party that I’ve heard of.  That’s just what I bring to the table, I highly recommend choosing myself as a best man if you are getting married.  Contact Cyndi at clynott@stilettoentertainment.com for details.  So now I’m just hanging out in Seattle because the rehearsal dinner is in 3 days and then Casey’s wedding is 3 days after that.  So in my down time I’ve actually been recording some new demos and I am pretty excited about these new tunes.  I’m happy with how my control is coming along singing-wise, I’m still getting used to the idea of me singing and it’s a pleasant surprise that these demos are sounding good with no real editing to speak of.  I think singing every night on the last two tours has done me some good, thank goodness.  So anyway, hope you all are doing well, I’m just about done with this rambling only at-times-entertaining post.  I’ll try to blog a little more frequently as long as Cyndi keeps bugging me to, so please come back occasionally.  Oh and please email caseybates@mac.com and tell him you are in a band and you have that new sound he is looking for.  Even if you’re not in a band.

Cyndi is making me blog more about being on tour.  I know I know just what you wanted to hear, a guy in a band talking about being on tour.  But at the end of the day powerful women make most of my decisions for me so I’m just gonna have to roll with the punches.

In order to appease Cyndi while keeping my blog fun for me, I’ll try to distill the last few days down to key events.

While my tourmates made the 7 hour drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco, I was flying overhead, fast asleep in my first class seat.  The flight was only a little over an hour,  after which I caught a train into downtown SFO.  I dropped my stuff off at my hotel and went to catch Inception again.  Cyndi has some good theories about Inception so make sure to email her at clynott@stilettoentertainment.com if you want to chat about it.  I had an enormous chili burger and a peanut butter/banana milkshake for lunch to celebrate a a glorious day day.  The show at Bottom of the Hill was awesome, there was much debauchery afterwards and somehow I ended up at a bar with The Morning of where a large Mexican transvestite was singing, “That’s the way uh huh uh huh I like it uh huh.”  The next morning I ate a gigantic freshly cooked crab on the wharf, which made my hands smell like fish all day.  That is pretty much the only thing worth mentioning about that day because the Sacramento show was boosh aside from a handful of nice kids.  We had a day off the following day, so I flew to Seattle before driving down to the Portland show with my brother Billy and my best bud Jayme.  We had a pre-funk party at this sweet bar called XV with The Morning Of.  We probably ordered like 30 or 40 $1 Pabsts and the bartender bought us a round of shots so we were definitely in fine form for the concert that night.  The show in Seattle was fun and we had a raging party at Casey Bates house afterwards.  Casey tried to Ice (Icing is handing someone a Smirnoff Ice, which they are then forced to drink on one knee) Jayme, but Jayme had a Smirnoff in his pocket, thus deflecting the Ice and forcing Casey to drink both drinks.  I know it sounds retarded but when you’re drinking it is quite entertaining.  So now I am sitting in a mall in Spokane, waiting for the other bands to get here.  I flew in this morning and I actually think this town is pretty cool.  We have a day off tomorrow and I may fly down to Vegas for the day before the Salt Lake show on Monday.  Touring is so rough.

Tour stories are fun, but I can’t stand when bands say stuff like, ” Hey we’re playing such-and-such town tonight, who’s ready to rock out?”  If you see messages like that on my blog or on my Facebook or Myspace it’s because my manager Cyndi wrote it pretending to be me and she thinks that’s how band people talk.

Speaking of which if you are really bored, lonely or want to discuss “the Bizkit” you should totally e-mail clynott@stilettoentertainment.com because Cyndi would love to spend some quality time with you.

The last couple shows have been such a blast.  My friend Nick from this band called Raining and OK picked me up from the airport in Phoenix the day before yesterday.  We just randomly decided to have him play drums that night without ever rehearsing together or anything and it was flipping awesome.  So instead of flying out to San Diego for the show yesterday, we grabbed the RAOK guitar player Austin and drove out and the two of them played with me last night too.  Austin had never rehearsed with us either, he just kind of figured out the songs on the drive out and made the magic happen and it was the most fun I’ve had on stage in years and years.

Except for this creepy kid with a blonde mustache talking about boners and porn and acting like he was on crack between songs.  He was obviously a Places and Numbers fan.

“You played a great first round.” This guy is such a tool.