Friday, March 16, 2007
Stu Man
ladies and gentlemen...its stuart. the drummer. bloggin out from behind the kit to say HOWDY from the great city of austin texas. we kicked ass today: ate crawdads and checked out daniel johnston. tomorrow, more ass kickin and another gig. saturday we play THREE TIMES... doesnt leave much time for ass kickin on THAT day, but we'll squeeze it in..we are SIMON DAWES .so ill leave it like this....ask me whatever you like. im a blogger now..and ..drummers rarely speak. this is your big chance. ask me anything about simon dawes.....and just in advance, im not giving out wylies cell "if thats your question. mom."
Monday, March 12, 2007
Thursday, March 8, 2007
Hush Hush
Yesterday I was on the way to breakfast with my friend Alex and we were on our way to breakfast on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood when we passed Guitar Center, which was packed with a bunch of press people on some bleachers with cameras out in front. Initially, we asked each other if either of us knew what was going on, but we didn't know and we didn't care all that much, so we soon forgot about it. I had meant to stay in Hollywood and have Wylie meet me with some posters that I could go put up in the area for our shows on Friday and Saturday, so until he called me I had to come up with ways to spend time. Alex needed a new practice amp so suggested visiting guitar center, which I normally detest, but yesterday it sounded fun.
When we first parked at the Guitar Center, we both noticed a man behind the car in front of us pushing his car along sunset at perhaps a little faster than a snail's pace. We asked him if he needed any help and said that he needed to push it all the way to the mobil station on Fairfax, which, for those of you not from Los Angeles, is perhaps 3/4 of a mile up from guitar center, and on a busy street like Sunset with yesterday's midday heat, it was quite an undertaking. Anyway, we committed to help the man who turned out to be a self proclaimed ex-LAPD officer who had been gambling for the last 86 hours straight with no sleep and no breaks. By us having to push the car this terrible distance to the gas station rather than having him buy a gas can and bringing it to the car made me assume that the gambling had not gone as well as he had hoped.
During our push, a long haired homeless man started yelling, 'push you bastards!' and then 'Do you need any help?' He was about 5'8'', deeply tanned, thin, wearing board shorts, a t-shirt and holding a drink in a coffee bean cup. As he put it down he said 'if my drink spills, I'm kicking your ass.' When he realized that we were going further than the next available spot on the side of the road, he went back to get his drink and handed it to me in the driver's seat where I was steering as they were pushing. He said, 'Don't spill my drink. It's alcohol.' So we kept pushing, kept sweating and the homeless man kept yelling at us, thinking he was very funny. Once we got to the gas station, the gambler thanked us and Alex and I headed back towards Guitar Center.
When we showed up it was closed for the next 20 minutes because a Kenny Loggins (famous for hits like 'Danger Zone') private show was wrapping itself up. That explained all of the press people there earlier. So while guitar center reassembled it's main show room, we tried killing more time in music stores across the street, and finally the hall of fame, which is a room attached to guitar center filled with rock star paraphenilia (sp?) like guitars, amps, and clothes from people like Bob Dylan, Elvis, Angus Young, Johnny Ramone, Bo Diddley. We were carrying on some aimless conversation while looking at all this gear and then at the end of the room on a table we saw a pair of 'hands.'
Note: In front of the Hollywood Guitar Center, there are cement hand prints of famous artists as a walk way. They're all broken up into small squares so that each individual artist, or in some cases, band, has their own separated spot. I hope I explained that alright.
But the pair of hand prints we saw in the hall of fame should have immediately struck me as odd that they were inside this room rather than outside in the ground, but due to our wandering conversation, I wasn't paying a lot of attention to it and walked up, perhaps mainly as an impulse, the way anybody would, I placed my left hand into the indented left hand and Alex touched it with his thumb which turned out to still be wet cement, and I looked up at the name above the hands which read 'Kenny Loggins'. This meant that at his private show, Kenny Loggins made his own set of cement hands to be added to the collection out in front of the store. My hand was now covered in cement, which I jammed into my pocket to keep from anyone who worked there from seeing me. Alex and I could not understand why it would be left out unprotected like that, but we were grateful for no one catching us. And at the very worst, it truly was an honest mistake. The point of this entire story is that I have now replaced the left hand of Kenny Loggins on the Guitar Center walkway. If anyone gets a chance to make it out there, know that if you look at Kenny Loggins' spot, you're not seeing his hand print, you're seeing mine. Yesterday, I became immortalized.
I apologize for the long story, but I thought it was funny and thought you could appreciate something like that. Even though I've put it up on the blog, make sure that no one runs to Guitar Center to tell them what happened. They're be no proof and I will just deny it if I have to, but that would be lying.
TOMORROW'S AN ALL AGES SHOW IN LA AT SAFARI SAM'S.
Talk to everyone soon.
taylor
When we first parked at the Guitar Center, we both noticed a man behind the car in front of us pushing his car along sunset at perhaps a little faster than a snail's pace. We asked him if he needed any help and said that he needed to push it all the way to the mobil station on Fairfax, which, for those of you not from Los Angeles, is perhaps 3/4 of a mile up from guitar center, and on a busy street like Sunset with yesterday's midday heat, it was quite an undertaking. Anyway, we committed to help the man who turned out to be a self proclaimed ex-LAPD officer who had been gambling for the last 86 hours straight with no sleep and no breaks. By us having to push the car this terrible distance to the gas station rather than having him buy a gas can and bringing it to the car made me assume that the gambling had not gone as well as he had hoped.
During our push, a long haired homeless man started yelling, 'push you bastards!' and then 'Do you need any help?' He was about 5'8'', deeply tanned, thin, wearing board shorts, a t-shirt and holding a drink in a coffee bean cup. As he put it down he said 'if my drink spills, I'm kicking your ass.' When he realized that we were going further than the next available spot on the side of the road, he went back to get his drink and handed it to me in the driver's seat where I was steering as they were pushing. He said, 'Don't spill my drink. It's alcohol.' So we kept pushing, kept sweating and the homeless man kept yelling at us, thinking he was very funny. Once we got to the gas station, the gambler thanked us and Alex and I headed back towards Guitar Center.
When we showed up it was closed for the next 20 minutes because a Kenny Loggins (famous for hits like 'Danger Zone') private show was wrapping itself up. That explained all of the press people there earlier. So while guitar center reassembled it's main show room, we tried killing more time in music stores across the street, and finally the hall of fame, which is a room attached to guitar center filled with rock star paraphenilia (sp?) like guitars, amps, and clothes from people like Bob Dylan, Elvis, Angus Young, Johnny Ramone, Bo Diddley. We were carrying on some aimless conversation while looking at all this gear and then at the end of the room on a table we saw a pair of 'hands.'
Note: In front of the Hollywood Guitar Center, there are cement hand prints of famous artists as a walk way. They're all broken up into small squares so that each individual artist, or in some cases, band, has their own separated spot. I hope I explained that alright.
But the pair of hand prints we saw in the hall of fame should have immediately struck me as odd that they were inside this room rather than outside in the ground, but due to our wandering conversation, I wasn't paying a lot of attention to it and walked up, perhaps mainly as an impulse, the way anybody would, I placed my left hand into the indented left hand and Alex touched it with his thumb which turned out to still be wet cement, and I looked up at the name above the hands which read 'Kenny Loggins'. This meant that at his private show, Kenny Loggins made his own set of cement hands to be added to the collection out in front of the store. My hand was now covered in cement, which I jammed into my pocket to keep from anyone who worked there from seeing me. Alex and I could not understand why it would be left out unprotected like that, but we were grateful for no one catching us. And at the very worst, it truly was an honest mistake. The point of this entire story is that I have now replaced the left hand of Kenny Loggins on the Guitar Center walkway. If anyone gets a chance to make it out there, know that if you look at Kenny Loggins' spot, you're not seeing his hand print, you're seeing mine. Yesterday, I became immortalized.
I apologize for the long story, but I thought it was funny and thought you could appreciate something like that. Even though I've put it up on the blog, make sure that no one runs to Guitar Center to tell them what happened. They're be no proof and I will just deny it if I have to, but that would be lying.
TOMORROW'S AN ALL AGES SHOW IN LA AT SAFARI SAM'S.
Talk to everyone soon.
taylor
Thursday, March 1, 2007
Noisepopping
We're in Berkeley. We drove through the night, or rather, Blake drove us through the night. Thank Blake. We spent this morning eating sandwhiches, visiting music stores, visiting book stores and seeing all of these northern california friends of ours that we rarely get to see. We'll be driving into the city in about an hour to hang out before the show tonight.
Simon Dawes Trivia: For any Like friends that read this blog, listen carefully to who sings at the very end of Lazy Daisy. Z BERG. I thought that'd make some of you happy to know that.
Here's another demo of a new song. My girlfriend Josie and friend Matt were cleaning up beer bottles as I recorded it. You'll be able to hear that. As well as Josie calling for 'finch' who happens to be my dog. It's called Bedside Manner...Tell me what you think.
Bedside Manner
Here are the lyrics for anyone interested in that sort of thing...
There's sometime as a much older man
I will sit down and put on this song
It just might make me cry
Or at the very least a tear in my eye
I can't take all these years of my life
to be widdled down into a thought
That only appeals to the ear
I need memories perfectly clear
I just wanna be making my mind
Keep from changing my mind not to change
'Cause I'm greedy as the sea
And that's how I hope it always will be
I'll be somebody now and somebody then
And all of you all in between
And then I'll be ready to leave
When everyone's taken with me
Cause there's so many days in a year
And so many years in my head
So I think about when I'll be dead
And how those very last moments are spent
And if I think about you
Is that something you think you'd accept?
Taylor
Simon Dawes Trivia: For any Like friends that read this blog, listen carefully to who sings at the very end of Lazy Daisy. Z BERG. I thought that'd make some of you happy to know that.
Here's another demo of a new song. My girlfriend Josie and friend Matt were cleaning up beer bottles as I recorded it. You'll be able to hear that. As well as Josie calling for 'finch' who happens to be my dog. It's called Bedside Manner...Tell me what you think.
Bedside Manner
Here are the lyrics for anyone interested in that sort of thing...
There's sometime as a much older man
I will sit down and put on this song
It just might make me cry
Or at the very least a tear in my eye
I can't take all these years of my life
to be widdled down into a thought
That only appeals to the ear
I need memories perfectly clear
I just wanna be making my mind
Keep from changing my mind not to change
'Cause I'm greedy as the sea
And that's how I hope it always will be
I'll be somebody now and somebody then
And all of you all in between
And then I'll be ready to leave
When everyone's taken with me
Cause there's so many days in a year
And so many years in my head
So I think about when I'll be dead
And how those very last moments are spent
And if I think about you
Is that something you think you'd accept?
Taylor
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Ugh
Anybody have to deal with Myspace's pathetic bullshit today? Those bastards just outbid the EPA for "Worst Organization In The History Of Life God Damnit".
Upon having the SD account "phished" for the second time this weeek, I was prompted to yet again renew our password... Only I couldnt renew the password because one of the fields wouldnt transfer information (you know, the one where you have to retype the warped letters in the box? thanks you acid-burnout-google-tech-weenies. you can sleep easy, I'm a real human).
Myspace should hear about this dillema. I'll "Contact Customer Service"! Only the same moron who fucked up the Password Page must have doomed this one, because i couldnt edit a "sub-catagory" information field, and in turn, had no (obvious) way of reporting my problem.
In the meantime, I'd tried to post a new blog, and Safari froze my iChat. "WTF". Added bonus: It was right in the middle of a file transfer. Otis Rush's sideproject "Snatch and the Poontangs" is looking a bit more like "Snatch Poo" on my desktop.
Our Monday nights at the Echo are over. The final show was total glory. Spaceland Recordings taped the whole thing. Should be available soon on their site. I'll keep on it. In the meantime, here's a quick demo of a new one called Hiroshima Song.
Woo Hoo, Hoo Hoo, Hoo Hoo
Looking forward to a couple days in San Francisco this weekend. NoisePop Festival. Then a couple more dates in LA, then a big ass SXSW trip.
Also a tour in the works for April...
ta ta,
blake
Upon having the SD account "phished" for the second time this weeek, I was prompted to yet again renew our password... Only I couldnt renew the password because one of the fields wouldnt transfer information (you know, the one where you have to retype the warped letters in the box? thanks you acid-burnout-google-tech-weenies. you can sleep easy, I'm a real human).
Myspace should hear about this dillema. I'll "Contact Customer Service"! Only the same moron who fucked up the Password Page must have doomed this one, because i couldnt edit a "sub-catagory" information field, and in turn, had no (obvious) way of reporting my problem.
In the meantime, I'd tried to post a new blog, and Safari froze my iChat. "WTF". Added bonus: It was right in the middle of a file transfer. Otis Rush's sideproject "Snatch and the Poontangs" is looking a bit more like "Snatch Poo" on my desktop.
Our Monday nights at the Echo are over. The final show was total glory. Spaceland Recordings taped the whole thing. Should be available soon on their site. I'll keep on it. In the meantime, here's a quick demo of a new one called Hiroshima Song.
Woo Hoo, Hoo Hoo, Hoo Hoo
Looking forward to a couple days in San Francisco this weekend. NoisePop Festival. Then a couple more dates in LA, then a big ass SXSW trip.
Also a tour in the works for April...
ta ta,
blake
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Welcome Rain
I ain't in to fat lippin, I'm in to gat grippin
A cat's slippin, is a cat drippin
Why I say that? the cat's slippin, the Mac's spittin
The cat drippin, look in the mirror you's a fat kitten
Puuusssssssssssssyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy-ah
-Clipse
Made this at home the other day. There's more rain in it than Seattle.
2_17_07.mp3
-Blake
A cat's slippin, is a cat drippin
Why I say that? the cat's slippin, the Mac's spittin
The cat drippin, look in the mirror you's a fat kitten
Puuusssssssssssssyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy-ah
-Clipse
Made this at home the other day. There's more rain in it than Seattle.
2_17_07.mp3
-Blake
The Manifest Destiny
Our 3rd of 4 Echo shows went very well. It seemed to be the best turn out so far, surprisingly. I've never been very familiar with how these residencies worked, so I assumed there wouldn't be many people present after the first 2 weeks, but lo and behold...
Also, our good friends and GREAT band BlackBlack opened the show, which was a treat for everyone.
Our set list for the more curious...
Love is After Me
Be There Right Now
Wilderness
Bedside Manner (for Wilderness and Bedside Manner, our good buddy Alex Greenwald from the bands Phantom Planet and BlackBlack came onstage and played with us)
Every Single Time
Dead Ends (by Chad Vangaalen off of 'Skelliconnection.' Go listen to it)
Like It's Something (which you can hear 2 blogs down from this)
Blood and Guts
Awful Things
Bad Directions
So one more show at the Echo and then off to San Francisco for noisepop. All of you Bay Area kids know about this already, right? If not, look at our myspace or website (perhaps more credible than anything I'd say on a blog). We're also hoping to set up a show with the Morning Benders as well while we're up there but I don't know the status on it.
And anyone who hasn't heard 'Miniature Tigers' needs to. It's our good friend Charlie Brand's band and he makes really great music.
RECAP:
BAND MENTIONED IN THIS BLOG:
Black Black
Phantom Planet
Chad Vangaalen
The Morning Benders
Miniature Tigers
Everybody should take time to check out every single one of those if you haven't heard them already. We're starting a family!
Lastly, I've done some drawings recently and I wanted to show everyone and get some input. Maybe for shirts? Posters? Website? Record Covers? Overall Simon Dawes artwork style? What do you think? You can click on them to make them bigger
Alright, I will talk to everyone very very very very soon,
Taylor
Also, our good friends and GREAT band BlackBlack opened the show, which was a treat for everyone.
Our set list for the more curious...
Love is After Me
Be There Right Now
Wilderness
Bedside Manner (for Wilderness and Bedside Manner, our good buddy Alex Greenwald from the bands Phantom Planet and BlackBlack came onstage and played with us)
Every Single Time
Dead Ends (by Chad Vangaalen off of 'Skelliconnection.' Go listen to it)
Like It's Something (which you can hear 2 blogs down from this)
Blood and Guts
Awful Things
Bad Directions
So one more show at the Echo and then off to San Francisco for noisepop. All of you Bay Area kids know about this already, right? If not, look at our myspace or website (perhaps more credible than anything I'd say on a blog). We're also hoping to set up a show with the Morning Benders as well while we're up there but I don't know the status on it.
And anyone who hasn't heard 'Miniature Tigers' needs to. It's our good friend Charlie Brand's band and he makes really great music.
RECAP:
BAND MENTIONED IN THIS BLOG:
Black Black
Phantom Planet
Chad Vangaalen
The Morning Benders
Miniature Tigers
Everybody should take time to check out every single one of those if you haven't heard them already. We're starting a family!
Lastly, I've done some drawings recently and I wanted to show everyone and get some input. Maybe for shirts? Posters? Website? Record Covers? Overall Simon Dawes artwork style? What do you think? You can click on them to make them bigger
Alright, I will talk to everyone very very very very soon,
Taylor
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