I just finished the song “Driving Forever”, the newest song on my upcoming collaboration album. Hope you like it.

Driving Forever – DOWNLOAD – Lyrics

Thanks to the great audio samples from Chris Fudurich, Brian Page, Jeremy Quinn, Tim Godwin, Terry Burton, Daniel Pisciotta, Dave Patrikios, and Jeremy Starpoli.

 
I’ve created a replica of my life in my mind.
A place where we can sleep with the lights off.
I’m no longer angry all of the time,
Lie down in the snow, I know i can die.

 
Follow me home. We are so alone.
We both want a simple life, but it’s not ours to know
Only a matter of time before you go
Love me or not, you still leave me low.

 
Summer is over, autumn leaves blow
My love for you is part regret and part sorrow
You’re crying at the rest stop again
In a foggy haze, this road it never ends
We’ll be driving forever.

 
Driving forever. This road has no end.
We can never be together again.
Only a matter of time before you go
Love me or not you still leave me low.

 
If you’re interested in getting involved in this Creative Commons music collaboration project, check out my Sounds Like You page.

She keeps an eye on my gear. Trying out a Bogner Alchemist (sounds amazing) and a Line 6 M9 (I like it).

Thanks to everyone that came out to the show at Hotel Cafe. This was the first time that State Shirt songs were realized by a full band. And I was lucky to have recruited some amazing musicians.

Dave Patrikios, formerly of the popular NYC rock band The Realistics has been praised as “a fucking excellent drummer” and I was lucky enough to enlist him. Chris Candelaria, bassist with LA band Twinstar also joined on and stepped in with rock solid backing vocals. Michael Ashton joined us on keys and pretty much learned the songs overnight. And Jaime Kime, probably best known as the Grammy award-winning guitarist from Zappa Plays Zappa, stepped in as our official guitar wizard.

Here are some photos from the show… Hope to see you at the next one.

And here are a few pics of Song and Wager, featuring Dave Patrikios on drums. And his wife Mary O’Reilly made a guest appearance for an awesome cover of Iggy Pop and Kate Pierson’s “Candy”…

This is the first time I’ve had contact on a race track. Someone up front missed a shift and we all bunched up. I tried to get the car stopped but didn’t really have anywhere to go. Neck is sore, car has a bent frame (in front of the front suspension). After spending some time removing some bent brackets and broken plastic bits, it does look like it will live to see another race day.

Holy shit I am tired. That was one totally packed weekend of racing in the Willow Springs heat! I ran in two classes (Spec Miata and ITA) which means there was virtually no downtime—I was either in the car on the track or preparing the car for the track. I did manage to get to the track early enough to realize that the desert is quite beautiful in the morning. Though after it hits 100° I start to forget about how beautiful I thought it was.

Surprisingly I managed to earn myself four podium finishes! Saturday: Finished 3rd in the Spec Miata race. Finished 3rd in the ITA race. Sunday: Again finished 3rd in the Spec Miata race. Again finished 3rd in the ITA race. So the 3rd place Spec Miata finishes weren’t much of an accomplishment… in addition to finishing 3rd I was also 2nd to last. That’s what I get in a 4 car field. But the ITA races were a battle between 8 cars, so I’m pretty happy with my 3rd place finishes there.

With so few cars at this event the in-car videos aren’t exactly that interesting… I had one or two lap battles with a few cars and then was pretty much on my own for the rest of the races. So I won’t post any full races but here are some highlights. Luckily no spins but no record lap times either.

I just finished recording a cover of Electronic’s “Disappointed”. I had never even heard the original song until about a month ago. Hell I had never even heard of the band. But there was something really good at the core of this song and I wanted to try a version of my own.

In case you also didn’t know, Electronic were an “alternative dance group formed by New Order singer and guitarist Bernard Sumner and ex-Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr.” Thanks Wikipedia. I’m a fan of both New Order and Johnny Marr. Not sure how I missed this band? The track “Disappointed” is from 1992 and made a dent on US charts, and even features Neil Tennant of Pet Shop Boys on vocals. Though I guess I can see how I missed this song–terrible early 90′s bands like UB40, Snow and Color Me Badd really soured me on pop music at the time. But this Electronic song was fun to dig into.

Here’s my version of Electronic’s “Disappointed”. Click below to play. Hope you like it:

Disappointed – Lyrics

If you could cover a song, what would it be? What other songs should I cover?

And just for fun, here’s the original (and strange) video from 1992. Primitive computer graphics, Neil Tennant looking bored, some dude holding a giant gold sphere. Enjoy

So, the day has finally come. Today is officially Mustache Monday. Though I may keep it for the entire month.

EDIT: Here are the other members of the Mustachathon providing their own personal brand of mustachitude.

Thanks to all the mustache pioneers for making this day possible, here are just a few of the greats: Tom Selleck, Burt Reynolds, Weird Al Yankovick, John Oates, Ned Flanders, Mario, Freddie Mercury, Wilford Brimley, Cap’n Crunch, The Nuge, Frank Zappa, Gene Shalit, Sam Elliott, Salvador Dali and Yosemite Sam.

Over the last year or so I’ve been trying to get rid of stuff. Stuff I never look at, stuff I don’t need, stuff that’s just sitting in a box. After a while it just starts to feel like extra weight, like a burden. Maybe with the exception of the instruments in my studio, I don’t really want to own much of anything at all. I’ve had weird dreams that on the day I die I won’t own anything. Just lying on an old wooden floor of an empty 2nd story apartment. Would certainly make it easier for whoever needs to take care of the situation after I’m gone, all you’d need to deal with is a body.

I have hundreds of these old cassettes just sitting in milk crates and plastic tubs, most of them contain songs I’ve finished, songs I didn’t finish, songs that my friends an I worked on, guitar ideas, horrible synth ideas, live jams, spoken words, songs I love, songs I hate, skits I did with my sister and brothers when I was a kid.

They contain a lot of memories. But they just sit in the closet. Taking up space. Taking up mental space.

I must have spend thousands of hours recording stuff to cassettes. Started with a portable Panasonic recorder, recording what I thought were awesome piano ideas, and incredibly retarded 7-second improvised a cappella songs. I moved up to my mom’s boom-box, and did some crude multi-tracking by playing one tape recorder while recording to another. Sounded amazing, as you may have guessed.

Then finally the day came and I bought a Yamaha MT120 4-track. Came straight home from school every day and sat in front of this machine for 12 hours straight. I must have at least a thousand songs in various states of completion, just sitting there as magnetic particles encased in plastic. From the looks of it, I have at least 100 tapes that I recorded on my Yamaha 4-track, and another 100 tapes that I recorded on a newer Yamaha MT8X 8-track. And at least 60 in my series of “Tune Tapes”, where I’d just record skeleton ideas, musical sketches, guitar parts, keyboard ideas.

What the hell should I do with all of this music?

Let it sit and slowly degrade and demagnetize? Or spend months and months listening through all of this stuff to find the gems? Import the cassettes to my computer? And then do what with it? Now they’ll be sitting on a hard drive instead of in a milk crate.

I could upload unfinished stuff to ccMixter and see if anyone wants to remix it. I could do some sort of strange performance art piece where I do perform the music of one tape per week in various locations around the US. I could actually finish some of these songs I never finished when I was sixteen. Or I could just throw everything away.

After all, they are just memories. Like the photos of my childhood that sit in a shoebox. I look at them every few years, and it refreshes my memory. But it’s also a time that has passed, a time that is getting less and less significant with each passing second.

So, on my last day on this earth, do I really want to still have a crate of cassettes by my side, just to remind me of my past?

Untitled Instrumental
An instrumental I wrote when I was 17 or 18

Q
Wrote this for my friend Scott in ’97

Wrong Planet
My idea of a song, in 1984-ish?

Midnight Cowboy
My friend Adam and I did a cover of Midnight Cowboy (in the style of Faith No More), sometime in high school…

Weggy Wah Solar Neutrino
I like this one. Not sure how to explain it though.

So it’s been a while (6 months) since I’ve been on a race track. And I’m still on my rookie license. So I was quite surprised when I didn’t qualify dead last for my recent race at Willow Springs Raceway. I started 15th out of 22 cars and managed to finish 15th. I lost 5th gear the day before but I still managed to do okay with only 4 gears. Here are a few laps from the race.

And here are a few photos:

We just finished up the music video for the song Fell Out Of The Sky.

Shot over the course of 6 days in the Los Angeles area. Directed and edited by Angela Heine, camera by Ben Clemons, FX and some more editing by me.

Many thanks to all the actors: Darlene Weege, Priscilla Amador, Sean Vega, Janet Consolver, Terry Burton, Bonnie Buckner, Jack Heine, Jinna Kim, Ho Yip Lui, David Patrikios, Samantha Sakabu, Ed Sakabu, Mary O’Reilly and Joshua Chisolm. And thanks to the partygoers: Chris Fudurich, Rachel Cruz, Chad Baker, Erik Tarkiainen, Ashley Tarkiainen, Jaspr, Kyle Tarkiainen, Alexis Sakabu, Lisa Sakabu, Fred Sakabu, Alexis Bright, Katherine Chisolm, Margie Chisolm, Cicely Chisolm, Mark Tapio Kines, Miki Tapio Walsh, Holly Regino, Kevin Becker, Denise Stanlow, Amanda Stanlow, Kim Pendergest, Peter Pendergest, Christopher Avalos, Madeline Wright, Heather Luyando and Cassidy Luyando.

Music inspired by last words on the black box data recorder from Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 182 airplane crash, September 25, 1978. link at planecrashinfo.com

Here’s some photos from the video shoot. More photos are here, here, here and here.

I took a road trip back in October, and when I was in Massachusetts I spent a couple days at Matthew Larsen’s old brick duplex in Holyoke and helped him record a few songs. Go to Matt’s site and listen to the new songs.

Here’s Matt laying down some melodica.

After four very full and busy days, the shooting for the “Fell Out Of The Sky” music video has come to an end. Today was the greatly anticipated party scene, which wouldn’t have been possible without all of our friends, who had to take a break from their busy lives to eat, drink and be merry. Editing for the video starts next week!

Not a whole lot of time for me to take many photos today, so I only have a few to post for now. I’ll try to dig around for some more soon.

Holy crap today was a lengthy and intense day of filming! Tomorrow is the last day, the big fancy party scene. Here are a few photos from today:

So the second day of shooting has come to an end. We got some amazing shots and the actors were all outstanding. One more weekend of filming coming up, and then we’re off to editing! Here are some photos of the day:

Today was the first day of filming for the “Fell Out Of The Sky” music video! The unbearable smoke and ash from the Sylmar fire forced us to change ALL of our locations today, but we were fortunate to find some great alternate locations. All of the actors and crew were great! More shooting tomorrow, and next weekend as well. Here are some photos:

This is what happens when you go to the West Hollywood Halloween Carnival in an incredible Tinky Winky teletubby costume. We were only there about an hour and Angela ended up posing with over 300 people.

(and this is only about 1/2 of the photos!)

Was lucky to see a great show in Greenfield, MA when I was back there a few weeks ago. Was good to see a bunch of people I haven’t seen in years. Urthquake (Bob ex-Squidlaunch) started off the show with his noisy, guitar-loop-filled set, rockin the pointy-headstock guitar. Bromp Treb (featuring Neil of Fat Worm of Error) killed the audience with his spastic, psychy-dubby, insane soundfest complete with two reel-to-reel tape decks and custom tape loops. Truly great.

Dan Friel was up next… I was in the band Squidlaunch with Dan back when I was 18. His music is a lot different but his love for noise has not changed. His new album has been getting a bunch of great reviews. Go check it out. The set was ended with Diagram A. Complete blistering, hypnotizing, intense noise.

I took a bunch of pictures. Here you go.