I ordered the new Helio Sequence on vinyl when the pre-sale started the other day. While I waited I remembered thinking about how annoying it is to get a vinyl and not be able to easily transfer it to other media. And how, really, can't I just get a free mp3 download when I buy the record? Then, sure enough, Keep Your Eyes Ahead shows up on my doorstep with a sticker on front announcing the inclusion of a coupon for a free mp3 download. How about that? Plus I got all that other cool stuff... SubPop sticker (as always), KYEA sticker, KYEA ahead button, and a CD with some outtakes. I dunno, but that's a package for which I'm more than happy to shell out a few dollars.

I am, when trying to write about music, loathe to attempt a track-by-track review of any sort. I tried it once, and it was awful. I realized that and then realized that the only thing about which I am qualified to write is that which I feel. That often turns into a huge mish-mash of run-on sentences and inside jokes that only I get. Which is fine since I'm only writing for myself. Now, as I attempt to think what I feel, it's impossible for me to get away from the opening cut without saying something. There's really nothing original about the subject matter of Lately, and the song itself is pretty straight forward. If, however, there was a *type* of song that makes me cry, it's this. It's an easy idea to butcher, but this was done beautifully. The production and playing were both crystal clear and razor sharp (as they were throughout the album), and Brandon's voice soared and every word was placed perfectly. Easily one of the most beautifully painful things I've allowed myself to experience in quite some time. There's never an admission that every word of the song is a lie, but you can feel it. It's heavy and, at the same time, promises freedom. If you just put it down on paper. Put it in a song. Making it concrete makes it real, right? But no... no it doesn't. I didn't come away from their show in Charlotte feeling like this song is as amazing as I think it is now. But, really... just fantastic.

So... there's that. I tried to stay with Brandon's vocals, but the words quickly desolved halfway through the 2nd song, and his voice really became another instrument playing its part in a well choreographed tete-a-tete between space and sound. Now I purposefully did not listen to the record on myspace before I had it in hand... there's something about sitting in a room listening to music for the first time; I didn't want to ruin it. But they must have really been proud of these songs b/c they played most of them at the aforementioned show. I'm sure that had some effect on me as the next songs melded together, and I let them wash over me with a mild sense of comfort and familiarity. I'm spastic and fidgety enough that perhaps the highest compliment I can give to anything is that I was able to sit, unmoving, doing nothing else and not wondering what I would be doing next. It was soothing in such a strange way. I could feel the music slowly trying to pull some sort of low-level sadness out of me as it went by. And then Shed Your Love came on. A pretty atypical song for me to enjoy. No drums. Just Brandon picking a guitar and channeling shades of Bob Dylan with some neat production stuff going on in the background. Its placement on the record definitely helped the long, and it really pulls you out of the electronic beep-boops that are so often prevalent in Helio Sequence songs. Highly highly unexpected... both its presence on the record and that I'd actually like it. End Side 1.

Tangent... I'll try to make this quick... I was lucky enough to have been around real musicians a few times during the all-important final step of making an album. Figuring out the tracklist. I may have mentioned this before, but KYEA was done so perfectly that I just had to mention it again. A record has 2 first songs and 2 last songs. What those songs are is important. What if I Want You wasn't the last song on Abbey Road? That's all I'm really going to say about that except that the experience of listening to this album is greatly enhanced by the pause after Shed Your Love. (oh, and there was a big pause in the middle of the theatrical release of Lawrence of Arabia too...)

And there's a pause in the middle of this blog post... So, Side 2. Side 1 got you all good and depressed but not really sure why b/c it mostly sounds poppy and happy, and then they kick you with that last track and follow it up with the title track to open Side 2. The power of the pause. The effect is very mildly jarring as I listen to it now on iTunes... But Keep Your Eyes Ahead is a fantasticly hopeful and forward looking (duh) song. Red All-Stars. That's what it makes me think of. Sadly, it ends in a fade-out. One of those that seems to start fast and then just last a little longer than it should. So there's my one initial complaint about this record. The remaining four songs were all new to me, which was nice. I couldn't help but feeling Beck mixed with Primative Radio Gods on Back to This, which was strange... But both of which are good things. Side 2 kind of did this sin curve thing. Keep Your Eyes Ahead was definitely the highest peak, then we dipped a little for Back to This and then back up just a little for Hallelujah, and it was a great ride. I like Hallelujah a little bit more each time I hear it. There's a lot of noise, and the lyrics got lost very easily. Pretty sure I got the general idea tho. And Brandon's really got a fantastic voice. And then Broken Afternoon. I wasn't completely sure what to make of this. Initially b/c I just knew it was signalling, all too soon, the end of the record. Then b/c, well, where is Benjamin?? And then, why do I keep hearing Bob Dylan and Dan Bern? And, lastly, wtf is this? Dog Faced Boy? (No ophphense) I know it's a sign of weakness to fall into making comparisons, but it's all I've got at this point. The record ends with such an odd little ditty that it leaves me rather confused... As a whole, Keep Your Eyes Ahead holds up better as an album than Love and Distance. Largely b/c L&D played like Cooleyhighharmony with it's divided sides, and KYEA flowed in and out and played much smoother overall. Also the overall production quality is amazing with nothing seeming out of place and everything feeling as though it was meticulously planned and very carefully put together. Aside from that fade-out. My only other complaint? 37 minutes long.

How sad it was that we could not believe And everyone who believes And everyone who believes And they said, "We all said hallelujah" "We all said hallelujah" And everyone moves around with ease And everyone fell right to their knees and then, "We all said hallelujah" "We all said hallelujah" "We don't want answers anyway"

Labels: music

I mentioned The Spectre the other day in passing. I guess in the mid to late 90's it was, hands down, one of my favorite books. I'm in the midst of re-reading the series; it's still really good, but maybe not quite as amazing as I remembered it being. Isn't that usually the case tho? Regardless, I finished scanning them all, and I thought it'd be neat to take a picture of the set. Not that it's worth anything or whatever, but I'd reckon there aren't that many people still holding on to their complete sets of this title. Plus, it's got to be one of the best sets for consistantly amazing covers. In, of course, my humble opinion. And none of them are by Dave McKean... Eh.
Also, I got the new Helio Sequence vinyl today... more on that later. I'm going to listen to it for the first time now.

Labels: Comic Books

I was reading ninjaturtles.com the other day and happened upon this post: (excerpt)

TMNT Volume Four issues #1-7 are now available for legal download at www.WOWIO.com!

WOWIO is currently only available for U.S. residents and to sign up for their free downloading service (limited to three books per day) you'll need a private e-mail address (i.e. you can't use major providers such as Google, Yahoo, G-Mail, etc.), a scan of a personal I.D. or a valid credit card. See their site for more details.

So I checked it out. The registration process was kind of annoying, but not too bad. It wasn't just a Log-in, Verify, You're done process. Had to wait a day, but that's cool. Just finished downloading Issues 1-3. I've got the comics, but this will be cool to have. Especially since I have to re-read everything to be ready for the forthcoming new issue. It's been well over a year... or at it feels that way... since the last TMNT came out.

Regardless... the pdf's look cool and volume 4 has, in my opinion, been really good stuff. Worth checking out for free at least.

You can also read the original series for free online... Issue 1, Page 1

Enjoy!
Or not...
But don't say I never gave you anything.

Labels: Books, Comic Books

Al Feldstein is going to be at HeroesCon this year, and I wanted something Quality to get signed. I was sort of working on collecting this series anyway, and the new HC collections are really fantastic. Going to get him to personalize the HC's and get this one CGC'd Signature Series. yep. :) There's a non-color-breaking crease on the front bottom right corner, which made it a million times more affordable b/c the rest of the book is gorgeous. And it presents very very nicely. Only 16 more issues to go...

Labels: Comic Books

There was a little comic book convention on my birthday. Which was nice. And I went. I had 4 potential goals in mind. I needed to find TMNT #4, Grendel #2, Daredevil #131, or Daredevil #168. But only in VF/NM or better. I've been mildly cannibalizing my complete Daredevil run lately... pulling out the low grade mess and replacing them with prettier books, and that's mostly what I'm working on. No one ever has the Grendel or TMNT anyway. Lots of 131's, but nothing in grade. And lots of 168's too... many of them close, but all of them had that ugly printer's mark or whatever across the lightning bolt. Except for one. I passed on a slabbed 9.2 (with the mark) for the exact same price; I was afraid for a bit that I'd made a mistake, but I'm not a big fan of buying CGC except in rare cases, so to hell with that. I don't think it's the 9.4 the dealer claimed, but it's still a very pretty book for the exact price I had planned to pay. Very cool. :) So now I'd like to find the Grendel prior to HeroesCon since Matt Wagner will be there, and then the only thing I'll be looking for is a DD1. I need to start saving. Right now it's looking pretty grim. Donations are accepted.
Back in the early 90's when, unbeknownst to me, the comic book industry was shooting itself in the face, I was finding a new outlet for escape and imagination, and it all seemed amazing. In 1992, my imagination got a little push when Will and his dad took me to see Alien 3 in Asheville. Being a wide-eyed 14 year-old who had yet been exposed to the earlier Scott & Cameron masterpieces (screw you, Titanic!), I thought Alien 3 was the coolest damn thing I had ever seen. And, at the time, it likely was the coolest thing I had seen. Somehow I convinced my mom to give me the trilogy on VHS for Christmas, and I decided that the Alien would be one of my favorite things. Now I knew that there had been some Alien comics published by some non-Marvel comic company called Dark Horse. But there was no way I was going to afford a comic that costs multiples of $5! So I waited... And then there were rumors of some crazy book about Aliens fighting the Predator creature. But, living in shitetown, we didn't actually have a comic store, so that book came and went, and the price soon put it out of my grasp as well. So it was with no small amount of elation that I (again with Will) walked in the now-defunct Super Giant Comics in Asheville and saw Aliens Vs. Predator #1 sitting on top of a stack of WildC.A.T.s for $5. I remember talking to the owner about how cool it was going to be and how, despite his protestations, I was "pulling for" the Aliens. So I snatched it up along with a copy of the super-shiny WildC.A.T.s #2 and headed home. Honestly, I don't recall actually reading the thing, but I do remember feeling pretty let down once I finished the book. Much to my chagrin, #1 was, in fact, #1 OF FOUR. But, dammit, I read #1 10 or 15 times, passed it around school, and it even hung on the wall in my room for a short time. Before too terribly long, I managed to find a copy of #3, and I subjected it to the equal brutality of a teenager trying to be cool. Whatever that means. I read it a lot. Quite some time later, I was at the creepy comic store in Boone called, I think, "The Dragon's Den." In the back, you could pull out long boxes full of comics stored in crappy bags with dirty tape on them as a statue of Vampirella or something made sure you didn't have sticky fingers. I couldn't believe it when I stumbled upon a vein of all Aliens comics...
	I remember finding the complete series for Aliens: Hive and Aliens: Genocide all while finding myself in awe at the sheer number of Aliens comics in existence. The last thing I picked up was a copy of Alien: Earth War #1. The John Bolton art on the cover is still gorgeous to me today. Not only did I find this amazing stash of new stuff, but I also picked up Aliens Vs. Predator #'s 0 (?!?!) and 2. That had to have been one of the coolest trips to a comic store I had ever made! While the two new stories I picked up were a lot of fun in their own right, they still weren't Aliens Vs. Predator. And I STILL didn't know how the story ended. And then I just got sucked in by the Bolton art on the cover of Earth War. The interiors (by a (barely) post-Sandman Sam Kieth) actually left a little to be desired vis-à-vis the cover art, and the story was a little difficult to follow. But I didn't care; I wanted to like it so much I wrote a hundred different stories in my head to go along with the cover art. But I never did find the endings to these stories; my loose issues languished in my comic boxes for years... Not long thereafter, the owner of Super Giant got me reading The Sandman and The Spectre (I can only assume it was b/c I dressed funny), and my torrid love affair with brain eating bugs from space slowly faded away. I always kept my eyes open tho. The last panel from issue #3 with the Predator stranded above the Alien horde below facing a certain doom has been burned into my brain for over a decade. This past weekend I finally finished the story. 15 years later, and I can stop worrying about that poor Predator being left to the wolves. And I can stop wondering what happens when the Aliens are unleashed on Earth. Really, Earth War wasn't that great, IMHO. Except, right... the covers. And occasionally, Kieth did some really great stuff with the pencil. But Aliens Vs. Predator was perfect. I put my 14 year-old brain back in, and all the pieces fit, and it was... well... 1994 again.
It would be remiss of me to neglect to mention that I never would have even thought to look for these books this past weekend. Brooke and Allison required that I buy comics with the unnecessary birthday present(s) they gave me. I found a really nice copy of TMNT #8 that I needed, but that didn't really take care of my budget, so I just kept digging through rows and rows of long boxes. I think I spent longer at this show than I ever have looking for things that I actually wanted instead of things that struck my fancy at the moment. I had nowhere to be and nothing else I had to do. It was strange. And quite rather nice. So I had the time and the motivation(????) to find and do what I wanted for a little while and not feel bad about it. Whatever that means. I think this was supposed to be about comics. But thanks Allison, and thanks Brooke. Then, after the show, we went to the Bobcats game, and they actually won. Gerald Wallace is such a badass.

Labels: Comic Books

ok, wow, holy shit. Seriously... do not watch this if you can't stomach violence towards animals. There's nothing gory until the very very end, but still I cringe. Hurray for China.

Trent Reznor for peta2.com

tonight's most shining example of brilliance on Fox News Edge: "everyone's gotta get pregnant sometime." phoned in by "Eutica" in response to, "Is getting pregnant becoming a trend in Hollywood?" *sigh*

loves Ray.

I guess that, while I'm posting terrible random pictures, here are our terrible random pictures from when Thomas decided to grace us with his presence for a few hours before going back to China.
I am 98% certain that I took this photo. It is a fairly normal photo of fairly normal looking people doing fairly normal looking things. (losing at Crainium) I am also 98% certain that I did not take any other photos this night...	How Sweet. Pretty sure this was Allison's doing. Apparently someone broke my sweet bone, so I can be pretty sure I had no part in this.	Obviously I didn't take this. But, sadly, I suppose I start the offensiveness by blinding everyone with my head. I wish I could turn that into a super power. Also, Allison's hair is totally pink. Crazy that it looks all orange here...
lol!!!!!!!111 They think they can win!	c'mon... pleeeeeeaaaase let us win :(	Let me think about it...
hah! no, you'll never win!! :-p	grrrr... I will eat you!	pssh. Whatever.
Right. That's over. Almost. I'm sorry to have subjected anyone not involved to the photographic evidence of... well... of whatever all of this proves. Which might be nothing. And that might be worse than proving something really bad. (*shhh*... it actually proves that Thomas is voting for Fred Thompson) And, lastly, this proves that I don't know what to do in front of a camera... *sigh* Oh. And we did win, btw. technically.

Labels: Allison, Brooke, Thomas

b/c I like organizing and cataloging stuff... here are the photos I have on my computer from 1996. There is nothing special here, but a tiny piece of my soul is now freer since I will no longer worry about what to do with all these dumbass pictures. It is driving me more than slightly crazy that I don't recall the exact dates of all of these things. I have decided that it is ok so long as I can narrow it down to the month.
These are pretty random... from a Superbowl party... Jan 28, 1996. I believe these people are Chase Slagle, Amy Voelker, Mark Voelker, and me. And then Myra I-Can't-Remember-Her-Last-Name, Whitney Hobart, and Bryan.
Then there are these awful pictures from Easter of that year. I think the "youth" were supposed to be serving breakfast to all the old people or something. My mom and sister are in the first photo. Whitney is in the last photo, but I can't remember the girl's name in the middle. Once I start thinking about people more than 3 years younger than me, the information is pretty well irretrievable.
Then there was the whole graduation thing. According to the pen marks on the backs of these photos, we graduated 02 June 1996. Most of the stuff I remember from this day is terrible.
Me and Bryan beforehand. Someone said we had to smile. You can also barely see Richie's head over Bryan's shoulder. Camera hog. Oh yeah! And I have no tassle b/c I took it apart, and I just had a bunch of string in my pocket. That other really blurry picture is the good thing I remember from that day. My last tiny act of defiance to that shitty school. Shake hands with the Principal? I don't think so. Stop at the top of the ramp for photos? Nope. Fuck you, I'm out.
Then the photo-op with my mum. I do like that I got that golden rope thing for honors or something even though I absolutely did not earn it. And then me and Bryan and my sister and my mom. I had to get out of that dress asap. And I sure as hell wasn't going to wear a suit underneath.
I don't remember what the occassion was here, but this was yet another church youth group gathering. It was the week after graduation tho, and that cake says "seniors" on it. So, through my superior reasoning powers, I will state that this was a graduation party. It was the lake that was below my house in Spruce Pine. This place was actually pretty awesome, and I did not utilize it enough...
	Some kind of game was being played... football maybe? I dunno, but this is Swiss Pine Lake. It's a fake lake. But it was nice.
There was food there... Somehow all pictures containing food also contain Bryan. There's Amy, me, and Bryan. Then me, Bryan, Nathan Hall, and Will Wilson. Then Bryan. As I write this, I am wearing the same flannel shirt that I am wearing in those pictures.
Then I have all these random pictures from July of '96. But, for some reason, they were all lacking the Day from the date on the back. This caused me much consternation. But I think I've gotten over it.
Some random trip to the zoo. Church youth group again. If it wasn't for John and Janice, I would have zero pictures of my formative years.
Bryan eating again...	Me and Will trying to decipher the message hidden in the cupcakes. John looks on in disbelief. (He was the preacher at my church... I really liked them... wonder what happened to them...)	Apparently they liked us too. For some reason they took Bryan and I to eat at Makoto's in Boone.
So there's 1996. Some of it. Somewhere in there Bryan and I went to Great Britain. So the year wasn't a complete loss. And I got rejected from Davidson. And then I called them and was like, "wtf?" And then they let me in, and then I drove to MHS one night to share the news when I found out. For some reason I was excited about it. Then we moved to Hickory. Then I moved to Davidson. And eventually betrayed everything that I thought was worthwhile. *sigh*

Labels: bryan

So... apparently... at some point in the recent past, I was on the website for the Army National Guard and requested information. I don't remember doing that at all, but I will trust that I did. They were probably offering free t-shirts or something. I just got a call from one of those nasal phone operator ladies who asked me a bunch of questions. Like how tall I am and where I went to school and stuff. She also asked what interested me in the National Guard. I told her I had no idea but that maybe they were giving something away so I signed up. Who knows. Her response to all of my responses was either "Wonderful" or "Fantastic."

The last question she asked was, "What do you like to do in your free time?"
I said, "I like to smoke pot. And then do other stuff. Perhaps that's why I can't remember contacting you."
- "Wonderful... Sgt. Murphy will be contacting you shortly to setup a more in depth meeting."

And that was that.
Which, now that I read it, really isn't all that funny. But I thought it was at the time. I think I will talk to Sgt. Murphy when (s)he calls until I can find an opportunity to say something awful and disgusting about the piece of shit in the White House. Then ask them to call me back if someone other than Guiliani wins the race this year.