Recap - since the 28th of May...

[illusionofjoy]

Years ago, when the law banning drivers from using cellular phones was passed in New York, I thought, "what a dumb law - yet another attempt to regulate common-sense." Since then, I've become an ardent supporter of the police being able to pull people over for gabbing on their wireless lines whilst behind the wheel. While I've been driving, I've had several near-misses, caused by people who were too engrossed in their conversations to bother paying attention to their driving (most of these people have been in SUVs, incidentally). Today, joi_division was side-swiped by an SUV, the driver of which was on a cell phone. Thankfully, she's completely unharmed, though her passenger-side door needs to be replaced. She got no info on the driver or his vehicle, unfortunately, as they sped away immediately after changing the shape of Joi's car - a classic hit and run. A report has been filed, but it is doubtful that the perpetrator will be caught. The catalyst has been made for me to finally write a letter to my state representatives about getting a law passed in Pennsylvania like the one that was passed in New York.

Yesterday evening, Joi and I were considering going out to see a local group, Seven Color Sky. They had been one of the openers for The Psychedelic Furs at the Three Rivers Arts Festival last weekend. Joi and I had mused that it was amazing to hear an opening act that didn't completely suck and it was pretty easy for us old-school fogies to groove on their Cure-meets-Echo & the Bunnymen sheen. We ended up not going simply because we couldn't find out what time their show started last night. It matters not, as they have a couple of more shows coming up in South Side in the near-future.

These past two weeks have been one concert after another for me - in comparison, that is, to how much I usually go out. The only other times I have gone to a plethora of concerts within a short span of time was when I was WAIH's music director and had gone to the annual CMJ Music Marathon. I saw some really good bands the three times I had gone; I miss those times.

Last Tuesday was John Wesley Harding at the Three River's Arts Festival. Opening for him was The Breakup Society, a band whose attempts to channel the spirit of Buddy Holly were less than successful. Not a bad group, per se, but they could work on tightening up their sound.

John Wesley Harding was a great showman, however. Armed with only has guitar, a harmonica and his wit, Harding filled two hours with beautifully tongue-in-cheek songcraft and anecdotes. Having heard his last two albums (The Man With No Shadow - repackaged for American consumption as Adam's Apple and Confessions of St. Ace), I had a general idea of what to expect. Harding opened with "Goth Girl," a track off of St. Ace that I had told Joi about. As I expected her to, she laughed throughout the entire song as lines such as, "Goth girl: who is the guy on the leash? Does he wash dishes? Goth girl: he looks like Pete Murphy to me - oh yeah, he wishes!" From there on, Harding sang the songs and told stories about most of them. He closed in his encore with a cover of David Bowie's "Ashes to Ashes," at which point some dirty hippie walked up to the stage and tried to hand him a pink rose while he was playing. Harding looked down and quipped, "Did David Bowie send you?" Classic.

Last Friday, as mentioned previously, The Psychedelic Furs headlined WYEP's festival stage with Seven Color Sky opening. Joi and I hung out with bonamoz for this show. The Furs ran through their hits as Richard Butler pranced and hammed up each song in a cheeky "I'm the lead singer" manner, making for a pleasant trip through memory of one of the 80's better post-punk/pop bands. Among "Love My Way," "Pretty In Pink," "Imitation of Christ," and "Heaven," they played "President Gas," a condemnation of Reagan's policies during his two terms as president. It was a day after the show that I found out that "President Gas" had passed.

Though I grew up in the 80's, I never quite had a full grasp on what was going on until my teenage years in the 90's. In retrospect, however, history gave me a clear view of just how much the 80's sucked politically. In the past week, I have heard so much about what a "great" president Reagan was that I wanted to vomit. No president that has Ketchup classified as a vegetable can be that great. No president who engages in thoughtless wars under the guise of "regime change" and "nation-building" can be that great either. Effectively, Reagan paved the way for even bigger schmucks; namely president Bush I and president Bush II. Needless to say, the media's reluctance to speak ill of the dead wore on me greatly. Thankfully, I could depend on Ted Rall to be one of the voices of dissension, with his op/ed about "Reagan's Shameful Legacy." It wasn't long after that, Richard Faussett, a writer for the Los Angelos Times chimed in with his own less-scathing critique of Reagan. I took some comfort in that not everyone in the world was fellating Ronnie's corpse. Still, it is sad that a song like "President Gas" still has relevance in today's political environment. Such things make me really disappointed in my fellow Americans.

It would take a Brit to sum it all up into one nice poison package. Morrissey allegedly interupted one of his concerts to announce the death of Reagan only to quip that it was "too bad it wasn't Bush." We may have been thinking it, but he said it. It's okay though - he won't do it again...until the next time.

Rewinding to the 28th of May...

Joi and I broke away from the Pittsburgh scene that Friday evening to go see VAST in Cleveland. The drive from Pittsburgh to Cleveland is about two and a half hours, the duration of which one spends in Ohio must be taken at exactly the speed limit, as not only was it a holiday weekend but Ohio state troopers keep credit card readers in their vehicles. They've got you speeding and you get to pay up immediately. Ech!

We got to Cleveland with little incident, despite not really knowing the area. Thankfully, unlike Pittsburgh, Cleveland's streets are laid out in a grid pattern where going in a straight line in a vehicle actually translates into a physical straight line. I now know why the denizens of Pennsylvania refer to Ohioans as "flatlanders."

The Aurora, where VAST was playing was fairly easy to find, what with its large neon sign. Parking was our next challenge. As we drove past the club, neither Joi nor I found a driveway into any parking lot nearby. Ahead of us, near a gas station we caught a glimpse of a guy with an orange construction flag. Thinking that maybe he was there to direct traffic to a parking lot, we pulled up to him. Upon closer inspection, it was obvious that this wasn't anyone hired by the club, but just some wino who had likely stolen his flag from a construction site somewhere. Joi rolled down her window and was blasted with the stench of alcohol as our flag-waver said, "parking: ten dollars." We quickly declined, saying we'd find someplace else, the smell of alcohol and scandal overwhelming. "Alright fine," he called after us as we drove away, "but there ain't no place else open!"

I drove around to a side street behind the club, where a sign was posted: "Augora Club Parking." Five dollars later and Joi's car was safely inside of a secured lot.

Since the show had started at 7:00PM and Joi and I had to drive over two hours to get there, we ended up missing two of the opening acts. This didn't bother us much, as the one we did see, Aphasia, was a classic case of a band with a really cool name but no musical talent whatsoever. If this band was so awful, I shudder to think of what the other two openers had been like.

VAST was excellent, of course. This was the second time I had seen the group, the last time being at the Lost Horizon in Syracuse, NY right after the group's second album, Music For People had been released. Since then, Jon Crosby has put together an entirely new touring band and he even more so resembles the Robert Smith of our era - sans makeup, of course.

While it is a shame that VAST lacks the fame that their talent would seemingly beg for, this group does have a very devoted cult following, all of whom seemed to have shown up from Cleveland's scene. Among the most amusing in this audience: the girl standing across the room from me, singing along to every song, jumping up and down, leaving her D-cups to bounce so wildly that I was placing mental bets as to when they were going to come flying out of her top in all their glory.

Such were my past two weeks of silence from ye old journal. There will be more silence to come, however, if only for a time. I recently ordered several parts from newegg.com, in order to build myself a new machine. Those parts came in on Thursday, making my transition from a MAC user to a PC user nearly complete (though it could be argued that it is already complete given work, the library and the systems at my friend's places). While I would have loved to stick with Apple, they pretty much screwed themselves out of my loyalty with the fact that their prices were too high. Money talks, people and my money doesn't have enough voices in the chorus to sing about the virtues of Apple anymore. MAC OS is out of my price-range.

Also out of my price-range is a pre-built computer. I visited some corporate website to compare costs and found that while they all claimed that they could "customise a computer exactly to my liking," those claims never panned out. Time and time again, to get what I wanted, I was forced to also take crap that I didn't want in my machine and would never use. By simply buying the parts and opting to put together a PC by myself, I've effectively spent about a third of what a comparable pre-built system would cost.

Still, the system won't be put together quite yet. Firstly, the company shipped the wrong hard drive to me. I had ordered a WD7200 200GB SATA drive, which is what they have listed on the packing slip. In the box, however was a WD1200 120GB SATA drive - that 80 missing gigabytes of hard drive that I paid for! I've contacted the company about the error and hopefully will hear from them soon.

On the front marked by my own stupidity, I realised that I ordered the wrong sound card package. While the motherboard I bought comes with an integrated sound card, I was planning on making that my secondary card while I installed a higher-end primary card to do the actual line-in and MIDI recording. With two cards, I would be able to do studio tricks such as remiking drums (which, as anyone who has taken recording 101 knows, makes drum machines sound more like real drums). In any case, I ordered a Creative Soundblaster Audigy2 ZS standard package with just the card when I meant to order the Platinum package, which includes a front-mounted sound drive that allows me to wire MIDI and line inputs right into my computer. After reading newegg.com's return policy, it shouldn't be too hard to send back what I purchased and then buy what I need once I have confirmation that the return was received.

I've waited this long, so waiting another few weeks or so for my home studio to be complete won't be too painful. It is annoying, however. Even if the studio aspect isn't complete, a new computer will finally allow me to get online from home. While I could have hooked up my old MAC G3 to a DSL line, such an exercise would have been a trial of frustration as it doesn't have the power in 2004 to handle what the internet would have thrown its way. Sadly, this computer was top of the line in 1999, when it was bought. Now I doubt it's worth much more than $50.

In a way, it's good that I won't be able to record again just yet. Most of the new songs I have been working on are far from fully formed and I would hate to push something out of the womb when it can't support itself on its own. It would seem that my isolation from the world of this journal will resume for a time...at least until I get online at home again. There's something to be said for being able to write at one's leisure, rather than trying to force something out in the 45-minute sessions one is boxed into when one visits the library. Trying to force introspective and interesting writing in such a circumstance is much like trying to fake an orgasm.

With that, I disappear once more...