Dear Friends,
Well, yesterday was a complete washout unless you count doing a whole lot of nothing as something. I did some cleaning/straightening/purging, which felt good. I also got a new battery for the mini-mini-van. I got four years out of the last one, so it was a good run.
I suppose I knew it was coming. It had not been firing up with a lot of gusto for the last few months, so it was definitely time. I had to jump it to take Liam to work in the morning on Saturday and by the time I got to WalMart to buy a new one, it didn’t hold a charge at all.
Four years of desert heat is pretty rad for a battery. I can’t be too bummed about that at all. I know of some people who are happy to get two years out of a battery out here in the desert. What an exciting blog topic.
Battery life.
*****
Spark it.
Sparkle.
Drop the hammer.
The battery lives and dies in the desert.
Shelf-life.
Half-life.
Diets come and go.
The battery lives and dies in the desert.
New brand
New name.
Check the box.
The battery lives and dies in the desert.
*****
Here’s to a more productive Sunday.
*****
Getting high on my own supply number 11.
I forget about this ep sometimes. The u.f.o. ep is something we put out on Record Store Day 2014 with AZPX and Stinkweeds Records. It had some tracks that we had that weren’t going to be on anything else, so we put it out as a special treat for ourselves and our fans. There were only 100 or so (maybe 200) made.
I barely remember the discussions about this. At the time that the record came out, I was in a bit of a personal rut. I was just starting a new job after being laid off from a job that I really liked. It was my first layoff, so I took it very personally. u.f.o. ep
Before yesterday, I don’t think I had listened to it since it came out. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by it as a whole. The name, u.f.o. ep, comes from a song that we were doing early on as a band called “UFO I Don’t Know.” We recorded it during our first recording session at Villian but weren’t sold on it so we didn’t include it on the first CD.
I play a pretty simple bass line that Michael did some cool guitar work over to make it flow really well. The lyrics are about being abducted by aliens and the chorus goes “A u-fo, I don’t know” which highly entertained us back then. It also had a great bridge, too.
To be honest, it was a good choice leaving it off of Lesson No. 1, but I think it works for this particular artifact. I enjoyed hearing it again and it brought back memories of our early practices and songwriting sessions. I’m sure we played this live at least a few times, including the 2014 release party at Stinkweeds in the parking lot. I think there is a video of that.
The next track is “AZPX” which we came up with as a theme song for our label. If I remember correctly, it was used for a video that AZPX did with Rad Pinkard, but I might be wrong on that. It’s a short punk rock/shuffle kind of thing that Michael came up with and we had fun arranging. Over the years, we also had a slightly longer, slower version that we would bust out from time to time. It sounds good here. The Venomous Pinks cover it sometimes, too.
The next three songs are covers that we recorded at Villain in 2013 and 2010. The first is a JFA cover of “Skateboard/We Know You Suck” that is on a tribute to JFA compilation that came out around the same time. I had spaced this one and quite enjoyed hearing it again. We did a nice job on it and even had a guest scream from our bud and Michael and my bandmate from Living Room Collective, Michael Pistrui.
“Plastic Passion” by the Cure is up next. I pushed for this one, which Bobby’s help, because I had always wanted to cover it. Bill G. and I started talking about doing the song back in high school before either of us was even in a band. Then Alex and I talked about covering the whole Boys Don’t Cry compilation in the 90s.
I was pleasantly surprised by revisiting “Plastic Passion” after a decade, as well. It’s a pretty decent version of the song and we played it well. During the time we were tinkering with it, there was a video of us playing down on Grand Avenue that New Times released, too.
The last of the covers is “Avon Lady” by Feederz. This is one that we played live a lot over the course of our time together. The recording turned out really well and might be my favorite thing on the u.f.o. ep. I always really liked the way Michael sang it live, but he kills it on this recording. It’s pretty rad across the board.
We did a number of covers over the years, but “Avon Lady” was one that we always went back to and played quite a bit.
“Ding dong!”
The next two tracks are things that I had totally forgotten about. The first of them is “Theme” which we recorded initially, I think, with Ryan Butler, but then re-recorded at Villain in 2013 according to the CD sleeve. It was one of our first songs and our first instrumental. It almost brought a tear to my eye to hear it again. It reminded me of when we first got started.
When we were doing “Theme” as part of our early sets, we were like little kids with a new toy. I think we were all so excited to be playing cool music with people we liked and that the crowds were digging, too, that we brought a great level of joy to our band. We were able to maintain that level of joy for a long time, too, which has been a huge gift to my life.
Hearing “Theme” again made me very thankful for Bobby and Michael.
“Something’s Burning” came from a recording session and interview we did at Eric and Matt at 602Radio in 2009. It’s not really a fully realized song in comparison to a lot of our other songs from the early days, but the riff was something Michael and I always really liked. This was also a fun revelation for me to hear after so long as, again, I had completely forgotten about it.
The last two tracks are songs that Dave Malvin recorded for us at a show at Last Exit Live in late 2013. It’s fun to listen to them because I was totally scatting the lyrics and in the case of the last one, I am pretty sure I wasn’t even trying to make words…just sounds that could kind of pass as words. I’ve always been able to just ramble things off when it came time to sing and hope that people weren’t paying too close of attention.
“Genetically Modified Song” and “Crushing Eagles” both sound pretty good for live recordings from the room. Both songs were pretty rockin’ when we first started playing them live, so it was fun to hear them again in their new, raw states. I was listening to them trying to remember the conversations about including them on the ep, but I couldn’t pull that memory out of my head.
There might be a few of these left at AZPX, I’m not sure. I don’t know how I would be able to copy this for anyone, but I bet Michael has them uploaded somewhere. Maybe we will put them on Spotify at some point.
*****
See you tomorrow.
AI UFO over the desert.
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