friends, i need your assistance...

as most of you know i am working on a new record... well... i have been working on it for about a year... anyways... i need your help figuring out a title... so for those of you who have heard the tunes i have been working on... and if you havent just ask and i will send you them... please help me figure out what to call this mother...

LATE NIGHT MUSINGS ON WHAT WAS...

Looking back on my time i spent in L A with my brothers and friends... its hard not to view it with rose colored glasses... but on nights like this i find myself wondering what could have been... if maybe we would have handled things a little differently... i like most twenty-somethings that move to L A to "make it" in the music industry... the first taste of modest success makes you actually feel like you could really do it... its all there ... you know?... its so close that you can almost taste playing shows to 100000 people... even just the feeling of having someone come up to you after you have played and tell you that you touched them in a way that you may have been touched by a hero of yours in the past... those are days that i never appreciated at the time... but now i would give almost anything to play with those guys again... to get it really going on stage... to feel that strange levitation that happens when it is really clicking...in hindsight there were a lot of dark times as well... passing out mid song on stage... vomit and all the glorious rock and roll cliches that i entered into with almost no grasp of the consequences that would follow from taking the trip on that road...but i hope this isn't the end of that story... but for a moment... i felt what it truly was that makes people do this... chase the stupid childhood dreams... to sit and watch for that last gleaming second of the lit fuse on a stick of dynamite before it goes off in your face and sends you and your wishes into the stratosphere in one glorious explosion.

WITHOUT FURTHER AD... WELL ANYWAYS... LADIES AND GENTLEMEN... THE DIGS.

I am a bit of a tangent whore...so it should come as no surprise to those of you that know me... that just days after i posted a blog entry about silver phile... i am posting one about the brother band to them... the digs... i met Patrick from the digs a few weeks prior to the gig i played with silver phile... if i remember correctly (which i probably don't) it was at some other bands show at spaceland or somewhere like that... we had a lovely talk over some drinks and other things about how we were both mutual fans of each others bands... and about a week later we were playing our first gig together at mr. t's bowl... we (rocking horse people) played like shit that night from what i remember... but the digs fucking blew me away... for those of you that haven't seen them play Patrick and Norman Woods guitar weaving is amazing, kind of in the vein of the Byrd's meets Brian Jones and Keith Richards style circa 1966... i think that he got about two words out and ran back and cranked is one knob amp up just ripped into it so recklessly that i thought the fucking stage would collapse... i mean that in the best possible way... anyhoo... Patrick sings a majority of the songs but Norman sang one which i don't know the title of but i remember it had the vibe of "them changes" by the band of Gypsies era Hendrix stuff with buddy miles and billy cox... to sum up a show by them... think of sweethearts of the rodeo meets cant explain... seriously the most fun that can be had sitting watching another band blow your band apart right the fuck in front of you... if you are in L A and see a gig coming up with these fellas playing... go check them out and buy them a drink on me... send me the bill...  here is a link to some of their tunes... may the road rise folks!

http://www.myspace.com/thedigsband

TREY ANISTACIO MUST DIE... I MAY HAVE SPELLED THAT WRONG.

A guy that i work with plays too much of the band phish... well any phish is too much... but i think if we all band together... we can bring this asshole down... that is all... oh... and i think we all need to listen to more isley brothers...

silverphial... how can you be this good?

    During my time in the psych scene in L A when i wasn't too smacked out to stand or see i had the pleasure to hear some of the best music on the planet... now i know that it is fashionable to think that the only good places to be from as a musician are Brooklyn or Montreal... but if you ask me those two cities are more full of shit than L A for once simple reason... in L A we know we are full of shit ... and we own it... now that that is out of the way allow me to get to the task at hand... me and the fellas from my old band "ROCKING HORSE PEOPLE" staggered into an art gallery opening to play a gig with a band called "SILVERPHILE"... most times when i would play a show i would focus on our set and then proceed to get as fucked up as possible so i could ignore the rest of the bands playing on the bill... but this night i made sure i was together enough to be able to see straight enough to focus on SP's set... i had played a show about two or three weeks prior with 1/3 of the bands line up (Patrick Cleary)'s other band "THE DIGS" whom i could (and probably will) write a glowing profile of...Patrick and his lil lady Cheryl Lynn Caddic front this 4 piece (at the time) backed up by a man i will simply refer too as "THE ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK" (Scott) who happens to be probably the best musician i have ever seen in my life who was manning the bass that night but can probably play anything with strings or keys on it and jonny (forgive me i don't know his last name) on keys... they opened their set with a song called "OHIO"... a ballad with such a sweet sense of longing and loss it literally brought me to tears... for the life of me i cant remember the names of the rest of the tracks that they played... well, since it was the first time i had seen them play its not surprising i didn't know the rest of the names of the songs...anyways... their sound can only be described as csny meets the carpenters with a healthy dose of the kinks spackling it all together... simply put... this crew of musicians are the best L A has to offer even on their worst night they are better than every band in L A put together... when i was moving away from L A ... as the plane was taxiing to the runway i couldn't help but cry thinking i may never get to play a show with this gang of geniuses again... so do yourself a favor... and follow this link and cry yourself to sleep as you listen to perfection you could only hope to catch a glimpse of in yourself on your best day.

http://www.myspace.com/silverphial

the beautiful tragedy of skip spence.

      like most music snobs i know i am a huge fan of "lost" records recorded by crazy people. weather it be the original "smile" album by Brian Wilson or the two albums put out by syd barrett before he walked home bare foot and crazy from London to Cambridge never to be seen again. this brings me to the subject at hand.. skip spence... he came to prominence as a member of the group "moby grabe" in the mid to late sixties... where like a lot of his counterparts at the time he pretty much brushed his teeth with LSD... during the recording of the last moby grape album (that he was a part of) he attacked two of the other members of the band with a fire axe subsequently landing him in bellvue for a six month stint where he wrote most of what would become the quintessential "lost" album... "oar"... according to legend on the day of his release from bellvue he, still dressed in his hospital robe, got onto his motorcycle and drove straight through the night to Nashville to record this great record... for those of you that have not heard "oar"... it is a beautifully stark portrait of a man falling apart... he is the only musician credited on the record which is quite incredible when you hear how well all the instruments are played... songs like "Diana" and "little hands" are moving enough to bring the hardest man to tears... skip unfortunately disappeared into a lifetime of mental illness and obscurity after the recording of "oar"... and he died in 1999... unfortunately he never was able to see the impact that his record had on musicians such as myself and others including beck and Jeff tweedy of wilco... to make a long and rambling blog entry short... pay skippy some respect and pic up "oar"... and listen to it with wild eyed wonder as was intended by genius himself.

here is a link to the song little hands from the album "oar"

http://youtu.be/4t2ZufBbnD8

welcom to the harshness.

so i have decided to start my own music blog... i am dedicating it to reviewing both new and old music so i would appreciate it if anyone would send me some of their new albums to either destroy or celebrate... anyhoo... the ball is in your court ladies and gentlemen... wow me... or face the consequences...