The show on Saturday was ridiculously fun, probably my favorite we've played to date. Thanks to everyone who came out.

Our set list seemed backwards and weird at practice, but it worked out just fine. (It's very easy to overthink these things.) The crowd was very enthusiastic, drunk and dancing, and we were a bit buzzed too, which certainly helped things along. I think I played guitar on my knees at one point. Egads. Jim took a flying leap off his kit after our last song, scattering drums and cymbals everywhere. We had to politely decline when an encore was requested.

So that was a good night.

Did I mention that I have Girl Talk tickets?

We're excited about tomorrow night's show, should be a good'un :

Butterknife @ the Cantab Lounge
738 Mass Ave, scenic Central Square, Cambridge
21+, $8, doors at 8:30

A Dead Pixel - 8:30pm
The Classic Ruins - 9:15
My Own Worst Enemy - 10:15
MARS - 11:15
Butterknife - 12:15


Hope to see you there.

First off - supercalafragilistic congratulations to phatmike and kpht for giving birth to bbPHT! Fantastic news for the proud parents, Livejournal, and really, the internets as a whole.

So hi, how are you? I'm good. Things are good. The holidays were wonderfully relaxing - 17 days off in a row! Was great to see family and old friends visiting from out of town.

January has continued to be awesome, in particular, the week of January 20th. The big bullet points for me, in no particular order : 1) Obama became president!, 2) I turned 33!, and 3) T and I got engaged!

I'll save the proposal story for another time, and Obama's inauguration is not exactly news at this point, but the birthday was wonderful. I'd proposed the day before, so telling everyone the news was a nice birthday treat. My 33rd fell on a Thursday, and so our regular Guys Night at Gargoyle's became quite the celebration. In addition to the usual crowd, T and K both joined us, and so drinks became dinner, more drinks, champagne, dessert, and a bar full of people singing to me. I was very touched, and reminded of why I love my friends and my neighborhood.

We threw a little party Friday night, and I'd write more, but I don't remember a lot of it. (Thankfully there are photos.) I was totally intending on pacing myself, but alas - when friends show up with a gift bottle of bourbon, goddammit son, you partake.

In other news, the Butterknife record is *almost* done. I'm finishing vocals next week, and after this weekend we'll have over half of the record mixed, with the other half to be completed shortly. Things are sounding really good. So we're thinking record release in late spring, early summer? I'm definitely looking forward to this thing being in the can.

So, that's me.

RE: chuckm and archer823's recent posts, I'm also rethinking my LJ use. I'm honestly not sure how much I'll continue to use it. I seem to be having most of my online social interactions on Facebook and Twitter, and it's rare I have the desire to blather about anything in great length. But we'll see. It's probably still worth it to post pictures of monkeys picking their nose, and such.

We're playing the Cantab Lounge again, our friends in My Own Worst Enemy put together a good bill and asked us to play. Here's the deets :

Butterknife!
Cantab Lounge, Saturday, February 7th
738 Mass Ave in scenic Central Square, Cambridge
$8, 9pm doors, 21+

The Classic Ruins - 9pm
My Own Worst Enemy - 10pm
Mars - 11pm
Butterknife - midnight

This will be our last show until our CD release, which should be sometime this spring/early summer. We're mixing the record now, and we're really pleased with how things are sounding.

Hope to see you there!

I can do this, I can do this.... only three more days of work and then I'm off for 17 days in a row. Glorious.

Not sure about New Year's plans yet... what are YOU doing?

I missed this by like five minutes. Fun!

We're playing our last show of 2008 tomorrow night, hope you can make it! Here's the details :

Butterknife @ the Cantab Lounge (downstairs)
Saturday, December 6th
738 Mass Ave, scenic Central Square, Cambridge MA
with Optimo, the Doom Buggies, the Beatle
show starts at 9, $8, the 'knife at midnight

(I will write a real update one of these days when my job is not up my nose constantly...)

Mental note : do the thankful meme when I get home. But for now, go hang with my nieces and eat pie.

I managed to slice my finger open yesterday - index finger on my fretting hand - a mere three hours before having to play a show. Great! Thankfully it was the side of the finger, so I only had to worry about the band-aid buzzing against strings, and that didn't turn out to be an issue, so, phew!

There was a good turnout, and lots of crowd interaction. Intimate shows like that are a lot of fun. (Thanks to everyone who came out!) I did some new covers - opened with Liz Phair's "Fuck and Run", did a finger-picked version of Prince's "I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man", and also did Elliott Smith's "Miss Misery" (which has, like, every chord) and Madonna's "Live to Tell." As far as 'knife tunes, I did the usual ones, but busted out "Laser" acoustic for the first time. That's a fun one to play.

We decided to make the trek to Maine last night, and so we left the show a little early and hit the road. Got in around 2:30, fell asleep immediately, and woke up to snow. Snow! My first snow of 2008. Of course, it's not snow at my house, so it's not the same, but still.

I'm doing an acoustic set at TTs tonight, some covers, some Butterknife tunes, some not-Butterknife tunes that were written by me... anyway, it should be fun and you should come. I'm playing with John Borecki and the awesome Davina Yannetty. Come on out!

8pm, $3, I'm on first at 8:30.

Starting tomorrow I have nine days off in a row. Glorious!

I had a good time at the Chinese Democracy listening party the other night. There was free food, always a plus, and the people-watching was more than entertaining.

What I most liked was that in this era of MP3s, where music is for all intents and purposes free, you could gather a few hundred really excited people into one room expressly for the purpose of listening to one album, from beginning to end. There was the free food, of course, and free T-shirts (the giant Best Buy logo on the back was a big turn-off for me), but that communal feeling was there. And it was a nice feeling. It's easy to be cynical, and I am, but I'm fully in favor of people getting invested in and excited about music, even if it's music I don't care for.

As for Chinese Democracy : to my ears, it's awful. It sounds like someone spent 14 years and as many millions of dollars in a studio surrounded by huge piles of coke and yes-men sycophants with nothing to say but "Yeah, man, that sounds awesome!" Great art is often made because of its restrictions, not in spite of them, and there clearly weren't many limitations on this record, except for, say, "Hey, let's get Slash to play on this track!"

But if you like overproduced hard rock with some industrial/hip-hop influence, peppered with children's choirs, sitar, classical guitar, string sections, piano breaks, and samples from MLK's "I Have A Dream Speech", then your 14-year wait for new Guns n' Roses material may not have been in vain. Safe to say, it's not my personal recipe for a good listening experience.

Then again, this Marnie Stern record is pretty fucking ridiculous too.

I'm on first at 8:30, playing an actual acoustic guitar this time, followed by John Borecki and Davina Yannetty (ex-East Boston Makeout Club Band). I'll be doing some covers, some Butterknife tunes, and some of my solo tunes. Hope you can make it.

As for tonight, I'm tagging along to a listening party for Chinese Democracy. Somebody probably said, "We'll see a black president before Guns n' Roses releases another album", and so, well, here we are. I'm keeping an eye out for flying pigs. I don't have any actual interest in the album, per se, it's more of a rubbernecking kind of experience.

After two-plus years in my place, I finally had new windows installed yesterday. I'm so glad I did - it makes such a difference, even this early in the season. My place was so drafty, you could literally see the curtains moving, even with the windows closed. Now it's like an airlock, only without the terrifying blackness of space on the other side.

And I'm not exactly excited to be laying out piles of cash in this economy, but it actually wasn't as bad as I expected (thanks to necrophore for the reference!), and I'll definitely be saving dough on heat this season.

So yeah - It feels good to be continually embracing the whole homeowner thing.

So now thoughts turn to the holidays. I've got my Thanksgiving plans all set (Tuesday-Thursday afternoon with T's family in Maine, Thursday night through Sunday in NJ with my folks and brother's family). Not sure about Xmas yet, but probably heading to NJ again.

I've got a solo show on November 24th, and then Butterknife has a gig at the Cantab on December 6th. So what's missing.... holiday party, perhaps? Maybe I'll get on that.

This takes me back. I used to listen to The Low End Theory and Midnight Marauders, like, ALL the time. I never got around to picking up Amplified, but I didn't know J Dilla did production on it. I may have to get around to that...

I played a whole bunch of Dead Space last night, and holy moly is it awesome. Sure, it steals from Aliens, Resident Evil, Bioshock/Deus Ex/System Shock, etc., but it steals all the best stuff.

I started reading Murakami's Kafka on the Shore. So far, I dig. I finally finished Jonathan Lethem's Fortress of Solitude, and I have to say it never grabbed me the same way Motherless Brooklyn did. Ah well.

Work is nuts this week, but I'm taking the week of Thanksgiving off, so I should be able to hang in there....

There's a good chance I'm going to spend the entire day trapped in a conference room. Somebody please bring me a sandwich?

Wow. It's nice to feel optimistic about politics, huh?

Obama, and all 3 MA propositions went the way I'd hoped.

Fingers crossed for No on 8 in California and a few other things here and there.