recording the next BLONDIE "record"

annnnnd we are plowing ahead, noses and other extremities to the proverbial grind(stone, house what have you)
the thing is that after the long build-up and the digital world that we are all working in these days we have wound up with over thirty tracks that are being worked on simultaneously... certainly a first for sheer amount of material, also a first for this way of working that is editing and adding to many tracks at the same time as we go along... in the past even the last two new era BLONDIE recording we have always focused on one maybe two tracks at a time... all the 'basic tracks' are done in a group still; that hasn't changed however
as per usual i am not exactly sure where the thing is going, how different it is from previous offerings etc... does it sound like a BLONDIE recording? yes i am sure it will be familiar, there are many aspects and sounds/styles that are there in it
in the old hippie days everyone used to say "the same but different" so that applies here

Jeff Saltzman is terrific in his production role and i am really liking his approach... we are all learning things as we go along
Jeff is a fan as well as a talented producer/musician so that understanding of the band that he brings is a whole other dimension... i have been exchanging ideas and sound files with him for probably six months or more prior to starting work... he has his two assistants with him Gaby and Marco so they are like a crew and work tightly together...

i will put out some more info in a bit... i dont think that we are gonna discuss the specific songs before they are done... i dont know for sure what we are gonna do with so many tracks, the strongest are gonna be on whatever form the thing is released in first

it looks like we will come over to Europe/UK next year for sure

BASTERDS

i loved Inglorious Basterds... i am so pleased that Q still has his edge... i was a bit concerned after 'Deathproof'; the painful interminable banters in Deathproof made for some low points in Tarantino cinema but he has more than redeemed himself here (well assuming he really needed to)...

the layers of film references are great fun but i was mainly taken with the long dialogs (here because its a period piece we are not subjected to conversations about Madonna's sexual activity or Burger King)... for me some of the Quentin long ass dialog scenes in previous offerings work and some dont, some are annoying and some are brilliant; in Kill Bill we have back to back scenes that are brilliant (Uma and Don Esteban the old pimp) and then annoying (the end long scene between Uma and 'Bill' for me didnt make it in spite of some great bits like the 'Clark Kent is how Superman sees humanity' thesis)

but the long scenes in Basterds all held me, they all were played over underlying tension... even the 'language barrier' was somehow an addition

also i thought Brad was fucking fantastic, i am seeing that his performance is a bit overshadowed by that of Christoph Waltz as col. Landa but Pitt's deal was just terrifically subtle while Waltz just played his part bigger and therefore stood out all the more... Waltz is a fantastic find for Tarantino, i couldnt even find a picture of him on imdb.com, very funny... no doubt he will shoot up the hollywood ladder quickly now

some of you know me as a WW2 buff so there's that... i wrote a list of "my favorite movie weapons" for Dick Manitoba's "Book Of Punk Rock Lists" a year or so back... well i certainly would have added the oss glove gun that is featured in one of the finale scenes... the glove gun is one of the weirder weapons that came out of WW2, it can be found in most collections of special forces memorabilia and oddities (like the one shot Liberator pistol that was distributed to the resistance fighters by the allies)... anyhow the glove gun is a real thing and putting it in the film gets may points from your narrator here... after much looking i found a pic of one, see above

BROOKLYN GIG

this then was the Brooklyn show; Aug. 13 at Asser Levy Park in Coney Island...

pic is courtesy Debra Garcia the director/producer of the events there...

word was it was the biggest crowd of the series; close to 18 thou

now we are in Chicago, show tmrow

i have been taking my own pics i'll put some up in a day or so

just saw the new Rambo movie on the bus, way behind in movie watching... i think we need to see "RAMBO VS. PREDATOR" made

no sleep till...

the Coney Island show is tomorrow and we look forward to some good old fashioned chaos; as its a freebee with the usual hordes attempting to access whatever small area is designated as the deluxe vip thingy... we are planning several levels of non-admittance, that is velvet ropes and people with clipboards preventing entry into other areas that are guarded by people with clipboards these in turn surrounded by the same etc etc ad infinitum... at the end in the interior superior vip area there will be nothing, like unto the proverbial matter sucking black hole:

the shows continue to be amusing... we will return to Europe and the UK though probably not till next year, i keep getting queries about that

thanks so much to everyone who has turned out this summer to see us

i'll put up some pics from the tour soon...

tour IS ON SCHEDULE

the tour (and ourselves) is covering a lot of ground... we will have crossed the country maybe twice

thanx to all who are showing up... the whole pairing with Pat seems pretty succesful, brining in new people for both acts

the Donnas are also a lot of fun, i must confess to not being familiar with them previously

so back in the bubble as we used to say; the road crew are pirates, in pirate mode that is, the busses, sound checks, hotels, monitors, the whole 9 yards

some memorable shows, and the band is very 'tight'... tight is a musical term that means everyone plays the same song at the same time but with precision

i dont have any specifics right at the moment

we are in Lake Winnipesaukee NH... i only know how to spell it cause there is a poster right over the desk here with a picture of a canoe at the edge if a wood and the heading "pleasant memories of the vacationists paradise"

the place we are in looks like twin peaks: rustic charm la la, maybe a murderer or two but i havent seen em

another fabulous hotel room

hmm

is anyone looking at this stuff?

maybe its hidden away here...

just in case:

 the following Cartesian coordinates define the vertices of an icosahedron with edge-length 2, centered at the origin:

(0, ±1, ±φ)

(±1, ±φ, 0)

(±φ, 0, ±1)

where φ = (1+√5)/2 is the golden ratio (also written τ). Note that these vertices form five sets of three mutually centered, mutually orthogonal golden rectangles. 

in public, the glare!

i am pleased to see that just over the weekend i have gotten a lot of visitors to the site here

i am finding its easy to put this stuff up and i'll try and keep it regular

one of my main objectives is to have a place to put up music i am working on, for sale or free i'm not sure... the whole problem of making money from music now is just too weird 

its always been that but for different reasons... the formula used to be that the tour promoted the record now that equation has completely reversed itself and the record supports the tour... i dont think of too many other things that have totally flipped like that

i put up some new pictures, well ones that havent been up here before, amongst them some shots of Goldfield Nevada... that is a place that we passed through a couple of years running while driving from Vegas to Burning Man outside of Reno Nevada... in 1890 or thereabouts Goldfield was a boom town of more than 30 thousand souls, the Goldfield Hotel was the biggest hotel in Nevada... but the mines fizzled out and now its a veritable ghost town with just a few hundred people living in and around... its beautiful in its bleakness though; the main street has brand new building standing next to abandoned ones that look like they have been empty for decades... the hotel is notoriously haunted, every one of the various 'ghost hunter' tv shows have done a segment there but the locals say that its all bunk

 the scenes from 'Vanishing Point' of the radio station apparently were shot in the Goldfield Hotel... gee i see now that the hotel has a Myspace page... 

i frequently think about retiring to Goldfield, theres something wonderfully barren and slow about it... its just so damn hot 

 also i put a different picture on my Cormac McCarthy quote page, its a sort of swamp near home here

then here is a punk orange