holy shazbot just got back from W.Coast stint # 1 with The Dead Science. We spent 3 days rehearsing in Seattle, during which time Sam, Jherek, and Darling Nikki learned about 14 songs (Lapland + Shudder) then kicked it out with me up and down the art
galleries, vegan training restaurant facilities, and Unitarian churches (plus oh yeah a club or two) of the Grooviest Coast, America's left brain, land-of-sleeping-giants/crystal-blowing-sandlands; I bow to thee.
A beauty trip indeed; and I thank the magnificient (if sorely underappreciated) Dead Science for concocting the whole sick-sweet beast.
I also want to thank everybody who came out to the shows in increasingly encouraging numbers, so that by the last show in Portland, the club was a carbonated smoke-can of spring-eyed weird-hordes plying me with 'Jaeger' shots and requests for 'Higher and Higher' (see Wet Hot American Summer), making me feel like a cartoon hero indeed, thank you.
I do have one question, though; it's really more rhetorical, because I think I probably know the answer, and as usual the answer is money, but nonetheless:
why is it so hard to play non-club venues and have it sound good?
I mean, I'll take a nice, white, art-encrusted, living/breathing space over a dank, black, smokey, puke-hewn rock club ANY DAY OF THE WEEK. But if you can't hear the vocals, then (in my case anyway) what's the point?
So I put it to you, alt-venues of America: take up alms, buy a new, louder PA system, and Take Down The Man. It will be good for all of us, I promise.

let's see, what else, it's shaping up to be a Citizen's Band and Joe Lally month (March, that is), plus I'm getting into my new record.
It was good to get out of NYC (and my apt.) and see-feel what people are doing out there in Neu-Word!-America; it def. opened my thick head (and thin skin) to lots of new approaches. Some memorable music-drives included Dirty Projectors on i-5; Xiu-Xiu on the 10 south from Eugene; Parenthetical Girls on the Az-Ca border; a pitch-black metal show somewhere around Davis which kept me awake and alive until the inevitable 3am genero-tel where the ritual killings began; Diane Cluck just popping up at all the right times on shuffle throughout; and of course, Show Me Your Grill, or The Grill Song, or whatever-the-fk-it's-called. Killa and yes-yes, I do believe it's a good time for music (and for ritual killing, chicken heads, plastic fangs, etc).

oh! The booking agent and my manager thought that I'd had a stroke at one point, that was something, and at the Vegan training restaurant (World Cafe in Eugene) a sweet-weird, hairy fella (X between Tommy Chong + Charlie Manson's GOOD muppet-twin) named Vince became our tour mascot/spiritual go-to guy (shroud in the rearview when the Bigger Questions arose), cassette-taped, emceed, and just generally hosted the show, while Bruce, the sound-guy, regaled us with stories about his bandito, trad-Mexican outfit that covers Ennio Morricone on stolen and home-made instruments. Again, yes.


so, here are some things maybe that are nice for you to listen to and look at?
the photos were both taken in 'hair-and-make-up' during the last Citizen's Band show in Miami; the bare-back-bouffant belongs to ms. Amy Miles, and the intense face to Rachelle Garniez. Come sea-hear our new show, 'Chewing Up The Scenery,' at Deitch Projects on March 11-13.

The music is a guitar piece that will probably make it's way onto my new record in some form or another.
Little_Minerette.m4a



P.S. hoshit I forgot the best part...after rehearsal one afternoon, a group of artists took over the gallery space (we were rehearsing at Gallery 1412, Seattle), led by a flowing-haired, bearded ancient in a track-suit and cap. His blue eyes pierced me and I introduced myself: 'hi, I'm Craig.' By way of response, my new about-to-be-hero told me a story about norse mythology, Thor, and the origins of his name. I kept thinking 'it can't be, it can't be, it can't be...' But the gods were smiling down that Thursday, and to my great delight, It Was. Torben Ulrich, Lars' hammer-tongued father, who's paternal genius and unique magnetism fairly steal the movie 'Some Kind Of Monster' from Metallica, had somewhow descended from the ice-clouds to hold court. I assured myself that I was being prejudiced, perpetrating a kind of all-Nordic-white-bearded-tennis-besuited-elderly-dudes-look-alike attitude, and that this was just some old Seattle hippy. But in the car, as we left, Torben followed us out to wave goodbye (forever?), and Dead Science Sam said to me and Meggan, 'do you know who that is...?' I thought to myself, YES, I know and have always known, for he-is-me-and-we-are-we. I remember seeing the movie in theaters and wishing there was a kind of choose-your-own-doc portal through which I could climb whenever Torben was onscreen, so that I could navigate the Rune-y depths of his story in a parallel film. When he waved goodbye, I felt he was blessing our humble tour and hope, if he ever reads this, that he knows I am not making fun or being facetious when I say 'thank you.'