Monday, January 31, 2005
thursday: started mixing my solo album with major matt. i was scared to make decisions about levels and reverbs and compressions, but matt was super-nice, and it all went pretty smoothly. near the end of the session, yoko called to invite me to play at jane doe books the next day, which was
friday: i left major matt's at 7 and went straight to jane doe in bushwick. i like that place. it's a feminist lending library. i was really excited to play there, since i rarely get to place my songs (or my me) in a feminist context. just sitting around all those books felt nice.
malcom rollick went first. she sounded gorgeous and i love her hair. the first time i saw her play was at stuyvesant high school gay day last year. she seems much more powerful and confident on stage now. i was really impressed.
when she finished, it was my turn. as i got my stuff together i managed to snag a hug from gina young, who i only ever see in 2 second intervals these days, since we're both hard at work finishing our new albums. anyway, so yeah: i played. the crowd was really pleasant. there were all these adorable 17 year old kids in the front who were so scrappy, i felt like messing up their hairdos. i was a bit unfocused, but that probably bothered me more than anyone else. i played a newish song, "word/come." it was very jane doe books. it feels good to sing that song, and lots of people singled it out afterwards as their favorite one. i was glad, because that song has no jokes in it, and i'm getting tired of funny songs. anyway, everyone was very nice to me after i finished playing.
then i got to sit on the couch in the back, next to a really cute boy. we crossed our legs towards each other, which is, of course, a sign of impending marriage. i was soon distracted though, because rachel jacobs started playing. she was ferocious and turtle-like. i was enthralled, and felt moved to gesture suggestively towards yoko, since she warned me before the show that i'd flip out over rachel's songs. and i did.
after rachel, i moved up to the front with nan for a good look at dream bitches. they played "danny shobsin," which is my new favorite song. nan and i bounched and air-drummed and sang along to a bunch of songs. and kimya showed me her mother's coat, which was a very middle-aged green plaid, with rad shoulder pads. she looks really good in shoulder pads.
nan and i stood by the radiator for kimya's set. i haven't seen her play in a long while. it's so different from my first impression, way back at ladyfest dc, when all the horror behind some of her songs seemed so close to the surface. this time, she was super-relaxed. there was clearly more distance from the sadness in the sad songs, but that distance left room for thought. which is a joy.
not a joy: 17 year old kids chugging bottles of cheap wine during "the beer," kimya's horrifyingly moving song about alcoholism and substance abuse. some of them got pretty rude, and were talking while kimya played, and eventually this one girl barfed a huge load of purple teenager puke all over her lap, splattering it onto her friends. she just sat there in it, covering it up with her torso. it smelled, well, like puke. kimya, being a badass motherfreaker, just laughed at her and made a joke about it, which i thought was an eminently appropriate reaction. i got to sing along with kimya and malcom for the big finale. you can see photos here.
after the show i hung out for a little bit with dibs and yoko and nan. i swapped cds with rachel. i looked for the cute couch boy with whom i made foot/leg contact, but he had vanished! ah well. nan and i got restless and ran down to a convenience store to buy apple juice and orange juice and this cookie that tasted like a shoe. soon enough the evening was over and it was
saturday: i woke up on dibs' couch and we went to my place in queens for the big cheese on bread meeting. when the rest of the band showed up, we made hummus and tomato pitas and planned for our big july tour. then we drove on over to galapagos for our sound check. what a joy! to soundcheck in the late afternoon! well before the actual show! it was a luxury we'd never experienced. chris, the sound guy was very good and very nice. very scandanavian. the show itself was a huge success. the black and the jew hosted. they KILLED. the crowd loved them. i had been talking about them for weeks, so it was great to see the looks on people's faces as my raving materialized into the brilliant performances themselves. urban barnyard opened with "surfin sewer rat," a song in which casey sounds joyously bostonian. they drafted our very own gregg to drum for them. being a genius, gregg played astoundingly. speaking of genius, next up was jessica delfino, who put the show together with me. she played fiendishly dirty songs, and those in the audience who weren't laughing were trying to retrieve their jaws from the floor. i wish i could have seen more of jason trachtenberg's set, but i was running around backstage trying to get everything organized. from what i heard, he was his usual idiosyncratic self. everything out of that man's mouth is hilarious. jason was followed by the o'debra twins, who i cannot explain. people ask me what they do, and i cannot tell them, because i do not know. what i do know is this: they are made of magic. i especially like their list performance, "i'm ashamed of my period because..." my favorite reason was "because i'm overweight." the variety show portion of the evening ended with the unbeatable haunted pussy, the best 10-minute gothic heavy metal opera ever.
we were running low on time, so we skeered up a bit where side of fries would emerge from backstage and set up our stage while haunted pussy was still performing. somehow we managed to pull it off, and so we went seamlessly from heavy metal to heavy muppet.
performing on that stage was a blast! the place was pretty packed, and all our friends were dancing up front. cutiepie andrew from creaky boards gets a medal for courageous work in the line of dancing. he kept reaching up and grabbing for my feet and legs, which made me feel like a rockstar. sara's microphone kept sliding down, but she just bent over and sang into it anyway. it was adorable. the boys were all in their trademark white spaceman suits, which were quite fetching. ooh ooh and cesar came up to play saxophone on the last two songs, which was ridiculous. most of the band ended the show on the floor, and i poured my glass of water down my shirt and ran off backstage.
this entry is getting egregiously long. i'll pick up the pace.
very late night. new intern john sold 8 cds. we've now broken even on our original cd investment. yay. katherine and i stayed up talking until 5:30 in the morning. i needed that.
sunday: i lost and broke many important things, which prevented me from seeing shiragirl, which made me sad. but i got everything together with dibs for the "smooth jazz storytelling" that we did at superfine for julie's "church" series. it was a lonnnnnng night, but had some really fantastic moments, especially tina's power-point presentation about the elevators of washington heights, and julie's amazing metalic backdrop. i had a lot of fun telling stories while dibs played guitar. a lot of people were talking, but a lot of other people seemed really engaged. we're looking for a more intimate venue to do it again, and we're making preliminary plans for the big dan fishback "spoken word" album. haha. spoken word. spoken....word?
and now is now. ahhh!
love
dan
friday: i left major matt's at 7 and went straight to jane doe in bushwick. i like that place. it's a feminist lending library. i was really excited to play there, since i rarely get to place my songs (or my me) in a feminist context. just sitting around all those books felt nice.
malcom rollick went first. she sounded gorgeous and i love her hair. the first time i saw her play was at stuyvesant high school gay day last year. she seems much more powerful and confident on stage now. i was really impressed.
when she finished, it was my turn. as i got my stuff together i managed to snag a hug from gina young, who i only ever see in 2 second intervals these days, since we're both hard at work finishing our new albums. anyway, so yeah: i played. the crowd was really pleasant. there were all these adorable 17 year old kids in the front who were so scrappy, i felt like messing up their hairdos. i was a bit unfocused, but that probably bothered me more than anyone else. i played a newish song, "word/come." it was very jane doe books. it feels good to sing that song, and lots of people singled it out afterwards as their favorite one. i was glad, because that song has no jokes in it, and i'm getting tired of funny songs. anyway, everyone was very nice to me after i finished playing.
then i got to sit on the couch in the back, next to a really cute boy. we crossed our legs towards each other, which is, of course, a sign of impending marriage. i was soon distracted though, because rachel jacobs started playing. she was ferocious and turtle-like. i was enthralled, and felt moved to gesture suggestively towards yoko, since she warned me before the show that i'd flip out over rachel's songs. and i did.
after rachel, i moved up to the front with nan for a good look at dream bitches. they played "danny shobsin," which is my new favorite song. nan and i bounched and air-drummed and sang along to a bunch of songs. and kimya showed me her mother's coat, which was a very middle-aged green plaid, with rad shoulder pads. she looks really good in shoulder pads.
nan and i stood by the radiator for kimya's set. i haven't seen her play in a long while. it's so different from my first impression, way back at ladyfest dc, when all the horror behind some of her songs seemed so close to the surface. this time, she was super-relaxed. there was clearly more distance from the sadness in the sad songs, but that distance left room for thought. which is a joy.
not a joy: 17 year old kids chugging bottles of cheap wine during "the beer," kimya's horrifyingly moving song about alcoholism and substance abuse. some of them got pretty rude, and were talking while kimya played, and eventually this one girl barfed a huge load of purple teenager puke all over her lap, splattering it onto her friends. she just sat there in it, covering it up with her torso. it smelled, well, like puke. kimya, being a badass motherfreaker, just laughed at her and made a joke about it, which i thought was an eminently appropriate reaction. i got to sing along with kimya and malcom for the big finale. you can see photos here.
after the show i hung out for a little bit with dibs and yoko and nan. i swapped cds with rachel. i looked for the cute couch boy with whom i made foot/leg contact, but he had vanished! ah well. nan and i got restless and ran down to a convenience store to buy apple juice and orange juice and this cookie that tasted like a shoe. soon enough the evening was over and it was
saturday: i woke up on dibs' couch and we went to my place in queens for the big cheese on bread meeting. when the rest of the band showed up, we made hummus and tomato pitas and planned for our big july tour. then we drove on over to galapagos for our sound check. what a joy! to soundcheck in the late afternoon! well before the actual show! it was a luxury we'd never experienced. chris, the sound guy was very good and very nice. very scandanavian. the show itself was a huge success. the black and the jew hosted. they KILLED. the crowd loved them. i had been talking about them for weeks, so it was great to see the looks on people's faces as my raving materialized into the brilliant performances themselves. urban barnyard opened with "surfin sewer rat," a song in which casey sounds joyously bostonian. they drafted our very own gregg to drum for them. being a genius, gregg played astoundingly. speaking of genius, next up was jessica delfino, who put the show together with me. she played fiendishly dirty songs, and those in the audience who weren't laughing were trying to retrieve their jaws from the floor. i wish i could have seen more of jason trachtenberg's set, but i was running around backstage trying to get everything organized. from what i heard, he was his usual idiosyncratic self. everything out of that man's mouth is hilarious. jason was followed by the o'debra twins, who i cannot explain. people ask me what they do, and i cannot tell them, because i do not know. what i do know is this: they are made of magic. i especially like their list performance, "i'm ashamed of my period because..." my favorite reason was "because i'm overweight." the variety show portion of the evening ended with the unbeatable haunted pussy, the best 10-minute gothic heavy metal opera ever.
we were running low on time, so we skeered up a bit where side of fries would emerge from backstage and set up our stage while haunted pussy was still performing. somehow we managed to pull it off, and so we went seamlessly from heavy metal to heavy muppet.
performing on that stage was a blast! the place was pretty packed, and all our friends were dancing up front. cutiepie andrew from creaky boards gets a medal for courageous work in the line of dancing. he kept reaching up and grabbing for my feet and legs, which made me feel like a rockstar. sara's microphone kept sliding down, but she just bent over and sang into it anyway. it was adorable. the boys were all in their trademark white spaceman suits, which were quite fetching. ooh ooh and cesar came up to play saxophone on the last two songs, which was ridiculous. most of the band ended the show on the floor, and i poured my glass of water down my shirt and ran off backstage.
this entry is getting egregiously long. i'll pick up the pace.
very late night. new intern john sold 8 cds. we've now broken even on our original cd investment. yay. katherine and i stayed up talking until 5:30 in the morning. i needed that.
sunday: i lost and broke many important things, which prevented me from seeing shiragirl, which made me sad. but i got everything together with dibs for the "smooth jazz storytelling" that we did at superfine for julie's "church" series. it was a lonnnnnng night, but had some really fantastic moments, especially tina's power-point presentation about the elevators of washington heights, and julie's amazing metalic backdrop. i had a lot of fun telling stories while dibs played guitar. a lot of people were talking, but a lot of other people seemed really engaged. we're looking for a more intimate venue to do it again, and we're making preliminary plans for the big dan fishback "spoken word" album. haha. spoken word. spoken....word?
and now is now. ahhh!
love
dan
