Strange Pulse

Holy cow, I love this stuff. New album, recorded in 2006. Check out a song or two in the radio.blog, top right.

Makes me so happy that people are recording music like this today.

Also, I’m doing a series of posts over at Kulturblog.com on moments to live for in songs–basically an excuse to post a bunch of songs over there.

Stone Gossard (of Pearl Jam) has a side-project band he does with some guys from Satchel called Brad. A couple years ago they were playing an in-store at Tower Records in Seattle. I heard about it from a friend who is a huge Pearl Jam fan. So I grabbed one of my early grunge records by Green River, a band Gossard was in way back in the day, as well as my camera, and headed to Tower.

They played outside right on the ground of the parking lot, so it was impossible to see the band unless you were in the very front. I didn’t get many good pictures from where I was standing, but here’s one of Stone (he’s in the hat):

The show was good–I later picked up Brad’s album, I’ll post a song to the radio.blog. It’s mellow, end-of-summer kind of music. I like the singer’s voice a lot.

After the show, they had everyone who wanted anything signed or to meet the band line up on one side of the building, and the band sat at a table while we all shuffled down the line. Of course, Stone was the last person at the table, and I was feeling stupid that I’d have to pass all the other band members with nothing for them to sign. So when I saw someone handing out Brad postcards, I grabbed one, and had the band members all sign it. Here’s a scan:

I ended up sending it to my friend who is the huge Pearl Jam fan.

When I got to Stone, I had him sign the postcard, then I pulled out my ancient Green River album. I hadn’t thought about what to say to him ahead of time, and I got completely tongue-tied. Completely. No words. At all.

I just handed it to him. He looked at it like he wasn’t sure what it was at first. Some woman standing next to me said, “Wow, Green River vinyl–good find!” Like I’d bought it off eBay or something. I wanted to sock her. Stone was turning it over in his hands, and he said, “This is old school….This is the real thing.” And I could tell he hadn’t seen a copy of the record himself in a long time. I wanted to yell, “I’M old school!” but didn’t. Couldn’t. Mouth wasn’t working.

He signed it over his image on the record. Hard to see because most of it’s black, but here’s a scan:

As soon as I walked away, I thought about all these things I could’ve said to him. Like how I saw Mother Love Bone, his band after Green River but before Pearl Jam, play a roller rink in Kent with Alice in Chains. And how I’d first heard about Green River from an article in a local music zine called The Rocket when I was in high school but was too young to see them play before they broke up. And how I’d bought the record as a teen in an old Seattle indie record store called Fallout Records.

But nope. I’d blown it.

Oh well. I like to imagine him calling up Jeff Ament (another Pearl Jam band member who was in both Green River and Mother Love Bone) and saying, “This woman showed up at a Brad in-store in Seattle and had me sign a Green River vinyl record…It was a trip!”

I’ll post a Green River song to the radio.blog as well (top right).

I went to a show last night to photograph a band for a zine, but missed the band I was supposed to shoot. It was a music festival with several bands playing. Turns out I went to the wrong stage. And sat through the most excruciating performance I’ve ever seen–and I’ve seen some doozies–by this horrible hippy band. I’m still all stressed out from it. Man.

Who knew there were so many hippies in LA? Such a nightmare. With their long tangled hair, flowing shirts, leather boots, jangly bells, bare feet, moccasins, leather head bands, oversized glasses–it was tremendously annoying. I kept wondering how many of them grew up in Beverly Hills.

But I did catch half of Om’s set, another band on the line up I wanted to see. I couldn’t get close enough for any decent photos. But they were rad.

I’m going to see a band tonight that a lot of people I know rave about, I’ve had a burn of their album for a long time and just haven’t listened to it. But I’m shooting them for Skyscraper Magazine, which means I get in free, so I’m stoked. They’re called Pearls and Brass. I’m listening to a few mp3’s on their site, and they rock.

I’ve been thinking lately about how my husband will notice all these details about bands and their equipment that I never even think about. Like when we saw Hellride the other night, Stephen Perkins’ band, he asked me if I noticed how Stephen had his toms set up. I guess most drummers have them lined up from biggest to smallest, but Stephen had them mixed up. Makes for a different sound when he hits them all in sequence.

And there’s this doom band called Bottom that I love-and not just because they’re all chicks. Daniel mentioned once to me how the guitarist uses two amps for her guitar. Two different types, with different effects on them, or something, and it makes for this really cool sound. Something I never would’ve noticed.

When we were in Vegas staying at the Hard Rock Hotel, we were looking at the Nirvana/Kurt Cobain display. There were two guitars, plus a manequin with some of his clothes. I was looking at what was written on the guitars, and how frayed his clothing was, and thinking about how creepy it was. Daniel’s first words? “That guitar is strung wrong,” pointing to one. “He played like that,” pointing to the other.

How does he know this stuff? Neither of us were big Nirvana fans. He plays guitar, sure, but not very often or very well!

In the last month some people have hit my blog via Google/Yahoo/MSN/etc searches. Some of the search words they’ve used crack me up (my comments in parenthesis):

bloooood (yes!)
motocross poems (really? motocross? poems?)
mohawk (via a blogger search)
gooder a word? (no, it’s not)
I am gooder than you? (apparently)
info poem on the pulse of the merging (I think they want my crazy uncle’s blog)
mormon husband blog (close, but no)
“party” room to rent laie (good luck)
mike muir mormon (the resulting post of mine for this was titled “The Devil’s Music”, gotta love it)
Metal Church (yes! my husband would be proud!)
redheads in tacoma (someone needs to get out more)
oil rigs pictures (ditto)
fake pregnant belly (don’t ask me–no clue)
stevie wonder/where he lives now (ditto)
neopuritan (huh?)
Sarah McLachlan is she mormon (no, she’s not)
heavy metal poetry (and it’s beautiful, too)
What is “Mia” a nickname for? (bulemia, or Euphemia, if you must know)
insane drums (how cool is that)
strange pics (hope I delivered)
weird miracles (ditto)
teens wearing socks (nice one)
love (my blog is the third result!)
snowboarder poems (who knew?)
Pictures of a damage reproductive system cause by crack (whoa)
leo sayer (even better than Metal Church!)
Mormon redheads (in Tacoma?)

I’d been hoping for weeks that I’d be able to make it to see my friend’s band (Fatso Jetson) play in Hollywood last night, but things did not go well at work yesterday, and I was just too stressed to contemplate the trek to LA. So my husband and I were lying in bed last night, in our pajamas, watching tv, when my husband’s boss called.

He told us Stephen Perkins, drummer from Jane’s Addiction, was playing a show in Long Beach with Mike Watt from the Minutemen on bass/vocals, and Peter DiStefano of Porno For Pyros on guitar/vocals. They call themselves Hellride, and they play Stooges songs.

And we had to go because Daniel’s boss had gotten us on the guestlist. (He’s friends with a friend of Perkins’.)

We got there and Daniel was looking around for his boss to get us in for free, but we didn’t see him anywhere, so he was just going to go pay our way, when I spotted our names chicken-scratched on a piece of paper in front of the guy manning the door. I love being on the guestlist. :)

Stephen Perkins is one of my favorite drummers–one of the best I’ve ever seen live (back in the Jane’s Addiction days). Hellride played a really fun, energetic set, with the drums front and center.

And they had an artist in the back with a big plastic sheet for a canvas who would slop paint on it, then proceed to turn the blobs into these really incredible paintings by etching stuff into the paint. He’d do about one painting a song, and he took pictures of them all. I don’t remember his name. But he was pretty rad. Sometimes instead of wiping the canvas clean to start another one, he’d
just put some more blobs of paint up and change the existing painting into something else.

Mike Watt:

Peter DiStefano:

Stephen Perkins/Artwork:

Do you see his blurred face off to the right in this one (above)? Kinda cool.

I’ll post a Jane’s Addiction and a Stooges song to the radio.blog, top right.

Aw, isn’t he cute, falling asleep with his bottle still in his hand? But wait, what is he lying on?

Oh. Somehow his mother let him fall asleep in his high chair. What kind of a mom does that?

What a cutie pie. Showing off the rock he found. But wait, why is it all wet?

Eww. Bad mommy.

Walking outside on my lunch break to 80 degree weather. In February.

Blueberries. Strawberries. Strawberries. Blueberries.

A cold glass of water.

Sleeping in.

Mountains. Lakes.

Poetry.

A good book, an extraordinary turn of phrase.

Really bad tv. So bad it’s good.

The Internet!

There’s a lot of people in my family who’ve made bad choices. Not that my life is exemplary–I obviously got married so young and had kids right away that we couldn’t support, and had to go through a lot of stress and hardships to get to a point where we could support them. But compared to a lot of people in my family, my life is great. I didn’t marry an abusive guy who does drugs or is in and out of jail. I didn’t get pregnant as a young teen. Etc.

So I’m one of the “good kids” in my family, and I’ve always tried to help out family members who’re in trouble whenever I could. I’ve been thinking about how people you love, when they’re screwing up, and they know they’re screwing up, and they’re going to keep on screwing up, can lie to you and say everything’s fine.

I think in many cases they’re not lying. At first I thought they’re just telling me what I want to hear. But it’s more than that. They’re telling me what they wish was true. What they want to be true. And I think often they’re in denial enough that they convince themselves, as they say it, that it is true.

I have a niece (not one I’ve blogged much about before, a different one) who when I saw her at my grandma’s funeral said to me, “Everything’s going really well. My husband’s treating me so good. We’re doing great.” And it was like she was waving a red flag in my face with the words HE’S STILL ABUSING ME written on it.

The last time I saw my youngest Laotion brother, he came over for a visit to my parents’ house. I hadn’t seen him for a few years. He was about 14, which meant legally he was 16 or so. I think I was about 18. (My ability to remember what age I was when things happened is very poor, so I’m purely guessing how old we were.) I asked what he’d been up to. He told me he’d just gotten out of juvenile detention but wouldn’t say what for. I of course thought it was for stealing a car, and when I guessed it he admitted it. (But maybe it was drug related and he was lying, who knows?) I was worried about him getting mixed up with Asian gangs in Seattle. I don’t remember what I said but he reassured me that he wasn’t going to do anything illegal/stupid anymore. I have no idea if he was lying or not. I’m guessing at the time he meant it. But that doesn’t mean his intentions prevailed.

It’s kind of weird being one of the “good kids” in a family full of screw ups. When my niece who came to live with me and Daniel when she was 15 got pregnant, she didn’t tell me at first. Instead she went to Hawaii with her boyfriend, whose family lived there. I can still remember being in my parents’ bedroom when she called to tell me. I can see my mom’s dresser and mirror with the phone on it. She called to tell me she was pregnant and wanted to come home. She’d gone to Hawaii because she was afraid to tell me.

Why was she afraid to tell me? Because I’d told her to let me know if she ever needed birth control? And kind of lectured her on it because all of her friends–6 of them, plus her older sister–had already gotten pregnant. That may have been it, but I think it was more than that. I think she didn’t want to let me down. And maybe she didn’t want to add to my stress at the time, since things were difficult back then. But I think there’s this issue kind of hanging in the air between me and a lot of my family–that they’ve made some bad mistakes, and I haven’t. I know how to make better choices than they do? I don’t know. It’s just kind of weird.

Once my oldest brother Darryl, who died when he was 34, came over to my parents’ house. I think I was about 18? He would’ve been 32 or so. We were talking about music and bands, and he asked if me and my brothers–the younger generation in my family–were really as straight as we seemed. Did we really not smoke pot? I could’ve said, “Well, you know, Jenny doing drugs and ending up schizophrenic scared us straight,” but all I said was, “That’s right. We don’t.”

I said to my friend yesterday: “Do you know what’s weird about having kids, Dave? They turn into people. People who are turning 16 next month.” He looked at Nathaniel like, “you can’t be THAT old.” And I knew what was running through both our minds: everything Dave was doing when he was 16.

Yikes.

Dave when he was 16. Dave now.

Nathaniel yesterday. Nathaniel now.

I can’t believe he’ll be old enough to drive next month. But he doesn’t even have his permit yet–and California just changed their driving laws for teens. They have to have a permit for six months, and for the first year of having their license, they’re not allowed to transport other teens without an adult in the car. There’s also a nighttime curfew of no driving at all for teens. I think it’s reasonable, since they’re basing the new laws on when accidents that have been happening.