Show Preview: Houston TX Reach Music Festival

Fighting the Mean Reds

Stay Focused! I've noticed that my inner voice is rather weak. For as much as I know I have to do, I still waste away hours online or offline or wherever. How can I stand to spend three hours searching for Natalie Portman Robot Art, when I've got the mountain of rock stardom to climb. Yuck.

TO DO:
Find booking agent - We've been doing all our booking ourselves. It saves money, but it's not practical in the long term. It's hard to negotiate guarantees (which we deserve, because we work our asses off to bring people to every show). It takes time away from other things ie. Natalie Portman Robot Art. It's hard (for travis, our booking guru).

Get Travis, Matt, & I on a click - Part of becoming a better live band involves reliability. Too many redbulls or an overexcited kidney and suddenly we're playing Jump Blues at competition speed. Starry Globes and Stereos in liquid slo-mo. The solution to this involves in-ear monitors and a click track (metronome). The HUGE side-benefit of implementing this new technology is that we will be able to add sound-effects, backup parts, etc. to the show. We'll finally be playing Ego Protection, which starts and ends with a drum machine that must be perfectly sinc'd to our tempo. (very hard to do when I've got two hands on the keyboards---I need more hands)

Write new songs - We compose at a geriatric pace. There are no throw away songs in our arsenal. I'd like to believe that there are no two songs that sound the same. And it's hard! We wrestle our way into each new track. Bridge? Chorus? At some point we're gonna need a whole new album and that means a LOT of new material. And it needs to be better than ever. I never want to release an inferior product. I'd rather go hide in a cave.

Make money - Is it really possible? I hate to be selfish, but I'd really like some.

And thats just the tip of the iceberg people. So I need to stop being lazy, dammit, and get to work!

Positive Affirmation

I really need some kind of confidence boost. Maybe if I were given an opportunity to rescue a single person or a group of people from some menacing force, my equilibrium would return to normal. My mom bought me a weight scale for christmas. Kind of a hint. But I don't think I'm overweight, at least not until my mother got into my head. I hope my wife doesn't treat me like that. Of course, she'll probably be the fat ass, not me. I'll have to hide the Oreos. I feel like Lindsey from Arrested Development. My mother is much nicer than Lucille, though. Oh fuck it, I say. As far as I'm concerned, every woman yearns to mother my children, even when I stiff them on their tip near closing. I need to tell myself things like that. My mother calls it positive affirmation- like when you're just hanging around the house, saying out loud to yourself, "I am an attractive, kind person."  "I am a capable attorney." or, "I am not depressed...or lonely" 

               

It kind of seems like a delusional exercise to me, an exercise in delusion. But when I think how many times a day I tell myself how much I suck at things, I am convinced maybe a little affirmation might be in order. 

 

I open the door every morning now, fully nude, for all the back yard and garage to see, and display my virility: a god to women. 

I'm working on the lyrics for two new songs, both (positive affirmation) destined to admired for generations to come. I'm trying to find a good balance between humor and poignancy. It's difficult. However, I think they are great and if you come to our show at Club De Ville on the 30th of January, you might get a listen. 

 

This one line, too sappy, not enough bite? I'm not sure:  "Open your womb to me."

Purple Monster (not a porno)

        I got really frustrated yesterday because the short story I had been working on for a week was floundering. It was all over the place. I realized it then. It was like discovering a piece of paper from the night before, a group of lines scribbled down in a moment of real vision. It was like discovering that what you wrote was complete shit - only instead of that that drunken night, I had a week of hard work. 

 

Of course, the inspiration for the piece was spotty at best. For some reason I've been convinced that anything I dream, now matter how weird or apparently random and useless, must be committed to the page in the form of short story. So I dreamt one night about an abominable snow man creature of sorts, only more human. I dreamt that this creature carried a sword and slid down hills of trash. It seemed compelling. 

After discovering that my creature was probably not capable of the witty inner dialogue that a Fante inspired 1st person narrative provided, all became clear. I am a horrible writer. I have nothing to show for three years of "writing." I should stick to music. But, at the time, I was horrible at that, too. Everything before me was crap. Nothing worked. I needed to make him innocent. He was a god figure, a hairy, bloodthirsty god among men. And that's what I'd name the new draft. A God Among Men. 

 

I took a good deal more of my medication than usual. I began with positive affirmation. I lit the incense I'd received for christmas and placed the stick in it's stand, an effigy of an elephant. I felt strange. If I turned my head, things seemed to blur. My plan was to build a rapport with my revamped character, to understand him. I borrowed Brett's color pencils and began. He was supposed to be a black man-like creature with black fur. I spent close to thirty minutes on it. When I finished, I felt relaxed. I went to bed. 

 

The next morning I rose late and checked the drawing. Instead of black outlines for the arms and legs, the entire figure was purple. The snow man was purple and red, big red fur around his neck. This was fucking terrifying to me. I spent thirty minutes in a well lighted room illustrating a fearsome god monkey and my brain shits out a purple clown teddy bear. 

So that's how things are going. I'm glad to be back after my disturbing two week hiatus. I'm sure the millions of devoted fans that read this page must be as well. 

                - M. Galactic

Helo

I know it's a crappy video. I gotta ease back into this blogging thing.