JT- Special Networking Edition
Sunday, January 24, 2010 at 03:13PM The last couple of weeks, due to circumstances I’m about to go into in pointless detail, I have been pretty busy with music stuff, as well as all the various activities that go with it. What this means is that I’ve had to temporarily suspend my complicated schedule of watching Family Guy re-runs on DVR, assembling moderately intricate salads at home, experimenting with various ethnic restaurants in my neighborhood, and going to the movies in the middle of the day.
First things first. I got sick, not once but twice after the family vacation to Mexico, and my time has since then been largely monopolized by various nose-blowing and late-sleeping duties. That’s the boring part. The exciting part is that I also went to the NAMM Show in Anaheim last week, and played a show at Spaceland on Sunday- more on that later. I always approach the NAMM show with a certain trepidation due to its overwhelming size, as well as the inherent point of me being there in the first place: to schmooze as though my life depended on it. In addition, there’s the joy of driving to The Weird Plastic Kingdom that is Anaheim, which you’d think would be enough to push anyone over the edge in itself. Anyway, even though in my mind it’s as though I’ve been invited to watch my own death or something, the NAMM show never ends up being anywhere as bad as I think. In fact, it’s mostly pretty fun since I get to catch up with company reps I don’t see all year (and are nice enough to send me their kick-ass gear to use on tour), and I usually run into friends from out of town while I’m there as well. This year’s visit also ended up being productive, at least in terms of amassing huge quantities of business cards, and generating way more email communication than I am able to deal with on any given day. I finally met with the dude considered to be the Grand Fromage of Artist Liaison at Fender- and about time too, since Fender are the ones who have been providing me with a pass to this thing for the last couple of years. I also ran into fellow Fender artist Ginger Reyes of the Smashing Pumpkins, which was an unexpected and pleasant surprise. I commented on her cute and very recent acquisition (a baby), and we both agreed that it’s better she plays for the Pumpkins and I play for Kylie. Thank God.
All that aside, I also had an extensive chat with the folks at T-Rex, who kindly supply me with more effects pedals thank I know what to do with. For some unknown reason, these dudes are ridiculously stoked to have me on their team, and have since then posted pictures and a little video interview from our meeting. I’m not going to do anything as lame as posting them here myself, since hearing myself talk about bass pedals is just about the last thing I need more of. But, should you be interested in that sort of thing, you can look up all of it on T-Rex’s website. I believe there’s also a video of me shredding on their Bass Juice pedal on their Facebook page. Ugh. I’m willing to take one for the team every once in a while, if it serves the ultimate purpose of me attaining global, all-encompassing Fame Among Gear Nerds. I think my plan is working, hahahahahaahahah!
This is Scott of EMG. I get to use their pick-ups, and in exchange they get to take a photo of me looking awkward. I win.
In unrelated news, I also went to see Spoon play a secret show at El Cid this week. All you need to know about El Cid is that it’s a way smaller club than what a band of Spoon’s caliber would normally play at, hence the secrecy. I do not have long and explicit history of Spoon fandom, in fact my main mental association with them is a vague memory of having to load out of a Har Mar show in London at a completely unreasonable speed in order to make way for the subsequent Spoon show. For some reason, this annoyed the crap out of me at the time. Anyway, in spite of all this, I was up for the secret show, and bought a ticket online. This operation was pretty demanding in itself since it had to be done at PRECISELY 2pm on the day (when I was already out running errands, of course), or else the show would sell out. After some general confusion with the layout of the website, figuring out where to input my credit card details etc, I was able to secure myself a ticket. My self-congratulatory back-patting was short-lived, however, as almost immediately after that, I was notified that Groovetickets.com had oversold the event, and were reversing my order. To reiterate: these assholes sold me a ticket, then decided that actually, no, we’re going to take that ticket right back. Fuck you, Groovetickets.com! The only redeeming aspect of the situation was that at least my credit card charge was reversed, also very snappily. I fear the main entity that will bear the brunt of my wrath with regards to this debacle is our friend Jonathan, who works at Groovetickets, and was the one who told us about the show in the first place. Oh, and I guess the other main redeeming factor is that my show buddy had a spare ticket, which I was able to use. Spoon are the type of band that you need some brains to enjoy, and clearly I have become smarter in recent years, because I enjoyed them way more than I thought I would. Spoon have interesting lyrics, killer bass tone, squiggly guitar lines, and solid drumming, and seem to be very grateful for the fact that people come to their shows and buy their records. Approval granted, The End.
Moving right along. My friend Jack Burnside, formerly of Mezzanine Owls, asked me if I would play with him at his show at Spaceland last week. I was all, “Oh sure, why not, that sounds like fun etc”, so that’s what we did. The band is tentatively called Rabbits, and despite extensive online research, it did eventually turn out that there is another band called Rabbits, and we might to change our name. That shit is not going to rain on our parade, however, as both the show, and our beer-addled rehearsal week leading up to it, were tons of fun. I hope we get to do another one soon.
This night is notable in that Jack Burnside didn't even do his customary pre-show anxiety puke.












