i think we have a new song coming out thursday…

that’s all.

well, i just finished work, it’s about quarter of ten in the evening, and steve and i are about to drive to pittsburgh to record another track with the band.

i’m ready to go to bed.

something’s not right here.

oh yeah, it’s the part about our 4am arrival.

drive safely.

well, 12 hours of driving, specifically.

it’s amazing what can happen in 12 hours. you can get pulled over by the mahwah police (well, apparently you can do that in 5 minutes if you’re going 71 in a 55). i assumed that when the cop looked in my back seat and saw the guitars and amps and then asked if we were musicians, he was going to call in the narcotics squad and have us strip-searched. instead, he returned my license and registration.

“slow it down.”

“but officer, reprise is already at 56 bpm. we can’t play it much more slowly”

i don’t think he would have understood the joke though, so it’s probably best that i just thanked him and drove away.

in 12 hours, you can drive from bergen county to pittsburgh and back (if you avoid rush hours). and during those 12 hours, you can spend 100 dollars on gasoline (thanks, opec), be reminded that sax and rock are antithetical (thanks, bruce), and repeatedly ask yourself and your passenger, “what the hell are we doing?”

it was never asked, but it was implied at moments. it’s a legitimate question, too.

lest we forget, the answers can be found on the music page. one answer is in the form of an album. another was posted last week, and more will be found there soon. i thought the last song was great, but the next one is better. actually, the next three are all better. and the fourth is so good that it makes me cry to hear it. not really because it’s beautiful, it’s just because it’s so damn good. as a band, we haven’t even started working on it, but i’ve been sitting on my bed playing it ever since we got back this evening, just to hear it out loud.

and even though my self-imposed question still stands (what the hell am i doing?), the truth is, i’m amazed at my good fortune. we’re recording again in 5 days. keep listening.

yeah.

how come no one ever replies to my posts? damn it.

so, oddly enough, not one of the five of us found it necessary to write something relating to our experiences surrounding our cd release last weekend. yeah, i’m being sarcastic with the “oddly enough” part. but here’s one in earnest: as usual, i’m picking up the slack in this band to bring you this blog post. this post is brought-to-you by joe, picking up the slack.

when i was a kid and i heard announcers say “brought-to-you by”, i thought they were saying two words instead of four, the first word being “broctayued.” funny how stupid kids are.

allow me to write you a story, reader.

once, last weekend, a child was born unto this world of an asexual parent. this parent had carried the child for much longer than biologically necessary, and it was a great relief to the parent when the parent’s water broke and it started experiencing contractions: a mixture of intense physical pain and emotional pleasure. the parent, good night, states, named the child “short films on self-control” after good night, states’ uncle, ten five-minute videos to a better you. and then there was the afterbirth.

that was an allegory. the first person to interpret it correctly wins a good night, states toothbrush.

to be frank, not one of us had a negative experience last weekend. i don’t know any other way than understatement, so you’ll just have to take my word for it that one of the other four will write something that comes closer to expressing the positive feelings we have about the album, the show, and our good fans.

thank you for coming. we hope you enjoyed the show. we hope you continue to enjoy the album, indefinitely. a lot went into it, so we hope you get a lot out of it. thanks to army of me and lohio. we enjoyed you more than you enjoyed us. don’t argue. someone else, quick, tell them we love them. we do though, for real.

and if you were so kind to join us at the after-party, then you know how crazy it was. if you call drinking beer from the the east end brewing co. crazy. i sure do.

i just did like 20 reps of slack. time to drink a protein shake, take my shirt off, look at myself in the mirror, and get some sleep. night.

no, you can’t buy that at bath and body works. i’m writing from an underground hooka bar where we slept last night. it’s called chronictown.

need i say more?

we played state college again, only because the people here are so deprived of live music that they actually enjoy it when we come. no, i’m kidding, we stand alone. still, my statement regarding the dearth of live music in state college remains true, which seems impossible given the fact that enrollment at penn state is around 40,000. how do you concentrate so many young people in such a small area and have no music scene? i suppose it’s the same at its heart as what has happened in omaha, kansas or lawrence, nebraska, except inverted. whatever sparked music scenes in such remote, sparsely populated areas of the country is somehow, against all odds, not present here.

this wasn’t meant to be a diatribe against penn state. so let’s change gears.

jesse and shane, purveyors of hooka, pipes (interpret that noun as you wish), and espresso, are true devotees to rock and roll and those whose make it. as such, they were the best hosts we could have wished for. they opened their coffee bar, stash (of granola bars), and hearts to us without condition. so i’m sitting here typing, drinking coffee, and eating one of those nature valley peanut butter granola bars. quite content. well, except for the fact that the store above this has been making VERY loud banging sounds for the last 4 hours. by the way, it’s 11:30, and we went to sleep after 3:00. whatever. our gratitude remains the same.

oh, it was a fun show. hope you enjoyed it (if present). if not, it’s hoboken tonight, dc friday, and philly saturday. see you there.