Don't Blame Me, I Just Write Here

Minneapolis’ City Pages is releasing their annual “Picked to Click” issue on October 20th. Each year, this issue highlights the Twin Cities’ best new bands based on the voting results of various music critics and industry folks. Like the all-star voting in Major League Baseball, “Picked to Click” can sometimes be contentious, with seemingly deserving bands sometimes getting overlooked. Most bands worth a damn don’t care about such recognition, however, and I’d like to tell you about two of them.

Voytek

Voytek is the best not-givin’-a-shit band in town right now. They play snotty, funny, smart/stupid punk rock the way it’s supposed to be: up-beat, care-free, and loud. Every Voytek show is a guaranteed good time, so long as you check your inhibitions at the door and learn not to take life so seriously.

I’m no historian, but I believe they started off as just a two-piece consisting of brothers Sam and Max, and bassist Dusty provided low-end to the lineup after declaring his need to be in the band while recording their album at Nicollet Park Recording Studio. Guitarist Jon moved back from Denver last year, and a full band was born. Dusty’s always traveling the world as a guitar tech for the Hold Steady, so Taylor Harris has since picked up regular bassin’ duties.

New Labor

New Labor just released a brand-spankin’ new 7″ at the Hexagon Bar on Saturday, and the show was one of the best I’ve seen from them so far. I read somewhere recently some mention that they cross Jello Biafra’s vocal stylings with Nomeansno songwriting, and I’d say that’s somewhere in the realm of accuracy. What I like most about this band is their ability to slow things down and throw in some lounge-inspired interludes, and somehow make it work when the manic-slash-crazed stuff kicks back in. That type of risk-taking can quickly muck up a great tune, but more and more, New Labor is turning into a craft, and in turn, providing Twin Cities show-goers with a new, inventive band with whom to provide their rock and roll thrills.

What’s more, I discovered yesterday that New Labor is in the video-making business, something I’m usually not crazy about, but I hope to see more of these from the guys. Check out their video for “Dangerous” on YouTube:

Sam McPheeters from Born Against recently wrote an article in Vice Magazine that poses the question, “Is Rock Over?” Rock stardom, perhaps, but otherwise it’s all about where you look. Perhaps Sam should check out what’s going on in the Twin Cities.

I bought a six-pack of Lone Star on Friday, and had completely forgotten about the games underneath the bottle caps.

These two were pretty easy, but a few others were real brain benders, which is funny if you consider the effects alcohol has on your cognitive function. Session is the only other beer I know of that has games under the caps. That particular beer has illustrations of paper, rock, or scissors under each cap.

Completely related, I used to love the game show Classic Concentration when I was a kid.

An impending morning of work and a potentially exhausting day be damned, I stayed up until 2:00am on Thursday night reading John Kricfalusi‘s blog. Most people probably don’t know him by name, but Kricfalusi is best known as the creator of The Ren & Stimpy Show, which aired on Nickelodeon in the early 90′s.

It all started when I discovered that The Ren & Stimpy Adult Party Cartoon was newly available on Netflix’s “Watch Instantly” service. At that point, it was already time for bed, but I stayed up anyway to watch a version of the classic children’s show that was aimed for an adult audience.

While watching that show, I recalled once visiting his blog, so I performed a quick search, and before long I was reading lessons about drawing toys, and considering ways to improve my own skills for the first time since I drew with any frequency.

Kricfalusi’s “Cartoon College” (if you will) is exactly the kick in the pants I need. Throughout, he delivers incredibly useful tips and analysis for aspiring cartoonists, and in reading some of it, I remembered why I had an interest in cartooning in the first place – it’s fun. I’m looking forward to taking many of his lessons and eventually donating to the cause myself, because this is valuable information and it’s great that it’s out there in the world.

Pictures soon?

If you were to ask me the exact date, I would be unable to tell you, but I’m 98% certain I bought my first guitar in 2002. It’s a black Gibson SG knockoff – a Yamaha SBG200 with humbucker pickups and gold tuning pegs. If you’ve never seen a Gibson model, picture a guitar that Bruce Wayne might own if he was into purchasing them at second-hand shops in Uptown, Minneapolis, and was simultaneously unprotective of letting anyone and everyone know he is The Batman.

(Quick aside: I always love when Batman’s enemies speak his name prefaced with a “The”. It’s a stylistic and linguistic choice that is extraordinarily pleasing to these ears.)

It’s been 8 years since my purchase of this instrument, and in that time, I’ve learned approximately the same number of chords. I can’t play you a tune, but I could throw down a blues scale for you like you’ve never heard (unless you’ve heard a novice play one).

Over the last week, I’ve been picking up the guitar more and more between bouts of surfing the web and writing in this very blog, and I’m pleased to find that I’m enjoying it again. In fact, today I even learned a new scale, which is my favorite part about playing guitar. I’m not yet to the point where I enjoy playing chords, but I love picking strings and trying to find sequences that sound good together. Rumor has it that this is why scales were invented.

When I started learning to play the drums way back in 1996, I made a lot of recordings that would be laughable to listen to today if I still had them. I imagine the same kind of documentation may be necessary if I’m ever going to improve at guitar. Stay tuned for haphazard recordings of flubby performances!

Yesterday was the official beginning of “YLTLSBC”, or what Adrianne calls “Yo La Tengo Late Summer Blog Challenge”. The point is the get into a habit of blogging daily, and I guess so far, I’m 2-for-2.

Not technically, however, as Adrianne reminded me that I “know how to queue up a WordPress blog”. Still, I say having an update every day is a noble thing to make happen. And, hey, I’ve been reading a lot of Calvin & Hobbes and Bloom County lately, and I know Bill Watterson and Berkeley Breathed (as well as any comic) put in a lot of work in advance to make sure a strip comes out on a daily basis.

Now that I’ve justified that it’s not cheating that I started writing this entry on August 31st, maybe I’ll write my review of the “Weird” Al Yankovic show at the State Fair, in advance of actually seeing it. It reads something like this:

Yesterday, Abby and I went with our friends Sarah, Patrick, Ava, Pat and Cara to see “Weird” Al Yankovic at the State Fair Grandstand. It was [insert weather condition], which was [insert feeling about the weather]. “Weird” Al had many costume changes, the most entertaining of which was when he [insert thing that "Weird" Al did]. My favorite song was [insert favorite song], and until last night, I had no idea that he had written a parody of [insert song I didn't know he parodied]. That’s fine, though, because [insert person who didn't know] had no idea that [insert song performed by "Weird" Al] was one of “Weird” Al’s original songs, therefore, I maintained a modicum of musical superiority over [him/her].

All in all, the concert was a blast, though it was a bit uncomfortable due to all the [insert fair foods eaten] I ate. Next year, I’ll take it easy!”

This blogging thing is pretty alright!

It’s been four long years in the making, but news from the folks over at Modern Radio is that the new STNNNG album, The Smoke of My Will, is finally finished and slated to come out on Tuesday, October 26th. The official release show will take place at Saint Paul’s Turf Club on Saturday, October 23rd.

Hannah Haugberg and Brian Severns collaborated on the artwork, and I think it looks awesome:

I’m relieved to see that this album will finally see the light of day, and that my drumming still appears on two of the 10 tracks – “New Black Hole” and “Two Sick Friends”. In a perfect world, this album would have been released in 2008 while I was still involved with the band, but I’ve already previously written about that. Bygones, eh?

All things considered, I’m looking forward to hearing the final recording in its entirety, and I wish the band and the label much success with this long-awaited release. If you’re reading this and are a fan of the band, here to listen to “New Black Hole” and pre-order a copy of the record.

Finally, one fun fact before I go: In the summer of 2008, this record was tentatively called Summer Bummer, and we did a little backyard photo shoot at Adam’s aunt and uncle’s house. If the record were to have come out then, this is what it might have looked like:

If you were to ask me what I liked most about playing in a traveling rock band, I would tell you this: friendships. The most rewarding thing about going on tour is seeing all the friends you’ve made, catching up, sharing stories, telling jokes, and schooling them at hoops. Being in a band means dotting the countryside with talented, kind, fun and friendly people, and some of the best ones I’ve met in my time reside in St. Louis, Missouri. Collectively, they’re known as The Conformists.

The first time I met Mike, Jim and Chris (and at the time, Tom) was in 2005. STNNNG was on our first tour, sharing a van with another Twin Cities band, Falcon Crest, and our trip took us through St. Louis, where we had a show lined up at the Lemp Arts Center. At the time, Chris was still sporting men’s formal wear as a part of his regular attire, which inspired certain preconceived notions in The Conformists about what the quality of our music would be. Likewise, when half their band took the stage decked out in little more than muscles and sweat, we prepared ourselves for whatever rock-and-roll cliche was about to ensue.

Instead, The Conformists played one of the most confounding, bizarre, and dramatic shows I’d seen since getting introduced to the music of Arab on Radar at the Foxfire Coffee Lounge in 1999. The music was perplexing, the imagery was peculiar, and the commentary was, well…let’s just say it took a good year or so before you could tell whether the things that would come out of their mouths were serious or not (they aren’t).

We became good friends, and over time, St. Louis became somewhat of a destination.

The Conformists’ long-time drummer, Tom, left the band in 2007. In 2009, I had the honor of filling in for a few shows while they were integrating their newest drummer, Pat. We spent Memorial Day weekend rehearsing a handful of songs from their second album, Three Hundred, in preparation for a pair of shows the following month. The second show was held at Union Rock Yards in Chicago, IL for the “PRF BBQ”, which was hosted by members of the Electrical Audio message board. One of the forum members, Toomanyhelicopters, took footage of the entire set, which I was grateful to have as a memento when I returned to the Twin Cities.

The whole point of this long and convoluted story is to tell you that this great band has finished recording their third album, None Hundred. It is being released on LP (with an included CD) by the criminally-underrated label Sick Room Records on Tuesday, September 21st.

Two tracks, “Jesus was a Shitty Carpenter” and “Swim Home” can be heard on the band’s Myspace.

I will endorse few things in life, but friendship and great bands are two of them. I hope this record makes them rich.

So, apparently having a workspace dedicated to writing and drawing doesn’t make any difference when neighboring drummers and bass players are rehearsing at the same time that you’re trying to work. My iTunes is blasted, and I still can’t drown out the sound of a poorly tuned bass drum.

No matter, I must slog on, for this is why I’m here!

This week, Adrianne proposed the “Yo La Tengo Late-Summer Blog Challenge, wherein all us blog-type-persons, beginning on September 1st, start putting words out there for people to read. Every day. Is this my worst nightmare? Outside of the one I had the other night, when I quit the job I love for one where I toiled for years? No, there are still worse.

Perhaps if, every day when I wanted to write, I had to blast Cougars’ Pillow Talk over neighboring noodling musicians, it could become my own personal hell. Only because I’d prefer to listen to music at a lower volume, if at all, while trying to put words into pixels. Not because Cougars are, y’know, a bad band – they’re actually pretty great. That Brian Wnukowski can drum.

And now that this post is apparently going nowhere, let’s talk about drumming, shall we? I was listening to Radio K the other day, and a song was playing by a bass-and-drum band that sounded not unlike my old friends and Snackbag Records labelmates, V9R9D. I waited for the DJ to announce who it was, and it turns out it was a different (but active) local band, Falcon Arrow. A new band to check out, how cool is that? I’m told by those that are familiar with the band that they’re much mellower than the song I heard on Radio K, but to be honest, I was relieved to hear drums on the station at all. I’ve been a huge supporter of Radio K over the years, but much of my drive-time listening has been diverted due to the increase of electronic/ambient (re: no drummers) on-air presence. I did stay tuned through three more songs and was rewarded with actual drummers before they returned to their regularly-scheduled programming. ‘Twas nice.

All things considered, kudos to the K for playing music with drums at all. The more they do it, the more I’ll stay tuned.

In other drum-related news, I celebrated my 14-year anniversary of the purchase of my very first drum set this month – an ocean blue 5-piece Tama Rockstar. I was 17 years old and working at a McDonald’s in Eagan, and had it not been for some very gracious friends, I might never have tried my hand at playing music. For as inactive as I’ve felt for the last year, I can’t begin to imagine what my 20′s might have been like if I hadn’t dedicated myself so strongly to the craft of song. And now, with a new band underway and a few more in the works, 2011 might find me busier than ever behind the kit, and I’m looking forward to it.

But for now, I’m looking forward to the neighboring drummer taking up new interests so I can focus on some other ones as well.

Onward!

Last night, I went to Big Brain Comics in Minneapolis to celebrate the release of Will’s new book, Fingerprints. It’s been years since I last visited the shop (at their old location just off Nicollet Mall), so I was happy to poke around and see what they had in stock.

A few Christmases ago, my sister gave me the complete collection of Calvin & Hobbes, bound in three hardcover books. I, admittedly, haven’t sat down to page through them all yet, but it is one of my most cherished possessions, as I spent a lot of time reading that strip as a child. Reminded of this, a wave of curiosity poured over me, and I started searching for a similar series of books for Berkeley Breathed’s Bloom County. And guess what? IT EXISTS.

More accurately, it sort of exists. The Complete Bloom County Library is a five-book collection of the complete chronological run of the strip. The publisher, IDW Publishing, started releasing installments of the collection last October, and thus far, has only published the first two books, covering the first 4 years of the strip. Volume 3 is scheduled to be released on November 2, 2010.

What great news! Bloom County was my second-favorite comic strip when I was growing up, but I read it much less religiously than Calvin & Hobbes. As such, the series feels much newer, and I “get” the jokes much better this time around (I was 2 when the strip first debuted, and likely didn’t start 1986 or so…certainly I was much more familiar with the series spin-offs, Outland and Opus).

Oh, the glories of adulthood!

Last summer, I laid the Apple G4 Powerbook I bought in October 2003 haphazardly on the couch. When I got up to walk away, it fell off the couch and landed square on the power jack. At the time, the computer was nearly six years old, and it had definitely seen better days. I made do with the computer for another full year.

As I wrote about in this space last week, I bought a table for my rehearsal studio so I could spend more time away from home working on web design, music, drawing and writing. The studio has internet access, and I brought the Powerbook with me, hoping I could get a little more life out of it, although by this point, it had become more of a nuisance than a joy to use. The urge to buy a new computer continually nagged me, but I wasn’t ready to throw down the money. The temporary solution, I thought, was to buy a replacement battery for the laptop so I wouldn’t have to rely exclusively on AC power to get anything done.

The new battery came today. I ordered it on Amazon.com from a company called PCMicroStore. It didn’t work. Impulse finally got the better of me, and I’m writing this entry from a brand new 21.5″ Apple iMac.

It’s beautiful, and I’m already visualizing the many opportunities for productivity. There’s just one last obstacle in the way – the waiting. I hope these files will transfer before long…

Starting today, I’m making a new rule for myself. It’s unbelievably simple:

“Do something, then tell people about it.”

Before I made this rule, I had been going about it completely backwards. Nobody will ever care about what you want to do, what you have plans to do, what you intend to do, or what you’re going to do. The only thing that matters – that will ever matter – is what you have done.

In honor of that rule, I’d like to tell you that I purchased a table from IKEA this week for use at my rehearsal space. This one, in fact:

Abby and I have a larger-sized version of it at home, and I was delighted to find one with half its depth, because they’re great, affordable tables, and I’ve been keeping my eye out for one with its dimensions.

I brought the table to my rehearsal space, and yesterday I put it together, along with a chair and a lamp to go with it. It’s perfect, and that’s all I’m allowed to say for now, because I made a rule.

Sometimes, you wake up in the morning and start thinking about all of the crummy parts of life that you can’t control. For me, this morning, the following parties were responsible:

• People who were once my friend, but are no longer due to something I did
• People who were once my friend, but are no longer due to unexplained circumstances
• People who are supposedly my friend, but never, ever call
• People who are supposedly my friend, but don’t respond to invitations to hang out
• My dad, who I haven’t spoken with since 1998

It’s far too easy to get caught up thinking about these things. From time to time, I consider talking to a therapist about these topics, but something about pride or self-determination often get in the way, and a desire to “figure it out” or some other sort of American Gusto that once existed inside people for things that have nothing to do with mental health.

It turns out, however, that the thing that typically works for me is to stop thinking about them. When I remember this, I like to think about the good (and often great) things that are going on. I make plans. I focus my efforts. And I try and reach out to people who are receptive and actively engaged in friendship with me.

Here is what made today great (aside from having reasons to make unordered lists):

• I had an exceptionally engaging and productive day at work
• I went to IKEA and bought a desk, chair and table lamp for my rehearsal studio
• I saw Dinner for Schmucks with Abby and our friend Josh, and it was great!
• I made plans to practice with my band on Thursday and Sunday
• I got to hear great-sounding music from members of another potential new band
• I made plans to hang out with my friend Adrianne, who just moved back to town from Boston

And that was all just today! This weekend, I went tubing with Abby and my new friends Ryan and Jamie (and they brought great people with them), I got a call from my grandma (which I need to return before week’s end), I went to happy hour with friends at my new favorite bar, I went bowling (and bowled well!), I got to see excellent tables at Red Hot Art in Stevens Square, and I had delicious meals each day.

I want this message to serve as a reminder to myself that life’s too short to get bogged down in the garbage that I can’t control. The people that matter the most to me are those who care for me as well, and the only thing that will get in the way of achieving great things is getting bogged down in the garbage I can’t control.

I have a great girlfriend. I have a great job. I have talents, some of which are likely completely untapped, and I’m getting opportunities to use them again. And, while I might not know the value of some of my friendships, there are many people in my life who show that I matter.

This is what counts. Hooray for today.

This is what a typical night of sleep is like for me:
-Wake up because a fire truck is on its way somewhere
-Wake up because someone is talking too loudly across a parking lot to someone else
-Wake up because a garbage truck is backing up
-Wake up because an ambulance is next door
-Wake up because someone’s blaring a religious speech in their car speakers
-Wake up because someone is blaring music in their car speakers
-Wake up because it’s too hot because I closed the window to shut out the noise
-Wake up because the cat just jumped on the bed from the dresser

I went tubing for 2 1/2 hours in the Cannon River yesterday. I never thought lounging in the water for that amount of time could wear me out. I knew I wouldn’t recover. I don’t have kids, but I imagine it’s a lot like this, only worse. I don’t know how you people do it.

We don’t have a lease, but the rent is cheap, and I’m still over my head in what I owe. What makes this easier to get through is knowing that there will be a day when it is over, and then I can rest.

Until then, beeeeeeepbeeeeeeepbeeeeeepXXchunkachunkawhirrrwhirrrrwhirrrrrr!beeeyoooobeyoooobeyoooo

I just wrote what I thought was a pretty nice entry, and when I posted it, only the title made it to the server.

In summation, the thing basically said, “Boy, I’m lazy. I don’t write or do anything, why is that?” Anyone who might have read things I’ve written in the past have read similar things before.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to stop writing like I have an audience, and stop worrying about whether or not the things I put out there should or should not be written. My friend Patrick once told me, “Write down everything, especially if you think it’s dumb.” He was giving me advice about how to be a stand-up comic, an activity which I had delusions of pursuing last summer. Patrick was right, though, and his words were true to more than comedy. I’ve spent so many years keeping a Livejournal (many entries of which were once public) that there’s no sense in getting caught up about whether or not what I write is “worthwhile”. I only ever write in first person about events that happen in my life, so there’s even less sense in considering its worth to the general public.

I spent so much of the last few years waiting on others for my creative endeavors, that I forgot what it was like to just do something because I love it. And with that, I vow to take a chance on writing here regardless of who might read it, and maybe that will dovetail into actually doing things again, instead of just talking about doing them.

That’s what I wanted to get off my chest before my words got eaten in the ether. There were some other parts, as well, but I’ll save that for another day.

There are few things more remarkable than getting things done. Hard work is its own reward. The early bird gets the worm.

As this space sits vacant, time marches on. And in the morning, something dawned on me:

I can procrastinate later.

Few things have felt more satisfying this year than reaching the end of a book. I knocked off three of them just like that a few weeks ago, and now I’m back to that one that just won’t end.

In 2001, I bought The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon, and since that time, I’ve managed to complete about 1/3 of it. It’s a brilliantly-written novel: it’s funny, smart, and I care about the characters, but man does it drag on, kind of like an Apatow film (sidenote: we saw Get Him to the Greek last weekend, and it was decent. Judd Apatow only produced it, and I think its brevity made it a stronger movie).

Anyway, these World War II-era novels just don’t cut it for me. I had a conversation with an old friend one time who said that he would stop reading a book if it wasn’t holding his interest. Somehow, that idea seemed completely bewildering to me.

“Life’s too short for shitty books,” he said.

I’ve learned something about myself in the past few months. If I purchase something, I feel an obligation to get value out of my purchase. If I get something for free, I can walk away from it easily.

That said, I’m too far into Catch-22 to give up on it (I’ve only got 30% of the book left, and even though I’m having a hard time finishing it, I don’t consider it a shitty book), but for the next few months, my library card will start to see some action.

While I’m not under the impression that Facebook and Twitter are inherently evil, I’ve been kind of put-off by them both as of late. Both sites operate under the guise of social interaction, but sitting where I sit, it seems to be the reverse – lots of talk about what others are doing, and not much discussion beyond that.

And I’m just as guilty.

That’s why I’m declaring this week “Freedom From Social Networking Week”. And even with that declaration, I’m cheating. I vow not to contribute to the fray by posting anything, but that doesn’t mean I won’t be watching. I have to stay in the loop somehow, you know?

Perhaps I’m cautiously optimistic that this will help me redirect my musings elsewhere, such as this site.

In the meantime, I’ve still got 315 pages left of Catch-22, a book most of you probably already read in high school.

Last Wednesday, I went to the Acme Comedy Co. for free thanks to Sarah (who recently celebrated a birthday), and had the honor of seeing Hannibal Burress, a comedian from Chicago. Burress is perhaps known (not necessarily “better known”) as one of the newest writers for Saturday Night Live. He was legitimately hilarious, and could potentially provide more reason to watch SNL next season.

In contrast, last Friday, I went to Midway Stadium, where I saw the St. Paul Saints lose a game 9-1 against the first-place Sioux Falls Pheasants. In the 4th inning, the starting pitcher, Joe Woerman, walked three consecutive batters. Not satisfied, Woerman served up a meatball to the next batter, who crushed it and just about struck the passing train on the other side of the fence.

I’m struggling to find a way to tie these two unrelated events together, but I think it looks something like this:

Elsie’s in Northeast Minneapolis is running a summer special right now where you get two games of bowling and free shoe rental every day before 8pm. Cost? Twenty bucks, for the whole summer.

The offer is good through the end of August, so I’m taking taking advantage of this opportunity to work on my game. I’ve been a fairly avid bowler for most of my life, but only once have I participated in a league – in 1996. For twelve weeks, I bowled with a few of my McDonald’s co-workers and maintained a 154 average, which I thought was pretty good for a 17 year-old kid with a straight toss.

Since that time, I learned how to throw a hook, and have upgraded to a heavier ball. I’ve bowled several games over 200, but I’ve never thrown a 600 series, nor have I been terribly consistent. It has happened, on many occasions, where I’ve tossed a score less than 100. Though it doesn’t happen frequently, it’s quite embarrassing when it does.

I’ve gone to Elsie’s four times since May 1st, and these are my scores:

Rounded up, that’s a 164 average. That’s not remarkable, but I suppose it is considerably better than our President. Recently, I’ve started paying more attention to my mechanics, foot placement, and the targeting arrows, and my scores seem to be improving. In fact, if you calculate the averages for each day, they have gone up with every visit.

By the end of the summer, my goal is to reduce the number of open frames per game (a zero average would be great!), and to have an overall average in the 180-190 range. If I can bowl a few days where my scores don’t drop below 200, that would be sensational, but it’s going to take a lot of practice to get there.

In the meantime, here are some tips on how to bowl your best game ever. Get down to Elsie’s, grab yourself a summer pass, and I’ll see you on the lanes.

Four years ago today, STNNNG wrapped up mixing our second record, Fake Fake, and the five of us were sitting atop Phantom Manor in Chicago, drinking beers and chatting with our good friend & mastermind behind the mixing board, Mike Lust. Our previous album, Dignified Sissy (also recorded by Lust), came out just a year earlier, and we were all surprised by the positive reviews it was receiving in the press locally, nationally, and even in parts of Europe.

I have a lot of fond memories of that time. The year prior, we had become a five-piece, started getting out of town more frequently, and our shows still carried an uncertain element of danger that all great rock bands seem to have. Often, we were as surprised as to what developed onstage as those in attendance, and that made the whole event even more enjoyable for us.

In the fall of 2005, we were awarded the “Picked to Click” award by the Minneapolis City Pages, an honor that in previous years had not typically been bestowed upon the city’s louder, grittier bands. Later that winter, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune proclaimed us as the #1 live band, with Dignified Sissy placing sixth in best local albums.

Though I would deny it at the time, I think these awards and recognition precipitated a certain kind of expectation. After awhile, these expectations brought about internal conflicts and struggles that many of us were willing to put up with simply because the benefits of being in a notable band far outshone them. It was easy to joke about the Picked to Click “curse”, but I do think that perceptions both internally and externally changed because of the weight that recognition seemed to carry.

At the time Fake Fake was released, the future felt limitless. The band was confident, and to me, it felt like we were a tight-knit unit, willing to take on anyone who wanted to challenge the idea of what our shows were supposed to be. If nobody showed up, we didn’t care, and played that much harder because we had that much more to prove. As time passed, that unity ebbed and flowed, but rarely was shared by all members equally.

In the three years that followed, we managed to write enough new songs to try and put together a third record, but the dedication and focus to finish that album no longer existed. Attentions were diverted to other projects, with each member of the group forming or joining other bands to satisfy the need to keep playing. Some members (myself included) threatened to quit, but everyone kept it together for the sake of finishing the latest record.

By August 2009, I chose to leave. At the time, 8 of the 10 songs on the new album had 60% of the basic tracks, but it had sat on the shelf, largely untouched for several months. With no end to the recording process in sight, I determined that I could no longer hold out for that time to come.

STNNNG’s third full-length album, now titled The Smoke of My Will, is slated for release in summer or fall of 2010 on Modern Radio. Much of the material has been re-recorded with their new drummer, Ben Ivascu. Because of my own inability to deal with difficult situations such as these, I have lost many friends, and have been exiled from the label’s messageboard community without explanation.

I have been working very hard these past 9 months to move on and provide myself with some semblance of closure. It’s important for me to remember that, although my life is different now, I had a once-in-a-lifetime experience to do something grand with people that I once regarded as friends.

I’m doing what I can to remember the good times, and in honor of that, I wish to share with anyone who reads this several live recordings of shows over the past few years that contain versions of songs that may appear on the forthcoming record. I’m extremely proud of what this band has achieved, and I hope that my own effort shined through each time someone heard us. I miss it more than anything, but there’s no going back, only forward.

Enjoy.

(link) STNNNG on Radio K’s “Off the Record”, November 30, 2007 (includes: Slow Water; Ladies & Gentlemen, We’ve Been Infected; New Black Hole; Some Raw Girls; In The Hate Field)

(zip file) STNNNG live at the Turf Club, January 19, 2008 (includes: A Tremblin’ Blues; Ladies & Gentlemen, We’ve Been Infected; New Black Hole; Some Raw Girls; Black Dog 2; Slow Water; In the Hate Field; Two Sick Friends)

(link) STNNNG live at the Turf Club, July 22, 2009 (includes: The Ugly Show; Slow Water; Some Raw Girls; Two Sick Friends)