In case someone stumbles upon this page: 2008 had a happy ending, even if it took a bit into 2009. I now live in the lower Haight, having spent a good portion of the past year traveling, and have beat the economy by accepting a good position at a Bay Area biotech company. I’ve attached a picture of my kitchen.
I also bought my dream touring bike for 100$. Got it set up as a nice singlespeed now, and will try and tour on it this spring/summer. Picture attached.
I’ve been recording a new song here and there for the past few days. Right now it’s a preliminary, instrumental bit, but if I can write decent lyrics (I’m having ideas already) and a vocal line, it’ll get that. I’ll probably add a short acoustic guitar outro.
That said, it’s a pretty complicated, burly song. I don’t really expected many people out there would be too into it. The first half is very organ-heavy – I had an idea a while back that I wanted to write something with a slow, brooding organ part floating on top of a distant maelstrom of blasting drums – something about the juxtaposition of vastly different speeds and tonal qualities appealed to me. I think I achieved close to what I was imagining.I also wanted to explore some heavy organ riffing – call it an experiment; those parts ended up sounding a little stoner-rocking.
The last half of it is an ambitious tribute to the jazzy math-rock I’ve been listening to lately. I wanted a more jazz-informed chord progression with tons of key modulation, changing but catchy time signatures, and tasteful tapped guitar parts.
The performances went pretty well, I think. The only glaring errors are in the drumming in the middle when the clicktrack was ramping up tempo. The guitar parts came together in only a few takes, and I wrote and recorded the final bass part in two hours. I’d like to point out that the tambourine took only one perfect take!
Anyways, here’s the song.
http://rapidshare.com/files/108144784/jeff_gist_-_your_favorite_moons.mp3.html
April’s been rad so far. Weekend before last, I went to Kobey’s Swap Meet with my friend Kari, and bought expired food products. Eat shit, FDA! Here’s her with some sweet-ass Pop Tarts.
I then helped my brother’s roomates hang up carpetting on their refinished garage. They turned an unpowered, bare drafty space into a pretty sweet practice space/studio with sound insulation everywhere.
And the finished product:
Not much happened during the mid-week, though – I “officially” put my notice in, is all.
The next weekend, some friends and I rocked some cheap beer and went to a house party show. Technical rock extravaganza. Here’s Witt. They’re all in high school, and they shred harder than most 60 year olds.
And Fever Sleeves just got some good news about some DC legend personally mixing their upcoming 7″. Here they are, destroying.
The next day I went to Balboa Park for the annual rummage sale. It was a zoo – I could only deal long enough to pick up some sweet old Swedish pint glasses (I don’t think Norrlands Bryggeriet is in business anymore) and a puzzle. Here was the 1/4 mile long line to get in:
I then went to IKEA for meatballs (call it a practice session), and then to the beach for a hang out session. There was some rad paraglider surfing happening. We played bocce ball and did flips off of sand dunes.
I bought a pair of glasses for the beach. Here’s Cassie and myself modelling them today at the pizzeria. And I made a new addition to the tip jar.
I’m going to try to hnker down and write as much music as possible over the next two weeks, when I’m not tying up loose ends at the ol’ job.
