Saturday, March 1, 2008

Whorelando Risien

I'm in the Orlando airport at 6:26am, having missed my flight because I was only at the airport 42 minutes early. I'm tempted to launch into a diatribe about airport security and how incredibly insulting it is, downright unconstitutional even, but I'm almost out of battery and it's a wide topic that fills me with a blinding red fury. And I'm utterly exhausted. In a life sense, I think. We played the last two One Drop shows. They went well. I played one solo set in Gainesville, and it was so horrendously bad and cost me so much hair that I opted to cancel my set in Orlando.

I'm excited with my new solo format... I'm using the very powerful Ableton Live program along with many midi controllers to be able to make anything I want on the fly. However, with only one week of integration/implimentation, the only thing I made was misfired samples, feedback, and out-of-sync loops. Two wonderful people drove two hours to see the carnage, and there was a point when I was leaning far to the right to try and sing into the misplaced microphone, sacrificing any decent piano playing in the process, and my voice cracked. In the middle of a children's song. And just then my brain was screaming to just stop because I was doing more damage to my career than good and my nerves just couldn't take it anymore. I'd spent 10+ hours a day for five days preparing, hadn't even seen the FL sun or eaten more than one meal a day, and my body was just really irritated with me. The biggest show I ever played was in front of 7500 people. That nervousness was an empanada in comparison to what I'd been going through for the last two days. Seconds away from walking off stage mid-song I remembered those two people and felt like they deserved more than two songs. One of them had superglued a fake goatee on his chin in order to make the 18+ cutoff (he's 16). Turns out everything following the voice crack made my butchered children's song sound like an empanada in comparison. I was so relieved when it was all over that I went into the bathroom and vomited. Then I gave those two special people shirts with my face on them, as some sort of clumsy apology. Then I got to watch my friends Brian and Neal absolutely murder things with their band The Captives. By the time One Drop went on, I was so relieved to be through it that I actually played very well, even taking into account our having only rehearsed for three hours in two years.
After the show we all went to Flaco's to have their amazing food. But they were kind of closed so all that were available were plantains and Empanadas. I was very excited (because I happen to enjoy the spanish delicacy) until I bit into one of the four I purchased, and found it to be uninspired at best.

It was a happy ending for this band in a way. I guess that's a lucky thing. We were able to get back to the feeling that you bask in when you first start the band: the simple enjoyment of playing these songs with one another. No money issues, no life choices, no drug-gorging, no fan-pandering. Just music.
That was four hours ago, before they accused my midi drum pads of being a security threat (level chartreuse?). Now I want to sleep off this whole trip and pretend music never happened.
This is what I look like right now:

4 comments:

metaghost said...

Next thing you know, Nick Cage will take the lead role in your biopic.

Gonna do any solo gigs while touring for Worlds?

Or would you just be jinxing the whole operation?

joseph said...

music's out. words are out. canvas is out. it never happened. try culinary arts. gainesville has Sunny's barbecue sauce. i haven't eaten a thing since my last trip to Sunny's Cafe last May. jared was with me. he hasn't eaten a thing since either, but he can't say so or your younger sister will use his chest as a dart board. some dude named Sunny knows art. but he won't sign a contract outside Florida. if you can't make the stop, keep up the first three art forms. i brought my fan T-shirt to Taiwan and sell fake gavincastleton autographs.

Anonymous said...

Hmmm...culinary arts sounds good...or just sleep it off and try again in portland. Just try try try again and you'll get it-you always do.

I, personally, think you should get a real piano on stage, forget the keyboards and electronics, and just play and sing your stuff. The best music-the most heart melting stuff, I've ever heard come out of you, came in that particular form.

Anonymous said...

You mean you didn't arrive at the airport 2 hours ahead of time? Tisk tisk. what were you thinking?! 41 minutes us never enough for them to frisk you and and take samples of your hair.Test for drugs and then genetically trace your family history. Next step you must fly with scrubs on.