Happy Anniversary

I have either horrifying dreams, or confusing ones, presumably planted in my head by someone or some organization. None of the dreams end up waking me up in a sweat sitting up or anything, but I do often wake from them and then never go back to sleep. I think for the last year or so since some shitty things happened and then I left Massachusetts and came back I get about three or four hours of sleep a night if I am lucky. Maybe once a week or every couple of weeks I will get a good sleep in at some point to “make up” for any lost hours. Even though I am doing nothing with my life right now, I still feel like sleep wastes time you could be up doing shit.

Speaking of sleep a number of times this week I have sat here with this thing open and a blank screen for long periods of time and dozed off with nothing to say. It’s always good to have nothing to say...especially since I say too much sometimes.



If there is a place and time to go completely mad, I think it is now. I feel it coming on. Not in a bad way necessarily, but enough that it will only get worse every day. This, as a result of this living situation and wherever else I have found myself sleeping the last year. I haven't just had a bed. Wait, why would I talk of this?

There are people behind all of this that will eventually have to face their situation. These people will eventually die. Well tanned and filled with what they thought was life.

Vacations

03/11/10 - 4:07 PM

Have some extra time before she gets here to sit around and watch these crackers sitting in Starbucks, along with, me, a fellow cracker. This is the beginning of what will be a few weeks of not standing still. I enjoy this lifestyle better than whatever one I was living in MA before I left and whatever one I was living here for the last few months. Spending a couple of (bittersweet?) days up here on the central coast with her, going back to Boston this coming Tuesday for a week, and then driving out there on the 30th of March, so not much sleeping in a bed that collects dust underneath it. I wonder how slow I can get down to when I get back there. This should be a nice couple of days with her. If not I will be even more sad than ever. There’s no reason why it won’t be anything but good…at least that’s my intention.

Watching and listening to these people. Definitely “Californians”


(and then the next thing you know)
03/12/10 - 3:35 AM

Have no idea how the fuck I am going to do this. I can’t sleep and can’t breathe in this room right now. I’m overwhelmed with this whole situation, per usual. Who does this to themselves? Puts themselves through this?

We walked around downtown at the farmers market. It kind of reminded me of how great it would be to walk around the Topsfield Fair with her all buttoned up in some nice coat. Steam getting laughed out of her face in the cold. Red cheeks and all that good stuff. Fuck.



03/13/10 - 3:48 AM

We had a nice day out today out and about in this area on the water, off the water, etc. The way the mountains line the coast make everything ocean side that much nicer. You have this gigantic wall of earth that you neglect, and then the vast blue ocean and the way the sun hit today and her smile and laugh and the music in the car and taking pictures and eating lunch on the water.

I still can’t really handle that tomorrow I’ll leave here and probably never come back to this place, at least for a long time. My head anyway. I can’t be where I was in September, August, July, all of those months when everything was just a little different. Another night here I’ll never get to sleep, drive off into the distance tomorrow and just wait around twiddling my fingers for days. I’m kind of an asshole and deserve to have shitty things happen to me. This situation though, well. I feel like such a fucking idiotic moron, and who knows, I could have no idea what I am talking about, but really, it doesn’t matter anymore

Keep seeing weird shadows fly around the room here while she sleeps over there. I can’t ever get to sleep at the same time. I have to come here and get something out of me before sleep

It’s warm in here, way too warm to sleep
It’s freezing in here, way too cold to sleep
I doubt I could ever really explain how shitty I feel
I don’t have enough fingers to type it out
I don’t have enough hours left to explain it out
I just know exactly how I feel
I know how I’ve felt, which can’t be wrong
Sometimes I apparently make
(fuck, what the hell am I doing?)



+++++++++++++++++
3/13/10 – late afternoon
That was worse than I thought it would be. Eating lunch and then saying goodbye, no real view of anything in the future; Just walking away and waving and her blowing me a kiss and me driving back down here to “try again” at making myself happy. Nobody is ever going to want to sit around and wait for me to be normal. I feel like I have exhausted any chance at “love” at this point in time. I feel like I should pack it in with these at this point. They are hard to walk away from, and this one has truly been the hardest. In a few weeks I will drive across country by myself, further and further away from her wondering what the hell I just did, or feeling like the happiest guy in the world. Whatever the case or feeling I have that morning I leave here the intensity of this whole thing has proven to be too much for me and I really need that week by myself to let it all sink in, but oh God do I already miss her. I should probably drive home now and play some music loud so I can put my head somewhere else for the day.

The Dark Signal Returns - Shrinebuilder @ the Echo in LA 03/03/10

Man I am going to miss going to see shows out here. I don’t know if I have just handpicked the correct shows to see while living out here, but I have not seen a bad show here yet. I’m only living here for a few more weeks so I should try and see some more...but alas no money to be spending on fun really.



Usually “supergroups” are a failure. Well nowadays they are anyway...obviously CSN & Y, Cream, ELP and Bad Company were pretty solid bands. Okay, Cream were the best of that list, but...some of the later ones in the 80’s like The Firm an Asia were for the most part one hit wonders. I’ll most likely never hear Velvet Revolver or Audioslave, but I’m going to assume they aren’t very good at all.



It was only a matter of time before a band would form out of some of the bigger more influential contemporary underground heavy bands. When I first heard about this band I was immediately excited to hear it. Scott Kelly from Neurosis, Al Cisneros from Sleep and Om, Dale Crover from The Melvins, Scott “Wino” Weinrich from St Vitus, The Obsessed, The Hidden Hand and pretty much the Godfather of this genre of “stoner”, “doom” and what have you. The reason I assumed this band would be great is the consistency of great music they have all released through the years. There is always a lot of heart and soul put into their music from the artwork and packaging to the music itself of course, and then there is the live performance. Who has ever seen a shitty Melvins show? A bad Neurosis show? If you did it was most likely something else causing it, the bands always give 110%.




I’m not that big of a music snob, but I kind of am. With people I know getting into commercial music like Lady Gaga and that kind of thing I have to question their ears sometimes. As much much as I have music on all day and a good amount of it is indeed background music, I still like to hear something that moves me. Modern “dance” music or whatever it is just doesn’t feel right to me. I like some crap you would call commercial pop. But the new stuff is really painful and insulting to me. I don’t know, you can’t call me an old man as I would much rather hear someone screaming unintelligible words with a microphone shoved halfway down their throat at deafening volumes. Seeing a band like this, or musicians like this remind me that there is still good music that can move you. It doesn’t have to have any kind of message, any kind of statement, be any kind of genre, it just needs to BE. This music definitely IS.




Shrinebuilder’s music is pretty dark, but also pretty pos. The artwork on their record reflects this, light on the outside, and dark on the inside. Aside from Dale Crover who seems to be playing a little more of a traditional rock style (and playing a scaled down set compared to what I’ve seen him play countless times with his full time job in the Melvins), Kelly, Wino and Cisneros all pretty much bring exactly what they are known for to the table, but somehow it works when all put together.



I saw the debut Shrinebuilder show back in November at the Viper Room and it was one of the best shows I saw last year. The show was kind of a warm up show, and they played their set twice in a row which was to say the least, awesome. They did what I could tell was pretty much the same set last night. They definitely sounded a little tighter. My one complaint about their album was there are only four songs on it. The album is still long as the songs are long, but seems like they could have fit one or two more on there. The live set consisted of all of the songs from the record, a couple of others I did not recognize, and a cover of Joy Division’s Twenty-Four Hours which was amazing. One of the “unknown” songs was a bluesy song sung by Scott Kelly that could easily be on one of his solo records, a later Neurosis album or just a new original, Definitely sounds like one of his. This song on the setlist was called “Hell” (I think!). At this show it was sung with such emotion and soul you could almost feel the heat coming off of him. “Pyramid of the Moon” this fucking song is so intense, you want it to never end, and it’s actually one of the shorter songs on the album. Live, it’s a monster. Al’s voice is one of my favorite voices in doom/stoner, so I was happy to see him get some time singing on the record and of course live. I never saw Sleep live and never saw Om, so it was cool to see him play bass as well. He is definitely the most energetic of the the three guys up front. Dale Crover is Dale Crover, a monster to watch behind the kit, but watching Al play bass was great, I never realized how great a player he is.




Openers A Storm of Light were great. I love their new record, saying they sound like Neurosis is kind of a cheap way to describe them, but fronted by Neurosis visual dude Josh Graham there is obviously a big influence there. I think their sound is a little more theatrical and arty if that makes sense. Drummer Vinny Signorelli played with Unsane and the Swans....also played in a band way back called The Dots, and his drum set was apparently used during a Bad Brains recording session, hence "The Black Dots". They were tight as hell, but for whatever reason only played about twenty five minutes, leaving the audience slightly confused as they seemed to end just as they started building some intensity.

I hope they announce a Boston show I can see when i return there next month. They have a tour happening but no New England dates that I have seen. Highly recommended show if you are into any of the members’ respective bands.