Ehh... I will be fine. I've got five gallons of water in the fridge, a couple of candles, a bottle of red wine if I have to drink myself to sleep with no air conditioner, and my bathtub's filled up so I can still go to the bathroom if the pressure goes out*. This happens once every couple years or so. I am glad I don't live in Galveston 'cuz it's basically underwater right now I think.
Houston won't get hit for another few hours so I am going to go outside now and play in the wind. If the storm ends up being awful and you have a few extra dollars, the Red Cross is good with hurricane relief stuff.
As far as that good news I alluded to last time, here's a hint: it includes me doing stuff that you can see on the internet. Not yet, but soon. I hope.
*: It's so I can fill the tank back up and flush again. I'm not going to shit in my tub.
2. This is neither here nor there, but: awesome, Rachel Maddow is getting her own show on MSNBC! Also I saw Tropic Thunder and it was really really mediocre.
3. Something neat that I am pretty sure I should still not say anything about yet is about to happen soon, I think.
WARNING: CUSSES. PROBABLY NOT SAFE FOR WORK IF THEY DON'T LIKE YOUR COMPUTER SPEAKERS SAYING F-BOMBS.
Jeff Goodyear: Drums Carlos Sanchez: Drums Jose Sanchez: Bass Ryan Goodland: Guitar Briana Fitzpatrick: Keyboard Cley Miller: Guitar Jenny Westbury: Tambourine Charles Larrabee: Lead Tambourine Iram Guerrero: Rhythm Tambourine Tom Adams: Other Tambourine Mlee Marie Suprean: Saxophone Charlie Naked: Rhythm Saxophone Mike Switzer: Trombone Joe Mathlete: Guitar, Vocals GGMG: Whiskey I can't actually remember who else was onstage at that point
So long story short: I took a job that required me to move to Austin for three months at the beginning of the year (you may or may not remember a long period of me not really posting anything on any of the blogs I keep... I mean, longer than usual). We set up one last pre-"hiatus" Mathletes show at the Proletariat, a venue that had been good to us over the last couple of years and that was to be shut down a few weeks later to make way for Houston's new light rail system. Like a good game of telephone, word got out that I was moving away for good and that the Mathletes were breaking up forever purple monkey dishwasher. It's hard to break up a band that (at that point) had no permanent members, but I wasn't 100% sure when I was coming back to Houston, and sensing opportunity I didn't contradict any of the rumors.
I decided to invite a large percentage of people who had played with us over the last year (as well as a few local musicians whose songs I really loved) to be a part of the Mathletes Symphony Dorkestra Fakeup Show. This naturally resulted in a tremendous logistical nightmare of poorly-rehearsed stumbling through songs half the band could barely remember, with lots of instrument swaps and guest vocalists and at any given point at least one or two people just playing tambourine. Also the singer of this particularly number got spectacularly drunk before the first band went on (perhaps you can tell).
So... Yeah. That's probably all the Animals the internet needs (and then some). Thanks for indulging me. Coming soon: something besides YouTube clips of my band playing the same song over and over again!
I hate it because I've been trying to upload the last video of the Mathletes playing "Animals" that's worth showing for like forever now, only every time I try I fail (a lot of this probably has more to do with me stealing a none-too-steady wireless signal from one of my neighbors (which is definitely less expensive than getting Comcast but possibly even less reliable) than it does with YouTube itself, but still). So... "coming soon."
I love it because of pretty much everything else about it. Having a bad day? Here's this!
Jeff Goodyear: Drums Carlos Sanchez: Li'l Drums Jose Sanchez: Bass Charles Larrabee: Guitar Briana Fitzpatrick: Keyboard Jenny Westbury: Drawings, Animal Sounds Cley Miller: Fancy Dances, Animal Sounds Joe Mathlete: Singing, Guitar
This is the last show we've played to date. We were asked to open for Voxtrot at Houston's Museum of Fine Arts (now with rock bands!); unnerved by the prospect of playing on a proper soundsystem in front of more than fifty people, I tried to assemble a lineup that would be as tight and well-rehearsed as ever. We still only had one rehearsal where we all showed up, but it went off rather well all the same.
Cley was playing keyboards for most of this set and didn't have time to learn this song. He said he would figure something out. I did not think this was what what he was going to figure out.
Gie Gie McGee: Vocals, Pianica Briana Fitzpatrick: Keyboards Ryan Goodland: Guitar Iram Guerrero: Drums Carlos Sanchez: Other Drums Cley Miller: Other Other Drums Jose Sanchez: Bass Joe Mathlete: Vocals, Guitar
Here's us playing a show at some weird gigantic student center thing at a college campus. Pretty much the same lineup as Part Three, plus Gie Gie on vocals. Everyone here had played the song multiple times-- all together, even. And we're still not very tight. But it has been said before: what we lack in professionalism we make up for in unprofessionalism.
Apologies for the sound mix/quality, but on the bright side this clip totally has more than one camera angle (It has two. Two of them). Also I apologize for how much I look like a hobo, or possibly some guy whose job is selling weed to record store clerks.
If I could, I'd like to take this opportunity to plug Young Mammals (the hydra-headed rhythm section of this clip) to the half-dozen people I have not alienated yet with my narcissistic band-rambling on this blog of late. Here is a video they did when they were still called the Dimes, before an achingly mediocre go-nowhere band from Portland with the same name threatened legal action while pretending to be their "record label" (this is akin to calling someone in middle school using a deep voice and saying you are your dad and you're going to kick their ass. If you were an ugly orphan). If you care to feel depressed about how slowly you're achieving your life's goals: they wrote and recorded this song in high school, before some of them could even drive legally.
Bubba Hightower: Bass Charles Larrabee: Guitar Gie Gie McGee: Vocals, Pianica Joe Mathlete: Guitar, Vocals Briana Fitzpatrick: Keyboards Mike Switzer: Trombone
This was kind of a bummer.
We were offered a show at a bar called Rudyard's, one of the best places in Houston to see live music, as part of a bill with a number of other local musicians I really admired. We had never played at Rudyard's before, and I was really excited.
None of the three drummers who were playing with us at the time ended up able to make the show; Gie Gie and Charles had this bizarre antiquey drum machine from the early 1970s we ended up using for most of the set. We didn't have much time to rehearse (though I guess we probably wouldn't have rehearsed much more if we could've), and between a long series of instrument swaps, mangled songs about animals and robots, and general chaos, we ended up driving most of the crowd downstairs after just a few songs. To top it all off, I forgot to move my car after we loaded in our instruments and it got towed in the middle of our set. All in all, not one of our better shows, but looking back on it now with some distance (and the knowledge that I didn't give up music forever after that night), I kind of like this clip.
For bonus laffs, here's a review of the show by a blogger named Justin Crane entitled "Sloppy". Most of the humor for me stems from the fact that he played guitar with us on one song.
The most important lesson learned: don't play your most "Children's Band"-esque show ever in a bar.
