Damn writer's block and deceased mascots

R.I.P our paper lamp mascot. Someone threw it out. It will be remembered for the life it lived and not for its unfortunate, unnecessary demise.
Enter John's new purple shades, worn mostly inside.

I guess the trip to Alaska wasn't that great in terms of the music making. As often happens, the break I took put a bit of a damper on the groove that John and I had gotten into with regards to writing new songs (I also blame it on the untimely death of our mascot). We both agreed this past week that neither of us were feeling the "Take Me As I Am" song we had started working on pre-Alaska (as in, we would play back the part we had so far over and over and over again and still not feel what the song was and where it should go next). So we returned to my Alaska song about the boy I met there.
At first the mojo wasn't really there for that song either. We literally sat for HOURS playing the part we had worked on earlier in the week. We both agreed on the one part that was really great, so we didn't want to scrap the entire song. It was just that the first part was bringing the song down (not that depressing is a bad thing, but this was 'fall asleep depressing,' not, 'wallow in sorrow with a stiff drink depressing.'
There were numerous times that we were going to just call it a night and give up, and then right in the last half hour something just clicked and I came up with this melody that felt just right--like it was the next step the song needed. So, I guess we will just have to wait and see what the coming days hold in terms of us both playing around with it until we feel content with the arrangement.
The search for our own studio space continues. I refuse to replace our mascot until will do.

All Points West Takes the Fun out of Fest

I meant to write this before, since it is kind of two weeks late, but I caught the first half of the All Points West Festival in Liberty State Park on Friday August 9th. I only saw the first bit because I had to run back to my place and grab all my stuff to hop on a Chinatown bus to Boston by 8pm (I had a 6am flight out to Vancouver from Boston for the Alaska trip).
I don't mean to sound like a whiner, but I was really shocked with the way the festival was handled. For instance, their puritanical drinking policy. You go up with your ID and receive a wristband that limited you to 5 beers (5 beers!! for an event that lasted from 12pm to 12am! I'm not saying I'd drink more than that, but I don't appreciate being limited to a certain number of brewskies at an all day festival. And it wasn't even like the beer was free! They just allowed you that much). It gets worse, though...So, part of why I love watching live music is the pleasure of drinking as I watch my favorite bands play out. Well, tough luck doing that at APW. All the drinkers are penned up with their beers in a gated area and not allowed to bring their beers outside of it (Now, granted, it helped me quickly spot my buddies who were also at the festival, but come on!) And you weren't allowed to hand in tabs that were broken off--the bartenders had to break it off for you--ostensibly to prevent people from getting more tabs from their friends' bracelets (I figured out a way around that by simply buying my friends drinks with my bracelet so they didn't use their's up).
The sound on most of the stages was also a travesty, and I'm surprised that a festival that size could get away with a sound system that was so unbalanced and crappy. Maybe they bumped it up a few notches for Radiohead, which I regretfully had to miss in order to catch my bus. Let's not talk about it.
All I can say is, it wasn't worth the 100 bucks I dropped on the ticket, and I spent my lonely solo ferry ride back to NYC wishing I had finished up all 5 of my precious drink tabs instead of giving them to my friends.
[Thanks to my girl Angela for the photo. Did I mention they banned umbrellas and it poured on and off throughout the show? Yea. Awesome. Thank god I smuggled one in anyways.]

Mr. Majer's Mandolin

As yet unnamed, this new addition to our musical family is welcomed with Leffe beers into the studio on the eve of August 19, 2008. John breaks into joyous country riffs in between recording tracks, much to the dismay of his partner in crime. Ruthy makes hollow threats to leave the mandolin in the car on Thursday...

Glacial Getaway

Sorry for the brief hiatus from blog writing. I was off in Alaska on a cruise, checking out the glaciers with my surrogate family before they melt into the ocean from global warming (the glaciers, that is, not the family). I definitely couldn't ever afford a trip like this being unemployed and all (I'm working on that part), so I let myself relax a little and just enjoy the break. Even though I brought my computer to work on music, of course, I spent more time hitting the buffet and scheduling midday trips to the jacuzzi with my pina coladas than actually getting any work done, but now I'm back and ready to dig my heels into the music again.
I was inspired to write one song while I was away, though, and John and I hit the studio last night and I played him the really rough draft of what I had written up. Rather than return back to the third song we had been working on pre-Alaska getaway, we started playing with stripping away some of what I'd done on this new tune and changing the tempo and feel of the song to see what fit...it kind of went from an emo-pop love song to a rock and roll love song, but i really really like the edgier direction John took it in with the guitar bits he added. I guess we'll have to see what we end up keeping and scrapping when we get back into the studio on Thursday after attending a doom metal concert in a location yet to be determined. Should be interesting :)

[Updated] DJ J. MAJ what?

John will be guest "DJing" as Nurse Bettie this coming Thursday for Anti-Mag's Thirst Fursdays on the Lower East Side, which I think will mainly involve him scrolling through his iPod, but who knows. So look for the tall dude with the iPod and ask him for his autograph. It will make him beam with glee. I will be setting up shop at the bar and trying to get as many drinks into the happy hour time slot as I can muster.

Check this out for more deets: http://www.anti-mag.com/events.html

[Update By J. Majer] - I am very flattered that I am a subject of a Syvia blog post. I am excited to get my DJ on. Even if it is just pushing play on my iPod and walking away. However, for the record, when I am DJing, I am no longer known as John Majer. I am known as "with Bacon." Go forth and tell the world. Believe It!!!!

[Updated] Recap on the weekend

[Updated By J. Majer] - Behold! The Light Of Inspiration!

We got a ton of stuff done this weekend, which was awesome and a relief considering how tough it had been last week for either of us to get any good work done on the songs. "The Rain" is now finished THANK GOD, and it sounds fabu. On Sunday, we were even able to slip in a few hours starting on our next song, "You're On To Me" which we had some basic beats and melodies drafted up from months ago. I even remember exactly how the song transpired. I was walking back from the gym, grooving to my iPod as I've been known to do, and these two lyrical lines just popped into my head. What to do? I wrote it down in my trusty little black notebook intended just for these moments, since often I think up great melodies and lyrics in random places while doing random things.

Then, in one of our early studio sessions John started fooling around on the guitar and I was going through my notebook seeing if there were any lyrics that would fit what he was playing (or that I still liked, because I tend to write a lot of stuff down and then come back to it and cringe at the idea that at some point I actually thought that sounded good). I sang the lyrics and John liked them well enough, so *poof!* a song was born. Or at least, the seeds of a song were planted. We played around with some really groovy beat ideas, and even sampled some 'negative space' in my vocal track that sounded cool. Who knows if we'll keep anything but it's fun to mess around and just see what we come up with.

Oh. And here is our lovely mascot, the broken paper lamp in all its glory is still going strong.

Tag! You're It

The dawn of the tag cloud has come. Behold the right hand rail in all its glory. I laugh in the face of HTML failure. Victory is mine!

Looking forward to getting some work done in the studio tonight. I've come up with some better lyrics for The Rain that I want to bounce off John, and I'm hoping we can finish our last little tweaks and start working on a new tune. Fingers crossed.