The Second Coming of the Paper Lamp?

It may just rise again from the dead. Word on the street is that we are very very close to getting another studio space to work in with some buddies, which means that there is a good chance that a new and improved paper lamp mascot will make an appearance in our new and improved space. I am looking forward to freeing up our weekend evenings a bit for some proper shenanigans, rather than having to ask forgiveness from my friends for being so MIA these past few months. This weekend John has gone fishin' but he did leave me a nice little beat idea to work on, so i've been messing around with that in addition to taking these past few weeks to revisit some old drafts of previous tracks i had written and see if I was inspired after having let them sit for so long.

Wondering why you got no update last weekend? Well, let's just say it was a washout. A combination of mutual tiredness, a Diesel party that we ended up not even getting into b/c we arrived too late, and a delivery of RAM all conspired against us. But hopefully with our new space, we will be able to make up a bit for lost time.

Weezer show at Madison Square Garden

John and I caught Weezer at MSG last Wednesday. At first I was surprised at how thin the crowd was for the opening bands, but then it got packed as the witching hour approached. I have to say, even though my euphoria could have been due in part to my state of intoxication by the time Weezer took the stage, I haven't had a nostalgic live show like that in a while. It brought back high school to a tee, and I thank Rivers Cuomo for allowing me to relive my teenage years where I listened to the blue album and pinkerton on repeat during car rides. Oh the days of compact disc players, where have you gone? I love the whole "we're dorks and we embrace it" thing that they've got going on. And, I'm not going to lie, any show where I can bond with fellow music fans and complete strangers by collectively screaming out the lyrics to every verse of every song is a damn good show in my book. Say it ain't so. 'Tis so. 'Tis so.

The final arrangement of "Port City" has come!

No, I didn’t take another trip to Alaska. I have just been very delinquent with my blog posts for Syvia because it necessitates me signing out of my gmail account (and by default, my gchat) to upload a new blog. Kinda annoying…wish someone at blogger would tweak that (*hint, hint).

So, a quick summary. Basically, we thought we had finished arranging our song (which was originally entitled “Skagway Boy” only to have the title nixed by some grumpy bandmate of mine, to be replaced by a mutually agreeable title of “Port City”). In its first incarnation, it was a very dance-y electronic song, which was good, but John and I both came back to it after a week and agreed that it was good, but it wasn’t the best that it could be. So, we scrapped practically everything except the vocals and some really basic instrumentals and beats that we felt made the song. First, we tried a more folky, bossanova style on the tune, but we ended up settling on very ethereal, atmospheric instrumentals and bumping up the beats in the background (bongos!), which fits it perfectly. So, after I finish laying down new vocals to go with the new instrumentals we have for the track, we will be finished arranging that song and can fully sink our teeth into the next one…which we’ve tentatively titled “Like A Sea” and I am already crazy about even though we haven’t spent a ton of time on it. It’s one of those songs that is so addictive you just want it to keep going on and on. And on that note, I will end this post here and promise to be better at keeping you all in the loop. Soon the day will come when you will be able to put a sound to a Syvia song. But not yet. Not yet…

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 :)