Welcome to my playlist

Just updated our blog with a new fangled playlist, and currently John has had zero input in the songs, but that may change in the future. Or, he may have to upload a dueling playlist and we may start taking votes on whose is better...recounts may occur, chads will be counted, voter fraud will be investigated, and I will win regardless. Behold the democracy of Syvia :P

Note: The songs are not supposed to be played in a specific order, nor is there any meaning behind their arrangement in the list. I am merely lazy and started to compile all my favorite tunes. I am not finished yet (even picking these songs were tough because I didn't know when to stop and just upload the damn player before I kept adding more).

And the beat goes on

I know, I know, it has been a while, but you will be psyched to hear that we are still alive and kicking. Last weekend we managed to write and arrange a song within about a week and a half, which we are thrilled about. It began with a little idea I had laid down, and then we worked on all last weekend. The song is tentatively called "Because Really You Should." Tonight we are doing pre-production with our buddy Dan, who is going to lay down some drum ideas on the tunes that we have arranged. We also have a number of exciting possibilities that are evolving but I'm going to keep mum about them until we are further along.

Quick show review: Sunday we hit up the free No Age and Titus Andronicus show at Santos Party House. It was my first time seeing No Age live, and from what I heard, they weren't "themselves," which I guess was a good thing since I wasn't blown away by the performance. I wish I had caught them when they played Bowery Ballroom, because that was supposed to have been off the hook.

JUSTICE rocks the house that is Webster Hall

Had a great time at the Justice show last Thursday night. Despite the one hour wait outside in the cold and the fact that Justice didn't start until around 2am, it was still worth it. They put on a slamming show. The kind of show where the music is so loud and awesome that you can just close your eyes and let the sounds wash over you and clear your mind, because there is no way you could get a clear thought through that kind of entertainment. I especially love how Justice does a bang up job of teasing a song out until you absolutely can't take it anymore because you know your jam is about to drop, and then when it finally does all you want to do is jump around and go crazy. The strobe lights, thumping beats, and packed crowd even at the wee hours of the night made it one amazing dance party.
Check out the photo of the disco ball that dropped around 3am (thanks for the pic Angela!).

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.