Thursday, August 31, 2006

The Medium is the Message

The last few days I’ve been playing my old cassettes on my tape player that I use for my Davey G. practices, and have been rewarded with the unending joy of the wave of nostalgia they bring. Suddenly it’s 1993 all over again, and I’m listening to They Might Be Giants “Lincoln” album, or the Fastbacks “Zucker,” both were bought in the early ‘90s and neither of which I’ve played because of the continuing trend toward analog obsolescence which have led to Cds and MP3s and the like. These are some of the old albums which are so old and fundamental that I never bothered to update them, so they sat unused in boxes around my house. While it would be possible to purchase them again on CD or download them, the way I remember experiencing this music was always on cassette, with all its inherent flaws yet without some of the issues of Cds (Say what you will about the sound quality of a 15 year old tape, but at least a tape doesn’t skip.). The music would be the same but the experience would be vastly different.
As I brought the cassettes to work and connected the tape player to the stereo, I can also see the wave of nostalgia wash over my late 20-something co-worker. He sings along to every song, songs neither of us have listened to in 10 years. It’s a strange kind of boundless joy I haven’t completely understood--I was truly ecstatic when I listened to the MCKnicknix, an old and forgotten New England band who were my first punk rock show ever, and then Jawbreaker on the flip side (whom I saw twice, getting to shake Blake Schwarzenbach’s hand at the show in Connecticut where a fight broke out during the opening band’s set). It was great to liberate the near-defunct technology and hear the songs of my youth in the form I remember. I find myself wishing I still had my old Dead Kennedys and Circle jerks cassettes which I played out long ago. I know they are still out there in some form, but I know it wouldn’t be the same. That’s not such a bad thing, as a scratchy cassette is nobody’s friend, but I guess that’s not the point. Because (make my corporate Comm. teachers at UB proud) as media guru Marshall McLuhan said “the medium is the message.”
www.daveygandthekeyboard.com

Monday, August 28, 2006

Davezine 12 Flyer

All right! I’ve written more new songs since the last time I blogged, pretty much going back to the blank place in my head where silly thoughts reside. I almost don’t want to talk about the new songs, because I really want people to come hear them at my next show and be completely surprised. But music and tunes are starting to join up and as I sit here and count, I have about 7 new songs for a future album.
I have made a flyer for the show, it looks like this:

Only three weeks to go! Yay!
www.daveygandthekeyboard.com

Thursday, August 24, 2006

a day at the races

I was at the track yesterday, down about 15 bucks and making my last bet of the day--a 5 dollar win bet on a 5-1 shot that I thought looked pretty good, much better at those odds than what I thought was an overrated favorite who went off at something like 3-2. A win would have netted me 30 bucks and saved my day. Earlier I had hit the daily double for 7 bucks (2 favorites) and then I lost 3 in a row.
I made my bet, then went out to watch the post parade. My horse (the 9) rode by, the jockey was talking to Anna Napravnik, the 18 year old girl jockey (who has been totally kicking ass at Laurel), saying that since she hadn’t sent him a message in a week, he had knocked her down a few notches on his Myspace page.
The race was a 5 furlong turf race, and it unfolded with my horse charging to the front and holding the lead, then in the last half furlong Napravnik streaked past on a horse called Red Malone, completely fucking up the bet and setting me down 20 for the day. Guess that was her revenge for being downgraded on Myspace.
I went home and looked her up, but she hasn’t friended me yet.
www.daveygandthekeyboard.com

Monday, August 21, 2006

NEW AND IMPOVED! obligatory Monday post

Slow day, no big news in the Davey G world, other than that I bought a new toy keyboard at the goodwill. Just sitting and watching a game on ESPN 2, the only channel I get.
I put my show up on my
City Paper page
Which I’m not really sure what it does. But there it is. And it’s on myspace events.
I hope to make some new music the next time I get down to play. Plus I picked up a few pieces for my Halloween costume. Very exciting.

Thursday, August 17, 2006

Is it Thursday again?

I’ve been working pretty steadily on my music the last week or so, and I feel like I could be confident in trying out two new songs at the next show. One song is called “Irritating” and the other is “Come to my House, Break In, Steal My Shit,” which pretty much speaks for itself, I guess. I was inspired by two movies I’ve seen recently--Leonard Cohen “I’m Your Man” and the Devil and Daniel Johnston--the former because of the work ethic involved in his music and poetry, which I feel puts me to shame whenever I think I “can’t write” or just avoid the whole process. The latter is an inspiration because Daniel Johnston is really just some fucked up guy who’s been plugging away at it for years. He looked success in the face and was then too crazy to cash in on it. Fucking brilliant! I see some of the minimalist elements in his work in some of my shit--though he actually plays and I just sort of tinker.
Anyway, for anyone concerned--my woman has convinced me that pictures on my blog are good thing to have, so here is a picture of the cat. Her name is Stella and she licks my arm a lot.
stella!
www.daveygandthekeyboard.com

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Obligatory blog post.

I was on vacation with my girl last week so there wasn't a lot of progress on Davey G stuff-though I have been working on about 4 new songs and have sent off my press release to the powers that be here in Baltimore.

The release is in about a month and I have many zines to assemble before then. I have realized that my little PSC 750 copier is quite frankly not up to the job, so the effort has stalled somewhat as the money situation is (as usual) a little tight. But it'll get done.

www.daveygandthekeyboard.com

Monday, August 07, 2006

Hardees Fast Food thoughts, part 1

When I was 14 I worked at Hardees Fast Food Restaurant back home in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. As I think about it from my kitchen at the job I've now been at for over 5 years, I kind of feel like Lester Burnham in American Beauty. The character is ruminating on the summer of '73, when he worked at a fast food joint, just partying and getting laid, with his whole life in front of him.

While I remember hating a lot of the job, I think that for about 3 months of 1990 it was the best thing ever. I was just starting to play in a band--even if I was only just drumming on buckets and crap at first until I bought my crappy-ass third hand drum set (which I still play). I was just starting high school, working this job at 3.75 an hour, living with my parents, truly with my whole life in front of me.

All I did was flip burgers, chop lettuce in a big lettuce press, wash pot and pans, just work in this little industrial kitchen. Its kind of weird but I was pretty happy with the work--keeping thing simple and routine, while still being very excited about the possibilities of life. I never thought I would still be in a kitchen so many years later, but I guess in a lot of ways my life hasn't changed. I'm still making music, being a drone, but excited about the possibilities of life. I still summon the inner 14 year old whenever I sit down in the basement and make music. Or whenever I get on stage and scream through a kiddie horn.

The bliss of Hardees didn't last,obviously. I became pretty sick of the place and the people, and after about 8 months (an eternity in a high turnover world of fast food) I told my manager I didn't need to work and I put in my two week's notice. A few months later the place shut down, pretty much with no warning, and now I think it's been turned into a used car dealership.

I started thinking about Hardees on Friday night when Josh and I, bored out of our minds at work, took out paper hats and wrote stupid shit on them. I wrote "Hardee's Head Chef" and he wrote "Hawk Tenderizer", all the while blasting Ozzy Ozbourne and collectively not giving a shit. I couldn't help but think back fondly to a time when this sort of shit was just a job and not a fate that I had resigned myself to.

www.daveygandthekeyboard.com

Thursday, August 03, 2006

me, and the Poncherellos

The show is up on the talking head site, though I am not the top of the bill--sort of the concession for taking that date and accommodating a touring band. I have been loosely working on a few new songs out of my little basement “studio.” One is about the MTA, another called “Be My Friend,” “Come to my House”, and I did a version of “It’s So Easy.” I guess when I sit down and work at it a few songs come out sometimes but I really would love to push it and get more done, even get another keyboard. One day…

My friend Andre and his band the Poncherellos are playing a reunion show up in Massachusetts at Source of the Nile. They were a group that formed about the time I was in Lampstand, then broke up and went their separate ways, then had a reunion show (along with the Lampstand reunion show that was somewhat of a watershed event in the Davey G and the Keyboard forming) and now, after a long period of working in LA in the porn industry, Andre has decided to re-form the group. I am really curious about this--they were pretty much a straight-up goofball ‘70s style band, who took their name from the Erik Estrada character in CHIPs, yet somehow they achieved a great deal of underground success, mostly due to the dogged determination of Andre, the guy who wrote Rebel Sound Magazine (also somewhat of a seminal publication in the Western Mass. punk scene, whatever that was) and had the connections within the national scene. I think their 7-inch split with the Gloo Girls in 1993 was Maximum Rock’N Roll’s 7-inch of the year. Yeah. So anyway, this show is rumored to be on August 17 at 6 p.m. Apparently Andre is moving back to Massachusetts to start a business, something related to coffee and punk, a place to do shows. I hope it works out.