DAN JONES AND THE SQUIDS @ recordBAR 2/13/18

DAVID GEORGE + SQUIDS + EDISON LIGHTS @ recordBAR 2/23/18

DAVID GEORGE * DAN JONES AND THE SQUIDS * EDISON LIGHTS @ recordBAR 2/23/18

SQUIDSkc @ recordBAR 1/13/18

SQUIDSkc @ recordBAR 1/13/18

I'm not familiar with Verbose YET but I supported the Ex Acrobat EP on Bandcamp and you should too--it's great.

MEAT PUPPETS + MIKE WATT & THE JOM & TERRY SHOW @ recordBAR 5/22/17

DROP A GRAND WITH THE HORNS OF MANITOBA

GUS 

Gus Blanzden was in town last night and played conch with  Pinky Pierson in The Horns of Manitoba, on stage with Drop A Grand.  Milemarker followed and Shiner headlined.
 

THE HORNS OF MANITOBA '84

DROP A GRAND

Shiner was celebrating the release of Lula Divinia on vinyl, and they sounded awesome. 

1/27/17 - BENEFIT FOR DAVE ROSSER @ RECORDBAR

FOUNTAIN AND FAIRFAX W/ STEVE ON GUEST VOX

SQUIDSkc/PEDALJETS/CHER UK SHOW * AND A MORNING DRAWING

SquidsKC are on a great bill with Pedaljets and Cher UK at Record Bar on Friday 10/21. This show is going to bring the rock! 

The morning routine consists of feeding the dogs, remembering to GRIND the coffee beans and not just throw them in the filter; then reading some poems while the shower heats up, then doing a few minutes of drawing to drift away from whatever poems I've just read (this week it is David Ray's translation, After Tagore). Then write a poem in a few minutes with as little thought as possible, type it up, stick it in paper and electronic folders and forget about it; go manage subcontract for 9 hours.  It's about a half-hour morning ritual.

This drawing took about three weeks, a little at a time. I'd like to see it blowed up to 48" height and printed on 13 oz scrim banner material, or backlit in a light box. That would be spendy.

It's hard to get musical between 5:30 and 6:30 AM because that gets me wired, I lose track of time very easily, and it's hard to come down from it, so I do that at night.  The main development lately is to take good care of whatever output I manage because the absent-minded professor routine doesn't work.  Printing, filing, organizing, being my own secretary.

FRIDAY NIGHT IS ALRIGHT

Last night's show with The Pedaljets and Conquerors was a gas. Then on to the Mutual Musician's Foundation and chow at YJ's, both first times for me. 

Coals are currently prepping on the grill to smoke ribs for the Troostwood Neighborhood Party.  Life is good.  Squirrels keep nibbling our late crop tomatoes but life is good.

THE PEDALJETS @ recordBAR

THE CONQUERORS @ recordBAR

THE VIEW FROM YJ'S WHILE EATING BISCUITS, EGGS, AND ITALIAN SAUSAGE

WENT AND SAW SOME JAMS AT THE MUTUAL MUSICIAN'S FOUNDATION IN THE WEE HOURS

Pedaljets + SquidsKC + The Conquerors @ recordBar 9/25

DOWNTOWN DOGS & AN UPCOMING SQUIDS KC SHOW

It was two years ago this week that we moved back to KC--the time has gone fast. The anniversary timed with a couple of vacation days I needed to use, so I had a staycation and on both days, took the dogs downtown for exciting city dog walks. So many snacks on the sidewalk when you are a dog in the city.

I also took a 90 minute nap both days with aforementioned 4-leggeds on the sofa, finished off a demo or two, finished Justine by Lawrence Durrell and kind of took it easy. There are things to be grateful for and also ruts to bust, after two years in a place. Downtown dog walks are a great rut buster.  

Downtown KC is really booming.  It's so different from the days when Dad worked in an office there and then the whole thing shut down at night like a neutron bomb had gone off.  Then his office moved to Corporate Woods and the neutron bomb really went off.  Some of it is mainstream entertainment but there are capillaries of culture, margins of uniqueness, like Boss Vintage Records near the Sprint Center, on 12th and McGee.  Is there an independent bookstore downtown?  I haven't seen one, yet.

In addition to our early show with New Baboons on 9/15, SquidsKC will be playing with The Pedaljets on Friday 9/25 at recordBAR. I'm thrilled about this, have always loved their records--carried them with me out to the Northwest and then back again twenty years later. I like the recent record just as much or more than the first two. 
   

BLORB FEARS NO MONDAY!!!

FRIDAY NIGHT FLIER AND OTHER ASSORTED DOODLES

GRASS, STONE, AND MISSOURI PEA GRAVEL

This used to be a humpy slope draining right into our basement. The kind of yard you'd pass out in at a college party and wake up covered in bug bites, most likely alone. 

Then it was a raw dirt site with a new wall by Jason Nace and Lime Green Masonry and lots of sticks and rocks.  

Then I laid in supplies from the Grass Pad and lucked out with a really wet Spring (and was diligent about watering when it was dry).  Flagstone from House of Rocks in small batches every pay day have got the path moving but we could still use a ton more for the patio and finishing the walking paths.

It's starting to look pretty sharp, and the patio is kind of made for a house concert, but watch out for the volunteer chard, beets, and turnips. #Troostwood

POTENTIAL SLOW FILM DAY

Winslow Homer: The Wittling Boy

If I leave the house today, I kind of feel like seeing a slow art movie.  I hope there is one in town.  Maybe something about a postman in rural Ukraine who wittles.  A lot of the footage wood feature wittling, or preparations for wittling, or procurement of supplies needed for wittling: a stool, a knife, a chunk of wood, a pack of cigarettes or a plug of tobacco, and if there is not a chair on the porch, a chair.

Television is so good, at this point, that I watch a lot more serial television than I do films.  They are easier to ritualize with dinner or bedtime or whatever.  We are currently watching Bloodline on Netflix, a show that seems to have come out along with Daredevil and House of Cards Season 3, but is better than both of those shows, though less hyped.  The screws are tightening and in some ways it is excruciating to watch but as a show about secrets in families, it is spot on. 

My buddy Mark Facebooked me a link that asks who should play Dave Robicheaux and Cletus Purcell in a potential James Lee Burke series.  I think that it should be Kyle Chandler from Bloodline/Friday Night Lights, and Domenick Lombardozzi (The Wire, Boardwalk Empire, Daredevil).  

It's still so weird to me that Tommy Lee Jones was cast as Robicheaux in a film that left out Cletus Purcell.  Tommy Lee Jones was great, but that is like a World Series with only one team.  How could that idea have flown for even one second?  Hollywood is strange.  Would my pitch fly for a film about a Ukrainian wittler?  

It may not be the Seine, and it may be somewhat of a sewer, but living just up the hill from Brush Creek and the campus of the Kaufmann Center is a Troostwood neighbhorhood bonus.  This is the view from the bridge on Troost, where we saw a heron amongst the geese.  The creek must be running high from the incredible storm last night.
Another bonus: you can't smell Gate's BBQ when walking in Paris.

My next show with SquidsKC:

OF INDOLENCE, THE WAR ON DIRT, AND ROCK MUSIC

Yesterday was a lazy day.  I took a trip to Half Price Books, took a walk, took a nap, ate a bowl of soup.  I was just flat out tired from last weekend's Rock and Roll Lottery gig and preparation; Friday night's gig; work--and everything else.  I just had no gas in the tank and it was pleasant to do nothing all day to prepare for a night out at The Ship and Voltaire with good friends for a late birthday dinner.  I found a Dan Simmons book and a novel called Kraken that I have seen a few times before, and a couple of graphic novels, at Half Price.  I got a birthday reading pile for $30, not bad.  However, I jumped into The Twelve, from the Plaza Library, the followup to The Passage.  High tech vampire apocalypse Saturday.

The Ship was a magical little place, wow.  And dinner at Voltaire was one of the best meals I have had in a long time, with good pals.  Excellent birthday.

I am blogging this morning but may in fact still be tired.  I may in fact pursue indolence today, as well.  I may need even less activity today.  Situps--no.  Jogging--no.  Home repair--no.  Almost anything but indolence and dawdling will not do.  Syntax will not be edited for sense.  I send this report from a large pile of pillows, in the dark, with a Roku controller and a mug of coffee in my hand. 

My birthday was fun, though my fantasy of leaving work after 8 hours was interrupted by work--what else?  We had penne with roasted peppers and sausage from Broadway Butcher--so good.  And coconut cream pie prepared by one of Tracy's co-workers.  It was great.  At 46, I am launching into the second third of my life, and think all birthdays from here on out will feature pie, not cake.  Coconut cream, banana cream, apple, blueberry, strawberry rhubard--any of these.  Another birthday commitment I made was to keep wearing loud shoes.

Friday night's show was really fun.  It is a special thing to be rolling out the Squids in KC with old friends.  We debuted a new song, again, and even better.  It was the second time I've seen Knife Crime--rock solid rhythm section, cool contrapuntal guitars ("angular" but not arty UK postpunk angular), fun songs, and a nifty Redd Kross cover to end it.  The Heavy Figs were a blast of fresh air from 1971, sort of loose proto garage metal and rock and roll.  It reminded me of Dead Moon and a few other things.

Whatever the state of the war on drugs, I have been naive about grass.  I went to The Grass Pad and bought a 25 pound bag of seed, fertilizer, peat moss, and straw from True Value.  Watching it not grow is agonizing.  Watching birds use the islands of straw as a feeder is agonizing.  Yet, I am seeing a few shoots come up.  If you re-focus, and don't look to closely, you see a slight haze of green shoots that MAY be grass growing.  Or this is your hopeful imagination.  Whatever the case, unless I choose to sod the yard, I believe I have embarked on a 5-year project to get even a little bit of grass growing where the stone mason thrashed the back yard with a bobcat, moving and leveling.  All very necessary.

Here is a cool photo of me and Britt, from the Rock and Roll Lottery, by Rachel Sky.  I met so many cool people doing that show, after getting so stressed out!  There is stress that indicates something excellent is happening, and other kinds of stress that, if chronic, need to be zapped.

BAD JELLY BEANS @ recordBAR FOR THE ROCK AND ROLL LOTTERY SHOW 3/13/15

SQUIDSKC AT RECORDBAR FRIDAY 3/20...AND A WORD ABOUT ED'S NEW RECORD

Squids gig this week, come on down.  

******

     My pal Ed Cole released a dark, folky get-stuck-in-your-head record this month, something he worked on at home and bouncing around to friends' homes and studios over the course of a couple years. It is a departure from the post-punk garage rock of The Underlings and I really love it. I listen to it while I am cooking, like last night: white bean and turkey chili with grilled cheese sandwiches, bopping in and out of the house to move the sprinkler on the grass seed I planted. I played some trombone on this song:

ROCK N ROLL LOTTERY @ recordBAR.

SATURDAY, JANUARY 3, 2015 @ recordBAR

A happy new year to one and all. Tonight SquidsKC will be playing a benefit show at recordBAR. It's a good lineup and a fun way to start the year, helping out. 

Our first full year in KC blew by in a blur. 

GO DUCKS!